Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan sat down with Loudwire Nights for a new interview. During the chat, the frontman revealed they were inspired by Mötley Crüe during the making of their latest album ‘Aghori Mhori Mei.’
“All of a sudden I start talking about Motley Crue, specifically the ‘Too Fast For Love’ and ‘Shout at the Devil’ albums,” Corgan said while talking about how the band inspired them. “In their own crazy minds, they thought they were doing glam. Nikki thought they were doing Sweet and early Bowie, but they couldn’t really do it and they hadn’t really studied the records, so they did the Motley Crue version of Sweet or something. And you end up with this beautiful, almost primitive but more visceral version of the thing they were trying to kind of be.”
He added: “We couldn’t be Led Zeppelin, but we could kind of do Pumpkins’ fake version of Led Zeppelin or Pumpkins’ fake version of Soundgarden or something.”
It’s been just over a year since the Smashing Pumpkins dropped the final part of their last album, ‘Atum: A Rock Opera in Three Acts,’ in May 2023. But Corgan and the band have already released a new one.
The announcement for the new album first came on July 19, two weeks before the release date.
“In the writing of this new album I became intrigued with the well-worn axiom, ‘You can’t go home again,’” Corgan said of the album. “Which I have found personally to be true in form but thought well, what if we tried anyway? Not so much in looking backwards with sentimentality but rather as a means to move forward; to see if in the balance of success and failure that our ways of making music circa 1990-1996 would still inspire something revelatory.”
The Pumpkins have a busy year ahead. They will be opening for Green Day on their The Saviors Tour and will also play a bunch of solo arena shows across the U.S. and Canada.
You can hear the album down below.