Billy Corgan Vs. Audiences Everywhere

11/21/08 5:36pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

It's probably ill-advised to do an anniversary tour where you don't play any of your hits and you yell at your audience, but Billy Corgan has been doing both during the Smashing Pumpkins' current 20th anniversary tour.

Corgan has been using "Everything Is Beautiful," which the Pumpkins have been playing during the encore of some shows, to take the opportunity to rant at his audience and diss its city in the lyrics. He's even turned the microphone over to hecklers or crowd members so they can either yell at him or tell him they love him.

But nothing quite matches the clip below. During "Everything Is Beautiful" at a recent show at the Chicago Theatre, Corgan took the time to enlighten the audience about how he masturbates and thinks of Sarah Palin (disgusting and just wrong), but can't get off and has to think of the audience to get anywhere (ewwwww!).

Corgan loves professional wrestling, so we're calling him out as trying to play heel (the bad guy), especially when he starts asking the audience members why they're angry at him.

"You know, for 20 years, we've tried to make people happy and failed again and again," he says in the video. "It's so confusing.

"We're so good at it. It's like we don't play music. Do we not play music? Is that what it is? Is it because I don't put a big smile on my face? What is it? Is it the funny voice? What is it? How come people just aren't happy with us?"

I'm willing to bet it has something to do with the fact that your anniversary tour is completely absent of hits and that you've been antagonistic towards your audiences throughout the tour, Billy. Let's not forget that earlier in the tour when a fan gave Corgan the finger, the frontman invited him up on stage to ask why he had cursed at him with his digit. The fan said it was because he sucked. Corgan called the fan "James Iha." All these things might have something to do with it.

Here's Corgan's latest outburst: