Billy Corgan 2019-06-19

June 19, 2019 – Dublin, IE
Live performance by Billy Corgan
Europe 2019 (Billy Corgan) tour
Date	June 19, 2019
Venue	Olympia Theatre
Coordinates	53°20′39″N 6°15′58″W
Location	Dublin, IE
Venue type	Theater
Capacity	1,621
Personnel	Billy Corgan, Katie Cole
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Setlist

Set one

"Waiting for a Train That Never Comes" (acoustic) (live debut)
"Hard Times" (acoustic)
"To Scatter One's Own" (acoustic)
"Faithless Darlin'" (acoustic)
"Apologia" (acoustic)
"Cri de Coeur" (acoustic)
"Buffalo Boys" (acoustic)
"Dancehall" (acoustic)
"Aeronaut" (piano)
"Processional" (acoustic)
"Half-Life of an Autodidact" (acoustic)
"The Long Goodbye" (acoustic)
"Mandarynne" (piano)
"Along the Santa Fe Trail" [Ray Noble] (piano)

Set two

"Wound" (acoustic)
"Thirty-Three" (acoustic)
"Spaceboy" (acoustic)
"Violet Rays" (acoustic)
"Endless Summer" (piano)
"Tonight, Tonight" (acoustic)
"Shame" (acoustic)
"Travels" (piano)
"Disarm" (piano)

Encore

"1979" (acoustic)

Notes

"Buffalo Boys" and "Dancehall" with Katie Cole on backing vocals
First performance of "Endless Summer" since 2003-06-13 and first solo performance

Banter

(incomplete due to lack of full show source)

Waiting for a Train That Never Comes
Hard Times
To Scatter One’s Own
Faithless Darlin’
Apologia
Cri de Coeur
BC: [tape cuts in] People always wanna know what’s in this bottle.
Guy in crowd: Mochi!
BC: Exactly. I’d now like to bring back to the stage Ms. Katie Cole.
Buffalo Boys (with Katie Cole)
Dancehall (with Katie Cole)
BC: [tape cuts in] It’s okay to applaud. (crowd cheers) For years, I decided not to talk anymore. The shows seemed to go better, there was less clickbait. You are looking at a living meme. (crowd laughs) And your laugh is not one - laughter is one of acknowledgment. But um, I’ve decided for the first time in probably...30 years to actually start talking about what some of these songs are about. Because the beautiful thing is, when I was young and I did talk about my songs, some bearded dude would always change what I said and make it about things that I didn’t mean it to be about. And now in this goofy world that we live in with the good and the bad of the “‘nets,” as George Bush called them, uh, the “internets.” Uh, another shining moment in our history. Now we have this ability to communicate directly with one another, which, honestly as a musician, restores our relationship back to the way that it belonged before the dawn of the 20th century, when musicians like myself would play in the town square or play a wedding or somebody’s funeral, and so I look forward to restoring that relationship with you where I can be myself and in turn, you can be yourself, and we can erase some of the artificial boundaries that commerce and the starving king machine imposed upon, um...whatever this is, right. So, I’d like to play some songs now from my solo album, Ogilala, if you know that record. I appreciate the 24 people in Ireland who bought the record. And uh...but the streaming numbers were unbelievable, uh, heh heh heh, heh. This song, which is a song written in honor of my son, Augustus Juppiter, who’s hurtling towards four years old...(a few hoots and claps from audience)...yes, thank you. The other night my son was watching a clip of me from the Pumpkins recent European festival shows and he walked over to my partner and he said, “Daddy’s playing too loud.” A heh heh, a heh. So, a quick story on this song. Actually, one step back: I was in a very low place in my life, I thought - a few years back - that the Pumpkins was done, the last show had been played. I had not made a big deal of it, it was just, it was done and it was gonna stay done. And so I started - I took a trip across America, which is a interesting journey if you’ve ever taken it, and I mean really drive through America, not fly over it as most people do. And I reconnected somehow with the world that I grew up in, for better, for worse. The broken homes, the burned out trailers, the busted out Main Streets, if they even had a Main Street. And uh, I wrote a group of songs and out of nowhere, Rick Rubin, the great producer and my friend, called me and said, very Buddha-like, “What are you doin’, man?” Heh heh, and I said, “I’m writing these songs, but I don’t think you’d want to hear them,” he says, “No, I really wanna hear them.” So I sent him these songs and he wrote or just called me back about a month later and said, “I love them, keep writing, I wanna make a record with you,” and I - I had never been more stunned in my life because to me, this was - these songs were the result of, like, giving up, not an ascension to the throne. So, this song in particular was originally written in this manner, which unfortunately gives it away a little bit, but it was more like a jaunty Tin Pan Alley - actually, probably songs that were very much played in a place like this, like (singing and playing a bouncy piano melody) “Tumbling down the middle, the world survives, look out, son, the air is alive....” (stops playing piano and speaks) And I - to me, in my estimation, it was a complete throwaway. But I played it for him and he goes, “That’s amazing” and I was like “Really?” Heh. I mean, I was probably the...least fan of the song - that doesn’t make any sense, but I do know what I’m saying. I didn’t think the song was worth anything other than it was in this pile of songs that I’d written [unintelligible word], and he made me promise that I would play him everything. So somehow he got me to slow the song down and now it’s one of my favorite songs and so, I always think of Rick when I play this song.
Aeronaut (piano)
Processional
BC: [tape cuts in] I never saw my baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, win a championship.
Somebody in crowd: Go Donnie Crews!
BC: ‘Cause it only took them 108 years, heh heh. Donnie Crews, yeah, the great. To Donnie too. Anyway...with a name like Corgan, I have Irish roots. But I’ll tell you a funny story. When I was about 10, they gave us a school assignment where they said go to your grandparents and ask about your ancestors. So I went to my grandmother Concetta on my mother’s side, who was Italian, and I said, “Can you tell us about the family history?” and she said “Absolutely not.” And I’m like, “I have an assignment” and she said “I don’t care, I’m not telling you anything.” And I said, “But you’re Italian” and she said “Yeah.” And I said, “What about your ex-husband, my grandfather Henry?” and she said, “I’m not telling you where he’s from.” And I said, “I gotta write something down on the paper” and she leaned in, she said, “He’s Bohemian.” Bohemian. The Czech Republic used to be called Bohemia, so that’s my only clue. But on my grandmother’s side, the one I just spoke to you about, was Irish. She married a true bastard of a man in my grandfather. Herbert.
Guy in crowd: English!
BC: [unintelligible word], he was Irish. And uh...my grandmother when she was 16, she grew up in a very poor rural area and uh, she won a scholarship to attend a secretary school. So she went to stay with a friend in another city - it was a boarding house - and my grandfather, who at that point was 35, she was 16.... He’d already had a marriage and children and um, that’s when she met him. And somebody in the boarding house said, “I think he’s got a crush on you,” and she said, “Who, that old man?” And not too long later: pregnant, married, had six children, my father being the last. So, of course, you know these general things: the unknown question of like “why?” and you hear things like, “Oh, the family came over in the Great Potato Famine,” whatever that means. They’re still having it, apparently. And um, so today a friend wrote me who’s done my genealogy and she said, “You know, you need to know that your great-great-great-great grandfather, Patrick O’Corgan, was from Dublin.” And I’d never put those pieces together until today. And that ancestor, who was my grandfather’s great-grandfather - however that works, I can’t do it - anyway, he came over in the 1700s, fought in the Revolutionary War, obviously kicked the English’s ass out. And also that famous war, the War of 1812. So...this is for the nice lady, my great-great-great grandfather, Patrick.
Half-Life of an Autodidact
The Long Goodbye
Mandarynne (piano)
Along the Santa Fe Trail (piano)
BC: See you in a few minutes, thank you so much.
[set break]
Wound
Thirty-three
BC: [tape cuts in] When I was married.
Guy in crowd: Why did you sing it?
BC: Excuse me? (no response) This next song...which is from the Siamese Dream album.... Thank you to the people who bought that album. We appreciate it. If you hadn’t’ve bought that album, well, it would’ve been bad. Like many people, I grew up in a broken home: divorces, guns, jail, drug deals, phones tapped...surveillance. My father was busted with a van full of drugs at a Kmart. True story. Sentenced to 12 years. Which he managed to evade somehow. Let’s just say he paid something and something happened and he didn’t do 12 years, god bless him. My father met my mother - I think as the story goes, he was playing a school function, he was in a band - and they fell in love, allegedly. He impregnated her, obviously. And Bill Junior came along. (crowd cheers) I will let my father know you applauded his night of passion. I have a full brother, who has three beautiful children, and I have a half brother, which came in a subsequent marriage. My brother Jesse was born with a rare chromosomal disorder, which we didn’t know at the time he was born. The first hint that something was wrong was he needed open heart surgery when he was about six months old and they gave him a 50/50 percent chance of living at all. After that, we figured out he had this rare disorder, which was so rare at the time that he was born there was only a hundred cases in the entire world. So every time he’d go into the hospital, they would descend like vultures to examine the kid. My brother, Jesse was one of the first...disabled generations, I guess you could say, that was put into quote and quote - quote unquote normal schools. They called it mainlining or streamlining or something like that. And he for the first time in his life, somewhere around 16, was faced full brunt with the brutality of the world. He was no longer in the special education program and as you all know, that’s a brutal process. And my response to his pain of realizing who he was in the world was to give him Metallica’s Black Album. Beginning a career in listening to metal, which...is frightening honestly, he listens to bands I’ve never heard of. So the three of us, my brother Rick and Jesse and I, were left for days at a time in a home without much supervision. And I became my brother’s caretaker. Which is a weird place to put a eight, nine year old kid. Where am I going with this?
Guy in crowd: Spaceboy.
BC: Thanks for ruining the ending of this story. I guess I’ll just play another song from another album. I - I understand that you have a premature problem, that the problem is you. It’s okay, I’m probably a result of a similar act. So I’ve watched with horror as my brother was called every name that you could imagine as he played in the sandbox: a gimp, a cripple, a retard. And people would talk 10 feet away - parents with children - who’d talk as if we couldn’t hear. And I sat there and as a parental figure had to navigate. And my brother was raised successfully, he’s had a job for over 22 years and he’s an upstanding member of our Chicago. (crowd cheers) And what’s even more amazing is for a young man who was - or we were told that would never walk, never talk, that we should put him in a home and just basically forget about him, that he’s not only got a life, he’s had a marriage, he’s come out as gay and now he lives his life in complete [unintelligible word]. So little that I know when I wrote this song somewhere around 1992 that his journey was just beginning and it was less about my commentary on what he’d been through, but more my commentary on where his life was going. So this is a song called....
Same guy in crowd: Spaceboy.
BC: Thank you.
Spaceboy
Violet Rays
BC: This is a song from that band Zwan that we had for a second. Yes.
Endless Summer (piano)
Tonight, Tonight
BC: [tape cuts in] Now, I’m about to do something....
Guy in crowd: [unintelligible]
BC: No.
Girl in crowd: [unintelligible]
BC: No, it’s not - it’s still a show, okay, there’s a lot of people who paid good money just wanna see the show, [2 unintelligible words] talk. Okay? Just get along. I’m a dad now, I know how to deal with these things. Now, I’m gonna tell you a story, it’s multi-part, but I’m gonna break a rule that I assume in this town you hate. Which is that every band that comes here says something about my friends and brothers in U2. Is that true? Is that a correct assumption? No? Am I wrong about that? Nobody says anything about U2? Are they not from Ireland? Okay, I’ve never told this story before and I guarantee you, it’s worth it. In fact, the guys in U2, which involves them, they don’t know this story, but it involves them. And I’ve walked around for many years feeling bad that they don’t know this story. Let’s just say it involves guilt. So, could we get the lights up? Could we get the lights up by chance? Get the house lights up? Like to see you anyway, there we go, what a beautiful crowd, thank you! [unintelligible word]! [unintelligible word], leave ‘em up, this is important, this is important. Before I tell you this story, this story cannot leave this room. So you’re gonna have to raise your hand - I’m not joking - ‘cause if you don’t do this, I will not tell you this story. Raise your hand, all of you, even you cynics out there. Even the bearded critic in the back, raise your hand. It’s a blood oath. I do solemnly swear (audience repeats) that I will not repeat this story to anyone outside of this room (audience repeats), including members of U2 (audience repeats), their associates (audience repeats) and their families (audience repeats). Deal? Hey, my son Augustus and I make a deal, we do fist bump. And when I’m away, we do fist bump over the iChat or whatever the fuck it is. So that - it seals the deal, so we have a fist bump, yeah? Alright, cool! And it does involve this song, I swear. I’m so nervous! So...
Guy in crowd: Lame ass Bono!
BC: I’ll tell the fucking story if you just shut the fuck up. (loud crowd cheer) You know, when we were kids, we used to sit around, “Is it Bono (pronounced like “oh”), is it Bono (pronounced like “ah”)?” Heh heh. Okay, here’s the story. Quite nicely, quite nicely and a lovely man, Bono (“oh”) - right, Bono? - invited me to stay at his house somewhere in the ‘90s. And it does involve this song, I swear. And so, as you do, when the king summons you, you go there, and we were staying in the guest cottage. And I was a bit bored and I saw a book. And I started reading the book and I got very into the book. That night, we had a long night - as you do - in Dublin, I know you know what I’m talking about. What do you call - “tie one on”? - I don’t know what you say around these.... We tied one on. Next morning, I thought I was gonna see Bono and I didn’t because he was on his face somewhere in the house. So I’d already started reading this book and we’re packing to leave and I’m a little out of it and I’m like, “I really wanna read this book,” so I stole the book. And I still have the book.
Guy in crowd: What’s the book?
BC: It was a book about Bob Dylan. It wasn’t anything special like a first edition or anything, it was just a book you buy at the store and it was about Bob Dylan. And that book ended up inspiring the Adore album, in terms of the way Dylan was working at a certain part of the career and so I’ve always sort of justified my theft because a lot of good came out of it. And in fact, I - am I crazy, did we play here on the Adore tour? And Bono is sort of right there (pointing to a box on the side of the theater), right, I mean like he was here at the show. And the whole time I’m thinking “If he only knew what I’ve done.” And so, that’s why we keep it between us. And so this is a song from the Adore album, which (he shrugs)....
Shame
Travels (piano)
BC: So this song was written at a very dark part of my life and when I say dark, I mean dark. Thought it could be the end somewhere in 1992, obsessing about the idea of killing myself and this went on for months. I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t tell the band, I didn’t speak to anybody, I didn’t seek any help because in my mind, I was weak and the only way to solve that weakness was to kill myself. And I began obsessing, I began obsessing over what I would wear at the funeral, how I would kill myself, what people would say, whether I could preemptively sort of countermand some of the arguments that would come out of my death. Including being compared to other people, which is horrific if you really think about it. And this went on for months, at some point somebody handed me a flyer because like they obviously started seeing something going on, and it said “the signs that you can tell when somebody is suicidal” and it was a checklist of ten things and I was nine of the ten things on the checklist. And it went on so long and my interest in killing myself went on so long that I actually became bored with the subject and so on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, I was like “Right, Friday’s the day, I can’t take thinking about this anymore.” And I was absolutely determined. I couldn’t make up my mind how I would kill myself, but I knew Friday was the day. And that Friday I woke up and...I just didn’t have the courage to do it and courage is obviously the wrong use of that word. And I thought, when I use the language that I used in my head, “You motherfuckin’ pussy, you don’t have the guts, you just don’t have the guts. You’re confirming everything they’ve ever said about you, that you just don’t have it in you.” And so I sat on my bed and I looked at my guitar and I was like, “Right, if I’m not gonna kill myself” - and this is where some interesting logic kicks in - I said, “Then from this moment on, I will be who I really am. I will stop pretending, I will stop trying to hide,” although that didn’t necessarily work out. And on that day, the first song I wrote was Today. (a few cheers from the crowd with one guy loudly shouting “YEAAAH!!!”) And the next day - thank you. Thank you for cheering my suicidal end. I do appreciate it, heh heh heh. And this song, which came out roughly a year later, was banned by the BBC. And I got plenty of yelled at behind the scenes because I refused to change the lyrics, the circumstances of which would take this story into another direction, but if you wanna see why this song was banned by the BBC, please look it up ‘cause it’s a horrific thing that happened and - but I refused, “I’m not changing my lyrics, this song is about me...and no one’s gonna change it.” After everything I’d been through, there was gonna be no compromise, because this song was my testament to what I’d survived as a child and little could I imagine some 27 years later that people would routinely write me and talk about this song and other songs that kept them from doing the same stupid thing that I almost did. And so, thank you. One last thing. One last thing and it’s just a plea from me to you, one person to another. Suicide rates are going through the roof, I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the statistics but it’s horrific and let’s face it, social media has something to do with what’s happening. I’m not saying social media’s to blame, I’m saying the pressure of social media is just that one bridge too far and probably like me, social media plays a part into how someone who’s sick in the mind would think of how people would react, they - it’s become part of the process. And so please look for signs, please if you hear someone talking about killing themselves, please take it seriously because we don’t know how many Mozarts and Kurt Cobains and future presidents and future Bonos that we’ve lost.
Guy in crowd: Billy Corgan, Billy Corgan over here.
BC: No no, I’m still here, you can yell at me to my face, you don’t need to think of some avatar that’s over there, I am right here. Thank you.
Disarm (piano)
BC: Thank you, thanks so much.
[encore break]
1979
BC: God bless you, Dublin.