I hope that you are being sarcastic there.I'd never wish to have met a frankly stinking junkie with severe mental disorders who also happened to make some of my favourite music.One wishes sometimes people would make the more rational thing of separating feeling close to someone's music from feeling and imagining being close to the person who's playing it.

I'm also in the camp of the first band i ever REALLY loved that got my into other stuff good stuff... I still love them too, but have played them to death.
So i dont know. He does have a big tendancy to be completly pretentious and egotistical. Its hard because he doesn't often show a modest side publically but when you listen to some pumpkins b-sides and like all the zwan stuff and chicago songs that never saw the light of day it shows a pretty amazing talent. I'd go as far to say that he is the most diverse musician that i've ever heard - and the best at it. (im not talking about way out there stuff but in terms of different types of music and doing ti well) So i personally think he's justified in it in a lot of ways as he speaks a lot of sense most of the time. And lastly i'll say, before this post gets too long, I wouldn't say he's a sell out at all... he never cast any aspersions to what kind of artist he wanted to be, and i'd say made it pretty clear that he wanted the pumpkins to be the biggest band in the world and make a lot of money and all that shit. On the flipside of that, though it often backfires, I'd say he tries to do a little bit for fans of the band and releasing machina 2 they way they did is pretty cool.

Hey another welsh boardie!

I think he's misunderstood.
The minute i heard the Pumpkins I was inspired to write music. If it wasnt for the Pumpkins I would have never got on to Sonic Youth, which in turn would have meant I never got into Indie Rock (or experimental and modern classical music for that matter), which would have changed the whole course of the last few years of my life. So for me they are a pretty damn important band.

I too went through a period of overlistening to the Pumpkins, but then I gave them a little break and got back to them. Although there are some aspects of band that now annoy me slightly, some overly grand elements on Mellon Collie and the whole concept of Machina....apart from that I still love them and 1979 is the greatest song ever written! hehe

Word. I think he wanted pumpkins to be the biggest band in the world without selling out. Hell, that's why he quit! He was sick of losing to shit music, and prefered to quit than try to compete with them. I'd say he's got a right to be bitter. Fuck, I am bitter. In 1990, at 8 years old, I already new that new kids on the block was shit. Everyone seemed to know it, and they bombed. Then 10 years later my favorite band breaks up essentially because Simon Cowell kept the dream alive.

Yep, from the emo neck of the woods too! :cool:

courtney is obviously nuts, progressively losing it more and more (and incredibly entertaining and used to be credible as a human being and actually LOOK like one and used to be a credible musician and blah blah blah i could go on all day) but i still have to disagree with kim there. the murder theories are just bullshit.
i've moved on.

I got to agree with cantankerous. Kurt blew his brains off.

Yep! it surprised me that Kim believed that theory actually

Billy Corgan is an artist. It's not like he stopped making music and just sat around in a room counting his money! He started Zwan (and djali zwan), made a solo cd, and worked with loads of other artists. And he made a kick ass website to give all his unreleased material to his fans.

I don't think it's about competition. I think he wanted to acknowledged. The difference with Billy Corgan is that he didn't sacrifice his art for it. He thought he deserved to be acknowledged for what he was doing.