August 30, 2024 • 34 mins
In this exclusive interview, Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins and president of the NWA dives deep into the challenges of staying true to his artistic vision while catering to a diverse fanbase. He discusses the evolving role of wrestling with the NWA, the future of the music industry in the streaming era, and how he channels personal experiences into his music. Corgan also explores the parallels between storytelling in songs and wrestling, and the importance of authenticity in a world of quick fame. Don't miss these insights from a true creative visionary!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Battleground Podcast and exclusive interviews with some
of your favorite wrestlers.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Stop. It's one O five nine in the Rock Nashals
Classic Rock Its Battle and tonight there is a big
show going on at ge Otis Park. You've heard us
talking about it all week. I've even been telling you
that I'm going to have a special guest in the
studio and he is literally right here in front of me,
(00:38):
a man that you're gonna be hearing performing tonight, William Patrick, Corgan,
Jorge show. Sir, how are you doing.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm good.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
I'm still reeling with the idea that you you dressed
up as a giant piece of douchies going to unsuspecting
front doors. That's I'm still processing that.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I mean, you should see the videos we've we recorded
all of them, we posted up on the internet, so
they're on our Instagram if you want to see those
all show clicks. Yeah, it's been very interesting. But first
and foremost, before we get into anything any business, I
want to say congratulations. I saw the news you got
another one on the way.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yeah, number three, number three?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
How excited? Are you?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Pretty excited?
Speaker 4 (01:15):
You know I was forty eight when my wife birthed
our first child. So before I met her, i'd pretty
much given up on the idea of having a family,
not because I didn't want one, I just couldn't find
the right situation. So to be here together twelve years later,
we're married, we have two kids and another one away.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
It's amazing. I mean it certainly.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
It certainly makes the case for if you have faith,
like anything can happen.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Absolutely. Now, are you are the kids going to be
interested in music wrestling? Are you going to try to
like get like a whole big thing with them?
Speaker 4 (01:48):
Oh? No, They when we do NWA stuff, they come
to the show, so they know a lot of the wrestlers.
It's hard for them because they'll see the wrestlers on TV,
but they in their minds it's like their friend, like,
Oh that's my friend Tyris. That's how they think, you know,
So it's hard for them to get into the storyline
part of it all. Yeah, and then when they come
on tour, they perform on stage with us. So my
(02:10):
wife and I have gone out of our way to
always make them feel like whatever we're doing professionally, they're
a part of that. But at the same time, we
always tell them. You know, whatever you want to do
with your life, we're here to support you. But yeah,
they obviously have very interesting experiences that are outside the norm.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Right, because I mean they one day it's wrestling, the
other day it's music. So it's like you said, I mean,
it's got to be a cool moment as a dad
to have these moments with your Well, we.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Rolled up on MetLife Stadium not too long ago in
New York where the Mets play, and my kids were
in the back seat and they go, how many people
are going to be here today? I go about forty
five thousand, and they just don't even bat an eyelash.
And then two hours later they're on stage dancing in
front of forty five thousand people. So it's very I
didn't have that growing up.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, it's kind of My kids are the same way.
I've got two as well. I've got a sixteen and
a seven year old. The seven year old, or my
seven year old, gets into everything. My sixteen year old
is he's too cool for school. He doesn't want to
do anything the dad does. But going to those things,
it's such a cool moment.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Well, you should dress him up as junior Dookie. Junior.
I thought about that, that would be good kind of
go to work with Dad.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Right, exactly exactly, so let's talk about it. Of course,
you guys are on tour with Green Day and Rancid
and the Lenda Linda is that play in Giotis Park tonight.
But you know, the Pumpkins have always defied conventional music trends, Right,
how do you balance maintaining your artistic integrity with the
expectation of a fan base that spans generations.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
It's impossible.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
And I would add to that the expectations of the
music business because the music business, once you reach a
certain amount of time in the music business, they just assume, okay,
that's what you do, like you're this type of band.
So when you do something that's outside their mental concept
of who you are, that becomes a problem.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
We've always led.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
With the idea that if we believe in what we're doing,
it'll all sort of work out, and it kind of
has over time. Our path has been pretty unusual. I think,
I don't think it's a bos I mean, you could
argue it's a problem, but our path in music is
almost like not like any other path of any other band,
especially over this span of time. I mean, you're talking
about thirty five, thirty six years, and you know, when
(04:22):
we made this new album Agori Mori May, we decide
to kind of go back to our old school way
of making music and more guitar focused, and it's almost
like people are like, oh my god, oh you can
still do that, and it's like, no, no, we could
always do that. We just chose not to for various
lengths of time. So it's cool and that we have
a little bit of win in our back for a change,
and people seem to like what we're doing at the moment.
(04:45):
But you know, it doesn't mean the next album we
wouldn't decide to do something completely different. It's just it's
just not the what's kept us motivated. And I think,
like I said, over thirty six years, it's kind of
worked for us. And you know, given our streaming numbers
and where the band is public right now, I guess
that you could argue it's also worked that way too.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Absolutely, And of course you've been vocal before about the
impact of streaming on the music industry. If you could
redesign like the music business model from scratch, what key
changes would you like implement to.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Building Wow, what artists? What a great question I would
like to see.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
And I'm working on trying to set up my own
record label, but I would like to see something more
akin to what Tony Wilson did with Factory Records, which
was the which was the label most notably that put
out Joy Division back in the day in New Order.
And you know Jack Bates, his dad, you know, played
in New Order, you know, in Joy Division, so you know,
he literally grew up in that business model, which is
that you know, the the partnership between a label and
(05:46):
artist is a fifty to fifty partnership. I think that's
the that's the most that's the best upside for everybody involved.
That avoids Taylor Swift being mad about what happened here
in town with her former label. You know, I'm saying,
get down to like everybody's kind of got the same
skin in the game. The old model, which is still
very much the model, is Hey, you're lucky that we
(06:08):
are interested in you. We're going to completely exploit you,
and then if you're successful enough, we will work out
the level of exploitation going forward. Creates a lot of
bitterness in the business people who do have legitimate moments.
Even if there are a couple of years, they don't
really get paid what they're due for the moment they created.
And I think the music business as a whole would
benefit from a partnership model. The chance of it happening
(06:30):
is probably less than five percent because labels just assume,
very much like the NFL or something, you're only going
to be around for a couple of years. So if
you get lucky, we want to take the advantage of
you getting.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Lucky, right for sure. And this weekend, man, it's a
very busy weekend. We were talking off the air. I mean,
you've got the show tonight at Giotis Park. Then you
got to hop on a bus to get the Philadelphia
because you got NWA in Philly this weekend. And in
your journey with the NWA, now is my time when
I also get to geek out and talk about wrestling
(07:03):
on a music we talking.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
About wrestling here, I've been in this chair talking about
wrestling before.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I'm having a flashback.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yes, how do you see the role of wrestling involving
in like the broader landscape of entertainment, especially in an
era dominated by streaming and instant content.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
Again a great question. You know, I think there were
those years between let's say the mid forties and maybe
up until about ten years ago, or wrestling's placed in
the culture was very much kind of an almost embarrassed yeah,
and there's wrestling too, you know. It was it was
stuck over there in the corner with Roller Derby. And
yet over those seventy years, you saw the rise of
(07:41):
the NFL, the rise of the NBA. Heck, now we
see the rise of the WNBA, right, And I think
it was very hard for many people in the wrestling business,
because they're obviously very gifted athletes to not get that
same kind of street respect as another great athlete. Yes,
they're entertainers, and we all understand that part of the business.
I think since you've seen the sale of WWE to WME,
(08:06):
which is also owns UFC, I think you're going to
see now wrestling finally enter the core mainstream of entertainment.
It'll be up there with Broadway theater and everything else.
It's something that's obviously very popular, generates a lot of
money for whatever partners that it has, and I think
it also sort of attract more talent. So I personally
(08:28):
I think wrestling's best days are ahead. And I love
the era that I grew up and I think it
was a fantastic time for professional wrestling. But I think
what's to come, and when you see what WWAE is
able to do with eighty thousand people in a stadium
for WrestleMania and all that stuff. That's why I bought
the NWA, because I saw a lane by which we
could not only bring the NWA back, but also grow
(08:49):
as a business. And all my meetings, whether I'm talking
to top networks, big agents in the sports field, my
pitch is always the same. It's a mainstream product. It's
meant to be a mainstream product. I know it's very
trendy right now for wrestling to be treated as a
niche product, like a smaller and smaller fan base pays
more and more to watch a very specific kind of wrestling,
(09:11):
And I get that. It's very similar to the dynamics
of independent music, where a band has a weird mustache
and a bunch of people like them and they can't
really write hit songs, but everyone says how great it is. Well,
there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I came out
of the independent markets myself, but we all understand the
biggest movies are about the most people going. The biggest
(09:33):
wrestling events are about the most people going. So what
does that tell you? You have to find a product
that reaches everything from a five year old kid who
gets what they're watching at the most fundamental levels and
then in my case, sitting next to an eighty one
year old Belgian woman who didn't even speak English but
who like professional wrestling. I think that's when wrestling's at
its best. So the best times are to come. And
(09:55):
to your question about streaming, streaming is perfect for wrestling digital.
We've seen a lot of growth lately in the NWA.
We just started putting up just matches, no context, just
put up a match, and our streaming numbers have gone
back up. So what does that tell you? People only
want to watch what they want to watch when they
want to watch it. They don't necessarily want to sit
for a whole show. Doesn't mean I don't want them
(10:15):
to watch the whole show, but a lot of people
they don't have time and they're on a bus. They
want to watch one match whom they watch one match
that you're offering them so.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Right, and that's the great thing about like you said
about wrestling right now and the whole streaming things, like,
you know, if I'm sitting there and I can't watch,
you know, the NWA show when it gets put out
on the CW app, I could watch it on a
Saturday morning, or I could watch it Sunday evening after
I put the kids to bed.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Oh. I mean, it's fantastic for that. But again, you know, look,
you know, there's a lot of talk in the entertainment
business about the influence of TikTok and how it's Somebody
told me yesterday, somebody who's a huge, huge YouTube person.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
I don't want to say the name, but they said
that when.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
They do short YouTube like shorts for like Instagram or TikTok,
thirty five seconds is the perfect time.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, that's the level of.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Attention you can get from somebody thirty five seconds before
they scroll onto something else.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
I mean, so, are we down to thirty five second matches?
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Like, I don't know what.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
I'm gonna do with that, but bring the bell and
that's that's real information. Yeah, you know, so, but you know,
we see it now. I don't know if you're an
NFL fan, I would assume, you know, being being here
with an NFL team, I've gotten very used to you know,
I don't really watch the NFL anymore, but if there's
a game i'm sort of interested in, Like we have
the new quarterback in Chicago, I'll watch that thing the
(11:35):
NFL puts together that it's like basically six eight minute
highlight but they show all the top plays.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
It's perfect.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Yeah, I'm watching the product. I get a chance to
see my team, that the Bears, how they're playing, and
then it's you know, instead of three hours and eight
thousand beer.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Commercials later, right, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Yeah, I get those I get those other two and
a half hours of my life back.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, and you can do other things like, you know,
writing songs or whatnot.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Oh yeah, like standing in the sunshine or a breathing oxygen, you.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Know, right, which kind of leads me to my next question.
Because the Smashing Pumpkins sound has always been deeply introspective.
As a songwriter, how do you channel your personal experiences
into music while still allowing space for listeners to interpret
and find their own meanings in your songs?
Speaker 4 (12:21):
As strange as it sounds, the more personal my songs
are traditionally the more people seem to find themselves in it.
If I write kind of a vague song, there seems
to be no connection. If I write something that's very
as we call in wrestling, me me, me, me Me,
that's when people seem to want to get married to
the song and have their kid born to the song.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
I know.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
It's strange to me because I feel a lot of
the songs that people have connected with through the years
are super personal.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
But I don't know how that works. It's a mystery
to me.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, it's gonna be one of those things, because it
is interesting when people connect to those songs, especially if
it's on a whole different level, like you said, like
if you wrote it for your personal experience, but they're like, hey,
I'm gonna interpret.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
It for this well.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
And then just the whole thing misheard lyrics. You know,
my my diction isn't so great when I sing, so
I mean, it's amazing the miss the misheard lyrics through
the years. So you get that too, like somebody they've
convinced themselves that there's a line in a song that
isn't the one you're singing.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
But that's the one they believe in. Yeah. So and
they come up and tell you like, oh I love
that line.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
You're like money, you don't want to.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
I want to say the all time one though, was
it's a slightly different topic, but a guy came up
and said, you know, I got a I got a tattoo.
You know my favorite lyric of years of all time,
I got a tattoo. And he lifted up his sleeve
and one of the words was misspelled. Oh no, it
was like one of those eye before e like conceive
or receive. And I was just like, I can't be
(13:47):
the guy to tell him this. It's just like, that's
a great tattoo, that's all I said.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I was like, oh, thanks, bro.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Oh well, I don't know if it sticks. But for
a while there was a site Pumpkins Tattoos. It's just
thousands of tattoos of pumpkins related.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I mean, that's got to show like something really cool
to the test of time with everything that you guys
have done of just like you have a page dedicated
to tattoos of the pumpkins.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Well, yeah, you know, I used to. I used people
would want me to sign.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Them and then you know, I thought that was kind
of cool, and then one day I was like, oh,
this is wrong, Like I got to stop doing so
I stopped doing that. But yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting
what people you know, it'll be a small symbol from
an album that they connect with. It'll be sometimes the
band's logo. Usually it's my handwriting, so it's weird. I'll
see my handwriting like on somebody's body. Yeah, there's other
(14:43):
stories there. I can't tell then, about women in tattoos. Whatever,
let's just leave it right now.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
We'll just leave it right there. Of course, our guest
in studio right now, William Patrick Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins
are playing tonight with Green Day at Giotis Park. And
you know, as someone who has exceeded in both music
and wrestling industries, what parallels do you see between crafting
a compellative, a compelling narrative in a song and building
(15:10):
a creative storyline in wrestling?
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Another good question.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Uh, you know, I could give you kind of a
high falutin answer, but it doesn't really apply. The closest
parallel to wrestling and music for me are set lists.
You know, you have a two to three hour event,
how do you pace that event so that people feel
that what they're watching sort of has an unfolding narrative,
(15:36):
even though it's just a series of matches, which is
the same as a set list, right, What do a
series of songs tell people about who you are as
a band? So, for example, anybody coming to the show tonight,
we start with Everlasting Gaze, which was, you know, a
moderate hit on our last record of the nineties, and
then we play a song from Zeitgei's which came out
(15:57):
in two thousand and seven, which was a very controversial
record time, but most of the audience, of course, won't
know the song. And then the third song we do
a YouTube cover which is somewhat obscure YouTube song, not
a big hit, So people would say, why would you
open your show with the first three songs? You know,
sort of, but that's the story that we want to tell.
We usually start dark and then kind of move to light,
(16:19):
and not everybody agrees with that setless philosophy. Some people
believe you should come out with a bang and hit
and everybody cheering, and I'm like, but there's only one
way to go from there, which is down right, So
you have to have confidence to tell a story. So
same thing with matches, right, you got to have this
confidence that you know, some of the early matches can
tell a story that we'll get they will get the excited,
the audience excited about what's still to come. I suppose
(16:41):
just like looking at their watch thing, Okay, I get it,
but like let's move on to the next thing. So
that's a big thing with n w A. As you know,
storytelling is a huge part of what we.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Do, absolutely and it's been some of the great storytelling.
And it's awesome because here on this show, like we're
a music driven show, but I also a big wrestling nerd.
As nobody that's paid that's listening to this right now
can see. But behind me, I have one of the
most prestigious titles in all of wrestling sitting back here behind.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Me, the ten pounds of Gold.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
That's it, the ten pounds of gold. When you see
that thing that is that is the championship belt of
all of wrestling. I'll just go ahead and say that,
and you can fight me for that. Whoever's listening to this.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Right well, so interrupt you.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
What's cool is you know that the lineage of that
belt goes back directly, you know, over seventy six years.
So when you know, right now EC three has the belt.
When you have that belt, I mean you have a
direct link back through you know, some of the greatest
talents in wrestling history. Yeah, so there's no getting around that, right.
I mean, that's a that's a real tangible thing in
a business where there's not a lot of reality.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
No, and you look at it and it's like you said,
I mean a EC three, Tyris Nick gold Is, Harley
Ray's Rick Flair.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
I mean, the list goes on and on and whoever
has even Adam here, Adam Hears who you know is now.
I saw recently he's talking about having another match and
I think it's been over ten years or so that
he since he's had a match. Incredibly talented person. So
that'd be interesting too, because you know his lineage is
through the NWA title and that's how he made his name.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Absolutely, and I mean the NWA when you think of wrestling,
it's synonymous with wrestling. NWA is it, because I remember
growing up watching NWA at the fairgrounds here down the
street in Nashville, and every.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Saturday is definitely an NWA town.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yes, absolutely, so hopefully you know, we can get another
NWA show back here in Nashville.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
But you know what it is is so crowded. You know,
we like running the Fairgrounds, but every time we call
for a date, they're like book booked, booked, and so
I don't know, I needed if anybody's listening, you know,
somebody at the Fairgrounds. I mean, we need an in
over there, because literally every time we've called with a
date just booked, I think they're booked two years out
or I.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Think we could work around I know some people over
there we can make.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
I appreciate that, Yeah, because we love running Nashville. I mean,
had some great shows here and for a while we
were doing our TV here as well at Skyway.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Right for sure, and that that's a great place as
well to do some stuff. But you know, we're here
talking about music, wrestling and everything in between. And you've
often spoke about the importance of the authenticity in your
work in today's culture, and we've bifinitly talked about this.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Is there anything authentic in today's poture.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Quick fame and viral moments? How do you stay grounded
and true to your long term vision, Whether it's with
the pumpkins or the nwa.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Well, to be blunt about it, I've always taken the
position and my father was this way too, so maybe
it runs in the family. But it's something along the
lines of this. When you see everyone run to one
side of a room, right, well, that's going to leave
a lot of space on the other side of the
room for something completely different. So I don't know, I
(19:47):
don't know what would make people run to a corner
of a room. Oh my god, it's a super famous person. Okay, Well,
I'm the type of person that isn't going to run
to that corner. I'm the type of person that's going
to hold back and say do I care? And that's
point I'm gonna turn around and say, well, what's going
on in the other direction? So I think you have
to provide a counter narrative thing that has just as
(20:08):
much value coming from independent music. And if everybody remembers
in the late eighties, you had early glimpses of what
was coming with Guns n' Roses and then sound Guard
and then ultimately bands like Nirvana to kind of break
through what was the But if everybody remembers the eighties,
especially late eighties. I mean there's a lot of hair
(20:29):
metal and every you know, a lot of great hair
metal bands, which I still like, but you know, they'd
all fall into that thing where everybody was doing the
soppy ballad. You know, I'm on the road and you know,
I've run out of hairspray and all that those songs, right,
and then you know, and then you had you know,
Janet Jackson was a hugely dominant pop artist. It was
all about dancing and you know, like a lot of
(20:49):
stuff which I wasn't particularly interested as a music fan,
even though I loved her music.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
I thought her production was always great and all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
So when you when you try to create something that's
counter to that, it's not just like it's not just like, Okay,
well we're going to go over here in the other corner.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
We're going to make a big racket and that competes. No.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
No, what you have to do is you have to
present something of a higher sense of inner integrity. So
if everybody on the other side of the street in
twenty twenty four is plastic, surgeried out, you know, filtered out,
God knows what they're running their voices through. You know,
all that stuff that everybody does, so everybody seems perfect
and all from the same alien laboratory. Well, when a
(21:33):
kid turns around and looks at that other corner of
the room, they need this to be somebody that's completely
opposite that. Yeah, so you get into crooked teeth and
not perfect people and they go, well, why are they
standing there? And that's where being a deadly live band
has always worked for us, and really just not giving
a you know what about what people think. If you're
(21:55):
fifteen years older, you're twenty five years old, and you
feel a bit lost in this current culture and we
and we know statistically that many many people do. Well,
that's why bands like us with Green Day and all
credit to green Day, it's their show, are able to
sell a stadium full of people. And by the way,
the audiences that we're looking are very, very young. I
would say the average audience on this tour is probably
(22:17):
somewhere in the mid twenties. Yeah, not like the audience
you would assume, which is like old gen X people
coming out for one more round because it's a couple
of nineties or three nineties bands. No, it's very young.
So what does that tell you? They want something that
feels a little bit more gritty and a little bit
more real. And if you look at Green Day who
they are as people, they're not perfect. I don't think
(22:38):
they would tell you they're perfect. We're certainly not perfect.
Rancid certainly not perfect people, but we're all ourselves. And
when when you put all those people together, it's not
you don't you like, Okay, this is we're we are
that other side of the room. It's not for everybody,
but it's enough, right.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, And that's a great analogy. And of course you're
going to be able to see all that tonight Giodis Park.
You can still grab tickets ticketmaster dot com and I
think we actually have a pair that will give away
as well.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
During the show. Do I have to wear the Dukie suit? Though,
you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Wear the Dukie suit. But here's what we'll do is
I will wear the Dukie suit and I will take
a close line from EC three on stage if he's around,
we'll do that.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
That's what we'll make viral news that way on this
little quick thirty five second clips. I mean Alex Taylor
can do it. I mean he can do it. He
lives here.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
That's true, Plunk Plunky would definitely put you to sleep.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
We'll figure we'll talk about that after the air. We'll
we'll figure this out. But last question before we let
you go. And I always like to kind of get
people's thoughts on this. Recently I had Slash on the show.
We talked about this. Over the past year or so,
AI technology has kind of gotten really bigger. A lot
of people using that, a lot of people using AI
(23:55):
technology in music. What are your thought thoughts on AI
technology being used in the music creating process?
Speaker 3 (24:04):
You want the short answer and the long answer.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
Whichever answer you I don't want to I don't want
to bore your great listeners, so you tell me.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Hey, give them a long answer. These everybody, I would
love to hear from the musician, the guy that shuts
there and goes through the process.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
We'll start here. AI is not going anywhere.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
So the debate over it as far as whether or
not it's going to be part of the music business,
that's already over somebody recently in the in the end,
the Nashville I Almos said, und way, the Nashville circles UH
told me that AI is being used in almost every
writing session in Nashville now and has been for years.
(24:45):
So it's here, yea, Now, let's hit pause on that.
Every time there's been a major technological advancement in the
history of music, it yields a new type of music.
You could say it's good or bad, but it does something. Heck,
the invention of electric guitar, basically by Les Paul in
(25:06):
terms of what everybody would understand the modern electric guitar, well,
that ushered in people going well, now they can hear
me in the back of the room and Muddy Water's
turning all the way up and distorting his guitar and
link ray slashing, you know, a speaker with razor blades,
so it's sounding more cool and distorted. So it gets into, like,
(25:27):
let's call it the ethics of what you're going to
do with that technology. So here's let's start from the
bad side. What we've seen over the last twenty plus
years with pro tools is there are a bunch of
people in the music market who have no business being
in the music market. Now you can argue, hey, who
cares if they came up with the right beat, the
right rap, the right chord changes, the right song however,
(25:49):
beautiful silly. If they get it done and they get
a song on the charts, will more power to them.
It's a capitalist society and you should do it. But
what you end up doing is you sort of end
up mutting the water where it's really hard to tell
who are artists with real ability and we're going to
be in your life for the next thirty or forty
years or somebody.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
That's just having a little bit of a moment.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
And so what it does is kind of smears the
culture around where everything kind of feels almost less than
what it should be because you're not really looking at
a whole group of people of accomplishment. You're looking at
basically a high school photo. You know, if you've ever
looked at a high school photo twenty years later and go, well,
that one didn't turn out so good, And so that's
what you're looking at now in popular music. You're looking
(26:29):
at a high school photo. We're probably eighty percent, ninety
percent of the people in the photo. You won't even
remember their name a heck, not ten years from now,
maybe even a year from now. So think of the
message that sends to young people. It's good to cheat,
it's good to be a fraud. It's good to do
whatever you got to do to be successful. Let's call
it the American idol model. What do I got to say? Who?
(26:51):
What needs do I need to be on in front
of to you know, to you know, prostrate myself so
you'll give me the magical wand of a Now to
the ethical part of it. A very famous person in
the tech industry came up to me approximately seven years
ago and told me that this technology was coming and
(27:13):
offered me an early version of it and said, you know,
basically all of music history had been analyzed, and this
machine would tell me what chords to play. That would
give me the greatest advantage with you as a listener,
what beat to play, what tempo, what key to play,
and to basically game the system so I'd have a
(27:34):
better chance of reaching you as a person listening.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
That is scary to think about, okay.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
And I've known this person a long time and something
I'm friendly with, and they thought they were doing me
a favor, like hey, like, you know, hey, I'm going
to give you this technology, you know, right, And I
told him not to want it, and he just he
couldn't believe that I didn't want it, and I said,
I'm not interested. I said, my whole life is standing
(28:01):
on a stage playing my music, and that's just the
way it is. And if that means that I'm not
going to be good enough, well that means I'm not
going to be good enough. Ten years from now, I
might be standing in a stage somewhere, a much smaller
stage than when I'm standing on and the new alternative
musicians of the world, they might be all AI this
(28:21):
and AI that, and the audience just won't care because
it's just the new version of the new thing. I
don't want to be a luddite and wave a flag.
I just I believe, and I'm a spiritual person. If
you believe in God like I do, if God gives
you a talent and then you want to cheat with
that talent, then why did God give you that talent?
(28:44):
The journey is ultimately inauthentic. And I like to believe
in the theory that when I lay my head on
my pillow, you know it's a pillow I bought with
my own money, with my own work, not because I
was able to cheat my way forward. Last thing, we
know that young people are totally going to cheat their
way forward. Okay, if it's not a filter on Instagram,
(29:08):
it's going to be AI telling them what to sing
and play. And so I think pretty quickly we're all
going to have to make a kind of cultural decision
of how we view let's call it AI inspired work,
and I'll go one step further. Is everyone ready, including
people that listen to the station? Are you ready to
listen to artists that aren't real? Yeah, because that's coming
(29:30):
to We recently saw it, and God blessed because we
understand the situation. But Randy Travis where they used AI
to have his voice in a song because obviously he
can't sing, And it's a weird feeling, right because on
one level, it's like you realize what a great talent
he is and what a crime it is that he's
(29:51):
in this situation where he's not able to sing at
the level that he was once able to. So there's
like a familiarity, there's a tug on the heartstrings, and
at the same time, it's not real. So are you
ready for a whole generation of that?
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Man?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
It's it's scary.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Are you ready for? Are you ready? Are you ready?
As a as a let's call it a rock fan.
Your friend goes, hey, do you hear the new uh,
you know the new record by the you know the
water Bottles. No, oh my god, this is great. Let's
go see them live. You're watching the band live on stage,
and you're like, Okay, this this is not bad. And
(30:29):
then your friend turns and goes, by the way that
that recording that's not that was all Ai. This is
just the band they sent on tour to play the songs.
But the song that you like isn't real at all.
Are you ready for that? Because that's coming for sure.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
I don't think I'm ready for it, just like I
don't think I'm ready for the whole like hologram concert
thing as well, because I remember, like they did the
Tupac thing years ago, there was the doo talks of
a hologram tour happening. I think recently they did like
a Roy Orbison hologram tour that people will pay him for.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
I think, you know, hologram type of thing is fine
for an amusement park. I don't think it'll ever work
for the for the concert venue. I don't think people
are going to go to the Ryman and watch a hologram. Yeah,
but they will go to the Ryman and watch Hank
Williams imitator.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
And by the way, they push that on Hank Junior
when he was eight years old. Yeah, okay, that's the
early version of what I'm talking about. Hey, there's a demand,
And are you telling me they can't like AI comes
with what or they find a guy and they go,
you're going to be the voice. We're the record company.
We're gonna do the AI record, but you're gonna be
the voice. Your your voice will actually be on the record,
(31:41):
but you won't actually sing. Yeah, it's it's it's here.
I mean, that's what I'm That's what I mean. It's
like it's like something out of a bad seventy sci
fi movie, right right? Are we gonna end up with
a you know? It's like remember there was the argument
during a when steroids were pervasive in baseball, and there
were people literally saying, just let him do steroids. Like
what do we care? We want to see a five
(32:02):
hundred foot home run, right, I think you're gonna have
a crowd that's gonna be like, I don't care. I
like the music, I don't care who makes it? And
are we gonna have this weird thing where there's gonna
be an audience that's refused, you know, like GMO foods.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
You know what I mean. You're right, I refuse to
listen to AI music.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
The line won't will be impossible to ascertain because almost
every popular artist will be using some form of AI
to game the system. And then you're gonna have these
and they've been doing in Japan for I think over
ten years, where they have these anime bands where they're
like they're not even real.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Wow, it's gonna be interesting to see how music plays
out in the future. No pun intended there, but.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
It all goes with the biblical end of the world,
you see. So we're right on point there.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
We're getting there. Well, it's been an honor and a
privilege to have you sitting here in studio with us.
Can't wait for the show tonight before we let you go.
Is there anything you want to say to all of
nash right now that's listening to this?
Speaker 4 (33:02):
You know, every time I come here, I've spent a
lot of time here for people don't know. We recorded
a lot of our new album here and in Nashville
at Blackbird. We love working at Blackbird. Great family obviously
runs the studio, the McBride's, and in many ways, you know,
we used to do a lot of our recording in
LA back in the day in the nineties. So Nashville
(33:25):
has become our new musical home outside of Chicago. So
every time I come here, I feel like I'm home
because this is where I do a lot of work. Now,
what I always tell people, because a lot of people
ask me, because obviously get around they think about moving
to Nashville obviously the hottest city in America, And I
always tell them, as usually musicians asking, I always say,
(33:45):
the great thing about Nashville is there's still people there
that play. You know, there are still people are going
to be out on a Thursday night in one of
those bars playing. And that's what I love about Nashville
is there's still players here because you won't really find
it in LA anymore.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
It used to be.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
And I God, I got I don't can't even imagine
what goes out in New York anymore other than they
say jazz. So this is this is the music city
for America right now, and there really is no close second.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
I'm just gonna end it like that, then it's all
I got.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
She's got to add a nuclear explosion.
Welcome to the Battleground Podcast and exclusive interviews with some
of your favorite wrestlers.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Stop. It's one O five nine in the Rock Nashals
Classic Rock Its Battle and tonight there is a big
show going on at ge Otis Park. You've heard us
talking about it all week. I've even been telling you
that I'm going to have a special guest in the
studio and he is literally right here in front of me,
(00:38):
a man that you're gonna be hearing performing tonight, William Patrick, Corgan,
Jorge show. Sir, how are you doing.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm good.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
I'm still reeling with the idea that you you dressed
up as a giant piece of douchies going to unsuspecting
front doors. That's I'm still processing that.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I mean, you should see the videos we've we recorded
all of them, we posted up on the internet, so
they're on our Instagram if you want to see those
all show clicks. Yeah, it's been very interesting. But first
and foremost, before we get into anything any business, I
want to say congratulations. I saw the news you got
another one on the way.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yeah, number three, number three?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
How excited? Are you?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Pretty excited?
Speaker 4 (01:15):
You know I was forty eight when my wife birthed
our first child. So before I met her, i'd pretty
much given up on the idea of having a family,
not because I didn't want one, I just couldn't find
the right situation. So to be here together twelve years later,
we're married, we have two kids and another one away.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
It's amazing. I mean it certainly.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
It certainly makes the case for if you have faith,
like anything can happen.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Absolutely. Now, are you are the kids going to be
interested in music wrestling? Are you going to try to
like get like a whole big thing with them?
Speaker 4 (01:48):
Oh? No, They when we do NWA stuff, they come
to the show, so they know a lot of the wrestlers.
It's hard for them because they'll see the wrestlers on TV,
but they in their minds it's like their friend, like,
Oh that's my friend Tyris. That's how they think, you know,
So it's hard for them to get into the storyline
part of it all. Yeah, and then when they come
on tour, they perform on stage with us. So my
(02:10):
wife and I have gone out of our way to
always make them feel like whatever we're doing professionally, they're
a part of that. But at the same time, we
always tell them. You know, whatever you want to do
with your life, we're here to support you. But yeah,
they obviously have very interesting experiences that are outside the norm.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Right, because I mean they one day it's wrestling, the
other day it's music. So it's like you said, I mean,
it's got to be a cool moment as a dad
to have these moments with your Well, we.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Rolled up on MetLife Stadium not too long ago in
New York where the Mets play, and my kids were
in the back seat and they go, how many people
are going to be here today? I go about forty
five thousand, and they just don't even bat an eyelash.
And then two hours later they're on stage dancing in
front of forty five thousand people. So it's very I
didn't have that growing up.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, it's kind of My kids are the same way.
I've got two as well. I've got a sixteen and
a seven year old. The seven year old, or my
seven year old, gets into everything. My sixteen year old
is he's too cool for school. He doesn't want to
do anything the dad does. But going to those things,
it's such a cool moment.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Well, you should dress him up as junior Dookie. Junior.
I thought about that, that would be good kind of
go to work with Dad.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Right, exactly exactly, so let's talk about it. Of course,
you guys are on tour with Green Day and Rancid
and the Lenda Linda is that play in Giotis Park tonight.
But you know, the Pumpkins have always defied conventional music trends, Right,
how do you balance maintaining your artistic integrity with the
expectation of a fan base that spans generations.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
It's impossible.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
And I would add to that the expectations of the
music business because the music business, once you reach a
certain amount of time in the music business, they just assume, okay,
that's what you do, like you're this type of band.
So when you do something that's outside their mental concept
of who you are, that becomes a problem.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
We've always led.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
With the idea that if we believe in what we're doing,
it'll all sort of work out, and it kind of
has over time. Our path has been pretty unusual. I think,
I don't think it's a bos I mean, you could
argue it's a problem, but our path in music is
almost like not like any other path of any other band,
especially over this span of time. I mean, you're talking
about thirty five, thirty six years, and you know, when
(04:22):
we made this new album Agori Mori May, we decide
to kind of go back to our old school way
of making music and more guitar focused, and it's almost
like people are like, oh my god, oh you can
still do that, and it's like, no, no, we could
always do that. We just chose not to for various
lengths of time. So it's cool and that we have
a little bit of win in our back for a change,
and people seem to like what we're doing at the moment.
(04:45):
But you know, it doesn't mean the next album we
wouldn't decide to do something completely different. It's just it's
just not the what's kept us motivated. And I think,
like I said, over thirty six years, it's kind of
worked for us. And you know, given our streaming numbers
and where the band is public right now, I guess
that you could argue it's also worked that way too.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Absolutely, And of course you've been vocal before about the
impact of streaming on the music industry. If you could
redesign like the music business model from scratch, what key
changes would you like implement to.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Building Wow, what artists? What a great question I would
like to see.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
And I'm working on trying to set up my own
record label, but I would like to see something more
akin to what Tony Wilson did with Factory Records, which
was the which was the label most notably that put
out Joy Division back in the day in New Order.
And you know Jack Bates, his dad, you know, played
in New Order, you know, in Joy Division, so you know,
he literally grew up in that business model, which is
that you know, the the partnership between a label and
(05:46):
artist is a fifty to fifty partnership. I think that's
the that's the most that's the best upside for everybody involved.
That avoids Taylor Swift being mad about what happened here
in town with her former label. You know, I'm saying,
get down to like everybody's kind of got the same
skin in the game. The old model, which is still
very much the model, is Hey, you're lucky that we
(06:08):
are interested in you. We're going to completely exploit you,
and then if you're successful enough, we will work out
the level of exploitation going forward. Creates a lot of
bitterness in the business people who do have legitimate moments.
Even if there are a couple of years, they don't
really get paid what they're due for the moment they created.
And I think the music business as a whole would
benefit from a partnership model. The chance of it happening
(06:30):
is probably less than five percent because labels just assume,
very much like the NFL or something, you're only going
to be around for a couple of years. So if
you get lucky, we want to take the advantage of
you getting.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Lucky, right for sure. And this weekend, man, it's a
very busy weekend. We were talking off the air. I mean,
you've got the show tonight at Giotis Park. Then you
got to hop on a bus to get the Philadelphia
because you got NWA in Philly this weekend. And in
your journey with the NWA, now is my time when
I also get to geek out and talk about wrestling
(07:03):
on a music we talking.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
About wrestling here, I've been in this chair talking about
wrestling before.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I'm having a flashback.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yes, how do you see the role of wrestling involving
in like the broader landscape of entertainment, especially in an
era dominated by streaming and instant content.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
Again a great question. You know, I think there were
those years between let's say the mid forties and maybe
up until about ten years ago, or wrestling's placed in
the culture was very much kind of an almost embarrassed yeah,
and there's wrestling too, you know. It was it was
stuck over there in the corner with Roller Derby. And
yet over those seventy years, you saw the rise of
(07:41):
the NFL, the rise of the NBA. Heck, now we
see the rise of the WNBA, right, And I think
it was very hard for many people in the wrestling business,
because they're obviously very gifted athletes to not get that
same kind of street respect as another great athlete. Yes,
they're entertainers, and we all understand that part of the business.
I think since you've seen the sale of WWE to WME,
(08:06):
which is also owns UFC, I think you're going to
see now wrestling finally enter the core mainstream of entertainment.
It'll be up there with Broadway theater and everything else.
It's something that's obviously very popular, generates a lot of
money for whatever partners that it has, and I think
it also sort of attract more talent. So I personally
(08:28):
I think wrestling's best days are ahead. And I love
the era that I grew up and I think it
was a fantastic time for professional wrestling. But I think
what's to come, and when you see what WWAE is
able to do with eighty thousand people in a stadium
for WrestleMania and all that stuff. That's why I bought
the NWA, because I saw a lane by which we
could not only bring the NWA back, but also grow
(08:49):
as a business. And all my meetings, whether I'm talking
to top networks, big agents in the sports field, my
pitch is always the same. It's a mainstream product. It's
meant to be a mainstream product. I know it's very
trendy right now for wrestling to be treated as a
niche product, like a smaller and smaller fan base pays
more and more to watch a very specific kind of wrestling,
(09:11):
And I get that. It's very similar to the dynamics
of independent music, where a band has a weird mustache
and a bunch of people like them and they can't
really write hit songs, but everyone says how great it is. Well,
there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I came out
of the independent markets myself, but we all understand the
biggest movies are about the most people going. The biggest
(09:33):
wrestling events are about the most people going. So what
does that tell you? You have to find a product
that reaches everything from a five year old kid who
gets what they're watching at the most fundamental levels and
then in my case, sitting next to an eighty one
year old Belgian woman who didn't even speak English but
who like professional wrestling. I think that's when wrestling's at
its best. So the best times are to come. And
(09:55):
to your question about streaming, streaming is perfect for wrestling digital.
We've seen a lot of growth lately in the NWA.
We just started putting up just matches, no context, just
put up a match, and our streaming numbers have gone
back up. So what does that tell you? People only
want to watch what they want to watch when they
want to watch it. They don't necessarily want to sit
for a whole show. Doesn't mean I don't want them
(10:15):
to watch the whole show, but a lot of people
they don't have time and they're on a bus. They
want to watch one match whom they watch one match
that you're offering them so.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Right, and that's the great thing about like you said
about wrestling right now and the whole streaming things, like,
you know, if I'm sitting there and I can't watch,
you know, the NWA show when it gets put out
on the CW app, I could watch it on a
Saturday morning, or I could watch it Sunday evening after
I put the kids to bed.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Oh. I mean, it's fantastic for that. But again, you know, look,
you know, there's a lot of talk in the entertainment
business about the influence of TikTok and how it's Somebody
told me yesterday, somebody who's a huge, huge YouTube person.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
I don't want to say the name, but they said
that when.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
They do short YouTube like shorts for like Instagram or TikTok,
thirty five seconds is the perfect time.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, that's the level of.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Attention you can get from somebody thirty five seconds before
they scroll onto something else.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
I mean, so, are we down to thirty five second matches?
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Like, I don't know what.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
I'm gonna do with that, but bring the bell and
that's that's real information. Yeah, you know, so, but you know,
we see it now. I don't know if you're an
NFL fan, I would assume, you know, being being here
with an NFL team, I've gotten very used to you know,
I don't really watch the NFL anymore, but if there's
a game i'm sort of interested in, Like we have
the new quarterback in Chicago, I'll watch that thing the
(11:35):
NFL puts together that it's like basically six eight minute
highlight but they show all the top plays.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
It's perfect.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
Yeah, I'm watching the product. I get a chance to
see my team, that the Bears, how they're playing, and
then it's you know, instead of three hours and eight
thousand beer.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Commercials later, right, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Yeah, I get those I get those other two and
a half hours of my life back.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, and you can do other things like, you know,
writing songs or whatnot.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Oh yeah, like standing in the sunshine or a breathing oxygen, you.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Know, right, which kind of leads me to my next question.
Because the Smashing Pumpkins sound has always been deeply introspective.
As a songwriter, how do you channel your personal experiences
into music while still allowing space for listeners to interpret
and find their own meanings in your songs?
Speaker 4 (12:21):
As strange as it sounds, the more personal my songs
are traditionally the more people seem to find themselves in it.
If I write kind of a vague song, there seems
to be no connection. If I write something that's very
as we call in wrestling, me me, me, me Me,
that's when people seem to want to get married to
the song and have their kid born to the song.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
I know.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
It's strange to me because I feel a lot of
the songs that people have connected with through the years
are super personal.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
But I don't know how that works. It's a mystery
to me.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, it's gonna be one of those things, because it
is interesting when people connect to those songs, especially if
it's on a whole different level, like you said, like
if you wrote it for your personal experience, but they're like, hey,
I'm gonna interpret.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
It for this well.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
And then just the whole thing misheard lyrics. You know,
my my diction isn't so great when I sing, so
I mean, it's amazing the miss the misheard lyrics through
the years. So you get that too, like somebody they've
convinced themselves that there's a line in a song that
isn't the one you're singing.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
But that's the one they believe in. Yeah. So and
they come up and tell you like, oh I love
that line.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
You're like money, you don't want to.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
I want to say the all time one though, was
it's a slightly different topic, but a guy came up
and said, you know, I got a I got a tattoo.
You know my favorite lyric of years of all time,
I got a tattoo. And he lifted up his sleeve
and one of the words was misspelled. Oh no, it
was like one of those eye before e like conceive
or receive. And I was just like, I can't be
(13:47):
the guy to tell him this. It's just like, that's
a great tattoo, that's all I said.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I was like, oh, thanks, bro.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Oh well, I don't know if it sticks. But for
a while there was a site Pumpkins Tattoos. It's just
thousands of tattoos of pumpkins related.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I mean, that's got to show like something really cool
to the test of time with everything that you guys
have done of just like you have a page dedicated
to tattoos of the pumpkins.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Well, yeah, you know, I used to. I used people
would want me to sign.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
Them and then you know, I thought that was kind
of cool, and then one day I was like, oh,
this is wrong, Like I got to stop doing so
I stopped doing that. But yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting
what people you know, it'll be a small symbol from
an album that they connect with. It'll be sometimes the
band's logo. Usually it's my handwriting, so it's weird. I'll
see my handwriting like on somebody's body. Yeah, there's other
(14:43):
stories there. I can't tell then, about women in tattoos. Whatever,
let's just leave it right now.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
We'll just leave it right there. Of course, our guest
in studio right now, William Patrick Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins
are playing tonight with Green Day at Giotis Park. And
you know, as someone who has exceeded in both music
and wrestling industries, what parallels do you see between crafting
a compellative, a compelling narrative in a song and building
(15:10):
a creative storyline in wrestling?
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Another good question.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Uh, you know, I could give you kind of a
high falutin answer, but it doesn't really apply. The closest
parallel to wrestling and music for me are set lists.
You know, you have a two to three hour event,
how do you pace that event so that people feel
that what they're watching sort of has an unfolding narrative,
(15:36):
even though it's just a series of matches, which is
the same as a set list, right, What do a
series of songs tell people about who you are as
a band? So, for example, anybody coming to the show tonight,
we start with Everlasting Gaze, which was, you know, a
moderate hit on our last record of the nineties, and
then we play a song from Zeitgei's which came out
(15:57):
in two thousand and seven, which was a very controversial
record time, but most of the audience, of course, won't
know the song. And then the third song we do
a YouTube cover which is somewhat obscure YouTube song, not
a big hit, So people would say, why would you
open your show with the first three songs? You know,
sort of, but that's the story that we want to tell.
We usually start dark and then kind of move to light,
(16:19):
and not everybody agrees with that setless philosophy. Some people
believe you should come out with a bang and hit
and everybody cheering, and I'm like, but there's only one
way to go from there, which is down right, So
you have to have confidence to tell a story. So
same thing with matches, right, you got to have this
confidence that you know, some of the early matches can
tell a story that we'll get they will get the excited,
the audience excited about what's still to come. I suppose
(16:41):
just like looking at their watch thing, Okay, I get it,
but like let's move on to the next thing. So
that's a big thing with n w A. As you know,
storytelling is a huge part of what we.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Do, absolutely and it's been some of the great storytelling.
And it's awesome because here on this show, like we're
a music driven show, but I also a big wrestling nerd.
As nobody that's paid that's listening to this right now
can see. But behind me, I have one of the
most prestigious titles in all of wrestling sitting back here behind.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Me, the ten pounds of Gold.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
That's it, the ten pounds of gold. When you see
that thing that is that is the championship belt of
all of wrestling. I'll just go ahead and say that,
and you can fight me for that. Whoever's listening to this.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Right well, so interrupt you.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
What's cool is you know that the lineage of that
belt goes back directly, you know, over seventy six years.
So when you know, right now EC three has the belt.
When you have that belt, I mean you have a
direct link back through you know, some of the greatest
talents in wrestling history. Yeah, so there's no getting around that, right.
I mean, that's a that's a real tangible thing in
a business where there's not a lot of reality.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
No, and you look at it and it's like you said,
I mean a EC three, Tyris Nick gold Is, Harley
Ray's Rick Flair.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
I mean, the list goes on and on and whoever
has even Adam here, Adam Hears who you know is now.
I saw recently he's talking about having another match and
I think it's been over ten years or so that
he since he's had a match. Incredibly talented person. So
that'd be interesting too, because you know his lineage is
through the NWA title and that's how he made his name.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Absolutely, and I mean the NWA when you think of wrestling,
it's synonymous with wrestling. NWA is it, because I remember
growing up watching NWA at the fairgrounds here down the
street in Nashville, and every.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Saturday is definitely an NWA town.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yes, absolutely, so hopefully you know, we can get another
NWA show back here in Nashville.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
But you know what it is is so crowded. You know,
we like running the Fairgrounds, but every time we call
for a date, they're like book booked, booked, and so
I don't know, I needed if anybody's listening, you know,
somebody at the Fairgrounds. I mean, we need an in
over there, because literally every time we've called with a
date just booked, I think they're booked two years out
or I.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Think we could work around I know some people over
there we can make.
Speaker 4 (18:50):
I appreciate that, Yeah, because we love running Nashville. I mean,
had some great shows here and for a while we
were doing our TV here as well at Skyway.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Right for sure, and that that's a great place as
well to do some stuff. But you know, we're here
talking about music, wrestling and everything in between. And you've
often spoke about the importance of the authenticity in your
work in today's culture, and we've bifinitly talked about this.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Is there anything authentic in today's poture.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Quick fame and viral moments? How do you stay grounded
and true to your long term vision, Whether it's with
the pumpkins or the nwa.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Well, to be blunt about it, I've always taken the
position and my father was this way too, so maybe
it runs in the family. But it's something along the
lines of this. When you see everyone run to one
side of a room, right, well, that's going to leave
a lot of space on the other side of the
room for something completely different. So I don't know, I
(19:47):
don't know what would make people run to a corner
of a room. Oh my god, it's a super famous person. Okay, Well,
I'm the type of person that isn't going to run
to that corner. I'm the type of person that's going
to hold back and say do I care? And that's
point I'm gonna turn around and say, well, what's going
on in the other direction? So I think you have
to provide a counter narrative thing that has just as
(20:08):
much value coming from independent music. And if everybody remembers
in the late eighties, you had early glimpses of what
was coming with Guns n' Roses and then sound Guard
and then ultimately bands like Nirvana to kind of break
through what was the But if everybody remembers the eighties,
especially late eighties. I mean there's a lot of hair
(20:29):
metal and every you know, a lot of great hair
metal bands, which I still like, but you know, they'd
all fall into that thing where everybody was doing the
soppy ballad. You know, I'm on the road and you know,
I've run out of hairspray and all that those songs, right,
and then you know, and then you had you know,
Janet Jackson was a hugely dominant pop artist. It was
all about dancing and you know, like a lot of
(20:49):
stuff which I wasn't particularly interested as a music fan,
even though I loved her music.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
I thought her production was always great and all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
So when you when you try to create something that's
counter to that, it's not just like it's not just like, Okay,
well we're going to go over here in the other corner.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
We're going to make a big racket and that competes. No.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
No, what you have to do is you have to
present something of a higher sense of inner integrity. So
if everybody on the other side of the street in
twenty twenty four is plastic, surgeried out, you know, filtered out,
God knows what they're running their voices through. You know,
all that stuff that everybody does, so everybody seems perfect
and all from the same alien laboratory. Well, when a
(21:33):
kid turns around and looks at that other corner of
the room, they need this to be somebody that's completely
opposite that. Yeah, so you get into crooked teeth and
not perfect people and they go, well, why are they
standing there? And that's where being a deadly live band
has always worked for us, and really just not giving
a you know what about what people think. If you're
(21:55):
fifteen years older, you're twenty five years old, and you
feel a bit lost in this current culture and we
and we know statistically that many many people do. Well,
that's why bands like us with Green Day and all
credit to green Day, it's their show, are able to
sell a stadium full of people. And by the way,
the audiences that we're looking are very, very young. I
would say the average audience on this tour is probably
(22:17):
somewhere in the mid twenties. Yeah, not like the audience
you would assume, which is like old gen X people
coming out for one more round because it's a couple
of nineties or three nineties bands. No, it's very young.
So what does that tell you? They want something that
feels a little bit more gritty and a little bit
more real. And if you look at Green Day who
they are as people, they're not perfect. I don't think
(22:38):
they would tell you they're perfect. We're certainly not perfect.
Rancid certainly not perfect people, but we're all ourselves. And
when when you put all those people together, it's not
you don't you like, Okay, this is we're we are
that other side of the room. It's not for everybody,
but it's enough, right.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, And that's a great analogy. And of course you're
going to be able to see all that tonight Giodis Park.
You can still grab tickets ticketmaster dot com and I
think we actually have a pair that will give away
as well.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
During the show. Do I have to wear the Dukie suit? Though,
you don't have to.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Wear the Dukie suit. But here's what we'll do is
I will wear the Dukie suit and I will take
a close line from EC three on stage if he's around,
we'll do that.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
That's what we'll make viral news that way on this
little quick thirty five second clips. I mean Alex Taylor
can do it. I mean he can do it. He
lives here.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
That's true, Plunk Plunky would definitely put you to sleep.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
We'll figure we'll talk about that after the air. We'll
we'll figure this out. But last question before we let
you go. And I always like to kind of get
people's thoughts on this. Recently I had Slash on the show.
We talked about this. Over the past year or so,
AI technology has kind of gotten really bigger. A lot
of people using that, a lot of people using AI
(23:55):
technology in music. What are your thought thoughts on AI
technology being used in the music creating process?
Speaker 3 (24:04):
You want the short answer and the long answer.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
Whichever answer you I don't want to I don't want
to bore your great listeners, so you tell me.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Hey, give them a long answer. These everybody, I would
love to hear from the musician, the guy that shuts
there and goes through the process.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
We'll start here. AI is not going anywhere.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
So the debate over it as far as whether or
not it's going to be part of the music business,
that's already over somebody recently in the in the end,
the Nashville I Almos said, und way, the Nashville circles UH
told me that AI is being used in almost every
writing session in Nashville now and has been for years.
(24:45):
So it's here, yea, Now, let's hit pause on that.
Every time there's been a major technological advancement in the
history of music, it yields a new type of music.
You could say it's good or bad, but it does something. Heck,
the invention of electric guitar, basically by Les Paul in
(25:06):
terms of what everybody would understand the modern electric guitar, well,
that ushered in people going well, now they can hear
me in the back of the room and Muddy Water's
turning all the way up and distorting his guitar and
link ray slashing, you know, a speaker with razor blades,
so it's sounding more cool and distorted. So it gets into, like,
(25:27):
let's call it the ethics of what you're going to
do with that technology. So here's let's start from the
bad side. What we've seen over the last twenty plus
years with pro tools is there are a bunch of
people in the music market who have no business being
in the music market. Now you can argue, hey, who
cares if they came up with the right beat, the
right rap, the right chord changes, the right song however,
(25:49):
beautiful silly. If they get it done and they get
a song on the charts, will more power to them.
It's a capitalist society and you should do it. But
what you end up doing is you sort of end
up mutting the water where it's really hard to tell
who are artists with real ability and we're going to
be in your life for the next thirty or forty
years or somebody.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
That's just having a little bit of a moment.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
And so what it does is kind of smears the
culture around where everything kind of feels almost less than
what it should be because you're not really looking at
a whole group of people of accomplishment. You're looking at
basically a high school photo. You know, if you've ever
looked at a high school photo twenty years later and go, well,
that one didn't turn out so good, And so that's
what you're looking at now in popular music. You're looking
(26:29):
at a high school photo. We're probably eighty percent, ninety
percent of the people in the photo. You won't even
remember their name a heck, not ten years from now,
maybe even a year from now. So think of the
message that sends to young people. It's good to cheat,
it's good to be a fraud. It's good to do
whatever you got to do to be successful. Let's call
it the American idol model. What do I got to say? Who?
(26:51):
What needs do I need to be on in front
of to you know, to you know, prostrate myself so
you'll give me the magical wand of a Now to
the ethical part of it. A very famous person in
the tech industry came up to me approximately seven years
ago and told me that this technology was coming and
(27:13):
offered me an early version of it and said, you know,
basically all of music history had been analyzed, and this
machine would tell me what chords to play. That would
give me the greatest advantage with you as a listener,
what beat to play, what tempo, what key to play,
and to basically game the system so I'd have a
(27:34):
better chance of reaching you as a person listening.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
That is scary to think about, okay.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
And I've known this person a long time and something
I'm friendly with, and they thought they were doing me
a favor, like hey, like, you know, hey, I'm going
to give you this technology, you know, right, And I
told him not to want it, and he just he
couldn't believe that I didn't want it, and I said,
I'm not interested. I said, my whole life is standing
(28:01):
on a stage playing my music, and that's just the
way it is. And if that means that I'm not
going to be good enough, well that means I'm not
going to be good enough. Ten years from now, I
might be standing in a stage somewhere, a much smaller
stage than when I'm standing on and the new alternative
musicians of the world, they might be all AI this
(28:21):
and AI that, and the audience just won't care because
it's just the new version of the new thing. I
don't want to be a luddite and wave a flag.
I just I believe, and I'm a spiritual person. If
you believe in God like I do, if God gives
you a talent and then you want to cheat with
that talent, then why did God give you that talent?
(28:44):
The journey is ultimately inauthentic. And I like to believe
in the theory that when I lay my head on
my pillow, you know it's a pillow I bought with
my own money, with my own work, not because I
was able to cheat my way forward. Last thing, we
know that young people are totally going to cheat their
way forward. Okay, if it's not a filter on Instagram,
(29:08):
it's going to be AI telling them what to sing
and play. And so I think pretty quickly we're all
going to have to make a kind of cultural decision
of how we view let's call it AI inspired work,
and I'll go one step further. Is everyone ready, including
people that listen to the station? Are you ready to
listen to artists that aren't real? Yeah, because that's coming
(29:30):
to We recently saw it, and God blessed because we
understand the situation. But Randy Travis where they used AI
to have his voice in a song because obviously he
can't sing, And it's a weird feeling, right because on
one level, it's like you realize what a great talent
he is and what a crime it is that he's
(29:51):
in this situation where he's not able to sing at
the level that he was once able to. So there's
like a familiarity, there's a tug on the heartstrings, and
at the same time, it's not real. So are you
ready for a whole generation of that?
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Man?
Speaker 2 (30:08):
It's it's scary.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Are you ready for? Are you ready? Are you ready?
As a as a let's call it a rock fan.
Your friend goes, hey, do you hear the new uh,
you know the new record by the you know the
water Bottles. No, oh my god, this is great. Let's
go see them live. You're watching the band live on stage,
and you're like, Okay, this this is not bad. And
(30:29):
then your friend turns and goes, by the way that
that recording that's not that was all Ai. This is
just the band they sent on tour to play the songs.
But the song that you like isn't real at all.
Are you ready for that? Because that's coming for sure.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
I don't think I'm ready for it, just like I
don't think I'm ready for the whole like hologram concert
thing as well, because I remember, like they did the
Tupac thing years ago, there was the doo talks of
a hologram tour happening. I think recently they did like
a Roy Orbison hologram tour that people will pay him for.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
I think, you know, hologram type of thing is fine
for an amusement park. I don't think it'll ever work
for the for the concert venue. I don't think people
are going to go to the Ryman and watch a hologram. Yeah,
but they will go to the Ryman and watch Hank
Williams imitator.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
And by the way, they push that on Hank Junior
when he was eight years old. Yeah, okay, that's the
early version of what I'm talking about. Hey, there's a demand,
And are you telling me they can't like AI comes
with what or they find a guy and they go,
you're going to be the voice. We're the record company.
We're gonna do the AI record, but you're gonna be
the voice. Your your voice will actually be on the record,
(31:41):
but you won't actually sing. Yeah, it's it's it's here.
I mean, that's what I'm That's what I mean. It's
like it's like something out of a bad seventy sci
fi movie, right right? Are we gonna end up with
a you know? It's like remember there was the argument
during a when steroids were pervasive in baseball, and there
were people literally saying, just let him do steroids. Like
what do we care? We want to see a five
(32:02):
hundred foot home run, right, I think you're gonna have
a crowd that's gonna be like, I don't care. I
like the music, I don't care who makes it? And
are we gonna have this weird thing where there's gonna
be an audience that's refused, you know, like GMO foods.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
You know what I mean. You're right, I refuse to
listen to AI music.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
The line won't will be impossible to ascertain because almost
every popular artist will be using some form of AI
to game the system. And then you're gonna have these
and they've been doing in Japan for I think over
ten years, where they have these anime bands where they're
like they're not even real.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Wow, it's gonna be interesting to see how music plays
out in the future. No pun intended there, but.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
It all goes with the biblical end of the world,
you see. So we're right on point there.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
We're getting there. Well, it's been an honor and a
privilege to have you sitting here in studio with us.
Can't wait for the show tonight before we let you go.
Is there anything you want to say to all of
nash right now that's listening to this?
Speaker 4 (33:02):
You know, every time I come here, I've spent a
lot of time here for people don't know. We recorded
a lot of our new album here and in Nashville
at Blackbird. We love working at Blackbird. Great family obviously
runs the studio, the McBride's, and in many ways, you know,
we used to do a lot of our recording in
LA back in the day in the nineties. So Nashville
(33:25):
has become our new musical home outside of Chicago. So
every time I come here, I feel like I'm home
because this is where I do a lot of work. Now,
what I always tell people, because a lot of people
ask me, because obviously get around they think about moving
to Nashville obviously the hottest city in America, And I
always tell them, as usually musicians asking, I always say,
(33:45):
the great thing about Nashville is there's still people there
that play. You know, there are still people are going
to be out on a Thursday night in one of
those bars playing. And that's what I love about Nashville
is there's still players here because you won't really find
it in LA anymore.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
It used to be.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
And I God, I got I don't can't even imagine
what goes out in New York anymore other than they
say jazz. So this is this is the music city
for America right now, and there really is no close second.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
I'm just gonna end it like that, then it's all
I got.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
She's got to add a nuclear explosion.
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