Dec 16 2024 5 mins
The Smashing Pumpkins' Jimmy Chamberlain, Billy Corgan, and James Iha sat down with KROQ host Nicole Alvarez to discuss their recent journey into the past while working on their latest release, 2024's Aghori Mhori Mei. "It's curious," says frontman Billy Corgan, "because we sort of abandoned the way we worked mid-'90s, so to try to go back to the old way we worked was a curious thought. But I think it worked out pretty well. It feels good."
"For me, at least from an internal ideology standpoint," adds drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, "it's reignited the Rock focus of the band. I think when we play now we're more on the balls of our feet rocking, as opposed to a tentative kind of calculus. Now we're just trying to rock again." Billy adds, "Yeah, we're definitely back to the Rock," followed by guitarist James Iha, who says simply, "Rock feels good, yes." Touching on the state of the genre, Billy admits, "I think Rock is about to have an explosive comeback. First of all, we've erased the gatekeepers that told everybody the hipster stuff in the basement was where music was going. If you look at who goes to see concerts in large numbers -- look at the tour we just did with Green Day, the tour sold over 800,000 tickets -- people want to hear music played by bands, young or old, and Rock is always at the foundational spirit of that."
"Of course, there's Rock in every other genre," Billy continues, "but Rock is very specific to a specific audience for a specific set of reasons and we've had to hear for 25 years a bunch of hipsters tell everyone that Rock is not as meaningful as what somebody is doing in their basement. I'm sorry. So, now we're back to the point where the business has finally woken up and realized that the sleeping giant they've been looking for is at KROQ and is with the great Rock bands."
Listen to the full conversation above.
Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Words by Joe Cingrana, Interview by Nicole Alvarez