In a recent interview on The Howard Stern Show, Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins talks about the criticism he received from the music industry.
Corgan said to Stern "Even when we were successful, it was just constant criticism. Maybe there was a lot of praise. I didn't hear it because when you're in that mindset you just hear the criticism. It's like if somebody talks to you for a minute and they say one small critical thing and that's all you remember about the conversation. So, that may have been my life. People may have told me how great I was every five seconds and I just didn't hear it. But my memory was like we would get on stage and play to 15,000 people and I'd walk offstage and somebody would be standing backstage saying, 'You shouldn't have done that and you shouldn't have done this and people are mad and you're such an idiot.' That's what I remember."
He tells Stern that criticism started at a young age "If your own parents tell you you're a fucking idiot and then the guy 15 years down the road is [calling] you an idiot and he's the manager of this band and this band and this band and they've had all this success," Corgan said, "you're thinking, 'Well maybe that's just how it is. What do I know?'"
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Stern gave praise to Corgan and his band The Smashing Pumpkins on their song "Disarm" whilst playing the clip to him. "This song, there's no greater masterpiece," he says to Corgan. The frontman went back to discuss the criticism he's received.
"I'm the guy who wrote that song," Corgan said. "I'm the guy who arranged those strings. I did that song when I was about 25 years old. And it was a big hit song. Not once after that song did anybody in my life—anybody—pull me in a room and say, 'Can you give me more of that?' Not one time did anybody sit me down and say, 'Can you write me more of those songs?' They were like, 'Give me more of the ones that sell sausages' ... "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" was my saying, 'You want me to be this rat in a cage? Here I am.'"