![\"Billy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Billy-Corgan-Musician-Smashing-Pumpkins-Far-Out-Magazine-1-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Far Out \/ Billy Corgan)<\/p>\n
Sun 1 March 2026 1:00, UK <\/p>\n
If there\u2019s one thing you can\u2019t criticise Billy Corgan<\/a> for, it\u2019s the fact that he has always said things simply as they are.\u00a0<\/p>\n To his mind, it doesn\u2019t matter much if those things happen to ruffle feathers or turn a few heads. When he said recently that The Smashing Pumpkins were essentially the first grunge band to \u201cgrow up\u201d and expand their sonic horizons, he didn\u2019t necessarily mean it with any sense of venom on his tongue. He was only speaking his truth. <\/p>\n That perhaps unfairly leans towards painting Corgan in an overly pessimistic light, suggesting that he has a wrath or a fury towards the business and doesn\u2019t care who might be harmed along the way. You only have to listen to Corgan speak for less than a few minutes to realise that this is far from the truth.\u00a0<\/p>\n He has always been one to wax lyrical on the plaudits and praises of his favourite artists, with the likes of The Beatles<\/a> and Black Sabbath being prime among them. But in many ways, those were the big fry: the group that Corgan attributed as \u201cone of the great American bands\u201d had a far more understated allure, subsequently making them so much more intriguing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the great underrated bands of all time,\u201d were the words Corgan used to describe The Cars during an interview with Track Star. \u201cRic Ocasek blew my mind,\u201d he enthused, before hastening to add: \u201cI worked with Ric in the late \u201890s. I produced one of his solo records.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet Corgan also freely admitted that it was only during this process that he truly took a \u201cdeep dive\u201d into the back catalogue of The Cars, and realised that Ocasek was the master brains behind so much of the band\u2019s output. He recalled: \u201cMy opening line to Ric, from a music point of view, was, \u2018You motherfucker, you wrote all those songs?\u2019 He was like, \u2018Yeah.\u2019 It was so perfect.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In this sense, with the metaphorical shrug of the shoulders, you can easily see how the suave confidence of someone like Ocasek rubbed off on Corgan. It clearly made a lasting impression. \u201cI just think The Cars is just one of the great American bands,\u201d the Smashing Pumpkins frontman mused. \u201cI mean, what he was influenced by \u2013 everything from Suicide to Andy Warhol<\/a> to Vargas, this kind of \u201980s deco version of the world \u2013 he was amazing. A one-take singer in the studio. What a talented guy.\u201d<\/p>\n That charmingly underrated quality possessed by The Cars was something that put them in a precisely unique position, both at the cusp of a whole new musical era between the end of punk and the start of the new wave, thus allowing them to bridge sonic boundaries unlike anyone else. But while success was granted in doses, the reality was that they only ever had four top ten hits. <\/p>\n It goes without saying that this was not a failure by any means, but the fact remained that The Cars were never the showiest of all models on the scene at the time. There is something inherently likeable about that sense of humility, though \u2013 and it\u2019s a quality that Corgan sees as having embodied the all-American spirit of rock through and through. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Billy Corgan) Sun 1 March 2026 1:00, UK If there\u2019s one thing you can\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[35653,96,128,65938,163345,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-451553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-billy-corgan","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-ric-ocasek","tag-the-cars","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}