Billy Corgan

They're trying to tell you something.

So Irving, in his very Irving way, and again, I love Irving and have nothing but respect for him, I think he was trying to tell me, it's that moment in your life.

And I wrote him back very nicely, and I said, Irving, you don't know me.

And here I am some 15 years later and the band's bigger than ever.

We're still releasing new music.

I've just done an opera in Chicago that's focused on one of my past records, but I've completely reinterpreted it in a different way.

So I don't think Irving saw that capability in me.

And I don't mean this disrespectfully to Irving.

I just don't think Irving understands the psychological mentality of an alternative artist.

And when I say alternative, I mean an artist who came up in the Gen X era

late 80s, early 90s generation, because we came just like when you were inspired by those artists in the 60s, who at the time, the Neil Youngs and the Stills, they were all counterculture artists.

Absolutely.

Well, we were counterculture artists in a different generation, so just like those artists, you play by a different set of rules.

You're never gonna pull a Graham Nash

or Steven Stills or Neil Young or David Crosby and tell them that they have to play by the rules.

No matter how many times you tell them, no matter how many times you tell them the music business is gonna change, they're like, we changed the world.

And you can't take that out of somebody's DNA if they're one of those types of artists.

And we were absolute total punks.

We got away with murder with the stuff we did.

So when somebody taps you on the shoulder and says it's time to be an adult, you think, eh, it's not really my gig.