Billy Corgan

4. Start writing poetry.
As part of the confessional process, Corgan has made one of the most dreaded rock-star moves: the crossover to the written word. Ever since Bob Dylan scored a book contract and threw together the unreadable Tarantula, musicians have accepted the flattering overtures of eager publishers with dollar signs in their eyes, attempting to expand their lyric sheets into hardcover material. Awaiting such releases is an almost knee-jerk critical assault, as self-appointed literary protectors histrionically attempt to guard their turf against the presumptuous invader.

Corgan’s poetry book, Blinking with Fists, was greeted with just such a reaction after its release last fall. Reviewing Corgan’s live reading at the Chicago Poetry Center, Chicagopoetry.com editor C.J. Laity called the work “forced, sophomoric attempts at creating what he must have thought poetry is supposed to sound like.” But other observers disagreed, such as Jeff Vrabel of the Chicago Sun-Times praising the poems as being “full of the regretful melancholy of his music and the rhythmic, angular wordplay of his best Pumpkins lyrics.”

Certainly, Corgan’s fans responded to his jump across media boundaries, pushing Blinking with Fists to a high debut on the New York Times bestseller list. For his own part, Corgan has let the snipes and tomatoes roll off his back, and seems more determined than ever to moonlight in typing. Now serializing on an Internet near you: The Billy Corgan Autobiography.

“I’ve never really told my own story,” Corgan says of the project. “I’ve told a lot of stories, but I’ve never told The Story. And I’m sure I’ll leave things out, and forget things, but for the most part you’re going to get The Story, what I actually think happened to me.”

Already underway on his website (www.billycorgan.com), the first entries are somewhat scattershot, non-linear remembrances jump-cutting from playing shows with his first band, The Marked, to the troubled circumstances recording Adore, to his earliest memory of playing with a children’s record player while his parents fought. In talking about the crooked timelines, Corgan makes the project sound both meticulously planned and without-a-net spontaneous.

“It’ll all make sense in the end,” he promises. “I know where the destination point is, but I’m not sure how I’ll get there. I’m literally writing these, editing them and putting them on the Internet immediately, so I’m winging it.”

I ask if it scares him.

“Yeah, it totally scares me. I’m in new territory here.”

What’s definitely known is that toes will be stepped on, as Corgan has previously used his website to blame the Pumpkins’ demise on guitarist James Iha and called his former bassist D’arcy Wretzky a “mean-spirited drug addict who refused to get help.” But when asked about the project’s potential fallout, Corgan assures, “The intention is not to be malicious or cause harm at all. I’m constantly making sure that it strikes me as true. [Sometimes] I’d really rather tell another story, and I’d like you to believe that I’m the genius behind everything that ever happened, but it’s not true. I have to give credit where credit is due.”

Corgan’s literary aspirations don’t stop at poetry and non-fiction, either. Following up the tantalizing book-flap tidbit from Blinking with Fists, Corgan also has a “spacey” novel on the (distant) horizon. “Writing’s the same as music—you have to find your own voice,” he says. “I feel like I’m halfway there. It’s one thing to write poetry—you can ‘miss’ a poem. You can have a poem B-side. But as far as a novel, it can’t be a B-side. It has to be an A-side, and it has to be an A-side for like 300 pages.”

5. Get born-again.
First of all, for the record, Billy says, “I was raised a Christian, but I wouldn’t call myself a Christian now.” But there’s no denying that the tone of Corgan’s Biblical imagery has shifted from the tormented music of Smashing Pumpkins to the considerably more optimistic tenor of Zwan and TheFutureEmbrace. It’s a long way from “God is empty / Just like me” to covering the hymn “Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken,” and from declaring, “The world is a vampire” to promising, “We can change the world,” but Corgan sees it all as a logical continuum.

“I think when I was younger it was easier to focus on the negative, nihilist vision,” Corgan says, “Zeroes and black death. This is sort of picking up on the other half of the body, which is God and white light. I saw somebody wrote online that ‘he’s found Jesus,’ but no, I didn’t find Jesus. He’s been there the whole time.”

But Corgan’s faith doesn’t ?t easily into the mold of the Christian rocker or the caricature of the celebrity grasping at a shortcut to spiritualism. “My version, of course, is not this flag-waving, let’s all get on the Jesus train and ride out of Hell. I’m not that kind of guy. It’s an embrace that life is good, worth living and yeah, it’s not easy, but there are more pluses than minuses.”

The backlash against rockers daring to discuss issues of religion is well-documented—from the turned-up noses of certain indie factions against everything from the within-the-church criticism of artists like Pedro the Lion and Sufjan Stevens, to the mockery of stars like Korn guitarist Head who undergo deep conversions from rock hedonism to a pious lifestyle. As usual, Billy Corgan doesn’t care much about any potential fan aversion and doesn’t mince words in talking about it. “I’m not going to just get with the Paris Hilton program of ‘let’s pretend we’re all gonna live forever.’ If I’m accused of anything, what are you accusing me of? Thinking positively? Sorry, f---ing kill me.”

For those who still can’t reconcile a peaceful, suburban, spiritual Billy with the angst-driven poster child for Infinite Sadness, he recommends looking back at the subtext of his earlier work. “It wasn’t a demonstrable need to say, ‘I’m so miserable, look at me.’ It was, ‘look at me, I’m miserable, but I’m trying to figure out a way to get out of the hole.’ That, even in and of itself, has a positivity to it because it’s hopeful, it’s not death, it isn’t nihilism. There’s actually a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe now, I’m just further along towards the end of the tunnel. I don’t feel lost, I never felt lost.”