It’s not really a surprise that someone would talk shit about Billy Corgan. The Smashing Pumpkins frontman is no stranger to beef and controversy. What is somewhat surprising, however, is that genuine good guy Wayne Coyne would speak up, saying Corgan behaved like a “raging asshole” during Lollapalooza in the 1990s. And he’s not the only one.
The comments come from the new book Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival, an oral history of the festival that details the touring show founded by Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell, who originally came up with the idea as a swansong event for the band.
Billy Corgan Allegedly Threw Guitars at Billy Howerdel
Among the stories featured in the book are many about how difficult Corgan was during the run, including one from Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman—an artist liaison on Lollapalooza in 1994—who recalled seeing Corgan treat his guitar tech, Billy Howerdel, very cruelly. “Billy Corgan was treating [Howerdel] like such shit, throwing guitars at him, just being horrible,” Lyman said.
Howerdel—who later went on to form the band A Perfect Circle—addressed the claims, saying, “I got fired off that tour working for Billy and [Pumpkins bassist] D’arcy [Wretzky]—the first and only time I’ve been fired from a job. I don’t remember guitars being thrown at me, but there were a lot of behaviors that just didn’t seem healthy, that you definitely didn’t want to be around anyway.”
This brings us to Coyne, who did not beat around the bush of candy coast his opinion. “Billy Corgan was such a raging asshole, especially back then, that you didn’t want to stick around and watch them,” the Flaming Lips singer said, as first reported by NME.
“We liked a few of their songs, but we would just despise him after a while,” Coyne went on to say, then seemingly insinuating that the Lollapalooza crowds were also not fans of Corgan and his band. “So we’d leave right after the Beastie Boys played to avoid the traffic, because the audience was also starting to clear out.”
Corgan and Coyne Still Are Not on Good Terms
This is the part where a celebrity talking shit about another celebrity usually says something like “All that is in the past, we’re on good terms these days,” but such is not the case for Coyne and Corgan.
“We’re still avoiding him to this day,” he said. “We’ve played shows in the past couple years where he’s hanging around and you can tell he wants to come into our dressing room. And we’re like, ‘No, we’re not here!’”
To his credit, in the book, Corgan approaches this era of his life with self-reflection, indicating that he knows he was (is?) hard to deal with, and explaining that a lot of it has to do with the fact that Nirvana was supposed to be the headliner but when they dropped off the Smashing Pumpkins were automatically make the news headliners.
“You talk about going into Middle America at the height of MTV, in 1994, and I was twenty-six or twenty-seven. I was not prepared for that at all,” he said, also noting that there was palpable tension between himself and the fans.
Billy Corgan Dislikes Bullys, Ironically
“So we’re headlining what became historically the biggest Lollapalooza ever. And there they are,” he said. “There are the same football players who used to bully us in the hallways. I looked at it as, like, ‘No. You’re the enemy and we are here to take you on.’”
Finally, Corgan somewhat backed up Coyne’s position by sharing that there have been multiple people who’ve told him that they “refuse to ever see the band or listen to the band” after seeing them at Lollapalooza 30 years ago.
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