I was playing heavy metal when I was 18. I had to evolve out of that into an alternative consciousness about what it meant to change the way I played guitar, and the kind of songs, and the subject matter, and singing about child abuse, and all this stuff. I had to come from somewhere, and I had to take chances to do that.

Billy Corgan

Categorized in : Children Song Guitar

I think a spiritual journey is not so much a journey of discovery. It's a journey of recovery. It's a journey of uncovering your own inner nature. It's already there.

Billy Corgan

recovery journey spiritual

Great music completely obliterates any conceptions of genre.

Billy Corgan

great-music genre conception

For a 6-foot-3 guy with no hair and a whiny voice, I've done all right.

Billy Corgan

voice feet hair

Around the mid-'90s every hair guy who would have been in a hair-metal band got his tattoos and suddenly decided he was alternative. It just became like a thing.

Billy Corgan

hair-metal tattoo guy

Like any good tree that one would hope to grow, we must set our roots deep into the ground so that what is real will prosper in the Light of Love.

Billy Corgan

light real roots

Been there, done that, seen it, heard it, pissed on it.

Billy Corgan

been-there-done-that done heard

Do I belong in the conversation about the best artists in the world? My answer is yes, I do.

Billy Corgan

artist answers world

That's at the root of the human interaction: fair trade.

Billy Corgan

interaction trade roots

I usually wake up far after breakfast. That's as much as you're going to find out about my dietary requirements other than marijuana and vodka.

Billy Corgan

marijuana wake-up breakfast

Don't judge yourself by someone else's standards. You will always lose

Billy Corgan

standards loses judging

Why is it that all non-conformists look the same?

Billy Corgan

conformist non-conformist looks

I've had a lot of things rendered as not being effective or as some indication of my lack of sanity, only to be praised ten, fifteen, twenty years later for what I did once in this overt consciousness.

Billy Corgan

fifteen twenties years

Your basic person wants to talk about material culture, internet culture. I think about God, cats, nature.

Billy Corgan

cat culture thinking

There's something going on right now in America, where the American spirit or character is reasserting itself around liberty. I think it's an important time, and I'm trying to document that as an artist. If I just filter what I read through the media, if I just go through what I read through the media, I'm not really in touch with the world I grew up in. I know there's a gap there, I talk to my relatives, I talk to people I meet traveling around, and their mind is on something completely different.

Billy Corgan

artist character thinking

The funny thing about me that most people never really understand is that, at heart, I'm really a jock.

Billy Corgan

heart funny people

I don't think I'm before my time, I just don't think I'm in my time.

Billy Corgan

my-time thinking

Most great records really start with the drums.

Billy Corgan

records

Indie world won't have me, and mainstream world treats me like an alien, but here I am still floating between these two worlds.

Billy Corgan

floating here-i-am two

Sometimes people just like being around each other, and good things come out of that.

Billy Corgan

good-things sometimes people

I rummage around in artistic things from the past. If you don't understand the context, they wouldn't make any sense. I rummage around in conceptual ideas of the future, but if you don't know the source of the thinking, [it] wouldn't make any sense.

Billy Corgan

past ideas thinking