Resentment was very good to Corgan when he invented the original incarnation of Smashing Pumpkins and made it the biggest band of alt-rock's last, lurching stand in the mid-'90s. It grew — as only the purest, most potent reservoirs of resentment do — from out of the Midwest, festering inside the pinched heart of a nerdy metal kid who knew he would never be accepted by the Thurston Moores and Stephen Malkmuses of the world, with their stupidly perfect mussed hairdos and mysteriously crucial connections to skateboard culture and world-class noise-rock collections. To them, no matter how fast he shredded or how high his choruses soared, Billy would always have sweaty palms and pockmarks and a ruthlessly flowing mullet. Guys like that can just smell the hayseed on you, even through your paisley-colored rock-star clothes, and they'll never let you forget your place.
Corgan's problem was never being a hayseed, which would hardly apply to someone from Chicago, of all places. It was that Corgan always, always tried too hard: the first rule of rock stardom is that you can't make it look like you care whether you have it or not. Even Noel Gallagher, of all people a status-seeking ambitious climber, seemed as though he might be content just sitting in his house playing guitar. Corgan never mastered that.
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