Entrevista en Rolling Stone (27-03-08)

[Rolmos]

Esta es probablemente la entrevista que mas nos aclara la postura de la banda con respecto a la industria disquera, la demanda, y sus planes futuros para su música. Hablan del cambio de la industria y de la necesidad de buscar nuevas alternativas.

Alerta, SPOILER! de asunto desconocido:

This week, the Smashing Pumpkins filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against their former label, Virgin Records, alleging the band's name was used without permission for a Pepsi promotion. Band leader Billy Corgan called up Rolling Stone from a bathroom in Australia to explain his side of the story and wound up dishing dirt on his career, explaining how the Pumpkins will release music in the future and offering an opinionated take on Amy Winehouse, Radiohead and the state of the record industry: "I don't think the Beatles would be making an album right now."
Tell us about your personal perspective on this lawsuit.
We've been treated very poorly by [Virgin] as a label for years now. Even when we were going to put the band back together, we went to them for the umpteenth time and said, look, it's a natural thing to want to put out a best of, and they keep telling us nobody cares. And then to turn around and use us like this against our will obviously shows you how full of shit they are, because obviously you have value or they wouldn't be trying to make money on you on the side. And in our case we actually have the right to say no to these types of things. They had to ask our permission to put our music on iTunes. So this is just them getting really sneaky trying to push stuff through, because the only place they're going to get money now is from corporate sponsors.

And look, it's no secret that the record labels are out of touch. They've lost money continuously for seven or eight years and they continue to hold on to the Titanic. This is just another indication of them thinking that they can get away with whatever because they're the big old record business. You know, Josh Homme from Queens [of the Stone Age] came out talking about Interscope, Trent Reznor ... It's a very difficult position because whether it's blogs or people posting on Web sites, fans can get very frustrated about what they perceive about how you do your business, not being aware of how we continually have a gun pointed at our head.

Did you approach the label with your concerns before filing the suit?
No, because it's like talking to a brick wall. These people, they treat your music like it's worthless and they treat you like you're even more worthless. And that goes for our current label, Warner Bros., too. There's no passion. There's no love. There's no respect. It's just, like you're just a number. You might as well be some cookies, or a rock. I really think it's total arrogance on their part. I think they just thought they could get away with [using our music for the Pepsi promotion] and we wouldn't do anything about it. And luckily enough we have the ability to do something about it.

Do you have thoughts about how to go forward with your music and how to release it?
The first thing we're talking about doing is in essence not doing an album that has any walls. So we'll release the album in different forms in different places. Not just one CD with twelve songs. Our next album might be forty songs. Now, to the mainstream person, that's too many songs. So maybe you only give them one or two songs at a time. And then I think what's cool is you can deal with different people. You can do a deal with a skater Web site or you can work with Pepsi if you choose.
The music business has sown the seeds for it's own destruction here. So we're not in any hurry to go back and help save them. Warner Bros. treats us like we're from another planet. We've had a good record and we've sold records. And I haven't spoken to the label president since 2005. Now we're free, we're out of our contracts. So I think that makes us really dangerous, because we really are the kind of band that's willing to take chances. We really will work with anybody if we feel it's a cool, fun thing. And it doesn't have to always be about money.

Trent Reznor and Radiohead and all kinds of people have been jumping out of the major label system and doing things their own way. Can the labels survive?
Well, as long as they have young dumb bands who are willing to sign their lives away, yeah, of course. The label's going to continue to sell them that they're star makers. They're not star makers. Stars are born. MTV and the labels and secret people you don't know about don't run the music business any more. MySpace runs the music business now. Lots of other people run the music business now.

So it's safe to say that now that you are free of your contracts you're not going to be rushing to sign a new deal?
Well, I think it's kind of interesting and it's a vulnerable thing to say: People aren't beating our doors down to sign us, either. It's not that we're not desirable. We're not dumb. They're not going to be able to sell us their soap they're going to sell a twenty-two-year-old. And that's why they don't want to do business with us.

They're still trying to sell you on the idea that they know something that you don't know. But if you look at the numbers, they don't, they know less than the consumer. The consumer's been telling them for ten years they don't want albums. So what do they do? They continue to try to sell them albums. The consumer says that they don't want to pay $15 for fifteen songs when they only want one song. What do they try to do? They try to shove albums down their throat.

A lot of artists love the album form or have some connection to it. Is it going to bother you to be more single-focused?
No, we're still going to do albums. I think we're going to do it in a different way. I can tell that our plans right now are to do an album over two or three years and put it out in pieces and then maybe eventually bring it all back together. The album doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be ten songs. Some dumb white guy somewhere doesn't have to like it. Some old fart, out-of-touch has to decide, oh, these ten songs aren't as good as Sgt. Pepper's. Well, you know what? I don't think the Beatles would be making an album right now.
Artists are finding their own ways to get paid outside of the major-label system, like the Eagles with their Wal-Mart deal, Madonna signing up with Live Nation.
I think it's really difficult for the young artist, who doesn't have at least some sense of a pathway. For example, if you were a kid today and you're looking at the bands who are successful right now, you think, if you don't sort of sell out and let somebody make you a star, go on American Idol, then you can't be successful. Alternative culture is really critical towards introducing new ideas. We need those young bands to push old band like us, to push new boundaries. We need our butts kicked regularly. That's where all the energy comes from, from the bottom. And when the message on Amy Winehouse is drama is better than music, and for Radiohead publicity is better than music — no disrespect to them. But I think it's a bad message to young bands of how to make it happen. It's almost like the evil stepchild of the rap bling-bling thing, like, the only way to make it work is I've got to come up with a gimmick.

Selling out has lost its negative stereotype in a sense.
We can all talk forever about how cool it is and how things are different: The power's coming back to the artist. But sometimes it takes an oppositional force to make things work. The old music business wasn't great but at least it kind of gave you something to kind of work with or against. Now, who do you work for and who do you work against? The great example is American Idol. I mean, who gets bigger marketing, whose TV show is bigger? And then those artists don't sell. There's a complete disconnect between the drama of the show, the emotional connection with the singers, and then absolutely no care for their musical career. I mean, that's troubling.

Right, because, like you say, it's not really about the music at the end of the day.
Right. And as an alternative artist, we're still here because it is about the music. And anybody can point to any other 9,000 stupid things I've said or done. The music still trumped any of those things. So I can sit here at my rosy age and know that that's why we're here, because the music has held us in good stead with a lot of people around the world.
Speaking of the music, could you talk about new single "Superchrist"? Is that indicative of what you guys might be working on next?
I think that's the band, me, whomever, back in free territory. I think, if I was a fan of the Pumpkins, the great frustration is, where's that energy that used to be there? We made the video for $5,000. We spent our own money to record the song. We did it our own way. There was nobody standing there and there was no timetable. We just put it out when we wanted. It was great. I think that's where the band belongs.

Coming back, we didn't really know what to expect. It's a weird world. I mean, we never said we were bringing the original band back. And then people were saying, oh, it's not the original band. Well, we tried. I mean, what are we supposed to do? Stay home? You're dealing with ideas and opinions and disappointments that aren't yours. And there's not much you can do about them. We've rebelled for years. It's just that we've been quietly rebelling in a system that didn't give us a lot of options.

Is there a moment you can pinpoint that demonstrates your mistreatment at the hands of a label?
I'll give you my favorite line of the past three years. I was talking to the label president from Warner Bros., Tom Walley, and we were having a call. They were actually thinking about dropping us, which in retrospect probably would have been good. I was in Arizona, we were starting to write the album, and so I said things are going great. And he said, "What's the difference between Zwan and Smashing Pumpkins?" And I was like, what do you say? What do you say to a brick wall? What's the difference between your side band and the band that was your blood and your sweat and your heart for fourteen years? So we're out of Purgatory. And we're excited now.

Estoy en la oficina, pero intentaré dar un breve resumen esta tarde.

[virex]

Pues menos mal que quería aclararlo porque me la acabo de leer entera y me he quedado casi igual... No dice nada concreto, es más o menos lo mismo que dijo Jimmy pero en largo y dando nombres. Supongo que cuando se vean ya en la posición de tener que decidir algo nos enteraremos...
Bonita pullita a los Reidiojed :_D
I mean, we never said we were bringing the original band back. Pues algunos siguen sin pillarlo.

[Dagger]

Guapísima la entrevista, está pletórico Billy. xd El final es genial.
Yo sí que entiendo lo que pretenden hacer: A la Superchrist, hacer y grabar lo que quieran, cuando quieran, y sacarlo como les dé la gana. Y cada 2 ó 3 años, la posibilidad de hacer un álbum más convencional con ese material.

A mí me parece bien. ^^

[wasempty]

Es que yo no sé que problema tiene Billy en sacar álbumes, Zeitgeist se vendió más que el Machina! y en 7 años han cambiado bastante las cosas... cada vez se venden menos cedeses.

Pero vamos, mientras que saque buenas canciones... como si pone un mercadillo para venderlas

[virex]

Yo sí que entiendo lo que pretenden hacer: A la Superchrist, hacer y grabar lo que quieran, cuando quieran, y sacarlo como les dé la gana. Y cada 2 ó 3 años, la posibilidad de hacer un álbum más convencional con ese material.

Pues eso, que ha dicho lo mismo que Jimmy xDD Yo creo que tampoco lo tienen muy claro por ahora, al menos los detalles más concretos... Hmm, creo que no ha tocado, por ejemplo, el tema del dinero. ¿Regalarán esas canciones? ¿Pedirán donativos y luego sacarán lo mismo en CD?

Wasempty, para sacar un album como Zeitgeist tiene que estar puteado por una discográfica y creo que en esta entrevista "da a entender" (xD) que no es lo que quieren.

[Judas 0]

A mí me ha encontado este trozo: "I think, if I was a fan of the Pumpkins, the great frustration is, where's that energy that used to be there?".

Que es de lo que se queja la gente que no le gusta el zeitgeist, básicamente; así que por lo menos el calvo sabe lo que pasa :b

El último párrafo es genial, ahí, con nombres propios y to. Mira qué preguntarle en qué se diferencian de zwan (mola, les llama "side band" xD)

[nICKyDippLe]

Billy está hasta los cojoncitos de todo! Ouyeah! Poniendo puntos sobre las íes, filosofando sobre el futuro de la música, el futuro de la banda, dando consejos a los twenty-two-year-old (xDD)...

Lo ideal sería que toda esta palabrería y toda esta hartura se traduzca en auténticos pelotazos musicales que sirvan para darles una buena patada en las pelotas a Virgin y compañía. Porque ellas podrán permitirse prescindir de Smashing Pumpkins o Zwan AHORA, pero se ve clarísimo que su hundimiento es imparable.

A mí la línea que me ha encantado ha sido: We need our butts kicked regularly. That's where all the energy comes from, from the bottom.  j0j0j0j0j0j0j0, citaza. :_D

[Fabito]

Cuando ví el post pensé que se trataba de un mosqueo más.

Pero después de leerla y ver la actitud que se exhibe, no me da ningun mal rollo el parecer del calvo.
Parece hablar con propiedad y estar seguro de lo que quiere, si sigue esa linea en principio no debe tener demasiados problemas... :/

[Legolas-I]

"Hablando de Radiohead, cuando la campaña de márketing es más destacable que la música, algo anda mal"

Creo que tenemos nuevo material para el portal, no? ^^ Se sale la entrevista, muy interesante y como bien decís, sin morderse un pelo la lengua.

Grrrrrande B0lly

[newborn]

"Hablando de Radiohead, cuando la campaña de márketing es más destacable que la música, algo anda mal"

Tiene toda la razón, si van en plan "destroyer" con la industría discográfica me parece bien esta nueva idea de sacar canciones cuando quieran en plan AG, sigue la línea del vídeo de "Superchrist" o los conciertos residenciales, (que lejos quedan ya, ains); lo que pasa es que todo esto viene después de haber publicado el arco iris Zeitgeist y haber estado de festival en festival durante medio 2007. No se, creo que han jugado un poco a dos bandas.

Además, con este aire de banda independiente yo veo mas difícil la posibilidad de volver a verlos en vivo o que saquen un buen DVD, habrá que ver que pasa.

[molul]

Interesante entrevista. Comento algunas partes.

Alerta, SPOILER! de asunto desconocido:

Do you have thoughts about how to go forward with your music and how to release it?
The first thing we're talking about doing is in essence not doing an album that has any walls. So we'll release the album in different forms in different places. Not just one CD with twelve songs. Our next album might be forty songs. Now, to the mainstream person, that's too many songs. So maybe you only give them one or two songs at a time. And then I think what's cool is you can deal with different people. You can do a deal with a skater Web site or you can work with Pepsi if you choose.

Lo que saco de aquí es que la intención es hacer algo como lo que ha dicho Muse, ¿no? Sacar un montón de canciones sueltas y recopilarlas al cabo del tiempo. La verdad es que no me termina de gustar :S

Alerta, SPOILER! de asunto desconocido:

A lot of artists love the album form or have some connection to it. Is it going to bother you to be more single-focused?
No, we're still going to do albums. I think we're going to do it in a different way. I can tell that our plans right now are to do an album over two or three years and put it out in pieces and then maybe eventually bring it all back together. The album doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be ten songs. Some dumb white guy somewhere doesn't have to like it. Some old fart, out-of-touch has to decide, oh, these ten songs aren't as good as Sgt. Pepper's. Well, you know what? I don't think the Beatles would be making an album right now.

Billy, estoy en desacuerdo: the album MUST be perfect XD Bueno, al menos todo lo que se pueda. Con lo bonito que es ver el trabajo desarrollado por una banda durante uná época concreta... Es como la diferencia entre tomar café todos los días con el mismo colega y hablar del día día, y ver al mismo colega al cabo del año y quedar unos días para ponerse al día.

Alerta, SPOILER! de asunto desconocido:

Artists are finding their own ways to get paid outside of the major-label system, like the Eagles with their Wal-Mart deal, Madonna signing up with Live Nation.
I think it's really difficult for the young artist, who doesn't have at least some sense of a pathway. For example, if you were a kid today and you're looking at the bands who are successful right now, you think, if you don't sort of sell out and let somebody make you a star, go on American Idol, then you can't be successful. Alternative culture is really critical towards introducing new ideas.


Selling out has lost its negative stereotype in a sense.
We can all talk forever about how cool it is and how things are different: The power's coming back to the artist. But sometimes it takes an oppositional force to make things work. The old music business wasn't great but at least it kind of gave you something to kind of work with or against. Now, who do you work for and who do you work against? The great example is American Idol. I mean, who gets bigger marketing, whose TV show is bigger? And then those artists don't sell. There's a complete disconnect between the drama of the show, the emotional connection with the singers, and then absolutely no care for their musical career. I mean, that's troubling.

Lo de Radiohead, aunque cabroncete, no me parece que diga ninguna mentira. Se ha hablado de Radiohead más por la jugada del "In rainbows" que por la música del disco en sí (pocas críticas he visto yo en las que profundizaran en el disco), y lo digo desde el cariño, que a mí me sigue gustando mucho aunque no sea una obra maestra.

[wasempty]

A mi Radiohead me la pela, pero lo que tiene que hacer es centrarse más en la música y dejar de hablar de los demás.