Billy Corgan believes his guitar skills are often overlooked, even by some fans of The Smashing Pumpkins.
“Most people don’t even recognize my contributions as a guitar player. They don’t even assume I’m the one playing a lot of the guitar,” the frontman recently told Guitar World.
“You have these silly lists that come out about the greatest guitar players; I usually don’t even make those lists. Or they’ll put me behind somebody who I could play circles around. I don’t mean to denigrate the person in front of me or the people in front of me, but come on, you know? I’m enough of a guitar player to know who’s a great guitar player.”
He added, “Once you go beyond, let’s call it ‘the Zakk Wyldes and Dimebag Darrells and the truly great Randy Rhoadses,’ there’s a lot of people who pretend to play guitar. I certainly have no problem believing I’m better than a lot of them.”
Some ‘Greatest Guitarists’ lists in recent years, including Rolling Stone’s 2023 picks, didn’t even include Corgan’s name. The singer attributed this to the fact that he’s involved in every aspect of his band’s music.
“If I’m being frank about it – and maybe this isn’t the best way to do it – but if I’m being frank, people have a hard time understanding that as it pertains to the Smashing Pumpkins, I’m writing the songs, lyrics, melodies, arrangements and playing most of the complicated guitar,” he explained. “And that I’m capable of doing a solo on top of that. I think that’s hard for people to process.”
The Smashing Pumpkins released a guitar-driven studio album, ‘Aghori Mhori Mei,’ in August this year. They’re now touring to promote it in Latin America, with their next show in Brazil on November 1.