“She’s got that Hetfield downstroke thing that I could never do. That Master of Puppets thing – I have to cheat that s**t”: Billy Corgan on what Kiki Wong brings to the Smashing Pumpkins
Last year, Kiki Wong beat out 9,999 other applicants to the vacant position of Smashing Pumpkins guitarist left by Jeff Schroeder in 2023.
As for what made her stand out among the hordes of other guitarists going for the spot, frontman Billy Corgan reveals all in a new interview with Guitar World.
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Recalling the audition process, Corgan says: “I had to give some sort of filter to it because the response was so overwhelming, and that filter was, ‘Send me anybody with a professional resume.’ If they’ve done anything – play a casino in Vegas, tour with any band that’s got a recording history, anybody who would remotely qualify – send them to me.
“I would say there were easily, gosh, 500 or 600 of those, I had to go through all of those responses and whittle them down.”
“The thing I remember very distinctly, obviously given the result, was when I saw Kiki’s name, I kind of stopped and thought, ‘Wait, I think I follow her on Instagram.’ Then I went to Instagram to confirm this, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s that person I really like.’”
Corgan says the fact he knew of Wong already meant he already had a “positive impression” of her, which remained in his head as he mulled over other candidates.
“There were a lot of other people who had very impressive resumes,” he says. “I would go to their Instagrams and look at the way they stood or the way they played or the way they talked about music – even just the pictures they posted. But I kept thinking, ‘This person has no idea what kind of band I’m in.’”
He later adds: “A lot of people played well, but once we talked to them I thought, ‘They’re not really going to fit into our world,’ We’re a bit of a weird lot. [laughs] We’re kind of picky in our own way. Maybe every band is, but I know the way we’re picky.
“Kiki was just who she was. She wasn’t trying to be someone else. She wasn’t trying to be a flatterer. She was just herself. And it was like, ‘OK, this person can hang in our world.’ After that, for the next three hours, nobody who followed Kiki could beat her.”
On the other side of the story, despite making a lasting impression on the Pumpkins for simply being herself, Kiki Wong wasn’t hugely optimistic about her chances when she submitted her application.
“My brain is wired in a way that makes me on the verge of being a pessimist – slightly pessimistic but closer to a realist,” she says.
The opportunity also came just a few months after she had given birth to her baby.
“There’s always this voice in my head, like, ‘When am I going to quit the dream and be just a person? How long can I keep hammering at this thing and constantly being let down?’ Now I had an actual reason to think that way, which was to take care of my kid.
Wong says she had “just thrown the resume in there”, adding: “I was like, ‘There’s no way. There’s probably 4,000 people already.’
As for what Kiki Wong brings to the band, Billy Corgan says it’s her penchant for all things heavy.
“She’s got that [James] Hetfield/Kerry King downstroke thing that I could never do, whatever the fuck that is. That Master of Puppets thing – I have to cheat that shit… Hetfield and Kerry King would tell you the same. So would [Dave] Mustaine. The only way to play that way is you gotta do all downstrokes.
“There’s a belief that the attack of the downstroke is better than if you pick up-down, up-down. To me, when I see somebody who can do that with the downstrokes, I’m like, ‘Fuck, I can’t do that!’”
The post “She’s got that Hetfield downstroke thing that I could never do. That Master of Puppets thing – I have to cheat that s**t”: Billy Corgan on what Kiki Wong brings to the Smashing Pumpkins appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
