Ongoing History Daily: Billy Corgan, songwriter
Although Billy Corgan seems to be able to write a million songs a year, it’s actually a lot more complicated than that. Sometimes it takes years for a Pumpkins song to take shape.
Take, for example, the song “Bullet With Butterfly Wings.” Billy first came up with the basic idea back in 1993, right in the middle of the sessions that resulted in the Siamese Dream album. It began with the phrase “The world is a vampire” but really didn’t get moving until 18 months later when Billy suddenly came up with the “rat in a cage” line right in the middle of a BBC session.
That phrase popped into his head the same day the band recorded “Landslide” for the Pieces Iscariot album. Eighteen months after that, the Pumpkins released the final version as the first single from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
Tuesday’s post had something to do with Tool.
