“Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage.” That is one of the most famous lyrics ever written by Billy Corgan, but for the man who wrote Bullet with Butterfly Wings, sometimes being in the wrestling bubble, or the music bubble, for too long can make you feel more like a hamster on a wheel than a rat in a cage.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet, Billy Corgan discusses not wanting preferential treatment because of his stardom in the music industry and compares and contrasts how Smashing Pumpkins fans view his venture into wrestling and vice versa.
“Actually, most, and I'm saying this kindly, most [wrestling people] don't [care about his outside fame], and that's fine by me. I want to be seen in wrestling is as a person in wrestling and I don't think I should get [any] special treatment,” Billy began. “Yeah, I would say 90 to 95 percent [of Smashing Pumpkins fans] just scratch their heads and just think it's like my weird other thing that I do [and they] don't really understand it. And the only good thing that's happened, I would say in the past year or so with the NWA is even the fans who don't get it at least have come around understand that it is valuable, it is important. And now that they've seen it have some success, they at least look at it is like, well, he's not wasting his time. Yeah, cause, you know, again, this weird argument, like, 'why don't you just work more on music?' And it's like, no, it's important to do other things in life and after 30 years, I like other challenges in my life. And actually, it's helped my musical life because it keeps me fresh when I go back. That's my life. And I'm cool with it.”
Continuing on, Billy would say that there is no perfect balance between both worlds, especially when you want to give the entirety of your effort to each of your passions. Fortunately, Billy says he has a team around him with the NWA that he can entrust to take care of business while he's preoccupied with other projects.
“You have to make good decisions and you have to rely on great people like David Lagana, you know, the Vice President of the NWA to sometimes just carry the ball where you just can't,” Billy remarked. “Whether I'm on tour or I'm not available for hours because I'm on a plane across the country. There are times where you just have to trust the people around you to execute. I wish that I could give my full time to my musical life and I wish I could give my full time to my wrestling life, but it's just not in the cards. And so we just try to find balance. But yeah, there's no perfect balance.”
Also in the interview, Billy Corgan discusses his time in TNA and where it all went wrong. Read more about that at this link.
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