Billy Corgan calls Kurt Cobain his “greatest opponent”
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has described Nirvana guitarist and songwriter Kurt Cobain as his “biggest opponent” in 1990s alternative rock.
In a new interview with Zane Lowe, Corgan equated himself with Cobain as the best songwriters of their generation. Corgan also wasn’t shy about his ambitions for how The Smashing Pumpkins are perceived and the legacy that he wants them to leave.
“I want the Pumpkins standing on the top of the heap of our generation,” Corgan said. “If that means I got to write 800 songs to do it, I’ll do it. I ain’t shy about that. I will go down always as saying, Kurt was the most talented guy of our generation. Kurt had so much talent. It’s like frightening. It was like a John Lennon level of talent, where you’re like, ‘How can you have all this talent?’ Or Prince, right? But Kurt’s not here, sadly. So I looked around, I was like, ‘All right, well, I could beat the rest of them for sure.’”
Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins briefly toured together in 1991, playing shows in Boston as a part of the WFNX Birthday Bash at the Axis Nightclub and then later both appearing on dates of Hole’s Pretty on the Inside tour that same year. Corgan briefly dated Cobain’s widow, Hole singer Courtney Love, that year and later reconciled for a short period after Cobain’s death.
“When Kurt died, I cried because I lost my greatest opponent,” Corgan claimed. “I want to beat the best. I don’t want to win the championship because it’s just me and a bunch of jabronies, to use a wrestling term. It’s like, Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest sports competitor I’ll ever see in my lifetime — I mean, you want to talk about an alpha. That guy wanted to win the valet tip. You know what I mean?”
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