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Billy Corgan says the new Pumpkins lineup is, well, smashing! (© Shawn Thew/epa/Corbis)

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You touched on something I was going to ask: When I hear you play, you do have a singular style. I don't hear you quoting, say, Jeff Beck or Eric Clapton, either in licks or tone. Do you ever hear yourself quoting various guitar players?

"Oh yeah." [laughs] I rip off all my heroes. I just think I'm not that skilled. One thing I'll say, and I'll really credit my father with this…he really encouraged me not to copy anybody's guitar style. He really did encourage me to play in my own way. And so, when I try to play like somebody else, I don't know how to do it, so I kind of have to do a fake imitation of what I think they sound like.

"If you listen to A Song For A Son, the first solo in that, to me, is very reminiscent of Jimmy Page and then the second solo in that is very reminiscent to me of Hendrix.

"The thing is, when I think about getting older, it doesn't bother me anymore. It used to really haunt me. And I think what's nice about where we're at in rock history is, we can look back now, it's been 40 years - or 35 years - since the height of Zeppelin, the height of Hendrix…Clapton, obviously, is still playing really, really well. But you can look back at that period - Cream, Blackmore - and say, 'Wow, that was a really fascinating, incredible period for music.' Because even though a lot of music has happened and guitar music is more popular than ever, people haven't really topped that level of playing.

"For me, I see them as highpoints by which you can continually go back and draw from because in many ways they're masters of what they do. So it doesn't bother me to sort of ape them because I think they understand something that I don't."

How many Strats do you own? Are you a big collector?

"Mmmm, no. I have very few kind of rare Strats. Most of my Strats, when I was buying them, are from the mid-'70s, what we called 'Bullet Strats.' And that was my main model. Then I went off of Strats for a long time, and I didn't go back to them hardcore until I stated to do my own Fender guitar, and then I went back to playing them all the time now. I'm really happy with the way my model turned out because it really does what I need it to do. [laughs] It's kind of funny, because they've offered to build me Custom Shop ones and I've said, 'No, this is fine.'"

Well, that's important - to know that the guitar that bears your name is actually one you want to play!

"Yeah, I play it every day in practice, and I've found that the sound and the attack is pretty adaptable."

As far as other electrics go, I've seen you use 335s, Les Pauls, SGs, Flying Vs - are you still using those as well?

"No. I have a couple of the…I think they got in a big lawsuit over them…the [Gibson] Lonnie Mack [Flying V] models. They only made a couple of hundred of them. I had a couple of those that I played with Zwan for a while.

"Most of my really nice guitars I have I never take on the road. I have ones that are really nice for recording. For example, the first solo on A Song For A Son, the one I said sounds like Jimmy Page, that was a '72 Les Paul - it just has that sound. And I played that through a Randy Rhoads head that Marshall had done a few years ago - a beautiful sound."

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