Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan Says iTunes Is Making Rock Too “Cuddly”

Every alternative punk in the 90s knows Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins’ bald, amorphous, nasally-voiced lead singer. And he can sometimes be an idiot. Now he’s being an idiot about iTunes.

In an interview with Antiquiet, Billy Corgan blamed the “decline” of rock and roll — which, if you’ll look around, is actually in ascent, largely because it’s so much easier to reach an audience with iTunes than it once was — squarely on iTunes shoulders. Why? Because it’s too cuddly.

You don’t need an army, you don’t need a tank, you don’t need a bayonet. You just need a really good fucking idea. There’s something about a guy… just like Tom Morello had this quote on his guitar from Woody Guthrie: “This guitar is a fucking weapon. This guitar kills fascists.” Love kills fucking fascists. And when music is so goddamned fucking iTunes friendly cuddly, it makes me want to fucking puke. It’s not for everybody to be like that, but where is that voicing in the greater collective voices? Why don’t we have that anymore?

Deep, man, deep. Keep in mind, every album Smashing Pumpkins ever released is on iTunes. Heck, ebem Corgan’s follow-up band, Zwan, is there.

Don’t you just love it when rockers who have been nurtured and coddled and become millionaires through the studio system start lashing out at the new generation of artists trying to get their music out in any way they can as somehow lacking their edge?

What a doof.

• Source Antiquiet
• Via TUAW

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