Music
Billy Corgan Broke Our Trust, SMASHING PUMPKINS Split Was a Mistake
In an interview with Spinner Billy Corgan spilled the beans on the breakup of Smashing Pumpkins and why he’s releasing the 44 songs of ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope’ for free. Here’s a taste of the interview,
Why are you releasing the 44 songs of ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope’ for free?
I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that you work for a couple of years just to come up with a pile of 12 songs and that becomes the album. What I like about the idea of recording the songs one at a time is I’m always in the moment with the song. I’m hoping it will raise the quality of the songs that I release so that every song is important to me. Hopefully the audience will feel that way too.
It’s going to take a while for the record business to find its new bearings. In the meantime, it keeps acting like it’s the old record business, which I think really works against the artistic aspect of putting out music. I thought I would walk around all of that, make the songs available for free and I figured out a way that I could feel invested. I figure it’s going to take three years and I’m always putting out something I feel excited about, and then I’m also getting some level of feedback from the audience about what they’re actually connecting with.
Do you regret breaking up Smashing Pumpkins in 2000?
Breaking up the band was a mistake because I think it broke trust with the audience. You had an audience that was very invested in that idea — whether they were invested in the people or the idea or the songs, I don’t know. Like a relationship that you break off from and then try to pick back up, it’s never quite the same. It doesn’t mean it can’t be as good, but it has to be different. That beautiful original feeling got lost in the interim of being away. If we had said, “We just went away for seven years,” it would have been similar, but somehow breaking up, there’s a violence to it.
It’s a new day, and you’ve got new John Carpenter to listen to. John Carpenter, Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter have released the new track He Walks By Night this morning, the second single off their upcoming album Lost Themes IV: Noir, out May 3 on Sacred Bones Records.
Lost Themes IV: Noir is the latest installment in a series that sees Carpenter releasing new music for John Carpenter movies that don’t actually exist. The first Lost Themes was released in 2015, followed by Lost Themes II in 2016 and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death in 2021.
Sacred Bones previews, “It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. With Lost Themes IV: Noir, they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.
“Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone.
“The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.”
You can pre-save Lost Themes IV: Noir right now! And listen to the new track below…
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