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I'm Irish and I was born on St. Patrick's Day. I'm lucky sevens.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
We're like a really nice drink. We help people get through the day-we make life a little sunnier. I don't think we have any profound effect. If anybody has had a profound effect, it's The Beatles, and their effect is still minimal. There are things in the world way more important than music. Family is 50 times more important than music.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins
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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 The Smashing Pumpkins -
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 The Smashing Pumpkins -
For a 6-foot-3 guy with no hair and a whiny voice, I've done all right.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
When you move artistically, the natural inclination is to denounce everything that's gone before.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
My mother came to a Smashing Pumpkins gig once, and I was wearing a dress. She was very upset. She said, 'Everyone's gonna think you're a fag.' I said,'Well, they already think I'm an asshole.'
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
This is not a reaction against a negative world. It's a response to a negative world.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins
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Actually, I was having dinner with Michael (Stipe, of R.E.M.) when our second album went platinum, which up until that point was the highest success we'd ever had. And he turned to me during dinner and said, 'Welcome to the deep waters, kid.' I'll never forget that.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
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 The Smashing Pumpkins -
To me, music was about being accepted and escaping from this crummy existence.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
I think the original, 'They're the next Jane's Addiction' things that people said about us in the beginning have been pretty much wiped out.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
I don't necessarily believe that the sting of failure is a bad thing. It gives you a certain amount of freedom to just say fuck it!
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
Music is 99% of my life. But I know I need a break. Besides, if you give people too much, they start to not want it. We need to restrain ourselves.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins
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People act like Nirvana invented grunge; they just took it and personified it.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
We have a problem with any labels that people try to hang on us, because all it does is drag you down.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
It's about the girlfriend who left me last year. I tried to put all my anger in those words, even though I'm just as much to blame for the break-up. 'Soma' is based on the idea that a love relationship is almost the same as opium: it slowly puts you to sleep, it soothes you, and gives you the illusion of sureness and security. Very deceivable.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
The closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
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 The Smashing Pumpkins -
My earliest memory is of feeling different. My parents told me that I wasn't like other children.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins
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Life is everything and nothing all at once.
Billy Corgan The Smashing Pumpkins -
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 The Smashing Pumpkins