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With the new lineup of The Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan is ready again to take on the world...on his terms

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With the new lineup of The Smashing Pumpkins in place (the band includes drummer Mike Byrne, guitarist Jeff Schroeder and bassist Nicole Fiorentino), Billy Corgan is finally ready to take the group on the road this summer.

Having already dropped the first four of a planned 44 songs for the album Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, Corgan is, no doubt, thinking big. And when it comes to interviews, he doesn't hold back, either. In part 1 of our exclusive conversation, Corgan spoke voluminously about his approach to songwriting, his gear and guitars and the process of rebuilding the Pumpkins from the ground up.

In this, part 2 of our interview, Corgan is no less effusive - and revealing. Here he elaborates on the inspiration and recording of the first batch of Teargarden songs, offers his thoughts on alternative rock culture, the eroding music business (check out his Tweet in which he echoes the recent sentiments of Radiohead's Thom Yorke) and plots the course for the new Smashing Pumpkins.

Ready for a wide-ranging and fascinating dialogue with one of rock's true originals? Listen to the podcast below and read on for text of the interview.

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The song A Stitch In Time is really gorgeous. Did it stay pretty close to your original demo?

"Well, all I really had was an acoustic version, and everyone agreed that was the way to go, to not turn it into a band song. For me, the challenge was, can we keep it feeling like an acoustic song, but can we produce it in a way that gives it some more emotional energy? And I really thought of someone like Donovan, who did a really good job of that. 'Cause he wrote a lot of his songs obviously on acoustic, and yet somehow his music was able to convey something a little more exotic.

"I recorded a track and then I did the vocal, so we basically had the acoustic version of the song, and then kind of just futzed around with different ideas, different approaches, to try to come up with a different orchestration to convey an emotional value through the song. Yeah, it was a really fun process; it was interesting 'cause it was very trial-and-error. I didn't think it was going to turn out as maybe pretty as it sounds…"

It's interesting that you mention Donovan because there is a bit of a '60s vibe to it. Now, there's the sitar - is that an actual sitar or a Coral Sitar?

"It's a Coral electric that I bought somewhere in Florida along the way, but it's a '60s. One thing I guess I should point out, because we were talking about it earlier, a little about influences: Teargarden, for me, is almost like a person looking past, present and future all at the same time and trying to have that perspective."

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