As you’ve no doubt heard from any insufferable teen (or in most comment sections about current pop artists), music just ain’t what it used to be. And Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins agrees that music is missing something, namely, Billy Corgan.
During a recent VIP Q&A session in Atlanta, Corgan fired out a few rock doom-saying quotes. Apparently, it’s dying because guys like him aren’t on the radio anymore.
Via Alternative Nation:
“You hear a slight return to guitar in maybe the last year, but it’s more like a prop. You do not hear people playing guitar the way Kurt Cobain played guitar, the way I played, even a Stone Gossard [of Pearl Jam], you know what I mean? A very individuated style, that says this is our band, and this is the way we rock.”
Though a lack of Corgan is clearly the top culprit in rock’s decline, Billy also noted that Fender Telecasters are to blame for the lack of ’90s level radio dominance.
“Guitar is a prop in alternative music now, and the reason most of them play Telecasters, for anyone that knows music, is because it’s a real thin sound. It gets a lot of energy, and does not get in the way of the vocal, because it’s all about the vocal.”
Corgan also thinks he could get back on Top 40 radio if he wanted to. Which leads to the question: what’s stopping him?
“To me it’s the same, when we looked at the landscape in 1992, or 1994, when we were making those albums, we still had to step back and say: ‘Okay, if we’re going to penetrate this market, can we do it in our own style?’ And I think there’s plenty of substantive stuff in the Pumpkins’ past that shows I can penetrate any of those markets if I write an A-level song and we produce it in a contemporary frame.”
See it’s just that easy. See you at the top of the charts, Billy!
