Billy Corgan

For our generation, Tommy James is amazing, right?

So, like, not everybody knows Tommy James, but if you know it, you're like, oh, okay.

But did they give you, did they say, oh, we think this kid's going to be a star?

I'm just curious of those types of conversations.

I just love that stuff.

because you were there at the true genesis of punk in in the uk as often happens because in my generation happened with grunge people have a way of looking backwards and they kind of they put a mental framework on it like oh you guys wanted this and you thought that but of course it doesn't work like that when you're actually doing it so a lot of because when in the 90s we dealt a lot with like what i call like punk purists like this is punk and punk is like this and

But my sense was punk was just about you should just do what you feel.

If you think you could be on the stage, get up there and just do your thing.

That's it.

Yeah.

So when you came to America and you started to have success on your own terms, did you get any kind of weird punk pushback stuff or does that kind of stuff come later?

But you were building a genre of music that didn't exist.

You were putting together influences that nobody even thought could be commercial.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One of the great pleasures of doing interviews like this is I find myself, I go back to the music, but I'm looking at it differently.

Not just the fan who listened when the stuff came out.

I was already a fan of Gen X when you came solo.

So I knew that music, which was weird because not a lot of people knew Gen X in America.

Right.