If What William Patrick Corgan Does Is No Good, You Should Kick Him 'Out Of The Way'

"Put my music in one pile, and my mouth in the other pile," says Billy Corgan. "My music has done a lot more good than my mouth. One could argue that if I'd just shut up and played, a la Frank Zappa, things would've worked out better and it would've been a smoother ride. It didn't work out that way." 

In recent years, if you read a story on Corgan, the 50-year-old frontman of alt-rock icons The Smashing Pumpkins, it was likely to be something to do with his big mouth. He slagged off Courtney Love, dissed Pearl Jam and Foo Fighters, and appeared, several times, on the alt-right conspiracy-corner of Infowars.

"Talking about things is not to be feared," Corgan says. "Freedom of speech is the bedrock of our nation's ideological frame. Obviously, I didn't live through the Red Scare, but for the first time in my life people have wanted to shut down open debate, open inquiry."

Yet, Corgan is the first to admit that, these days, he "not as candid as [he'd] like to be, or used to be". He's wary of the way "speech has become weaponised" and has "disconnected" himself from social media. "I find myself in a world I wasn't prepared for, nor do I really care for," he offers. "I've totally taken myself out of it. It's just not that interesting. If you're in the informational wars, if you're in the digital ghetto fighting it out, every day, my idea vs your idea, this meme vs that meme, celebrity is like a fire accelerant. You're like a Molotov cocktail to be thrown in one direction or another [and] I don't want to be somebody else's Molotov cocktail. I'm better off writing songs.

"Take away everything," Corgan continues, "and I still have an ability: give me a piano or a guitar, and a piece of paper, and I can write you a good tune. Everything else past that is kind of bullshit. It's the art of artifice: 'Who's in the band? What's the name? Who are you today? Are you William? Are you Billy?'"

For his latest record, he is indeed William. Ogilala, his second solo album - and first since 2005's TheFutureEmbrace - comes billed by William Patrick Corgan. In his mid-40s, Corgan, who'd "always just been Bill, or Bill Jr, or Billy", decided to claim his name ("why did your parents name you something that no one ever calls you?"). "Then," he explains, "the American media, don't ask me how, started picking up on it, like, 'Oh, here we go, he's off the reservation again, out to manufacture controversy.' So, once I saw that, I thought: 'Oh, I'm really going to really drill it home now.'"

Corgan was at work on his latest Smashing Pumpkins LP when he "pretty much lost [his] mind in the process, got bored and quit". Deciding it was "time to do something else, go garden for a while", he rented an RV and drove off, randomly, around America, amid "the pre-election hysteria in early-2016". Taking a break from his 'work' - running a pair of professional wrestling leagues ("honestly, it's helped refresh my musical life by having a job not connected to music") and slaving away at the latest Pumpkins opus - he was newly inspired, writing a host of gentle songs that suggested minimal accompaniment.

Corgan ended up recording Ogilala with Rick Rubin, throwing himself wholly into a new project hoping to, creatively, shake off the baggage of the past. "You can't sit there waving your flag, like, 'Hey, remember me? I was in that band? I'm the rat-in-the-cage guy!' And, even when I don't want to be that guy, other people want me to be that guy. It's not a one-way street. I get that a lot: 'Hey, put the band back together!'"

So how has Corgan reconciled his desire to forge ahead with the tendency of fans to want to look back? "I had to let go of my own attachment," he offers. "The band had to die in my mind, for once and for all. The idea that I could resurrect the band without any number of original members - that had to die, too... I don't have to chase windmills or ghosts or the past or Sally-Anne's prom song. It's not really that important. When I get back to that space, that's when I go back to the person that made the work that people admire. It puts you more in the dangerous frame of mind: 'I don't need you, I don't need your permission, I don't need your softball question, I don't need you to photo-touch my picture.' I can just do what I do and somebody will be attracted to it if it's good. And if it's not good, they should kick you out of the way."