In the past decade alone, Colin Linden has played on, produced, or engineered at least 60 albums, for a diverse cast of artists ranging from Lucinda Williams to Fantastic Negrito. Here, he picks his trusty goldtop from the Gibson Custom Shop.
Some guitar heroes explode across the stage or erupt from recordings. Think Hendrix or Jimmy Page. Others, like Colin Linden, have a quieter brilliance. They play to support fellow musicians and their own songs with a perfection that extends beyond service into art, dancing a characterful line between the sacred and the profane, the beguiling and the dramatic. They have a visionary approach, distilled from years of surveying their craft and shaping what they’ve learned into diamonds. And with those jewels they can refract complex emotions or simply cut like the patient, intuitive, and exacting badasses they are.
Linden, who has a wonderfully raucous and spacious new album called Blow, is a crucial ingredient in the glue of Nashville’s—and, therefore, the world’s—roots music scene. And while the ability to write songs that turn life into an open book, create sounds that wallow in the dirt or glide toward heaven, or illuminate the wisdom and heart in the work of those he supports or produces seems part of his DNA, it all traces back to a magical encounter with a giant.
By age 11, Linden was already a guitar prodigy. He’d seen Hendrix and other major performers of the day and had traced the rock he loved back to its blues roots. When he learned that his favorite artist, Howlin’ Wolf, was playing a matinee as part of a six-night stand at Toronto’s Colonial Tavern—just a bus ride away—he begged his mom to take him. “The show started at 3:30, but I was so eager to make sure we had no trouble getting in, we got there about three hours early,” Linden recounts. And there was Wolf, sitting on a staircase near the stage. Linden raced down to the 6'6", 300-pound bluesman and explained that he had to stay in the balcony due to his age, so wouldn’t Wolf come up to talk with him? “Of course,” Wolf growled, and their friendship blossomed and flourished for five years, until Wolf’s death in 1976.
Ain't No Shame
Wolf, who was a remarkable judge of character, saw something in the kid. “One of the things that he said—to an 11-year-old—is you got to do your best and you got to play the same if you’re playing for three people or if you're playing for 3,000,” says Linden. “I know that it’s kind of corny, but it does speak to the idea that the calling of being a musician is greater than the success you may achieve in a public sense. That idea is something that sustains you when you are playing for three people—and not just when you’re a 15-year-old kid, but when you’re 35 or 45 … or maybe 55. Being blessed to be able to make music is a wonderful calling, and I reflect on Wolf’s generation—and the earlier generation of musicians like Sam Chatmon and Son House—and think about what those people went through and yet still kept a sense of wonder about playing music.”
“Being blessed to be able to make music is a wonderful calling, and I reflect on Wolf’s generation—and the earlier generation of musicians like Sam Chatmon and Son House—and think about what those people went through and yet still kept a sense of wonder about playing music.”
That sense of wonder, and the engagement it engenders, has been at the core of a storied career—even if everyone doesn’t know Linden’s story. A year after meeting Wolf, Linden started playing coffeehouses and radio and TV shows, and began developing the deft fingerpicking that’s one of his signatures. Canadian blues guitarist David Wilcox became his slide guru, hired Linden as co-guitarist in his group, and gave him 140 blues albums he considered essential building blocks. “David showed me the possibilities of what was there,” Linden relates. “I already loved Elmore James, Fred McDowell, Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson … that whole generation of great slide players. And I was aware of open D and open G, and some related tunings. David really showed me how to play ‘Terraplane Blues.’ I’ve spent the last 47 years still hearing him every time I play it, and almost every day I listen to some Robert Johnson, and every time I hear something I haven’t heard before. I keep digging deep into it. Of course, I loved roots music at the time, which had so many elements of blues in it: Ry Cooder, Little Feat with Lowell George, and I can’t underestimate the influence of David Lindley playing on the Jackson Browne records. I also loved all kinds of singer-songwriter music. The Band were always there for me, too. [The Band recorded Linden’s song “Remedy” on 1993’s Jericho.] Almost all the music I love was very informed by blues.”
November 27, 1971—the fateful day that 11-year-old Colin Linden met and was befriended by his idol, blues legend Howlin’ Wolf, aka Chester Burnett.
Photo courtesy of Colin Linden
In 1979, Linden played his first recording sessions, for 80-year-old Mississippi Sheiks’ guitarist Sam Chatmon’s final album. His own debut, Colin Linden Live!, came a year later. Since then, Linden’s ridden the swells and shallows of the business, yet there’s always been a tide of albums, bands, and gigs to surf. In the ’90s, he played guitar and co-produced for legendary folk-rock artist Bruce Cockburn, and, since his move to Nashville in 1997, has produced albums by Keb’ Mo’, Paul Thorn, Colin James, Lindi Ortega, Eden Brent, Gina Sicilia, and a passel of other roots performers. He’s played gigs and recorded with many of the above as well as Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, T Bone Burnett, John Prine, Gregg Allman, Rhiannon Giddens, the Pistol Annies, Buddy Guy, and Bob Dylan. (Linden’s 2013 summer tour with Dylan is his favorite: “All my life, he was the person I wanted to play with the most. I loved playing with him, I love the other guys in the band, and the crew. It was an absolutely unforgettable, wonderful experience.”)
In addition, Linden has made 11 albums with the heralded Americana trio Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, with fellow songwriters and friends Tom Wilson and Stephen Fearing, and has 14 solo albums under his belt. Along the way, he’s earned a Grammy and nine Juno Awards, several Maple Blues Awards, and dozens of other awards and nominations.
TIDBIT: In the vintage photo on the cover of his latest album, Linden is playing one of his first electric guitars: a 1964 Fender Mustang that was given to him on his 17th birthday by Canadian bluesman David Wilcox.
There’s even a good chance you’ve seen Linden and not known it. T Bone Burnett drafted him for the TV series Nashville a decade ago and he’s appeared onscreen many, many times as the ubiquitous guitarist in black—his everyday choice of monochrome. Off screen Linden’s served as the show’s bandleader, one of its key songwriters, music producer, and eventually music director during the series’ six years. He’s also been the music director for a series of U.S. and European tours featuring Nashville’s stars, and continues to perform and record with Charles Esten, who played the brilliant but troubled songwriter Deacon Claybourne.
Linden also has a track record on the big screen—not only as Father Scott, the singing preacher in the Coen Brothers’ rom-com Intolerable Cruelty, but as a soundtrack artist whose contributions include O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Everything’s Gone Green, Please Kill Mr. Know It All, and Inside Llewyn Davis.
Onstage, Linden effortlessly ricochets between original songs, traditional blues and gospel, and textural playing based in traditional roots music that reaches for the cosmic.
Photo by Art Tipaldi
His new album Blow ignited as a soundtrack project. Linden was asked to do stock music for Hap and Leonard, a dark TV buddy comedy about two rule-bending fixers-for-hire. “I kinda did it on spec,” he recounts. “I didn’t even pick the other musicians, but they were people I knew and admired very much: bassist Dave Jacques and drummer Paul Griffith. And we recorded with a fantastic engineer named Mark Rubel, over at Blackbird. It was very inspiring. Over the course of a couple days, I came up with maybe 18 pieces of stock music. And because the show was set in the Texas/Louisiana border area, I wanted to draw upon sounds that were kinda from there. I was so happy with the sounds that Mark got on my guitar, and so happy with the way it all turned out. Part of the deal was that I could take the tracks and use them for whatever purpose I wanted. And among those 18 pieces, maybe eight or nine felt like songs—just the structure that I’d improvised my way through.”
Sliding on a Truly Regal Regal
Linden’s most treasured guitar is this wonderfully voiced 1937 Regal Angelus, outfitted with both a gold-foil and a piezo pickup. Note his wrench-socket slide.
Photo by Ted Drozdowski
If you’ve seen Colin Linden onstage, you’ve likely heard him play his holy grail instrument, a 1937 Regal Angelus resonator guitar. It has a beautifully burnished natural tone, a bit lower and mellower than many resonators, and when Linden steps on a digital delay there are seemingly no limits on its ability to create honeyed textures that are transporting and transcendent.
The 5-pound wood-and-metal guitar with a solid, V-shaped neck is also perfect for his fingerstyle-with-slide approach. Linden says he keeps his slide, a no-foolin’ Mastercraft 5/8" socket, á la Lowell George’s 11/16", “on my finger almost all the time, no matter what I play, just cause I’m better at making certain notes sing with the slide than I am with my fingers. I’ll play a melody, and the first three notes of the melody will be the slide, and I’ll just go back and forth.
“Life changed tremendously for me when I got that 1937 Regal Angelus,” he continues. “It was gifted to me by [Canadian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist] Linda McRae, whose first album I produced in 1997. She had that guitar at her apartment, and we were doing pre-production for the album, and I didn’t have an acoustic with me, so she said, ‘just play this.’ And it was the greatest guitar I had ever played. I asked her, when she was going to come to Toronto to record, ‘Would you mind bringing that guitar with you? I’d love to play it on your record.’ And she did, and I played it a ton on her record, and when the record was finished, she gave me that guitar.”
By then, Linden had been experimenting with combining acoustic and electric tones, including putting a piezo pickup and a magnetic pickup on the same acoustic guitar, “because there are elements of both of those things that I really value having.” He also uses heavy strings on all his guitars, “so the gauges were not a lot different between the electrics and acoustics for me. It was easy to go back and forth.”
One day, his luthier made him an offer: “I know you love gold-foil pickups. I have one that would fit right underneath the strings, and I can just affix it to the face with tape and see if you like it.” That gave Linden “a world of sound, and I put a McIntyre pickup on the cone. I eventually hardwired the magnetic pickup into the guitar, and that combination gives me a sound I love. I’ve played it, certainly, on over a hundred records. I’ve played that guitar with Bob Dylan, with Emmylou Harris, for President Obama at the White House. I played it at Carnegie Hall, the Ryman, Royal Albert Hall, Massey Hall in Toronto. That’s the guitar that comes with me everywhere.”
And here’s a fun fact. Linden’s worn a slide on his left-hand pinky so often and for so many years that his finger has permanently bent to accommodate it. That’s something he’s seen before. “When I was 15 years old, I met Tampa Red. He was living in a nursing home in Chicago, but me and my friend Doc MacLean visited him on a journey that we took to the Southern states. Doc was a few years older than me, so he could drive. Even though it had been many years since Red had played, his pinky was permanently extended and almost looked dislocated from the rest of his hand from all of his years of playing slide.”
Now Hear Colin and His Regal Regal
Drink deep in Colin Linden’s magical resonator tone as he performs a solo version of the title track from his 2015 album, Rich In Love, at Nashville’s 3rd & Lindsley.
During pandemic downtime, Linden got the itch. “I thought, ‘I’d like to make an album where this is the backbone, and I’ll add whatever songs need to come.’ I was feeling so creative. As with a lot of other songwriters I know, I ended up being on fire writing, just ’cause we weren’t out playing and stuff. So, I finished those songs and wrote a bunch of others and co-wrote a few new ones. It was an interesting process for me, because some of those pieces were just a few bars that I’d loop and build a song around.”
Colin Linden’s Gear
Linden’s No. 1 amp: a cat-scratched 1957 Fender Deluxe that he’s nicknamed the Pig. “I bought it for $175 when I got off the road with Leon Redbone, out of somebody’s garage in Berkeley,” he says.
Photo by Ted Drozdowski
Guitars
- 1937 Regal Angelus with DeArmond Gold Foil and McIntyre pickups
- Various Fender Telecasters
- 1963 Fender Stratocaster
- 1952 Gibson Les Paul
- Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul goldtop
- Harmony Stratotone
- Nash T-style with Bigsby
- National Resolectric
- 1951 Gibson CF-100 E
- 1966 Gibson B-25-12
- Martin 000-18
Amps
- 1957 Fender Deluxe called “the Pig”
- 1954 vintage 5A3-circuit Fender Deluxes
- Fender Deluxe tweed and ’65 reissues
- Analog Outfitters Sarge
Strings & Slide
- D’Addario (.012–.014–.016–.030–.040–.050)
- D’Addario flatwounds (.011–.053)
- John Pearse Phosphor Bronze Lights (.012–.053) for the Regal
- Martin Mediums (.013–.056)
- Mastercraft 5/8" socket
Effects
- Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler
- Xotic EP Booster
- Analog Alien Rumble Seat Overdrive/Delay/Reverb
- Fulltone Custom Shop Tube Tape Echo
- Fender Reverb Tank
- Boss DD-5 Digital Delay
For the most part, he worked alone in his backyard home studio in a quiet Nashville neighborhood, just 10 minutes from the Ryman Auditorium, one ofTV-Nashville’s real-life locations. Maybe that solitude is why he was able to crawl so deeply into his guts and give Blow a raw, personal sound. It’s raucous tones and mostly hard-boiled arrangements sound as if they were cultivated in a sweaty juke joint or a swamp-side roadhouse rather than a studio. It might also help that he was joined by some old friends: a host of Fender Deluxes (including a ’57 named “the Pig” that’s had much of its tweed shredded by a nonetheless beloved cat) that he sometimes runs in stereo, a Nash T-style, a flock of Fender Teles (including a ’71 re-fin that gets him into Robbie Robertson’s tone zone), his Gibson Custom Shop goldtop Les Paul and another from 1952, a 1963 Fender Stratocaster, a Harmony Stratotone, several acoustics, and the crown jewel of his extensive guitar collection—a 1937 Regal resonator with a voice that’s pure emotional Esperanto. (See sidebar.)
Blow’s 11 songs also sound like the past rushing toward the future. Linden’s writing is focused and poetic, whether celebrating love in the Wolf-flavored stomper “Angel Next to Me” or diving into the urban demimonde in “Until the Heat Leaves Town,” which includes a guttural, dark, and wobbly slide solo that slouches toward the avant-garde but fits the song perfectly. That’s a one-two punch he first encountered hearing Hubert Sumlin push the envelope with Howlin’ Wolf. Linden’s guitar tones are full of muscle and blood and skin and bone, with their rawness often drawn into relief via modernist mixing techniques, like pushing the drums to the fore in “4 Cars” and in the soaring slow blues “Change Don’t Come Without Pain,” where flourishes of drunken bent notes and slide, and rotary and octave effects, plunge into psychedelia with mad abandon. On the trad side again, “Boogie Let Me Be” sounds borrowed from John Lee Hooker’s ’40s/’50s catalog, and “Right Shoe Wrong Foot” is about as Bo Diddley as even Bo Diddley ever got, with Linden’s guitar dealing out a reverb-drenched, 3-2 clave-fueled beat.
“Almost all the music I love was very informed by blues.”
“I kind of went with what made me happy,” Linden says. “My ear for sounds and my own aesthetic of mixing records is so informed by my heroes, Chess Records, Sun Studios, and the great Excello recordings, so that’s what I go for. It makes me smile when I hear that stuff. But I’ve also worked with T Bone Burnett a lot, ever since he produced an album for Bruce Cockburn called Nothing but a Burning Light in 1991. I love how T Bone transports something timeless and otherworldly into something that’s immediate. It’s so appealing. He’s had such a gigantic impact on my life.”
Linden’s fingerpicking on Blow is also a joy, allowing him to literally dig into licks and make his guitars’ strings snap and howl, layer rhythm lines with melodic counterpoint, and shift seamlessly between slide, chords, and single notes. “I was 13 and had been performing for a year or more when a couple people told me, ‘If you wanna learn country blues, you should maybe learn how to fingerpick. Those guys are fingerpickers,” he recalls. Older artists, like Ken and Chris Whiteley from the Toronto folk scene, became his mentors, and then working with Wilcox was his master class. “When he got me into combining slide and fingerstyle, it made me feel like there were no limits,” Linden says. “He was and is a wonderful improviser, with an incredible imagination, and he’s gifted in a lot of genres. After that, fingerpicking really was it for me. And then, I realized that a lot of stuff I wanted to play—like Steve Cropper licks—would really sound better with a pick. So, I started to use one when I formed my first band at 17. Then I got into hybrid picking. But fingerpicking is really where I feel at home. It’s like breathing.”
Another instrument that appears on Blow is this 1963 Fender Stratocaster, which is a recent acquisition. Note the interior of the slide, revealing its identity as a socket wrench.
Photo by Ted Drozdowski
Like the committed artist he is, Linden constantly works to evolve his playing and his tonal palette. “Over the years, that’s really meant focusing on the fundamentals,” he says. “It’s having better time, playing more in tune, and being more economical. I’ve learned so much from so many of the great guitarists here in Nashville … people like Richard Bennett. [Mark Knopfler’s longtime sparring partner and a session and studio ace.] I got the chance to do a few sessions with Richard. He’s a hero of mine, and he would play a Telecaster through a Deluxe Reverb, and I’d have my pedalboard and I’d have everything on. I’d do everything that I could to get the greatest sound, and it would sound maybe 25 percent as good as him just playing guitar into an amplifier. He served the song always, in a really focused and committed way. So, the things that I’ve learned from my heroes, like that, continue to be drummed into me. I got a chance over the last few years to play on the Grand Ole Opry a lot of times, and I would see the guys who were in the Opry band, especially Jim Capps, who was the sweetest guy, and Kerry Marks. They were always serving the song and they would be very economical, but put fire in it, too.
“When you’re touring a lot, your chops have to be in great shape,” Linden continues. “Even here in town, when I’m playing with Whitey Johnson”—the parodic blues persona of songwriter Gary Nicholson—“I’m taking maybe 30 solos a night. During the pandemic, I felt like that part of my life, which had been a constant for 40 years, became … well, it was gone. And not only did I crave it, but I wondered if I was playing as well as I should or could. I noticed that on a couple albums I played on and produced, I put so much effort into making every note as emotional as possible, playing with as much soul and fire as I can. I mean, I can practice Blind Blake and Charley Patton and all the stuff I do really well, but you can’t really simulate being a soloist in front of a big crowd. So, you focus on something different in your playing and hopefully the good things about you that you keep close will all be there when you get back to playing live. That’s what I’m hoping for. [Laughs.] I’ll let you know.”
YouTube It
Colin Linden plays his 1937 Regal Angelus on his dream gig, supporting Bob Dylan. Here, Linden’s fingerpicking and slide provide the backbone for Dylan’s tribute to Delta blues legend Charley Patton.
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Billy Corgan shining with his Reverend Z One.
When the Smashing Pumpkins formed in 1988, they were ripping in rock clubs with psychedelic-inspired sets that drew on ’60s-rock influences like Blue Cheer, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin. But by 1992, after the breakout success of the previous year’s swirling alt-rock masterpiece, Gish, “Suddenly, we’re on a major label,” recalls Corgan. “Pearl Jam sold a gazillion records. Nirvana sold a gazillion records. Alice in Chains is selling a gazillion records. And somebody puts a finger up to my temple and says, ‘You better figure out how to write pop songs or you’re going to go back to working at a record store.’
“So, how do I translate this kind of hazy psychedelic vision into something that sounds like pop-rock radio? I’d better figure this out, and fast.” On 1993’s Siamese Dream, Corgan had obviously gone far beyond simply figuring out how to fit his vision into a radio-ready format; he’d pushed alternative rock to new heights, masterfully crafting hooks fit for the band’s unique, massive guitar-driven sound.
More than three decades later, Corgan hasn’t stopped evolving his artistry to fit the times. On the firm foundation of his extremely well-developed, instantly recognizable musical voice, he’s made his career one of the most interesting in rock music, branching out into unpredictable trajectories. In 2017, he launched a new career as a professional wrestling producer when he purchased the National Wrestling Alliance, the source of the limited TV series Billy Corgan’s Adventures in Carnyland.The Smashing Pumpkins - "Edin"
And he’s applied that knack for spectacle—a de facto pre-req for anyone in the pro wrestling biz—to the band’s social media presence. In January 2024, when guitarist Jeff Schroeder split with the Smashing Pumpkins, they turned to the internet for an open call. Not only did the band eventually find new-hire Kiki Wong, but they effectively got every guitarist on the internet dreaming about joining the Pumpkins.
Corgan has also found a creative outlet as a guitar conceptualist. His four signature Reverends—the Billy Corgan Signature, Terz, Z-One, and Drop Z—were created in collaboration with Joe Naylor, the company’s visionary builder. Taken together, these models go well beyond standard signature artist instruments protocols. Not content to just design his own dream guitar, Corgan is equally concerned with contributing to the guitar community. The Billy Corgan Signature and Z-One models are forward-thinking electric guitars well-outfitted with hip, futuristic aesthetics and custom pickups; the Terz and Drop Z break new ground in guitar design. The Terz is a 21 1/2"-scale model meant to be tuned one and a half steps up—G to G—and the Drop Z model, at 26 1/2" scale, is intended for D standard or lower tunings. In the case of these alt-tuned guitars, the instruments are specifically voiced for their tunings, with custom pickups.
“In that quiet solitude of just you and the guitar, this communication can happen that sort of expresses something about yourself that is surprising.”
With all this action—plus signature Yamaha acoustics and his Highland Park, Illinois, café, Madame Zuzu’s, which he owns with his wife, Chloé Mendel—Corgan must be dialing into a deep, super-focused state when working on music, because he’s been prolific. In 2023, the Pumpkins released the epic ATUM: A Rock Opera in Three Acts, the third part of the trilogy that began with the Pumpkins’ smash-hit Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadnessin 1995, followed by 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God. In 2024, the band released Aghori Mhori Mei. Pitched as a stripped-down guitar record, and exempt from the former’s grandiosity, the songs are often riff-centric guitar jams, full of dark, in-your-face tones. But that pitch might belie the album’s rich compositional complexity and intense emotional breadth. Corgan’s writing on Aghori exemplifies all the nuance and finesse of his broader work, as do the dynamic, thoughtful guitar arrangements and hard-hitting performances.
With so much going on, how does Corgan keep his artistic vision focused and in step with the times? How does he find time to tap into the creative essence that has made his music so special? What drives his process? The only way to find out is from Corgan himself.
The Smashing Pumpkins’ Aghori Mhori Mei was pitched as a more stripped-down guitar record, but don’t let that description, fitting as it may be in comparison with their recent work, belie its majesty.
The premise of Aghori was to be more of a stripped-down guitar record. How did you approach this album from a compositional perspective?
Corgan: The idea was to return to the early language of the band and see if it had a modern application. If you were making a movie, it would be akin to: We’re going to shoot this on VHS cameras and edit in an old analog bay and see if you can make something that a modern audience would actually enjoy and appreciate.
The way most rock records are made these days is “in the box,” which is Pro Tools or whatever people use. You can hear that the digital technology is very important to the way modern rock music, whether it’s metal or alternative, is made. It’s become the fifth band member—you know what I’m saying? They’re able to do things and effect changes and musically innovate in a way that you wouldn’t if you were just on a floor with the band playing in a circle, like we used to. So, for us, we could continue down this digital path, and I’m not that interested in gridding out my guitars.
When you go listen to a Pumpkins record, that’s live playing. That’s not all chopped up—99% of what you hear is literally from our hands and mouths—we’ll still fly in a chorus here and there. If you’re at a particular crossroads, do you continue to move forward and with technology as your ally? Or do you kind of go back and see if that old way still has something magical about it? That becomes the sort of the existential debate of the record, both internally and publicly, which is: Is there a there, there?
But to clarify, this isn’t an analog recording.
Corgan: We record to Pro Tools. It’s using the technology of Pro Tools to make your records that we don’t do. I’m not trying to make a point. I’m saying using the technologies that are present to write your music or using it to do things that you can’t humanly do—that we don’t do.
Listen to your standard metal record. Everything is gridded to fuck: All the amps are in the box, all the drums are in the box, there’s not a missed note, everything’s tuned to fuck. You know what I mean? That’s modern metal, and I like it. It’s not like I turn up my nose at the thing, but that’s a way of making music for many people in 2024. We decided to try and go back and make a record the old-fashioned way, not to make some sort of analog point.
“There’s a certain loneliness in the way I play because I didn’t have anybody else to play guitar with.”
You write mostly on acoustic and piano. Where do the guitar arrangements come in?
Corgan: The fundamental process, going back to the beginning, is to create the basic track; the vocal then becomes the next most important thing, and then the icing on the cake is the guitar work over the top of that, basically to support and supplement the vocal and create more melodic interaction.
I got a lot of that from Queen and Boston and some Beatles—the idea that the guitar takes on a lead voice of its own that’s distinctive and almost becomes another lead singer in the band.
That stuff doesn’t show up literally until the last day working on the song. It’ll come off wrong, but we don’t spend a ton of time on it. And I don’t know what that means other than it seems to be like everything is done, and then you go, “Okay, time for the guitar work.” You’ll spend three hours, six hours just going through and trying stuff. Then it sort of just appears, and you go, “Oh, that sounds cool,” and you move on. It benefits from being fresh or feeling kind of like an emotional reaction.
I remember being in a car circa 1975 or ’76 and “Killer Queen” by Queen was on the radio. You’re listening to a song, the song sounds cool, and there’s flange vocals, and I’m 10 years old, in the backseat. All of a sudden, that lead break comes in; it’s just fucking loud. It has that feeling of somebody stepping forward into a spotlight. It’s not a show-off thing. It’s the way it makes you feel. It’s like a lighter type of moment. We’ve always chased that feeling.
Billy Corgan's Gear
Corgan with his signature Yamaha LJ16BC in 2022.
Photo by Mike White
Guitars
- E standard: Billy Corgan Signature Reverend Z-One Black
- E backup: Billy Corgan Signature Reverend - Satin Purple Burst
- Eb standard: Billy Corgan Signature Reverend Z-One - Silver Freeze
- Eb backup: Billy Corgan Signature Reverend Z-One - Orchard Pink
- Eb standard: ’70s Gibson ES-335 walnut
- C# standard: Billy Corgan Signature Reverend Drop Z - Pearl White
- Prototype Gibson Firebird
- Billy Corgan Custom Signature Yamaha LJ16BC Black with Silver Star
- Billy Corgan Custom Signature Yamaha White with Black Star
Amps
- Ampete 444 Amplifier & Cabinet Switching System
- Korg DT-1 Rack Tuner
- Carstens Cathedral
- Orange Rockerverb MkIII
- Carstens Grace Billy Corgan Signature Head
- Laney Supergroup LA100SM
- Laney LA412 4x12 Black Country Custom
Pedals
- RJM Mastermind GT/22 MIDI Controller
- Lehle D.Loop
- Warm Audio Warmdrive
- MXR Phase 90
- Catalinbread Zero Point Tape Flanger
- Behringer Octave Divider
- Strymon Brigadier dBucket Delay
- EarthQuaker Devices Time Shadows II
- Custom Audio Electronics MC-403 power supply
Strings
- Ernie Ball Regular Slinky (.010–.046)
- Ernie Ball Power Slinky (.011–.048)
- Ernie Ball Not Even Slinky (.012–.052)
- Ernie Ball Earthwood Medium Light (.012–.054)
Guitar starts out for so many of us as this really personal thing that we spend all our time doing, and then as life gets more complicated, you just have less time. What is your relationship with the guitar like in 2024? Do you have a day-to-day relationship with guitar playing?
Corgan: I do not. I don’t really pick up the guitar much unless I’m working.
When you do pick up the guitar, is it with intent? Do the ideas come inspired by the guitar, inspired by something you play? Or are they up in your head, and then you’re grabbing a guitar to realize it?
Corgan: If I pick up a guitar, I’m looking to play something that surprises me. It’s whatever comes out. And sometimes you hit the wrong chord and go, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Or you find a new inversion or something that you never thought of before. You try to play a different scale run than you’ve played 10,000 times, always landing on the same note. It’s just looking for something just a little bit new. I find oftentimes, in that quiet solitude of just you and the guitar, this communication can happen that sort of expresses something about yourself that is surprising—an emotional feeling or a way of approach.
“You could say to me, ‘Hey, play me some Siamese-type thing that you would’ve done in ’92,’ and in five minutes, I could write you something that would sound like a song that would’ve been a Siamese song in ’92.”
The style of my guitar playing came out of taking care of my disabled brother when I was a teenager, so I was stuck inside a lot. To paint a simple visual, imagine being stuck inside on a summer’s day and watching people play outside through the window as you’re playing the guitar. That was my life for much of my teenage years, because I was in this position where I had to look after somebody who was not so much homebound, but it wasn’t like the type of child at his stage of development that you could take him in the backyard and let him run around. You kind of had to look after him. It often became easier to stick him in front of a television or let him take a nap while you’re practicing.
There’s a certain loneliness in the way I play because I didn’t have anybody else to play guitar with. I developed a style that had a kind of call-and-response aspect to it in the open strings and the drone playing, because it was a way to effect a larger conversation without somebody else in the room.
Then, when it was James [Iha] and I in the early days of the band, James would basically do different versions of what I was playing. That created an even bigger conversation that seemed to create almost like a third guitarist. You can hear that in the whistling harmonics in the background. That’s just two guitars playing, but you create a ghost effect. I’ve done a lot of guitar work in the studio where people would be visiting me, and they look at the speakers, “What’s that sound?” And I’m like, “That’s just two guitars.” They don’t believe me. I literally have to solo the two guitars and just show them. That’s the harmonic effect.
I still have that inner relationship with my playing, where I could just sit down and play and find something that sounds like a bit of a conversation.
The Reverend Billy Corgan Signature in the hands of the man himself alongside drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and guitarist James Iha.
Photo by Ken Settle
When you’re writing, picking up a guitar, looking for those things, like you said, are you still after the same feeling you had initially or has the feeling changed?
Corgan: I think it’s more trying to find something that seems to signify whatever’s happening at the moment. It’s a truthfulness. You could say to me, “Hey, play me some Siamese-type thing that you would’ve done in ’92,” and in five minutes, I could write you something that would sound like a song that would’ve been a Siamese song in ’92. I can dial in any era of the band or my writing at will, because they’re all based on methodologies and certain emotional templates. So, I’m trying to do that for today. What is the 2024 version of that that makes me feel something—anything at all?
There’s this other creative side to your work, which is your signature gear. You have four Reverend guitars, and they’re all very different from each other. You’ve created them with Joe Naylor. Can you tell me about that collaboration?
Corgan: Somehow, Joe is able to go back and listen to what I’m referencing, and then translate that into something that’s physically tangible and consistent.
I don’t think a gimmicky guitar serves anybody. My signature guitars need to be useful to anybody else doing their music, not just my kind of music. And I’m very proud of that. I think that’s what makes a great guitar—it has application to whoever picks it up. And a lot of credit to Reverend to be willing to take these chances that I’ve sort of set them off chasing.
The Reverend Billy Corgan Drop Z is specially voiced in feel and sound for D standard and lower tunings.
They’re all bold guitars, but especially the Terz and the Drop Z, which are built specifically for alternate tunings. What were you looking for when you came up with the idea of those instruments?
Corgan: The thing with the Terz, which is G to G as opposed to E to E—a step and a half higher—was in listening to guitarists like Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead and other guitar players of that generation, I noticed that the function of the guitar for many alternative guitar players was becoming more atmospheric and less elemental. I thought maybe they would like to have a higher tonal range to work in. Because, ultimately, in 2024 logic, you want to get the guitar away from the vocal. If you think of the classic Telecaster sound, well, if you’re playing in the key of G on a Telecaster, that sits exactly where the vocal is. It’s like the worst possible place for a guitar in the 21st century. But if you can increase the harmonic range of the guitar, it does sort of sit, elementally, a little higher.
I don’t think people have figured that out yet about that guitar. But I have a funny feeling that at some point somebody will, much like when Korn took the Steve Vai guitar and took it in a completely different direction and made a whole new genre of music with it. I think the Terz opens a player up to a different tonal range.
“I don’t think a gimmicky guitar serves anybody. My signature guitars need to be useful to anybody else doing their music, not just my kind of music.”
A lot of these modern alternative guitar players, they don’t play super complicated stuff. Whether they were inspired by Jonny from Radiohead or the guy from Coldplay, it’s more like a tweedle-y guitar, like twilight, vibey.... You look at their pedalboards; it’s a lot of reverbs and bucket delays and stuff like that. I get it.
On the Drop—on making Aghori, I found myself thinking a lot about Mick Mars’s guitar sound and where Mick’s guitar sat in Mötley Crüe. Early Mötley Crüe was basically a guitar tuned down a step. Something about the D range—you could do it on a normal guitar, but it gets a little sloppy with the tuning and certainly the intonation. So, I talked to Reverend about making a D-to-D guitar that doesn’t feel like a baritone guitar, that plays and feels very much like an E-to-E guitar, but gives you range. For a modern guitar player who wants to make music that ends up on the radio, the specificities of where that guitar needs to sit tonally and how it would be mixed is what I was thinking of.
So, these are instruments for the modern player who wants to make music that can reach people vis-à-vis what is the media these days—streaming or whatever. If you want to take an old guitar and tune it down to F and all that … I did all that crazy stuff, too. I wouldn’t discourage anybody from doing it. But these are specific instruments with a very specific purpose, primarily for recording.
On “Edin” [from Aghori Mhori Mei], well, that’s that guitar. I think in that song, it’s dropped, so the low string is a C. But you can hear how that guitar sits so forward in the track. That’s a credit to Joe making that guitar exactly what I wanted, and the pickups really doing their job with how it sits in the track.
Corgan has an early memory of hearing Brian May’s lead break on “Killer Queen”: “It has that feeling of somebody stepping forward into a spotlight. It’s not a show-off thing. It’s the way it makes you feel. It’s like a lighter type of moment. We’ve always chased that feeling.”
I want to come back to how that affects your playing. You have these instruments that are now specifically voiced to your vision. When they get in your hands and you’re working on something, how do you exploit the sonics of those guitars? Maybe you wrote a song on acoustic, but now you have this instrument that you’ve helped ideate, and you can do stuff that your other guitars can’t. Where does that come in the creative process?
Corgan: I don’t think I have a romantic answer. For me, it’s more about recording accuracy or clarity. If you compare, let’s call it the “Mellon Collie ’95” guitar sound, where we were mostly a half-step down; it’s clear, but it’s very sludgy—a lot of midrange and not a lot of stuff above, say, 17k, because I was using those Lace Sensor pickups. Modern recording; everybody wants the guitar as far forward as you can get it.
These days, I’m mostly using these Carstens amps, which is a Chicago amp-maker, Brian Carstens. I used one amp that he made for me, the Grace, which he does sell, which is kind of a modern take on the Eddie Van Halen brown sound—a ton of gain, but clear. And then he has another amp called Empire, which is more for a metal player. I use that as well. And in some cases, I stack both amps on top of each other by reamping. He has another amp, called Cathedral, which is like a cross between a Fender Twin and a Hiwatt. Again, very clear.
“Modern recording; everybody wants the guitar as far forward as you can get it.”
The best way I can explain it, and this is my poor language-ing, but if I was to take a vintage Marshall plexi and a Les Paul, like a classic amazing guitar sound, and record the riff for “Edin,” and then I was to take my Reverend Drop Z run through a Carstens amp, and you listen to the two tracks, the modern stuff I’m using, the guitar is like six more feet forward in the track; the vintage stuff sounds kind of back there. You can hear it—a little gauzy, a little dark, and the modern stuff is right in your grill. It’s not harsh; it’s not overly midrange-y. It just sounds really good and present.
So that’s the key. Because I play so distinctively that I kind of sound like me whatever you put me through, my focus is more tonal and how it sits in the stereo field.
Are pedals just pragmatic means to achieve a tone? Or is there exploration involved there?
Corgan: Since Siamese Dream, where we famously used the op-amp Big Muff and EHX Micro Synth, and some MXR stuff, the main sound of the band is just crank through something. Going back to something my father told me many, many moons ago: guitar, chord, amp is the key. I worked in the studio with Tony Iommi. Those hands, a chord, an amp—and when he plays, God’s moving mountains. We get super granular when I’m in the studio; I might play a chord that’s no more than seven-feet long, anything so I can be as close to the amp as possible, so there’s the least amount of chord from the guitar to the amp.
It’s all about driving the amp and moving that air and moving those electrons in the tubes. That’s just the key for me. If there’s pedal work on any Pumpkins albums in the last 25 years, it’s for solos and little dinky things on the top. The main guitar sound is always pure power. We want as much pure power as possible.
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The Smashing Pumpkins kick out “Sighommi” from Aghori Mhori Meilive on Kimmel with new-hire Kiki Wong joining Corgan and James Iha in the guitar section.
