Billy Corgan
William Patrick Corgan Jr. is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and professional wrestling promoter. He is best known as the co-founder, lead guitarist, primary songwriter, singer, and only constant member of alternative rock band the Smashing Pumpkins. Corgan is credited with helping popularize the alternative rock genre. He has also been the owner and promoter of the National Wrestling Alliance since 2017.
Corgan formed the Smashing Pumpkins in Chicago in 1988 alongside guitarist James Iha, with bassist D'arcy Wretzky and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin joining soon after. Strong album sales and large-scale tours propelled the band to commercial success and critical acclaim throughout the 1990s. After their break-up in 2000, Corgan and Chamberlin started a new band called Zwan; after the band's demise, he released the collection of poetry Blinking with Fists and the solo album TheFutureEmbrace before reforming Smashing Pumpkins in 2007. The new version of the band, consisting of Corgan and a revolving lineup, has released new albums and toured extensively. In October 2017, Corgan released Ogilala, his first solo album in over a decade. His latest solo album, Cotillions, was released in 2019.
Corgan co-founded Resistance Pro Wrestling in 2011. He joined TNA Wrestling in 2015 and became its president in 2016, but left a few months later. He purchased the National Wrestling Alliance in 2017; thereafter, Corgan made it his primary focus in professional wrestling.
Early life
William Patrick Corgan Jr. was born at Columbus Hospital in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago on March 17, 1967, the oldest child of Martha Louise Maes and guitarist William Dale Corgan. He is of English, Irish, and Scottish descent on his fathers side, and Flemish and Italian descent on his mothers side. He grew up Catholic and has a younger brother. His parents divorced in 1970. Billy said he went to live with his great-grandmother, and then his grandmother. Next he and his brother went to live with his father and new wife in Glendale Heights, Illinois, a Chicago suburb 22 miles west of the city. His father was a musician and was often away; when Billy was nine his father and stepmother split. Billy grew up an hour away from both of his natural parents.Billy alleges that his father was abusive to him, both physically and emotionally. He developed a protective bond with his younger paternal half-brother, Jesse, who had special needs as a child. When Billy's father and stepmother separated, all three boys lived alone with their stepmother. Billy said his father was a "drug dealing, gun-toting musician mad man". Although William Corgan Sr. negatively impacted his son's childhood, Corgan said he came to have tremendous respect for his father's musicianship.
Corgan, who grew much faster than his fellow students, was a strong athlete in elementary school. In addition to being a member of his baseball team at Marquardt Middle School, he amassed over 10,000 baseball cards and listened to every Chicago Cubs game on the radio. However, by the time he began attending Glenbard North High School, his athletic prowess had greatly diminished. He decided to start playing guitar after seeing a Flying V when he went over to a friend's house.
Corgan gave his savings to his father, who bought him a used Les Paul knock-off. His father encouraged him to listen to Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix but offered little other support, so Corgan taught himself. His musical interests in high school included hard rock music like Guts-era John Cale, heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath, and mainstream rock like Van Halen, Queen, Boston, ELO, Rush, and Cheap Trick. Corgan discovered the alternative rock genre by listening to Bauhaus and the Cure. He performed in a string of bands in high school and graduated as an honor student. Despite grant and scholarship offers from a number of schools, and a tuition fund left by his grandmother, Corgan decided to pursue music full-time.
Music career
1985–1987: Early career
Not finding the Chicago music scene to his liking, Corgan moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1985 with his first major band, The Marked. Not finding success in St. Petersburg, the band dissolved; Corgan moved back to Chicago and lived with his father. From 1987 to 1988, he played guitar in Chicago band Deep Blue Dream, which also featured future Static-X frontman Wayne Static. He left the band to focus on the Smashing Pumpkins.1988–2000: The Smashing Pumpkins
Upon his return to Chicago, Corgan had already devised his next project – a band that would be called the Smashing Pumpkins. Corgan met guitarist James Iha while working in a record store, and the two began recording demos, which Corgan describes as "gloomy little goth-pop records". He met bassist D'arcy Wretzky after a local show, arguing with her about a band that had just played, the Dan Reed Network. Soon after, the Smashing Pumpkins were formed. The trio began to play together at local clubs with a drum machine for percussion. To secure a show at the Metro in Chicago, the band recruited drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, and played for the first time as a quartet on October 5, 1988.The addition of Chamberlin drove the band in a heavier direction almost immediately. On the band's debut album, Gish, the band integrated psychedelic rock and heavy metal into their sound. Gish fared better than expected, but the follow-up, Siamese Dream, released on Virgin Records in 1993, became a multi-platinum hit. The band became known for internal drama during this period, with Corgan frequently characterized in the music press as a "control freak" due to rumors that he played all the guitar and bass parts on Siamese Dream. Despite this, the album was well received by critics, and the songs "Today", "Cherub Rock", and "Disarm" became hits.
The band's 1995 follow-up effort, the double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, was even more successful, spawning a string of hit singles. According to Jon Pareles from The New York Times, Corgan wanted to "lose himself and find himself..." in this album. The album was nominated for seven Grammy awards that year, and would eventually be certified ten times platinum in the United States. The song "1979" was Corgan's biggest hit to date, reaching No. 1 on Billboard's modern rock and mainstream rock charts. Their appearance on Saturday Night Live on November 11, 1995, to promote this material was also the television debut appearance of Corgan's shaved head, which he has maintained consistently since.
On July 12, 1996, touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin died in a Manhattan hotel room of a heroin overdose after he and Chamberlin used the drug together. Chamberlin was later arrested on a misdemeanor drug possession charge. The Smashing Pumpkins made the decision to fire Chamberlin and continue as a trio. This shakeup, coupled with Corgan going through a divorce and the death of his mother, influenced the somber mood of the band's next album, 1998's Adore. Featuring a darker, more subdued and heavily electronic sound at a time when alternative rock was declining in mainstream cachet, Adore divided both critics and fans, resulting in a significant decrease in album sales.
Chamberlin was reunited with the band in 1999. In 2000, they released Machina/The Machines of God, a concept album on which the band deliberately played to their public image. Critics were again divided, and sales were lower than before; Machina is the second lowest-selling commercially released Smashing Pumpkins album to date, with U.S. sales of 583,000 units up to 2005. During the recording for Machina, Wretzky quit the band and was replaced for the upcoming tour by former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur. In 2000 the band released Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music free over the Internet and broke up at the end of the year, playing their last show on December 2, 2000, at the Cabaret Metro.
2001–2005: Zwan and solo career
Following a brief stint touring with New Order in the summer, Corgan reunited with Chamberlin to form the band Zwan with Corgan's old friend Matt Sweeney in late 2001. The lineup was completed with guitarist David Pajo and bassist Paz Lenchantin. The band had two distinct incarnations, the primary approach being an upbeat rock band with a three-guitar-driven sound, the second, a folk and gospel inspired acoustic side with live strings. The quintet performed throughout 2002, and their debut album, Mary Star of the Sea, was released in early 2003 to generally positive reviews. In the midst of their supporting tour for the album, mounting conflict between Corgan and Chamberlin and the other band members led to the cancellation of the rest of the tour as the band entered an apparent hiatus, formally breaking up in September 2003.In 2004, Corgan began writing revealing autobiographical posts on his website and his MySpace page under the title The Confessions of Billy Corgan, discussing subjects from his troubled childhood, failed marriage, and dynamics behind the breakups of both his prior bands. He commented that the Smashing Pumpkins endured the departure of Wretzky, who he called "a mean spirited drug addict", only to break up in 2000 largely because of Iha's desire to leave the group. Corgan called his former Zwan bandmates Sweeney, Pajo and Lenchantin "dirty, filthy people who have no self-respect or class...never have I met such creatures who feel so entitled to all yet contribute so little, not only to my life but the culture and the world in general...the world is on the brink of wars and mass terror, and their main concern is whether or not their indy friends still like them."
In late 2004, Corgan published Blinking with Fists, a book of poetry. Despite mixed reviews, the book debuted on The New York Times Best Seller List. He had made his debut as a poet on September 17, 2003, presenting at the Art Institute of Chicago's Rubloff Auditorium.
Also in 2004, he began a solo music career, landing on an electronic/shoegaze/alternative rock sound for his first solo album, TheFutureEmbrace, co-produced and arranged by Bon Harris of Nitzer Ebb. Released on June 21, 2005, through Reprise Records, it garnered mixed reviews from the press and only sold 69,000 copies. Corgan toured behind his solo album with a touring band that included Linda Strawberry, Brian Liesegang and Matt Walker in 2005. This tour was not as extensive as previous Smashing Pumpkins or Zwan tours. The tour was also controversial in Australia, with Corgan antagonising the audience and storming off the stage when Smashing Pumpkins songs were yelled out as requests. Prior to recording TheFutureEmbrace, Corgan had recorded some 72 songs inspired by Chicago history for the largely acoustic ChicagoSongs project, which have yet to be released.