Although there was admittedly a 20-year period when he refrained from entering a church, Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame has since openly emphasized the importance of his Christian faith and having a relationship with God.
On the latest episode of his podcast, “The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan,” the rocker discussed with Stryper frontman Michael Sweet the importance and risks of maintaining that faith and relationship while navigating the music industry — an industry where people appear, according to Corgan, to be “very comfortable talking about everything but God.”
‘God is the third rail in rock and roll.’
While he hailed from a Christian family, Sweet suggested that he experienced a period of aversion to religious messaging, particularly when first getting into the industry.
That changed, however, when a friend of the band visited their studio and declared, “I’m a Christian now. … I know you guys have gone down that [other] path, and you’re not now, but listen, if you give your band to God, He’s going to do things that you never even dreamed of,” Sweet recalled.
“It kind of blew my mind,” said Sweet, adding that he heeded the counsel and the band ultimately became explicitly Christian.
“As musicians, we’re certainly aware of other people’s opinions,” said Corgan, “especially at that particular time, making that kind of decision and say[ing], ‘OK, now we’re going to sort of represent that.’ Not, ‘We’re going to hide it in our lyrics and sort of just play along.’ Like, ‘We’re going to come out and say this is who we are, this is what we believe in.'”
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Corgan, whose band has sold tens of millions of records, stressed that becoming overtly Christian is a “huge decision.”
“It was scary,” responded Sweet.
“You know what you’re risking. You’re not just risking some guy from another band making fun of you,” said Corgan.
“This may blow our whole dream.”
Sweet suggested that there was “brief” skepticism, for instance, behind the scenes at Enigma Records about signing a group whose songs included lines like, “Jesus is the way.”
“Business is business, so I get it,” said Sweet, whose band ultimately signed with Enigma in 1983.
Corgan said with confidence that his band “didn’t get signed at different times” because of corporate sensitivities to social pressure and potential reputational damage.
“Signing a heavy metal band that’s singing about Jesus in 1984 or whatever — that is very outside the line that was going,” said Corgan.
The Smashing Pumpkins co-founder noted later in the episode that Christianity is “part of the fabric of the nation whether people like it or not.” He also claimed that “this idea that our most popular forms of music are overly leaned towards vice I think says more about artists’ sociopathy than it does reality.”
Corgan repeated an observation he made in a previous interview, namely that “God is the third rail in rock and roll.”
Given that the majority of Americans are still Christians, the musician is puzzled why, for so many artists, “God [is] antithetical to the part of marketing who you are.”
“Fear,” said Sweet.
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