“The ultimate singer”: the band Billy Corgan thought nobody could compete with
In a world full of musical misfits, Billy Corgan seemed to exist as an island unto himself most of the time.
The entire alternative revolution spat in the face of the mainstream style of rock and roll, but even if Seattle was the mecca for the greatest bands in the country, Corgan was the one who dared to take a few more chances and make songs that seemed tailor-made for the radio. He was never afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve, but he did get more than a little bit pissed off when he felt that one band was making music ten times better than everyone else he heard.
But Corgan’s influences didn’t always have to be about the same classic rock bands that everyone else was listening to. Some of the biggest names that he was listening to growing up were bands like Joy Division and New Order, and even when Gish was being made, Corgan was pointing towards bands like My Bloody Valentine as the kind of band that he wanted to be remembered with.
Then again, Siamese Dream doesn’t exactly sound like Loveless by any stretch. After the band made their first impression, their second record felt like something that could have come out of any 1970s truck, complete with the heaviest guitars that anyone had heard at the time. Corgan might complain these days about how Nirvana stole his guitar sound, but no one was going to mistake the beginning of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for what you heard at the beginning of ‘Cherub Rock’ or ‘Today’.
While Kurt Cobain was used to making catchy tunes, Corgan was much more willing to show off his chops. He studied all of those Rush records for a reason when he was first beginning to make music, but even in a world where every rock and roll band felt larger than life, there was no way for someone to accurately explain what it felt like seeing Led Zeppelin during the late 1960s.
Plenty of documentarians have tried to capture the essence of what Zeppelin were, but if you look at what else was on the charts at the time, there was no comparison. Cream was probably the closest to something heavy at the time, but Corgan felt that Jimmy Page struck gold from the first time he heard them. No one could script a better band, and Corgan almost seemed a little bit jealous of how someone could have had that many great players together under one roof.
Any band might normally have one or two members that dictate everything, but Corgan knew nothing could compare to Zeppelin’s model, saying, “I’m a hardcore fan. I have the weird test pressings. As a musician, it’s just unfair. Like how does [Robert Plant] sing like that? Jimmy Page originally wanted Steve Marriott, who was like the ultimate singer, so he got someone who could do Steve Marriott almost better than [him] who becomes Robert Plant, and the rest is history.”
Granted, no one really needs to hear the same story about Zeppelin ripping off their songs again and again. It’s written in history that they repurposed a lot of their greatest songs during their peak years, but the reason why they became classics was because of what they did with them. Jake Holmes did a decent version of ‘Dazed and Confused’, but no one would have thought to make it sound like the apocalypse with John Bonham’s massive drum sound and Page turning the guitar world inside out.
It seemed impossible for anyone to match, but that’s what makes so many players like Corgan inspired. No one goes into the studio thinking that they’re going to make an answer to ‘Stairway to Heaven’, but when they hit on the right idea, they’re going to move the Earth to try and get it to sound anywhere close to what Zeppelin made.
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