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William Patrick Corgan On World Cafe

William Patrick Corgan would be the first to admit that many people's image of him was locked down back in 1995 as Billy Corgan: frontman of The Smashing Pumpkins. The Pumpkins had just released Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the album with the song "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" -– you know, the one where despite all his rage, he's still just a rat in a cage? As Corgan tells me, that persona became something of a cage — or, at least, the trappings of fame did. The first time he ever walked a red carpet with Smashing Pumpkins, Corgan flipped the bird to the cameras who were trying to take his picture, and his relationship to the press has only gotten more complicated since.

But, as we often learn when we invite famous people in for interviews, Corgan is not who you may think he is. He's not who I thought he was. His Smashing Pumpkins years involved playing parts in public; so did his childhood. As he explains in our conversation, he needed it to survive back then.

Corgan joined us in the studio to perform music from his new solo record called Ogilala. It was produced by Rick Rubin, who Corgan says brought the "sensitive Pisces guy" of the Siamese Dream era back into focus. We start our session with a new song called "Shiloh." Hear Corgan with just his guitar, performing live at the World Cafe, in the player above.

Copyright 2017 XPN

Talia Schlanger hosts World Cafe, which is distributed by NPR and produced by WXPN, the public radio service of the University of Pennsylvania. She got her start in broadcasting at the CBC, Canada's national public broadcaster. She hosted CBC Radio 2 Weekend Mornings on radio and was the on-camera host for two seasons of the television series CBC Music: Backstage, as well as several prime-time music TV specials for CBC, including the Quietest Concert Ever: On Fundy's Ocean Floor. Schlanger also guest hosted various flagship shows on CBC Radio One, including As It Happens, Day 6 and Because News. Schlanger also won a Canadian Screen Award as a producer for CBC Music Presents: The Beetle Roadtrip Sessions, a cross-country rock 'n' roll road trip.