Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan performed an intimate Christmas concert with his family, just one day after his father’s death on the weekend.
Corgan announced on Saturday that his father, William Corgan Sr., had passed away following a heart attack.
Paying tribute to his dad in a video posted the following day, Corgan said: ““The show goes on, that’s what my father believed in.”
He had discussed his childhood and his “long, crazy, complicated relationship” with his musician father publicly before, including on The Joe Rogan Experience.
“My father had his own struggles with music and had a very complicated and oftentimes bitter relationship with the music business,” Corgan said this week.
“He assumed that I would have the same.”
He attributed his own career to his formative years spent watching his father.
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“On the bright side of it all, he inspired me to be the musician that I am,” he said.
“He made me be way better than I would’ve ever been without him.”
Saying his dad was a “fantastic musician and a great teacher in his own way”, Corgan added: “Probably the greatest blessing on that note is that in the beginning he didn’t really understand what I was doing musically, and then he came around and became my biggest fan and supporter.”
He later played his annual Christmas show at Madam Zuzu’s, the vegan cafe he owns with his partner Chloe Mendel in Chicago.
Joined by Mendel and 3-year old Philomena, Corgan performed ‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’ as well as two previously-unreleased original festive songs, ‘Evergreen’ and ‘The Magi and The Shiny Bright’.
Watch Billy Corgan perform ‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’ with his 3-year old daughter:
Earlier this year, Smashing Pumpkins announced they were “halfway through working on another big album.”
Speaking to Anne Erickson of Audio Ink Radio about the progress of the next Smashing Pumpkins record, guitarist Jeff Shroeder said: “We’re about halfway through working on another big album, which is… a sequel to Mellon Collie [And The Infinite Sadness and Machina, so it’s the third in a trilogy — more of a concept-based album.”
The 33-song project doesn’t have a release date, yet.
