Billy Corgan revealed in a new interview that the runaway success of his ’90s contemporaries in Nirvana and Pearl Jam nearly drove him to suicide.
On an episode of the podcast Why Not Now? With Amy Jo Martin, Corgan explained that the massive sales numbers of Nevermind and Ten led him to question his own metric for success with the Smashing Pumpkins.
“So, within a short span of time I went from thinking I was very successful within my given field, to all the rules had changed in my given field,” he said. “Everything I had built myself up to be and do was no longer as relevant as it needed to be. I went into a very strange depression because I felt like something had been not taken, but the change made me feel kind of inadequate in a way I wasn’t prepared for.”
“I just really struggled with the emotions I was feeling,” he added. “I reached this kind of morning in my life where it was like I’m either going to jump out a window, or I was going to change my life. I know that sounds very dramatic, but that’s literally what happened.”
Corgan said that writing the song “Today” helped to pull him out of his funk.
“It’s sort of a wry observation on suicide,” he said. “But in essence the meditation behind the lyric is that every day is the best day, if you let it be.”
Check out his whole performance via the player up top.
