Billy Corgan is one of the oddest survivors of the grunge era — too much of a black sheep to fit snugly into the '90s revival circuit, yet earnest enough to still try and make music people will like. He spent much of a new interview with The Independent talking about former rival, Kurt Cobain, and he made sure to throw shade at Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder.
Asked about Vedder's "survivor's guilt" post-Cobain suicide, Corgan was incredulous.
"That would be Eddie Vedder," Corgan said. "Somehow he makes it about him even when it's about somebody else! I had a much more personal perspective, because I'd been in contact with Courtney [Love] through a lot of the setting up of that period, and afterwards. I found it devastating because, whether we wanted to admit it or not, he was quarterback of the football team, leading the aesthetic and integrity charge. He knew how to navigate those things."
To be clear: Corgan and Cobain were not friends.
"Now, he and I didn't necessarily get along," Corgan said. "But I like to sing his praises, because he really was that talented. I like to think the world with him would have been a better place, and I like to think a lot of the crap music that followed wouldn't have existed if he had been around to criticise it. Because he had the moral standing to slay generations with a strike of the pen."
Cobain was not untouchable though.
"In the purest sense of the word, we were competitors," Corgan said. "He and I were the top two scribes, and everybody else was a distant third."
Most of the interview was typical Corgan -- A slanted view of '90s politics and loads of disdain for contemporary rock fans.
"We were shocked when we came back at how shallow that culture had become," Corgan said of the Smashing Pumpkins' 2007 revival. "Even Smashing Pumpkins fans were demanding Top 10 songs. We had always played long, rambling things, jokes and weird pranks. But now you've got to go along to get along. Trying to put across high-minded art concepts to 70,000 kids in a field when it's raining isn't the right space."
Monuments to an Elegy, the Pumpkins' ninth album, is due Dec. 9. Check out "One and All."
