<\/p>\nBut over the past few years, a new component to Smells Like Teen Spirit\u2019s magical alchemy has been proposed, with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan claiming that the song ripped off his guitar sound.<\/p>\n
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This is a somewhat recent development in the long-running saga between the two bands. At the time that Nirvana existed and Kurt Cobain was alive, there was always a bit of needle between their camp and that of the Pumpkins.<\/p>\n
It seemed to be down to a few things: that they shared a producer in Butch Vig, that Courtney Love had gone out with Billy Corgan before dumping him for Cobain, and that, let\u2019s not forget, they were all young, ambitious and in rock bands. There was probably no shortage of egos floating round.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only over the past few years, though, that Corgan has started to introduce the idea that he should be credited with Teen Spirit\u2019s muscular, explosive guitar sound.<\/p>\n
The back story to his claim comes down to the fact that when Vig worked with Smashing Pumpkins on their 1991 debut Gish, the producer’s focus was on building the sound around Jimmy Chamberlin\u2019s powerhouse drums with Vig happy to let Corgan take the lead on the guitar sonics. \u201cButch left the guitar department to me, like, \u2018I don\u2019t understand what you\u2019re doing over there, you do your thing but I\u2019m focused on rhythm and propulsion\u2019,\u201d Corgan said in an interview with US YouTuber and producer Rick Beato two years ago. Vig, Corgan said, was his group\u2019s first real producer to the point that him and his bandmates jokingly called him \u2018dad\u2019.<\/p>\n
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But Corgan remembers the moment when \u2018dad\u2019 got the call to go and join a new family. \u201cI was at Smart Studios the day Butch got the Nirvana job for Nevermind,\u201d Corgan recounted, explaining that Vig was originally meant to co-produce Nirvana\u2019s second record alongside an older, more experienced producer who dropped out, leaving Vig to oversee the record\u2019s creation on his own. \u201cWe were very close to Butch and Butch bangs off to do what became Nevermind,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Soon after Vig had completed work on Nevermind, he was hanging out with Corgan and asked the Smashing Pumpkins frontman if he wanted to hear the new Nirvana record.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got a boombox, he presses it and it\u2019s Teen Spirit and as the sun is going down on a beautiful Wisconsin summer day, I had two reactions,\u201d Corgan remembered. The first was that Teen Spirit\u2019s indelible riff reminded him of the chord sequence to Boston\u2019s More Than A Feeling. The second was \u2018hold on, I recognise that guitar sound\u2019.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhen the song kicked in, I looked at Butch and said, \u2018You ripped up off my guitar sound, motherfucker\u2019,” Corgan said. “He was like, \u2018I guess I did\u2019, because everything he took into that was stuff I taught him. Butch didn\u2019t need me to teach him how to mic up a cabinet but the way I would layer guitars, Butch was like, \u2018I\u2019ll take that\u2019. So now, Nirvana is on the radio every 18 seconds and every time I hear the guitar I\u2019m like, \u2018There\u2019s my guitar sound\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
It caused some very complicated feelings at the time, he said. \u201cIt was a bit of sibling rivalry, to use the term loosely, and our guy is now the number one rock producer in the world, literally overnight,\u201d he said, adding that the Pumpkins were also with Vig the night he found out Nevermind had gone to Number One. \u201cWe were having an Italian dinner in Madison, Wisconsin, we literally toasted Butch Vig, \u2018Congratulations, you\u2019re the number one producer in the world\u2019. If you go back a couple of years, we met on a Wisconsin street, he\u2019s Butch Vig the nobody and we\u2019re the Smashing Pumpkins, we\u2019re nobody. In that short time, we have a major label deal, we have the biggest selling independent album of all time and now he\u2019s Butch Vig, the big rock producer. It was like, \u2018How do we navigate this new thing?\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Corgan went to say that he thinks the fact Vig stuck with the Pumpkins \u2013 together, they would make the record that would become their classic second album Siamese Dream – at a point when he was the hottest rock producer in the world and getting offers left, right and centre came down to Vig\u2019s love for the band.<\/p>\n
\u201cButch loves us and loved us and I think the way he repaid his love to us was \u2018I\u2019m gonna make sure you guys get that opportunity, I\u2019m gonna go all the way\u2019,\u201d Corgan stated. \u201cIt makes me emotional because I get it now as an adult in a way that I wouldn\u2019t as a child, \u2018I\u2019m gonna give you everything I have including the gravitas of my buzz, I\u2019m gonna make sure the Pumpkins get across the line too\u2019. It\u2019s very emotional when I look back on it now because I realise he did us a good deed.\u201d<\/p>\n
An act of loyalty, perhaps, that means Corgan can let him off on the supposed borrowing of his guitar sound on \u2026Teen Spirit, even if no-one else thinks they sound the same apart from Billy Corgan himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kurt Cobain was never exactly shy about the influences behind Smells Like Teen Spirit. \u201cI was trying to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-209873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}