You Wouldn't Want To Meet Smashing Pumpkin's Billy Corgan
You know it's a The Smashing Pumpkins' song when Billy Corgan's unique nasally tone hits the radio. Corgan is the frontman of the bad as well as the primary songwriter. They've released several albums since the band formed in 1988, and many of their songs went on to become singles that played into the world view of the millions of angsty teens who listened to them.
The band has gone through a handful of members since it's been around, but in all, they've been pretty steady when it comes to releasing music. (Unlike Tool, who we hope is reading this so they know to put out another album before we die.) It might be a dream of yours to one day kick it with The Smashing Pumpkins and relive all of those pre-emo goth-ish years from your past. You're in luck — the band is still touring and releasing new material. Though you might change your mind by the time you're finished with this article. Just because you like a musician's sound, doesn't mean you'll like the musician.
Corgan doesn't really seem to like anyone
Billy Corgan doesn't seem like the type to make many friends. Some might say he's a "meanie," while others might say he's genuinely and completely confused about the people he seems to hate. For instance, Corgan was featured on the Alex Jones Show, where he talked about his feelings on social justice warriors — you know, the people who want everyone to have equal rights and be acknowledged as human. He says they aren't "any different" than a "Klan member spitting in some person of color's face" back at Selma in 1932.
Likewise, he doesn't seem to know how to treat his own fans. One fan hopped on stage during a Smashing Pumpkins concert in Memphis in 2016. That's a "no-no" and can easily get you tossed from the show. It's just bad etiquette. It's also bad etiquette to threaten to punch your own fan in the face (as Corgan did, according to Alternative Nation) after that fan paid way too much money to see you play. But Corgan only seems to do stuff like that when he isn't blatantly dogging on trans people, which he did in 2011, reports Queerty, when he called trans activist Devi Ever a "he/she" and "an ugly pig" before threatening to "knock [her] f**king lights out." Not cool, Corgan. Not cool.
He's been known to blow things out of proportion
If you're another famous person, it's a totally different story — Billy Corgan won't be able to figure out if he likes you or if you're absolute garbage (or so it seems). Don't worry, though — he flip-flops between the two. At least, that's what he did with Hole's Courtney Love (or, as every '90s grunge-head prefers to call her, "Kurt Cobain's widow").
It seems Corgan and Love dated back before she married Kurt Cobain. The couple got back together after Cobain's death, and Corgan got to do some work on Hole's album Celebrity Skin. That's kind of cool. Except it wasn't for Corgan, who decided to talk smack about the album, which allegedly included his songs without permission. Corgan went after his former love interest on Twitter, going so far as to throw her deceased husband into the mix. He tells Love to go "live off [her] husband's money." He goes on to attack her parenting, finally ending on notes like: "So have your moment, burn up in the sun that laughs at u as equally as it appears to celebrate u + sleep knowing u have no honor." Love did issue Corgan an apology, according to Rolling Stone, but he didn't seem to care much. Maybe the moral of the story is: "There's a difference between being mad and being a jerk-faced meanie-head."