A cringe-worthy clip from 1994 shows Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan interviewing an irritated Nick Cave for MTV at Lollapalooza.
Whip out your drainpipe jeans and spike your hair, an old clip has resurfaced, featuring a fresh-faced and full-haired Billy Corgan (frontman of Smashing Pumpkins) getting absolutely demolished by Nick Cave whilst interviewing him for MTV at Lollapalooza 1994.
Cave has a bit of a cool guy rep and it’s no secret that he cuts right through the bullshit. Unfortunately for Corgan, this is something that the fellow rockstar had to learn the hard way.
The interview gets off to a seemingly normal start, but fairly quickly derails after a bored Nick Cave arcs up in response to Corgan’s scripted questions (which he is literally reading off a script), with Cave telling him that he’s already done “this same interview”.
“Are these your questions?” Cave inquires of Corgan, who responds that they are, in fact, not his questions: “I take no credit for them.”
However, to Corgan’s credit, he then offers to go off script – but after mistakenly implying that Cave is English, the latter’s sassiness levels once again rise through the roof.
Corgan apologises, pointing out that Cave is identified with England due to the fact that that’s where he lives, yet by this point, all is lost and the conversation devolves into Cave telling Corgan that he has the mentality of a teenager – albeit in a friendly, ironic, but still-a-straight-up-jerk kind of way.
Now, the video lives on as a relic of simpler times.
One way I know I’m not right is how many times I’ve watched that clip of Nick Cave being mean to Billy Corgan.
— Kim O’Connor (@shallowbrigade) July 12, 2014
billy corgan interviewing and annoying nick cave at lollapalooza (1994) pic.twitter.com/G5Tngclwgt
— billy corgan doing things (@corganthings) April 16, 2018
Watch the interview in all its glory below.
