Shoestring Century

This piece, “The Smashing Pumpkins:  The Last Great Romantics?”, was originally published 23 February 2008 at the old Shoestring Century.  Since then, Mr. Corgan has given plenty of insight into how he sees his world, via the fine Everything From Here to There. I have altered the original text to replace disingenuous uses of the term “The Smashing Pumpkins” with the more accurate “Billy Corgan.”

Is he really a Romantic?  A Romantic might say this:  ”I have no problem telling you I am also a world class musician, and one of the best songwriters alive. If I said those things in an interview, I would be mocked, not because those things aren’t true, but because I shouldn’t be the one saying these things.”  But one would never, in the same essay, renounce “the illusion of independent thought [that] sustains the momentary peace of believing, ‘Lucky me, I am in control of my world.’”  The Romantic, the acme of the Western man, is in control of his world!

In the history books of Western music, Romanticism is regarded as a dead idea, something that went quietly into that atonal night of 20th century.  Everything resembling it since seems to be a Postmodern tribute, such as a John Williams film score, or a flat-out misuse of the term, like a “romantic” Coldplay ballad.  Yet I would argue that, by some historical anomaly, Romanticism’s ideals live on in the compositions and the career of Billy Corgan, a century after the death of the last great Romantics.  Based on the blues, rock has never really been a Romanic form, but Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlain and Co. have managed to transform it into something so grand, expressive and virtuosic that it warrants our consideration of whether or not the band should be thought of as the heirs to the legacy of Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, and Frederic Chopin.

Let’s look at some of the defining traits of the old Romantics, to see just how well Corgan keeps the flame alive, intentionally or not:

Populism

The Romantic period was the first time that musicians could play directly to the people, traveling Europe and selling reams of sheet music thanks to new technology, instead of writing for the ears of dukes and churches.  This certainly calls to mind the mutual indifference between the Smashing Pumpkins and the music press.  The band only provided one magazine interview upon the release of Zeitgeist, choosing instead to directly answer fans’ questions through YouTube.  Seven years before Radiohead’s much-ballyhooed web release of In Rainbows, the Pumpkins refused to play courtier to Virgin Records, and gave the uncompromising Machina II/Friends and Enemies of Modern Music straight to twenty-five of their biggest fans.  In another symbolic act, the band members finished a 1998 performance of “Pug” on Brazil’s Programa Livre by handing their instruments to shivering, star-struck teenagers.

Virtuosity

The Romantics were the first to celebrate the virtuoso onstage, through improvisation and inhumanly complex arrangements.  On that note, I’ll never forget the glee on my friend’s face as he proclaimed, in the middle of an extended Corgan 2007 guitar solo, “Man, I would never accept this shit from anyone else!” I agree with him on principle – there’s too much jamming out there.  And yet Corgan’s wild improv held thousands of us transfixed.  That’s real virtuosity.

Chamberlain’s drumming virtuosity is likewise beyond question.  In live performances, he tears into the kit with the same semi-improvisational abandon that Liszt, the first great concert pianist, brought to his instrument.  Corgan revealed in a 2007 interview that Chamberlain laid down his take for the searing, nine-minute-and-fifty-three-second “United States” in one go (barring one “small” mistimed hit).  The experience of a non-stop, sweaty, three-plus hour Smashing Pumpkins concert is not so different from the recitals in which a frail Chopin collapsed onto his piano keys following one last cascading, fifteen-minute number.

Wild Ambition

This is my term for the Romantic’s desire to master every known form and length of musical piece.  This stems from the 18th century’s surging belief in the individual’s abilities – no longer was the composer a humble servant of classical dogmas.  In today’s pop climate, Corgan rejects the Postmodern idea that every possible genre has already been done, or the traditionalist’s (i.e. the blues man’s, the punk’s) notion that a band should serve one sound.  Corgan has shown a mastery of the whispered and spare (“Black Irish”, “Blank”) as well as the vast and thunderous (“Thru the Eyes of Ruby”, “Behold! The Night Mare”).

And I don’t believe Corgan was ever truly psychedelic, despite the paisley shirts.  That’s just what people say nowadays about guitarists who try to wring every possible tone out of their instrument.

Nationalism

With Zeitgeist, flanked by a drowning Lady Liberty and deadened black Stars and Bars, the Smashing Pumpkins embody that last defining element of Romantic music: nationalism.  Before you recoil in horror at the idea of a goose-stepping Billy, let me quote Chopin biographer Benita Eisler’s definition that nationalism, for the Romantic, “breathed the poignancy of exile from which a patriot artist… affirmed ties to a violated country.”

Are all of these parallels deliberate?  Does Billy Corgan yearn to be seen as a Romantic in an age of Postmodernism?  I diagnose here a clear, incurable outsider:  Corgan was born around 150 years too late.

Remember these lines from The Gay Science:   “When a human being resists his whole age and stops it at the gate to demand an accounting, this must have influence.  Whether that is what he desires is immaterial; that he can do it is what matters.”  The proven, indestructible greatness of Corgan’s career thus far is antimatter to Generation Y postmodern detachment.  This is why Corgan offends.  He stands unashamed as a great man, humiliating the lesser — the scenesters.