Billy Corgan questioned whether he wanted to play the guitar again after his father passed away.
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman has admitted that the only reason he ever picked up the instrument in the first place was because he wanted to impress his pop, William Dale Corgan, and following his death in 2020, he contemplated whether he should carry on playing because he couldn’t impress him anymore.
He told Guitar World magazine: “My father passed away two and a half years ago; my father was my true idol. He was a really good guitar player; I learned a lot from watching him play. He explained a lot about how he saw music, and I absorbed a lot of that into my philosophical thinking.
“When my father passed away, this curious thing that happened – which anybody who has suffered loss can understand – where part of mourning is you feel things that you can only feel once you lose somebody.
“The thing that struck me – and I couldn’t have expected it in a million years – was I only picked up guitar in the first place to impress my father.
“I didn’t have a true desire to play guitar in the way that some great guitar players like Joe Bonamassa did. When I look at him or Billy Gibbons, I see pure guitar players; I’m not really a pure guitar player.”
After questioning whether he should resume playing the guitar, the 57-year-old rocker realised he could continue to “honour” his father’s memory.
He said: “I’ve had, at different times, a love/hate relationship with the guitar. I didn’t realise until after my father passed away that my father was the reason I wanted to play the guitar. Once he was gone, I thought, ‘Well, gee, do I still even want to play the guitar?’ Because he’s not here anymore to impress, it was a very subliminal recognition.
I was nothing I’d ever considered. Once I let that run through me, I came out the other side, thinking, ‘Yeah, I still want to play the guitar. This is a great way to continue to honour my father. He gave me the gift of music and playing guitar.’ I got super motivated to play; it was a strange thing I could never have anticipated, but that’s how I ended up here.”
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