Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan discussed indie writers not understanding his music or Soundgarden and Chris Cornell at first when they came out in a new Rolling Stone interview.
Corgan explained the secret formula to some of Soundgarden’s early songs, and how many didn’t understand how they were poking fun at the idea of some genres and people’s perceptions of them.
“I think for us, it was trying to find the balance between the sensuality and grace of the kind of shoegazer stuff that we were really into, whether it was the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, or My Bloody Valentine, against what we were interested in — what we’d term ‘classic rock,’ but was not being called ‘grunge.’
That was the one thing that a lot of the indie writers had a lot of trouble with circa 1990, me name-checking Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Even the way that Soundgarden was received, it was sort of a piss-take on heavy riffing. They were doing it, but it wasn’t as serious or as dumb. Chris Cornell even wrote songs as if they were winking at dumb ideas. It was a meta-riff on, ‘Yeah, we’re playing in this dumb sandbox.'” Billy Corgan Wrote Smashing Pumpkins Hit ‘In Minutes.’
