Billy Corgan Says Metal A Victim Of 'Weird Class Politics'

Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan is a hero is the alt-rock arena but he recently opened up about his metalhead youth and shared his belief that the genre has been maligned due to "weird class politics".

Corgan made the comments during an appearance on Metallica drummer Lar Ulrich's Music Beats 1 show. He said (via Metal Hammer), "For years, I would take sh*t about being a fan of metal - it should be beneath you. It gets into weird class politics. Most of the people who criticize people like us for being who we are, what we are, or what we represent, had better backgrounds than we had.

"We didn't necessarily go to the nice school, we didn't get to read the cool newspaper. For me, bands like Metallica told me that there is this other world that is more closely aligned with the experience you're having than the one you're being told about.

"So when I heard Mercyful Fate, Metallica or Ted Nugent, that told me, 'Wait, there's this other world than the world you're telling me that I'm supposed to believe in.' Even to this day, for all the money that metal moves, it's amazing how disrespected it is."

He added, "You can't get that through to a hipster's brain. If you sat around and drew up who you wanted to be on paper, you wouldn't be in Metallica or The Smashing Pumpkins. Those type of bands grow out of almost like a personality conflict."

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