Billy Corgan Quotes

It's always hard for me to put the pieces together when listening to a finished album that I was a part of writing and playing. There are so many memories wrapped up in each note and each song that it's hard not to constantly flash back to what made that musical event happen while listening.

It's so hard to listen to an album you created and without remembering where you were when you wrote it or referencing the the recording experience.

You never forget where you were when you write a song; it's a very proper memory, so I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing for each track. It was like going into a time machine.

I like being in a recording studio. I like watching a song go from the simplicity of the original music.

I talked to the record company about what I had in mind. They said they wanted something lush. I figured the best thing to do was let them hear what I had in mind.

When I produce a record, I roll up my sleeves; I'm not one of those passive guys. I really get in there and make sure every note is measured. I tell the bass player, 'You have to play it like this,' or I tell the drummer, 'It's got to be like this.'

Analog, electronic, whatever it happens to be, I simply love and adore literally every aspect of making music.

I was trying to do the same thing that I always do which is make an interesting record.

An album is a whole universe, and the recording studio is a three-dimensional kind of art space that I can fill with sound. Just as the album art and videos are ways of adding more dimensions to the words and music. I like to be involved in all of it because it's all of a piece.

I think that will be a lot of fun for audiences to get the same stream of consciousness that was going through my head at the time. It was very exciting to suddenly recall what I was feeling at the time.

When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.

I spend a lot of time working in the studio as a producer, not just a singer.

I always want to make an album that lets people immerse in it, kind of like you get caught up in a good movie.

Paul has more, I think, of a feel for the stage. Whereas I have it more for the notes themselves. I love record making and mixing, arranging, producing. That I love. I love to make beautiful things, but I don't like to perform.

The actual producing, mixing, and mastering is hard work, harder than what I do.

Fragrance takes you on a journey of time. You can walk down the street and pass someone and get taken back 20 years. It's very Proustian that way.

I applaud the effort it takes to put a record together.

I've always been interested in what happens in the studio.

I realized I liked being in the studio and working on translating the ideas into recordings.

I cry whenever I watch an emotional scene that I did, just because it brings me back to that moment. It's like, I remember being there; I remember feeling what I felt. It's really weird, right?

I started trying to do my own music at home, and I was like, 'You know what, I can play the guitar, sort of. And I can do these things, sort of. And I can make these crazy noises on my computer, sort of. But I need a ridiculously good drummer. I need someone to help me with string arrangements.'

I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content.

Every moment of my life has a soundtrack, so I never know when some song is going to jump me by surprise and bring the memory alive.

I've never made a record that didn't sound better than what was in my head - that's sort of my rule.

I really believe it's not bad to look back within music. I don't mean retro, but using your own memories to make a song because our memories are what make us who we are.