The albums that changed Billy Corgan’s life
Billy Corgan is one of the greatest guitarists and songwriters in the world of 1990s alternative rock. His guitar tone is widely heralded for its clean, reverb and delay features, which is contrasted with the fuzz-heavy distorted tone that he employed to perfect use in many of the Smashing Pumpkins‘ hit records. Offering a peek behind the curtain, Corgan once opened up on the albums that played a great influence in his early life and his subsequent career as a musician.
“We had a street sale when I was about five years old; my stepmother gave me a dollar to go buy whatever I wanted,” Corgan said. “There was a man on the street selling vinyl. He had Meet the Beatles. I didn’t know who the Beatles were, and I liked the way the cover looked; the four faces. He sold it to me for a quarter. I went home, and I put it on, and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had this electric experience of listening to the Beatles for the first time. The sound of their voices was just mind-boggling to me, like, how do you make that sound? It just sent this electricity through my body.”
Meet the Beatles is the Fab Four’s second studio album and was released in 1963. The album went straight to the top of the popular albums chart, where it stayed for 11 weeks. The front cover is just one of the iconic Beatles images featuring portrait photographs of the band’s members.
“Looking back, 45 years later, it’s easy to intellectualise, like, it’s the Beatles, but when you’re five years old, it could have been anybody,” Corgan added. “We had other records around the house, and I listened to other records. But that record altered the course of my life. ‘Little Child’ is on that record, and that’s a song that stuck out from that time. There’s no band that’s even come close to their level of proficiency and influence.”
Corgan also laid claim to a Black Sabbath record that provided his first foray into the world of metal: “I had a similar experience when I had an uncle who played the drums, and he had a very nice stereo and a very good record collection,” Corgan said. “My grandmother would look the other way when I would put records on the platter. One day I came in, and in front of the stack was Master of Reality by Black Sabbath. Again, I don’t know who Black Sabbath are. The album cover looks cool; black with purple letters.”
Master of Reality is the third studio album by the Birmingham heavy rock band. It laid the foundation for the future of doom and sludge metal and saw Sabbath going after a heavier sound, following the more blues-influenced sonic exploration of their previous two full-length studio efforts.
“I put the album on; the first song is ‘Sweet Leaf’, it’s the call,” Corgan added. “The sound of Ozzy’s voice and the sound of that guitar; it was like somebody jacked me into the cosmos. It was the ultimate stoner cosmos. I’m eight, but I saw whatever that is. Here I am, and I still feel it when I listen to it, and it obviously influenced the way I want to make music. That did my head in good. That sound! That sound of doom and celestial ambition, I was like, ‘Okay, cool, you can do that? That’s possible?'”
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