Is it true Billy did all of the guitar and bass parts on this record because James and D'arcy couldn't lay them down fast enough to meet the record label's demands?
D'Arcy is on Luna. What's funny is that James has writing credits on Siamese Dream but he doesn't play a note on it. Pretty sure he also came up with the solo on Rocket and his own guitar parts on Soma and Silverfuck because he always played those parts live and they don't really seem like Billy's style (too groovy). There's a misconception that "Billy did everything" because song writing credits are so jewed in the US. There are Billy fags that unironically believe that Billy told Jimmy what to play. IMO Jimmy should have gotten a lot more writing credits. James is rated just about right and D'Arcy just played root notes. It's actually insane that Jimmy has never earned royalties for songwriting when Jellybelly exists.
>>130605525Interesting point about jimmy & songwriting, one of those cases where the drum parts are inseparable from what makes the song the song, and of course those are all Jimmy
>>130605525Good info, Anon.
>>130605567Billy is miserly with songwriting credits, which is why all of his bands fail. He wants people to contribute, but doesn't want to let them get credit. With Zwan's first album the entire band jammed out an entire album of songs, then last minute Billy changed his mind, made sure the album was just "his" songs. When the band realized this, they just spent the entire time goofing off on Billy's dime. Billy got mad and blew the whole thing up. There's a rumor that Jimmy left in 2012 after a dispute over song writing credits. Billy then hired a 19 year old drummer from McDonald's who would never be so bold as to ask for royalties. Jimmy and James are both back in the band and it's clear from the music that they aren't doing shit.
>>130605659First time I’ve seen these perspectives and details, really interesting, thanksSeems like the narrative around a lot of this history is carefully managed by Corgan
>>130605719He makes everyone around him sign ironclad NDAs, which is why no one hears about what a scrooge he is.
>>130605525>>130605659>>130605757Fascinating stuff. Just curious, do you have some loose connection to Billy, or have you just done a lot of research?
>>130605777Lol no I've just been a fan for over 25 years. There used to be a forum called Blamonet where these things were openly discussed.
>>130605835Would be great if there was a revisionist unauthorized biography kind of thing that laid it all out in a nice chronological narrative, I’m assuming it’s just scattered posts and tribal knowledge
>>130605010the way I heard it James and Darcy were in the middle of a breakup and doing a lot of drugs and just not showing up to record much but I have no idea if that's true except they did break up then I'm pretty sure. I assume that's why the label sent them down to Marietta GA so they couldn't go to their regular dealers. I also wonder if that facilitated Mike Mills playing the mellotron.
>>130607175D'Arcy was always an alcoholic, but she didn't get into hard drugs (cocaine) until they hooked up with Mason's crew. Jimmy was the one who was off his face on heroin and cocaine during the recording of Siamese Dream. The entire reason they recorded in Atlanta was to get away from Chicago so Jimmy would have a harder time finding dealers. That didn't work out LOL. James and D'Arcy were breaking up but they had been on and off for awhile. Billy can just lay down takes way more consistently because he is a more technical player. Siamese Dream was recorded like a 70s prog rock album, a ridiculous amount of multi tracking, specifically guitar parts. Very few guitarists from the early 90s could match Corgan in that regard, which he has always had a huge chip on his shoulder that his "peers" never recognized his talent because they were a bunch of punch and playing guitar well was seen as uncool.
>>130608654*they were a bunch of punks
>>130605659do you have any thoughts/theories on why it seems like the music has gotten more boring with every album since the "reunion", and why the lyrics have gotten increasingly more portentous and nonsensical? or is it just the product of being surrounded by yes-men?
>>130608791Musicians like Billy are the norm. He had a decade of good songwriting and then that well dried up. Very common. The difference is that Billy's lows are really low. The worst thing about his music now is that the production seems self directed, regardless of who the official producer is. Billy gets final say on production.
>>130608887the fall from grace makes me sad, it's hard to believe that the guy who wrote the lyrics from the Siamese Dream/Pisces Iscariot era is the same guy writing the word salad nonsense on the newest album.
>>130605525Writing credits used to be different in that it was strictly whoever wrote the lyrics. You never got credits for coming up with instrumental parts unless it was a major part of the song. Look at how many guitar players wrote solos but got no credits.
>>130609135November Rain has only Axl Rose credited as a writer yet Slash would've made the iconic solo.
>>130609135It goes back to the copyright act of 1909. Because music at that point was distributed mainly as sheet music for people to play in their parlors rather than recorded tracks, the precedent was set that a song is the underlying melody and lyrics. >>130609142Guitar solos are considered arrangement.No one got shafted harder than Joe Walsh and Don Felder in The Eagles. It's insane that some retards can come in and add a few words to the lyrics and take songwriting credit while a guitarist can write a brain melting solo and technically not get songwriting credit. The legal framework overtly favors lyricists over real musicians.
>>130608654Tangent, but as someone who hasn’t messed with those drugs, I’ve always wondered how certain musicians can function on H, but especially a drummer, and especially a drummer like Jimmy, how can you perform at that level while hooked on that drug?Was Billy totally clean?Love this thread
>>130605010Best rock album of the 90s
>>130610610they aren't necessarily on heroin when performing. if he was nodding out in the middle of performances i'm sure they would have just kicked him out. he probably did that shit after the show.
>zoomers parroting memes they heard on YT as if they actually have an opinion or as if they actually lived it. whole internet at this point. so profoundly fake.
Billy Corgan mogs most other musicians. He's underrrated as a talent honestly.
>>130610795did you live it? were you literally in the recording booth with billy in the steaming summer of 92? fag.
>>130610795Lelnnials weren’t around either. They killed rock and shouldn’t speak
>>130609044>"wrote" Pisces Iscariot reminder that Pisces Iscariot was a label cash grab compilation of reissued b-sides and unreleased previously recorded stuff. not that that's a bad thing in itself, and yeah, Corgan wrote the tracks, but not as an album. but it was kind of a drag for me personally since I had tracked down all the singles already. mostly on CD but some vinyl. the box set was black vinyl but the individual 7"s were colored but I only found 2. I have all the cds, though.
>>130609135yeah but it's whatever the band agrees on. the MC5 were commies and understood how it worked so every member got a songwriting credit to ensure equal pay.
>>130610610Jimmy was doing loads of cocaine and booze as well.
>>130610799Billy is technically a great guitarist. But he didn't reinvent guitar playing or write music that resonated with a generation like Kurt Cobain. He also didn't "play the game" early on and eschewed trends to make music that harkened back to 70s classic rock. There are thousands of extremely talented musicians and artists generally who never get the recognition they deserve because a lot of fame is just being the right person at the right time. If fame was commensurate with talent then Taylor Swift wouldn't be famous.
Also a lot of what most people consider Corgan's signature sound is literally just Loveless.
>>130614174corgan's signature sound comes from Catherine. but yeah 'sometimes' by mbv is probably the reason the best alt rock song of all time, mayonaise, exists
>>130614159I should add that Billy is not the first or last person on earth to ever be overlooked. He has a persecution complex that makes him believe that he is solely targeted by forced beyond his control who are keeping him down. He honestly mentally seems like a schizo black guy.
>>130610610that's the nature of addiction. you just wing it and work around it because not doing the drugs is out of the question.i'd say a lot of addicts who are also musicians would tell you the real challenge would be to play and write without their favorite crutch.it also helps to be on a league of your own. bruce lee was famously very into hard drugs but could still whoop anyone's ass because he was bruce lee.
Jimmy probably needed the drugs to stand being around Billy for long periods of time. Despite all the Billy propaganda about them being buddy-buddy together it's not as though they ever hung out in their personal lives. Billy is a pretentious art fag theater kid who dated Russian photographers and Jimmy is a guy from Illinois who eats hot dogs and incidentally has a god like talent at the drum kit.
>>130617476Neither one of them were art fags. Billy was an athlete who grew up in the suburbs and he liked a lot of metal. And never cared for the "alt rock" scene's approval. When they called him a sellout, it didn't get under his skin like it did with Cobain.
>>130617558>Neither one of them were art fagsYou're just repeating Billy propaganda. Billy wants you to think he was a jock when he was a goth kid who lingered around record stores with his crew of weirdos. Read about his time in Florida. He literally got handsy with a tranny.
>>130617583I bet he still has his baseball card collection. I have mine. You don't give that up lightly.
>>130617558I thought he exclusively listened to Goth rock in the mid 80s and became a weird kid
>>130620138He can talk a lot about old metal. He also had a band with Wayne Static before the Pumpkins. I doubt he'd become good at guitar just being into goth stuff. He's also one of the only "alt rock" guys who was friends with Eddie Van Halen.
>>130620972to be fair, that band with Static was postpunkish.
>>130617583>>130620138one of the early bsides was Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again. that's not really a song the alt rock scene was into.
>>130623496also, their early sound on demos has more of a goth influence. to my ear, anyway.
>>130623548check out the new jimmy interview. they were a goth band but he couldn't fit in so they developed a more ambitious alt - hard rock sound
