Bono Interviewed By Billy Corgan

I don’t know how this escaped me for so long, but a Swan Fungus reader — who e-mailed her Holiday Contest entry last night — alerted me to it. By the way, the reader who e-mailed me her entry also included sheet music for the song inspired by the Billy Corgan book she designed, and she included an MP3 of the arrangement to go along with the sheet music and the book cover. People, the bar has been raised. Remember, you have one week and one day (until January 19th) to e-mail me your entry for the 3rd Annual Swan Fungus Holiday Contest. Winner gets bourbon. But anyway, I was talking about this amazing discovery which was brought to light by a reader…

Question: Why didn’t any of you tell me that Billy Corgan once interviewed Bono!? This is, like, the greatest Swan Fungus mash-up ever, and none of you thought to tell me about it at any point during the last five years? Come on, you’re slipping guys. I need to know about these things as quickly as possible. I’m declaring this interview, conducted in 1997 for Live! magazine, the Swan Fungus Bible. I want you all to read and memorize this. I expect essay to be written on the subject of its greatness. Just the introduction alone speaks volumes:

I guess I was destined to meet U2 the moment I heard their song “New Year’s Day.” It was 1983, I was 16, and it was unlike anything I’d ever heard: fierce, political, passionate, sexy.

So, why were you destined to meet them? Because you thought a song you heard was “sexy”? That sounds weird and stalker-ish to me. Ordinarily people invoke the whole “destiny” thing when, you know, some kind of fortuitous thing occurs which enables them to more easily map out their future. George McFly didn’t call Lorraine his destiny in 1955 without Marty being there to rewrite history. Just like Billy Corgan didn’t call Bono his destiny because he heard a song on the radio. That’s stupid. Already I think Billy Corgan is a stupid writer.

They quickly became the most important band in the world to me. Since then, I have followed their every move with fascination, sometimes with clucking disdain, but always ascribing revelations to their rock ‘n’ roll choices. I assigned to them the weight of not only saving the world, but saving music as well, because they understood the spot where the heart, the soul, and the political man all crisscrossed into a fireball. The ever-enigmatic Bono only fed my curiosity to meet them, so when I was offered the chance to interview them, it seems a natural. In a way, I knew them and they me.

That’s an actual typo in the second-to-last sentence. Also, I think Billy’s use of the word “ever-enigmatic” is supposed to read “ever-egomaniacal” but maybe I’m just presupposing. The point is, Billy Corgan actually uttered the phrase “…not only saving the world, but saving music as well…” and in fact he did even more than just utter it, he wrote it down (or typed it) so that the rest of us could see it and laugh at him for the rest of our lives. Amazing. I love how because it’s now 14 years later in 1997, Billy has to add that U2 “in a way” knows who he is. Because you know Billy writing that him thinking U2 is the best band in the world has nothing to do with the connection between Billy and U2 being a two-way street. Billy says that, but what he really means is that the way in which he knows Bono and U2 is the same way in which Bono and U2 know Billy, they’re rock stars and they’d be idiots not to know who one another are. In that one paragraph, Billy actually builds Bono up to be one rung below God on the ladder to Heaven, and then manages to put himself right up there alongside Bono. Oh God, this pairing is so perfect. So, so perfect.

I can’t go through this article line by line, because that would take way too much of both our time. It’s pure gold. It’s the type of Internet find that makes me fall in love with the technology all over again. Like when I was 12 years old and Matt sent me my first e-mail with an attached picture of a naked girl, having this article sent to me has opened me up an entirely new world. It’s a way less attractive world than naked girls, of course, but it’s also way more humorous.

Tell me, what’s your favorite part of this interview? For me it’s a toss up. I really like where Bono uses the term “Hip-Hop People.” That’s so what a 40-year-old who is completely out of touch with society would call a young black person in 1997. I also like where Billy calls Pop a “classic-song record.” Really? Isn’t Pop the one that tried to reinvent the band as a rock/electronic hybrid? Doesn’t it have drum machines and sequencers all over it? What kind of classic songs does that remind you of, Billy? You fucking idiot. Stop kissing ass. Pop sucked. It doesn’t surprise me that it’s one of the band’s worst-selling albums.

I’d love to see them sit down again for an unedited, uncensored interview. And poor Billy Boy would be asking all these questions about remaining relevant and reinventing yourself and how comes it works for U2 and not for Smashing Pumpkins. And then Bono will say something super condescending, or use a lot of words to describe some cliche he could have easily recited, only it won’t make sense in context to the question, and then he’ll be sure to mention AIDS and starving Africans and Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.

The Billy Corgan / Bono interview. Great achievement in journalism or greatest achievement in journalism. You decide.

[image courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan]