Billy Corgan is explaining how an English music paper decided that the most newsworthy thing about him was that he really wanted to be a girl. “People continue to make something of the fact that we have a girl in the band, which in our mind is completely negligible,” he’s saying, sipping iced tea in a Wrigleyville bar. “Now, in that context, I was trying to explain how there’s this constant pressure on men in rock to, you know, rock.”
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Thanks to the reporter’s interpretation of Corgan’s words, a hunk of the British record-buying public now gets the wrong impression if Corgan looks in a boutique window. This benign exploitation of his words pains Corgan, but it’s just one of the slings and arrows that come with good fortune. His band, the Smashing Pumpkins, sold 300,000-plus of their first album, Gish–a serious number for a first album from an unhyped and unknown act. Now the group’s got a new one, Siamese Dream, on major Virgin, which is already making inroads on MTV and the college radio charts. 1993 is definitely Chicago’s year rockwise; but while a lot of people (including Hitsville) have been busy raving about Liz Phair and Urge Overkill, Siamese Dream may surprise everyone by becoming the first album from a Chicago rock band to go platinum in many a moon, particularly if press interest is any indication. Corgan’s chat with Hitsville was by his reckoning the 80th interview he’d done in two months.
He was definitely feeling the pain. “At least before it was an open slate,” he reflects. “Now I’ve got to deal with it all. ‘Are you the next say-the-“N”-word? Has the band sold out?’ Every time the band climbs one more rung up the ladder there’s so much shit that comes with it that it’s slowly killing my desire to play music.”
“Not long enough.”
