SMASHING PUMPKINS Mainman: 'It's No Secret That The Record Labels Are Out Of Touch'

March 26, 2008

The SMASHING PUMPKINS this week filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against former label Virgin Records, accusing the company of illegally using the band's name and music in promotional arrangements that allegedly hurt the group's credibility with its fans. The incident that seems to have sparked the suit was the use of the PUMPKINS in a "Pepsi Stuff" promotional campaign launched by Virgin, Amazon, and Pepsi, which the group claims hurt its "artistic integrity."

Band leader Billy Corgan called up RollingStone.com from a bathroom in Australia to explain his side of the story. An excerpt from the interview follows:

RollingStone.com: Tell us about your personal perspective on this lawsuit.

Billy: We've been treated very poorly by [Virgin] as a label for years now. Even when we were going to put the band back together, we went to them for the umpteenth time and said, look, it's a natural thing to want to put out a best of, and they keep telling us nobody cares. And then to turn around and use us like this against our will obviously shows you how full of shit they are, because obviously you have value or they wouldn't be trying to make money on you on the side. And in our case we actually have the right to say no to these types of things. They had to ask our permission to put our music on iTunes. So this is just them getting really sneaky trying to push stuff through, because the only place they're going to get money now is from corporate sponsors.

And look, it's no secret that the record labels are out of touch. They've lost money continuously for seven or eight years and they continue to hold on to the Titanic. This is just another indication of them thinking that they can get away with whatever because they're the big old record business. You know, Josh Homme from QUEENS [OF THE STONE AGE] came out talking about Interscope, Trent Reznor ... It's a very difficult position because whether it's blogs or people posting on Web sites, fans can get very frustrated about what they perceive about how you do your business, not being aware of how we continually have a gun pointed at our head.

Read the entire interview at RollingStone.com.

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