OTHER TECH

Forty-five minutes is the right length for this record. It's beautiful, isn't it? CDs are too long these days. I find myself checking out at about 40 minutes.

That's understandable. In today's iPod age, nobody listens to full albums anymore. Nobody does. Look at the running times of those early Beatles albums: 35 minutes, 32 minutes. I can almost assure you that, except for the really hard-core fans, 95% of the people who bought my records over the last eight years didn't listen to them all the way through at any given point. It's just too much to take on. And I admit it: I'm the shuffle king. Even when I put on a CD in the car, I hit shuffle.

You mentioned the Beatles. They were an important touchstone in one of your early blogs on MySpace.com. Has blogging been cathartic for you? You're sharing a lot of intimate details about your life. I'm going from "nobody knows this story" to "the world can judge." Here's the thing: I have a level of self-consciousness that I think is appropriate as an artist, and I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think it had some artistic purpose. It's not just a celebrity car crash, because there are things I'm leaving off the table - things I've seen or done that would be tabloid news tomorrow. My thing is to show that it's really a maze in there [points to his head]. As controlling or as manipulative as I may have appeared throughout my career, it's nothing compared with the chaos going on in my brain. There are just times in your life when you have to clean the closets, you know? It's the very definition of purging: a need to publicly puke it all out.

You could draw some parallels with Bob Dylan's Chronicles. It's brilliant how he parceled out information his way: "I'll give you as much as I feel like." But you're a lot more open than he is. What he did was great, but I think my blog penetrates a little more into my thinking. Dylan never really lets you into how his mind works. He gives small insights. It's interesting to review your life because you go back through the emotions again, and - as you know as a writer - you totally go into the emotive moment. You're back in that space.

When you talked about being 5 and having the money to buy Meet the Beatles, it reminded me of the times I would bike off to the record store as a kid whenever I had any money to spend. I don't know why, but I can still see the light on that street, I can still feel the texture of it all. It's very 3-D. With Meet the Beatles, I can still see myself standing there, talking to the woman in the store. That's as clear as day. There are a lot of other things I don't remember at all. It's like my brain remembers the things I think are important in my life.

It's the movie that you come back to. It's been interesting. It's definitely been shaking things up. It's like letting loose certain energies, but the jury's still out as to whether that's positive or negative. Hopefully it will be positive, but I've been in the public game long enough to know that that can be deceiving.

Was there a lightning bolt that hit you and made you think, "I need to do this"? I'd been thinking for two-plus years about writing a book. There are tales in there - cautionary tales [laughs] - but every time I thought about the commercial end of it - how much do I do, who's it for, and who's going to edit it? - I'd get bummed out. It didn't feel right. I wanted to tell my story, but I could only see telling it through a book. But a bunch of us had been talking about doing different things with the Web, and this just clicked in my head.

A lot of stuff I've done in the past few years has been in the Pumpkins' shadow - I built this tower, and now I'm in the shadow of it. Everything I've done over the past 7 years has been about me realizing that peak wasn't going to last. That's why I did an album like [1998's] Adore, which is basically me ripping down the machinery I'd created. The funny thing is, a lot of people took what I said as arrogant, and I understand now why. But what they missed is that I'm a historian. If you look at history carefully, you see trends, patterns, and you know how to find your spot in it. People also leave off the fact that we just didn't suddenly wake up and know how to play 7-minute jams. There was a lot of work there.

You guys put in a lot of trench time. A crazy amount. The amount of time arguing over two bars versus three - "Wasn't it four the other day?" - an hour just on that kind of stuff.

You've said that all along. People who have been following your career won't be surprised by that. But people overlay that with their own stories. My story was, you work ten years toward this peak, but it doesn't take much to realize that what goes up must come down. Knowing that it would come down, I took it down myself. And I've been through this huge, long-winded rebuilding phase to get back to a spot in my life where I'm completely musically engaged - fully in my own power and not somebody else's; not beholden to the whims of the record industry. And it's interesting, because I'm riding back to a position of strength. It's starting to happen like it happened with the band. People are curious again, because it's an organic curiosity. And I'm doing it through new ways, new systems, by rising to new challenges.

The mistake is in going back and trying to win the same game. You can't. You can only win that particular game one time. You have to create a new definition to live by. And that definition gives the Pumpkins new energy, gives Billy new energy, gives everything new energy. Something you thought was exhausted isn't exhausted at all. Suddenly Smashing Pumpkins is finding young fans and is having a huge second life.

Was finally making the Smashing Pumpkins catalog, B-sides, and unreleased material available for download at iTunes.com part of that purging? It's part of a bigger picture. For five bucks, a fan can get five things he doesn't have that totally take him back to that era and make him feel satisfied. But we're still waiting for the Internet to catch up, business-wise. If we set up Smashingpumpkins.com and offered downloads now, you'd be looking at maybe 10,000 to 20,000 people - whereas at iTunes, you're looking at 4 million hits a day. I always used to say the music business is like a carnival game. You know it's rigged, but you still want to win the kewpie doll.

I imagine the Internet offers you freedoms you never had before as an artist. Everything is upside-down. Five years from now, I'll be hosting my own show and introducing new bands on the Billy Corgan Channel. And I won't have to ask anyone for permission, either. Ultimately, I trust the consumer. If I make good music, they'll find it, wherever it is.

What do you think about satellite radio? I love anything that lets people make their own choices. I've been saying for years that, whether it's through the Internet or some other new technology, most people, when given the choice, will gravitate toward good music. The problem is they're not given a healthy choice. Most people don't have a lot of time. But if you give them a button they can push and they learn to trust a particular channel or a DJ or something, they'll go there.

Just when I start to lose hope, I get an e-mail from some 18 year old who's listening to My Bloody Valentine and Zeppelin. They're out there. What will really be fascinating will be when you can see the actual numbers of who's listening to what and how they're listening. I think we're going to be pretty shocked by how many people prefer, say, Los Lobos over a lot of other things. And what will be wonderful is that it won't be speculative any more. People will vote with their fingers, and because of computers or whatever we'll know who's listening to what, and how often. And a cult band like Los Lobos will find out that they have three times as many listeners than they originally thought, and suddenly somebody will go, "Wow, we have to get into business with this band, because there's an audience out there."

There'll be an empowerment that just can't happen under the current system. If you're not selling, you know, a million records, nobody gives a shit. Exploiting niches will create great business opportunities and improve the quality of music. So I'm totally for it. I say that as I realize I'll be totally axed out of it and have no power. [laughs]

There was a story in The Economist a few weeks ago saying that the corner has finally been turned, and the consumer is now king of the Internet. It was about how they can track how people are less inclined to pay attention to advertising, which is totally shifting the money base, the ad base. Everything is upside-down now. The on-demand ability of things like TiVo is just f***ing everything up. It's great. Awesome. So cool.