Billy Corgan – who is best known as a founding member of The Smashing Pumpkins – wants his own music played at his funeral.
Billy Corgan wants his own music played at his funeral.
The 58-year-old rock star is best known as a founding member of The Smashing Pumpkins – who have achieved huge success with hits such as ‘Tonight, Tonight’ and ‘Bullet with Butterfly Wings’ since hitting the music scene in the 1988 – and he has now revealed which track he would have played at his memorial service, all just to make a “bitter point” to those left behind.
He told The Guardian: “I’d probably pick one of my own just to make some sort of posthumous, bitter point: ‘You should have paid more attention to me when I was here.’
“‘To Sheila’ from the ‘Adore’ album by Smashing Pumpkins would be a good one, if you’re sitting there, mourning my loss.”
What’s more, Billy recently thought it would be “funny” to perform the Smashing Pumpkins’ track ‘Zero’ at a karaoke, but it backfired on him when he approached the performance as if it were an actual gig.
He said: “The last song I did at karaoke was ‘Zero’ by Smashing Pumpkins. I thought it would be funny to sing my own song, but the longer it went, the more I performed it like I was on stage in front of 50,000 people, and the less people thought it was funny.”
Meanwhile, the ‘1979’ hitmaker – who has also released four solo albums outside of the alternative rock band – was asked about the song he “secretly likes” and admitted that it is none other than ‘Roar’ by Katy Pery, although the pop star had a moment of confusion when she met Dave and his family in person on the rare occasion he went to a party.
Billy – who is married to Chloe Mendel and has Augustus, nine, Philomena, six, and three-week-old Juno with her – said: “I don’t really go to parties. If I do, I’m usually horrified by what they play. My father played in dance bands in the 80s, so he’d play things like Celebration by Kool the Gang and ended up hating them. I must have inherited the same hatred.
“When “I hear ‘Roar’ by Katy Perry at the grocery store, I think: ‘That’s a good song.’ We were at a party and Katy and her husband mistook my wife for a nanny, because she was watching after all the children, and they were fishing around for a nanny.”
