“I wish I had more answers”: the singer Billy Corgan always regretted fighting with
For as long as rock music has ego, so too will it have feuds, as even the greatest creative minds aren’t immune to a back-handed compliment.
Soundgarden were a band who were always experimenting with their music and trying to understand what worked and what didn’t, sometimes this proved successful, other times less so. They had their first major hit with ‘Black Hole Sun’, which resonated with listeners far and wide, and saw the band tap into something that audiences at large were keen to engage with.
The band’s guitarist, Kim Thayil, said that he thinks the song took off so much because Chris Cornell had worked out how to write in a way that channelled his inner songwriter. “We’d had singles before,” he said, “But that was easily our biggest hit. That was more singer/songwriterish. Chris went that direction of singer-songwriter guy, and the band was more accepting because of the success of singer-songwriting stuff as opposed to more guitar-oriented rock.”
Thayil continued, “It was more vocal accompaniment rock, some guitar. So we started utilising a little bit more of that.”
Due to the success of the song, when Soundgarden reunited in 2010 after originally breaking up in 1997, fans were desperate to hear classics like this once again – Bill Corgan took issue with such a reunion, as he didn’t like the fact that a lot of bands were getting back together purely to bask in the glory of their old music, and while fans were excited about hearing these songs live, Corgan wasn’t happy with the popularity of the reunion.
“There are bands that are essentially coming back to only make money playing their old albums and maybe somewhere in the back of their minds they are thinking that there might be a future,” said Corgan, “I’m not in that business obviously. I condemn anybody who’s in that business, but doesn’t admit he’s in that business. When Soundgarden came back and they just played their old songs. Great! I was a fan of Soundgarden. But call it for what it is.”
Cornell hit back at Corgan’s remarks, highlighting that when the Smashing Pumpkins frontman was struggling for money, he got him a gig with a director, saying, “When Billy Corgan was completely broke, I got him a movie deal with [Director] Cameron Crowe, where he made $40,000,” before proceeding to insinuate that Corgan should pay him back the $40,000.
The two were never able to settle this feud, and it wasn’t until Cornell died in 2017 that Corgan said how much he regretted their ongoing disagreements, and if he had his time again, Corgan admits that he would try harder to reconcile things with Cornell, but recognises that those sentiments are now too little too late.
“I wish I had more answers and I’d done more,” he said, concluding, “I knew Chris, and we had a bit of a falling out and were never able to patch that up. I wish I hadn’t contributed in even the most minuscule way to his unhappiness.”
