Introducing One Song: The Smashing Pumpkins "Cherub Rock"

22:44If he's just being honest in a lyric, then I'm sort of like cool with that. but I think well wait if someone put out a song saying Diallo Riddle oh yeah I'm not gonna be like if you ever have an interview with that guy there ain't no more one song I think that that's I don't love it when artists do that kind of stuff I think like just respond to them in a song you know what I mean and Billy Corgan has a connection to Courtney Love and Hole as well can you tell us what that's about yes well actually technically not everyone knows this but Billy Corgan was first to date Courtney Love um yeah it's true yeah and famously as he's told the story himself i think he kicked her out and then she went down the street according to the story he tells and saw a nirvana show and started dating him whether it's like literally the same night or whether it's a little exaggerated but like she basically went from billy to kurt yeah and this maybe fuels a little bit of how billy corgan sees the world in this moment because nirvana clearly you know is the indie darling of 1991 and onward.

23:46And rightfully so. And rightfully so. And it should be noted that their first record, Gish, was produced by Butch Vig. Oh, I love Butch Vig. And it came out first. And guess what else Butch Vig was working on in that same time period? I can guess. Nevermind was released just four or five months after Gish, the first Smashing Pumpkins record. So Billy is feeling maybe left out of something bigger happening to someone that's right next to him. Butch Vig, one of my favorite guys from the 90s. and I'm a huge garbage fan. I think the stuff that he did with Shirley Manson and the crew was outstanding.

24:18But Corrigan, he gets back with Kourtney, I believe. And he co-wrote five songs with Kourtney on Hole's album Celebrity Skin, which is one of my favorite. And listen, I'll admit it. I'll take the heat. I think Celebrity Skin is a great album. No heat. I totally agree. I love that record. I love that song. And I actually remember exactly where I was at. I was at a party the very first time I heard the title track, Celebrity Skin.

24:55I just forgot how much I love that sick bass line my god it's so good and also I love it but I also hear now so clearly how the guy who co-wrote Celebrity Skin could have also written Bullet with Butterfly Wings yeah Yeah.

25:18We're tearing up the studio! The music has that effect on us. Can I just say, this is not one of my favorite songs, and part of it is because... We talked about this. Go ahead. I feel like, and I've heard in interviews, him sort of allude to this, I'm pretty sure he wrote this because he thought he was supposed to write it, like he was told to write another hit, not dissimilar to some of the terrible rock type anthems from Siamese Dream because it's very Smashing Pumpkins by numbers right down to the part where it's just him with no music behind him

26:00I don't know I heard that this was the first song of the Melancholy Sessions okay um ironically tonight tonight probably my favorite song was written during the siamese dream session oh really and and he just he actually while they were touring siamese dream he like booked some studio time and have a band go in and actually record that song while he had all these ideas running through his head but i believe that bullet is the first from melancholy and the last from melancholy is 1979 and then it almost didn't make the album but when uh i think it's uh the producer known as flood told him hey i don't know about this 1979 it doesn't sound like you guys you should leave it off that he saw that as a challenge and went back into the studio for four more hours worked on 1979 and then when flood heard it the next morning he was like uh yeah i I was wrong.

26:54You should put this on the album.

27:09Great song. It is in my B list of favorites. I don't dislike it. But again, as a Jimmy Chamberlain fan, as a fan of the drums in this band, as much as the guitar, it's a little bit like, man, I wish they'd let him riff on this. 1979, and I know that we have a lot of listeners. I talked to folks, and when I told them we were doing Smashing Pumpkins, a lot of them were like, 1979. Listen, we love that song. I do think that we just wanted to do something that felt a little bit more like the band's signature sound, but nobody's taking anything away from it. And by the way, it's their number one song.

27:43Oh, yeah. Understandable that you'd want us to break it down. Yes, but we want to talk about Cherub Rock. So Cherub Rock is on the Smashing Pumpkins' second album, Siamese Dream, released in July of 1993. It was their first single off the album, and that's only because Billy fought the label hard for it to be the first single. That's right. For purely commercial reasons, this might have been one of the times the label was right, because they wanted the first single to be today. Today turned out to be the second single, and today is the single that broke the band big. But the album, Siamese Dream, is a wonderful picture of the band at that moment.

28:18I mean, there's so much going on. Corrigan is depressed and suffering from writer's block. You've got things happening within the band, like James Eha and Darcy are in and out of a romantic relationship. Jimmy Chamberlain is battling a heroin addiction, and the whole band is just, there's a lot of infighting going on. That's right. And in Billy's own words, this is an interview he gave a few years later, he said, this is referring to the moment where they went into the studio for Siamese Dream. They had just come off this tour for Gish, selling out everywhere we go. Everything was cool, fine, dandy, then in his words, It's suddenly boom nirvana.

28:48We went from being seen as future stars almost to has-beens. People were saying, well, if you were so good, this would have happened to you. So Billy is in a deep depression. As he said in another interview, I was suicidal, plotting my own death for about two months. Everything you said about the breakups and the heroin, this is a dark, dark moment with a lot of pressure and a lot of confusion. We alluded to the breakthrough. So we've already kind of with the song today. So he breaks through and then these songs get written and the album is amazing. But in this moment, before they get started on this very long, drawn-out process, they're in the studio for three or four months with like 12, 14-hour days.

29:22It's a difficult album to make. But a lot of great art comes out of challenging times. That's all true. And listen, after the break, we will dive into how the song Chairbrock was actually made. And does this song feature James Eha, Darcy, and Jimmy Chamberlain or not? Stay tuned for the answer after this.

29:49In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speedtest, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged. With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity, even in times of high demand.

30:27With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients. And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite to mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S. where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ukla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. The greatest music stories aren't always in the songs themselves.

31:09They're in the late night studio sessions, the chance encounters, and the cultural moments that shaped entire movements. For music lovers who find themselves going down rabbit holes about their favorite artists, Claude, an AI thinking partner, helps you explore those deeper questions. Whether you're wondering about the connections between different scenes, trying to understand what drove a particular creative period, or exploring how social movements influenced sound, Claude works through these complex cultural puzzles with you. It's built for people who know that understanding music means understanding the human stories behind it.

31:43Claw doesn't just compile facts. It helps you see patterns across decades of music history, ask the kinds of follow-up questions that reveal deeper truths, and works through the nuanced relationships between artists, movements, and moments. Whether you're a music journalist, industry professional, or someone who just lives for understanding the stories behind the sounds, Claw matches your level of curiosity about what really drives great art. Try Claude for free at Claude.ai slash broken record and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

32:17One of the things I think is universal to nearly everyone is that warm feeling you get when you find someone you feel comfortable sharing parts of your life with that otherwise you might just keep to yourself. Often it's a friend, sometimes it's a loved one, but in those moments you really take a load off. That's one of the things I've enjoyed most about therapy, that there's someone regularly in my life that I'm able to talk to about things I'd probably keep to myself for longer than I really needed to. And they're clinically trained and licensed to help. Plus, if you regularly see them, they have most, if not all, the context they need to really understand how this item you're sharing might be affecting you or those around you.

32:53That's where BetterHelp comes in. They've been helping people find their therapy match for over a decade. Because of their quality therapists that work according to a strict code of conduct, they have a 4.9 rating out of 1.7 million client session reviews. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash broken. That's BetterHelp.com slash broken.

33:30Welcome back to One Song. Luxury. Walk us through, Cherub Rock. Tell us, how did this song get made? Well, as we mentioned, this is the Siamese Dream Sessions. It's circa 1993. And we are in Atlanta with the band, The Smashing Pumpkins. I love that. Home town. And the band is there together. It's all four members. It's Butch Vig, who is the producer. And yeah, I mean, you can watch some great old interview footage where they are very bored. These are long days. They are tracking guitars. Some songs have like 40 guitars in them, like stacks and stacks. They are rehearsing. They're getting many takes of Jimmy Chamberlain playing drums.

34:04It seems very grueling. It seems like this record was a very long, laborious labor of love, but laborious nevertheless. It almost seems like Billy Corgan brings you into his family and then tortures you. Maybe, maybe. It's a little bit of a shadow of what he experienced himself. So this song, though, to be clear, it's a 100 % Billy Corgan composition. and as we go through the instruments, we'll talk about who actually was performing these parts because it might be a little surprising. So interestingly, Billy wrote this song pretty quickly. He says, I wrote Cherub Rock in half an hour. I heard it one day while I was driving up the road.

34:40It was one of the last songs I wrote before we did the album. The thing is, there's parts of me that wonder what would have happened if I spent four hours writing it and not done something else. So it's interesting his dichotomy between being somebody who spends hours and hours and hours tracking guitars one at a time and getting that perfect sound. But his songwriting process, it sounds like he aims to be quick. The quicker, the better. It is the first song. It opens the album. And it's a pretty epic tune, starting with and kind of based around Jimmy Chamberlain's ridiculously cool drum part.

35:12So he might be my favorite living drummer. And he is a powerful rock drummer, but he's got this incredibly light touch. So his influences, when he talks about them and some great interviews out there, he's always mentioning like Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. you know i could totally see that john bottom's in the mix too but like jazz is a huge part of who he is as a drummer you can tell you can tell by his versatility yeah and some of the and some of the fills that he used you could totally see that being like you know like and now playing with paul white man here comes jimmy chamberlain well without further ado let's listen to some of the isolated drum tracks from cherub rock first i'll play the part and then i will play where it comes from.

35:57And then he gets a little more intense and it does the same thing, but louder.

36:08And he does that John Bonamy kind of fill there. And Billy Corrigan has gone on the record with how he was inspired for that part by this.

36:26That is By Tora and the Snow Dog by Rush from their 1975 album Fly By Night. So I'll just play for you Cherub Rock again with the guitar so you can, you know, having heard Rush, you'll hear the entire piece. now listen just the fact that billy corgan is referencing rush who might be the like in 1993 92 especially the least cool band for this group of like his cohort of pavement and nirvana this is a band that mud honey used as an insult against their label mate sound garden saying you guys sound like rush like it's the worst thing you can say to anybody and yet everyone secretly especially the drummers in this world love Rush because Rush is one of the great musical bands.

37:08And from a drummer's perspective, Neil Peart is one of the greatest living, well, at the time, living drummers. Sadly passed away recently. But anyway, I think it's quite funny that there's a Rush. It's not quite an interpolation, but... So really cool connection there and a funny one, a little tongue in cheek. This is part and parcel of the song's DNA, which is about, hey, screw you gatekeepers. Hey, screw you hipper than thou hipsters. And which is a word that literally he uses in the song we'll be hearing shortly. So there's that bold Rush reference. And then we have a little more Jimmy Chamberlain love to deliver.

37:49Let's hear some more of what he does in this song.

38:04He describes what he's doing as a conversation between the hi-hat and the ride. And there's all these ghost notes. Like, the way he thinks about how to make a drum part to me is so musical. And it's about supporting the song. And it's just a beautiful thing to listen to. I love it. And let's start adding stuff back in so you can hear it in the context of the song.

38:33The lightness of touch is what I keep coming back to. How he manages to be heavy and strong and forceful and authoritative as a drummer, and yet there's lightness going on. There's an airiness to the hi-hats being a little open and the ghost notes on the snare. I don't know, man. Just my drummer brain gets so turned on by everything he does. So inspired by it. Absolutely. And here's the honey part. So I'll play that for you, and then I'll add some instruments back in. It's another one of my favorite moments.

39:11it's funny because i like that a lot yeah what do you like about that i mean i'll play with some context and let's get into it

39:28I have, by the way, spent many hours of my life playing along to this record, just air drumming along to it. So I know where every little moment, every fill is. And if I were to try and sit down and play it, you'd be like, that does not sound like Jimmy Chamberlain. You are playing the parts, but you are not playing them the way he does it, which is very interesting. This is just a snare fill. And look, we've come off of an episode recently where we were talking about the Tears for Fears. I mean, it's a drum machine, but by contrast where because it's a drum machine, the sound is the same. It's just a little bit louder when the fill comes in.

40:00Da, da, da, da, da, the beginning of head over heels. Here is by, this is the opposite of that. This is a great drummer who's carefully selected his snare and the snare head and the miking and everything. and the way he plays this snare fill is extraordinarily artful and specific.

40:23It's just a little moment, but it's got so much sauce in it. Yeah, and it definitely adds to the emotion in the song. Oh, absolutely. This is kind of a similar moment. I'll add in the vocals so you can hear where this is.

40:45so what's interesting and it's relevant to this point is that in the studio i'm already kind of given the secret away but the band performs as a unit of four they lay down the drum tracks that's how this record was made jimmy chamberlain needed understandably for there to feel like a band So they all performed all the songs together. And then they erased all the musical parts that weren't the drums. And then Billy went in and re-recorded those parts. But while this was happening, Jimmy Chamberlain's musical drumming brain is hearing what is happening in every instrument and reacting to it in a way that only a drummer of his caliber can.

41:25Because all the little subtleties of when what the vocals are doing rhythmically and it is enhancing them in some ways giving them space to shine in other ways duplicating the same rhythm maybe so all of these choices are so part of what makes him a very incredible an artful drummer absolutely um and and specifically a rock drummer you know because i think that um you know i we've talked about on the show my my earliest appreciation for drums was uh animal from the muppet show and uh then went into that's where you were going from the beatles yeah yeah yeah and then i got into 808s and drum machines it's interesting because uh hearing you talk about uh the emotion in these drums that occurs to me most of my drum appreciation even as a drummer myself came from the effect that it gave you you know what i mean yeah you know not to beat a dead horse but i think that when the drum pattern changes a lot you know that's something that i get really excited about But then again, I like Daft Punk.

42:25And a lot of times their songs are for the floor. Hey, they're both satisfying in different ways. Sometimes there's like a one bar loop or a half bar loop in Daft Punk or a two bar loop. The satisfaction comes from it being repetitious and it kind of, it's like a drone. It puts you in a trance. It actually puts you in a trance. I was going to say, it's almost, to go back to the black church, part of the reason those songs were always like that was because they're trying to whip you up into something. And then by contrast, this song, by the way, it's not only is the drum part changing from moment to moment because the human drummer Jimmy Chamberlain is playing it but also the tempo is kind of rushing and slowing down subtly there's no click track in this this is played to Jimmy's internal metronome which during the song kind of gets a little faster and then slows down a little bit Jimmy's internal metronome and also Billy's emotional state given where he is in the song whether he's on the verse or whether he's on the chorus yeah you know um I love the bass in this song yeah and I feel like there's a story here because the basis is usually Darcy, is it not?

43:23Yeah. In the early nineties, there's this phenomenon of like the female bass player in an otherwise male band. You've got like Kim Deal and the Pixies. You've got another Kim, Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth. We had Debbie Gouge in My Bloody Valentine was one of two. We have Tina from The Talking Heads. There's this sort of legacy of like - Tina's one of my favorites of all time. Right, right. I think that Billy was kind of wanting that visually, but in the studio, he didn't need it so much. I don't know that Darcy was really giving him what he needed. Jimmy has explicitly talked about how Darcy's rhythm wasn't really working for him as a drummer.

43:55She was a little like not where he was in terms of the beat. So they performed in order to get Jimmy's drums down, but then the bass was erased. The Darcy Retsky take was erased and Billy went in and this is what he played.

44:21And just one more thing on this issue, like Billy, like he does with so many things we've, we have learned on this episode, wrestled a lot with the decision to replace the bass parts. And in fact, uh, in later years, he expressed regret over what he did by taking them off the track. He said, look, musicianship and technical vision are fine and good, but at some point you cross the line, no matter how good Nami you got, you got, you cut away the gut of your band. And he has really wrestled over the years with like how to make these other members of the band feel like they're in a band and not the Billy Corgan experience.

44:51And I think he's really got a dynamic of like, he wants to control the sound. He wants to control everything, but he doesn't want to control everything. And he does. It's a real push pull with him through the entire career of the band. Yeah. Yeah. Because Darcy wasn't happy. Well, I, listen, we like this band. Yes. Every story that we're hearing makes it sound like it's really hard to work with Billy Corgan. Yeah. I think it probably was. And we can probably imagine why James and Darcy and Jimmy, why the band does eventually their own lives. They come and go. And actually, James, both James and Jimmy are back in the current touring iteration of Spaghetti Bunkets.

45:28You're just like, okay, well, you know, we're not under any illusion of who this guy is. And he has great ideas. Yeah. And they know their place. They aren't considered... I hope they know your place. I mean, look, the facts are the facts and they aren't songwriters. So they're not making the untold millions that Billy has made on the publishing. It's tough when one guy has all the publishing and is making a vast sum of money. And you're like, hey, can we go out on tour? Because I wouldn't mind paying my rent. Not to say anybody in this band is suffering like that. But still, I think we can understand where that makes the conversations awkward.

46:04Yeah, it does. There is a power imbalance. Let's just put it that way. Billy kind of holds all the cards in terms of what happens with this band. but he has been loyal and loyalty. He's talked on the Howard Stern show about how loyalty coming from this broken background, how in him trying to create this family, he does place a lot of importance on being loyal and having loyalty. And the fact that he is currently literally on tour as we make this episode with James and Jimmy again, he is really trying to keep this family together. Not with Darcy. Darcy, unfortunately is out of the picture. Okay.

46:34Yeah. There've been some leaked text messages. You know, it sounds like she's a little bit in a difficult spot recently in her life, But I think Billy has tried to make it work, and for various reasons it didn't. But we do love you, Darcy, if you're out there. Yeah, and if you want to give your side of the story, call us. Tell me about the guitars, because they are such a part of the signature Smashing Pumpkins sound. Absolutely, my friend. Well, let's see. Let's start with the pumpkin chord. The song begins with this big wall of guitars, and then on the top of it, this is a big part of the sound of this band, is you will frequently have a big wall of sound, maybe riffing, and then melodically on top, there's something that almost sounds Indian.

47:12It almost has this raga feel to it. Oh, like maybe a guitar or something? It sounds, well, in fact, it's funny you should say that because Billy has talked about how he once did this experiment where he played Black Sabbath in one room and Ravi Shankar in the other room. And that actually is a perfect metaphor or analogy, whatever the right word is for, for the sound of the pumpkins. They have this big riffy underpinning and then on top of it, this beautiful melodic sound, which is coming from basically playing an octave, the same note as an octave up and down the fret. And that's what we're about to hear.

47:42He calls it the pumpkin chord, but he's borrowed it from Jimi Hendrix. And I'll play, after I play this, I'll play you the Jimi Hendrix song that I think he was thinking of.

47:58And what I'm specifically referring to is that, duh, so that's a melody, but he's playing it on the octave. So it's two notes of the melody, one lower, one higher, and it just thickens up the sound. and it again creates this kind of Indian raga feel mixed with, I mean, I think that's what Hendrix is doing. And I'll play you. Yeah, I was gonna say that sounds very, I can definitely hear the Jimi Hendrix influence on that once you isolate it. So this Jimi Hendrix song uses that same way of creating the melody. It's not uncommon. In fact, both Billy Corrigan says, we got this from Hendrix, but he probably got it from Wes Montgomery.

48:29It's a thing you do on guitar, but it's also a very distinctive sound. And here's a song where Jimi Hendrix uses it.

48:46So Jimmy's doing the same thing. He's got the octave and he's playing the melody, but it's got a thicker tone and it's got a little Indian association. By the way, who would have thought that Wes Montgomery was the link between Jimi Hendrix, Smashing Pumpkins, and Doja Cat? So cool. That's kind of crazy. So cool. And that was Third Stone from the Sun, by the way, from Are You Experienced? Yes. Yes. Give us more guitars. So like I said before, this record has some insane overdubs. One of the tricks of recording and mixing a big stack of guitars is you've got to find room for all of them or they just become this big mess.

49:21They're all in the same frequency range, so you have to cut the frequencies and do this and do that. So many, many hours in the pre-Pro Tool era went into doing that for this result, which I think was worth it because it arguably changed the sound of alternative radio.

49:49I mean, that just does something to my serotonin. It's great. I'm going to do something that might piss off some of our listeners. It sounds a lot like this to me.

50:10i want to fly away yeah yeah i mean look you can you can make fun of lenny all day i love lenny but lenny's a hot man similarities look i'm just gonna say this riff riffing riff rock like crunchy guitars that have catchy riffs meaning the guitar is playing a figure like a kind of a melodic figure that you walk away humming right i think that all goes back to jimmy this goes back to jimmy it goes back to like the kinks i would say right around the same period of time specifically play the part you just played again just right before i played the litty just play that part

50:55oh oh oh yeah i mean like i'm just saying that i think that litty I'm not saying he stole it guys oh my god I'm so scared but I do think that like there's just I think everybody to a certain extent is chasing Jimmy when I hear that fuzzy guitar that you can like totally hum along to and I don't know that I give it I don't know if I love the Kings I don't know if I hear that when I hear the Kings I definitely hear that when I hear Jimmy I hear what you're hearing I think in part there's some shared chords going on these are these are circle of fifth C chords going on they're in a slightly different order and if you add to that the sound of the guitar The fuzz guitar.

51:30Yeah. And then maybe there's maybe a rhythmically similar thing, although I think the Lenny's a little faster. Look, all of these things evoke a similar, I would say, shared source, or shared group of sources, which is they have some shared records in their collection. I'm sure Lenny, they both have late Beatles records. They both have Kings records. This is the 90s, guys. So there's still retro happening in the 90s. I do feel like in the 90s, a lot of groups were going back to the bands in the 60s quite a bit. Well, Lenny certainly is one of those guys, right? Well, for sure. and like you said, Billy's going back and listening to old bands.

52:02I think, you know, they're all listening to old bands in the 90s in ways that I think current bands are not listening to bands in the 60s. So, you know, by the way, the 60s was really having a moment because the Beatles have the anthology, CD comes out with Free as a Bird and some new material. Austin Powers is in theaters. I just feel like even some of those garbage songs, they were like redoing can't seem to make you mine by the seeds. You know, Garage and Fuzzy, sort of like wannabe Jimmy, all that stuff was really back in the 90s. Well, you're right to make that connection because besides the Jimi Hendrix chord, the prior record, Gish, was very visually, certainly, and even sonically, there's a lot of psychedelia coming into play there.

52:46And funny that you mentioned it too because in the solo, which I'll play it for you now, Billy in the liner notes talks about how part of the influence for this was a different 60s song. And I'll play you the solo first and then I'll play you what he alludes to being where he got some of the idea for the solo. Which, by the way, this guitar solo at one point ranked number 97 in Guitar World's list of the 100 greatest guitar solos of all time. So without further ado, let's play it.

53:27I mean, that's part one of the two-part solo, but right there, there are some crazy sounds going on in there. That is awesome. So cool. So reading from the liner notes in the 2011 reissue of this record, Billy says, quote, The solo is uncorked down from the gentle glades of Ichiku Park. So this is his wink and nudge to those of us who know the Small Faces. He's talking about this moment from this song. This is Small Faces, Ichiku Park, 1967. and listen to the sound. He's, I think, referring to the flange sound, which at the time was unusual. I mean, that had to blow your brain if you were listening to that, you know, smoking pot, smoking grass in 1967.

54:19The sound of a flange is still so exciting to me. like that swirly, druggy sound. I love a good filter. Yeah. You know, like these are all, these are all some of my favorite things. Because we love to play the parts that you wouldn't notice necessarily in the mix. I've got a few of those really delicious things in the guitars. Just a couple of quick things. I never noticed this until I was in the stems, but right after that guitar solo, a little after we get this sexy moment.

54:51And basically what that's doing is it's echoing the let me out. So I'll play it in the mix. On the guitar.

55:01So that guitar is kind of echoing the let me out. Another little delicious detail that you will forever hear when you listen to the song from now on.

55:21that little like it almost there's another jimmy hindrance thing by the way that sounds like the beginning of uh purple haze i think yeah

55:33so those are just some really fun uh guitar sounds again they spent many many hours coming up with different sounds and tracking layers, layers of guitars. Just layers. Layers and layers. What did you say were the number of layers? There was like 60 layers? Well, there were up to 40 on some songs. Up to 40? That's crazy. I don't know how many were on this song, but I hear lots and lots of guitars. No, you can totally. Obviously, it would not be Smashing Pumpkins without the vocals of a certain Billy Corgan. William Patrick Corgan. What can you play us from Billy's vocals that will ignite and excite us?

56:06Let's start from the top. freak out give him doesn't matter what you believe in now what's going on there because i think what i hear is you know there's one layer where it's just him singing it yeah kind of like this yeah and then there's another one like it's just whispers right that could be that could be i don't have it separated but i'm hearing what you're hearing there are definitely some layers there's some layering going on and he talks about how he likes uh like ozzy's doubling technique because Ozzy has a very distinctive doubling technique. That was going to be my question. Because even if he's not copying somebody, there's obviously sort of like an approach of a previous artist who's like, oh, let's do it in that style.

56:48Yeah, for sure. And doubling is definitely a common thing across the board. But I think he specifically liked the way that the Ozzy vocals were doubled. And I think I hear some of that in there. Mental wounds not healing. Life's a bitter shame. I'm going off the rails on a crazy train So Billy likes Ozzy and Jimmy. He likes Ozzy, he likes Jimmy. Ozzy, Jimmy, and Billy. And you can hear him, like, his singing style is, of course, he's got kind of two modes. I don't think, I think he would agree with my assessment that he's not necessarily a technical singer. As he said, as I mentioned earlier, he's not Chris Cornell.

57:26You're probably dead to him, honestly. What's that? I said you're probably dead to him, honestly. But let's keep going. Let's assume that Billy... But yeah, you're right. There's another, that's like the sort of like verse Billy. And then there's the chorus, Billy. Who goes aloud? Yeah. And that was a perfect imitation. Thank you. Billy's singing style is, I think, perfect for this band, not Chris Cornell. It is probably a good thing that he has like an imperfect voice. Like it's, he is straining and he's breathy. And these are characteristics of his personality. And it works. It works for the band.

57:57It's one of those things where if you've got the most technically proficient, amazing singer, We always use Chaka Khan as an example. Chaka Khan and Smashing Pumpkins would be a completely different band. Absolutely. It wouldn't have the personality of Billy Corrigan. Billy Corrigan, Anthony Kiedis, like some of these people, well, Anthony Kiedis in particular, I feel like anybody can sing like Anthony Kiedis. Pretty much. But that's sort of what makes him endearing to the Chili Pepper fans. Endearing is a good word, yeah. It's very approachable. Totally. This isn't something we couldn't all do ourselves.

58:25But that's some more Billy vocals. This is fun. Well, here's that chorus we were talking about. Who wants honey? As long as there's some money. Who wants that honey? That's a very distinctive singing voice. Very distinctive. I like how you went like minor there. Yeah. The harmonizing definitely gave you sort of like that fun, dark appeal. Yes, yes. And there's layering. you can tell that there's a low octave and a high octave he's doing in there. I love the way it all comes together. It all comes together. That's the magic of music like this. When you hear a vocal isolated like that, you're like, I'm not sure what this is attached to.

59:10But it works with those major guitars and jimmy on drums. This is a perfect match of all these sounds. Look, let me play for you. This is one of my favorite lines that probably hooked me into the song because in the moment it was happening, and then as I mentioned later on in life, this battle for the gatekeepers versus me, like the gatekeepers aren't accepting me what's going on this is the line

59:45by the way hipsters was not it doesn't mean what it means today like i feel like post 2003 electro clash like hipster became ironically something of a cool thing like that which you kind of wanted to be. But back in the 90s, I feel like hipster was definitely pretty much uniformly pejorative. Well, it's funny you said that too, because the word hipster to me, I first heard around this time when I visited my friend at University of Chicago, who himself was telling me about how the scene in that era, it was like there's a suppressive scene. There's a band called Urge Overkill, one of my favorites, and they were the absolute cool kids.

1:00:23And as fans of music of that era may remember, Liz Fair did her Exile on Guyville album about the hipsters of Chicago. And my understanding from the inside was that Urge Overkill was part of this group that she was railing against on this album. And the word hipster came into my vocabulary in Chicago. So it's just interesting to like, listen back and be like, you're right, 1991, the word hipster. Words don't mean the same when you're singing it as it would have meant in 2005 or even 2024. It's music scenesters who are opinionated and judgy and keeping you down. In defense of who overkill and everybody.

1:01:01Everybody in the music scene is judgy. Like these guys think these guys are too pop and these guys think these guys are underground and can't sell five records. So everybody's kind of pointing. Yeah, that's true. But punk rock has this real, real lineage of orthodoxy. Like, like I should say post Sex Pistols, punk rock started to codify. There are rules. You can do this, but not that. And then there's little scenes like the DC scene and the like. There's like a million sub genres. Yeah. There's a lot of rules. And I think Billy was like, I don't know these rules and I'm just making the music that I like.

1:01:32But he's being judgy too. He's judgy about the judges though. I love your Billy defenses. But the more you talk about him, the more I'm like, no, he's kind of. It's like that thing where like you rail against corruption and then you join the system and then you too become corrupt. But that is neither here nor there. I hear what you're saying and you're right. You're giving me something to chew on. And that's what I appreciate about you and our friendship. That's why we do the show. I mean, that is so important to defining the Smashing Pumpkins sound. Well, look, this band has been super successful.

1:02:05Their songs have been used in many movies and TV shows, including the HBO series Girls, which used today. and The End is the Beginning is the End, which was in the, I think, essential Batman movie, Batman and Robin from 1997. Everybody's favorite Batman. Shout out to Clooney. It was also featured in Guitar Hero 3. Right, which is a big thing because these video games introduce a new audience to the band, to the song. But just speaking really quickly about visuals in the band, I don't think you can talk about Smashing Pumpkins without talking about their music videos. Yeah, some great music videos.

1:02:41The music videos are outstanding. Indelibly. And I just want to call two from roughly this period forward. First off, 1979, I think one of the most beautiful lyrical music videos. He was literally like - Yeah, it's nostalgic. And they're supposed to be driving around suburban Chicago. And yet you can see the Hollywood Hills in the background. So it's that classic thing where people try to shoot LA for somewhere else. And of course, Billy's in the backseat of the car. and the other members of the band show up in various scenes. But I want to pay special attention to Tonight Tonight because this video had a huge effect on me.

1:03:30The directors of both 1979 and Tonight Tonight are Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Ferris. they were on Mr. Show with Bob and David one of my favorite shows of all time they direct amazing material to this day and also the puppetry in Tonight Tonight is by a guy named Wayne White and he is a genius he won three Emmys for his work on both the set and the puppets of wait for it Pee Wee's Playhouse which if you know anything about me there are a few pieces of art of any kind that mean more to me than Pee Wee's Playhouse I mean Paul Rubens rest in peace you are a sweet soul all time yep tonight tonight you know when they saw the album art for melancholy uh dayton and ferris were like why don't we make this video the way that they made early silent films so that's why it looks the way it does and it's in my top three and i don't even know what else is in my top three but this video is in my top three and they shot it like those early silent films and if you think about those early silent films being made like these are the earliest moving pictures that's like the beginning of the 1900s this video comes out at the end essentially of the 1900s so it's a perfect bookend uh in some ways of what pop culture you know starts off as at the beginning of the century and where it ends up at the end of the century it's just an amazing video and i'd even say just as like a writer and just as a human like it's such an emotional song like you know it starts silent it flares up and then you've got lyrics like we'll crucify the insincere tonight You know, the indescribable moments of our life tonight.

1:05:07The impossible is possible tonight. It's such a perfect opener for an album and for a double album experience. It's like a stage, welcome to our show, welcome to our play a little bit, right? It's just one of those songs where, you know, if I'm in the right mood and that song starts off and those soaring strings, just everything in that song just worked really right for me. So I would be remiss if we did an episode about Smashing Pumpkins where I didn't mention that song, those lyrics, which I think are just wonderful.

1:05:51Like, what do you believe is the legacy of Cherub Rock and the Smashing Pumpkins? Look, for me, Cherub Rock was, and the Smashing Pumpkins and Siamese Dream. This record in this moment, it's really important to me personally, for all the reasons we talked about today. It made an impression on me that this person wanted to make a sound, even if it wasn't the cool sound of the moment. That's a great message. And I hope that resonates to this day. Obviously, the landscape has changed in the music industry. But I think this idea of you have an idea in your head, but you're not sure if it's cool, that's pretty universal.

1:06:22That feels pretty timeless. So when I think about this record, there's the sonics of it, which these big guitars that we've been talking about, the sound of Billy Corgan, the band itself and their legacy. That's obviously a big part of this song. And it's, to answer your question, it's legacy. But I also think this message is a really interesting one. And part of why I wanted to do the song was to remind people of what Billy was trying to say. Look, I think the line, beware all those angels with their wings glued on. He's just talking about how you think that this is going to change your life if you kowtow to what people want you to do, but it really won't.

1:06:55Look what's inside and do what's true to you. So I think that message still resonates for me. I like that a lot. Okay, Luxray, it's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gem with you, the One Song Nation, and with each other. Today, I'm going to go first, and my one more song is SR Smoothies Inside of You. This is a song I used to play often, and unfortunately, Actually, I don't think that it's one of those songs that's made the transition from vinyl and CDs to MP3s. So you might have to go digging for it. But it's called Inside of You, parentheses, Ogu 2040 Remix.

1:07:31I found it on YouTube. This is our smoothie, Inside of You.

1:07:45it's got a very slow build but trust me by the time you get to the end you'll be like oh i know why he chose that song and it also has a lot of cool drum changes that come in as well awesome for my one more song i'm just thinking about rush and i'm thinking about billy corgan in the like late 70s early 80s i'm just picturing the man listening to this song thinking about his alienation, because this song moved me when I was a young, alienated, disaffected youth. It's Subdivisions from Signals, 1982, a classic song about being lonely as a kid. Be cool or be cast out. You know, that message really resonates when you're 13.

1:08:30Absolutely. Just like Billy Corgan, who also taps into that part of our brain, will crucify the insincere tonight. As always, if you have a song you want to suggest for one more song, you can find us on TikTok or Instagram. You can find me on TikTok at Diallo Riddle or on Instagram at D-I-A-L-L-O. That's right, on Instagram at Diallo. And I am Luxury on TikTok. That's L-U-X-X-U-R-Y-X-X. And Instagram, you can find me just the L-U-X-X-U-R-Y part. You don't need to add the XX at the end. You can also find us on YouTube these days. Yes, you can. Search One Song Podcast on YouTube, and you can see our lovely faces, as well as some visual clips to go along with these outstanding vocals.

1:09:11Complete episodes, yeah. If you like the podcast, go re-watch it with Looking At Us this time. Yeah, the entire episodes. And if you've made it this far, I think that means you like the podcast. So please do not forget to give us five stars, leave a review, and share with someone you think might like the show, because it really helps keep it going. All right, Luxury, help us end this thing. Well, I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter, and musicologist, Luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And this is One Song. We will see you next time. This episode was produced by John Asante with engineering from Marcus Hum.

1:09:44Additional production support from Casey Simonson and Abu Kamara. The show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Weil, and Leslie Guam.

1:10:01The more you learn about your favorite artists, the more you want to know. Claude helps you keep digging, finding new threads and rabbit holes to explore. Whether it's discovering deeper meaning behind a detail in an interview, or figuring out the influence behind an artist's particular era. Claude thinks with you to find the next clue. If you can't get enough of the stories behind your favorite music and artists, Claude will help you discover new layers you didn't know existed. Try Claude for free at Claude.ai slash brokenrecord.

1:10:55session reviews. Visit betterhelp.com for 10 % off your first month. Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty, if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive. The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level. The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them.

1:11:30Machines that make you feel more human. Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. This is an iHeart Podcast.