Billy Corgan On How Running NWA Has Helped Him As a Musician, Feels Good About Company’s Current State

Billy Corgan says that running the NWA has actually helped him enjoy his work with Smashing Pumpkins. The musician and promoter recently spoke with the AP for a new interview, and you can see a couple of highlights below:

On splitting his time between Smashing Pumpkins and the NWA: “When I first started doing it, a lot of the music fans really looked very negatively on it. People were writing things like, why can’t you just focus on music? If you’d focus on music, I’d like it. With the rise of let’s call it the new version of the NWA and the re-rise of the Pumpkins, both have credibility simultaneously, I don’t hear that stuff anymore. It’s like people are sort of respecting the fact that I’ve kind of put my foot into it and really committed to both companies, both brands in a way that’s yielded results. I think people start to understand in some convoluted way that by me doing things outside the band, it’s allowed me to approach the band with a lot more excitement and joy as opposed to thinking the band is my whole life. At some point, that became really problematic for me. You go to the supermarket and it’s like, hey, you’re the rat in the cage guy. And I’m like no, I own a tea house, I own a wrestling company, I have little kids and I have friends. I’m not just a guy that lives in the basement writing songs.”

On the state of the NWA right now: “I feel really good. I feel like in the last year, I think people have finally started to see what my vision is for the NWA. Much like the Smashing Pumpkins, not everyone agrees. There’s lot of pieces that are finally starting to come together. I feel really good about the pay-per-view, about our ability to put on a world-class event at any time. I wish I had more money to blow because I would put on more of this stuff.”