CHICAGO — Smashing Pumpkins singer and National Wrestling Alliance owner Billy Corgan suddenly wondered what Billy Corgan thought about all that was going on in the world, confirmed the man himself.
“Politics, for example. What would the man who famously wrote the line ‘the world is a vampire’ have to say about that?” said Corgan in the mirror. “I’m sure William Patrick Corgan, Jr. has a lot on his mind regarding Trump’s presidency, foreign wars, and the TikTok ban. It’s not unlike band politics, which I know all about. But do people ask me about it? No, which is messed up because I’m sure they’d want to hear from the guy who once released a double album called ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.’ And don’t even get me started on religion. I lived through Nirvana once already.”
Those close to Corgan were not really wondering what he, in fact, thought about all this.
“I’d be trying to get through soundcheck so I could do almost anything else, and he just wouldn’t stop talking,” said former guitar tech for Smashing Pumpkins Craig Drake. “They’d play a song and Billy would want to try a different guitar, which is no problem. What is a problem, though, is having to hear him talk about some sort of current event that always ended on some sort of tangent about him not wanting to include any hits in the band’s setlists. I think one time he compared Zwan to the United Nations.”
Rock historian Marty Merfeld revealed that this isn’t something specific to Corgan.
“So many rockstars have this sort of center-of-the-universe way of thinking. They get caught up in the everything of it all, in a way,” Merfeld said. “The stories I’ve heard about Paul Simon talking about Iran-Contra. Sting and the collapse of the USSR. Gene Simmons and the late-aughts recession, obviously. They think people want to hear what they think because their music is popular. What they’re forgetting is that news and reporters exist already. Walter Cronkite never made an album, and Billy Corgan should maybe consider that when he starts telling a barista about the US transportation budget.”
At press time, Corgan was reportedly telling an uninterested gas station clerk his opinions on the previous week’s WWE Monday Night Raw.