Billy Corgan Just Wants to Talk

Billy Corgan’s new video podcast, The Magnificent Others, has an aesthetic befitting the oft-contrarian Smashing Pumpkins frontman. One promo image for the show depicts Corgan frowning and in a fighting stance, fists balled, as though he’s about to unleash an uppercut. But on the show itself, Corgan tells GQ, he has “no interest in being combative—none.” Instead, the show features sprawling conversations with cultural figures like Gene Simmons and Pat Benatar about how they became successful in their respective fields; its guiding principle is curiosity, not confrontation.

In a recent interview with Tom Morello, for instance, he asked the guitar phenom about formative political influences by framing it this way: “I read that when you were working for Senator Alan Cranston, you found that disillusioning,” Corgan says. “You don’t have to belabor it, but I’m just looking for more meat on the bone about how you became you.”

Corgan says he shopped this big-swing podcast idea around for a while, but was disappointed that he kept getting the same feedback: Why don’t you rehash the Smashing Pumpkins’ wild ’90s era instead? After appearing on Bill Maher’s podcast, Corgan spoke with producers at Maher’s company, Club Random Studios, who were all in on his idea for a talk show that scratched well beyond the surface.

“I really, from the bottom of my heart, feel there is a space in this culture for deep, fun, lively conversations about things that I think matter, and that I believe other people understand matter, but maybe wouldn’t know because there's almost no representation anywhere of it,” Corgan says. “Or it’s somebody trying to constantly make some sort of cultural or political point and using the guest as the spear that they're throwing. I have no interest in that either.”

That’s not to say Corgan still doesn’t have a few bones to pick, especially when it comes to how the last few decades of Smashing Pumpkins have been portrayed by the media. But on The Magnificent Others, Corgan is trying for something else—what he calls “a kind of respectful listening,” not unlike the PBS interviews he watched growing up in Illinois. On the heels of his podcast launch earlier this month, Corgan spoke with GQ about how he decided to become a podcast guy, navigating political vibe shifts, how people misunderstand the Pumpkins, and his recent, “surreal” meetup with his possible relative Bill Burr.

Billy Corgan: I love the question, and I'm going to give you a somewhat circuitous answer. Because it's the truth. I think because of my negative experiences with the media, I had to learn how to be my own media. And over time, you develop your own stratagem about how you want to present yourself to the world. And so that gives me, I think, a unique perspective when I look at other artists and people in the culture that I admire. I can see not necessarily that they have a frustration, but I'm frustrated for them, because I think their real story is not being told.

And I'm a person who loves old Hollywood. I’ve read a lot of books about the silent era going into the talking era, and there were similar dynamics at play: shifting technologies, new types of messaging, and people who could adapt to the changing landscape of the way people share and receive information. So if you'd asked me 30 years ago, would I want to host my own show? It would only have been under the aegis of something very egoistic, where it would be about me. I feel very comfortable with where I am in my life, so the idea of sharing my love of other people with the world and maybe creating a different sort of cultural balance? That appealed to me and that motivates me.

Well, number one, I try not to ask what I call the five questions. And what I mean by that is, if you're someone in my position, you get asked the same five questions over and over and over again to where you'll still answer them but you create this pat, get out of the question, real quick answer. Or you just repeat the same war story that's already been told 50 times. The other thing I really try to do is talk about things that I imagine that they're invested in, that maybe the rest of the world has told them is not important. And the minute they hear that I have interest in maybe this era or this part of their life, or this album, it seems to open up something in them and like, “Okay, this is somebody who's taken the time to understand that my journey is a lot more complex than is normally presented.” And that seems to engender a greater conversation, which is more about the journey and less about the destination. Because if you're in public life, it's always about the destination. But if you talk to most artists in particular, it really is about the journey.

My five questions would be: “Hey, are you the ‘rat in the cage’ guy?” That's at the airport. But with a journalist, it would be, “What was it like to be on The Simpsons? It's been 30 years since you released your biggest album, talk about the ’90s? Did you know Kurt Cobain, what was he like? So you just become a proxy for the information they're really interested in. Which, in its own way, is a way of saying, “We’re really not that interested in you, you're just a vessel to get to the thing we are more interested in.”

And I think artists, whether they want to voice it or not, become sensitive to that, because they sort of see how they're viewed and what they're reduced to. If you take someone like Pat Benatar, and I got to interview her and her husband, who's been her musical compatriot and partner for, I think, 45 years, she's got the exact same fire that made her an international superstar. I mean, her light is not dimmed one percent. So navigating both well—how do we discuss how you got here, but also talking about where you are today in a very real way and not like, Hey, what's your new project?—I think it creates a balance in the conversation that's much more warm and much more honestly real. And look, I have the luxury of 90 minutes of the thing. I realize most people don’t.

I can't say. I do feel that there is an absence of this type of conversation. And the term I use around the shop is, I grew up watching these long form PBS conversations in Chicago. Very liberal but very Catholic. At the time, they would have conversations between, like, a priest and a Satanist. And they would very calmly talk about God and the devil. And I was always struck by that: Like, how could two people on such opposing sides of the subject, and particularly one that's easily heated, have a very calm conversation about these deep and meaningful things? I guess it created a different type of listening in me because it was treated soberly. Maybe there was a way to achieve a kind of respectful listening. So that's all I'm after. I don't know if it has any zeitgeist is what I'm trying to say.

I think if there's any shift that I've seen, it feels like maybe we're moving back towards a willingness to have a conversation collectively. I believe in the promise of America, although America has let people down many, many times…I mean, I'm the living example of somebody who came not from nothing, but close to it, and made something of it. I know that doesn't work for everybody, and I'm conscious of that. So I think our collective culture works better—and I would include Western culture in that, Western European culture—if we're all having this kind of conversation and we're willing to listen. Even if we vehemently disagree.

It’s a complicated answer. So I'm going to give this simple version. I would define post-truth at this time, in 2025, as: I see where a lot of people really don't want to know the truth. They're more comfortable living in a digital atmosphere than an analog one, in that they feel they've amassed some kind of power or status that translates well in the digital world, but really has no bearing in the analog. So you're navigating a whole group of people, it's got to be at least in the tens of millions, that doesn't really care if there is an agreed upon analog truth, because they're living in a digital version based on what they're fed by algorithms. And A.I. is reinforcing [that.]

Sean Parker did an interview maybe seven years ago where he talked about, when they founded Facebook, they were aware that by feeding people information based on their bias, that they were going to create a difficult political atmosphere. In essence, what people would call a silo mentality, or this bifurcated red team blue team, or something, right? And so I would just say, glibly, that I think we've lost a certain amount of the population because they're just going to keep consuming and believing what they want to believe, while the rest of us out here in analog reality have to deal with fires and hydrants that don't work. There is a tangible reality that must go on. There are stop signs and red lights.

As for your other probing on how it relates to the conversational thing, I remember having a conversation with a friend who was belaboring that one segment of the society was, in their estimation, irredeemable…and they needed to, in essence, be excluded from society. And I said, “Well, what are you going to do, put them on a boat and send them to an island? They're not going anywhere.” It’s a bad analogy, but it's like, if everybody just puts their cards on the table, we'll figure out a way to achieve some sort of balance. If you know your neighbor is somebody that you don't want to hang out with, that's fine. But if you have to come to some sort of agreement at the local city council about tax law, then that relationship becomes valuable, right? So by excluding people, you're basically saying, “I don't need you, I don't need your vote. I don't need your participation.”

And by the way, I've pre-judged that the opinions that you hold cannot be swayed under any circumstance. And I'm not a believer in that. As a Machiavellian, solipsistic [laughs] megalomaniac on stage, I believe I can move the crowd. I mean, I've seen it.

It does, and somewhat ashamedly so. It's nothing I would want to admit. But since you asked the question, I'll tell you the honest truth: Yeah, I do think about greatness a lot. Because I think it's an existential question that everybody has to go through, which is: “Am I using my time here on this planet wisely?” When I'd achieved incredible, crazy worldwide fame by the age of 27 or 28, I felt a lot of people patting me on the back, saying, “you've done it.” And I kept thinking, “but we could be so much better.” I would use my heroes to, like, almost like mentally berate me. I'd see Bob Dylan or John Lennon standing in front of me thinking, “you're not there yet, kid.”

So that's one journey. Then you go into this other thing where we'll start using the ghost of you against the current version of you. I have people walk up to me in an airport and say, “Your album saved my life.” And you're like, “Wow, that's incredible.” And they tell you the story about how they were going to jump off a roof. And then they go, “So, do you still play music?” So in the world I grew up in, which was very negative, working class, that means you're not that great. Because if you're that great, they would still be listening to you. The fact that you saved their life doesn't mean anything, because it has no sustain.

Then thirdly, to belabor the point, we've seen in the last 10 to 15 years, a real shift in our culture of what gets celebrated, and to me, grossly so, in the era of the influencer. There's a skew in our culture where we've started to celebrate our own ruin, in my opinion…I’m not saying don't cover it. I'm saying it's the way it's being covered. And I think that's where I, let’s call it the Midwestern in me, gets a little bit grumpy, thinks that’s something's being missed here. And if I'm in a position to be part of the voice that corrects it or contributes to, let's call it a more balanced position, that’s where I come from.

So why do we look closer to the Roman Empire right now than we do to the time of Shakespeare? Well, it's because we've lost our general moral moorings. And that's not to moralize. I'm saying that’s what roots us down as a culture, to drive and find the next set of voices that will change the world, right?

If I'm comparing myself against anything, that's what I'm comparing myself against. Like, let's call it the biggest ask of all: Are you actually contributing? Everybody I know complains. And maybe that's just a musician problem. I'm really interested in those who can change the world for the better. And when I say better, I mean everybody…the poor, the immigrant, the rich, the crazy, the silly. There’s room for everybody. And if we can all calmly understand everybody's value at this table, somehow coming out of that we're going to be in a better place. And I think there's great historical antecedent for that. But somehow, in this culture, we think somehow, by rewriting the rules, because we digitally can—or we can digitally erase one path and create another—that somehow we're going to think into existence a world which has never existed.

So self-referentially, you can see why doing a podcast which has a PBS-like tonality is an unusual leap into the void, right? Whereas a year before, I was told by some of the biggest corporations in the world doing podcasts that my only value was to talk about my life from the ’90s.

It was pretty surreal. First of all, I'd never met Bill Burr. Secondly, he really does look like my father, like in person. I'd seen the pictures. Never seen him in person. So it's the surreal thing of shaking somebody's hands who you have this kind of physical affinity for. And there's all these questions, and then you’re thrown into a situation where there’s a camera rolling. So what was captured was truly this awkward exchange of, “okay, what do we do with this information?” Bill’s mind is lightning quick, and he's viciously funny. There was one point where he was making fun of my coat that I was wearing. Which, by the way, is a very expensive coat. And you’re under the death ray of a professional comedian, you know? I mean, this is what he does for a living. So it was a very interesting dynamic.

He was very nice about the whole thing. And he basically left the door open to meet again and let it be known that I was always welcome in his world. But you could even feel, as was happening, that there was this, this meta thing going on. We realized that both of us had stumbled into something bigger than us.

I am, actually. I’m back writing, maybe for the first time in about a year. So that's over on the side. But yeah, preparing for a tour is interesting, because every year that goes by, the band gets just bigger and bigger. But on some level, there's a limiting principle, because time starts to say what is valuable of what you've created. And the audience, consciously or unconsciously, puts this pressure that their version of the band needs to be your version of the band. So I've made peace with all that, and so it has gotten easier. But it starts with the acknowledgement that we're there to serve, and to basically throw a party celebrating this 36 years of insanity.

We've been very blessed, and so things continue to be good. But having come from the independent music scene, I'm very conscious of how the dynamics are really working against independent artists, and what we would commonly call indie artists, or even more loosely, young artists. And unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any simple cure. I didn’t watch but I think maybe Chappell Roan, when she won her award at the Grammys the other night, was chastising the music industry for not providing some sort of living wage or basis of opportunity for younger artists to make their way into music. I would not necessarily look to the business sector to solve it, because it's a capitalist world. And they would cry poor, and they have their own issues, and I know because they tell me about them in my dealings with them. So it might take maybe some billionaire class to get together and put together some board or some common fund to create an opportunity zone or something. Because the dynamics are really, really against young artists.

Oh, you're really wading into the deep water of my life here. [Laughs] I feel like I can't give you an honest answer on that.

Because this gets into the politics of my musical life, and I just learned to avoid the landmines there. I’ll say this much. I still feel that there is a misalignment or a misunderstanding about my musical life that still needs correction, and I and I don't assume anybody's going to correct it but me. So if I have anything left to do, it's to fix that.

If you were cleaving my life into two easy categories, that would be my musical life from 1988 to 2000 and my musical life from 2001 to 2025. And the common low hanging fruit is one went well and one went not as well. It's not only inaccurate, but it's also kind of become a story that's easier to tell than the true and untrue of it, if that makes any sense. It’s like a rumor that becomes fact. And then you're asked to answer for the fact, even though you know it's a rumor. What’s the old thing that politicians say? A lie will go around the world before you get your pants on, or something like that?

And don't forget that the era that I'm talking about, 2001-2025, also aligns with the era of clickbait, where overall I became more valuable as clickbait fodder than a musician who had persevered and through guile and talent was still part of some equation. That’s been corrected the last few years, so I don't really have much to whine on about. But I can tell you candidly that it's still not accurate. And as someone with small children and a wife who's 32 years old, if I'm going to leave anything for them, I'd at least like to leave for them what I actually built and not what I think I built. So I had to learn how to endure and create my own version of media, and create my own third act. And you can argue about whether or not I've done that. But now that I'm in my third act, for me that's the driving ambition, more so than anything else. To correct the record.

No, not at all. I'm pretty transparent so I'm pretty much the same no matter what the subject is. My cynicism about the vocation of journalism has not waned. I mean, talking to someone like you who's smart and certainly capable, I could do that all day long. But unfortunately, most of your ranks are not worthy. This is me overly opining…the field of journalism has blown itself up in the era of clickbait. Overall, the journalistic ranks couldn't help but press the button and they, I guess including you, have backed themselves into a corner that they don't really know how to get out of. And I think now you see the rise of what people call independent media, or the YouTube class or whatever, drawing crazy big numbers. Bigger than major networks. Because, like myself, comparatively, they had to figure out, “well, this system wants no part of me, and this whole system also tells me I have no value. I know I have value, so I got to go somewhere else and establish my value.” And that's what I had to do.

So I understand that path maybe more than most because, and I guess in the field of media, I had to become my own press agent. Because there was no escaping the trap that had been laid for me, and in a generation that is easily overlooked because half of our stars were dead. So there wasn't even anybody to fight for anybody else. I mean, if you count Gen X rock bands, I mean, five, six, seven, lead singers are dead. Great artists, not people of insignificance. From a kind of a groupthink, I mean, there wasn't a lot of power to even stand with or behind. And, oh, by the way, a lot of the contemporaries that were still alive had marginalized themselves socially and politically into these anodyne creatures who wouldn’t dare say a thing that would cause any hurt to their career. Because God forbid.

So this generation that started off so fiery and so pointedly? It basically turned into a bunch of people in rocking chairs. So to stand out from that crowd made you even more of a target, because there was nobody else running rank. So yeah. That’s how you end up cynical, like I am.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.