Here’s the latest dose of Billy Corgan rambling: The Smashing Pumpkins’ frontman reckons that the next “Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love or Trent Reznor” won’t have as much of an impact as their predecessors.
Corgan told Daily Beast that most alternative bands will never escape the scene they start in and this will hinder their growth and impact as an artist.
“If you’re 20 years old and you aspire to be like me or Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love or Trent Reznor, you’re not going to make it that way. You won’t succeed,” he said.
“Let’s say you’re the next Kurt Cobain. You will be appropriated on your first album by the Pitchfork community. Your record company will rally round that idea because that’s your marketing platform. But the minute you’re in that world you’re frozen.”
Corgan then described Pitchfork as an “orthodoxy” that is driven by “social codes”.
“Those Pitchfork people are very much about social codes, about whether you’re wearing the right t-shirt. That orthodoxy is no different than the rigidity of the football team at school.”
“You can’t break the social order if you’re preaching to the choir – and the choir already has cool haircuts!”
Billy Corgan and his Smashing Pumpkins comrades will be in the country next week to headline Splendour In the Grass and play sideshows in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney.
