"Well, what we usually do is in every city we got to, we hire a fifteen-year-old boy and we turn it up until he starts to make a funny face, then we turn it up about ten notches higher than that." |
[According to reports from Australia, one fan shouted from the stage] play some Pumpkins ... Can I live my life for today? |
A lot of great music got easily dismissed because the baby boomers threw their weight around and we had to listen to Motown 'til our ears bled, |
Are you all ready to have a rockin' mashed potato time? |
For a 6-foot-3 guy with no hair and a whiny voice, I've done alright. |
For a year now I have walked around with a secret, a secret I chose to keep. But now I want you to be among the first to know that I have made plans to renew and revive the Smashing Pumpkins. I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams. In this desire I feel I have come home again. |
Great music completely obliterates any conceptions of genre. |
I don't mean this in any sort of trite way, ... but the music has really been the thing that has healed us over and over again. It is the thing that has held us together and taught us about each other. |
I'm not going to die glamorously. I'll probably be eating a Twinkie, take a bite, and fall over. |
If practice makes perfect, and no one's perfect, then why practice? |
In a weird kind of way, music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me. |
Interviewer: "If you weren't a rock star..." Billy: "I wouldn't be wearing these silver pants." |
It's my role as an artist to basically destroy the obvious and recreate the obvious, to put it back together into a form that maybe you wouldn't have considered, ... I'm not into making things unimaginable. |
Say you write a song about a chandelier, and the chandelier gives off light. And the light is the color red and red reminds you of the color your not supposed to wear around a bull. So you name the song Cow." |
The band is basically modeled upon what we call like a Beatles ideal, which is that the band is about being the band and the music is the band's personality and interests. |