Billy Corgan on Black Sabbath: “This is what God sounds like”
Despite being one of the two most iconic rock artists of the 1990s, Billy Corgan had no right to be making music in the 1990s. The decade of G-Funk, Friends and The End of History was the moment the underground went overground. In the US, you had alternative rock go mainstream three times in the form of grunge, pop-punk and nu-metal. In the UK, what else was Britpop but the sound of C86 selling out?
Everywhere you look, a subculture was becoming a culture. Drum and bass, Lilith Fair, gangsta rap. So why did the Pumpkins stand out for all the right and all the wrong reasons? Well, because Billy Corgan was never much of a punk or alternative kid. Sure, he was obsessed with shoegaze and 1980s indie rock, but that came from a love of The Cure and other alternative pop acts from the ’80s. The music that Corgan really identified with was the titans of classic rock.
This was a man who decided he wanted to play guitar when he saw a Gibson Flying V at a mate’s house. That such a symbol of traditional rock stardom would imprint on the young Corgan like that makes sense, as his career has much more in common with the likes of Kiss, Rush and Van Halen than it does with The Pixies.
What else would you expect from a man whose musical world was changed by Black Sabbath themselves? In an interview with KROQ’s Nicole Alvarez, he talked about the influence his uncle, a professional drummer, had on his music taste: “He had this cool stereo and a bunch of progressive rock records like Yes and Jethro Tull. And the first record in the pile was Black Sabbath, Master of Reality.”
The then eight-year-old Corgan decided to push his luck and asked his grandmother if he could play it: “She gave me that look like, ‘I’m gonna get into big trouble from your uncle,’ and I talked her into it.” The effect was immediate and profound: “The first song was ‘Sweet Leaf’, you know, you hear the Ozzy cough or whatever, and then that sound comes in. And I was just like, it made me feel as if I was staring into the cosmos or something. “
Adding, “I don’t know how else to explain other than I felt this kinda sense of agape. Like, ‘Wow, this is what God sounds like.’ So, it’s the eight-year-old version of what God sounds like, but I’ve never found anything cooler.” Corgan’s spent his entire career proving that statement utterly true.
He may be a grunge godhead, but he still makes rock operas, writes songs that regularly exceed ten minutes with multiple suites, and can absolutely shred a guitar solo in a way that none of his peers not named Mike McCready can. He may have come from a world of rock stars who were just like you, but he is still, for better or worse, a throwback to a time of giants.
