News

Okay, I think I can make this story anonymous enough.

Again, this was a very long time ago, some time in the mid to late 90s. A family member of mine (we'll call him Joe) worked in a charity organization. The major thing that org did to raise money was put on a charity auction once a year. This auction was a big fucking deal. There was crazy amounts of money in the audience, and they were bidding on signed items from famous musicians. Tens of thousands of dollars per item was not at all out of the ordinary. (There was also a silent auction with the "cheaper" stuff; I have a stuffed beaver signed by Primus, my wife has a Duran Duran set list from some show, that kind of thing.) One of Joe's responsibilites was working his contacts in order to get really famous people to sign things for charity.

So the night before the auction one year, Joe is walking down the street late at night in this major city, talking on his phone to someone, getting final details sorted out. All of a sudden, there's Billy Corgan walking down the same street. Joe stops and says to him real quick like: "Hey, Billy - I'm organizing this charity auction tomorrow night, would you sign something for me?"

Billy says sure, and Joe pops into a conveniently close music store and buys a Smashing Pumpkins poster. Billy signs it, then asks if he can come to the auction, and if there's anything else he can do to help.

Billy shows up to the auction the next night, and they make him a runway model - one of the people, usually pretty women, who walk out with the items and show them off to the audience up and down the stage while the auctioneer is calling. My then girlfriend, now wife, was also one of the runway models that year, so she got to spend the whole evening hanging out with Billy Corgan, who I am told was a complete gentleman and super nice, if a bit on the quiet side.

I was working the booth on the floor where the sold items were kept until the buyers picked them up, so I was watching the auction go on. There's my wife and Billy Corgan carrying this giant framed guitar out together, smiling and walking up and down, Billy in his kind of regular street clothes, and just doing the work all night long, without making it about himself in the slightest.

That's the Billy Corgan that I know.