The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan | Audacy Check In | 8.2.24

Joining us for a special Audacy Check In today is Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins on the release day of the band’s brand new album, Aghori Mhori Mei, to give us some insight about the making of the record, his idea of not being able to go home again, and plenty more.

The Smashing Pumpkins' Aghori Mhori Mei is out everywhere today, August 2.

“We're difficult in our own weird way, but we really wanted to make an album that people just felt really warm about,” frontman Billy Corgan tells us of the new record. “It was just that time in our lives to sort of make peace with a bunch of stuff, including our past, and somehow this record seems to bring all that together.”

Released on the heels of the band’s ambitious, three-part rock opera, ATUM, and while on the road,  most fans couldn’t have imagined another full-length would arrive before 2025.

Why the quick turnaround? Billy explains, “When I was making ‘ATUM,’ we started during the pandemic and you know, like everybody, we were all locked inside and we were freaking out about what was gonna happen, and how long is this gonna last. So, in making the record, you know, the whole concept, we ended up doing some kind of more, I guess, 'traditional' Pumpkin style Rock on the record. But it was really in the character of the story.“

“But doing the music,” he adds, “I found I still really enjoyed playing guitar like this, this kind of old school-ish thing. And so even before I finished the record, I told my, my partner in crime, which is Howard Willing, who makes the records with me, I said, ‘We gotta go right into another record and we gotta make the Rock record. I just feel that. The minute then when I started meditating on it, I was like, 'we really need to go back to the way we used to play.' Not to try to recreate it, but to sort of redefine It, to put ourselves in the right frame of mind or something. It just took a life from there.”

“On paper, you would think you pick up a guitar and go, ‘Let's do like a ‘Siamese Dream’ type song,” Corgan explains. “Not at all. You gotta get back into the mindset that you were in when you wrote those types of songs, and then those types of songs start coming out of you naturally. It takes a hot second. If you've ever -- I'm trying to make people laugh -- but if you've ever done a thing where you dated somebody for a while and then you broke up for a while, but then you get back together… the relationship's not quite the same because you've broken up. You’ve gotta almost kind of figure out like a new version of the old version.”

That kind of process can come up with positive results, he says, “Because you bring with you the lessons that you've learned. So you go back to the old school but with a new version of yourself. It does take a second to get your footing, because there are some stuff that we did that, you know, it doesn't age well. Somehow over time, it felt like, you cross the street and kind of pick up one thing and then go to the other side and try it, which is really how those records were made back in the day. It was a lot of experimentation and then it just kind of took on a life of its own.”

The idea of not being able to go home again is prevalent throughout the new release, which according to Billy, stems from the success the band achieved in the ‘90s. “I had money and I had status,” he explains, “and I fell into that temptation to go back to where I grew up, thinking that somehow people would treat me differently, or look at me differently. And I learned really quickly that nobody gave a s***. It was weird. Like when I put out a poetry book, I think in 2004, I was doing these autograph signings and I would do autograph signings. In Boston, like on the night there was a playoff game with the Red Sox, the guy from the bookstore would come and say, ‘This is the biggest autograph signing we've ever had, ever. And he would name-check famous authors. In the hubris of the moment, I decided to set up an autograph signing at the mall that I used to hang out in Bloomingdale, Illinois when I was a kid… There was a Borders or something. It was the worst-attended book signing of the entire country… This signing I think lasted 15 minutes. There was like 30 people there. Like, nobody cared. It was crazy to me, and even to this point -- I'm just trying to be funny -- I've never been invited back to my high school that I graduated with honors. I was an honors student, never been invited back to my high school ever for anything. Not a charity function, not a 'come talk to the music class about your experiences that shows you the world that I grew up in this pernicious, bitter world.' So, when I did try to go home again at different times in the ‘90s and the 2000s, it was like getting slapped in the face with a fish or something. It was like, ‘Hey kid, this part of your life is over. There's no making peace with this.’"

“People also feel safer staying in the nostalgia of their lives,” Billy says. “ For some reason, people just feel safer there. Sure, I get it. I respect it, you know what I mean? I'm not here to tell you you should think differently. I wish it was different, but I'm not here to tell you you're wrong.”

As an artist, he believes, “You just move on into other pastures, good and bad. You take your lumps as you go.” Bob Dylan, he says, talks about in his book ‘Chronicles.’ “He would make these records and people would try to convince him to be ‘66 Bob Dylan again,” he says, “and he would try to give ‘em Bob Dylan ’66, and he's like, ‘It's just not that simple… I'm not that guy anymore.’ It's just different. The clothes are different. The hair is different, or the hair is gone, whatever. But I became fixated on the idea, ‘I know I can't go home again. I know for sure I can't go home again.’ But what if you tried, what would be the results? What would that movie look like? Is it one of those sad Michael Moore documentaries… where the water's all bad and people are dying? Or what does that feel like? Is it a sad thing? Is it a happy thing? Is there something kind of beautiful about trying but failing? That was the spirit that we made the record under.”

Don't miss Nicole Alvarez's full Check In with Billy Corgan above as he takes us through some of the band’s new tracks -- and stay tuned for even more conversations with your favorite artists right here on Audacy.

The Pumpkins are busy on the road celebrating with Green Day, Rancid, and The Linda Lindas on the SAVIORS global stadium tour, with even more headlining dates added in the U.S. and Canada through the end of September -- and newly added South American dates in November.

Words by Joe Cingrana Interview by Nicole Alvarez