The whole world was watching when Courtney Love's husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, was found dead on April 8, 1994.

Two months later, Kristen Pfaff, bassist for Love’s band Hole, died from a heroin overdose. The group were forced to put a tour on hold and pull out of an appearance at Lollapalooza.

But Love refused to let these tragedies define Hole's 1998 album, Celebrity Skin. The last thing she wanted was to write “a grieving widow’s memoir,” as she called it in a 1999 Guitar World interview.

“I think that’s the kind of satisfaction some people would really want. But I’m not in the mood for that. That’s not what I’m about. This isn’t Lucinda Williams. I’m not some confessional singer/songwriter. My whole history in this business has been to find the hook.”

A media circus. The aftermath of two major deaths. A new bass player. An intense touring schedule. Hiatus. Relocation to New Orleans, New York, Nashville, and Memphis. All contributed to Celebrity Skin.

But Love also used Los Angeles, fame, and celebrity culture as her muse. The result was a record that captured the zeitgeist.

And although she didn't want to dwell on her departed partner in the album's lyrics, her guitar work paid subtle homage through her gear choices.

The most poignant of these was a big-bodied Gretsch that few would associate with Cobain – but for the Nirvana frontman, it was the one that got away.

“Kurt would always say, ‘I’m gonna get a Chet Atkins.’ But he never did. I don’t think he could find a left-handed one. It wasn’t until he died that I went and looked at one, and it was really beautiful.”

Love's other primary guitar during this era was her signature Fender Vista Venus – a part Mercury, part Stratocaster, and part Rickenbacker hybrid – which broke new ground as only the second signature guitar ever released for a female guitarist, following Bonnie Raitt.

“I didn’t want it all teched out,” she said of its H/S pickup configuration. “I wanted it real simple, with just one pickup switch. Because I think that cultural revolutions are in the hands of guitar players.”

Another key piece of gear was a solid-state 1976 Randall Commander that formerly belonged to Cobain (“He did like his Randall Commander”).

Meanwhile, the Boss DS-1 Distortion, a firm favorite of Cobain's, was a mainstay, as was the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi fuzz. Love was such a fan of the latter, she reckoned she beat her husband and Celebrity Skin co-writer Billy Corgan to the punch.

“I contend that I was the first person to actually have a Super Fuzz Big Muff, before the rest of the boys. It was when I was in this purist ’60s garage band called the Venerays, with Kat Bjelland.

“And just recently, I started using a box called the Mystic Blue. I like a good box, and I’ll try any one – if it has a good-sounding name. Especially if they made a box with some kind of girly name,” she quips. “If they made one called Cherry Apple Blossom, I’d run with it every night!”

Released on September 8, 1998, Celebrity Skin turned out to be the last album – and most commercially successful – before Hole parted ways in 2002, and featured contributions from Corgan, The Go-Go's guitarist Charlotte Caffey, and frequent Love collaborator Jordon Zadorozny.

“I genuinely did feel antisocial, and the first two albums reflect that,” she says of Celebrity Skin’s more “palatable” sound.

“But now I’m into mainstreaming. I’m just doing mainstreaming correctly… During grunge and during metal, they couldn’t sell shit to us because we were too cynical.

“There’s a way to mainstream things with integrity.”

Yamaha is a bit of an anomaly compared to all the other gear brands you’ll read about in Guitar World. The company’s history stretches all the way back to 1887, when reed organ manufacturer Nippon Gakki Co. was established by Torakusu Yamaha.

At the turn of the century, they were responsible for the very first pianos made in Japan. By the mid-’50s they were at the cutting edge of motorcycle design, which led to their expansion into a number of motor-related industries, including boats, generators and robots.

The Guitar Research Division was founded in the mid-’60s by Yamaha’s president at the time, Genichi Kawakami, who told his team to create something that could rival the finest instruments in the world.

All these years later, their guitars have been seen in the hands of many a musical legend, from folk heroes like Paul Simon and John Denver and classic rockers like Brian May and Randy Bachman all the way through to alternative greats such as Billy Corgan and Chino Moreno.

The company’s most famous designs include FG series acoustic guitars, the Carlos Santana co-designed SG-2000, RGX Superstrats, ultra-versatile Pacificas, and the newer Revstar models seen in the hands of modern trailblazers Chris Buck and Matteo Mancuso.

In celebration of their 60th anniversary in the business, we tracked down Electric Guitar Product Manager Yusuke Ota and Acoustic Guitar Product Manager Shingo Ekuni for an exclusive look into the company’s evolution.

What can you tell us about the very first Yamaha guitars?

Shingo Ekuni: The first Yamaha guitar was the FG-180 acoustic, which was designed in 1965 and released the following year. Our president was very ambitious and wanted to make the best guitar possible. We were already known for making high-quality pianos and orchestral instruments. The new guitars had to live up to that benchmark – built well enough to last forever. That was how it all got started.

Yusuke Ota: The first electric models came the same year, originally called the S201 and S302, though we changed the names to SG-2 and SG-3. We’ve changed the strategies and names behind our guitar lines a few times; in this case it was because Yamaha was planning to launch a semi-acoustic range like the Gibson ES-335 and wanted to call it the SA series.

The plan was to match the model name with the models, and the meaning behind SG was “solid guitar.” Back then, the ideas were a bit more fluid, so they were happy to change things around.

Even that early on, there was a focus on making guitars of all kinds, rather than sticking to one core design or sound.

Ota: That’s one of Yamaha’s greatest strengths. We have a wide range of styles, sounds and affordability. Things like the Pacifica became well-respected for being one of the best entry-level beginner’s guitars, but we have a lot of high-end instruments for professional artists. It’s a wide operation that caters to players of all skill levels and budgets, which can only be a good thing.

The SG-1000 and SG-2000 were introduced in the mid-’70s. Their names were soon cast into legend as “the Les Paul killer,” ending up in the hands of Al Di Meola and Phil Manzanera.

Ota: Early on, our development team didn’t really define what SG stood for very clearly. We actually call many different body shapes the SG, because it stands for solid guitar. In 1974, we made a very iconic model with the symmetrical body shape of the SG-1000, which officially arrived in 1976 along with the SG-2000, designed in collaboration with Carlos Santana.

He gave us a lot of feedback, which we utilized to make the best-sounding guitar of its kind. Our goal during that era was to produce “Made in Japan” models that could be used by professional guitarists. The construction was a set neck with a maple top and mahogany back, almost like a Les Paul but made in a Japanese factory with all the benefits of artisan Japanese craftsmanship.

We also gave the guitar some unique tonal features, like the bi-sound system, which worked like a coil split with push/pull tone pots. We wanted to provide single-coil sounds even though the guitar had two humbuckers.

What have been the best-selling acoustic models over the years?

Ekuni: It would probably be the FG series, because every dealer will stock them and a lot of people end up having those models as their first guitars. Some people even carry on using those entry-level guitars on a professional level. We’ve seen players with vintage FG-180 acoustics, the first model we ever made, on stage or in the studio. We also started making folk-style acoustics, which is what American folk artists like Paul Simon wanted.

The singer/songwriter players came back in the ’90s after all the metal generation kids in the ’80s, so the FG models had a revival. Gradually the lineup has expanded. In 2010, we did the vintage reissues called the FG Red Label, as well as the FG9 and FS9.

These were high-end guitars that looked back to our earliest models. We are proud to see vintage FGs still being used by professional artists, as well as the newer reissues. Today’s artists are more picky when it comes to sound, so it means a lot when someone like David Ryan Harris from John Mayer’s band is using the FS9.

In the 1970s, the quality of the Japanese guitars famously created a wave of fear and controversy for some U.S. brands. Now these “lawsuit era” models are highly collectable.

Ota: For sure. Many of the guitars made in Japan back then were copying Fender and Gibson. The currency exchange rate at the time made it hard for people to buy American guitars – it was super expensive. So the local manufacturers made their own versions to sell to the Japanese market.

The difference with Yamaha is that we were trying to make original guitars rather than copies. We wanted to invent a Yamaha-ness, if that makes sense, by adding unique features or coming up with quirky body shapes.

Then there was the age of the Superstrat, starting with the now-discontinued RGX series in the mid-’80s and then the Pacificas of the following decade.

Ota: In 1985, hard rock and heavy metal was very trendy. We wanted to make a guitar for that market, with a pointy body shape, a thin and compact neck profile plus high-output pickups even with the HSS configuration. It was like a guitar for the younger generation who were pursuing more of a technical playing style.

That was definitely us going into the Superstrat world. In 1990, we launched the Pacifica series by getting the Japanese and American teams to collaborate and make a guitar for all the session players in L.A.

That was a big thing around that time, so we wanted to create something that was ultra versatile and able to cover just about any kind of sound and genre. Another consideration was the price point, we wanted affordable versions of these guitars, as well as mid-tier and higher-end ones.

Which players would you say are most connected to the Yamaha brand and encapsulate the sound?

Ota: Of course there are a lot of legendary players who have used Yamaha guitars, but of the classic players, Carlos Santana is one of the biggest names we’ve been associated with. He really loved the SG series in the 1970s. We made that great guitar together that really influenced the market.

The SG-2000 had this really fat sound that was rich in the mid-frequencies, almost like a vocal. That’s why his guitar lines would sound like he was singing, with all that long sustain. It was such a thick tone even without any distortion or overdrive. It would always cut through thanks to the neck-thru construction, tonewoods and our pickup design.

In the ’70s, players were after a more powerful sound with a little bit more output but without sacrificing that very musical tone. After that, Carlos went on to PRS, but he was mainly using Yamaha electrics before that and helped make the SG series very iconic. As for contemporary players, we have to mention Chris Buck and Matteo Mancuso who are both using our Revstar series.

In terms of contemporary players, you couldn’t have asked for better endorsees. Both of them were born with this one-in-a-million kind of magic touch.

Ota: Exactly. I think they are two of the greatest guitar talents of this era. Chris is a very dynamic player who uses his right hand to create this very unique feel and tone. On the other hand, Matteo is super-technical and has a very clear tone.

They are such different players, but both of them want something similar – lots of dynamics and transparency. I think the Revstar is one of our most iconic models right now. I’m proud to see those two players using our guitars and look forward to seeing them both become even more popular.

Other famous names connected to Yamaha over the years include Billy Corgan, Wes Borland, Steve Lukather, Mike Stern and Rodrigo Y Gabriela. It’s been quite a mix, when you think about it.

Ekuni: We’ve always loved catering to many styles. Billy Corgan has been using the LJ16 as well as the FGX5 from the Red Label series. I’ve spoken to him directly about what he wants and expects from his acoustic guitars. What he mentioned was that our pickups are perfect for him to express himself. I think it’s partly because our development team is so big – we are making professional mixers, pianos and all kinds of equipment.

We pull from the same resources, which means we have more technology than other brands. Billy’s playing style is quite wide; he might go from very soft fingerpicking to hard strums with a pick. He needs a pickup that can do both, and most pickups that are good for one aren’t particularly good at the other. We made our pickups to handle every kind of playing style. Billy has told me that’s why he chooses Yamaha.

What are your current bestsellers?

Ota: The Revstar is doing really well right now. I think that’s because it’s so different to what other major brands like Gibson and Fender are putting out.

Again, it helps that Chris and Matteo are using them. The Revstar allows the player to really create the tone from their fingers, which a lot of electric guitars don’t always do. It’s all about what they hear in their head and translating that through the wood and the pickups.

What can we expect next from the gang at Yamaha?

Ota: The Revstar is our key series right now, so we’re looking to expand the lineup. For 60 years, Yamaha has been designing guitars with musicians at the center. That won’t change, but players are changing. Styles and expectations aren’t what they used to be.

We’d like to keep evolving and offer the instruments our customers need. People will always expect great guitars from Yamaha, and we want to make sure we deliver.

Ekuni: Compared to other brands, we’re quite unique. I’m working from Japan while Yusuke is in the U.S. We have teams across the world in Europe and other Asian regions correlating with each other, feeding back what our customers and artists are saying. We use this information to carry on developing better and more unique guitars. It was the mission statement for when Yamaha Guitars first launched and still is today.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

You Really Got Me cemented the Kinks as pioneers of the British Invasion. Along with Dave Davies’ infectious guitar riff, the in-your-face solo – which, for decades, was wrongly attributed to a pre-Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page – was in fact written and played by Davies, thanks to a particularly fiery studio session.

“I know you know the mythology of who played the solo on You Really Got Me,” Billy Corgan says in conversation with Davies on his Magnificent Others podcast.

“Of course I did,” the Kinks guitarist replies. “If anybody could play like that, they must be crazy.”

Corgan presses on, asking Davies about the state of the session when it came to tracking the solo: “But isn't there a story where, during the recording, Ray looks at you, goes, 'Oh, come on…’”

“Yeah, he did. And he was pissing me off!” Davies replies.

The You Really Got Me session – or sessions – were indeed contentious. The band recorded the song at least twice in mid-1964, with the demo’s “bluesy” quality replaced by a take that was slower than what was eventually released as the final punchy version.

Davies has reiterated on multiple occasions that the guitar’s distorted tone was the result of how frustrated he felt at the time. In fact, he was so frustrated that he ended up slicing the speaker cone of his Elpico amp with a razor blade and poking it with a pin.

“My brother is lying,” Davies wrote in a Facebook post from 2014, debunking his brother Ray’s claims that he should be given credit for the guitar tone.

“I don't know why he does this, but it was my Elpico amp that I bought, and out of frustration I cut the speaker cone up with a razor blade, and I was so shocked and surprised and excited that it worked that I demonstrated the sound to Ray and [Kinks bassist] Pete [Quaife]…

He continued, “Ray liked the sound, and he had written a riff on the piano which formed the basis of the song You Really Got Me and I played the riff on my guitar with MY new sound. I ALONE CREATED THIS SOUND.”

The frustration didn’t end with the session or the guitar tone, however, as rumors continued to swirl for decades that it was Page – then a session guitarist – rather than Davies who played the iconic solo, even though Page himself debunked the claim throughout his career.

“He did very little as far as I remember,” recalled Kinks drummer and percussionist Mick Avory when asked about Page’s contributions in a 2023 interview with All Music.

“But [the solo] was definitely Dave Davies, because even without knowing, you know it's Dave rather than Jimmy Page. It just wasn't in him to play like that. It was just completely off the top of his head – that solo. It fit – the attitude of it.”

Beef aside, when the song hit the airwaves in August 1964, it proved to be the breakthrough hit the band needed. It clinched the Number 1 spot in the UK and Number 7 in the US, becoming one of the Kinks’ most enduring hits along the way.

“We had no idea we would have that kind of effect on people,” Davies told Guitar World last year.

“We were just glad to make a record and get something out there. I came up with the sound, but I wasn’t trying to create something new. Although once we finished the track, I think we looked at each other like, ‘Maybe we’re on to something here…’

Elsewhere in last year’s exclusive interview with Davies, the British Invasion icon talked about the Kinks’ four-year ban from America and how it impacted the rest of their career.

After three decades, ’90s alt-rock producer extraordinaire Butch Vig has officially reunited with the Smashing Pumpkins to work on a new single.

“Back in the studio with Butch Vig for the first time in 32 years! James, Jimmy, and I had an awesome time recording this new single,” shared Billy Corgan on social media.

Corgan gave more details during his Substack livestream on May 19, where he teased what happened during the session, as well as what fans can expect from this new single.

“We’ve just recorded one song,” Corgan revealed [transcribed by Rolling Stone].

“It’s for a specific purpose, which I can’t give that part out … I haven’t come up with a title yet, honestly. The plan is the song will be released this year. I can’t say exactly when. There’s reasons for that … The song is really cool. It’s basically done recording. I’d say there’s a couple little things left. I’d say it’s 98 percent done.

“If this isn’t a 10 out of 10 announcement, I don’t know what is,” he continues. “This may be an 11 out of 10 announcement. This news isn’t anywhere. You’re hearing this first.”

However, fans hoping to hear the track live during the band's recently announced Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness anniversary tours in the UK, Europe and the States may be disappointed, as Corgan cautioned it may not be possible due to a “timing issue.”

Vig made history with Corgan and co. when he produced their seminal first two albums, Gish (1991) and Siamese Dreams (1993).

In a recent interview with Guitar World, Corgan revealed that he is “very focused on guitar music,” so the collab reveal bodes well for a potential Pumpkins album following their 2024 release, Aghori Mhori Mei.

“It’s the most motivated I have been to make a guitar record in 20-25 years,” he said. “Part of that is shoegaze music has really come back in the culture, which we’re commonly associated with.

“There came a point in the mid-2000s where it seemed like guitar was totally out of vogue. I’m not a Luddite – if people are not interested in guitar, that’s cool by me, and I’ll try to come at it a different way. But guitar is the thing I understand the most, and where I’ve had the most influence.”

In more recent Smashing Pumpkins news, amp builder Brian Carstens has revealed how he went from being a Corgan superfan to crafting amps for his hero.

When Billy Corgan announced his first-ever signature amp, the Grace, at the height of the pandemic, Brian Carstens became one of the most talked-about amp builders on the planet, seemingly overnight.

“It's like, this is what happens to other people, right? It doesn't happen to you,” he says. “You couldn't make it up. And for him to be genuinely so excited by it that he's like, ‘I want to put my name on it, and this is my first and only signature amp I've ever done’… it’s amazing.”

But like most overnight successes, Carstens’ journey is one of grit, determination and some curious twists of fate.

In fact, Smashing Pumpkins were the band that first inspired Carstens to pick up a guitar as a teenager in Michigan. By the time he moved to Chicago as an adult, he was determined to make it in music.

After a miserable stint at Guitar Center (“the worst job I ever had”), he wound up working at the Music Garage, the city’s premier rehearsal space. Amp repair guru Tim Schroeder hit him up to tech at the attached music store, where Carstens got his first taste of electronics.

“Whenever I had to replace pickups and stuff, I was like, ‘Oh, this is fun.’ Not making the nut or filing frets. And I was like, ‘I think I want to get into more amps.’ Two weeks later he fired the amp tech and said, ‘You’re the amp tech now. There's Wilco’s gear – fix it.’”

Carstens taught himself on the job and was soon hired to repair amps at Chicago Music Exchange. During his seven-and-a-half year stint, he worked on gear from Deftones, Mastodon, Joe Bonamassa – and no fewer than three Dumbles (“one I didn't jive with at all. One was cool. And Jackson Browne’s sounded amazing”).

All the while, he was picking up on what he liked from different circuits. Taking photos. Making notes. He started his own company, Carstens Amps, in 2015.

During this time, he started working on Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder’s gear [no relation]. Then he began fixing up Corgan’s. The pair met briefly backstage at a Pumpkins show. It inspired the builder to reach out.

“I just said, ‘Hey, I was at the show and saw you backstage with my friend Jeff and just wanted to let you know as a fan, thank you for always innovating. That's what art's all about.’

“He wrote me back like a minute later and he said, ‘Thank you. By the way, amazing amps. Used them on the latest Pumpkins. Well done.’”

Carstens offered to build Corgan a custom amp. But it quickly became clear that this would not be a straightforward commission.

“He told me what he didn't want. He didn't want a Marshall. Billy does not like to repeat himself. He wasn't super-descriptive, but he gave me a couple points. I said, ‘OK, give me a few months and I'll come at you with something beautiful.’ And he said, ‘I’ve never played a high-gain amp that I like.’”

No pressure. But Carstens and Corgan align in their quest for high standards. And as someone who had obsessed over the Pumpkins leader’s guitar tone for 30 years, he knew he was the man for the job.

Months later, his creation was ready. He brought it to Corgan in his Chicago studio.

“We go into this room and he's like, ‘Yeah, put it on that cabinet.’ It's a silver Marshall 4x12 from the Mellon Collie tour. He fires it up, starts playing through it. Jimmy's there and we're all just listening and tweaking knobs.

“At one point I was moving one of the controls and he goes, ‘Stop right there.’ He turns and looks at Jimmy, gets this big smile on his face and starts playing Shiva. And he’s like, ‘Can we keep it? I love it.’”

Corgan was so impressed with what he has since dubbed Carstens’ “savant-level understanding of gain and power” that he offered to make the Grace his first-ever signature amp. Yet the 100-watt head’s name was very much Carstens’ vision.

“Most things that have gain get so compressed. They get so narrow. This needed to be the opposite. It needed to be wide and harmonic and open and big. All my amps are that – there's an air around the notes. There's space. And there's a transparency. It allows you to shine.

“I didn't want to name it ‘Hellfire’. I didn't want to name it ‘The Dragonslayer’. I named it Grace. There's nuance to it. It changes your relationship with this piece of gear.”

Carstens invites an intimate relationship between the player and the amp. His creations are resolutely single-channel. He wants players to control the amp with their fingers, with their guitars, rather than rely on channel switching.

“The best amps are the ones that [players] have an interaction with. It's not just ‘click channel one, click channel two, click channel three.’ There's no inspiration with that for me. If I made two-channel amps, I would sell a lot more amps. But it's not about that.”

Instead, Carstens seeks to crystallize the ideal versions of each amp in his head with each subsequent release. The Empire is a modern metal amp designed for extended-range guitars and developed with input from Misha Mansoor. The Cathedral was designed to be “the ultimate clean, chimey, glassy, beautiful clean amplifier”.

His creations have attracted some major-league fans outside of the Pumpkins universe. Tool and Slipknot rave about them, after super-producer Joe Barresi picked one up. Will Putney always has a Grace ready to go in his studio. Greta Van Fleet are messing around with them. And it’s not all rock and metal bands, either.

“My phone rang and it was John Fogerty,” Carstens says. “He’s like, ‘I just played one of your amps at the Vault at Chicago Music Exchange. It wasn't for sale and I’d like to buy one. I’m in the cab right now going to my hotel, but I’ll send you my PayPal. I really, really like it.’”

The Grace, meanwhile, is currently reaching a new group of players as part of Laney’s Supergrace – a pedal amp that bottles Corgan’s live rig: one side Grace, one side Laney Supergroup. But Carstens had his reservations when the iconic British amp firm first proposed the idea.

“I have this thing with pedals. Playing that for an extended period of time, you get ear fatigue – there’s nothing like the tube-rich harmonic character that tubes have. But they did a great, great job with this thing.

“It doesn't replace the real, genuine article, but it allows people to access it at a price point where they can get the idea of what it is and where it comes from.”

Any future affordable collaborations weigh heavy on the Chicago builder’s mind – that tightrope between quality and accessibility. He equates the difference between amps and pedals to vinyl and streaming.

And no wonder: Carstens doesn’t want to make anything he’s not 100 percent happy with. Heck, 99 percent isn’t good enough. And maybe that’s why it took his uncompromising determination to finally unite Billy Corgan with an amp he not only likes but actively endorses.

“I don't want to create an amp to be in the middle somewhere. It's easy to get 90 percent there. To get that extra, it's hard. What separates the good from great? That's what it’s all about. Can I crack the code? If I can, hopefully I can make an amp for it.”

• For more information, head to Carstens Amplification.

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter has cemented himself as one of the all-time music greats, amassing a credits list that includes Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers, Steve Cropper, Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton and many, many more.

However, as he explains in a new interview with Billy Corgan, he never even set his sights on playing guitar in the first place. In fact, his life may have turned out very differently had his parents once bought him the Christmas present he asked for.

In the latest episode of The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan, Baxter looks back on his earliest days as a player, and recalled the moment he – begrudgingly – took ownership of his very first electric guitar when he was 10 years old.

“I wanted a bicycle for Christmas, and they gave me a guitar. It pissed me off,” Baxter says. “So I hung out on the wall, and then a friend of mine in the apartment downstairs came up to hang out one day, and he said, ‘Oh, do you play guitar?’

“I go, ‘No.’ They said, ‘Well, I'm taking guitar lessons, and if I show you some chords maybe I can have somebody to play with us.’ I said, ‘Yeah, all right.’”

Partly thanks to his neighbor’s generosity, and partly thanks to divine inspiration that one day opened the youngster’s eyes to the beauty of the guitar, Baxter’s early skepticism for the instrument was eventually defeated.

“I don't know,” he says. “Somehow or other, I got the cosmic bolt from wherever that place is. I fell in love with it.”

Baxter also had a large suite of influences to thank, including Bob Bogle and The Ventures. But, as he tells Corgan, the guitar player that inspired him “the most” was Howard Roberts.

“I was listening to Howard Roberts records when I was a little kid,” he remembers. “Every time I would listen to a Howard Roberts recording, it was like he would open the door and welcome you.

“Then once you’re inside and comfortable, it’s like, ‘Okay, let’s see where this is going to go.’ I think maybe I got some of that [style] from Howard.”

Baxter once expanded on his love for Roberts in an interview with Guitar Player, saying, “Something I noticed even as a young guitar player was how Howard Roberts had an almost conversational approach to playing the instrument.

“He didn't try to knock you over immediately. He engaged you. A good conversationalist will engage you and draw you in before presenting an idea or a concept or initiating a discussion.”

In related news, Baxter recently sat down with Guitarist to discuss why he chose to buy a beginner $140 Squier over a “bazillion” dollar vintage Telecaster.

Billy Corgan is one of the most recognizable faces flying the flag for ’90s alternative rock, having even recently made a surprise appearance at Coachella during rising indie-alt star Sombr’s set to bash out a Smashing Pumpkins classic.

However, the artist at the helm of the Pumpkins ship revealed that his inimitable guitar style can be traced back to what he calls a “weird decision” to practice guitar for four hours a day... in the dark.

“I was the type of guy who would have a record on eight hours a day,” he says on the And The Writer Is… podcast. “I was literally that guy.”

Listening to records for hour after hour encouraged Corgan to craft his own music.

“I was like, ‘Okay, if I'm going to do this, I'm really going to do it.’ I made this weird decision that day: I'm going to play four hours a day,” he asserts. “I don't know why I picked four hours a day. I would time myself, and I would get up in the middle of night, play it in the middle of the night, in the dark, no light, and just learn how to play the guitar without seeing it.”

Corgan stayed true to himself and played “four hours a day for four years in a row.” So what happened after the four-year mark? “When I hit the four-year anniversary, I was like, ‘I'm good,’” he replies. “I still practiced, but not like it did.”

Corgan doesn't explicitly explain why he decided to take such an unorthodox approach, but one can only assume it had something to do with discipline and familiarity. If you can find your way around a fretboard in the pitch black in your bedroom, chances are you'd fare quite well on a dark arena stage, too.

Back then, Corgan never thought he’d flourish into a songwriter, preferring to occupy the “gunslinger” role, à la “Malmsteen, Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhodes…” instead. “I thought I was [only] going to be a guitar player,” he divulges.

“By junior, senior year in high school, I start conceptually wrapping my head around the idea of writing songs. I had a metal band. We had no lead singer. So I would write riff-based songs like Iron Maiden.”

In an extensive interview with Guitar World, Corgan recently reflected on a tonal journey four decades in the making, and why he’s the most excited he’s been to make a guitar album in 25 years.

Back in the ’90s, Courtney Love and Billy Corgan ran in similar circles and over the years, their bands – Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, respectively – played on the same lineups, traded bassists, and even became musically interlinked through Corgan’s songwriting contributions to Hole’s Celebrity Skin, their most commercially successful record.

“I'm a smitten indie, wannabe rock star, and I've just seen you play, and, if anybody saw you in the first album era, what it lacked in Beatles chords, it made up for in complete, sheer, visceral energy,” Billy Corgan says on his Magnificent Others podcast, as he describes the first time the two met on October 29, 1991, at the Avalon, in Chicago.

To which Love replies, “I mean, if you're gonna go there, that's why I said with the Kim Gordon era, with Pretty on the Inside, like, ‘This is our own. This is the market. All right, I'm going all the way in.’”

Corgan recalls that, from that early Hole show, the two things he remembers are “the cool guitar stuff happening [by way of guitarist Eric Erlandson], and then this just never-ending scream. It was like white-hot rage, and it was performative, yes, but it was sourced from somewhere.”

As for where the so-called “white-hot rage” was coming from, Love recounts how her childhood trauma, which included her “father giving me acid from about three to six” – shaped her and what would eventually become Hole's rage-fueled repertoire.

“I couldn't afford to not understand the politics [of the music industry],” she asserts – an ethos which also extended to her willingness to recruit Kim Gordon, who she describes as “the gatekeeper,” to produce Pretty on the Inside.

“Try doing indie politics. It distracts so much, every musicality, and so, screaming was my only option – it was something I was good at too, and my lyrics were fucking fire, and I knew they were great.”

She continues, “Even though people love Pretty on the Inside, I could fuck with an R.E.M. song. I couldn't write Killing Moon, but I could fuck with the lesser [Echo & the] Bunnyman songs. I had a guitar player who was really good. I mean, at best, I was a reliable rhythmist... But I understood the skill set. I understood the art... the Peter Buck [the co-founder and lead guitarist of R.E.M.] of it all.

“So I understood what I could do with a good band. But I also understood, this is the market right now, and I'm gonna go all the way in and write great lyrics and do noise music.”

And speaking of the link between the two seminal bands, bassist to both, Melissa Auf der Maur, recently opened up about joining Hole amid tragedy and her “Master’s in Music” with the Smashing Pumpkins.

“The drama and chaos of Courtney Love and Hole are infamous, but to me it all felt familiar,” writes Melissa Auf der Maur in her newly released memoir and homage to the ’90s, Even the Good Girls Will Cry.

Like all great memoirs, Auf der Maur vividly encapsulates the pivotal moments that saw her transcend from DIY venues in Canada to joining Love and co. in front of 65,000 people at the UK’s Reading Festival in 1994. It all happened mere weeks after the tragic deaths of Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff and Kurt Cobain – and that’s just the first chapter.

“I found comfort in the chaos. My upbringing was the perfect training ground to be in a rock band and immersed in the world of Courtney. Despite how new I was to the band, I fitted right in,” she continues.

Indeed, Auf der Maur's grunge Cinderella story depicts a series of full-circle moments: her encounter with Billy Corgan at a low-lit punk venue in her native Montréal – and her becoming absolutely enthralled with the Smashing Pumpkins' music – led to a recommendation to join Hole, and later, the Pumpkins as their touring bassist, before she plunged into a solo career at the turn of the millennium.

“There's a reason why the introduction to my book, which is the Reading Festival, is [called] ‘Through the Looking Glass,’” Auf der Maur tells Bass Player, as she dials in from a room lined with photos – vignettes from those heady days.

“It was David Lynchian, Alice in Wonderland… I just stepped into another dimension. I went from a tiny town to a global stage with grief and chaos and death and everything.”

In the book, you describe feeling chosen by the bass. What was it about the instrument – its physicality and frequency – that felt like destiny rather than a practical decision?

When I was awarded Female Bass Player of the Year by Gibson, in the limo ride on the way [there], I started writing my acceptance speech, and that's when I came up with [the idea that] the bass is the mother of all instruments. So in my acceptance speech, I described the bass as the glue and the connector.

The bass is the connector that connects the singer to the drummer, to the audience, to the rhythm, and to the melodies, all at the same time… The place in which the bass sits in any music, not just rock music, but especially dance music or even jazz, the bass brings you on a different kind of journey. It brings you on a feeling journey. You fucking feel the bass.

Geddy Lee has a TV show called Are Bass Players Human Too? [and] he came to Hudson [New York, where Auf der Maur currently lives]. At the end of the visit, I was like, well, ‘Bass is so easy. That's why I picked it up.’ And he looked at me, he's like, ‘Well, that's a secret. Don't tell anyone.’ But he also said, ‘Bass isn't easy for everybody.’

I then realized, even during all my years in Hole, when it was clear that I was so young and had only played six concerts in my life, I played the bass, and didn’t make a mistake. When I joined the band, I only had five days to rehearse with them, and people say, like, ‘How did that happen?’ I was like, ‘I don't know. It was easy.’ So I feel my way through a song.

What did bass playing give you that the other art forms didn’t?

It entirely connects me to a deep way of feeling human connection, because the best of bass is when you're playing with a drummer and playing with a band and playing in front of an audience – that is the magic.

Me alone in a room with a bass; it means absolutely nothing to me. It does not please me nor make me feel anything. That’s my relationship to the instrument – it’s to connect with human beings.

How did you come across your first bass?

I had borrowed basses from older men. I was a DJ, a cassette DJ, at the local dive bar where all the older guy musicians worked with me. And I started plugging into their amps with their instruments.

Then, one day, the guys just said, ‘Hey, it’s time to get your own bass. You're turning 21, you've been borrowing all this time. Let's go find you a bass.’ And so they brought me to this second-hand shop. We walked into this giant music room. It just called me. She had the same color as my hair.

I said, ‘What about this? Is this a good one?’ They're like, ‘Oh yeah, you know, vintage Squier Precision, made in Japan, high quality…’ And then I said, ‘Great, my father, I'll just tell him it's my birthday present.’

My father [Canadian journalist and politician Nick Auf der Maur], who is a very adventurous, courageous, weird person, was having lunch, and I said, ‘Can I have $500 for this bass for my birthday? I'm turning 21.’ That was the bass I played in Hole until I was sponsored by Fender.

You joined Hole amidst unimaginable grief. How did you manage to adapt to the circumstances?

A switch flipped, and I was just the exact same person, but in a completely different environment. I was not raised in a suburban, boring family. I was raised by radical people who did radical things.

When I saw the Smashing Pumpkins and Hole play in 1991, when I worked as a ticket girl, and I saw both of them play in front of 20 people, I knew what was happening.

The world was changing, and something huge and magical was happening for my generation. I picked up the bass because I wanted to be part of the movement of radical noise-making for my generation. So I felt at home. I'm like, this is where I belong.

I was not a drug addict [but I was] watching what money and fame did to all these fragile people who were already, for the most part, coming from broken families and didn't have love and support, so their band and their community and their generation and the stage and the audience were their only family. I adapted very quickly because I understood what was happening.

What gear were you using during that time?

I only ever played the same thing, an [Ampeg] SVT tube amp – with the drive knob, not without. I had been playing a vintage one that was one of the boys' back home. I only ever borrowed until I joined Hole, so I knew what I wanted to buy when they bought me my amp – it's an SVT Pro tube head and SVT cabinet. My Fender Precision, Boss tuner pedal… that is it.

I didn’t use any distortion until later, when SansAmp made these cool distortion pedals. I also love phaser and chorus. I didn’t use anything else. [More recently] Geddy gave me all of his [signature] pedals, so I have some Geddy Lee pedals.

How did your sense of rhythm evolve once you locked in with Hole drummer Patty Schemel?

Patty and I played really well together. We [even] had a little side project when Courtney was becoming a Hollywood movie star – it was called Constant Comment. It was harder to adjust to [Smashing Pumpkins’ drummer] Jimmy Chamberlin. Me and Patty were easy.

By the time I was playing with the Pumpkins, it was a much more complicated catalog with a very complex drummer. Jimmy is a jazz-prog drummer. He's crazy cool. The sound of the Pumpkins is so Jimmy. So that was an interesting adaptation because Jimmy, like jazz drummers, does not play to a click. Patty's actually very tight. She's very, very rhythmically solid. Jimmy is like a wild animal.

It's like you're following this wild creature through two-hour sets of changing songs every setlist, and it took so long for me to figure out, ‘How do I keep up with this dynamic band?’ Because Jimmy is also following Billy, and Billy speeds up, and it's like this weird machine.

But when I did Billy's podcast [recently], I learned something about myself musically that I've never learned before. He told me about my specific pocket, which I knew nothing about. I'm on top of the beat. I’m ahead. I'll take it as a compliment, because [Led Zeppelin’s] John Paul Jones and [John] Bonham, who are one of the most famous rhythm sections, Bonham is behind, and Jones is above. I guess I naturally sit on top of the drums.

What are your memories of writing the bassline for Celebrity Skin? It’s unusual for a bassline to follow the vocal melody.

I don't remember anything. I'm very, very proud of my bass playing on that album, because I had so much time, because some of those songs, we'd be playing for hours and hours and hours.

You just play for Courtney to find her lyrics. She's someone who needs to be screaming to find the whole song for like 20 hours, so as a rhythm section, you're sitting there just playing in a loop over and over and over. So I had a lot of time to find melodic licks.

We were brought to see a Fleetwood Mac rehearsal with the producer, Michael Beinhorn [renowned producer who worked with the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Hole, and Ozzy Osbourne]. I was not a Fleetwood Mac fan because I'm more of a heavy, visceral rock fan, but I recognized being in that room watching the drums and bass, [their tracks] could be seen as simple, airy songs, but this is not simple.

What they are doing, the complexity of it when you step back, when you do a melodic line, when you open it up, when you push it… Through just one sitting and watching that rhythm section, it opened my mind to the power of less is more, but also [that] minimal changes make huge impacts on a song.

Billy Corgan famously recommended you to Courtney, and you later joined the Pumpkins. I'm curious how your dynamic with him changed across all these chapters of your life…

Our bond started when we discovered we were both born on St Patrick's Day. We're both pretty tripped-out hippie people that get a little romantic and convoluted and [are all] about the stars and destiny and astrology… He's a trip of a guy, and I am a trip of a girl, I guess, and so I think our relationship reflects this ebb and flow. Sometimes he feels like a soulmate, and then sometimes he's a total stranger.

What did you learn from him about bass playing?

I learned how to be an incredible bass player. Learning that catalog and playing 183 shows with those incredible players totally defined me as a bass player. I was a good bass player, and I am proud of my Celebrity Skin work, but oh my God… I mean, it changed my level of musicianship forever and opened my repertoire of understanding what my hands can do.

My solo records most certainly were expanded by having to learn that catalog and play it with them. So I always say the Pumpkins was my “Master’s in Music”… just phenomenal music training.

How did that impact on your solo career?

Living in the shadow of my grunge parents, Courtney and Billy, who made me, who found me out of nowhere… it was a complex and exhausting shadow to come out from under.

I made those solo records myself for myself, even though I put one out on Capitol [Records] and one on Roadrunner [Records]. I paid for them myself, because I was not going to let other motherfucking people tell me who I am or what I'm going to do and be.

It was done in protective force fields of independence so that I could explore, authentically, what it is to be me, alone, as the captain of the ship. So those two albums were completely self-exploration.

Especially my first record, being able to work with [Queens of the Stone Age’s] Josh Homme and [record producer] Chris Goss… I got to invite the people I admired the most. John Stanier from Helmet, one of my favorite drummers ever… having my favorite drummers play on my solo record was pretty much the coolest thing a bass player could ever do.

From its title to its content, your book, and, by extension, your career, have a feminist overtone. Did you feel a strong sense of responsibility in that respect when you were playing in Hole and Smashing Pumpkins?

The people from the record industry realized that the money is with the women, the money is with the girl fans. They turned the whole music industry, the pop music industry, into a female-led [industry].

Billie Eilish, I think, is a woman you couldn't even invent in the ’90s, because she's a product of a new world where, actually, women can be empowered and protected from a horrible system. She's a product of a new world, of a very special kind of world that didn't exist for women [before].

My mother, which I write about in the book, she wanted to change the way women were. She raised me, saying over and over, ‘No man should ever define a woman. You have to be your own person. Do not be defined by a man.’ So that's how I was raised, and that's what I did.

I felt a responsibility to continue what my mother had started. I just saw myself as a continuation of new feminism, and it still has to happen right now. I got very nervous in the past 10-20 years watching, well, rock music dying. So then, visceral, strong women kind of died and went more into pop.

It was a rare moment in the ’90s where women were being given a bridge into a very male form of expression, and it was so fucking powerful. [Nowadays] there's Picture Parlour, Wet Leg… of course, there are tons of women playing guitar. Thank God. But there was a dead moment there, between this and that, there weren’t any. When I was putting out my solo records, all of a sudden, I was the only woman on the bill again.

There’s this beautiful description in your book of the bathroom stall at Reading Festival as a liminal space – transitioning pre-fame Melissa into a public-facing bass icon. Looking back at that life-changing moment now, what would you tell 22-year-old Melissa?

I would tell her that she's doing it all right. It is her who has the answer. No-one in the future outside of her has the answer. The greatest thing I learned writing this book is that I already knew what I was and who I wanted to be.

I had all the tools, and I began to realize that my 22-year-old self was a teacher to me now. So I would basically tell her fucking follow your wildest dreams, listen to the craziest ideas you have in your head, and trust yourself.

I've already been everywhere in my life and back, and I'm just trying to ride the right wave to have meaningful experiences and share something of my perspective and my love of life with other people so that I can have good energy in my lifetime.

• Melissa Auf der Maur's memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: My 90s Rock Memoir, is out now.

Billy Corgan and Melissa Auf der Maur have a relationship that spans decades, and it all started with a $1 Tuesday night show – July 23, 1991 – at a dingy venue in Montréal.

It was precisely that night that their friendship and collaborative connection took flight, snatching Auf der Maur away from her DIY band in Canada to international stages with Courtney Love's Hole and, later, Corgan's Smashing Pumpkins.

Looking back on the time she first met Corgan during one his early gigs, Auf der Maur says on The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan podcast, “You were playing for $1 on a Tuesday. I was a ticket girl at that venue [Les Foufounes Électriques in Montréal], and got in for free.

“There was a Sub Pop logo on the flyer. No one had heard of your band. You had that 12-inch, and it was my night off, but I said to my roommates, ‘Some Sub Pop band is playing. Let's go see them.’ I was one of 20 people.”

Corgan, from his end, explains how that show in Montréal would not only lead to his encounter with Auf der Maur, but teach him a lesson in stagecraft – and dealing with hecklers.

“I was playing this solo in one of our songs, so I was intently looking at my guitar, and as I was playing, a beer bottle smashed against my guitar,” he recalls.

“I don't think it broke, but the beer kind of splattered, and I immediately kind of whirled up to see who threw the bottle. There's only 20 people out there – and usually when that happens, people aren't in a big hurry to let you know who threw the bottle.

“But for whatever reason, when I gave the death glare, the people around your roommate – Bruce – seemed to kind of almost say, ‘Not me.’”

He continues, “And as soon as I saw the body language of people going away from Bruce, I threw my guitar off mid-strum, dove into the crowd, and began strangling him to the ground.” Corgan vividly remembers the “look of terror” in Bruce’s eyes, because, despite heckling him, Auf der Maur’s roommate didn’t “seem to want to fight.”

The ordeal aside, the band continued playing because of a rule imposed by Corgan, even in those early days.

“We also had a rule, which you might remember, in the band, which is, no matter what happens, keep playing. So even though I'm in the crowd choking Bruce to the ground, I got back on stage, picked up a guitar, and finished the song.”

As for Auf der Maur, that was the moment that changed everything, as she explains: “That is when you captured my heart. With every song, [it's] as if I've never heard music. It was so much more realized and magnificent than a lot of the other bands.”

However, Bruce wasn’t so impressed. “Halfway through the show, Bruce, who's watching next to me, was like, ‘What the fuck is wrong with these guys?' I looked, [and] I'm like, ‘What?’ He's like, ‘They're so full [of shit]. They're not playing an arena, they're playing a punk club. Why are they acting like this?’”

Auf der Maur recalls that, right after Corgan pinned Bruce to the ground and promptly went back on stage, he played one song that remains one of her favorites.

“You said, ‘Montréal, we have one more for you.’ And you played, I Am One [the band's debut single], and it changed every cell in my body.’”

Auf der Maur's first band, Tinker, would eventually open for the Smashing Pumpkins at a show in 1993 – after which Corgan famously said, “One day, maybe you'll play in my band.”

In an upcoming interview with Bass Player, Auf der Maur also reveals the key lesson she learned from touring with the Pumpkins.

After finding herself thrust into the spotlight as the bass player of Hole in the midst of unimaginable grief – following the deaths of Kurt Cobain, husband of Courtney Love, and Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff – Melissa Auf der Maur held down the fort during the Live Through This and Celebrity Skin eras.

Fast forward five years, and Auf der Maur found herself playing alongside Billy Corgan in the Smashing Pumpkins. It was a full circle moment of sorts, as not only did she establish a relationship with Corgan way back in the early ’90s after witnessing the Pumpkins in Montréal, but her first band, Tinker, had opened for them in 1993 – and it was Corgan himself who recommended her to Love.

“When I saw the Smashing Pumpkins and Hole play in 1991, when I worked as a ticket girl, and I saw both of them play in front of 20 people, I knew what was happening,” Auf der Maur tells Bass Player in an upcoming interview in celebration of her memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: My 90s Rock Memoir.

“The world was changing, and something huge and magical was happening for my generation. I picked up the bass because I wanted to be part of the movement of radical noise-making for my generation.”

As for making the career jump from Hole to the Pumpkins, Auf der Maur describes it in her book as an opportunity to “prove myself as a musician in a man’s world of epic riffs, arena concerts, and more private jets.”

“[From] the Pumpkins I learned how to be an incredible bass player,” she extrapolates in our interview. “Learning that catalog and playing 183 shows with those incredible players totally defines me as a bass player.

“I was a good bass player, and I am proud of my Celebrity Skin work, but oh my god. I mean, I changed my level of musicianship forever and opened my repertoire of understanding what my hands can do – and my solo records most certainly were expanded based on having to learn that catalog and play it with them.

“I always say the Pumpkins was my master's in music – just phenomenal music training.”

Bass Player's interview with Melissa Auf der Maur will be published in the coming weeks.

Speaking of the Smashing Pumpkins, Corgan recently reflected on a tonal journey four decades in the making and why he’s the most excited he’s been to make a guitar album in 25 years.

Billy Corgan doesn’t often get a chance to talk guitar tone. But capturing that elusive sound in his head has driven him throughout his career. He’s spent his life in pursuit of it. “I don’t know if I ever have found my sound,” he says. “That’s the funny part. I’m always chasing something.”

The Smashing Pumpkins leader has never suffered fools and never been afraid to speak his mind. Accordingly, we’ve heard plenty about the band’s ’90s heyday and the interpersonal dramas that ensued. When I mention that I sent off an audition for the band, Corgan laughs. “Oh, wow. You might have dodged a bullet there!”

His quest for tonal refinement is as much a part of the Pumpkins story as the combative studio sessions and era-defining songwriting. It was Corgan’s discovery of the op amp Big Muff that propelled Siamese Dream to new high-gain planes. The explosive riffs of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness were shaped by his tireless preamp and power amp matching, tube swapping, Lace Sensor pickup switching.

And he hasn’t stopped – not just to satisfy his own desires, but also to be part of the changing face of guitars in modern rock.

“The midrange became the focus for guitar music in the 21st century,” he says. “I grew up listening to Hetfield and the scooped tone, and I love that sound. But listen to Metallica’s 2025 guitar sound. The scoop is gone. I don’t love a lot of midrange on guitar, but I’ve had to adjust my ear to make it happen.”

Which brings us to the Supergrace, his pedal amp with British veterans Laney. The two-channel 60W amp in a stompbox was born from his desire to revamp the company’s ubiquitous Supergroup for the 21st century. He suggested they link up with Brian Carstens, builder of Corgan’s signature Grace head, and possessor of “a savant-level understanding of gain and power.”

The resultant Supergrace delivers precision-engineered high-gain sounds alongside woodier vintage tones, essentially bottling Corgan’s live tone in one pedal. He was so confident in the sound that its first road test was in front of 60,000 people in a headline-grabbing guest spot with My Chemical Romance.

“With My Chem, they’re all playing modelers, and they sound great. Having a full rig was complicated. I think that extols the virtue of the pedal.”

This could be just the beginning of a signature relationship with Laney. There’s talk of full-blown tube head collaborations with Carstens down the line. It’s a passion point for the guitarist, who hails the legacy of the family-run company.

“As someone who grew up listening to and being so inspired by this amp, and the man who played it, Tony Iommi, is there anything I can do out of loyalty to help them?”

Testament to his commitment to the brand, Corgan is very giving with his time. We discuss the changing role of tone in rock music, his memories of Ozzy Osbourne’s final show, and why he’s the most excited to make a guitar record in decades.

Like your Reverend and Fender signature guitars, the Supergrace is reasonably priced. Why is making gear affordable to guitar players important to you?

Pretty simple: the guitar that changed my life. I walked into a Guitar Center one day and off the wall I bought an Eric Clapton model ’57 reissue Strat with Lace Sensor pickups. It was affordable enough for me as a touring musician, and that became the main guitar for Siamese and Mellon Collie, and launched 1,000 ships of people chasing that sound.

[Editor’s note: The Lace Sensor pickups on that guitar, which became known as the Bat Strat, were not stock on ’57 reissues of the day. It may have been pre-modded in store. As Corgan recalls, Guitar Center was using Clapton, who used Lace Sensors at the time, to promote the model.]

I didn’t go out and buy some $4,500 boutique guitar. I bought a production-model guitar, and it became super-valuable in my life. So every time I work with a guitar or amp manufacturer, I always say the same thing: I don’t want this to be out of the price range of anybody.

And in that spirit, the Reverends I play on stage are all production models. I don’t have a special one only for Billy – you know, special neck, special pickup – nothing. They are literally off-the-wall Reverends.

You’ve been meticulous about your tone over the years, and it shows. Can you remember the moment you felt you’d found your sound?

The first revelatory moment was when Jimmy Chamberlin sold me what became known as the Gish Strat, the one that was stolen and later returned. And it wasn’t until I played a Strat through a Marshall that I thought, “Okay, I’m in the neighborhood.” That was the first time I thought, “The way I play, expressed through this instrument and this amp, is close to what I’m chasing – what I want to feel like when I play.”

But as soon as I got there, because I was using a JCM800, there was not enough gain. And that started this whole other thing that led to multiple gain stages and jacking the signal in through the low input and KT88 tubes, and this cabinet and this wiring, and anything to just get more gain, including using shorter cabling.

How important is tone when it comes to guitar playing?

The most important thing with any guitar player is how they attack the guitar, physically. Tony Iommi’s attack vector on a guitar is far different than, say, Eddie Van Halen’s or Brian May’s, but that’s what makes them them. Only they play like that. You can imitate, but you’re never going to replicate.

And then tone: even Eddie went from that “brown sound,” that Marshall Plexi. When I was in 5150 I asked him about it, and there in the corner was the amp. There was the amp I spent thousands of hours in my bedroom trying to replicate – not realizing I’m not Eddie Van Halen! It’s never going to work.

But even he had to update his sound. And every time he would do a new amp collab, it got more modern in terms of gain. I was recently watching a YouTube clip of when Van Halen last toured Japan. I saw some fan was complaining about the sound, saying it’s not what it used to be.

And I thought, “Yes, but I don’t think you understand that Ed was under the same pressure we all were, which is, ‘I can play my old shit, but it sounds old.’

You get put in this weird spot where somebody might sound more exciting with tone, even though you’re a better guitar player. And I think that’s always been the case. Clapton used line drivers. Ritchie Blackmore used line drivers. Tony did. They had to brighten up those dark British amps.

Last time I saw the Pumpkins, I was struck by the fact you were using more modulation on your guitar leads. Does that play into your tonal evolution?

Well, I like the way things animate against each other. I can’t say I love it. I just don’t have a better solution to get that movement behind the notes, especially for lead playing. I don’t play that many leads live anymore, so if I’m only going to play two or three leads live, I’ve got to make my point fairly quickly.

I’m 58 years old, and the kineticism of a lead is what I’m interested in. The notes are less important to me. And that might sound strange, but that’s just the way I feel.

In essence, if you’re going to play a lead in an alternative rock band in 2026, what are you trying to say? No-one’s going to care that you can play good, because there are 50 10-year-olds playing Eruption on YouTube.

There’s nothing actually that impressive about somebody being able to play the guitar at a decently high level anymore. So I think it’s the expressive quality that makes it interesting. I’m more interested in creating a feeling than showing off.

We’re talking about Laney, founded in Birmingham, where Ozzy Osbourne’s farewell show took place. What did it mean to you to perform at that show?

It was honestly one of the greatest experiences I’ve had. The music, and being there in support of the band and Ozzy, meant a lot to me as a fan and as somebody who knows the Osbournes a bit personally.

I think it’ll go down as one of the great days in rock history. Just to be part of that lineup was insane, but it was that incredible moment where so many people pulled together in a common cause to celebrate the band and Oz, and everybody was so graceful about it, the vibe, the performances, the generosity.

I noticed when you got up with your fellow Chicago “metal Yardbirds”, Adam Jones and Tom Morello, you didn’t play guitar. Why not?

[Laughs] Well, originally I was going to play guitar, and then Tom wrote me and said, “Are you cool with us having K.K. up?” And I was like, “I’m getting out of the way on that one!”

I’m a huge K.K. Downing fan. In fact, I own his old number one amp and his pedalboard from the ’70s and ’80s. He put them up for auction. I saw him play that amp and that pedalboard and that V at a racetrack here in Chicago in 1982 when they were on the Screaming for Vengeance tour.

I’m not sure K.K. knows who I am at this point. I tried to talk to him about the gear, and he seemed a bit bewildered, like, “Who’s the fan that wandered in off the street?” But to stand there in Birmingham and play, not only with that great lineup on stage, but also with K.K.

It was deafening on stage. I do prize my hearing, but when he was soloing during Snowblind, I went out of my way to stand in front of that cabinet to just listen to pure K.K. with the wah and the V. And it was like an out-of-body experience.

We’ve spoken about keeping up with guitar trends. When Kiki Wong joined Smashing Pumpkins, you said you were already familiar with her on Instagram. Are there any other social media guitarists you’re a fan of?

I burned out on it, I think. And I don’t mean this as criticism – there are some unbelievable guitar players on social media. Where I get a little lost is I don’t see where a lot of that great playing is converting into popular music, whether it’s in popular metal bands or popular alternative rock bands.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are guitar players that I wouldn’t know that got super-popular on Instagram and now they’re in the biggest metal band in Finland or something.

I guess I’m old-school. I want to see those people on stage. I want to see them making the Metallica songs of tomorrow, or Megadeth or Slayer or something. I want to see that crowd of guitar players convert those incredible abilities into the popular culture.

What if Clapton had just been a guitar influencer and hadn’t been in John Mayall and Cream and Derek and the Dominos? The reason everybody knows Eric Clapton’s name is not because he’s a great guitar player. It’s because he made some of the most popular music of the 20th century – and, oh, by the way, it has incredible guitar.

The last Smashing Pumpkins record, Aghori Mhori Mei, had a great reception. Do you see yourself continuing down a heavier path on your next release?

I’m working on music, and I’m very focused on guitar music. It’s the most motivated I have been to make a guitar record in 20-25 years. Part of that is shoegaze music has really come back in the culture, which we’re commonly associated with.

There came a point in the mid-2000s where it seemed like guitar was totally out of vogue. I’m not a Luddite – if people are not interested in guitar, that’s cool by me, and I’ll try to come at it a different way. But guitar is the thing I understand the most, and where I’ve had the most influence.

So I’m excited to once more dive into the sea of pedals and amps and guitars and see if I can come up with something new to say. And I think, in a good way, the bar is very high right now.

There’s a lot of very interesting guitar bands coming on the scene, and they’re saying lots of new things. Some are familiar – I think, “Well, you’ve definitely listened to me and Swervedriver,” but that’s cool, because we stole from everybody.

It’s just that young people are listening to guitar music, and the young guitar players of today have something new to say. It inspires me to get back on the horse one more time.

What will you change about your playing and your sounds to say something new with the instrument?

That’s a really good question, because I just did the operatic interpretation of Mellon Collie in Chicago at the Lyric Opera. And a lot of the parts that the orchestra was playing were the guitar parts, and they translated quite beautifully. In the band – and I’m not making this up – we used to call it orchestral arranging.

We would look at the wall of guitars as if, “This is the oboe and this is the violin.” So, I’m inspired to go back and once more operatically arrange the way I hear the music, and then use new technology and new approaches to guitar to achieve the polyphony that I would be interested in.

Mellon Collie was the peak of a lot of years of experimentation. But we also made that album thinking, “OK, that’s the end of this. There’s no chapter beyond this. We’ve taken this as far as we can go.” Hence, 46 guitars on Thru the Eyes of Ruby, Jelly Belly – all those crazy overdubs.

So I would like to come at it now down the road, because if Mellon Collie was the summit, Machina [/The Machines of God] was the deconstruction of that approach.

I haven’t really done that Siamese guitar stacking since Oceania in 2012. But I did it knowing I wasn’t that into it. It was like, “I’m getting all this pressure to do this again.” So rather than run away from it or shut my ears, I’ll approach it from the standpoint of, “I’m not sure I have anything new to say, but I’ll try.”

How has your relationship with the guitar changed from the ’90s to now?

I’ve always been fairly rewarded for my guitar playing. But it was not the main thrust of my thing. And I think this is the reason a lot of the guitar magazines went off me in the 2000s – because I was being critical of the guitar. I wasn’t doing like, “The guitar is great and I love my guitar.” I was actually saying something more artistic, which is: “Look, the guitar needs to innovate.”

The guitar needs to be moved forward in terms of technical and mechanical innovation. If you look at the major companies, the Fenders and the Gibsons, they’re basically running museums half the time; their main focus is not innovation. This is why I’m in a relationship with Reverend, because the focus is innovation.

I used to write guitar advice columns for Guitar World. I was totally in that community, and then they just booted me out, because I wasn’t saying the right kind of political things anymore. And what’s even weirder is because of that, those 15-20 years where I wasn’t part of “guitar world,” a lot of young guitar players don’t even know I’m the one playing the guitar! They think it’s James [Iha], because they assume I’m the singer and James is the guitar player.

So even just getting back into the conversation about guitars is a relatively recent thing, and obviously part of it is me making guitar music again. But also I think it’s just I’ve always come at it from a different perspective.

By the time I was 17/18, I could play lightning-fast. And for whatever reason, I just hit the wall. I focused more on innovation and bringing something new to the table, and getting out of the gunslinger wars, and realizing I was never going to be better than Steve Vai or Zakk Wylde – and that was OK.

I feel like I’ve come full circle, where people now understand what I did, what I’ve actually contributed, and I don’t need to play any game about it. I can talk about what I love: the guitar. And I think you can see my passion for the instrument.

• The Laney Supergrace Loudpedal is out now. Head to Laney for more info.

Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne invented heavy metal together. Iommi gave it its inaugural riff. Ozzy gave metal a voice. And they might have had their moments over the years, with Ozzy’s fractious departure from Black Sabbath in 1979 a rift that took some healing, the pair have a closeness that few can understand.

Jack Osbourne can. The son of the late Sabbath frontman has seen this up close, and speaking with Billy Corgan for The Magnificent Others podcast, he revealed that a moment on the night before Ozzy and Sabbath’s farewell show, Back to the Beginning, in July 2025, typified the “interesting dynamic” between the two.

Osbourne was feeling some pre-show jitters. Black Sabbath were going out in the only way they knew how, with the biggest heavy metal one-dayer in history.

“He was so nervous about making sure that they were happy and everyone was good, like, he was very nervous,” says Osbourne. “But he was also really happy about it. He was. He felt good.”

A lot of preparation had already been done. There had been some hairy moments, too. Ozzy’s ailing health had threatened the show on a number of occasions. Even close to showtime on 5 July, there was a worry that they might have to cancel it. With that in mind, the final soundcheck carried a certain gravitas. Everyone had an edge to them. Ozzy’s voice wasn’t quite there, and Iommi noticed.

“He was soundchecking, so he wasn’t going to go out there with his A-game on,” recalls Osbourne. “He was just making sure everything worked, and ran through the set. And Tony said, ‘Hey, you’re singing flat.’ And my dad got really pissed off. He was upset.

“And my mom was like, ‘Oh, you know dad.’”

But Jack could see it for what it was. Only someone that close to Ozzy could have said that on this of all nights. As Corgan suggests, Iommi was like a big brother, Ozzy the little brother. That was the dynamic. Osbourne agrees, and furthermore, that moment – as fractious as it was – speaks to the closeness between the two. We would all do well to find a friend as close as Iommi was to Ozzy.

“I was like, ‘No, I think it’s a good thing,’” says Osbourne. “I think it’s a good thing because, out of the 40-whatever-thousand people at that stadium, the only person in that stadium that could ever say to my dad, ‘Hey, do better,’ was Tony. And I think everyone needs someone like that.”

Osbourne says all of the original Black Sabbath members were like brothers. Even drummer Bill Ward, who had sat out Sabbath’s reunion shows over various disputes, was back for this show. It was all water under the bridge.

“Although Tony and my dad’s relationship over the years had its times of being contentious, it was family,” says Osbourne. “They were brothers: Geezer, Bill, like, closest family that anyone could ever ask [for]. They’ve done life together.”

Furthermore, he believes Iommi was right to say what he said. Ozzy, who passed away on 22 July, aged 76, ultimately got the send-off he deserved.

“As I look back on it, I’m like, ‘No, I think that that was OK to say, because they knew it was the last time,” says Osbourne. “And it was like, ‘Hey, get out there, everyone needs to give it.”

What is it?

Billy Corgan’s Big Muff-drenched wall of sound in the Smashing Pumpkins helped define a generation, a sound countless players have tried to mimic, but never quite matched. Back in the early days of the Pumpkins, he was known for running everything from a KT88-modded Marshall to Mega Boogies and the occasional Orange, turning up the volume and fuzz for those iconic grunge riffs. Fast forward to today, and Corgan’s live rig is a high-gain fortress built around Grace heads, crafted by Brian Carstens, and a Laney Supergroup reissue for those glassier, lighter tones.

If you’ve ever dreamed of recreating Corgan’s current setup, you’d better have deep pockets; it’ll cost you about as much as a small apartment. Even if you somehow snagged all his amps, good luck playing through them anywhere short of a stadium. Luckily, Laney has come to the rescue for us mere mortals with the new Laney Supergrace Loudpedal.

Don’t let its small stomp appearance fool you, the Loudpedal isn’t just another amp-in-a-box overdrive pedal. It’s a full-blown, all-analog 60-watt amplifier, squeezed into a stompbox format. You can drop it straight onto your board and go from bedroom jams to stage volume, no head or cab needed, though it’ll happily drive a cab if you want it to.

As the name suggests, the Supergrace is split into two distinct sections. One side is based on Laney’s Supergroup, which offers both Clean and Dimed modes, while the other delivers the high-gain saturation of a Grace head. Onboard, you get a flexible three-band EQ shared between both sides of the pedal, plus Gain and Volume controls for each section, and a global tone knob for further dialing in your high-end. There’s also an on-board Reverb, which is based on Laney’s award-winning Secret Path pedal – and handily, the Reverb can be activated/deactivated via footswitch.

Now, for a pedal to actually work for modern touring musicians, it needs to slot seamlessly into any rig. On the back, you’ll find a balanced XLR DI out, with cab sim, naturally, so you can go direct to front-of-house or your recording interface. There’s also a standard speaker out, at 8 or 16 ohms, an effects loop, and a headphone jack for those late-night practice sessions. And, as you’d expect, all footswitchable functions are MIDI-controllable.

Inside, it’s all analog signal path, so there’s no digital modeling here. The amp section uses a sturdy Class D power stage, so you get genuine amp punch without the weight and size of a tube amp. The footswitchable boost circuit serves up instant volume and gain for solos, and the rugged metal housing means it’s more than road-ready – I mean, if Billy Corgan can take one on tour, then you can sure take it to your local bar gig without worrying about it not keeping up.

Specs

• Launch price: $629 | £449
• Type: Pedalboard amp
• Controls: Grace: Volume, Gain, Bright, Supergroup: Gain, Volume, Dimed/Clean Shared: 3-band EQ (Bass, Middle, Treble), Tone, Reverb, Boost
• Features: Two footswitchable channels (Grace and Supergroup), digital reverb, boost, USB-C audio interface, DI output, headphone output, and MIDI control
• Connectivity: USB-C audio interface, XLR DI out, 1/4" line out, effects loop (send/return), MIDI in/out, headphone out, speaker out (8-16 ohms)
• Bypass: True bypass
• Power: 60-watt Class D power amp, external 24V DC power supply included
• Dimensions: 67mm x 199mm x 143mm
• Weight: 1.2Kg
• Contact: Laney

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

Okay, the first thing I appreciate is how well this pedal is presented. Laney clearly wanted to make you feel like you’re unboxing a high-end product, and I think they’ve nailed it. The Supergrace arrives swaddled in a premium black box, with silver lettering flashing Brian Carstens and Billy Corgan’s names, letting you know this is a pretty special collaboration and one the team at Black Country Customs is very proud of – and rightly so.

Now, once I get my hands on the pedal tucked away inside, I am not disappointed. It’s a tank. Solid, weighty, and so well put together, I half expect it to come with a certificate of indestructibility. Every jack, switch, and knob feels smooth and expertly crafted. Not that I should be surprised. I’ve had my hands on a number of Laney’s Loudpedals now, from the tamer Lionheart and the metal-ready Ironheart, and it’s a format I really like. I love the rugged, no-nonsense design, and better yet, they feel built to survive pedalboard pileups and the occasional beer spill with equal poise.

Now, it is worth noting that, as this is an amplifier, it requires a fairly large power supply. The unit itself runs on 24V, 2.5A, so you won’t be powering this with your standard pedalboard power supply. If you have a fairly large pedalboard, then you’ll most likely be able to tuck it under to keep things neat and tidy, but for those with modest ‘boards, it may be more of an issue.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★☆

If you’ve ever twisted an amp knob, you’ll feel right at home here. The Supergrace is every bit as straightforward to dial in as any more traditional amp, and with it sitting directly on your board, I’d say it's more practical, too.

I honestly love how immediate and tactile it feels to use. With so much going on, it could easily get a little overwhelming, but Laney has gone to great lengths to lay out the unit in an intuitive way, with everything being well labelled and exactly where you’d expect it to be.

Of course, nothing’s perfect, and if I’m going to nitpick, I’d love to see a separate EQ for both the Supergroup and Grace channels. For me, these sides have wildly different personalities, and they deserve their own fine-tuning. Now, I totally understand why this isn’t the case for the Supergrace, not least because it would increase its footprint, but still, I think it would be worth it to have more control over each side separately.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

If I were to describe the Supergrace in a word, it would be versatile. Starting with the Laney side, armed with a Gibson Explorer and running the DI output into an audio interface with Corgan’s LA412 G12H IR loaded, I’m greeted with a sound that’s very British in its makeup. On the Clean setting, the tone is bright and responsive, and it gets a little hairy as you increase the gain. Flicking the Dimed switch introduces more gain to the party and makes the whole thing sound fatter and more in your face. There’s plenty of body to the sound, and it's undeniably Laney. From classic rock riffage to raw lead parts, I’d be perfectly satisfied if this were the only setting in this pedal.

Now, I would love to be able to switch between the Dimed and Clean modes with a footswitch. As it stands, you can’t switch this function with MIDI, either, which is a shame, as it would make the unit even more versatile than it already is.

Next, I stomp on the Grace side, and the gloves come off. It’s face-meltingly fierce, with thick, relentless gain that chews up your riffs and spits them out a whole lot meaner. There’s a sharpness to the top-end too. It’s right on the edge of being a wasp in a jar, but there’s enough note definition in the mid-range that it retains its weight and punch. It’s incredibly fun to play through. Riffs seem to have way more attitude than they probably deserve, and there’s almost infinite sustain for leads.

Now, back to my earlier point about the shared EQ. These two amps are very different beasts, and personally, I find myself wanting to shape their tones differently to get the best out of them. I want more bass and top-end in my clean sound, and I find myself rolling off some of the highs and tweaking the mid-range when I switch over to the Grace side. As it stands, I feel like I’m having to compromise with the EQ to get something that works for both sides, but it's not really giving me 100% of what I need.

The onboard boost is a valuable addition, and even performs well when the Grace side is fully gunned, and you think there's nowhere else your tone can go. I like the reverb, too. Like most players, I find myself too self-conscious to play without a touch of verb, and this one is a top-quality spring reverb that perfectly adds a touch of dimension without getting in the way.

Overall, I love the sound of this unit. There’s clarity where you want it, and a glorious wall of noise when you need it. Whether you’re chasing glassy cleans, classic rock punch, or full-on doom-lord saturation, the Supergrace more than delivers.

Verdict

From the moment you crack open its slick packaging, it’s clear Laney has gone all out with its newest member of the Loudpedal family. This is a feature-packed, well-made, and seriously fun unit backed by one of alt-rock's most prolific tone chasers.

Whether you’re a Smashing Pumpkins fan or not, I think most players would find a sound in the Supergrace to fall in love with. For me, it’s a sonic shape-shifter. The Laney side delivers everything from clean sparkle to crunchy riffage, while the Grace channel unleashes a torrent of gain that’ll make your solos scream. Add in a killer boost and lush reverb, and you’ve got a pedal that’s ready to conquer stadium stages or bedrooms alike. Sure, I wish each channel had its own EQ, but I suppose the shared controls mean you spend less time tweaking and more time playing.

Ultimately, this is a fantastic little unit that has enough useful features to disarm even the most die-hard tube amp fanatic and as a formidable amount of gain to help grunge rats break out of their sonic cages with plenty of rage.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Sweetwater Soundchecks

Jamie Slays

The Studio Rats

• Best pedal amps: big sounds in a small package

Heart’s Nancy Wilson has revealed her hilarious remedy for her unplayable first guitar, and it’s a story that anyone with siblings can relate to.

Alongside her older sister, Ann, the guitarist would go on to be the foundation of American hit-makers Heart. Yet, despite being born into a musical family, quality guitars were something of a commodity in the Wilson household.

“When the Beatles showed up, it was like, ‘I must have guitar!’” Wilson says of her earliest influences while guesting on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast. “It absorbed me, it still does. When I was nine, I felt my purpose was to learn every Beatles song, and every hit song.”

So, she got her hands on a guitar. But it was far from the Dean, Gibson, and Fender electric guitars that would later propel her career.

“I got the worst guitar of all time,” she laughs. “It was a $30 rental from the Band Stand music store down the road. It was a three-quarter-sized Lyle plywood guitar with a dowel neck. The strings were really high off the fretboard. It was life without Fs; no barre chords allowed.”

There was, however, one good guitar in the family ranks. Naturally, she was drawn to it – but it belonged to her sister.

“Ann got a good guitar from our grandma, because we were all interested in being the Beatles,” Nancy explains. “We didn’t want to be like the guys; we wanted to be the guys.

“Her guitar was really playable, so I'd sneak off with her guitar, and she'd get really pissed off at me.”

Wilson has previously revealed that her neighbors had tried to discourage her from playing guitar for one specific reason, but play she didn't listen, and she soon established herself as one of many guitar greats to have come out of Seattle, making a fan out of Jimmy Page in the process.

Last year, Wilson made the news when her custom-built baritone was stolen from the stage on the eve of Heart’s US tour. Thankfully, the guitar was tracked down after the band took the story to local news and social media channels, and it got its live debut alongside Chappell Roan – a fitting maiden voyage for the sparkling purple axe.

Michael Angelo Batio has looked back on his Smashing Pumpkins guest spot – and revealed how Billy Corgan saved the day thanks to his cat-like reflexes.

On the face of it, Michael Angelo Batio and Billy Corgan have little in common. One is a pioneer of double-neck electric guitar shred, veteran of Hollywood glam heroes Nitro, and currently of Manowar. The other is the frontman/guitarist of the Smashing Pumpkins.

But that’s not how the world works. We’ve all got more in common with each other than we ever could know. Just take MAB and Corgan.

They are both Chicagoans. They both play the guitar for a living. And Batio just happens to be good friends with former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder, which is how Batio had this remarkable story to tell Guitar World about the time he jammed with the Pumpkins onstage – and Corgan saved the day like the pro he is.

It all started with an invite from his old pal, Schroeder.

“Jeff mentioned to me that Billy sometimes has guest guitarists come up on stage to play a song with the Smashing Pumpkins,” says Batio. “I was invited to play at Riot Fest in Chicago with them. Over 40,000 people were at the show, and the Smashing Pumpkins were the headliner.”

You might remember this event. You certainly would if you were one of the 40,000 in attendance at Douglass Park that night in 2021. The Smashing Pumpkins opened with The Colour of Love, the first time it had ever been performed live. They revisited Crush for the first time since 2008. Meg Myers guested on Eye. Cherub Rock, 1979, Bullet With Butterfly Wings… The hits kept coming.

Where do you squeeze Batio into a pop-cultural event such as this? Easy, d’uh! For the last song of the night, an epic performance of United States.

Now there’s a track with a bit of runtime to let a man like Batio loose on. He had one rehearsal and then it was on.

“Billy told me to go for it during the performance and that’s exactly what I did,” he recalls “Also, on a side note, Jimmy Chamberlin is an incredible drummer. Billy, James, and the entire band are fantastic to work with, and their crew is top-notch.”

All was going well. Batio was getting into it. Now, if Mr Michael Angelo Batio is getting into it, that means he is showing you exactly what he can do, and it would be a crime of omission if he were not to show you his signature technique.

This requires both hands, maximum concentration – and this is when disaster struck, only for the feline reflexes of Corgan to step in.

“One of the greatest parts of the night was that I was doing my MAB Over Under technique, super-fast during my solo, and the wireless pack came undone from my belt, behind my back,” says Batio.

“It was going to crash onto the stage… Billy saw this, immediately came up to me, and in a super-quick motion, grabbed the wireless pack like a pro athlete before it hit the ground, reattached it, and we continued the show. All in a matter of seconds! It was an extremely agile move. It was so smooth, it was like we had choreographed it.”

Batio says he got the chance to sit in with the Pumpkins again, playing the Fisery Forum, in Milwaukee, WI. “Another huge crowd and great show,” he says. “I can’t say enough good things about him and the band – amazing songs, super-talented, and very cool.”

You can read our interview with Michael Angelo Batio, coming soon to Guitar World.

In related news, Billy Corgan recently spoke to Guitar World, during which he discussed why he changed the way he plays guitar solos and the guitar that changed his life.

Billy Corgan is an underrated guitar soloist – and he knows it. His tortured leads on vintage Smashing Pumpkins cuts like Soma and Quiet through to his mid-noughties guitar-hero rebirth on Zeitgeist have largely flown under the radar.

But in recent years, as the Pumpkins have continued their post-reunion renaissance, his approach to guitar solos has changed. He’s pulled back on the faster side of his playing, instead turning to longer, held notes and heavy modulation to cut through.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Corgan shared what prompted his change in style.

“I don’t play that many leads live anymore, so if I’m only going to play like two or three leads live, I’ve got to make my point fairly quickly,” he says. “At this point, I’m 58 years old – the kineticism of a lead is what I’m interested in. The notes are less important to me. And that might sound strange, but that’s just the way I feel.”

Corgan’s desire to constantly reinvent himself – something that both fascinates and infuriates his fanbase – extends not only to his songwriting and aesthetic, but every nuance of his playing. And the rise of technically astonishing social media guitarists has prompted him to reassess the way he tackles solos himself.

“If you’re going to play a lead in an alternative rock band in 2025, what are you trying to say? No-one’s going to care that you can play good, because there’s 50 10-year-olds playing Eruption on YouTube.

“There’s nothing actually that impressive about somebody being able to play the guitar at a decently high level anymore, so I think it’s the expressive quality that makes it interesting. So I’m more interested in creating a feeling than showing off.”

For Corgan, there’s a missing link between social media and making it in the quote-unquote real world. He burned out on the flashy playing. He wants to see more players make that transition and make their mark on the mainstream.

“I don’t see a lot of that great playing converting into popular music, whether it’s in popular metal bands or popular alternative rock bands.

“I want to see them making the Metallica songs of tomorrow or Megadeth or Slayer or something. I want to see that convert into music. I would wish for that crew of guitar players to convert those incredible abilities into the popular culture.”

The Pumpkins leader is quick to admit that he could be wrong (“Maybe there are guitar players I wouldn’t know that got super-popular on Instagram and now they’re in the biggest metal band in Finland or something”). And certainly, we’ve seen some players make the jump.

Rabea Massaad is writing, recording and touring with alt-metal outfit Vower. Sophie Lloyd got picked up to tour with mgk and released her own solo record. And Mateus Asato has played mega-stages with huge names including Bruno Mars, and is just about to drop his debut album.

It can happen. But as Corgan points out, technicality isn’t what taps into mainstream culture at large; it’s the songs that make the impact.

“It’s like if Clapton had just been a guitar influencer and hadn’t been in John Mayall and Cream and Derek and the Dominos. The reason everybody knows Eric Clapton’s name is not because he’s a great guitar player. It’s because he made some of the most popular music of the 20th century, and, oh, by the way, it has incredible guitar. That’s kind of the point I’m making.”

Billy Corgan’s full interview with Guitar World will be published in the coming weeks, in which he discusses the guitar that changed his life, as well as the Laney Supergrace, the pedal amp that bottles the firebreathing tone of his live Smashing Pumpkins rig.

Billy Corgan’s guitar tone is one of the most emulated on the planet. Whether driven by op-amp Big Muffs or boutique heads, his sounds, both high-gain and clean, are the stuff of legend.

But as the Smashing Pumpkins leader tells Guitar World in a new interview, it all starts with the guitar. Corgan didn’t seek out a special instrument when he was picking out gear to record what would become masterpieces, Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. He simply strolled into Guitar Center and found a guitar that spoke to him.

“The guitar that changed my life, at least in terms of my recording, was I walked into a Guitar Center one day and, off the wall, bought an Eric Clapton [spec] ’57 reissue Strat with Lace Sensor pickups,” he says.

“It was affordable enough for me as a touring musician, and that became the main guitar for Siamese and Mellon Collie, and launched 1,000 ships of people chasing that sound.”

Lace Sensor pickups are integral to the early Pumpkins tone. Glassy and balanced, they don’t output the same ‘Strat-iness’ that you might expect from a typical Fender, and were Clapton’s pickups of choice for his own signature model.

(NB: Those single coils didn’t come as stock in the ’90s ’57 reissue Strat, but by a twist of fate, they were fitted to the one Corgan picked up off the wall that day. As he recalls, Guitar Center was using Clapton to promote the configuration of his chosen Strat.)

That off-the-wall sunburst Fender would undergo many alterations over the years. To fans, it’s known as the Bat Strat, so-called because of the bat stickers adorning its refinished silver body, and has seen use throughout the Smashing Pumpkins’ discography.

The experience of walking into a guitar store and buying a brand-new instrument that delivered on all counts has stayed with Corgan, and continues to inform his own signature guitars with Reverend today.

“I didn't go out and buy some $4,500 boutique guitar. I bought a production-model guitar off a wall, and it became super-valuable in my life.

“Every time I work with a guitar or amp manufacturer, I always say the same thing: I don't want this to be out of the price range of anybody. All the Reverends I play on stage, they're all production models. I don't have a special one only for Billy – special neck, special pickup – nothing. They are literally off-the-wall Reverends.”

When we talk, the Pumpkins main man revealed he is now seeking out another Strat in the same vein – with, naturally, a few modifications…

“I was on Reverb recently, poking around, looking for that same model. Because I’ve never found a modern Strat that bested that Strat.

“I wouldn’t go back to Lace Sensors, but I was thinking about, what if I bought an off-the-wall ’57 reissue Strat from the early ’90s, but drop my signature Railhammer pickups in, or I could even go to [pickup builder] Joe Naylor and say, ‘Can you make me stacked single coils?’

“I was just getting sentimental for going back to play that guitar a little bit on stage, because I like the way that guitar feels in my hands.”

Billy Corgan’s full interview with Guitar World will be published later this month.

Last month, Corgan announced the Laney Supergrace, a pedal amp that seeks to capture the firebreathing tone of his live Smashing Pumpkins rig.

NAMM 2026: So, there we are. Another NAMM in the bag. 2026’s show further cemented 2025’s new normal: smaller booths, not quite as much product, but still a packed-out Anaheim Convention Center.

After making a big splash last year, Marshall was a no-show. Fender held an off-site Custom Shop event, but its only showfloor appearance was to promote its new Studio Pro DAW. Major brands like Gibson, ESP and PRS were in rooms accessible by appointment only.

Yet, weirdly, this all establishes NAMM as an important event in the gear calendar. Brands still value those dealer relationships. And, heck, as media, we can still get in, so we’re not complaining.

But what did we learn? Where is the gear industry heading? And, most importantly, what are we going to be spending our hard-earned dollah on?

Collaboration is the new competition

If there’s an upside to the ongoing tariff uncertainty and its effect on businesses big and small, it’s a new sense of unity across the industry. It’s not just about competing; it’s about growing the market by reaching out to new players and, sometimes, joining forces with complementary companies.

Take Laney. For its new Billy Corgan pedal amp – one of the highlights of the show for me – it joined forces with the Smashing Pumpkins frontman’s amp builder, Brian Carstens. The resulting pedal, the Supergrace, combines vintage Laney Supergroup sounds with the boutique maker’s detailed high-gain distortion. It’s using each other’s knowhow to further both brands.

Synergy debuted its new machine learning tech that makes class D power amps respond like a proper tube power section. But for the actual physical products, it teamed up with Boutique Amps Distribution buddies Wampler and Friedman, who employed the tech into an IR-Load head and pedalboard-friendly power amp, the Pedalhead.

EarthQuaker Devices and Dr. Z made a tube-loaded preamp pedal, ZEQD-Pre – billed as the ultimate end-of-signal-chain tonal tool. Blackstar previewed the BEAM Mini – world’s first amplifier to natively support Neural Amp Modeler (NAM). And Third Man Hardware’s entire booth is a reminder of just how many collabs Jack White has secured with pedal companies big and small.

It’s gratifying to see companies come together to push the market forward. More of this, please… (MAB)

Neural DSP has won the modeling game… or has it?

The conversation surrounding the state of play in the amp modeling market can often run the risk of becoming a bit stale. Firmware updates, hardware launches, everyone trying to do the same thing better than their competitors… modeling fatigue is a real possibility.

But this weekend Neural DSP looked to have all-but put the conversation to bed and taken control at all points of the modeler product chain spectrum. Here, new to the show, was the Quad Cortex mini – a touchscreen-equipped compact modeler that was first believed to be the middle ground between the Quad and Nano Cortex pedals.

However, that’s not really what the QC mini is. Functionally, it isn’t quite a middle-ground, because it is, basically, a full Quad Cortex, with the same processing power and a higher-than-anticipated price tag of $1,399 that puts it within touching distance of the QC.

At first glance, it looked to be the stake in the heart of Line 6, IK Multimedia and even Fender’s chances of wrestling control with their own in the premium, touchscreen-loaded, compact modeler. Those units are still years away. Neural DSP has beaten them to the punch by some distance.

Nevertheless, the story isn’t quite so black and white. At that price, it leaves the door open for rivals to issue a compact modeler of their own at a more accessible price point.

For now, the crown sits comfortably with Neural. But it might not stay there… (MO)

The tube is alive and well – the mid-range amp is not

There’s been a lot of debate about the future of tube amps in recent years. The tube shortages and supply chain disruptions of the COVID era and Russian sanctions forced a re-think for many of the big firms.

However, at NAMM 2026 tube amp builds appeared to be in rude health. High-end, innovative tube designs proliferated, with Magnatone, Orange, Two-Rock, and Divided by 13 all unveiling killer builds.

The latter’s Butch Walker signature, the BW 1969 [pictured above], takes a British amp and let’s you toggle between EL34 and 6L6 power stages, or stack them.

Orange’s OR60 is a single-channel amp that can somehow conjure up a huge variety of tones, Two-Rock’s Studio-Overdrive offers its own flexibility, bringing new levels of gain to a firm renowned for its headroom.

What is notable is that these are all high-end builds. Even the 8-watt Slack signature from Magnatone, the Lil Viper, retails at $1,899. So the tube really is becoming the preserve of the player of means, rather than the masses.

It’s sad in some ways, but it’s also taking the brakes off for boutique builders – and that’s exciting.

Meanwhile, most mass market amp solutions we saw weren’t traditional amps at all – between pedal amps, modelers, and the plethora of clever practice solutions [see below] – there were very few actual amps debuting at the sub-$1,500 mark.

All of which leaves me noting that it’s the mid-range amps that have really died a death. Those products that used to plug the gap between your crappy practice amp and your dream tube head. Those are notable in their absence. (MP)

Innovation takes many forms

Yes, the halls of the Anaheim Convention Center are typically filled with familiar-looking designs, and that shows no sign of abating (heck, even Tokai’s ‘lawsuit-era’ copies are making a comeback). But it felt like there was more innovation than normal on display this year.

Most obvious was the Casio Dimension Shifter – the doohicky that attaches between your strap and guitar and enables you to manipulate the parameters of any pedal with an expression input. That’s innovation in its purest form.

You might expect it to be the type of thing that never catches on, but the fact it was crowd-funded indicates there’s an appetite from guitar players for boundary-pushing devices.

Polyend isn’t a name we’ve mentioned much on Guitar World, but with Endless, its open-source pedal that lets users create effects from prompts, we’re sure to be talking about the Polish firm an awful lot more. It’s essentially ChatGPT in pedal form and the best use of AI in the gear world we’ve yet seen. It sounds spectacular, too.

Technological marvels don’t all require electricity, however. Strandberg debuted an all-new tremolo design, the Arc TILT, which promises smoother motion with more stable pitch control.

Gibson, meanwhile, used the show as an opportunity to gather feedback on a concept offset guitar, the Atomic Age. A brand-new guitar shape from one of the world’s oldest guitar companies? Will wonders never cease… (MAB)

The practice amp game is more competitive than ever – and it's evolving fast

JBL muscling in on the guitar arena was one of the biggest shocks of the show. The audio giant, best known for its ubiquitous portable speakers, debuted BandBox, an AI-powered smart practice amp.

Available as the Spark Go-esque Solo or the considerably larger Trio, the BandBox is most notable for its ability to separate song stems using AI, enabling players to isolate or remove vocals, guitar, or drums from any track in real time.

Shania Twain Strat slinger Lindsey Ell demoed the tech live onstage and it was impressive, quickly switching out the track mix and pitching songs up and down.

Jury’s out on JBL’s own amp-modeling tech – it is, after all, early days. Down the line, it could be worth partnering with more established amp brands to really hone the tonal side.

But as it is, the BandBox signals how much the practice amp market has changed: back in the day, you were lucky to play through something that sounded adequate.

But since the advent of the Positive Grid Spark, players are increasingly looking for something that can help them hone their playing. Finally, practice amps are living up to their name. (MAB)

Prices TBC

Like any manufacturing industry in 2026, the music-making business is heavily reliant on imports, and the tariff/global trade situation continues to have a major impact.

It’s impossible to paint a complete picture of the disruption, as it is in almost every facet of production across the industry – from components to materials and machinery – and there’s little appetite for politics at NAMM, but there are signs of the issues.

More than ever, brands appeared to be keeping info on prices for their 2026 lines very close to their chests, particularly on those products that were not due to hit stores directly.

It’s understandable: trying to predict what costs and, therefore, what viable profit margins and list prices might be in six months to a year has become a huge challenge.

Others are still figuring out how to price existing products – and we’re seeing different approaches.

For instance, Solar’s new ‘Sweet prices’ for the US, which attempt to take the uncertainty off the table by offering one fixed price that covers all shipping, tariff duties, UPS fees etc., so players know what it will actually cost at the point that they order.

Elsewhere, other forces of change are having their own impact, with manufacturers struggling to secure memory chips that are in short supply and being snapped up by cash-rich AI firms. Sadly, it seems there might be further pressure on prices, as a result. (MP)

Nylon-strings for shredders is becoming a new product category

Forget the classical guitar gathering dust in the wardrobe. Nylon-strings just got sexy. Ibanez ushered us into a nondescript meeting room so Tim Henson could give us the lowdown on TOD100, a higher-end version of his best-selling signature nylon with a Fishman Acoustic Matrix undersaddle pickup and fancier tonewoods.

Tosin Abasi, meanwhile, finally made good on his promise of a Larada nylon-string – but he ended up partnering with Cordoba to do it, with a price tag of $1,499. “It was kind of like my dream classical guitar,” he told us. “It's quite thin and it doesn't feed back on stage. You can plug it in, and if you're recording direct, you get a tone that sounds like you’ve mic’d up a high-quality nylon string guitar.”

Neither of these guitars will get you much volume unplugged; rather, they’re designed almost like electric instruments, with body contours and playability to match. And with two of today’s most groundbreaking players putting their own spin on the design, it hints towards the changing face of guitar playing. (MAB)

The headless guitar trend was never a ‘trend’ – it’s a movement

Those who thought the headless guitar resurgence was merely a phase may need to eat their words. They can’t be faulted, though – five years ago, who’d have thought that the headless guitar market would be continuing to grow with every passing month? Not many.

Strandberg, of course, is the biggest reason for that. Ola Strandberg’s firm has reframed what is possible from headless guitars while championing an ergonomics-led design ethos that prioritizes player comfort and health.

As players continue to cotton on to the benefits of headless builds, so too are rival firms. Ibanez, Kiesel and Schecter have already joined the ranks, but now there’s a move to make them more accessible than ever.

Donner’s HLX-500 – dubbed “the ultimate modern headless guitar” – is only $330, and offers an ‘asymmetrical neck profile’ directly inspired by Strandberg.

Cort, whose pedigree in affordable guitar making needs no introduction, has also released its own headless designs. Strandberg continues to set the standard and is the benchmark to beat, but this trend certainly isn’t slowing down.

If anything, it’s speeding up – and finding it’s way into more parts of the market. (MO)

Player wants are leading the charge on new products

One really encouraging trend at this year’s show is just how many manufacturers have actually been listening to players when it comes to the spec of their gear.

It’s an idea companies have paid lip service to for a long time now, but when we see stainless steel frets on Epiphones, or Yamaha finally capitulating to a rare new signature model – in the much-demanded Chris Buck CB502, its first signature Revstar – you get the impression that message boards are actually being monitored in 2026.

They say the customer is always right, but the industry has certainly previously been guilty of spec’ing to a price point rather than a player’s needs.

Now we’re seeing signature models emerge that are more than simple refinishes – and serious component upgrades on firm’s more affordable lines.

You can argue it’s simply a continuation of the premium offshore trend. I’d also wager it’s a response to the challenges and risks facing builders and guitar importers in 2026 – there is simply no room for flops.

Or perhaps it’s simply management really understanding their customers, reading the feedback and meeting them where they are.

Either way, we’re pleased to see it. (MP)

NAMM 2026: Back in September 2025, Billy Corgan made headlines when he joined My Chemical Romance onstage to perform Smashing Pumpkins classic Bullet With Butterfly Wings. But the alt-rock icon wasn’t plugging into his usual multi-tube amp rig. He was playing through a $629 pedal amp, the Laney Black Country Customs Supergrace.

“With My Chem, they’re all playing modelers, and they sound great. Having a full rig was complicated. I think that extols the virtue of the pedal,” Corgan tells Guitar World.

Announced today, the Supergrace came from a conversation between Corgan and James Laney and a request for a product that could “give the average guitar player the chance to own my live rig. My tone. The tone worth $100,000s”.

Laney collaborated with Chicago amp designer Brian Carstens, who makes the Grace heads that form the core of Corgan’s high-gain live rig, alongside a Laney Supergroup reissue that provides cleaner sounds.

As a result, the 60W Supergrace features two channels. The Grace is the high-definition distorted sound of Corgan’s heaviest riffs – it promises to be hugely responsive to guitar controls, and comes complete with three-position Bright switch.

The Supergroup channel, meanwhile, captures the grit that Tony Iommi used to invent heavy metal with Black Sabbath, but also offers cleaner textures for overdrive pedals via the Dimed/Clean switch. Laney’s ‘Transformer Rub’ sub-note is also present when you dime the gain.

As Corgan tells it, the aim was to update the Supergroup for a new generation of players.

“It shows you what's great about Laney and what’s great about a high-grade gain amp, like the amp that Brian and I did together,” Corgan tells Guitar World. “That's where it gets tricky: how do you bring that classic Laney sound into a tonality that works with a very high-gain, 21st century amp? And that becomes the existential thing that we tried to solve within the pedal.”

The pedal itself is all-analog solid state – in a painstaking process, Laney mapped the topology of both original amps and tuned them to respond like tubes – but it also features a digital IR section, and ships with Corgan’s preferred IRs.

Laney has also equipped the pedal with a Boost based on the Black Country Customs Steelpark circuit, as well as a digital spring reverb. Both are footswitchable. Bass, Middle and Treble controls are shared across the two channels, while an overall Tone control makes for quick tweaks.

There’s also XLR out and USB-C connectivity for recording with DAWs, MIDI integration for pedalboard switchers, and a transformer-isolated effects loop. Auxiliary inputs and headphone outputs make the Supergrace a valuable practice tool, too.

And, of course, it can drive a cab with 60W output (the pedal comes with its own laptop-style 24V 2.5A 60W DC power supply).

Laney lightning first struck Corgan when a Smashing Pumpkins tech sold him a vintage Supergroup. That powered Smashing Pumpkins’ 2014 record Monuments to an Elegy, and has cropped up on every record that followed. A modern reissue has since become an essential part of his live rig alongside three Carstens heads – all of which led to the Supergrace.

“I think we now have enough empirical evidence to suggest that the genius of the Laney design and the genius of the Marshall design set the template for all hard rock that followed,” Corgan says.

“I don’t think Mr. Marshall and Mr. Laney could even imagine where guitar players were going to take that. But whatever they figured out is still very valuable. This is bringing that blueprint into the 21st century.”

The Supergrace is available now for $629/£449/€529. Head to Laney for more information.

Yungblud may have been at the center of a somewhat divisive VMAs Ceremony performance last year, but there's no denying his credentials as a bona fide modern rock star – and he's rated highly by some of the biggest names in the business.

Earlier this week, Yungblud continued his strong momentum from 2025 – which included a high-profile collaboration with Aerosmith – by linking up with Billy Corgan and Smashing Pumpkins for a new single.

The singer-guitarist was widely praised last year for his stunning cover of Changes at Back to the Beginning, and notably developed a close bond with the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne.

He later linked up with Nuno Bettencourt and Aerosmith pair Joe Perry and Steven Tyler for an Ozzy tribute medley at the MTV VMAs, but the performance derided by Dan Hawkins as “nauseating”. Hawkins' brother, Justin, further accused Yungblud of “positioning himself as the natural heir to the Ozzy legacy” – an opinion that Yungblud himself hit back at.

Now, in the latest demonstration of Yungblud's pedigree, the Epiphone signature artist has announced his latest big-name collaboration, working with Billy Corgan for a revamp of his Grammy-nominated track, Zombie.

So why did Corgan, who invited Yungblud as a guest on his Magnificent Others podcast last year, agree to the collab?

“Dom [Harrison, Yungblud's name] is a true rock fan,” Corgan says in an Instagram reel posted to his band's account. “It's one thing to be a visionary, but it's another thing to have the gift to pull off the vision.”

Sharing studios with rock giants is no small task. When asked in the clip what that says of Yungblud's attitude, Corgan responds: “He has no fear.”

Corgan, like Aerosmith and so many others out there, was clearly impressed with Yungblud's chops. Here was a singer who wasn't afraid of standing in front of a stadium filled with Ozzy fans and belting out Changes – a rock star for the modern music fan.

Yungblud, apparently eavesdropping on the conversation, then appears at the door, quipping, “My ears were fucking burning!”

“With this song, I could hear no one else,” Yungblud continues of the collaboration. “When I sent the emails, I was like, ‘Yo, this is far out, but I've been channelling you with this record, would you do the honor of remiagning it with me?’”

Corgan's response? “Fuck it, let's go there.” He could see the vision.

The reworking of the track accentuates the song's authentic 1990s alt-rock undercurrent, with the pair sharing vocals, while Kiki Wong and the rest of the band all feature.

The original version of Zombie is up against Nine Inch Nails, Sleep Token, Hayley Williams, and another fast-rising, next-gen rock act in Turnstile for the Best Rock Song Grammy at next month's ceremony.

It's one of three nominations for Yungblud, which sees him also up against heavy hitters like Linkin Park, Deftones, and HAIM in other categories. That shows the scale of his impact on the rock scene.

Elsewhere, Corgan recently reflected on the writing of the Pumpkins' most iconic album, how one of its biggest hits nearly didn't make the cut, and why his bubbling chemistry with Kiki Wong is bringing the band into a new era.

Before she beat 10,000 other guitar players to the Smashing Pumpkins gig, Kiki Wong was racking up big stats on TikTok. The amp she used during that period, she’s revealed, is one that would have gear snobs cringing. And she still uses it to this day.

Speaking in the new issue of Guitarist, Wong was asked if she’d rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap amp, or a cheap guitar and a high-quality amp. She lands definitively in the former camp.

“Now, this obviously applies to me being at home and playing,” she reasons. “I've been playing out of a Line 6 Spider III 15-watt amp that I purchased in 2007. I've made about half of my TikTok videos with that amp, which is essentially where it got me today.”

As the numbers show, the competition to join Billy Corgan’s alt-rock heavyweights was fierce. Corgan said it took a “herculean effort” to sift through the mountain of applicants – and noted that Wong’s reel-driven reputation had already preceded her.

“I was a fan of Kiki’s before she submitted her name to be considered,” he told Guitar World, “and it’s great that someone of her acumen will be part of our touring family.”

However, not everyone was so keen on her guitar tone, as Wong admits. Regardless, it just shows gear doesn't matter all that much. It's what you do with it that counts. It also shows how far a cheap, widely mocked amp can take you.

“People talk a lot of poo about my tone,” Wong continues. “But, honestly, it's what I love and have loved since I was a kid. Now, on tour, it's definitely a different story – you've gotta have all cylinders running. But, overall, I love a great guitar.”

She’d proudly listed the Spider as a part of her amp collection long before she joined the Smashing Pumpkins, finding it ideal for bedroom riffing, while a Kemper amp modeler did the heavy lifting live. However, she isn’t the only big name to back the Line 6 Spider to the hilt.

Prog rock hero Steve Howe paired one with his vintage Gibson ES-175D for Yes' 2021 album, The Quest. Erra guitarist Jesse Cash also penned most of their records using the tiny modeling combo amp.

Meanwhile, Corgan has dished the details on what it's been like trading riffs with Wong, saying there’s one aspect of her playing that's leagues above his.

Wong’s full interview can be found in the latest issue of Guitarist, which features a cover story on the playing of T Bone Walker.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

Defining a place in a band as celebrated as the Pixies may seem a near-impossible task, especially given that her predecessors included the likes of co-founder Kim Deal, but bassist Paz Lenchantin was up to the challenge.

For 10 years she held down the bass chair with the alt-rock icons before a seemingly acrimonious split in 2024 saw Lenchantin take her leave in order to concentrate on her own projects.

Her debut album, Triste – featuring former A Perfect Circle bandmates Troy Van Leeuwen and Josh Freese – has now been released on her own label, Hideous Human Records.

“To me this album follows a thread of all the different bands I’ve been in,” says Lenchantin. “People might only know me as the bass player in the Pixies, but my background is really diverse, so it’s like a tip of the hat to where I’ve come from.”

Happy to be a musical chameleon, Lenchantin has steadily reshaped and shifted her bass playing over the past decade years, with the Pixies occupying much of her time onstage. For Lenchantin, though, finding her own path proved difficult.

“After my separation from the Pixies, or whatever you want to call it – I had no idea the Hollywood Bowl show would be my last. The whole thing felt like a divorce. But when you feel broken like that the only person that's going to get you back up is yourself. That's how you build confidence.

“So I went to my studio, which I guess was more like a jam room at the time. It’s actually a beautiful recording studio, but it had been used by so many people over the years that by the time I got there everything was tangled up. I just wasn’t familiar with it as a creative space.

“I had no future plans at that point, so I kind of undid everything and put it back together again. I just got reconnected with it.”

How were the studio sessions for the album?

“I had so many song ideas stored in my phone, so I just started scrolling until I found something that I liked. My next plan was to get the piano sounding beautiful, and then I added some strings. I’m a terrible drummer, but I ended up playing some drums. Songwriting is really a science. It’s not emotional at all.”

How so?

“It can be emotional when you listen back, but when you're writing I think emotion blocks you from the truth. If you’re doing something practical like driving to work, that’s when you might stumble upon an idea that can make you start to cry. You can't summon that on demand, so when I’m in the studio I like to start with something practical.”

Can you give me an example?

“I might have a theme for every song and a word associated with it. It could be the word ‘snake’ or something that’s quite symbolic. It would also be a simple word that you can instantly start rhyming with. It’s quite a David Bowie-esque approach to songwriting, but that’s kind of how I work.”

What made you decide to start your own label?

“I couldn’t begin to imagine taking this album to another person and be like, ‘Hey, are you interested in my songs?’ That thought was making me want to quit music altogether. It just felt too vulnerable. So then I thought, ‘How about if I don't ask anybody what they think of my music? And I just do it myself?’

“Creating a label actually led to one of my proudest accomplishments in building my own website. It might not be that good, but I still can’t believe I did it. At this point in my career the music had better be fucking good, but whenever someone’s complimentary about one of my songs, I’m now sat thinking, ‘That's great, but did you check out my website!?’”

Did you feel any pressure to stretch your style?

“I don’t really feel pressure like that from other people, but there’s a fear of letting people down. Luckily, I have so much material that if one song doesn’t quite work then it gives me an opportunity to bring out another one. I love taking songs out of that initial idea phase, so failure can often create something else.”

What’s your studio bass setup? Are you still using your vintage P-Bass?

“Yes. I never would have got that bass had it not been for Billy Corgan. Once I left A Perfect Circle, I joined Zwan with Billy. I had a Fender active P-Bass at the time, but Billy told me to go out and look for something else. He just didn’t think it was the right fit. So I found this old ’70s P-Bass, which I later found out was from 1965, and I just fell in love with it.”

What advice would you give someone who's just starting out?

“As much as we like to criticize these iPhones or smartphones, they can be so good for musicians. We can capture our ideas wherever we go. It’s not like we have to quickly grab a pencil and some paper to write down an idea.

“I’m not saying everyone should start hoarding songs because it’s also knowing how to tighten things up and keep your room clean. I definitely have too many ideas, but I always like to have an abundance of something.”

What’s next for you?

“I've been wanting to put out a record of ballads. You could look at any band from Aerosmith to Black Sabbath and make the argument that it was their ballads that made them so successful. There’s something about the wonder, the intent and the melodrama that’s in those melodies.

“The challenge is really committing to that one emotion. Eventually, I’d just want to move on to a punk song or whatever.”

• Triste is out now.

To celebrate the Smashing Pumpkins' first Japanese shows in 12 years, Yamaha has brought each member's custom guitar designs to life, offering unique twists on the firm’s best-known instruments.

Among the crop there are two Pacifica models, a Custom BB bass guitar, and, for Kiki Wong, a pretty extravagant Revstar. The quartet of instruments reflects their unique personalities.

“Yamaha Guitars have been proudly working closely with The Smashing Pumpkins for over a decade,” the gear brand explains. “The Rock legends’ announcement that they would be performing in Japan for the first time in twelve years was the perfect opportunity to collaborate once again, this time on unique custom instruments for this special tour.

“Out of the Yamaha Guitar Development Custom Shop in Calabasas, Los Angeles, Yamaha’s Lead Electric Guitar Builder, Rafael Barajas, turned each band member’s concept into reality.”

As such, Yamaha says the PACP12M was the natural starting point for Billy Corgan to base his design, offering an alder body and maple neck/fingerboard tonewood combination.

Its custom sparkling purple finish takes it a little away from his existing Reverend High Tide Blue signature guitar, but tonally, the inclusion of his signature Railhammer Z-One pickups, which are bestowed with a chrome finish and a design that pays tribute to the classic Pumpkins EP The Aeroplane Flies High, gives it some familiarity. Amusingly, Corgan once revealed that the pickups were dressed that way without his permission.

James Iha's Pacifica looks far sleeker, with a black finish and matching pickguard. The PAC611H model provided the template because he prefers hardtail bridges. It also features Anderson Guitarworks high-output humbuckers.

“The body has been repainted in a black finish mixed with iridescent sparkle to reflect stage lights, and the back of the neck has been sprayed with a satin finish for smooth playability up and down the neck,” Yamaha details.

Kiki Wong, who beat 10,000 applicants to the Pumpkins gig, is plenty familiar with Revstars. In fact, she got the new RSP20 Pro Series model just a few months ago, so it's no surprise that she gravitated towards that exact model for this build.

It's hard to look past its extravagant leopard print colorway, but beyond it, there are Seymour Duncan JB and Jazz humbuckers to bring it in line with her other go-to instruments.

Last but not least, Jack Bate's bass is adorned in a crisp white finish and a Rising Sun, as a nod to Japan's flag.

The instruments, which were exclusively played across the band’s recent Japan dates, are now on display in the Yamaha Music Ginza Store in Chūō, Japan. They'll be on display throughout October.

In related news, Kiki Wong has explained how joining the alt-rock giants has made her a better player, while Corgan has detailed the one technique Wong has that's far beyond his skill level.

It's fair to say that ultra-shredder John 5 is a Telecaster mega-fan. He owns a staggering amount of Telecasters, including a model from each year of production between 1950 and 1983.

Some other standout picks from his collection include one gifted to him by Eddie Van Halen and a gilded axe he played so much that Fender feared for his health. But the player who kick-started his love affair with the Fender classic is a little surprising.

Having played Teles in a variety of bands – from David Lee Roth to Rob Zombie and Mötley Crüe – the guitarist has proven just how versatile his weapon of choice can be. But, speaking on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast, he reveals his discovery of the electric guitar came from an unlikely source.

“It's totally Don Rich's fault,” he says of the Tele's appeal. “Something in my brain went, 'Boing.' I loved it.”

As Corgan says in the interview, finding live music on television in the 1970s was like finding ice in a volcano: “You took whatever you could get,” he laughs.

For John 5, Hee Haw – a country music-centric variety show – was his Holy Grail, and he'd watch it religiously with his father. Seeing a youthful Jimmy Henley “killing it” on the banjo was a pivotal moment for him. But it was Rich who turned him onto the Tele and the instrument that would come to define his life.

“All of them were incredible, but I was so drawn to Don Rich. Oh my god, he could play,” John 5 purrs. “I just couldn't take my eyes off his guitar; from age six, I knew I wanted to play an electric guitar. I didn't even know they came in any other shape. I was mesmerized by it. It really was an epiphany for me.

“My first real guitar was a Stratocaster, but I didn't love it,” he adds. “I was waiting for my Tele.”

John 5’s country influence runs through his career, with chicken pickin’ licks a major part of his vocabulary. Even though Van Halen, Kiss, and Crüe – who he joined in 2022 – were his obsessions, the echoes of his formative years are still present.

His latest signature guitar – a Tele, of course – arrived in 2023, which later inspired an instrumental song in which he throws in the “kitchen sink” of ridiculous techniques, transcending heavy metal and country borderlines.

“The guitar is, to me, the perfect guitar,” he says of The Ghost, his signature. “It has everything; looks, durability, amazing sound, so the only thing I could do is create a song that shows all of its glory.”

Looking back on his Tele affinity, he once recalled he lost a tooth playing Star Spangled Banner on one, and that he'd skip school to practice when a part was getting the better of him.

“We were the first band of our generation that started to grow up,” Billy Corgan says, reflecting on the making of the Smashing Pumpkins’ 1995 grand opus, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

“The band was coming off a golden moment, which was the grunge explosion. But all movements start to run out of gas, and then the gatekeepers come in and start trying to say what it really means – when they had nothing to do with authoring it.

“In our case, we made the move to grow up before anybody else, and then we were sort of singled out for criticism as far as other people were concerned, either because A) the party needed to continue, or B) growing up was some sort of sellout or something.”

Indeed, the previous two years were a heady time for the Pumpkins. Their 1993 album, Siamese Dream, contained a steady stream of radio and MTV smash hits that drove sales past the four million mark.

The band – which in addition to Corgan, Iha and Chamberlin also included original bassist D’arcy Wretzky – spent much of that year and the next on a relentless touring cycle (they headlined 1994’s Lollapalooza festival), and by the time live commitments wound down, Corgan, championed by some as one of the era’s most creative and vital music makers while lambasted by others as nothing more than headline-seeking megalomaniac, found himself at a personal and creative crossroad.

He decided to go big, and that meant wielding his newfound commercial clout as a form of political capital. The new record would be a double CD, and the material would spread the waters of what was considered “alternative rock” by embracing progressive rock, art rock, orchestral pop, folk and heavy metal.

In place of Butch Vig, who had produced Siamese Dream and the band’s debut, Gish, Corgan enlisted Flood (U2, Nine Inch Nails, PJ Harvey) and engineer Alan Moulder (the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine) as co-producers.

Over an eight-month period – “It was essentially four months of preparation and four months of recording, sort of,” Corgan remembers – the band cut upwards of 57 songs, 28 of which ultimately made the final double album that clocked in at just over two hours.

As lavish and ambitious albums go, Mellon Collie ranks alongside the Beatles’ White Album, Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk as career-defining masterworks.

Meticulously conceived and rich in every detail, its day-and-night theme contains moments that veer from almost unspeakable beauty (Cupid de Locke, Stumbleine) to ghastly horror (Tales of a Scorched Earth, X.Y.U.), with Corgan channeling a torrent of emotions. One minute he’s frozen in a kind of childlike awe; the next, he’s luxuriating in blissed-out romanticism.

Songs that reveal stark introspection give way to truly frightening sections of raw, unhinged anger in which Corgan – yes, he’s raging in a cage – gnashes his teeth and froths at the mouth. It swoons and spirals, exalts and destroys.

Released in October 1995, the album debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard 200 (it’s the band’s only record to reach the top spot), and thanks to yet another succession of hits (Bullet with Butterfly Wings, 1979, Zero, Tonight, Tonight and Thirty-Three) it stayed on the charts for well over a year. All told, the album sold a staggering 10 million copies, earning diamond certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

While the reviews were generally favorable (most critics hailed the record as a work of art), a few journalists took issue with the album’s length – the word “indulgent” was frequently tossed around.

For Rolling Stone critic Jim DeRogatis, Corgan’s lyrics were a particular sticking point. In his three-star review (which Corgan remembers as two-and-a-half stars), he wrote that the songwriter was "wallowing in his own misery and grousing about everyone and everything not meeting his expectations.”

“But he wasn’t wrong. I'm still there,” Corgan says, before adding, “Jim had a particular bone to pick with me that was personal, and that went on for years. We eventually made our peace, so I laugh at it now, but he was using that as a way to basically kneecap the band before it got out of the gates.

“I’ll say this, though: If the record was indulgent and wallowing in a particular form of misery, well, so were a lot of other people because that’s why the record resonated.

“This is where critics oftentimes mistake things that hit the zeitgeist,” he continues. “If an actor plays a serial killer, no-one really believes the actor's the serial killer. But when rock stars play misanthropes, the critics can help but believe the rock star is the misanthrope.

“Capturing the zeitgeist of a time requires some sublimation of one’s personality. Mellon Collie is not my personality. It’s close to my personality, but it’s not my personality.”

He pauses. “Machina/The Machines of God [2000] is probably much closer to who I am as a real person than Mellon Collie ever was.”

The Beatles disagreed with him, but George Martin famously said that he thought the White Album would’ve been stronger as a single record. Hindsight being 20/20, is there anything about Mellon Collie that you would change today, if given the opportunity?

“I think the only sort of inner regret I have is that it's probably a touch too long. If I had it to do over again, it probably would've been a slightly better record if it was 24 songs instead of 28.”

At the time you were starting to make it, was everybody on board with it being a double album?

“Oh yeah. I’d fought all the political battles internally in the year before that. During the height of Lollapalooza, when we were touring as the headliner and the band was getting really big, I announced on MTV that our next record was going to be a double, and the record label went into a panic.

“They told me I was insane – things like ‘career suicide’ and all that stuff was thrown around. It was seen as a sign of my growing hubris. ‘He’s gone mad’ and that sort of thing. I kept saying it was like our version of The Wall or the White Album, but I never took the time to count how many songs were actually on those records. If I’d done that, you could argue it would be a really strong record if you took the best 18 songs off of Mellon Collie. I mean, that’s a very, very strong record.

“It ended up being about filling those two CDs. So yes, I’d won the battle, and yes, we were going to make a double album. We had a producer who was willing to take the journey into the murky depths of whatever this was going to be.

“Oh, but there was something else I don't think I've ever really spoken about: There was also a sense of ‘Wait… If they’re going to do a double album, they’re going to be off the road for a very long time.’ So there was that pressure – you’re giving up a lot of money by going off-cycle this long, so the record had better be fucking good.”

It’s been reported that when Flood came into the picture, he wanted to change the way the band worked. He wanted you to jam more and record that way, which resulted in a lot of basic tracks.

“His main thrust was, ‘I want to record the band I hear on stage.’ He said he was shocked by the difference between the band he heard on Siamese Dream and the band he saw on stage. It became a process of like, ‘OK, how do we do that?’ The jamming and live take approach actually wasn’t dissimilar from Siamese Dream in that we would record live and then I would erase everything and re-record everything.

“Flood’s idea, however, was that he wanted Jimmy’s drum takes to be representative of the band at full throttle, not go in there and play so as Jimmy gets a good drum take and then we’ll put music on it. No, Jimmy needs to be playing like he does in a concert, which meant the band needed to animate and push Jimmy to the edge of his capability. And then you erase the tracks and then you put music on the top of that.”

How do you actually do that in a recording setting? Because you’re actually not live in concert. You don't have people screaming, and you don’t have that kind of excitement. The band is in a room by themselves. It’s kind of a sterile environment.

“Great question. First of all, we brought in a full P.A. so we would play at full volume. Imagine we’re in a room where it’s easily over 110 decibels. The old Pumpkinland, which is what we called it, had brick walls, a concrete floor with industrial carpeting and a high wood ceiling.

“So now we’ve turned everything up – I’ve got two Marshall half-slant cabinets at full power. James has two at full, and D’arcy’s got two full SVT bass rigs. We have a full P.A., including Jimmy’s drum monitors and our wedges. We’re playing at full concert volume.”

Logic would dictate that yes, that would certainly change the way you played and recorded. It sounds like an overwhelming experience.

“Well, it’s a lot different from putting your amps in a room, wearing headphones and playing along to Jimmy to get the most pristine drum tracks. When you hear, for example, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, that’s the live take of Jimmy playing to the band at full volume. That kind of energy and ambiance could only have been created that way.”

As you mentioned, the band had now become huge, and with that success came a relentless touring schedule. By the time you got in the studio, did that kind of energy and exhilaration give way to burnout?

“I don’t think so. I also think it had a lot to do with the way we recorded. On any given day, we would come in at, say, 11, and we would practice for at least an hour. Whether we were working on an arrangement or a new song, we would practice as we would as if no-one was in the building. Then, if we had something we felt was worth recording, we would go ahead and endeavor to record that, however many takes that might require.

“There would probably be a lunch break, and then we’d go into recording mode. Now, the band’s responsibilities were about one-10th as vast once we were in recording mode as they were when we were tracking. So although they might be in the building, once practice was over, it was mostly me working with Flood on a guitar sound, a guitar part or an arrangement or whatever. I was full-time, and the band were kind of part-time.”

Because you were shouldering so many of the responsibilities, did you ever feel as though you were stretching yourself a little too thin? Did you ever feel as though you were losing your focus?

“Let me answer it this way: first of all, we pushed the record back, which alarmed the record company because they had hard release dates that were involving typical record company stuff.

“It was going to be their big record of the year, so they were really counting on it coming out. It reached a point where there was a hard, fixed date, like, ‘You will turn in this record whether it's done or not. Here’s your hard date out.’”

No pressure, right?

“There’s the pressure of that, sure. By the way, there was a ton of stuff that was unfinished when that verdict came down. Now, we were running two rooms at CRC Recorders, which is now defunct. Alan Moulder was working in one room with other bandmates, and I was working in the main room with Flood and flitting back and forth between the two rooms, depending on what work was going on.

“I remember walking in when James had been working on the guitar parts of Thru the Eyes of Ruby. I might’ve been in a bad mood, but I just didn’t like what was happening. I let Flood know that we were at a stalemate on the song, and he looked at his watch and said, ‘You’ve got four hours to figure it out, because otherwise we’re going to have to kick the song off the record.’ In the next four hours, no joke, I think I put 46 guitar parts on the song, totally on the fly.”

It’s been written that you recorded 70 guitar parts on the song.

“Who knows? There was a lot of layering, so maybe that pads the number of parts. My point is, not only did I have to make up the parts that I didn't have, but I had to record them over a seven-minute song.

“At the end of the four hours, I had to present it all to the producer and have him go, ‘OK, good. Let’s move on.’ That’s the atmosphere this was recorded in, which was like, ‘Go now. No time. Yes or no?’ It’s also worth pointing out that we worked 86 days in a row to finish the record.”

That might cause some burnout.

“Yeah.”

The song 1979 is regarded as a classic. Is it true, however, that Flood initially wanted to drop it from the record?

“No, that’s not true. What happened was, it was tabbed early on as a potential single, which threw a shadow over the song, like, ‘It better be great.’ Well, every time the band tried to do it, it sounded like really bad B-level Rolling Stones. We would go out and play it, and I’d look around like, ‘This just sucks.’ Jimmy would say, ‘OK, what do you want me to play?’ Everybody was convinced that was the beat.

“We had this whiteboard Flood had made – you know, drums, bass, guitars, vocals. He looked at the board, and 1979 had nothing checked off. Then he looked at his schedule, and we were literally two days from the end, and we had to fly to L.A. for mixing.

“He said, ‘OK, tomorrow is the day. If we don’t finish this song, it’s off the record.’ It was the right decision, but I was thinking, ‘How can I drag it out even further?’ I guess I would've made the case that we could have worked on it in L.A. while the mixing was going on.”

So what did you do to save the song and make it more than just B-level Rolling Stones?

“Well, a few things happened. I went home that night knowing I reached this kind of crossroad, and I needed to make up my mind on something. That’s when I reframed the song in my mind and I recorded an acoustic demo. I changed something about the arrangement with the vocal, but I don't remember exactly what it was. I basically finished the song. It was done and it sounded great.

“The next morning, I played Flood that version of the song, which I think we recorded – it was just acoustic and vocal. Flood said, ‘OK, great. Now what are we going to do?’ We all agreed the demo had something, so Flood said, ‘Why don’t we just redo the demo?’

“We had the Alesis drum machine. I recreated the exact beat with the exact same sound, including the click. If you wanted the click in, you’d press some button and it would go on top of the beat. That’s what gave it this kind of drive. We tried it without the click, but it didn’t sound the same.

“OK, we made up our minds – we’re using the drum machine. We had the drum machine, and let’s call it a sketch of me playing the song. Now what the fuck were we going to do? We’d cast our lot into this particular ocean. The next thing was, ‘What's Jimmy going to do?’ I said, ‘Well, what if he came in playing on the chorus?’

“Flood was great at setting up drums really fast, so he threw up a kit and had Jimmy play along to the song, and I would just kind of go, ‘Jump in here and play.’ And then, ‘OK, stop.’ We got the arrangement to where it was like it could work, but when Jimmy would try to track it, he would invariably drift. This was pre-Pro Tools, basically.

“I had Jimmy play for two minutes, and I’d listen to where his beat swung intuitively with the drum machine beat. I took those two bars, dropped it into an Alesis sampler, fucked up the sound, then flew it back in.”

The phrase “chasing the demo” comes to mind.

“Well, the strength of the song is in its simplicity, but the mode we were in was simplicity was the last thing on our mind. What’s funny about it is, it’s become a very influential song. It was recently used by Jessie Reyez in an interpolation, which is a great version. I think it was so modern in its approach, but we weren’t trying to be modern. We were just trying to find a version that sounded good to us. We ended up just letting it be what it was instead of trying to make it something that it wasn’t.”

Fuck You (an Ode to No One) is one of the most bruising songs you ever recorded. Is it true you played the solo till your fingers bled?

“I don’t know if that’s true. I remember we had a B room, this very small production room. I had my cabinet in this really, really small room – it was about the size of a closet. Even when I would sit and play in the control room, the sound from the cabinet was so loud because it was right there.

“Somehow I got the idea that not only did I want to play the solo in front of the cabinet to get the right kind of feedback and resonant things looping through the guitar, but at the end of the solo, I wanted to throw the guitar at the amp to make some sort of statement.”

As one does.

“I would throw the guitar at the cabinet, which would knock it completely out of tune. Then I would go back and listen to the take and think, ‘Oh, that sucks. Do it again.’ I’d tune the guitar, go back in and blast it out.

“I have this memory of killing myself, blasting my head off, and then throwing the guitar at the amp over and over to get the perfect kind of cataclysmic ending. Whether or not my fingers bled, I don't remember.”

• Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is out now via Virgin.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

During a dual Zoom interview with Guitar World, Billy Corgan remembers he has a bit of pressing musical business to go over with Kiki Wong. “Kiki,” I’m breaking down all these parts, so I’ve got to call you about some guitar stuff,” he says.

“Awesome. Sounds good,” Wong responds cheerfully.

No doubt this has been a constant in her life since the day everything changed for her back in April 2024, when the Phoenix-based guitarist and social media shredder was chosen over 9,999 other hopefuls to join the Smashing Pumpkins following the departure of longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder.

Given just three months to get up to speed (during which time she had to learn some 35 songs that might comprise a Pumpkins setlist on any given night), Wong was thrown in the deep end and made her debut with the band in front of 15,000 British fans at the Birmingham Arena (her second show – at London’s O2 Arena – raised the stakes even higher).

“The second show at the O2 was insane,” Wong says. “But I do remember feeling, when we did get up on stage, that it felt a lot better than in rehearsal. It was so much fun to be a part of it all.”

During rehearsals, Corgan had a strong sense that Wong could handle the gig, but he also recognized that the concert stage would be the true litmus test.

“Some people get the deer-in-headlights thing, particularly when you're up there and suddenly you have to remember 4,000 weird guitar parts,” he says.

“Plus, the band’s loud and we’re playing faster, we’re playing lots of big places… That’s the problem with being in an old band. We can kind of phone it in at rehearsal or just be like, ‘Does everybody know what they're doing?’ No-one’s playing with the level of intensity we’re playing at live. I think Kiki probably experienced that on stage, like, ‘Oh… There’s that other thing that happens with them.’”

That “other thing” – the hurricane-like force of the band in full flight, along with the thunderous roar of the crowd – could break even the most capable and experienced of players. Happily, none of that came to pass.

During those first high-level shows, Corgan recalls glancing at Wong and thinking, “All right, she’s fine. I don't need to pay one ounce of attention to whether or not she’s drowning over there. She’s going to be fine.’”

What’s more, he noticed right away that Wong had a profound – and unexpectedly infectious – impact on the rest of the band (which also includes guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, along with touring bassist Jack Bates and keyboardist Katie Cole).

“Kiki held down her corner of the stage, and something about her personality kind of brought Jack forward,” Corgan says. “Suddenly the band was playing with a lot more aggression and fire.”

Given that the Smashing Pumpkins have had more than a few musicians drift in and out of their ranks over the years (between actual members and touring players, it’s something like 30 different people), Corgan’s assessment of Wong’s influence is not insignificant. Could this be something of a new chapter for the veteran group?

Corgan mulls over the question, then says, “I think when you’re in a situation where you need to bring in an additional musician, there’s a trepidation in the unit because you're wondering how that person’s personality will tip the balance positively or negatively.

“Secondarily, of course, there's how it will work in terms of musicianship. Kiki's such a wonderful person to be around – she’s already made the band better because everybody is in a better mood.”

Wong blushes and smiles as Corgan continues: “Sometimes that’s all it takes. Someone’s enthusiasm and positivity and just good-heartedness can make grumpy musicians realize that the opportunities they have are still important, and not to be looked past or easily waved off if they become inconvenient to obviously a much longer story that doesn’t always involve one gig or one tour.

“We’re very grateful to Kiki, because she’s brought a lot of good vibes and good times, and all those things aside, she’s a great, professional musician.”

At the time of our conversation, Corgan is prepping for a solo tour billed as “Billy Corgan and the Machines of God” for which he’s formed a side band consisting of Wong, drummer Jake Hayden and bassist Kid Tigrr. Soon after, it’s right back to Pumpkins world – the band will tour Europe, then Asia and the Middle East.

“When I do any kind of solo stuff, I know the first thing people assume is there's some issue with the band,” Corgan says. “Everything’s fine. In fact, the band's playing more shows this year than I’m playing solo.”

As for Wong, who will perform new songs and deep cuts on the solo tour before heading back to the Pumpkins, it’s a seemingly never-ending cavalcade of fresh material to digest.

“It’s a lot of work, but I love the work,” she says. “It’s been really challenging; I’ve been so used to my own style, and it’s easy to get very confident, maybe too confident. Suddenly I’m learning a different style, and I’m almost becoming a different musician, so it’s super-fulfilling. I’m deep into this whole new world of music I can tap into and grow from.”

Kiki, from what I understand, at the time that the Pumpkins were holding the open auditions, you were kind of in a down place musically; things weren't quite working out for you. What made you think you had a chance to be considered for the Pumpkins?

Kiki Wong: “Oh, man, it's so funny. My baby was six or seven months old, so it was these super-hardcore months of babyhood.”

Of course, when your baby is that young, you naturally think about trying to join a big band. Everybody knows that.

Wong: [Laughs] “Yeah, right? But you know, my brain is wired in a way that makes me on the verge of being a pessimist – slightly pessimistic but closer to a realist. But there’s always been this thing in my head, like, ‘When am I going to quit the dream and be just a person? How long can I keep hammering at this thing and constantly being let down?’

“Now I had an actual reason to think that way, which was to take care of my kid. I remember pushing the baby around in a stroller – he couldn’t sleep – and while pushing him around in the Arizona desert heat, I kept saying to my boyfriend, ‘What if I become a Pumpkin?’ He said, ‘You’ve got this. You’re going to get it.’ This was before we even heard anything back from anyone. I had just thrown the resume in there, and I was like, ‘There's no way. There’s probably 4,000 people already.’”

You were off by 6,000.

Wong: [Laughs] “But then everything unfolded in such an unbelievable way. Every step of the Zoom call with the band and being invited to L.A. – I remember right before the audition I still didn’t think I was going to get it, but I didn’t care because I knew I was going to play with legends.

“Even if I didn’t get anything, I’ve gained that experience. I remember going into the actual audition and playing, and I forgot what I was doing because I was just looking at the band, thinking, ‘This is fucking awesome!’ I was having so much fun.”

Billy, I have a key question: out of the 10,000 applicants, how many videos did you actually watch till you got to Kiki? And when you got to her, were you like, “Maybe we should stop here?”

Corgan: “I had to give some sort of filter to it because the response was so overwhelming, and that filter was, ‘Send me anybody with a professional resume.’ If they’ve done anything – play a casino show in Vegas, tour with any band that’s got a recording history, anybody who would remotely qualify – send them to me. I would say there were easily, gosh, 500 or 600 of those.

“I had to go through all of those responses and whittle them down. The thing I remember very distinctly, obviously given the result, was when I saw Kiki’s name, I kind of stopped and thought, ‘Wait… I think I follow her on Instagram.’ I went to Instagram to confirm this, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s that person I really like.’”

You had already seen her playing somewhat.

Corgan: “Right. So I had this sense of, ‘Well, I know her and I like her.’ At least I had a positive mental impression. I set her name aside specifically because I knew who she was. It would be like if you called me and said, ‘Hey, at least give my friend Bobby a look because I’ve known him for 20 years and he's somebody you can count on.’ It's like a personal recommendation.

“It helped that I had a positive impression of what she was doing on Instagram. There were a lot of other people who had very impressive resumes. I would go to their Instagrams and look at the way they stood or the way they played or the way they talked about music – even just the pictures they posted. But I kept thinking, ‘This person has no idea what kind of band I'm in.’”

What was the exact moment when you thought, “That’s it! Kiki is the one!”?

Corgan: “The funny thing is, and this was something of a miracle, Kiki’s audition was the first on this one day. Somebody set up the schedule people were traveling in and stuff, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that’s probably not very good for Kiki,’ because the chance of us hiring the first person we see is probably pretty slim. By the time you get to the eighth or ninth person, you’re going to have a hard time remembering the first person.”

“Kiki came in and played very well. Now, I know how to read Jimmy Chamberlin’s body language pretty well; we’ve played together for over 35 years. I remember looking at Jimmy, and I could tell he was surprised at how well Kiki played. We had this thing at the auditions where we played three or four songs, and then we’d sit down and talk to each person for 15 minutes.

“A lot of people played well, but once we talked to them I thought, ‘They’re not really going to fit into our world.’ We’re a bit of a weird lot. [Laughs] We’re kind of picky in our own way. Maybe every band is, but I know the way we’re picky. Kiki was just who she was. She wasn’t trying to be someone else. She wasn’t trying to be a flatterer.

“She was just herself. And it was like, ‘OK, this person can hang in our world.’ After that, for the next three hours, nobody who followed Kiki could beat her. She was still on my mind, even though we weren’t discussing it internally.”

How many people followed Kiki till you decided on her?

Corgan: “I think there were nine others.”

Kiki, what was the process of you fitting in with the band sonically?

Wong: “It’s interesting, because I've always been afraid to play anything with a clean tone; I still am a little bit. One of the things I loved about our first Zoom call was how we spent a lot of time talking about Dimebag Darrell. Billy is such a huge metal fan, and after listening to the Pumpkins’ music, I realized there's so much variety in it.

“There’s a lot of heavy metal and grit. This made me feel comfortable. I did a deep dive beyond the band’s radio hits, and I felt the kind of energy I get from heavy metal. I felt I could meld my own energy sonically. The band has been super open to that, too. There hasn’t been that ‘No, no, you have to do it this way or that way.’ It’s been sort of an invitation to express myself on top of the stuff that already written.”

You bring up the metal aspect. As you know, there’s been some criticism from fans that you’re “too metal” for the Pumpkins.

Wong: “Honestly, that’s been my life story since I was 13, the whole metal thing. It even got to the point where my girlfriends stopped talking to me. It got a little weird, but now it doesn’t phase me. I go on stage looking like a wrestler in my outfits, but that’s what I like to wear. People are like, ‘You look like you should be in Judas Priest.’ And to that, I say, ‘Thank you.’ Billy’s been totally cool about it – ‘Wear whatever you want. Just be comfortable.’

“Sound-wise, I’ve dialed the heavy metal stuff back a bit, but I’m just trying to find that metal voice and integrate it. I actually think it meshes pretty well. There’s a lot of metal influence and style in the music, but it’s in a truly heavy way, not just this, ‘Oh, my God, that’s making my ears sore. Get that out of here!’”

Corgan: “We’re heavier with Kiki, which is actually to the benefit of the band live. But to the other thing she said, at some point Kiki came to me and said, ‘Is there anything you’d like me to do as far as how I'm going to look on stage?’ I said, ‘I want you to be comfortable. That’s more important to me, and I think it’s more important to James and Jimmy. They wear what they want to wear.’

“If you’re looking across the stage at the Pumpkins, James is wearing a suit. I’m wearing a priest’s dress, Jack is wearing the Manchester outfit of a lumberjack shirt and jeans, and Kiki looks like Rob Halford’s cousin. And I go, ‘Yeah, this is the band.’

“I look out and see audience members who are super goth, super metal. We have a ton of LGBTQ+ fans just being themselves. I think that's really the beautiful message the band sends. You don’t have to be anything to be up here. You could just be yourself.”

Billy, you talked about the impact Kiki has had on the band personally, but let’s drill down into the musical aspect. Specifically, are there some songs you play differently as a guitarist because of the way Kiki plays?

Corgan: “No. I think of it more like an author, which is like, ‘OK, we have these ingredients to play with.’ Having Kiki allows us to do things in a different way, so let’s lean into that. It’s less of an influence as more as an opportunity for me.

“When it gets to the metallic side of the band’s catalog, whether it’s Bullet with Butterfly Wings or something we’re going to play live on the solo tour, like Eden, which is off the new record, that’s the best form of that band with Kiki in it.

“She’s still learning what we would call more of the goth/atmospheric stuff. Sometimes I kind of pull her aside and I’ll show her – ‘I think this is the way psychologically you need to approach this.’ Oftentimes I’ll use references that she might understand, whether it’s a Metallica or a Mercyful Fate or something to sort of say, ‘This is maybe how they would do it.’ She may not understand if I start talking about Bauhaus, for example.”

Kiki, we talked about how many songs you had to learn. Billy, James and Jim know this stuff cold –

Corgan: “Hey, wait! I’m downstairs practicing every night. I’m cursing myself right now for the setlist I picked for this thing. [Laughs] There’s some songs on the Machines of God tour that I’ve never played live. I’m not talking about live in front of a crowd; I mean played live ever.”

Hey, well, you better get to it.

Corgan: “I’m working on it!”

But Kiki, it is true that there’s 35 years of material you’ve had to master in a short period of time. Has it ever felt overwhelming?

Wong: “It’s really interesting because I’ve always kind of taught myself. My parents were like, ‘Piano lessons or bust.’ The problem with that is, I didn’t have a lot of the foundations of music that other people have when they go through the nitty-gritty theory and all of that.

“Billy’s been really understanding, and he knows how to navigate that sort of thing with me. He’ll be like, ‘All right, I’m going to play the chords and then show you how to do it,’ versus ‘I’m going to talk in super-theory jargon,’ which is my weakness. I actually bought four music books I'm going to be reading. This needs to be tackled. It's been almost 20 something years of never going through it, and I should.

“The band has been extremely accommodating in being able to speak my language and sensing how I learn things. It’s really helped. When we did the first tour in Europe, we had five days of rehearsal, and my fear kicked in, like, ‘Fuck!’ It was like the imposter syndrome, where you’re like, ‘I know I can’t do this. If somebody sees that I can’t do this, then it’s not going to work out.’

“My biggest fear was holding me back. Then we just found a way that works in terms of learning, and we were able to get some of the really difficult stuff done in five days. Everything was all good, and I was able to learn things a lot faster.”

Corgan: “There was this time when Kiki was really struggling with how to play a song – I don’t remember which one – and because we believed in her and trusted that she was giving her best, I went over and sort of rejiggered what she was playing. I took on a different responsibility.

“Rather than be like, ‘Oh, you’re hired for this gig and you’re failing,’ it was like, ‘OK, I see where you’re weak over here. Let’s figure out a way we can cover you and not expose you,’ all while knowing it was something she needed to work on. That’s the sort of environment that we have. We don’t expect Kiki to understand everything we do.

“It’s pretty arcane in many ways, and it was developed over many, many years. If you’re playing a song from Mellon Collie, that’s seven years of James and me playing guitar in a very specific way. We’re talking many, many concerts and recording sessions.

“I don’t expect somebody to just parachute in and understand that style. Even when Jeff Schroeder was in the band, it took him probably two years to fully assimilate what people would call the ‘Pumpkins’ guitar style.”

Wong: “I think what makes it difficult, but also inspiring, is that it's a style I’m not used to. Obviously, for the past year or so, I’ve gotten a little bit more acquainted with the Pumpkins’ style, which is different in some ways from where I come from. I’ve been a metalhead for years, just strictly high-distortion and no real dynamics in my playing.

“That’s all changed now. What’s truly great about all this is how it’s allowing me to expand my musicianship. I’m really trying to tap into tone and voicings in a way that’s almost orchestrated with the band, as opposed to just playing a part.”

Billy, what can Kiki do on the guitar that’s just beyond you?

Corgan: “Well, she’s got that Hetfield/Kerry King downstroke thing that I could never do, whatever the fuck that is. [Wong busts up laughing]. That Master of Puppets thing – I have to cheat that shit. Trust me, I knew Johnny Ramone and he was a big proponent of this.

“Obviously, Hetfield and Kerry King would tell you the same. So would Mustaine. The only way to play that way is you gotta do all downstrokes. I remember being at Johnny Ramone’s house – [imitates thick New Yorker accent] ‘all downstrokes, all downstrokes.’

“There’s a belief that the attack of the downstroke is better than if you pick up-down, up-down. To me, when I see somebody who can do that with the downstrokes, I’m like, ‘Fuck, I can't do that!’”

Kiki, same question: What does Billy play that’s just beyond you?

Wong: “Oh, my gosh. One of the most jaw-dropping moments on the first tour was just seeing Billy go crazy-shred. We have these times when it’s all improv, and hearing some of the voicings he uses… One of the things you strive for as a musician is developing your own sound, where someone will say, ‘Hey, that’s Kiki Wong!’ or ‘That’s Billy Corgan!’ But more than that, it’s ‘That’s Billy Corgan, and no-one else can be Billy Corgan.’

“When he solos… we have this 10-minute jam on Gossamer, and it’s just insane. Insane! You start to listen to what he’s doing, and he’s speaking and he’s using voices that are from the Smashing Pumpkins. There’s all these hints from other songs, but he’s simultaneously shredding. Then you just look out and people are just like this [she drops her jaw in awe].

“Because if you're a ‘hits’ person, you're not going to find this insanity that comes with the other songs. You just don’t expect the absolute insane shred experience from some of the main hits on the radio.

“But when you go to the show and you hear the hits, and then you hear something like Gossamer with Billy just going in… you hear all of those things, and then the visual experience… you’re blown away. When that happens, I’m like the audience, with my jaw literally wide open. I’m watching the show as I'm playing. It’s incredible.”

• Aghoro Mori Mei is out now via Martha's Music.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Back in 2024, after 10 years with alt-rock icons the Pixies, Paz Lenchantin departed in order to concentrate on her own projects. Her debut album, Triste – featuring former A Perfect Circle bandmates Troy Van Leeuwen and Josh Freese – is now due for release on her own label, Hideous Human Records.

“I had to make this record on my own – not to prove anything, but just to have faith that music can nurture me back,” Lenchantin said in a statement. “And it did.”

Happy to be a musical chameleon, Lenchantin has steadily reshaped her bass playing since being thrust into the limelight with A Perfect Circle (with Maynard James Keenan of Tool) and Zwan (with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins).

“I’ve played with some amazing players over the years, but every time I plug in, I do it without any thoughts of past or future,” Lenchantin told Bass Player back in January 2010. “I’m just really present with my instrument. It makes me feel timeless.”

While this may seem like a feat that very few bassists achieve, it is something that goes almost unnoticed to Lenchantin.

“I never know what’s going to be thrown at me next, and that keeps me from getting trapped in one genre or a specific sound. The picture is always very different with each project I’ve done. I just try to evolve with whatever I take on.”

Born into an Argentinian family of musicians, Lenchantin was classically trained in music theory at a young age. A multi-instrumentalist, she is fluid on almost any piece of gear she picks up – most notably the violin and guitar – but in her teenage years she found her passion in life when she first picked up the bass.

“Bass is absolutely my favourite instrument,” she told BP. “I feel so at home on the bass. I don’t know what made me want to play bass, but it was something that I was really drawn to early on.”

Finding her own path proved difficult, as her family often shunned anything beyond the realm of classical music. “My whole family was classically trained and were strict purists when it came to music. I used to hide my bass playing and was never allowed to amplify it.

“I used to lock myself up in my room and put my teeth on the top of the body of the bass to be able to hear what I was playing. That was the only way I could feel the vibrations.”

“I would do that and play along with Paul McCartney and John Paul Jones. It was the only way that I could get away with playing that kind of music. It was like my teeth were my amplifier back then!”

Lenchantin started out using only her fingers to play the bass, but quickly found that it would be a useful tool in her arsenal to play with a pick.

“Playing with a pick is a total tone thing – it’s an attitude towards the song. I didn’t know how to play with a pick before my time with A Perfect Circle, so at first learning to play bass with a pick was like dancing with two left feet.”

“I felt I had to entirely relearn the bass and I would spend hours trying to figure it out. But now I understand the value of the tonality. It’s just different and it’s nice to be able to use both ways of playing.

“I want to keep moving forward and growing and learning more and more than ever before. I never want to be stagnant or repetitive or boxed in – I’ve always tried to avoid those things.

“I’m not trying to find a sound and stick with it, I’m trying to make music that never gets tired. I never want to become a cliché of myself.”

• Triste is out October 17 via Hideous Human Records.

As one of the all-time standout electric guitar virtuosos, it’s fair to say that Steve Vai knows a thing or two when it comes to scaling the heights required to reach the top of the metaphorical technical and melodic guitar mountain.

As such, when Vai talks technique, we listen, and his latest nugget of wisdom – arriving courtesy of his recent conversation with Billy Corgan – has us listening intently.

While in deep discussion with the Smashing Pumpkins frontman about the level of the average guitarist today, Vai proclaimed it’s actually not as complicated as one might think when it comes to becoming a proficient shredder.

“I can tell you how to become a virtuoso very easily,” he says, before laying at a fool-proof – and, to be honest, completely expected – methodology.

“You have to practice nonstop and practice perfectly,” Vai explains. “You have to practice fast, and you have to get bulletproof intonation. This is an intellectual exercise, and when I was younger that's what I did. I set the clock and I set the metronome.”

Also in his chat with Corgan, Vai shed more light on the gruelling practice routine he adopted as a young aspiring shredder.

“My schedule back then, I was happy if I got nine hours a day,” he recalls. “I was very neurotic, very myopic. It just had such a pull, such a joy.

"Sometimes I would go to sleep early on a Friday so I could wake up and practice all the way till Monday, when I had to go to school. So I get like, 20–30 hours in. I’m not a very disciplined person; it was a passion. Because passion is a much more powerful engine of creation than discipline.

“Discipline implies you have to fight something, you have to push yourself to do something that you really don’t want to do. But passion says, ‘You're going to do this because you want to do it.’ There will be challenges along the way, but there's never the thought of giving up.”

Technical proficiency aside, an appreciation for melody – and how these technical skills can be channelled accordingly – is equally important.

“I love melody. The ability to shred is fine and good, but without melody, there's no shelf life in a performer's career,” he asserts.

Elsewhere in his Magnificent Others guest spot, Vai discussed his guitar battles with Yngwie Malmsteen and reflected on what it was like going up against Van Halen when he joined David Lee Roth's band.

Steve Vai has locked fretboards with a long line of elite electric guitar players over the years, be that through the various guest collaborations he’s participated in, the numerous G3 tours he’s helped head up, or the Generation Axe supergroup.

But one of the most challenging six-string adversaries he’s come across in all his years was Yngwie Malmsteen, with whom he formed Generation Axe back in 2016 – and ended up going toe-to-toe with him each night on tour for an epic guitar duel on Black Star.

Vai's epic guitar-off with Malmsteen was put to him by Corgan, who remembers seeing the pair share the stage in Dallas.

“I don’t remember the song you guys were playing, but you were out there with Yngwie and you guys were trading back and forth,” Corgan says. “And he played this one run… I can’t even describe it; it was probably the greatest 10 seconds of guitar playing I’ve ever seen in my life.

“He does his thing, and you’re supposed to go, and you literally went… ‘Okay, I’m done.’”

The exact moment that Corgan mentions can be found at the 4:10 mark in the video above, in which Vai can be seen laughing in disbelief at Yngwie’s guitar run.

When asked about ‘Vai versus Yngwie’, Vai recalls, “Yngwie is a special, special case. I loved the idea of being able to shred, as they say, and I honed that skill. But Yngwie, when he hit the scene, it was a different kind of a shred.

“He had a different kind of approach from the germination of his interest, and that was violin playing. His inner ear was hearing that kind of thing, which is, in a sense, not as guitaristic as somebody listening to Jimmy Page or that kind of thing.

“And when we get up on the stage together and we're trading like that, it's a great moment. Standing with another musician and actually trading licks like I do with all the G3, Generation Axe, all this kind of thing, it requires listening very intently and then responding in a way that you know is appropriate.

“With guys like Yngwie, you can't compete. If I'm with Joe Satriani or any of these guys, you can't compete with the best of them. They force you, if you're smart, to compete with the best of you.

“Like, I have to be more Steve Vai – that weird, quirky guy – than I have been before when you know somebody does something, that's the top of their game. So it's a wonderful opportunity.

“So when Yngwie does his monstrous thing, it's part of the show because it's fun. I can't, I don't do that.”

Elsewhere in his interview with Corgan, Vai recalled joining David Lee Roth’s band and spoke about what it was like to go up against Van Halen.

Steve Vai has opened up on his early experiences in David Lee Roth’s band, recalling how he felt destined for the role – and how he navigated inevitable comparisons to the singer's former guitar foil, Eddie Van Halen.

In 1985, Roth – fresh from leaving Van Halen – went about establishing his solo career. In his new band, an elite electric guitar player who could keep up with the level Roth experienced in Van Halen – and one who could hold down a spot previously held by the era’s greatest guitar player – was a priority.

For Vai’s part, though, he saw the Roth gig as one of the most hallowed spots in contemporary rock at the time, and viewed himself as tailor-made for the job – and it wasn’t long before Roth came calling.

Speaking about his experience in Roth’s band in a new episode of Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast, Vai remembers, “When the word was out that David Lee Roth was putting a band together and he was looking for a guitarist, I mean, it was probably the most coveted rock guitar position.

“I was in my little apartment on Fairfax Street in Hollywood, and as soon as I heard that news, I turned to my roommate and I said, ‘That's my gig.’

“It was just this intuitive, little voice that said, ‘No matter what you do, even if you don't want it, it's your gig.’ It's just one of those things. The next day, the phone rings and it's Dave.”

Playing guitar for Roth, who had been working with Van Halen up until that point, naturally came with added pressure.

Furthermore, the perception of Roth’s band was one of competition, and although the singer had grand designs for a project that could match up to the might of Van Halen, Corgan ultimately notes, “Dave didn't do what he set out to do, which was beat Van Halen.”

“I just knew that I could make it work, because I had a rock and roll fire that I loved in me,” Vai elaborates of his experience in the band. “I knew that I wasn't going to try to sound like Edward or do anything like him, because people are very hip to that.

“We didn't have the songs. Van Halen had the songs for that kind of success,” Vai adds of the two group’s differing levels of success. “They're good songs, but Eddie, he's got his whole ear for writing. That's the secret. That's the secret sauce. You can't replace that.

“We had great music. I love the music, but when I say we didn't have the songs, I'm talking about those specific things that cross over at radio.”

In the mid-1980s, Vai wasn't the only guitar player in the mix to join Roth's band. Recently, Steve Stevens revealed he too was approached for the gig.

The recording studio is a breeding ground for madcap creativity, and Billy Corgan made full use of that while tracking the charmingly titled Fuck You (an Ode to No One).

It was one of the angrier cuts from Smashing Pumpkins’ sprawling 1995 album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Now, speaking to Guitar World, Corgan downplays the rumour that, for its guitar solo, he played until his fingers bled.

However, he did try some rather novel production techniques that Pete Townshend would be proud of.

“I remember I had my cabinet in this really, really small room, it was about the size of a closet,” he remembers in the new issue of Guitar World. “Even when I would sit and play in the control room, the sound from the cabinet was so loud because it was right there.

“Somehow, I got the idea that not only did I want to play the solo in front of the cabinet to get the right kind of feedback and resonant things looping through the guitar, but at the end of the solo, I wanted to throw the guitar at the amp to make some sort of statement.”

Those kinds of antics are typically reserved for the stage. Pete Townshend used to glue his guitars back together so he could destroy them night after night. To do it in the studio is a wildly different tactic.

“I would throw the guitar at the cabinet, which would knock it completely out of tune. Then I would go back and listen to the take and think, ‘Oh, that sucks. Do it again,’” Corgan says.

“I'd tune the guitar, go back in and blast it out. I have this memory of killing myself, blasting my head off, and then throwing the guitar at the amp over and over to get the perfect kind of cataclysmic ending. Whether or not my fingers bled, I don't remember.”

Corgan was interviewed alongside new Smashing Pumpkins recruit Kiki Wong, who beat 10,000 other players to the gig. During the conversation, Corgan revealed the one technique Wong has that he’s never possessed.

Read Corgan’s new interview in full – alongside chats with Carlos Santana, Zakk Wylde, and more – in the latest issue of Guitar World. Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

If there's anything that warrants the term “life-changing,” it's Kiki Wong being handpicked by Billy Corgan and co. – out of more than 10,000 applicants – to join the Smashing Pumpkins.

Turns out, Wong made quite an impression from that very first audition. “Kiki’s audition was the first on this one day,” recalls Corgan in the latest issue of Guitar World.

“Somebody set up the schedule people were traveling in and stuff, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that’s probably not very good for Kiki,’ because the chance of us hiring the first person we see is probably pretty slim. By the time you get to the eighth or ninth person, you’re going to have a hard time remembering the first person.

“Kiki came in and played very well. Now, I know how to read Jimmy Chamberlin’s body language pretty well; we’ve played together for over 35 years. I remember looking at Jimmy, and I could tell he was surprised at how well Kiki played. We had this thing at the auditions where we played three or four songs, and then we’d sit down and talk to each person for 15 minutes.”

Aside from her stellar playing, what really gave Wong her edge over her competition was her authenticity and down-to-earth demeanor.

“She wasn’t trying to be someone else. She wasn’t trying to be a flatterer. She was just herself. And it was like, ‘OK, this person can hang in our world.’ After that, for the next three hours, nobody who followed Kiki could beat her. She was still on my mind, even though we weren’t discussing it internally.”

As for what Wong can do on guitar that's just beyond Corgan's abilities, according to the Pumpkins frontman himself, there are a few.

For starters, “she’s got that Hetfield/Kerry King downstroke thing that I could never do, whatever the fuck that is. That Master of Puppets thing – I have to cheat that shit. Trust me, I knew Johnny Ramone, and he was a big proponent of this.

“Obviously, Hetfield and Kerry King would tell you the same. So would Mustaine. The only way to play that way is you gotta do all downstrokes. I remember being at Johnny Ramone’s house – [imitates thick New Yorker accent] ‘all downstrokes, all downstrokes.’

“There’s a belief that the attack of the downstroke is better than if you pick up-down, up-down. To me, when I see somebody who can do that with the downstrokes, I’m like, ‘Fuck, I can't do that!’” he admits.

Wong is quick to add that, from her end, “one of the most jaw-dropping moments on the first tour was just seeing Billy go crazy-shred.

“We have these times when it’s all improv,” she explains, “and hearing some of the voicings he uses… One of the things you strive for as a musician is developing your own sound, where someone will say, ‘Hey, that’s Kiki Wong!’ or ‘That’s Billy Corgan!’

“But more than that, it’s ‘That’s Billy Corgan, and no one else can be Billy Corgan,’” she asserts.

For more from Kiki Wong and Billy Corgan, plus new interviews with the Sex Pistols and Carlos Santana, pick up issue 595 of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.

Hey, gang. The new October 2025 issue of Guitar World is out and about – and it goes a little something like this...

• Billy Corgan & Kiki Wong: Billy and Kiki – the Smashing Pumpkins' first and latest guitarists, respectively – discuss how bonding over Dimebag Darrell and dressing like "Rob Halford's cousin" helped turn Wong into a Pumpkin overnight – by Joe Bosso
• Billy Corgan's Tales of a Scorched Earth: Corgan looks back on the making of the Smashing Pumpkins' era-defining grand opus, 1995's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – by Joe Bosso
• Sex Pistols Incite Anarchy in the U.S.: O.G. Sex Pistols Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook are about to kick off a rare U.S. tour with Frank Carter – as in, not Johnny Rotten – behind the mic. Says Jones, "For the first time in a long time, I'm really enjoying doing Pistols songs" – by Andrew Daly
• Carlos Santana Is as Supernatural as Ever: Six decades into his career, Carlos Santana remains excited by the very thought of having a guitar in his hands. In this issue, he looks back on the music and gear that's soundtracked his one-of-a-kind life (not to mention his “visitation” from Stevie Ray Vaughan) – by Amit Sharma

Let us not forget this other cool stuff...

• The Gear Hunter checks in with Robert Keeley of Keeley Electonics
• Personalities pays a visit to longtime Beach Boys guitarist Al Jardine, who discusses the lesser-known aspects of Surf's Up and Holland
• Meet Inhaler guitarist Josh Jenkinson
• A tribute to the late, great Rick Derringer (1947-2025)
• Zakk Wylde's life in three guitars

The issue also features new interviews with Khruangbin's Mark Speer and Laura Lee Ochoa, plus Vernon Reid, Ricky Byrd, both guitarists from Momma, both guitarists from Phoneboy and both guitarists from the Voidz, plus Bumblefoot, Ally Venable and Laura Pleasants.

Gear-wise, we explore the history and allure of the Fender Jazzmaster, and we review all this cool stuff:

• Kramer Volante HSGT
• TC Electronic Ditto 2
• ToneWoodAmp2
• Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus plugin
• Jackson Pro Series Misha Mansoor Juggernaut ET6
• Taylor 314ce Studio
• Gibson Marcus King ES-345

Finally, we have new columns by Joe Bonamassa, Jared James Nichols, Sue Foley and Cory Wong, plus transcriptions of Neurogenesis by Intervals & Koan Sound, Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up your copy of the October 2025 Guitar World.

Billy Corgan is a man whose reputation and genius truly precede him. Since forming the Smashing Pumpkins in the late ’80s, the group has sold more than 30 million records, including landmark albums Siamese Dream, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness and Adore.

It should also be noted that Corgan is one of the most influential guitarists of his generation and quite possibly many generations to follow. Yet there is one element to his success that may not be common knowledge, which is that he has written and recorded the bass guitar tracks on almost every album in the entirety of the Smashing Pumpkins’ history.

While this should greatly warm the hearts of bassists everywhere, it also leads us to question the influence of D’arcy Wretzky, Melissa Auf der Maur, Ginger Pooley, Nicole Fiorentino and now Jack Bates, and the roles they’ve played in the development of the Pumpkins’ unique sound.

Their playing over the years has surely sparked trends in alternative rock bass playing, and their collective stage presence is infinitely powerful.

Yet Corgan was the mastermind fuelling the Pumpkins’ low-end sound. Speaking to Bass Player in 2012, he said, “As a guitar player first, I tend to like bass that doesn’t diminish what I’m playing. I tend to see bass in more of a support-and-enhance type of role that’s best when it makes everything else shine brighter.”

It is not always easy for a guitarist of Corgan’s magnitude to approach the bass as a creative outlet. Often guitar players get stuck writing overly simple lines, or parts that do little to connect with the drums. But for Corgan, who is adept at playing over 10 different instruments, he is able to write, record and play the bass parts, even if he does tend to honour the guitar first.

“At times I can be guilty of creating too much around the guitar part. If there’s any part of creating a bassline that I’m good at, it’s looking for a rhythm hook with some notes that would harmonize or blur with my guitar.

“Bass should be able to disappear and reappear at will, tucking underneath a guitar part and driving the song, and then drawing attention to itself at just the right moment.”

Epic moments in famed Pumpkins songs such as The Everlasting Gaze and Bullet With Butterfly Wings give the bass a piece of the spotlight, but generally Corgan likes to use it as a more supportive tool rather than a standout feature.

“It is not difficult for me to switch to the mentality of a bass player in the sense that as the songwriter, in most cases I know what I’m looking for. That said, I don’t always think like a bass player. I’ve learned a lot of respect for that approach over time, but it doesn’t always come naturally to me.”

While the Pumpkins bass chair has been a veritable revolving door since the departure of D’arcy in 1999, one trait has remained consistent to the position, which is they have all been pick players.

While the grinding, midrange tone of playing with a pick seems a staple of the Pumpkins sound, Corgan enjoys players who let their fingers do the plucking.

“I actually prefer people who play with their fingers. If a bassist is going to use a pick, it has to be used just right to not blunt the guitar attack. It’s a fine balance not to interfere with the tonality of the guitar.”

Corgan’s bass collection is nothing short of spectacular. “Right now I own a 1958 Fender P-Bass, a 1963 Fender Jazz Bass, a 1968 Guild Starfire, a 1968 Höfner violin bass, a ’60s-era Fender Coronado, various ’70s P-Basses, a ’60s Gibson EB-2 and various Reverend basses.”

When Back to the Beginning was first announced, not only was it promised to be “the greatest day in the history of heavy metal”, it also vowed to bring together a mind-bending array of special guest guitar heroes for a range of Sabbath-honoring and supergroup sets.

And arguably the most anticipated supergroup of the evening was the ‘metal Yardbirds’ – a reunion of sorts between three electric guitar greats, all of whom grew up in similar musical circles when they were younger, and whose team-up had been teased by Sharon Osbourne back in February.

That hotly anticipated group comprised Tom Morello, Billy Corgan and Adam Jones, who came together for a Rage Against the Machine/Smashing Pumpkins/Tool super-band that performed two tracks on the night.

Morello, Corgan, and Jones – who shared near-identical early experiences growing up in similar music circles, before branching out into their own styles – were flanked at Back to the Beginning by Judas Priest royalty K.K. Downing, and former Ozzy and Dio bassist Rudy Sarzo, for a rampant Breaking The Law, before a Sabbath nod via Snowblind, from 1972’s Vol. 4.

The songs played host to plenty of whammy and wah pedal action, with the Flying V-wielding Downing, and Les Paul wielders Morello and Jones, delivering a bevy of high-octane guitar solos, each one oozing in a classic rock ’n’ roll spirit.

Elsewhere, Corgan was exclusively assigned to vocal duty for the two songs, meaning the wait to hear the six-string triumvirate of Morello, Jones and Corgan regrettably goes on.

Speaking of his connection to Morello and Jones – and the concept of the 'metal Yardbirds' – earlier this year, Corgan had said, “Somebody will get mad at me, but it's the closest thing to Beck, Clapton and Page kind of growing up in the same hood. We have had our influence in what followed.

“If they want to get mad at me, they can, but that's not an insane theory. I find it really fascinating, because what was it in the water that we were all drinking?”

Intriguingly, Jones says Tool originally turned down the chance to get involved with Back to the Beginning, with curator Tom Morello eager to involve his former schoolmate.

Elsewhere, there were some other noteworthy spots. Steven Tyler, who continues to recover from vocal issues that forced Aerosmith's retirement last year, made a triumphant return to the stage and joined Ronnie Wood, Tom Morello, Nuno Bettencourt and Andrew Watt group for three tracks.

Taking to Instagram to reflect on just shy of 10 hours of riffs and tributes, Billy Corgan had some heartfelt reflections.

“Music is the soundtrack to our lives, but yesterday, in my estimation, was something truly special,” he wrote. “As a three-dimensional soundtrack was being crafted in real time. All to celebrate this coming home for the band once known as Earth.

“Every great journey has trials and tribulations, tragedies and surprises. Therein lies the magic, therein lie the tears. I both whooped yesterday in sheer exultation to be in the right spot at the right moment, and I wept silently as my heroes fell on their wizardly, mythic sword to bid us farewell.”

Sixteen Stone can comfortably be regarded as Bush’s most popular album, with three tracks – Comedown, Machinehead, and Glycerine – entering the US Billboard Hot 100 and clinching the number 8 spot on GW's 2014 list of 50 iconic albums that defined 1994. Yet, as Gavin Rossdale reveals in an interview with Billy Corgan on his The Magnificent Others podcast, label executives at Disney’s Hollywood Records did not seem to believe in the album’s potential.

“What happened is, we delivered the record that was Sixteen Stone to them. The story is, according to the guy from our label, Rob Kahane, that at the record company, they threw the CD and said, ‘Not only are there no singles on this record, there’s no album tracks.’

“And they threw the record at him – because Frank Wells [former President and Chief Operating Officer of The Walt Disney Company], who had signed us, got killed in a helicopter crash. So we’re being reviewed by the subsequent team there, and they dropped us.”

Having his dreams shattered forced Rossdale to go back to where he was before. “I went back to work, I was back painting. I had no idea what was possible. No one told me what was possible. I didn’t know what’s possible.”

When asked whether there was an appetite for Bush in the UK, Rossdale adds, “That was the height of Brit pop, right? So people were looking for the next Pulp, the next Oasis… and our style, I suppose.

“So I was well-known enough to the whole community to get demo time – I’d never hear back what they thought of the demos, but I quietly was building up the repertoire of having the real band, because Nigel [Pulsford, the band’s lead guitarist] would do the stuff at his house, and then we’d go in.”

As Rossdale details in a recent Guitar World interview, “I wish we’d had bidding wars – a mad time dining out with everyone falling in love with us. But no; we had one dude with a small label who believed in us.”

The album finally saw the light of day when it was released by Trauma Records on November 1, 1994. The rest, as the adage goes, is history.

Any Smashing Pumpkins fan missing the Melissa Auf der Maur era was in for a treat last Friday in Montreal, as the former Pumpkins and Hole bass guitar hero joined Corgan and his new band, the Machines of God, on stage in her hometown.

She joined the band for the encore track The Everlasting Gaze in Montreal, Canada, on June 13 as the newly formed group celebrated the Pumpkins’ turn-of-the-century material.

According to fan footage, the bassist even recalled her first-ever conversation with Corgan.

“Billy, do you remember the first words we ever exchanged, on July 23rd, 1991?” she asked the Pumpkins frontman. “I walk to the side of the stage after you played I Am One, and you were packing up your gear, and do you remember what I said?” He quipped, “I love you, never leave?”

“Very close,” she added with a laugh. “I said, ‘On behalf of Montreal, Canada, I apologize for the broken beer bottle that was thrown at him, and I am Melissa from Montreal and I will follow you ’til the end of time.’”

The band – spearheaded by Auf der Maur – then launched into the final song on the setlist – The Everlasting Gaze from 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God, an apt nod to Auf der Maur’s era with the Pumpkins.

In a video posted to the Pumpkins’ socials, Corgan and his former bandmate share a warm embrace before digging into the song’s hardened groove. Their chemistry is tangible, even in a phone-filmed video.

The former Hole bassist joined Corgan’s crew for one year in 1999. She held down the low-end across the Sacred and Profane tour, and features in a number of music videos from that period. Her time ended when Corgan disbanded the group, which she knew about from the offset.

Speaking to Bass Player last year about her time with two of the bands that defined ’90s rock, she said, “Courtney and Billy were both very different. But I have so much respect for both of them. My time with Hole was more character definition, creating me as a person, and then my crash course in music, one on one, was with the Pumpkins, who refined and defined my musicianship.

“Billy in particular: his level of efficiency and musicianship and his commitment to art was pretty remarkable. He was a real mentor in that way.”

“It was just a very dramatic coincidence. Billy said, ‘You're gonna be in my band!’ And I couldn't say no, because it was a dream come true,” she continues. “It was fulfilling a teenage fantasy but it was also the best music lesson of my life.

“I knew it was only for one year because they told me they were splitting up. And knowing I was going to be taught their back catalog was incredible.”

Corgan, meanwhile, has said his new project is focused on fusing classics with deep cuts. Material from Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness, Machina/The Machines of God, and Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, as well as 2024 release, Aghori Mhori Me, will feature.

“The A Return to Zero Tour,” he adds, “reintroduces a four-piece, two-guitar lineup in which music from these seminal Pumpkins albums were created.” Now Auf der Maur, who was a key player in the band’s purple patch, has also been reintroduced.

She reprised her spot in the band for, quite possibly, one last time, giving her hometown Pumpkins fans a moment to savor.

Billy Corgan is also set to star in a supergroup with Tom Morello and Tool's Danny Carey at Black Sabbath's Back to the Beginning as heavy metal's forefathers bow out with one hell of a party.

The ultimate metal and hard rock extravaganza – i.e. Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath's final show, Back to the Beginning – is fast approaching. The July 5th mega-show will pit together some of the world's most influential names in heavy music at the Church of Sabbath.

Tool's Adam Jones is one such disciple set to be involved. However, as he reveals in the new issue of Guitar World, the band was quite late signing on to the festivities – and he was initially not going to sign on at all.

Like all the other artists involved, Jones and the gang were initially approached by Tom Morello, who's doubling as the show's musical director.

“The four of us [in Tool] were on the phone, or texting – I can’t remember – and someone went, ‘I don’t think I can do it.’ Someone else went, ‘Okay, yeah, I think I’m gonna do this other thing,’” Jones says when asked about his involvement. “I think I even went, ‘Yeah, let’s not do it.’ But it was really an honor that they asked us.”

So what led to his change of heart? It seems like it all boiled down to Morello's persistence (the chance to join an iconic lineup for a historic event didn't hurt either).

“Months later, Tom contacted me and said, ‘Would you be down to play something with me?’ I was like, ‘Hmmm, that could be fun. Yeah!’ He goes, ‘It’ll just be me, you and Billy Corgan.’ He was thinking we could play a tune, so I said, ‘Yeah, that’s fine. But if plans change, I won’t feel bad if you decide that you don’t want me to do it – but let’s do it.’

He continues, “I was again talking to Tom, and I went, ‘Yeah, I’m sorry we all couldn’t do it.’ He goes, ‘Well, you know Dan [Carey, Tool’s drummer] is playing with these guys, and Maynard [James Keenan, Tool’s singer] is playing with these people…’

“I went, ‘I didn’t know that…’ It hit me, and I said, ‘If the three of us are there – and I know Justin [Chancellor, bass] will want to do it…’ I went back to our people and went, ‘Why don’t we just do it? We’re all going to be there.’ That’s how it happened – and why it was announced later.”

As for Morello, he cites teaming up with Jones and Corgan – who he dubs “three dudes from Northern Illinois” – as one of the highlights of the event.

“Adam and I went to high school together,” he told Guitar World. “Billy grew up a couple towns over. All of us were so influenced by Black Sabbath, but we’ve never played together. So that’s something I’m really psyched about.”

And, if you missed out on tickets for the actual show (they sold out in 16 minutes), it was recently announced that a pay-per-view livestream will be available, with tickets – priced at $29.99 – up for grabs from the official Back to the Beginning site.

For more from Adam Jones, plus new interviews with Tom Morello and Jake E. Lee, pick up issue 593 of Guitar World at Magazines Direct.

Zakk Wylde has opened up on time he came close to joining Guns N' Roses, and revealed how the ill-fated audition to link-up with Slash and co ultimately resulted in his departure from Ozzy Osbourne's band – and the formation of Black Label Society.

The Pantera electric guitar veteran recalled his experiences of jamming with GNR during a new interview with Billy Corgan, whose podcast is becoming something of a hot spot for high-profile tidbits. In the past, Gene Simmons has discussed Ace Frehley’s near-disastrous Kiss audition, while Corgan spoke about the differences between rock and “indie” guitarists with Richie Sambora.

With Wylde in the intervew chair, Corgan zoomed in on a lesser-known footnote in his storied career, which took place during the recording of Ozzy’s 1995 album, Ozzmosis. At the time, Guns N’ Roses were a guitar player down, and Wylde was on a list of potential recruits.

“I think Gilby [Clarke] had left the band and so Axl [Rose] was like, ‘Well, who are we going to get on guitar?’” Wylde recalls. “I guess Slash just threw around and my name came in the mix.”

It was Rose who reached out to him. The band was eager to test the waters with a guitarist who had previously been able to fill the sizable shoes of Randy Rhoads and Jake E. Lee in Ozzy’s band.

“I knew Slash when I first joined Ozzy, that's when Guns were blowing up,” he continues. “I knew Steven [Adler] and then I obviously knew Matt [Sorum] from when he was with the Cult. So everybody kind of knows each other. Axl called me up. He was like, ‘Zakk, do you want to get together and jam?’ I was like, ‘Alright, yeah, we’ll see what happens.’”

Wylde met the group at a rehearsal space and started “jamming and noodling ideas”. He also recalls they went as far as “recording a couple of riffs”, one of which became The Rose Petalled Garden from Black Label Society’s debut LP, Sonic Brew.

After their jam, Wylde notes “nothing was materializing”, to the point where Ozzy was left quizzing him over his availability: “Are you going to do this thing with the fellas or are we doing this thing?” Wylde recalls Ozzy asking him. The guitarist, however, was equally in the dark about the situation.

“Nothing [with Guns N’ Roses] was happening,” he continues. “I remember Oz was getting ready to release the Ozzmosis album and getting ready to tour. Oz was like, ‘Zakk, sit down. I’m going to get Joe Holmes to come play for a little while and then we’ll see where it happens from there.’”

Ultimately, the GNR gig didn’t come through for Wylde, he was no longer “playing with the boss”, and the guitarist was left in a difficult spot. He needed another creative outlet to turn his attentions to.

“When we were doing Ozzmosis, there was this place called Bruise on 34th in Lexington,” he goes on. “The pub had been there since 1908. So, I would go after we got done tracking and I'd be drinking till six in the morning every night, hanging out at the jukebox.

“They had the Stones on there, Bob Seger, Neil Young, the Eagles, all this amazing mellow acoustic stuff. I remember just going back into my room with my acoustic and writing. That’s when I did [my solo album] Book of Shadows.”

After a short tour in support of the album, Wylde realized he “wasn’t ready to be a singer-songwriter yet”. He wasn’t, however, willing to accept that “the dream was over”, despite acknowledging that Ozzy and GNR were moving on without him. And so, he set about building Black Label Society from the ground up.

“I went from playing with Ozzy in arenas, stadiums, and festivals to playing in clubs with like five people,” he says. “There were no other eggs in my basket.”

History dictates that BLS would ultimately be a success, and Wylde would even later return to the Prince of Darkness – but his tale may have been very different if the GNR gig worked out.

Billy Corgan’s Smashing Pumpkins have been busy of late – but that hasn’t stopped him planning a tour for the summer with his solo band Machines of God. Given his tendency to color outside the lines, he likes to work with equally open-minded bandmates like bassist Jenna Fournier, who, in addition to her band Niights, records under the name Kid Tigrrr.

She describes herself as “a multifaceted working artist,” explaining: “I have the passion that comes from the soul’s abyss and draws from my own experiences. I also do session work, art commissions, and ghostwriting, as well as other projects, to support the work I want to create and the stories I want to tell.”

Corgan’s Return to Zero summer tour – which celebrates Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and the Pumpkins' two Machina albums – kicks off in June.

“The focus and memorizing are the hardest part for me personally,” Fournier says of her preparation. “And the newest material from Aghori, is certainly not as easy as pumpkin pie. Pie with a side of metal. My teeth hurt!”

How did you first meet Billy?

“It was after auditioning for a project he was working on. He threw out a sort of casting call to his fans, as he sometimes does, and I sent some clips of my guitar playing and original material. So began a rapport.

“He asked if I’d be interested in trying out on bass for this tour, and the timing was divine. I could pour myself into the music. My audition in LA was our first time playing together.”

Did you grow up with the Pumpkins albums you’ll be playing?

“I once reminded my former label, who felt our album was not cohesive, that the Smashing Pumpkins took over the world with an incredibly dynamic double album that traversed genres.

“I stuck to my guns because Smashing Pumpkins taught me that music doesn’t have to fit neatly into a box with a nice little label on it. The aesthetic and layers of symbolism surrounding these albums have inspired me as a visual artist as well.”

What drew you to the bass?

“I’m more of a guitar player, but I taught myself guitar by playing notes on one string – like a bass would be played – before I learned some chords and then got into pedals.

“The first time I auditioned for a band, it was as a bassist. A friend loaned me one and taught me how to play it. I was 19, living alone in Las Vegas, answering ads in the paper, just trying to get into a project. I do not recommend this!

“It’s been fun moving back onto the bass – it feels like things are coming full circle in a strange way; and the bass feels very natural, albeit a lot heavier. I feel kinda naked without my pedalboard, but I do enjoy standing in front of my cabs and really feeling the bass in my body.”

Has D’Arcy Wretzky been a big influence on you?

“She still empowers me today as I learn all this material, alongside the other women Billy has had on stage over the years. Representation truly matters! D'Arcy was laid back and so intrinsically cool: ‘I am the cucumber; I am the walrus.’”

Tone is important when it comes to the Pumpkins’ music. How will your rig reflect that?

“I’ll be playing the Yamaha BB7, the same model Jack Bates uses in Smashing Pumpkins. We don’t use pedals for this music, so the tone is really sculpted from the bass itself and the amp.”

Has Billy offered any advice on how to tackle the songs?

“He’s provided a few files with the bass cranked. I’m also studying live clips and recordings.”

Have you gotten to talk with Kiki Wong yet?

“Yes, and I already adore her for her work ethic and shining positivity... a very inspiring mega-babe!”

What’s the latest with your music?

“I recently released Stoned + Animald, my debut solo album as Kid Tigrrr, on Billy’s label Martha’s Music. It’s a sort of shoegazey, bedroom dream-pop indie hybrid. I recorded and produced a lot of it from home.

“It’s a new approach after a decade of Niights, which is very collaborative. It’s more experimental and quite personal. I have a lot of songs written and waiting to be recorded – I plan to get back to them after the tour and continue exploring DIY production.”

You aren’t strictly a bassist; how would you describe yourself in full spectrum?

“A lot of my work is about processing and healing from traumatic experiences – ‘exploring the human condition’ type of thing. I think it’s healthy for me to sometimes step away from myself. It keeps me challenged and expands my horizons.

“Sometimes the worlds bleed into each other. Sometimes I obey the whims of the muses; other times I grind away at one project with a sort of tunnel vision. But I’m almost always learning or experimenting or creating.”

Is this a one-off with Billy, or is there potential for more?

“I’m really not sure at this point, but I hope this one will go great and lead to more! After the tour I’ll go back to my little dog and my hermit cave of wonders.”

• Corgan’s Machines of God tour kicks off on June 7. Kid Tigrrr’s Stoned + Animald is on sale now.

Dating back to the late 80s and led by Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins have polarised and galvanized with records such as Gish (1991), Siamese Dream (1993), Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness (1995), and Adore (1998) through an outright refusal to adhere to genre confines, regardless of the success those confines afforded them.

Because of this, and Corgan’s tendency to speak his mind, critics and fans alike have had a field day. But that hasn’t stopped those same pundits from filling seats in arenas, such is life for the Pumpkins – light and shade, as it were.

But things change, as do attitudes, especially when it comes to rock music – and even more so when you’re a Pumpkin. This is never truer than in the case of Aghori Mhori Mei, the Pumpkin’s 13th studio record, which, upon its sudden dropping in August of 2024, has been universally praised by critics and fans alike.

Corgan admits that the process and sound of this new record harkens back to the band’s early days. But don’t mistake this for a nostalgia trip.

“It’s something we argue about behind the scenes,” says Corgan of the band’s approach. “I think if I was being overly simple, or if something feels like, ‘I’ve been there, done that,’ I’d be less interested, even if I like the riff.”

From a guitar perspective, Corgan doesn’t feel he’s returning to the well as much as he’s left his old approach behind long enough that it feels fresh again.

“Our way of making music seems to be very different from other groups,” he says. “There’s a long map there. If you want to bother charting the wins and losses, overall it’s been a singular path, which is something I’m really proud of.”

Monstrous new tracks like Edin, Pentagrams, and Sighommi feature mega riffs, distorted sounds, and some typically searing Corgan solos. Fans should be – and are – happy, yet Corgan sees a trend.

“People get weirdly bent out of shape when I talk about my guitar playing,” he says. “It’s a strange thing that I find really curious. I don’t know what to think about it. The guitar in the last 20 years, in many ways, was highly marginalized in independent music as people went toward electronics and beats and production values. When you get to the issue of me as a player, I’m happy to point out that I’m not a particularly skilled player because I never took lessons.

“It’s interesting to note the number of people who were influenced by how I played and went on to do amazing things,” he adds. “It gets into this weird conversation, where the public has one perception, but that doesn’t always translate in alternative music – especially in a guitar magazine – like metal or even country. I think it’s really more a contrivance of the genre.”

Come what may, Corgan isn’t bothered by any of it.

“You kind of stand up for yourself and say, ‘Hey, how is it that this band is still here, kicking ass so many years later?’ If the way the intelligentsia rates us… does it really sort of hold up against, let’s call it, empirical data? So, by and large, I’m totally fine with whatever people perceive. The fact that young people seem very interested in what we’re doing currently, not just in the past, is really important to us.”

What was your intent as far as guitar sounds going into Aghori Mhori Mei?

“I’ve always tried to find something new every album. I think I wanted something that was a bit clearer and more old-school. That’s somewhat contradictory because our old-school sound wasn’t necessarily clear… but I think I kind of found it in what we did do.”

You’ve never been one to cater to fans in terms of harkening back to old sounds, so why do it now?

“It just seemed to go with the songwriting. It was exciting to play with. I guess in the late 80s and early 90s, we played with Marshall JCM800s, and there was a certain midrange clarity there that I liked. But at some point I went off of it, so it was cool to go back there. To hear the way we used to voice guitars – it wasn’t sentimental as much as it was just trying to find something that felt fresh.”

From a gear perspective, what was the key to finding that voicing?

“I always start by trying to use new equipment in a novel way so that what I’m hearing myself play seems unfamiliar to me. I sort of have to adjust my playing, and then there becomes this relationship between the sound and the way I play.”

What song kicked that process off for you?

“I don’t remember… We went to Nashville somewhere along the way and did about 60 instrumental demos. So it was just a lot of riffs; it was what people would call a ‘riff tape’, I guess. That would have been the start of it, but it also evolved out of the types of riffs that I was writing. Sorry, I’m trying not to be too nerdy because once I go in there, it just goes on forever!”

Be as nerdy as you like! How do you decide what riffs are not only worth pulling out but Smashing Pumpkins-appropriate?

“Well, there really isn’t any ‘Smashing Pumpkins appropriate’. That’s always been part of the public part of the argument because we were able to establish such an identifiable approach.

“It became this hat that we were always supposed to wear. I do feel good now that, over time, people have recognized that there are other kinds of languages that we’ve developed under the umbrella of the Smashing Pumpkins, you know?”

On a deeper level, it seems that no matter what you do, the expectations placed on you and your band are sort of unfair. It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

“First of all, I don’t mind being held to a high standard, you know? If that standard is somebody’s perception of a standard that we created, that’s even better.

“Certainly, we notice at times where it doesn’t seem that people are held to the same aesthetic and musical standards that we are, but that’s okay. I was – and am – a Rush fan. I held them to a very high standard, so maybe there’s a sort of backward compliment in it. But as far as the rest of it goes, I don’t have a really clear answer.”

It doesn’t hold you back or cloud your vision as a guitarist, then.

“It gets into… this is more of a science dissertation… but I really think it gets a lot into the transition era between pre-social media and post-social media branding of artists.

“There have been artists that have been very successful coming out of the 90s – and I don’t need to say who they are – and they’re more successful than we are by and large, almost without exception, but they’re known for doing one or two things really well. We, of course, moulded ourselves more like Zeppelin or The Beatles, where we wanted to be a band that could play any style we chose. But in the post-social media age, that works against you.”

How so?

“Because, on some level, you’re always pitting people against each other. It was sort of novel in the 90s because, again, very few people were doing it. But now there are more independent artists who do that, and they’re more celebrated as auteurs in a non-commercial sense. It’s the schism between a band that refuses to have one personality and a commercial band that sells a lot of tickets. It creates constant tension.”

Having said that, Aghori Mhori Mei seems to have satisfied a lot of fans.

“For a change! [laughs]”

The opening three tracks, Edin, Pentagrams, and Sighommi, feature killer riffs and great songwriting. Can you give insight into how you put that trio together?

“Thank you for saying that, really. My approach was to do it the way we used to do it. It’s a very effective way of arranging the guitars. Simply put, you try to arrange the guitar parts into a musical composition before the vocals are even involved. So if you just listen to the track, the track itself is very exciting from a guitar, rhythm, and riff perspective. Then you write the vocals and put all the overdubs on top of that.

“It’s very much the way we did the first three albums [Gish, Siamese Dream, and Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness].”

Do you still use the vintage valve amps you recorded those albums with?

“I do have some vintage stuff, but lately I’ve been using these custom amps that Brian Carstens out of Chicago makes [Carstens Amplification]. There’s an amp called Grace that he and I did together, and he’s got a new amp called Empire, which is more of a metal amp; I use that one a lot.

“It’s like a mixture of a Laney and maybe a Hiwatt or something. Then he’s got another amp called Cathedral, which is like a Hiwatt/Fender blend and is highly tweakable.”

Are there specific guitar amp characteristics that you know are right for you?

“These days, my sound is more midrange than I would personally go after if I didn’t care about good mixes and stuff like that. So there’s a lot of presence – and I’m trying to get as forward as I can without gimmickry. Meaning raw power, guitar into amp into cabinet, mic’ing, and trying to get that signal as far forward as I can get it.”

Interesting. A lot of people assume your sound is just a Big Muff paired with a Fender Strat.

“That hasn’t been my setup since ’92! [laughs]”

It’s only been 33 years!

“Yeah, I get it, though. It’s such a cool sound. I loved that sound, and I still do. I still use that sound here and there for overdubs because I love the zing of it. But when I sat and watched Eddie Van Halen play 3 feet in front of me in the studio, I learned that it’s about the hands.

“Great guitar players can get the same sound out of any amp; it’s something about the way they play. That’s the beautiful thing, right? And I do play a certain way that’s very strange.”

What’s strange about it?

“I hear it when outside guitar players come into the band, whether it was Jeff Schroeder and now Kiki Wong, you know, they’re kind of like, ‘Oh, there’s this other thing you have to learn how to do…’ It’s not just the sound, like, they’ll say, ‘I always thought it was the sound, but it’s actually the way you play that sound that makes the sound that I’m hearing.’ It’s hard to explain… I have a very busy left hand, which is something I learned from my father.”

You’ve been using Reverend lately, but have you ever broken out your old Strats from the 90s while recording?

“I’ll bring out old gear. I still like using old gear to write. I certainly have gone into some albums where I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m going to use this stuff because I just want to. I don’t care what anybody thinks.’ And then, halfway through the process, it just falls to modernity. Like, Joe Naylor with Reverend, his pickups, and these designs that he’s done for me, they’ve just brought the guitar forward. I don’t know how else to say it.”

Where would your modern sound be without that?

“It’s just what’s required today. You know… everybody loves a good soapbar pickup, and I love those old guitars, like Billie Joe [Armstrong] with Green Day plays old Les Paul Specials.

“But if you try to use those old pickups, everybody’s cell phone is coming through them [laughs]. There’s a point where innovation just wins. It’s not sentimental; it’s strictly progress. I had to get out of the way and say, ‘What’s more important? Supreme sound or my personal taste?’ And at the end of the day, sound always wins because it needs to.”

Is it true that your Reverend guitars are off-the-wall, stock guitars?

“This is the greatest endorsement that I can give: I don’t know what the list price of a Reverend guitar is, but let’s say it’s about $1,000 or whatever. That’s the same guitar that I’m playing on Aghori Mhori Mei, and that’s the same guitar that I’m playing on stage with the band and on tour with Green Day in front of 50,000 people. It’s the same guitar.”

A lot of artists would spring for a custom guitar. Why don’t you?

“It means a lot to me that a young musician can go into a music store and take a guitar that they can probably afford, and if they work hard like we did, they can have that same sound and have that same opportunity with that great instrument. That’s really important to me as an independent musician, you know? I’ve certainly played super-expensive guitars – but it’s pretty cool playing a guitar that doesn’t need to be souped up.”

Why do you think Smashing Pumpkins still matter as a guitar band in 2025?

“I don’t know why we matter any more than why we don’t matter, if that makes any sense. When you’re in a band, you have your theories about why people like what you do, but you learn along the way that your version of your band is not the version that the public has of your band or how the public arrives at somewhat of a collective decision about who you are. It’s a very curious thing to me.”

Come what may, does that perception, and the expectations that come along with it, impact you at this stage?

“The simple way I would explain it is, by and large, most people perceive the Pumpkins as a loud alternative rock band, even though that’s not the way we perceive ourselves. That alone is kind of strange to me, right?

“Like, how is it that you’re in a band that you think is different from the band that the public thinks you’re in? That perception, at that level, is an interesting cloud that follows you around.

“It doesn’t mean it’s always raining all the time, but it follows you around whether you want it to or not. So when it gets to issues of relevance and influence, I’m not saying I’m of the mind to let other people make judgments on that; I’m just of the mind that I can accept that other people’s perceptions aren’t mine – and I don’t feel the need to fight for mine, maybe, like I used to.”

• Aghori Mhori Mei is out now via Martha's Music.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Kiki Wong had to be the best of 10,000 guitarists to earn her spot in the Smashing Pumpkins, after Billy Corgan opened to door to auditions from players all over the world in a bid to find the best candidate.

Eight people were hired full-time to sift through applications, which included one from our very own Editor-in-Chief, Michael Astley-Brown, and though the Jackson Rhoads-touting shredder aced her audition, mastering the alt rock icons' back catalog wasn’t without its challenges.

“It still shocks me that I was literally living in the desert and catapulting into a world tour with one of the most influential '90s rock ’n’ roll bands,” she says in the latest issue of Guitar World. “It has allowed me to improve as a musician and expand my musical understanding.”

She sings the praises of Billy Corgan’s “distinct playing style,” but admits that getting to grips with some of his nuances wasn’t easy.

“Learning his style was hard, but it helped me play with more feel and vibe,” she explains. “The first week of rehearsal was like a musical boot camp that taught me more than 20 years of playing by myself did.”

As to the song that gave her the most trouble, she cites Thru the Eyes of Ruby from 1995's career-high LP, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. But it isn't the song's complexity that left her scratching her head.

“It was one of the more difficult songs for me to learn since there were so many effects and different harmonizing parts. The tricky part about Smashing Pumpkins’ music is the arrangements,” Wong asserts.

“It’s orchestrated well and almost counterintuitively while still maintaining musical sensibility and mainstream appeal. It’s really quite genius, but also hard to learn – and it sounds insane, but sometimes the easiest songs still get me nervous.

“One note hanging can be more nerve-racking than a whole solo because if you miss that note, you screwed up the whole part,” Wong continued. “That’s why Today [from 1993’s Siamese Dream] sometimes gets me nervous [Laughs].”

Speaking to Guitar World previously, Wong said she had given up on the prospect of touring again, but was pushed into applying for the Pumpkins gig by her boyfriend. When the chance of an audition fell before her, it was something she wasn't going to take lightly.

“I practiced those songs in and out like my life depended on it for three weeks, she says. I watched every live video I could find on the internet of those songs from '96 to 2023, trying to analyze every move they made.

“My heart was going 1,000,000 mph [during the audition] because almost the whole OG line-up was there. It was like looking through a glimpse of my teenage years but in real life!”

Wong had earned her stripes playing with Taylor Swift, Usher, and Bret Michaels, alongside writing and performing original material with Nylon Pink, Hellfire Heart, and Vigil of War.

At the time of joining, she had amassed 674K Instagram followers thanks to her talent and character-laced content, and that follower count has seen a healthy bump since she was announced as the band’s latest recruit.

Aside from playing in the Pumpkins proper, Corgan has also called on his new guitarist for a new solo project, Billy Corgan and The Machines of God, formed to celebrate some Pumpkin classics out on the road.

Head to Magazines Direct to grab a copy of Guitar World, which also includes new interviews with and contributions from Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Bonamassa, and Cory Wong.

In the latest episode of his The Magnificent Others podcast, Billy Corgan sat down with Richie Sambora to discuss their respective musical backgrounds – and revealed he came from an indie scene where being a good guitar player wasn't looked overly fondly upon.

Corgan's comments came after he and the ex-Bon Jovi electric guitar hero discussed some of their earliest eye-opening musical moments. Sambora's first gig was Black Sabbath in 1975 when he was just 15 years old.

“I lived on a dead-end street next to a swamp, but I could cut through the swamp and get to the train tunnel in a minute and a half,” Sambora remembers. “It dropped me off in Penn Station, underneath [Madison Square] Garden. I saw everyone that there ever was to see: Queen, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, David Bowie five times.”

Corgan is quick to note that such early experiences meant Sambora's bar for music was set high – something that contrasted with the music scene where he cut his own teeth as a guitarist.

“Not everybody has a high standard,” the Smashing Pumpkin man relays. “You know the thing about a lot of indie people is they think playing too good is a bad thing.”

Despite his rock background, though, Sambora was able to generate a credible reputation among such “indie” guitar players, as Corgan reveals.

“You are very well respected in the alternative community,” Corgan continues. “A lot of the rock guys, the alternative community look at and go, 'Uh, too obvious, too cheesy, they want it too bad,' but you have a different rep in my world. People would understand where you're coming from. They get it.”

During his chat with Corgan, Sambora also reflects on his time in Bon Jovi, and discusses the events leading up to his eventual departure. Sambora left Bon Jovi in 2013, but joined forces with his replacement, Phil X, for a run-through of Livin’ on a Prayer at a recent charity bash as the pair proved there’s no bad blood between them.

Corgan, meanwhile, recently announced a new solo project, with the Smashing Pumpkins' newest guitarist, Kiki Wong, also set to be involved. Billy Corgan and The Machines of God will celebrate a plethora of classic Pumpkins records, with a US tour kicking off in June.

One of Corgan’s previous podcast chats with Gene Simmons saw the bassist recounting how Ace Frehley’s Kiss audition nearly ended up with him throwing fists.

Whereas some guitar greats may favor high-end custom shop electric guitars or sought-after vintage builds, Billy Corgan is more interested in playing accessible six-strings that the majority of guitar fans can afford – and that includes playing off-the-shelf Reverends for all his work.

In the new issue of Guitarist, The Smashing Pumpkins frontman discusses his gear philosophy and, after confirming that rumors of him playing his off-the-shelf signature guitars – as opposed to personally constructed custom builds – are true, goes on to explain why such an approach is so important to him.

“This is the greatest endorsement that I can give,” he says when asked if he plays his stock Reverends. “I don’t know what the list price of a Reverend guitar is, but let’s say it’s about $1,000 or whatever.

“That’s the same guitar that I’m playing on Aghori Mhori Mei, and that’s the same guitar that I’m playing on stage with the band and on tour with Green Day in front of 50,000 people. It’s the same guitar.”

For Corgan, that means he routinely takes to the stage and studio armed with any one of his stock signatures, from the five-star rated $1,499 Z-One and Drop Z to the $1,299 regular and Terz models.

It’s a conscious choice, too, and although Corgan has experience with playing “super-expensive guitars”, he prefers playing more affordable alternatives because they can also be played by aspiring musicians.

“It means a lot to me that a young musician can go into a music store and take a guitar that they can probably afford, and if they work hard like we did, they can have that same sound and have that same opportunity with that great instrument,” he explains.

“That’s really important to me as an independent musician, you know? I’ve certainly played super-expensive guitars – but it’s pretty cool playing a guitar that doesn’t need to be souped up.”

But Corgan’s ethos of playing affordable guitars goes way beyond him using his $1k signatures. As is well-documented, he once used a $65 guitar to record Smashing Pumpkins classic, Mayonaise.

“The origin of the squealing high note was, I bought this guitar for $65, and it was such a cheap guitar that every time I’d stop playing it would make that whistle,” he once said (via Far Out).

“So when we wrote the song, we wrote in these parts that would stop so the whistle became part of the song because every time I would stop it would whistle.”

Corgan is, of course, not alone when it comes to playing more affordable instruments, and is just one of a number of players well-known for using cheap guitars in high-profile situations.

For the full interview with Billy Corgan, pick up the newest issue of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

Billy Corgan has announced a new solo project – Billy Corgan and The Machines of God – that will celebrate a string of classic Smashing Pumpkins albums, with a U.S. tour kicking off in June.

The tour, named A Return to Zero, promises to be the ultimate career celebration, with a setlist drawing from Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness (1995), the double album Machina/The Machines of God, and Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music, as well as the 2024 release, Aghori Mhori Me – featuring a mix of highlights and deep cuts. Accompanying Corgan will be the recently recruited Kiki Wong on guitar, drummer Jake Hayden, and bassist Jenna Fournier (also known as Kid Tigrrr).

On top of this announcement, the Pumpkins have revealed details for the remixed and remastered versions of their 2000 concept albums, Machina/The Machines of God and Machina II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music.

Corgan's Madame Zuzu’s tea shop in Highland Park, Illinois, will exclusively offer this expansive 80-song box set, which includes an impressive 48-track Machina and 32 bonus tracks of demos, outtakes, and live performances. Additionally, the band will be releasing a 16-song reissue of the original Machina/The Machines of God vinyl on August 22.

What’s more, this year will also see the 30th anniversary celebration of the era-defining Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness. In honor of the milestone, Corgan – alongside Chicago’s Lyric Opera – will present A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness, a seven-show series taking place between November 21 and 30.

Speaking about this seminal album to Guitar World back in 2005, Corgan said, “I think Mellon Collie illustrates a complete passion for music and for the guitar.

“Almost every track was written on a $60 guitar while sitting on my couch in my living room, watching TV. The album is a love affair with music, the guitar, and the band. And it’s all documented in those tracks, which makes me so happy.”

The artist presale for the upcoming tour runs from April 1 through April 3, with general on-sale beginning on April 4 via Ticketmaster.

Corgan’s recent endeavors also include The Magnificent Others podcast, where he recently discussed his 1996 Guitar World interview with Eddie Van Halen.

Though he's best-known as the author of seemingly non-threatening, ultra-radio-friendly power-pop smashes like Just What I Needed and My Best Friend's Girl, Ric Ocasek – the late frontman and rhythm guitarist of the Cars – always had a lot more punk and alt-rock street cred than you'd think.

The Cars' minimalism, visual and sonic, often earned them a New Wave tag that lumped them in with the likes of pop boundary-pushers of the era like Blondie and the Talking Heads. Though the band were fairly agnostic about the label, it wasn't applied to them without reason.

In the punk realm, Ocasek produced Suicide: Alan Vega and Martin Rev, the second album from the titular duo, in 1980.

Though more accessible than the band's debut – a listen to that album's centerpiece, the horrific 10-minute Frankie Teardrop (which this writer believes is still one of the most disturbing pieces of music to ever receive mass distribution) will prove what a tremendously low bar of “accessibility” that was – Ocasek's work on the album proved that his artistic talents went far beyond writing pop chart mainstays.

In that context, it makes sense that Ocasek would reach out to Smashing Pumpkins mastermind Billy Corgan to assist him with what would become his fifth solo album, 1997's Troublizing.

In a 1997 interview with Guitar World, Ocasek offered nothing but praise for Corgan and fond memories of his experiences working with him. To hear him tell it, the two were highly collaborative, with Ocasek allowing Corgan to, in some cases radically, re-shape his original arrangements, and Corgan luxuriating in Ocasek's guitar collection.

The Smashing Pumpkins guitar hero would end up playing on more than half of Troublizing's tracks, with Corgan often using Ocasek's own guitars; and favoring some in particular.

“He was using my guitars and everything,” Ocasek said of the sessions. “He fell in love with my SGs, so now I have to buy him one. I promised I'd get him one. I told him that one day it would show up at his door.”

Recording-wise, Ocasek and Corgan alternated between tracking live in the studio and plotting out songs with programming and drums played to a click, with further guitar overdubs coming later.

Giving his producer plenty of free rein to add touches as he saw fit, Ocasek came away impressed by Corgan's arranging and writing talents, and his technical abilities.

“[Corgan] did three EBow parts on Crashland Consequence. He did one part all the way through, put a harmony on top of it and then put a third harmony on – all pretty immediately, too,” Ocasek recounted.

“I was impressed with how he could instantly figure out where the thirds and fifths were. 'Cause I'm a basic non-musician. He's certainly proficient at playing.”

“What I think is nice about Crashland,” Ocasek continued, “is that he really accentuated the clicky guitar. And he also held back the drums for half the song. I thought that was cool.

“He also held back the real heavy guitars for almost 3/4 of the way through. Those are things that you sometimes don't think of when you're writing.”

Billy Corgan and Eddie Van Halen go way back. Heck, he even interviewed EVH back in 1996 for this very publication – a meeting of the minds that saw both guitarists, from different genres, eras, and schools of guitar, delve into the nuts and bolts of what makes Van Halen, well, Van Halen.

Fast-forward 29 years, and Corgan is recreating the infamous Guitar World interview with Van Halen's son, Wolfgang, on his own podcast, The Magnificant Others – and even offers an EVH anecdote or two of his own.

“I saw your dad back in the day [in] ’84, last tour with the original lineup,” he reminisces. “I sat there and studied it all like every other nerd. But when you're like this, as far away as you are [referring to the GW interview], and he's playing, you're like, ‘Holy Mother of God, how do you play like that?’”

However, upon his meeting with Eddie, it was soon Corgan's turn to flex his guitar chops... an experience which he recalls as nothing short of intimidating.

“He's talking and he's smoking and he's making jokes, and he goes, ‘You play, right?’ And I go, ‘Yeah.’ He goes, ‘Play.’ And he hands me that guitar or whatever.”

He continues, “[He goes] ‘Play the guitar. Let me see what you got.’ So I'm like, ‘Holy... What am I gonna play him?’ And I'm not gonna play Van Halen.

“So [then] I'm just like, I got nothing to lose, so I just start playing. And he goes, ‘You can play.’ I think he thought I was just some alternative creep! [laughs]”

Corgan discusses how after that encounter, he forever gained the respect of EVH. “After he saw that I could play the guitar, the conversation went totally different yesterday, and now we were talking about music and amps, and so he really opened up.”

EVH has also looked back on the Billy Corgan interview – recalling the moment Corgan tried his rig, and was shocked by the setup.

Billy Corgan recently invited Tom Morello to guest on his new The Magnificent Others interview series. During the conversation, he took the opportunity to voice a long-held theory that concerned him, the Rage Against the Machine titan, and one other electric guitar player who all formed a de facto ‘Yardbirds of metal’ trio.

As youngsters and aspiring musicians, Corgan and Morello both came from neighbouring areas, and as the Smashing Pumpkins frontman puts it in this new chat, they "grew up in the same atmosphere” and shared similar music experiences.

Corgan also namedrops Tool’s Adam Jones – who famously started a band with Morello during that time – as a third player to have shared social and sonic circles. They all listened to similar music, started rock bands, and wrote riff-driven music.

However, despite having near-identical interests – and having shared such similar experiences – when their careers took off, all three players branched out into significantly different niches.

Morello went down the activist rock route with Rage Against the Machine, Jones went progressive with Tool, and Corgan developed the Smashing Pumpkins’ alt-rock sound. It’s a branching of styles that has baffled Corgan ever since.

“I have this theory no-one seems to pick up on, so I'm bringing it to you,” Corgan says to Morello. “I'm sure I told you about this before, but I do find it fascinating that Adam [Jones] from Tool... obviously you guys had a band together when you were young.

“And there I am, living probably 20 miles away from you guys. We all grew up in the same atmosphere. We all started rock bands that were predominantly riff-driven… and we took music in three completely different directions. I find that really fascinating.”

That the three heavy players would be so closely connected by one shared musical experience, only to then split off and explore their own avenues, is not a new phenomenon.

In fact, almost the exact same thing happened in England, with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, all of whom grew up in Surrey, UK, and would go on to join the same band. It’s a shared phenomenon that clearly hasn’t gone unnoticed by Corgan.

“Somebody will get mad at me, but it's the closest thing to Beck, Clapton and Page kind of growing up in the same hood,” Corgan goes on of the connection he had with Morello and Jones. “We have had our influence in what followed.

“If they want to get mad at me, they can, but that's not an insane theory. I find it really fascinating, because what was it in the water that we were all drinking?”

Indeed, similarities between the respective trio’s experiences can be drawn. Clapton, Beck and Page will forever be linked by the fact they all had stints in the Yardbirds, before they too embarked down notably differing guitar paths.

Page embraced hard rock with Led Zeppelin, Clapton pursued psychedelic rock and blues through Cream and his solo work, and Beck became revered for his blues rock and fusion style.

Again, the fact these three were all unified by Yardbird tenures that preceded stylistic deviations, is, at least in Corgan’s mind, the same thing he experienced with Adam Jones and Tom Morello.

“The one thing that all three have in common is metal, you know?” Morello says in response to Corgan’s theory. “Adam and I, we were in his truck driving up to the [Judas] Priest shows and the Iron Maiden shows.

“And then I think what's interesting is how that metal DNA appears in all three, but then there's how it branches off.”

While Clapton, Beck and Page only performed together during one magical tour, we have yet to hear what a Morello/Corgan/Jones collab sounds like.

Although, given the news that Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath's final show will play host to a Tool, Rage Against the Machine and Smashing Pumpkins supergroup, it could be on the cards…

Visit Billy Corgan's YouTube channel to watch the full interview.

The announcement of Ozzy Osbourne's return – and last-ever live performance – on July 5 marks the historic reunion of the original Black Sabbath members for their first show in 20 years.

Dubbed ‘Back to the Beginning’, this homecoming – and, frankly, celebration of a great legacy – takes Sabbath back to where it all began: Birmingham.

However, instead of a traditional headliner-and-support-style show, this event will bring together some of rock’s most influential, generation-spanning talents – a supergroup, if you will, or a “very supergroup,” as Tony Iommi shared with Planet Rock – for what already looks like an event destined for the history books.

Most intriguing among the lineup is a Tool, Rage Against the Machine and Smashing Pumpkins supergroup, teased by Sharon Osbourne, who appears in the same interview.

“Tom Morello is going to be playing with Billy Corgan and you know the drummer from Tool [Danny Carey]. You wouldn't have thought that you would see those three guys together, but they're all from Chicago, so they're all home guys,” says Osbourne.

“Then you’ll see Slash and Duff [McKagan] and whoever they choose to play with,” she elaborates in an interview with NME. “David Draiman [Disturbed] is going to come up and sing, Jonathan [Davis] from KoRn is going to be here and he could be playing with [Red Hot Chili Peppers’] Chad Smith or whoever! Alice In Chains are coming and they’re playing as the band.”

As Osbourne explains, assembling all these big names was no easy feat – but their willingness to commit is a testament to Ozzy’s legacy and, by extension, Black Sabbath’s.

“People are coming in from all over the world – they're all gigging because it's the summer, so everybody's out doing festivals, and somehow, it worked. Bands like Anthrax, we asked them to be a part of it, and they said, ‘Oh, don't even bother to send us a ticket. We're going to be there no matter what.’”

After all, as Osbourne puts it, “This is a celebration – of the genre and the pioneers who started it and passed it on to all these bands. Usually, this thing is done when you’re dead – so it’s nice that these guys can be alive to be appreciated!”

Tickets for the mega-event go on sale on February 14, with proceeds from the show set to be shared equally between Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, and Acorn Children’s Hospice.

Visit Live Nation for tickets.