The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan has revealed he once told Pantera to “shut the fuck up” after they started questioning Metallica’s ‘90s output.
Metallica released the genre redefining ‘The Black Album’ in 1991 before following it up with the divisive ‘Load’ album in 1996 and ‘Reload’ in 1997 alongside 1998’ ‘Garage Inc’, which saw the heavy metal titans cover everyone from Black Sabbath to Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds.
Speaking on Jose Mangin’s SiriusXM Metal Ambassador podcast (via Loudwire), Corgan explained that Pantera were “having a big moment” at the start of the ‘90s, as were The Smashing Pumpkins.
Corgan went on to say he was backstage with Pantera who were discussing “one of Metallica’s mid-’90s [albums], it might have been ‘Reload’ or something,” and there was “a lot of controversy about where Metallica was trying to go and what happened to Metallica and are they still metal [if] they’re wearing makeup now”.
“They were just going on and on about Metallica,” continued Corgan. “Not in a negative way, more confused like, ‘I love Metallica, but I don’t get it and they’re not metal and what’s going on?’.”
“I knew them well enough that they would sort of listen to me and I said ‘You know what? Shut the fuck up’,” added Corgan, with the room apparently going silent.
“’Listen, set aside Metallica for a second’,” continued Corgan. “‘You guys right now are the best metal band on the fucking planet, okay? You just focus on Pantera. You just focus on being the greatest metal band on the fucking planet. Metallica will work it out’, and they did, right?”
Pantera apparently took Corgan’s outburst as a compliment. “Then it was like, ‘Okay, drink this horrible poison you fucking alternative weirdo’,” he reflected.
Last month, Corgan claimed that he improved U2’s ‘All That You Can’t Leave Behind’ album after offering advice to Bono.
He went on to praise Radiohead and their ability to harness a new way of making music in the 1990s.
“Radiohead figured out the world that was coming pretty much before every band on the planet, and they reaped the reward of that and did a lot of great work, in essence, anticipating this dissociative world,” he explained.
“I was making music for a world that was basically dead and dying, but I was the last to get the memo. So I really credit them with figuring that out.”