The Smashing Pumpkins will be performing Thursday night in NYC, an Audacy Live event at Irving Plaza presented by our sister station ALT 92.3, and immediately as he entered the Built Ford Tough Studio to join Boomer & Gio Thursday morning…he was immediately floored by The Booms?
“I just shook Boomer’s hand and was like, ‘man, he really is an NFL quarterback!’” Corgan joked. “There’s that NFL quarterback size that you hear about!”
And yes, even he knows that Aaron Judge is on the precipice of history, knowing “he’s about to hit 61 and 62” – and in an interesting diversion, he could correlate the media attention around one player to his own experience as his band went through tough times in the late-1990s.
“They were not happy with the media’s focus on me, but I kept saying it’s working so who cares?” Corgan said. “When you’re winning, the focus is on the quarterback, but it’s the whole team winning. And you know the whole team’s winning, so I’d say, ‘who cares what they do?’ But they wanted me to be something different in public, and I didn’t want to do that.”
In that vein, Corgan continued to try to tell the band that it’s a team effort, no matter who the media may have focused on.
“People get really granular about who does what, but it’s a team effort – and the team is winning, so I’d say to them there’s nothing to argue about,” he said. “But we’d have these stupid arguments about nothing, and it was like the deli tray argument from Spinal Tap.”
Corgan is a huge sports fan – specifically the Cubs and Bears, as he is from Chicago – and he also understands how Judge is doing what he’s doing, as he himself has to do exactly what Judge does to prepare to play every day.
“Preparation is a lot of the gig – watching people play at a high level, you have to be so prepared that you just go out and play,” Corgan said. “If I don’t prepare, and I just expect the audience to give me what I need at 55 to give them a good performance, then I’m dead in the water already.
People have to get babysitters, travel, spend money maybe they don’t have…I have to get to a place of appreciation, so that when that feeling comes up in me, I can get back my focus.”
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These days, Smashing Pumpkins are back together, and Corgan also has other irons in the fire, too: like continuing to run the National Wrestling Alliance, still going strong after 75 years.
“It’s been a crazy journey, and wrestling is a whole other life,” Corgan said.
Oh, and in addition to sports, Billy of course had to critique Gio’s technique, as he played some bass with a band out on Fire Island over the weekend
“It was fun, but I was a little foggy,” Gio said, to which Corgan responded: “I think the right word is addled!”
Boomer & Gio also talked a lot, of course, about Smashing Pumpkins’ upcoming tour, all the history and controversy around the band’s lifespan, and much more on Billy’s life itself – take a listen above!
Follow WFAN's morning team on Twitter: @7BOOMERESIASON, @GioWFAN, @Alsboringtweets, @JerryRecco, and @WFANMornings
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