Billy Corgan says Radiohead went from an “enemy band” to one of the most important of the 1990s
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has explained how he changed his view on Radiohead from considering them an “enemy band” to recognising them as one of the most important trailblazers of the 1990s music scene.
Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Corgan said that until 1997, he had “very little respect for the band.” He claimed that before OK Computer, they sounded like “every other UK alternative band” and he considered them an “enemy band”.
However, he then claims that Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke sensed a shifting in the zeitgeist and was the first to react. when he made his pivot, wisely so, with his band to what they became — which is the great band — I found myself thinking: ‘He figured something out before you.’” Corgan continued.
Adding: “At that moment, when they started doing it … I found myself flatfooted because I didn’t see that coming. I was so disconnected from what was happening because I was on all these mega tours.”
He champions them with responding to the modern world first. “Radiohead figured out the world that was coming pretty much before every band on the planet, and they reaped the reward of that and did a lot of great work, in essence, anticipating this dissociative world,” Corgan explains.
“I was making music for a world that was basically dead and dying, but I was the last to get the memo. So I really credit them with figuring that out,” Corgan adds.
Concluding: “And I’m not saying I wanted to make laptop rock, but there’s something pretty cool about figuring out that music was going to be more environmental and less standing-on-the-beach-with-a-cassette-deck.”
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