Top 100 Billy Corgan Quotes
#1. About six months ago, I listened to Siamese Dream. That was the first time I'd ever really heard my own album, because I had separated from the experience of making the record. And it really moved me. It made me cry, it's so beautiful.
Billy Corgan
#2. The funny thing about me that most people never really understand is that, at heart, I'm really a jock.
Billy Corgan
#3. I don't think '90s music was as significant as '60s music in terms of changing the world, but it was significant, and I think it was similarly disillusioning when you realize the mainstream just
Billy Corgan
#4. More than any audience in the world, Americans will cross their arms, stare at you and say, 'OK, whaddya got?' - no matter how many times you've proven it to them.
Billy Corgan
#6. It makes me crazy to think that somebody might attack my city or any other city.
Billy Corgan
#7. I mean, I'm certainly not a 'teaophyte,' or whatever the word would be.
Billy Corgan
#9. I have a hard time thinking of men trying to sing my songs, because I think my perspective is definitely feminine.
Billy Corgan
#10. Being overly identified with [a certain period of time] becomes a noose around your neck, and people don't want you to grow up, they don't want you to change, they don't want you to evolve.
Billy Corgan
#11. I had such a big mouth for so long that it doesn't faze anybody anymore.
Billy Corgan
#12. Most of my arguments with musicians through the years have had more to do with their attitude about music, or their attitude about their own lives, or their personal responsibility. Music has never really been the big centerpiece of the fight.
Billy Corgan
#13. That's at the root of the human interaction: fair trade.
Billy Corgan
#14. Life is everything and nothing all at once.
Billy Corgan
#16. We're the worst band in America ... That makes us the best.
Billy Corgan
#17. I've had a lot of things rendered as not being effective or as some indication of my lack of sanity, only to be praised ten, fifteen, twenty years later for what I did once in this overt consciousness.
Billy Corgan
#18. My version, of course, is not this flag-waving, let's all get on the Jesus train and ride out of hell. I'm not that kind of guy. It's an embrace that life is good, worth living and yeah, it's not easy, but there are more pluses than minuses.
Billy Corgan
#19. The mythology in rock n' roll is that I'm a bit of a loose cannon. Yet I've produced more music than anybody in my generation. So how much of a loose cannon am I? But the general public believes that I'm a loose cannon, so let them believe it. I'm not going to correct them.
Billy Corgan
#20. I think long and hard about what it is I'm actually trying to do, and then I kind of have to narrow my focus into that. If I don't, I'm too all over the place.
Billy Corgan
#21. I walked away from going to church when I was 8. I didn't set foot in another church until I was 28.
Billy Corgan
#22. When you actually like each other, it translates to the music.
Billy Corgan
#24. I put up with the music business because I understand that I'm in the tradition, I'm in a tradition that's of far greater importance than the business I seem to be in. Everywhere I go in the world, people ask me about the business that I seem to be in, but I'm not really in that business.
Billy Corgan
#25. That's the great thing about rock n' roll: the myth is ultimately more important than the reality. And that's what you learn - you just learn to go with the mythology.
Billy Corgan
#26. If practice makes perfect, and no one's perfect, then why practice?
Billy Corgan
#27. Why is it that all non-conformists look the same?
Billy Corgan
#28. I always thought Kurt Cobain was the perfect embodiment of the great alternative guitar player.
Billy Corgan
#29. Where is this great love for rock and roll that existed for 50 or 60 years?
Billy Corgan
#30. It seems to me that references to bands like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin meant more to me a year ago and all those old things are totally losing importance.
Billy Corgan
#31. People always called the Cure gloomy, but listening to the Cure made me happy. There was something about the gloominess that gave me comfort, and I think we're the same way.
Billy Corgan
#32. Sometimes people just like being around each other, and good things come out of that.
Billy Corgan
#33. I do not think wrestling is going to save the world.
Billy Corgan
#34. It was shocking to see Nirvana play, because it was like, "Here's this little guy with a monster-guitar sound." And it was heavier than Black Sabbath. That was shocking.
Billy Corgan
#35. When you present people with things from the heart and from the soul, they make better choices: They make better choices about their bodies, they make better choices about their partners, they make better choices about the environment.
Billy Corgan
#36. The ideology of the Smashing Pumpkins was ultimately more valuable than the music of the Smashing Pumpkins. That's what critics can't put their finger on.
Billy Corgan
#37. In the music business I am surrounded by people who don't view music as a sacred voice. They view music as something that they can use and exploit, often times lazily. They have no sense of the tradition, they have no sense of honor about those who came before and charted the path.
Billy Corgan
#38. What bothers me is when music becomes entertainment. Of course, music is supposed to be entertaining, but go back to any period of time - music had a cultural significance on different levels, whether it was folk music, it was the news of the village, or it had to do with the rites of passage.
Billy Corgan
#39. I'm viewed as this weird, crippled character. But you got to take your lumps.
Billy Corgan
#40. I get more out of life just being myself, by just being a human being. Not by being a rock star, not by being whatever. Sometimes I act like a jerk, but I think people respect me for being myself. That's the ultimate thing about the Smashing Pumpkins.
Billy Corgan
#41. I'm like the Fugitive, running from the one-armed indie-rock community!
Billy Corgan
#43. I mean there's certainly a lot of progressive rock and metal that exists at the underground level, which has its own vitality, as it should. But it seems to have lost its ability to really charge up the hill.
Billy Corgan
#44. I look at other members of my generation who have basically done one thing, and one thing well, and have been handsomely rewarded for it.
Billy Corgan
#45. The Pumpkins love rock-and-roll, we absolutely love it, but we also think it's a flatulent, ego-serving kiddie playground. You can have your cake and eat it too.
Billy Corgan
#46. It's important for people to talk and get beyond the wall of Facebook and social media.
Billy Corgan
#47. To me, music was about being accepted and escaping from this crummy existence
Billy Corgan
#48. The Smashing Pumpkins was never meant to be a small band. It was going to either be a big band, or a no band.
Billy Corgan
#49. I think when I listen to old records, it puts me back in the atmosphere of what it felt like to make the record and who was there and what the room looked like. It's more a sensory memory.
Billy Corgan
#50. My view of the world is always tempered by the fact that there are people who are less fortunate than I am.
Billy Corgan
#51. To me, it's the folly of man to make God human.
Billy Corgan
#53. I did 13-something years of talking to wrestlers and promoters about why they did certain things and why they booked matches a certain way and what they were thinking and whether they were satisfied with the draw. And I got a lot of insight in the business.
Billy Corgan
#54. Personally, I think Jesus would like better bands.
Billy Corgan
#55. Music is supposed to be interwoven into the fabric of society; it is not supposed to be a plaything that is there to serve the population's titillation of the moment.
Billy Corgan
#56. If you don't fit into this kind of like gossipy, trendy, Web-hit thingy, you're relegated to sort of second-class celebrity status.
Billy Corgan
#57. I grew up in the suburbs and basically associate the suburbs with cultural death.
Billy Corgan
#58. Like any good tree that one would hope to grow, we must set our roots deep into the ground so that what is real will prosper in the Light of Love.
Billy Corgan
#59. Live simply; make compassionate choices when it comes to food.
Billy Corgan
#60. Thinking about the future and thinking about the past is really only a way of ignoring the present.
Billy Corgan
#62. The point is to let the music be itself. If it doesn't mean anything to you, then it's bullsh*t.
Billy Corgan
#63. As a 28 year old who's lived long enough to know the difference, I know now that the feelings I felt an 16 were not necessarily correct. But however overly dramatic, the desperation and hopelessness I felt at 16 was my reality.
Billy Corgan
#64. It's wonderful to read interviews by old blues guys - they talk about all their influences, they talk about who taught them how to play, and who they saw, and how they were determined to play that way.
Billy Corgan
#65. Well, we have brought certain things upon ourselves. I've certainly brought things upon us with my mouth.
Billy Corgan
#66. My mother and I parting company at four years old is a recurring theme; although it's not symbolically necessarily present, it's present in all my relationships.
Billy Corgan
#67. The reason I don't play any of the old songs is because I really honor my old band, and I think that those songs are best served within the context of that band.
Billy Corgan
#68. Time is never time at all. You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth. And our lives are forever changed. We will never be the same. The more you change, the less you feel.
Billy Corgan
#69. I feel like I'm always fighting not to repeat myself.
Billy Corgan
#70. Rock & roll is not about what you play, it's about how you play it.
Billy Corgan
#71. Heavy metal is a universal energy
it's the sound of a volcano. It's rock, it's earth shattering. Somewhere in our primal being we understand.
Billy Corgan
#72. I think the days of working with producers in the conventional sense are over for me.
Billy Corgan
#73. I don't think people buy records because of anything that happens on Facebook. They buy records cause they're friends say 'I bought this record and I love it.'
Billy Corgan
#74. We are the most beloved and hated band in the world.
Billy Corgan
#75. I was brought up Roman Catholic. I'm not even baptized.
Billy Corgan
#76. I dont think we're the type of band people look at and say, 'I want to grow up to be just like that'. We're like a train wreck.
Billy Corgan
#77. In my Corgan brain, I've decided it's almost as simple as 'All you need is love.' Almost.
Billy Corgan
#78. Rock and Roll is still asking people like me to live up to the old guard's concept of what success is but it doesn't mean anything.
Billy Corgan
#79. I think rock & roll has prepared me for a lot of flexibility.
Billy Corgan
#80. I'd reached a point where there was a direct conflict between what I was trying to be and who I really was.
Billy Corgan
#81. The simplest way that I can understand therapy is that we're born a certain way, we're taught to be something different, and we spend our whole lives trying to unravel it.
Billy Corgan
#82. I went to see a shaman. He put his hands on me, and I cried like a baby for an hour.
Billy Corgan
#83. I'm an experimental artist in a field that doesn't celebrate experimentation. It celebrates self-destruction, which I guess you could say is a creative endeavor.
Billy Corgan
#84. Usually the intention of the artistic effect is too sophisticated for most people to understand, sort of like a joke that they don't get so they don't think it's funny.
Billy Corgan
#85. We don't make music for people to take drugs to, we make music for people to live their life.
Billy Corgan
#86. We were in Japan once where they had 30 kinds of green tea. I thought there was one.
Billy Corgan
#87. The things I'm guided to do are really strange to me.
Billy Corgan
#89. Everybody likes to run around on their phones, including me, but we don't always want to hear who's sweating somewhere in some non-air-conditioned factory to create those things so that they can keep the prices down.
Billy Corgan
#90. Not let the child run the circus, just have that child be the source of the creative voice.
Billy Corgan
#91. We can look you in the eye and talk to you about life, heart, love rock'n'roll, whatever, but we do not have the moral authority to tell people how to vote or what to do with their bodies. We are just a rock band.
Billy Corgan
#92. Destruction is a true sign of devotion. As I always tell my girlfriend when she threatens to kill me. 'You should kill me and it would tell me that you love me.
Billy Corgan
#93. Even if you don't believe in God, exploring fully the idea of a god or gods should pose no threat to you.
Billy Corgan
#94. We weren't like mates who decided to form a band. The other three met me because they were interested in being in the band that I was starting.
Billy Corgan
#95. My earliest memory is of feeling different. My parents told me that I wasn't like other children.
Billy Corgan
#97. Around the mid-'90s every hair guy who would have been in a hair-metal band got his tattoos and suddenly decided he was alternative. It just became like a thing.
Billy Corgan
#98. Soon you won't even have the choice to live or die as you wish!
Billy Corgan
#99. In the beginning, though, I have to admit that I did have a chip on my shoulder. I did want to prove everyone wrong. But after I went through the process and came out the other side, it wasn't about anyone else.
Billy Corgan
#100. People always seemed to pay attention to us. I have no idea why
there was just a presence between the four people or something.
Billy Corgan
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