Loud and Quiet Presents Midnight Chats.
Hello and welcome to episode thirty five of the Loud and Quiet interview podcast Midnight Chats. For this episode, I met an extremely famous man, and I probably wasn't quite appreciative of how famous he was until I was sat in front of him. That man is Billy Corgan, the lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins. And of course I know the Smashing Pumpkins and I know Billy Corgan. I know who he is. And I went to do this interview and it wasn't until I was actually sat opposite
him that it kind of clicked. You know, he's an iconic looking guy. He's unmistakeably Billy Corgan, and I think maybe I just wasn't ready for that. And when I was sat down, I was like, oh, yeah, you are Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins. I really enjoyed our conversation. We spoke for about an hour in a hotel in West London, in Chelsea, and essentially the reason Billy was in town and speaking to me was because he's just
released his second solo album under his own name. If you don't include all the Smashing pumpkins stuff, but Oogi Lala is his new album under the name William Patrick Corgan. Please enjoy this episode. Thank you for taking the time to download it and listen. If you do enjoy it, subscribe, comment, do all of those things, and do check back on previous episodes. Greg's been holding the fort for the past
few episodes and doing a great job. I've had some really good guests on recently, and we've got a few really good ones coming up as well, so please do back. That'd be enough one of these in two weeks, but for now, please enjoy my conversation with the Billy Coran, actual Billy Corgan. Do you listen to podcasts?
I do.
I do.
I'm a person who was a self learner, so I really appreciate like deep dives. Like there's this guy. He has a podcast and a website called the Disney History Institute or do it the Disneyland History Institute or Disney and he does these super deep dives into Disney's world. He created his creative process, the theme parks he didn't build,
and he's incredibly researched. He has all the contexts in the Disney world, access to amazing photo archives, and I actually I was so impressed by what he is doing. I reached out to him and he said, oh, you just made my day. And you know, he said, I was listening recently. It's so cool that you found me. And he does really great He puts out like a blog and then his podcast is sort of he reads his blog post, but it's super long in details to be like forty five minutes with some music and stuff.
So it's a little bit of production. But man, you learned so much about something you thought you you thought you knew about. It's such a weird thing. And this is what I love about it. It's like you think you know something and then somebody who's willing to take the time and they kind of take you there, and you know, it's perfect. What I love about podcasts is something like you know, you brushing your teeth. It's like you could still listen and learn something. I mean, compared
to music. I mean, I listened to people's podcasts probably ten times more than I listen to music. It just sort of goes better with life. I can watch my kid and I don't know, just I love it.
So you did you find yesterday?
I've been in London for a few days. I came from Paris and I was in Berlin, and so it's I think there's a day eight and then I go home to Chicago.
Cool. What did you watch on the plane on your first long haul? I watched.
A so so movie called It's Frank Sinatra. And who was in singing in the Rain? His name escapes me, Gene Kelly. Yeah, him and Sinatra in a kind of a navy movie, like in the Navy or Anchors Away or.
Is it the musical?
Yeah, the.
Something Town, Something something Right, And I think I know the one you made. I noticed that planes have started to do that more like put old classics on.
I love it.
Do you when you when you fly? Do you do you get into the films?
I'm not a fan of most new movies. I just can't, you know even you know, sometimes the watch in some movie and it's like then you got to get the we're ruining the Earth message, and it's just like, I just want to watch a movie. Man. I don't need to be politicized too. It's like the politicization of entertainment. At some point it gets I mean it's in you know, you're watching a kid's cartoon and you're being lectured about the rainforest. It's just like, I got it. I mean,
I'm doing the best here. I'm separating my garbage. What else you want me to do?
Yeah, that's true. And you don't get that with Frank Sinatcha.
No, you're guaranteed. Yeah, I'm saying you're guaranteed. If you watch a movie pre nineteen sixty five, you're pretty much guaranteed just to have a laugh. You know, sometimes that's not a bad thing. Escapist entertainment is sometimes probably the best medicine.
So is that what you would watch that home? As well?
I only watch old movies, old films. I probably ninety seven percent of the time watch movies before nineteen fifty. I'm a big fan of the studio system, even though it didn't treat the individual artists too well. I'm a big fan of how they just cranked out like quality
movie after quality movie. And then I do deep dives on people I like, like like, I love Barbara Stanwick, who was a quintessential American actress, like a beautiful but kind of a strange face, kind of a tough I think she was from like Pittsburgh, and you know, she's
the classic. You know, she made good in it in Hollywood and was this massive actress, and you know she does all these kind of she does everything from the rom com to like the serious you know, drama where she's the other woman and you know it's just and she's always good. She's she's good in every movie. Okay, so one movie you'll be a six out of ten, and the next will be a seven out of ten, and the next will be an eight out of ten.
But she's always she's always great. And that's why they used to have stars like that, because they just crank them out.
For anyone who's not familiar with her or what would be your entry point suggestion.
Gosh, see, she's one of those weird ones where there's there's not that one movie that you that was like the big movie.
Yeah, sorry, what's her name again.
Barbara Stanwick. I'm terrible with this stuff. There's one movie where it's like her husband has an affair or something. It's like but it's like it's like when it kind of you're kind of getting into like the film noir, like the forties. It's sort of ahead of its time. It's sort of really gritty and maybe she murders her husband. It's like one of those.
But I know what you mean, know about those old films, because I like, I like when you can tell this is this is a really kind of old fashioned boring thing to say, But I like when you can see the sets of a film, when you can see that they've made.
A oh like made the Street, made the Street.
Yeah, there's just something about that that and like old Disney films, like.
Or like even like Frankenstein, where they made like the Bavarian Village. Yeah, and it's like the idealized, scary Bavarian village and then you see it in another movie they're like, well, we'll just use the Bavarian village again, like I've or they dress up the Bavarian Village for robin Hood or something. You know. It's like, isn't that the You can't blame them, right, I mean.
No, like we've made this thing now value for money out of this thing. I read recently an I think you recently did with Rolling Stone on that side, so you know it's true. There was just one thing that you said in it that, like talking about films, was just a reference to Stanley Kubrick. You were likening kind of the way Kubrick would work to the way that you work.
I presaged it by saying, please, don't think I'm comparing myself Curbick, and of course he took that part out. Now, what I said is Kubrick's methodology is the only artist I've ever read that reminds me of mine. Is that I do these really deep, immersive dives into things I'm fascinated by. I yank out whatever it is I'm interested in subconsciously, and somehow it shows up in my work. And then I burnt. I literally burned the road to where it's like I'm just so done with the subject
that I just move on to something else. And apparently that's sort of the way he worked.
So I recently saw two thousand and one for the first time. I've never seen fantastic and I saw it in the in cinema here at the BFI on the South Bank, and I mean, it completely fried my mind.
Well, he's that type of artist, you know. It's funny. We used to work with a guy his dad's His dad was a Hollywood special effects guy, and his dad's claim to fame was he was the guy that designed the sequence at the end with the spaceship and the lights, So it's pretty kind of a cool. Yeah, we got to hear some of the kind of the background stories about the making of that stuff, the special effects stuff.
But yeah, Kubrick's like, to me, there's a special class of twenty century artists like Philip K. Dick is another one. I don't know if you ever read Philip K.
Dick, no, as there's recently been a series here on TV of his stories Electric Dreams.
Well, he wrote what became blade Runner, right do Android's dream of Electric Sheep that was that's what became Blade Runner, Minority Report. There was Scanner Darkly with Keanu Reeves, which I never saw, but it seemed like it was kind
of a bit of a funky movie. But many of his works have been made in But Philip K. Dick is that sort of artist where it's like their work is beyond the bounds of the medium they're working in, right, And it's so deep and it's so layered that it takes generations to figure out what even the bigger meta message is because cultures tend to reflexively look at a piece of art and say, what does this have to do with us right now. But a true artist works
on multi dimensional levels. Hence the Mona Lisa. You can still get something out of it four hundred years later when you should really shouldn't. So why do you It's just a painting of somebody. Yeah, and there's plenty of paintings of somebody, you know, And that's oftentimes what gets difficult as a as a public person who's an artist in the media, because the media is asking you to find yourself on their terms in this moment. But if you've made real work, you know that the work goes
outside the bounds of that. So you're asked to be sort of reductionist about your own work to sell your work, which inhibits what you've actually tried to create, which is something sort of beyond the bounds of the time you're in. It's a weird I don't want say compromise. It's a weird sort of negotiation that goes on forever.
You know.
It's like there's those books like, you know, read the bad reviews of the most famous classical pieces. Have you ever seen that? Yeah, it's like somebody's ripping apart, you know, Stravinsky, you know, you know it's like it gives somebody like me a little solas, like, well, in a hundred years, they're going to understand my fourth album, you know, Thank god, you know, I can go to my grave happy because some days somebody's going to figure this out.
Do you genuinely read your right?
I stopped that about seven ten years ago.
Yeah, No good can come from that, right, And.
What's weird is and it's hard for people to understand, like I've had a good review come out in one of the big magazines here, and of course somebody tries to put it under my nose and say, hey, have you read this because they're they're excited for me, like you got a good review, and it's like, no, no,
I can't. And they don't understand why because invariably, you know, it's critique, right, And I'm not saying I can't be criticized, but I don't want to put ideas in my head that are going to inhibit my ability to produce more work. So something that I consider just fine based on my own set of internal data, like oh, you know, that's
a pretty good song. It could have been better if I've done this, this and this, But you know, I like the song fine, And then I read a review and it's like, and the worst song on the album is And suddenly I'm like, now I'm second guessing something I wasn't second guessing. But why am I second guessing based on one person's opinion? It's a weird again, it's a weird negotiation.
Sure, so, I mean we should say that. The reason you're you're over here at the moment is new album's coming out, allegedly allegedly coming out? Can you tell me what it's called? How to pronounce it? Og lala og lala? Okay, I'm god.
It's a made up word, is it? Yeah? I just made it up.
It's just something you came up with.
Well, it's based on, you know, some etymology and is that the word? I always get confused. It's like, is etymology the study of bugs or the study of words? It's one of those. Yeah, it's a little bit of automotopy and a little bit of etymology.
And yeah, under your own name, it's yours. It's your second SIDO record, first in twelve years.
Yeah, the first one didn't go so well.
No, it's a bit of an.
Unpleasant experience, was it not making it. I love making the record. I enjoyed it, and I really actually liked the record, but I it was it got such a strange reception. It was sort of like, well, it's not the pumpkins, and why are you doing electronic music? And I was like, don't you remember I had like hit songs with I actually had two hit songs in nineteen seventy nine and and and the song I And they actually can even argue Aviador, which did quite well in Europe.
So had three singles in the nineties which were electronics. So here I am not too in the distant future, you know, making more electronic music. Was like, why have you given up the guitar? And I was like, no, there's guitar on the album. It's like, it was this weird.
Why do you think people were like that? Was it just was it because they loved the Pumpkins so much and it was fun. It's two thousand and five, wasn't it.
It's us right, No, I since we have time to take the deeper dive into culture. I think that one of the strangest I'm fifty years old, so I've lived long enough to sort of see the death of print media move into the Bloggi sphere, move into the YouTube podcast the dominance of the podcast genre a blitter all comers. There's collateral damage, which, of course in any cultural shift there's going to be. You know, so this is not
this is not me crying foul. But one of the strangest effects of digital culture was the winnowing down of let's call it like what you stand for in essence, there's so much data that people don't have enough bandwidth go beyond Oh, you're the pumpkin guy and you make noisy rock, and no amount of contrary information will change that label. It's a weird or you know, my band is listed on iTunes under alternative. Who made that decision?
You know, so forever you're in this box, in some digital box, but in a record store, you might have been mixed in next to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, who are now under rock or classic. You know. So it's this weird ghettos and and so I think I was sort of hit sideways by this narrowing down of like who you are in the culture. And the longer you get away from let's call it the moment, the
narrower the definition becomes. It becomes simplified. And so even though, like, let's say, the last electronic hit I had was nineteen ninety eight, and I'm making an album seven years later with similar themes and influences, seven years in digital time is seven hundred. So what was remembered about me seven years later wasn't that I had hits with acoustic guitars and strings, and it was You're the Pumpkin Guy, and the Pumpkin Guy's angry and sings about rats and cages.
So this isn't that. And I'm standing there thinking I'm on the other timeline, which is the one that actually circles around the sun timeline. There are artists that three years ago were on the cover of magazines and they're gone already. That would have been unheard of in the past. Yeah, they would at least had three four more years. People rise and fall within twelve eighteen month cycles. They rise like a phoenix in crash. There's this acceleration of the cycles, is my long winded point here.
So with that in mind, in terms of the new record, which is it's not an electronic record. In fact, it's thank god, it's a very stripped back.
It's a midnight affair.
It's a midnight affair and it's mostly you and acoustic guitar and piano. Yeah, no drums, no drums. How do you think in terms of like this idea, if you're the pumpkin guy, you're the angry pumpkin rock guy. What do you think is going to be the response to this record?
Well, empirically and based on what I just said, you would think you're going the wrong way right. The strange, strange thing happened about three years ago. I live down the road in Chicago from an outdoor venue. It goes back to the eighteen hundreds. It's probably something that's all over year, but for America it's a little bit rare. It's a park where people sit out on the lawn and listen to a show. It's meant to be in international acts from all the world coming to play. It's
a storied place. So three years ago, the guy from the venue, they must have had an open date or something, because it was the last minute thing. The guy called and said, would you be willing to come in and play a solo gig? And he made a pretty generous offer to where you're like, well, it's worth getting up
off my butt to go do this. So Jeff and I from the Pumpkins put together an acoustic show and we did some electronics stuff too, and we played it loud a little bit, but mostly it was mostly acoustic the whole night, and the reception was so positive. Again, an organic response to something that we didn't wouldn't have expected an organic response from that. Then the next year
we toured as Smashing Pumpkins. We call it in planes, but it was basically Pumpkins acoustic with some electronic and it was the other side of the Pumpkins catalog type of thing. The response was two or sold out immediately. Response was great. So then we did it again the next year, bigger places, best reviews I've probably ever gotten ever.
So somehow we accidentally hit a vein that interests the fan base that like that like somehow this approach is organically and connected to their understanding of that idea, but not in an intellectual way. Don't ask me why.
Maybe it's like, maybe it's just as basic as the fact of a Pumpkins fan from the nineties likes guitars and rock guitars and now they're old.
They're old, and as they're as they're using their walker, you.
Know, they want something a bit quiet.
Yeah, that little slower pace. We used to walker with him.
But maybe it's just that they're like the symps and electronics is maybe like a bit of a step too far, but an acoustic guitar and piano is kind of within that kind of vein.
I think that's a good that's a good assertion, and I would they seem to be attracted to the melody and the lyric. So in essence, if you were trying to take a guess, the lyric, the message still means something, and maybe the guitar is that the loud guitar is less important as the message. It's something about the messages working so shocked me. Honestly, I didn't expect to sort of end up here because I kept getting in my
ear from industry professionals. You know, if only you could like Bob Dylan in his book, you know, he's supposed to write three, but he only wrote one so far. He talks about how people for years would say, can't you just go back to the old Bob Dylan, And he actually says in the book, I actually wanted to give them the old Bob Dylan and I couldn't. So I think that's quite astute.
So you started making this record with that in mind, with it to be that.
No, it's it's it's it's like, well around the podcast, I can explain it. So it's like two roads that are running alongside each other but don't meet, but ultimately meet by accident. That's kind of what happened to me. So over here, I'm telling you this sort of organic thing is happening with acoustic music for me, but only on the live side. I have no intention of doing an acoustic album.
Why not?
I just didn't. You just think it wasn't in my mind. On the other side, I'm trying to figure out a way to get the Smashing Pumpkins back into a contemporary frame. The easiest way to do this is to have a hit record, right, So you're trying to figure out some approach that you feel good about that you can aggressively approach the market. You know. I don't know, it's not worth explaining other than you just want to be aggressive. And so I made one record that we put out
in twenty fourteen called Monuments to an Elegy. It sold dreadfully. It seemed to disappear in two seconds, as records can these days, which was disappointing. I went back in the studio to make a follow up record. I got I don't know, about a month or two months into the record, and I lost my mind and I quit. I can't do this. So then I found myself sitting at home going, okay, now what I'm going to do? And in my bummed out phase, I picked up an acoustic guitar and I
started writing acoustic songs. So I suddenly these two roads converged, which was funny because I had plenty of empirical information to say that the audience is actually interested in me doing acoustic music. But my pride was in the way because I was over here trying to, like, I don't know, rebuild the wall to steal from Roger. Yeah, one more time.
And that's the first. So that's the first time you've sat down and written acoustically.
Not true. Actually I wrote an acoustic record before the electronic solo record.
Okay, and what happened to that one?
It's sitting on a shelf. It's quite nice. Actually, it's a very stark record about Chicago. It's more folk. I guess than this record, the Oji Lala. But I was going to put that record out on Warner Brothers in two thousand and five, and I sniffed around the record company a bit and I got a funny vibe that they were just going to bury the record if it
was going to be acoustic. So I shelved the record even though it was finished, and then I made what became the first solo record, the Tronic Future Embrace Record, which caused all the other problems.
Okay, so it's niceig.
It's my two thousand zig zagging that sort of led me to this this point of like it's like you've gone back to the beginning, and it's like, I'm going to do the simplest thing possible because maybe somehow the directness of that approach will get through to somebody, and somehow it seems to be cutting through the fog better than a loud electric guitar, which is weird because I got cut through the fog the first time with an electric guitar, and I'm cutting through the fog with an
acoustic It's strange, but as long as it's effective, I'm happy. Because it's a lot of work to kind of end up coming up short, you know, and.
You wecoded this record with Rick Rubin.
Yeah, yeah, it was fantastic.
And is that the first time you've what with him?
No. I work with Rick in nineteen ninety eight on a song call let Me Give the World to You, which was left off the Ador album, which later came out in one of those kind of reissue deals.
Sure, and it was his idea to keep the songs pretty much as you have them, right, And if you had done this record with someone else, would do you feel like you would have naturally just build it up and made it electric even as a podo.
Almost hard to say, because I wasn't sure I was going to make a record at all, and I'd called Rick for advice to recommend a producer, and then that's when he said he was interested in doing it, which was surprising, and that's how I ended up working with him. And then once he endorsed what I was doing was obviously okay. Now it's going to head towards a conclusion. So it's almost unfathomable because he's so he's so part
of the process. He encouraged me to keep doing. He encouraged me to keep writing and he encouraged me to commit to this path. I'm not sure what had the courage to do without him.
This is his shangrilaus Gdi.
Yeah, it's beautiful. It's like, you know, you're on a bluff and Malibu overlooking the ocean. You know, you're literally one block from the ocean. You're on this you know, it's where Bob Dylan recorded, the band recorded, Neil Young wrote songs there. I mean, it's crazy history.
Is that like a like an old bus? Is there a bus though?
Yeah, it's the legend is that it's Bob dylan touring bus from nineteen sixty five or sixty six.
And was that just because I know that Rick Rubbin bought this place kind of fairly recently, right like last ten years or something.
Yeah, but he fixed it all up.
Was that bus just there?
Yeah? The bus was part of the property is the seventies? I think? Okay, I think it was put there in the seventies. But what's Rick what Rick has done? Or maybe it was this way when he bought, but it's been coverted to into a studio. The bus has yes, So when I was there working, Neil was in the bus. Neil sorry, Neil Young, Neil, my buddy, Neil. Neil Young was in the bus working.
But that can't be like a very big space.
That's very small. But they what I from what I know, Neil likes working in the.
Bus, Okay, right right, he likes.
Well, as everyone knows, Neil loves old cars and he restores old cars. Yeah, I'm sure he loves the ambience of the bus, you know. I mean it's nice inside. It doesn't look like a bus. It's been converted into like rooms and stuff. It's not what you would think, but it's small.
Yeah. And do you stay in the bus if you're working in the bus? Is it got like a like do you stay at shangrilel when you're working at Shango? You can?
Yeah, there are places And when I was working with Rick, I stayed on the property. But I don't think Neil was sleeping in the west that field.
Here, Neil Young sleeping in a bus. I don't.
Actually, I think Neil's earned the right to sleep where everyone in his own bed. But it's pretty cool. You know, you're you know, you pull up and you know you got your smoothie, you know, from down the road and you walk up and there's Neil sitting there having a latte.
It's awesome. I mean when you think of the history and uh, you know the you know, the you know, like one of my favorite Neil Young albums is Zuma, you know, which he wrote in that same world that whatever, that surf stoner world, which you know, it's very much that part of the the country. And so that's awesome that. I mean, i'd be lying to say that the history of a place doesn't somehow get into you absolutely, but you know, Metallic also recorded there with Rick, and so
that's cool too. You know, you know, you're standing in the spot and Rick's telling you about when he got Headfield to get out as old you know, his original flying v that he used on early Metallic, and just to watch Headfield play rhythm guitar. You know, Headfields was one of the greatest rhythm guitar players ever. I mean, his right hand for a guitar player. It's just like like some machine or something. Just the idea that you're sort of standing in the spot of some of your heroes.
This is cool.
You know. So what would a general how does a die at shangrilel pan out? What's the schedule that.
Rick likes to work about like one to seven. Okay, he works a shorter day than you would expect, but it's actually actually kind of smart because he gets you to really focus those six hours, where if a band's working like ten to twelve hours, it's a little bit more like you work for a couple hours and then he you know, the pace is a little bit more laconic or something. He gets you to kind of commit like, Okay, for these six hours, we're really gonna work, And I
think that's actually probably better. Yeah, and when you think of all the sixty stuff, I mean, most of those sessions were done in four hours. Like the Beatles would come in and bang out a song in four hours, and we're still listening to them. So maybe there's something
to it. Yeah, there's something about the spark. You know, modern recording has slowed everything down so much into a micromanaging And then the worst thing is you work and then you sit there and watch some guy on a computer, Like you know, it's like, what's what's more rock and roll than watching a guy edit on a computer for an hour? Let me talk about a vibe killer.
What interests me is how is those stories of how like pop music, like big kind of mainstream pop music is now put together kind of by you know, like one hundred different people like adding a like one guy, add one line, maybe just one line to the whole song, and you've.
Got like it's a factory.
Yeah, like a factory thing.
It came out of kpop. For as far as I know, really I'm no expert. My my understanding is that's how they work in Korea, and that's sort of what's set up like the modern version of what we hear on the radio. They have like the guitar player from The Pumpkins. Jeff Schroeder is half Korean. His mother's Korean, so and his partner is full Korean. So she was working over there. So he went over to live in Korea for a
while with her. And so he spent like six months living in Korea, and he got to know a lot of the K pop people just by hanging out with musicians. And he said, there are guys that all they do, and I'm sure there's girls do there are guys that all they do is they write the choruses. So they identify you just write choruses, like you're really a good chorus.
And there are people who only write verses, So imagine writing verses just verse like you know, I love you, I love you so much, but but that's all they do. And then they hook that up. Then they have like a menu of like we can use this chorus, we can use this chorus, we can use this chorus, we can use this chorus, and then they pick the chorus
that goes best, and they frankenstein the song together. I mean to me as somebody who writes like very organically, like I'm cooking a very particular meal that is so alien.
And that person who writes just the verses, they might not be any good at course, and then they might be completely foreigncident.
It's like it reminds me of like a mony python sketch. It's like you're the greatest like one foot hopper, please welcome Mark, the greatest one foot hopper in the history of man. You'd be like, okay, like you know what I mean. It's like it's such a weird.
Thing, but you gotta figure if you go through the gene pool, you're gonna find some kid, you know, she's really great at like writing, like the nurse the nursery rhyme chorus.
So when you and by the way they and they work.
Competitively, yeah, they don't.
I've seen that in Hollywood too. I've been around a few major motion pictures where you go and like one time I went to meet a director for something and he took me like and he had three different editors working on the same scene. And I was like, how do you, how do you? How does that work? He said, well, they all have three They each have their own chance
to basically win me over, to impress me. And then and then and what the director told me is then when the then when he picks like let's say he picks option B, then he gives all three option B, and they and then they all sick on Option B to try to improve try option it and try to beat it. So it's like it's like, okay, one of you, who's got the right vision that wins. Now all three of you have a shot to start from there and make it better. It's like such a weird.
And then at some point he must just decide this is as good as I want it to be. Yeah, right, you are the winner.
Yeah, that's why they say. With a lot of motion pictures these days, the directors are more like they're more like a military drill commander or something, because you have all these sub units working on you know, have.
You ever been asked to write for other people in a in a way, in a well, in any way, but in a way like that, like a collaborative way.
Uh? Yeah, I mean I have. I've, you know, I've I've had some success with different artists. But I don't write as much as I would have thought through the years. I don't know why. I think it's just because I don't live in La Sure, I think I lived in La I probably would have collaborated on a lot of people's records, including pop singers and stuff like that, because whenever I meet those people, they're very, very interested because they know I know how to do that. You know,
writing hooks is like a weird skill. But I think living in Chicago, it's like I live on another planet.
You've always been in Chicago, right.
I've tried to get out many times. I at one point I tried to live in Portugal. I've tried. I thought about living in Berlin. I've lived in New York, and I have lived in Los Angeles, and I've always gone back to Chicago, much to my chagrin.
Really I love Chicago.
I mean it's a really it's a really cool place in a particular way. And it's obviously where I'm from, where I was born. I live on the same lake. I live, you know, on the same lake that I would born on, just twenty five miles up the lake kind of thing. So there's all the symbolism is rife there. It is, you know, the hometown hero lives in isolation or exile, that's probably the better word up the coast, but it means less and less and less to me by year. The zim Yeah, I just I just don't
resonate with the town anymore. It's weird. And my friends keep saying why don't you move? Like they know I'm not happy there, and they you know, hopefully you're younger than me, you look great. But my point is is your friends, you know, as they should, they say, why don't you move somewhere? Will you'd be happier? You know, like you don't seem happy here, you know, like, why don't you move to I don't.
Know, what do you say to that? When they said that.
My only defense at this point is I work best in Chicago, right, and because work is so central to my life, maybe it's the place I concentrate best. Maybe the neutrality of Chicago has something to do with why I am able to concentrate there. Better don't ask me.
With that in mind. The idea of to be able to move away, would you need to kind of stop working? Can you imagine that, ever, being the case where you like to move away? Yeah?
Yeah, In fact, I would say I have to. I don't mean like you give up your house and you never come back, But I really think I need to go somewhere. I really do. I think you know. I hate I hate this term, so I'm I'm prefacing this by saying it. I hate the term bucket list. It's very I don't know if you.
Guys use it over that it's starting to creeping.
Okay, it's an American thing. It irritates me to no end. But on my bucket list, being irritating is having the experience of leaving home for good in a very psychological way. It's not temporarily move somewhere else and come home, but like starting a new life completely well, leave to the extent that you actually put roots down somewhere else and have a different experience. I think I would die very
unhappy if I never had really done that. I haven't been able to do that, and it's a very strange defeat in my mind that I've not been able to do that.
So you're fifty at the moment.
Yeah, apologies for forty nine. Next year, forty nine next Benjamin Benjamin Button.
Yeah, do you? I mean, I think you look good for it. I'll return that compliment.
God bless you.
How do you like being fifty?
It didn't bother me as much as I thought it would.
It's just a number.
No, it isn't a number. I won't lie.
No.
Does it feel different? Does it fail? Does it feel like fifty? Yes?
Yeah, I don't feel fifty in my mind, but I mean my body feels fifty for sure. And you know, despite what anybody says, you know, touring is very hard on the body. All those years of buses and backstages, it really does take a toll. So you have to be better about, you know, keeping your stuff together. For me, the biggest issue is is if you could go back in a time machine and say to me at twenty, where would you like to be when you're fifty, I would have said, well, I would like to be successful.
I would like people have heard my music, and I would like to still be engaged. Because my father was a musician and somewhere in his forties or fifties he quit music. He was done with it. It was like he was too disappointed and things hadn't turned out. So I would hope that I was as interested in music at fifty as I was at twenty. So at least from my time machine analogy, I'm okay on all three fronts. So you know, still engaged, people are still listening and still here.
Yeah that's good.
Yeah, yeah, I've got I say this all the time, and I really I literally have nothing to complain about. I can complain all day and I'm good at it, but I literally have nothing to complain out.
Oh yeah, I think that's everyone though we can't.
Yeah, like, yeah, well, of course everyone can have a winch. But the point is is, when you look around the world, there's a lot of people with a lot going on and a lot of years I did not appreciate the blessings and the gifts and even the love and the attention that I was given for my work. You know, I oftentimes spent more time quibbling about what wasn't there than what was there, and all those sort of unappreciative things.
And I think I'm really happy to be in a place where I can look back and say, Wow, I've had a great life. It's been pretty pretty cool overall, been treated well, not as well as I would have liked, but hey, it's better than digging a ditch and not being appreciated for digging a ditch. Because I know a lot of people in my family that dug ditches and they don't get a medal at the end, or you know, they don't get to sit and talk to a podcaster.
Absolutely, the glamour, that's right, that glamor of this. I mean, if people could only see once. I just wanted to ask you about on the album, is the opening Zowie? Would you say Zoe? Would you say Zowey? Why do you say bow Remember we used to have that debate in the seventies.
It was it was is it Bowie or Bowie?
I say Bowie, but he at some point he went with Bowie. I think he would change it as well, wouldn't he.
My My understanding is it was a really Zoe Bowie with an English accent.
Yeah. So so the first song.
I call it Zouie.
Okay, Zoui, Yeah, I think Zowie Bowie. Zowie.
Yeah, Zowie Bowie.
Zowie sounds better. Let's go with Zoowe. So the first song on the record, would you say it is called Zouie. Yeah, and it's inspired by David Bowie. Yeah. Absolutely, and you because you work with him, right ah.
At some point, well, we played a TV show with David. We I got to do his fiftieth birthday. We shared festival bills a bunch of times with him. Fiftieth birthday, Madison Square Garden. Okay, yeah, it was. It's actually kind of strangely become kind of an iconic thing. He had his at Madison Square Garden. He had his fiftieth birthday. So it was a sold out concert and on the bill it was all David songs, but on the bill was myself, lou Reed, Frank Black of the Pixies, Thurston Morris,
Sonic Youth, Robert Smith of the Cure. I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody else, but it was a pretty interesting and everyone came out and did David songs. And then he would sing, and it was a really cool night. And it's one of those things like it's grown in importance
over time. Y. I mean, I was super honored to be asked at the time, but even now looking back, and now, of course David's passed away, you know, you look back and say, wow, that was a pretty pretty cool thing to be involved in, because how many artists have that night where it sort of all comes together where you can look back and say, Okay, that was important, that was important, and that was one of those things where it was important.
Which song did you do?
I think we did Gene Jeanie and all the young Dudes nice And I wish I was giving me exclusive information, but I told this story yesterday. I asked David, why did you pick? Why did you pick all the young dudes? So he chose them face, Yeah, he told me what
songs he wanted me to sing. I'm sure that involved lots of different things, so I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but I did ask him why he chose all the young dudes for me, and he goes, oh, because there's that line in the song about Billy's pulling stars off his face and I thought of you, I mean, talk about man, that's the moment. I mean, hell, die hello, Hello. It's like I'm good, We're good, I'm out right. Yeah, that's a mic draft, right. I wish that's the end
of the podcast right here. So yeah, So I I do, I do regret, and I don't say this with any sort of I'm not casting any spursions on his character. I do wish we'd were together on a go in the studio. Never had that opportunity, was never asked, and I could never understand why, because I kept throwing it out there through the back channels and he never took the bait.
Well he was, you know, I guess he wasn't doing that much, was he.
I guess he did work with Trent and they made that song. It was a great song, I'm Afraid of Americans. It was great track. You know, maybe maybe you know it's as simple as you know. Trent was an artist that was more in line with where he was trying to go. He was, you know, if you remember, he was very focused on technology, the Internet. You know, he did the one album that was sort of talking about the coming Internet culture. He was certainly he was certainly
right about where he was. His thinking was, as usual kind of spot on, So yeah that I wished we'd had to have that opportunity to work together in that capacity. So I worked to get you know, in the live arena many times, but never behind the scenes.
I think we're outside, but.
They're out of Midnight has run out, thanks very much.
Midnight Chats is a loud and quiet podcast. Music courtesy of gold Panda. Search Midnight Chats on iTunes for more episodes and to subscribe. For more information, visit loudan quiet dot com.