Billy Corgan revealed that he enlisted the help of the FBI to keep the latest Smashing Pumpkins album from being leaked online, according to Stereogum. Released last week was the final release of the group's conceptual trilogy — Atum: Act Three. The new works are directly linked thematically to the Pumpkins' 1995 double LP, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness.
While appearing on Audacy’s Klein Ally Show, Billy Corgan explained the back-story to the leak: “They were all probably the most catchy, single-y type songs. So it’s like, not only is it six months too early, you’re pretty much giving away the album before you even have a chance to set your feet into the ground. Somehow, some hacker was offering the files for money, and we were able to trace it and pay off and keep it from leaking. The FBI got involved. . . I don’t know how they got what they got.”
Corgan added he paid the ransom for the tracks out of his own pocked, adding, “It was a mercenary person who had hacked somebody — I don’t want to say who — and they had other stuff from other artists. It wasn’t like some Pumpkins fan who was hellbent on breaking it on Reddit. Somehow, they gave some information that allowed the FBI to track them.”
A while back, Billy Corgan explained to FMQB how intense the recording process often is for him: “We were fiddling with stuff to literally the last second. I mean, I would take a lot of the blame. I'm more detail-oriented probably than anybody I've worked with. People commonly call it perfectionism, but I feel a little bit like a painter, because as the person who sort of generates the original idea and writes the song, I have to sort of put it all together. So it's like, if some element is not supporting another element that I'm intrinsically involved in, then there's some part of me getting disappointed.”
Smashing Pumpkins next perform on May 25th in Napa, California at JaM Cellars Ballroom.
