Billy Corgan interviews Steve Vai

[jabps]

Billy can be annoying when he’s interrupting but I think once I saw a couple of these and started to understand why he interrupts or why he can be pushy with getting a certain answer from a guest, they were easier to tolerate. I still probably said “STFU!” 10x during the Vai interview, but I get the idea that Billy has both felt he’s been misunderstood and actually has been misunderstood quite a bit over the years, so when he’s really trying to connect to someone or connect an idea to a question, he’s a bit over the top in ensuring it happens. His drummer is probably the only person on the planet that ever tells him to shut up.

He’s more intelligent than I ever gave him credit for, some of the insight he’s let out during those interviews is telling of that, particularly the Gene Simmons one where it almost seemed like Gene would throw him a bone every now and then by giving him an intelligent answer instead of “For money, duh” over and over. Both intelligent guys, but I get the idea Gene likes keeping his intelligence under wraps as where Billy is always looking for a chance to show people how intelligent he is.

That's one of the reasons I liked the Gene interview, he pushed him, challenged him at times to get away from the stock, cliche answers Gene has used for years. Paul is the same way, it's hard to get past their facade they've kept up with all these years, to the point that some of their stories have taken on life of their own. Oddly what they don't get is the reality of it all is now more interesting than the facade.

You are correct Simmons is smart, and he's a solid bass player but he likes to downplay all that, at times even putting himself down so he'll come off as a regular guy but it doesn't work, never has.

 

[DrewJD82]

That's one of the reasons I liked the Gene interview, he pushed him, challenged him at times to get away from the stock, cliche answers Gene has used for years. Paul is the same way, it's hard to get past their facade they've kept up with all these years, to the point that some of their stories have taken on life of their own. Oddly what they don't get is the reality of it all is no more interesting than the facade.

You are correct Simmons is smart, and he's a solid bass player but he likes to downplay all that, at times even putting himself down so he'll come off as a regular guy but it doesn't work, never has.

Yeah, Gene’s pretty interesting and I’d be curious to know where his desire to be seen as the way he presents himself comes from. One could say the dude has an inflated ego but I certainly believe that’s part of the character he’s playing more than anything, I just wonder why he feels the need to play a character at all. If he really wanted to let the ego fly he’d be making it known to everyone he’s got a deeper grasp on the world and people than he does.

 

[DrewJD82]

You serious bro?

Halfway.

 

[jabps]

Yeah, Gene’s pretty interesting and I’d be curious to know where his desire to be seen as the way he presents himself comes from. One could say the dude has an inflated ego but I certainly believe that’s part of the character he’s playing more than anything, I just wonder why he feels the need to play a character at all. If he really wanted to let the ego fly he’d be making it known to everyone he’s got a deeper grasp on the world and people than he does.

He's an interesting dude for sure, I'll say this. I meet Gene in a music/business environment one year, the next year I meet him again in the same type environment and he remembered me and my name from the year before when the reality is he had no reason to remember me from Adam.

Further I had a friend that used to bootleg video's of Kiss back in the day before youtube lol, he'd place ads in the Circus, Hit Parade etc... with his freaking phone number. Gene called him, left a message basically saying give him a copy of everything and you can sell whatever as long as I have a copy. This was all around the time before the Reunion. I even let the guy stand on the mixing board platform one time and film one of their "one off" shows which of course he sent a copy to Gene. When Tommy was putting the Kiss Conventions together they reached out to that guy for help. From that point on, that guy always had a couple of tickets and passes to the area shows when they played, he even one time had these baseballs made up with their faces as a gift. Next thing you know, Gene is marketing that for sell lol.

 

[cragginshred]

I did a little "research" into this, and it turns out that it's James Iha (the other guitarist) who uses the JJ100.

Yup, not just a "story" I sat 2 feet from the tech working on the amp while Dave and him laughed about someone putting globs of glue above the top of the dials to mark the position he wanted the guitar tech to set the amp at.