Billy Corgan on Soundtracking Glenn Martens's Margiela Debut—'God, I Would Die to Wear That'
Billy Corgan: They reached out, gosh, it seems like about a month ago. They wanted to use 'Disarm,' which is a song I wrote—and I said they could do whatever they liked with it. I'm cool with it.
I had no expectations when I was invited to the show; we were in Paris anyway for a trip, so I thought, 'this is nice!' I hadn't been to a fashion show in probably over 20 years—I think Valentino was the last fashion show I was at. This is the world my wife [designer Gilles Mendel's daughter] lives in, not me. Of course, I know Margiela, I used to buy Margiela back in the '90s, so it's not like I didn't think it was going to be beautiful, but whatever expectations I had, I was just blown away.
I knew they were going to use the song, but I had no idea that the song was going to be the core of the presentation. It was surreal because I'm both feeling the song—it's my song—and then I'm watching this beautiful work go by and I thought it was magical. I loved it. The show was amazing. The use of my song was amazing. It was a pretty mind-blowing experience.
Did you get to meet Glenn Martens after the show?
I'm not somebody who wants to bum-rush my way backstage. I'm often put in the same position, especially after a show, it's a lot of intensity, energy, and emotion; so we went upstairs and hung out at the party. [But after] we went and talked to him. He told us that he'd been listening to the song for about three days in a row as they were preparing for the show. It was very flattering. He said, 'I'd love to do something again,' and I said, 'look, you could use my music into infinity, if this is the way you're going to use my music.'
How does it feel when people make connections like this with your music? It's Glenn's debut show at Margiela and it plays such a big part in the message that he's trying to transmit.
I don't know what it's like to launch a show like he did, but I certainly know what it's like to put yourself in the position of all that pressure and all that expectation. And I felt very honored to be a part of that. As somebody who routinely stands onstage in front of 40 or 50,000 people; as the gowns were going by, I was like, 'oh my God, I want to wear that, Oh my God, I want to wear that.' So I did mention that last night to Glenn, and I said, man, I want to wear some of this stuff on stage. It's so tremendous. That's the greatest compliment I can pay somebody, to say, oh my God, I would die to wear that.
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