Billy Corgan on the Realities of Being a Rockstar - Joe Rogan

Hello freak bitches. I've always wondered what it's like when you are when you're beginning as an artist you know you're you're idealistic you have all these ideas about what the future could be who knows it's all wide open and then all the sudden many years later you are a fucking massive superstar selling out arenas how difficult is it to find people who understand where your head is impossible do you like seek out other superstar musicians and talk I did and I got nowhere there either really yeah I had a I've had a hard time ever getting like good data let's put it that way hmm the freakiest thing was I saw how it changed my inner world meaning friends and family how so my step-grandfather who was a World War two vet very closed down classic Eisenhower Republican type of guy smart you know I mean had literally zero interest in me as a kid I mean negative zero interest and and one day I'm sitting there at Christmas and now grandpa wants to talk to me about the economics of my success whoa and it's like like that got through to him because some guy at work or somebody at the church brought me up and it was like oh that's my grandson you know nothing about childhood you know childhood tears did anything but that you know I saw where it warped the gravity in my family and then you get the friend like you know you're different it's like yeah I'm different of course I'm different you know I mean I you know I mean it's like yeah a million dollars in my pocket you know I could buy you know yeah I mean you know I one day walked into Beverly Hills and paid cash for a Ferrari and that's just dumb stuff like that's kind of awesome yeah yeah I remember the people don't like the idea of that no I think it's funny right it's amazing you bought a Ferrari with money that you had on you yeah that's fucking crazy I think it was and it was the classic story I walk in the you know the guy didn't know who I was it's like so how are you gonna pay for this and I was like cash you have a brick with you it's like wow that's just an awesome thing to be able to do so stupid right yeah so I'm saying you go from like literally complete not abject power I pop poor I had no money right you know and then one day I'm like throwing you know G's around for yeah dumb cars and well it's also you you've reached such a high level that there's nothing above that like I have the I have the antidote my manager who was you know we were with the metallic guys at the time he called me on like a Wednesday or something and he said I can't say for sure but more than likely based on calls are getting you're gonna be number one this week meaning melancholy and I literally said is there a position higher like I couldn't process that there wasn't like another step couldn't keep going yeah yeah well that's what I always wondered like when you reach a certain level and you're selling out these giant arenas and you one of the biggest bands literally ever look at one of the top 100 biggest bands of all time right arguably yeah it's we're in there yeah it's in there yeah where the fuck do you go like it had to be this madness yeah I would imagine madness is the only option yeah madness sort of becomes attractive at that point god that's got to be so strange to be just crushing it selling out these giant arenas number one song is going now what what the fuck do we do do we fade away no we went crazy yeah we just lost our minds like what happened what was the process did you see it slipping away oh you see the madness yeah yeah and it became you know it's like it's like a bad relationship or bad relationships you it becomes a lot clearer when you're out you know at the time you sort of do your own rationalization like oh he or she's going crazy not me we all went crazy in four different directions Wow and this and the and the great shame of my band was musically we were super tight and we never disagreed on music it was like this weird phenomenon where musically we were like totally in sync we could produce and write music very very quickly and it was always the other stuff around us so that sort of ate at the core and then when we lost our personal relationship that's what diminished the musical relationship but you don't know it at the time because you're sort of I don't say arrogance not the right word but it's like you have a sort of a you know you got a little bit of a thing in your walk and you think you know you got the world by the you know what and all good you think you can power your way through anything because you have right you don't understand that you do actually need the people standing next to you I have such a greater appreciation for my man-mates now that now that I've seen what we actually did accomplish in ink you know is surrounded by chaos but then we created our own cast and then at some point it all blurs what were the things that fucked it up was it the money and the fame and was it the tension was it the ego um I think we were we were like one of those bad behind the musics the very early conversation I remember we had these managers very early on and and they were coming to town sort of courting us before we had a record deal and one day they came to town and they said can we just got to breakfast with you which was weird because it was always the whole band like you know democracy and they said um they said uh now who writes the songs and I said well I do and they said well that's gonna be a problem like what do you mean that's gonna be a problem they said well songwriters and bands make a lot more money so our suggestion is you should share your songs with your bandmates to keep sort of a kind of a democratic stasis and they use some examples of bands who didn't I thought hell no I'm not I'm I'm not giving them my work I mean it's my songs and they were like you don't understand you're gonna make a lot more money and I was like tough shit you know what I mean it's like live and learn kind of thing why they think you were gonna make more money because songwriters get if you quick lesson the songwriter gets paid separate statutorily by the government than the than the actual copyright of the recording so if you if I'm on Joe Rogan's label you pay the band for the recording which of course in that case would be split four ways but you owe me a statutory rate as a songwriter for the sale which I think these days is about ten cents so every record we sold where I was the sole songwriter I was getting ten cents that they weren't getting or eight cents or whatever it was at the time so you can imagine over a gazillion record sold it added up yeah so I start pulling away financially you know I mean but when you're a kid and you're 23 and somebody's having this conversation with you you literally don't even have an apartment right and somebody's trying to tell you how you're gonna make a lot more money it's like what does that mean fast forward four years later and it's like I'm making a lot more money hmm so that sort of sows it it organically sows discontent yes you know it's a whether you call it jealousy or not and then as I emerged a sort of the auteur and the big mouth in the band and maybe the person who was most willing to be controversy or whatever we'd get in a room with journalists and they would just talk to me and then we get out of the interviews and that the band members would yell at me for them not being asked questions so it's like this weird thing like it was my responsibility to push them more as stars or yeah so it's not just about the music it's about being appreciated and successful and now in hindsight and in fairness to them I didn't appreciate why it was important to them because in their minds we're all equal we're in the room together yeah you write the songs that's cool but at least give me the social currency right being recognized or yeah you know or somebody would offer me alone a magazine cover and if I was smart which I wasn't I should have said no only the band or nothing but I was like sure put me on the cover I'll take it you know I mean right you probably would have saw thought they would do the same thing if someone came absolutely yeah absolutely and then of course it becomes tit for tat then like two of the band members went on their own and made a record deal without me they got somebody to give them a bunch of money to start a label which they had every right to do you know what I mean so suddenly they're like making side deals and it starts getting all that weird business and right you know again it's like an erosion factor you don't appreciate it from within there's a lot of compression there's a lot of money there's a lot of stuff going on and then one day it sort of howls out and then it's too late you know you can't just sort of sit down have a meeting and make it all okay because the wounds are deep and in our case I mean the wounds lasted for I didn't talk to Darcy for 17 years whoa and I didn't talk to James for I think 16 Wow so we met them in the heat was was real I mean we didn't there were lawsuits and all sorts of stuff it's such a common story that I hope someone listens to this part of your position as well and they won't it's just human nature right is that what it is power corrupts man yeah and again you know no sympathy asking today though I mean it wouldn't today like I feel like if you were in a similar position today you'd have hindsight in your favor oh yeah no no I would yeah I mean and even talking about the band going back on a tour and the possibility that's like I approach it completely different yeah so that's what I'm saying like power doesn't necessarily corrupt it corrupts if you don't know what the fuck it's gonna do to you sure yeah but again and I'm not and I'm preaching for sympathy but the and I can't speak for the modern music business but the business we are in in the 90s we were surrounded by people who are giving us wrong information now were they giving us wrong information on purpose or because they weren't bright enough I don't know but we weren't getting the right information very few people actually try to sit us down and say look this is gonna be a problem trust me you know it's like you're in there with the hounds and there's just right and they probably don't have the time for psychological management anyway they're probably in the middle of just trying to figure out how to make money off you and my my understanding is they and I again going back to the conversation I have with the executive they just basically looking to say you've got four years if you're lucky if you're lucky so why are they gonna yeah why are they gonna spend a bunch of time trying to hold your hand knowing you're gonna lose anyway what a crazy relationship between the record labels and the artists it's it's similar I guess probably like the pit boss if you're happy if you're having a hot run it like roulette the pit boss is just like enjoy it now yeah cuz we're gonna get it back that's what it feels like what percentage of musicians or musical artists that get signed by a label and put something out ever wind up having an actually successful career probably less than 10% Jesus Christ I would say it's probably even smaller meat grinder of a business you would think like hey man we're on fucking Warner Brothers dude we made it it's happening they're gonna promote us they're gonna push us they signed us and and sorry to interrupt again but the other weird thing is the again the system I was in was even if you were successful it was set up to make you feel like you weren't successful right because that was the work that was the manipulation yeah I once said to somebody who is a very famous name in the business it's like you guys find a needle in the haystack and then you spend the next 20 years telling them they're not a needle in the haystack it's what I'm trying to say and I'm not saying it well is you would think you would be surrounded by people are telling you your talent you're special we want to help you because the more you succeed will succeed and we'll all succeed together it was the exact opposite it was like no you're dumb you're wrong no you're crazy don't do that you're gonna ruin it and then and even if you'd say I want to wear this hat okay I'm gonna wear this hat and when it wouldn't work that's a see you should listen us is that universal have you heard other musicians say the same I would guess it was universal because looking back it doesn't feel personal to me it felt like I you know use your bad analogy pimp ho I don't know right it's a weird con job thing that was my experience it was a lot of con jobs that Courtney love piece that she wrote about the music business I'm sure you're aware of that where she was it recent or no a bunch of years ago where she it was I think it was actually probably before digital got really huge and it was a lot of people thought she had a ghost rider but it was really eye-opening to a lot of people that didn't know anything about the music business like where the money actually goes and how how much money has to be spent and how little you actually make even though if you sell a shit ton of records you've never seen this it's pretty famous from 2000 actually is on salon.com one of the years we weren't talking yeah well it's for people who haven't read it it's pretty eye-opening I've nothing to do with the music business I've always been absolutely fascinated as a completely objective observer just looking at it going this whole thing seems so crazy because it's if you do not get signed and if you do not get promoted at least until recently you had no chance they they literally controlled the reins in the direction of your career almost like an actor like you can't make it as an actor unless you get an audition and someone chooses to put you in a film but like a great Greek mythology type myth thing the music businesses made two critical mistakes over the last 30 or so years that led to its current sort of reduced status one was they let MTV run amok on free content and when they tried to rain MTV and MTV basically told them to take a hike and the music business back down so when MTV stopped playing music content there was nothing the music business could do because they'd given away all their leverage to the MTV and then the second was when Napster showed up and they acted like Napster was a virus that they just need us to stamp out not really realizing that Napster was just the beginning of a whole wave of new technologies and new sort of social interactions or something those two critical errors led to the music business reduced position and it's this music music has been around forever but the music business has been around what a hundred or so years I think we're into 120 plus years of recordings yeah it's just amazing how what a iron fist they've managed to control the the business with and and to sort of wrangle the artists for the most part well it's a wizard of Oz you know you know don't don't you know don't look behind the curtain have you ever thought about being on the other side yeah I have but I just don't have that much I'm actually that's why I'm more interested in wrestling I think I like that I like that even though it's a sort of weird business I sort of like that because it doesn't have anything to do with music I have too much damage and too many I don't think I could see clearly does it make sense it's like it's still too weird for me yeah no it does it does make sense when you first when I first came to LA and whatever 90 and had the meetings and you'd be in that you know hit the office and the people with the beards and everything and they'd be like so when we put the product out and every time they would say product I would sort of wince product like how can you call my art product you know I mean and that's to them it's just it's cookies and toilet paper it's just it's whatever and and it's not to say they're not fans and they don't appreciate you know or they don't care but at the end of the day it's just some sort of weird business you know and like all institutional cultures that are sort of kind of corrupt at their court just kind of runs on its own inertia it's just it just does when you see someone like Chance the Rapper break out of that system do you think that that's a model that can be followed or is he just like an outlier no it's certainly a model that could be followed but you know it probably works because he's so talented it's like a weird combination right I mean use the McGregor example it's like how many McGregor's are there in the world right and and beyond being a skilled fighter I mean the guy's an a-level talker speaking from a professional wrestling standpoint the guy's probably the best promo in the world yeah