Billy Corgan explains the meaning of Adore
(part three of a three-part interview)

(This story picks up where Friday [June 26]'s left off ). The Smashing Pumpkins' Adore album title is not some light-hearted or tongue-in-cheek reference to the band's public standing. The thought behind the moniker goes much deeper than just hearts, flowers, and fans. "I was just looking for somethingthat seemed to symbolize theintensity of love in all its positive and negative aspects," says Billy Corgan. "The concept of adoration is like the word 'fanatical': there's a positive energy and there's a negative energy in adoration, and in looking at love there's a good side and a bad side. "I was trying to look at it from all ends," Corgan continues. "What makes a person want to kill for their country, what makes a person want to kill the person they love, what makes a person want to drive across the country to see someone for five minutes? That kind of intensity seemed to sum up the whole thing for me." When the Pumpkins played two shows in Australia recently -- in Sydney and Melbourne -- those conceptual notions were supported musically by the physical presence of not one but two percussionists, a keyboard player, and Corgan's own sinewy lead work. But rather than filling in the breathing spaces in the musical landscape, the additional personnel somehow opened everything up and underlined the possibility that Adore is more of a blues or folk album, albeit with certain Corgan-prescribed preconditions. "I spent a lot of time listening to old folk music and old blues," he says. "When I tell people they just don't believe me, because they can't necessarily hear it in the music. But I really went back and tried to pinpoint in myself what's the true source of music of the soul. That was my foundation. "But at the same time," he adds, "I didn't want to make this kind of folk album that harkened back to the old days. I guess I'm trying to make a folk album for the future, a folk album that seems to suit our times. As much as Bob Dylan's 'Blowing in the Wind' was very 1964, maybe 'To Sheila' or 'Ava Adore' or one of those songs is very 1998. "It's like facing a technophobia, and the distance between human beings and machines. There's a relevance in there, just as much as the folk singers who sang about [fear] of losing their jobs because now there was machines that work. It's that same kind urgency, energy, and fear. It all seemed to mix in for me." Parts one and two of this interview ran in allstar on Thursday (June 25) and Friday (June 26), respectively.

-- Murray Engleheart

Source: Allstar Magazine