Humility is not a quality we expect to find among the creatures of the rock’n’roll jungle and certainly not in a beast as imposing as Billy Corgan. Indeed, the tall, bald singer, songwriter and guitarist, who is back in Britain this week with his new group Zwan, gained a somewhat intimidating reputation as he steered his previous band, the Smashing Pumpkins, from the pre-grunge Chicago underground to the heights of international success during the 1990s.

In Britain his intemperate outbursts have either been forgiven or forgotten — this is the nation that launched Oasis on to an unsuspecting world — but in America he feels that he has yet to be allowed back in from the cold.

“You can’t have a band with Oasis’s attitude in an American setting,” Corgan, 36, says. “They won’t buy it as an intellectual concept.

“America’s big on humility. You need look no further than all the public posturing of Jennifer Lopez and Julia Roberts. They get their Oscars and they say they want to thank all these people but that’s not what they’re thinking. That’s what they need to say to convince all the fat housewives that they really care. I’ve never played that game, which is why I’ve had problems in America.”

Corgan may not pay lip service to the notion of humility, but his actions actually tell a rather different story.

Having reached the end of the road with the Smashing Pumpkins in December 2000, he decided not to launch a solo career but immersed himself instead in starting a new group. Not just any group either, but a gathering of players who are at least his equal in age and experience — if not popular success — and including the Pumpkins’ drummer Jimmy Chamberlin.

Given Chamberlin’s involvement, Corgan could easily have presented the band as a new incarnation of the Smashing Pumpkins. In which case they would have sold perhaps a million more copies of their current album, Mary Star of the Sea, and would now be going out as a headlining act — instead of halfway down the bill — at the European festivals they are playing this summer, starting with the Download event in Donington Park on Sunday. But Corgan chose a more humble option.

“It was a decision to walk away from a lot of things,” he says. “I didn’t feel it was fair to my former bandmates to continue to exploit the Pumpkins’ name. I wanted to try and grow a new fan base and do it in a way that had a lot of integrity and grace to it.”

Zwan’s music, which is nearly all written and sung by Corgan, is not that far removed from the grunge grandeur of the Pumpkins in their pomp but is much better played and more adventurous in its scope. In the live setting particularly, Zwan have reclaimed a freedom to improvise that has been completely lost to rock musicians since the rise of nu-metal.

“When I was putting the band together, the one thing I was clear about was that everybody had to be a committed musician,” Corgan says. “In the Pumpkins it would be: ‘Why are we bothering with all this practice?’”

Although Corgan is clearly the boss in Zwan, he is anxious to emphasise their collegiate credentials. In interviews he makes sure that the other members of Zwan are wheeled in to have their say.

First to pop her head round the door is bass player Paz Lenchantin, who was formerly with the American rock group A Perfect Circle. Dressed in tiny pink hot-pants and a skimpy T-shirt, she has the face of a pixie and the figure of a 14-year-old girl. She is closely followed by guitarist Matt Sweeney, who looks a little like Tim Burton’s delinquent ghost Beetlejuice as he sits rocking back and forth on a chair. Friends with Corgan and Chamberlin since 1990, he was the first person Corgan started playing with after the Pumpkins split up.

Chamberlin arrives, a man who vowed at the end of the Pumpkins to give up touring but who is now happily on the road again with Zwan. What’s the difference?

“It’s fresher,” he says. “We’re not playing songs that are ten years old. There are memories to be made as opposed to memories to be forgotten.”

Finally Dave Pajo arrives, his rumpled Malaysian features and jet black hair suggesting that he has not long awoken from a deep sleep. Corgan has earlier described him as “one of the most revered guitarists in the pantheon of American rock”, thanks to his work with cult heroes Slint.

Corgan seems relaxed and even mellow in this company of almost-equals.

“My natural personality is mellow,” Corgan insists. “You mature, I suppose. There’s things I wouldn’t say in public now that I used to say, thinking I didn’t care about the consequences. Now I know what the consequences are, so I wouldn’t say them. But my opinions are still the same. That doesn’t make me different. It makes me a little wiser.”


Zwan play at the Download Festival, Donington Park, Derby,on Sunday and at Glastonbury on June 27. The single, Lyric (Reprise/WEA), is released on Monday