'The more I do something sort of audacious, the more I seem to be rewarded for it'

Making their fourth appearance in the Grand Duchy, the Smashing Pumpkins will feature as part of the Luxexpo Open Air event in Kirchberg, after a venue switch from the Rockhal due to overwhelming demand for tickets.

They last played in Luxembourg over a decade ago, appearing at the Rockhal in 2011 and 2013, and previously played to a sold-out crowd at den Atelier back in 2007. Now touring Europe, lead singer Billy Corgan took some time to chat to Today Radio's Stephen Steps Lowe on the Sunny Side Up show this Tuesday.

"It's probably our biggest European tour since 97 or 98," Billy told Steps."The audiences have been fantastic. Lots of young faces, which is always a good sign that you're kind of going [in] the right direction."

At times the interview took a bit of a deeper turn, exploring Billy's reputation as an opinionated creator and how that affects his relationship with the press. "There's this weird thing that people romanticise what musicians should be like, and that musicians are sensitive," he said. "I just always found that kind of bourgeoisie [...] my performance is on the stage and in my music, but in life I'm not a performer."

Today Radio: What are your thoughts in relation to the press interest in you saying, 'we will play the songs that interest us and not just a Greatest Hits session'?

Billy Corgan: I think I make good clickbait. Somehow a quote, which is so innocuous, the person said, 'how do you feel about playing old songs?' And I said, well, I just, if I don't want to play them, I don't play them. I wasn't saying all my old songs, I was saying any song in particular. So that quote taken out of context seems like one of those weird things where you say something and it reads differently than you mean it.

They [the press] can't help themselves. They clickbait so bad. It has nothing to do with integrity. It has nothing to do with the truth. It just has to do with where they can generate energy, right?

Today Radio: You've played in Luxembourg a couple of times. You played at the Rockhal and you played in Den Atelier, for a club show, I think it was a pre-festival warm up, and you seem to approach it with all the gusto and the same energy and level that you would have done for a stadium show. Is that how you approach your performance?

Billy Corgan:You know, we came up in the clubs and we realised early on that if you could make an impact at a club level, you certainly weren't going to make an impact anywhere else. So it's just the way we learned how to play. I guess we don't feel like we have a choice. And I don't mean that in any weird pedantic way. We just feel like if you're not going to put your whole heart into what you're doing, why are you up there at all?

Today Radio: When you're not Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, what do you do outside of that field?

Billy Corgan: My real interests in life are learning. I read a lot. I do a lot of research. I'm very interested in theatrical things, you know. Anything that involves performance, you know, could be puppets, it could be opera. So yeah, I think I just spend my time away from music just looking for things to inspire me. And then somehow, it leads back at some level to making it into a song.

When I was making Melon Collie... in 1994, I was reading Shakespeare every day. That's what I would do. I couldn't tell you what Shakespeare I read. I would just open it to a page and just steeped myself in language.

Today Radio: [on the band's twelfth studio album, ATUM: A Rock Opera in Three Acts] Did you have doubts about making that type of release?

Billy Corgan:  Not really, no. There's something in my life that the more I do something sort of audacious, the more I seem to be rewarded for it. [...] I guess what I would say is, be simple about it.

I have children, young children, and of course I see what they're listening to, and, you know, I'm in the world and I see what's playing at the mall or whatever. You just see this kind of perfectly constructed world, and you're so aware, both as a human being and as an artist, that the world is quite dangerous and quite untrustworthy as it comes to the human condition. And there's nothing wrong with rattling a baton on the glass every once in a while and kind of mentioning to everybody, by the way, this narrative movie you're watching is completely fabricated. There's nothing real about anything that you're watching. And now it's so obvious, particularly in America, with the political process and the social process, how much it's manufactured.

So, most people are aware it's manufactured, and they're kind of freaked out about it, but they don't know what to do about it. So, at least in my case, I can say, hey, for 30 plus years, I've stood in the same spot and said, you know, by the way, this is all kind of fraudulent. And invariably, because I've always stood up against the fraud, they try to make me fraudulent.

Check out Pumpkins classic Tonight, Tonight's episode on the chart-topping  podcast Song 2 here.

For more information on the upcoming show on 28 June, visit Den Atelier or participate in our giveaway here!