Ep500: Billy Corgan - Record Collector
The Vinyl Guide - Artist Interviews for Record Collectors and Music Nerds
Nate Goyer
4.7 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Billy Corgan discusses his unconventional record collecting philosophy while revealing the complex saga behind the Machina albums, the 25 legendary vinyl copies, the upcoming Machines of God boxset, Mellon Collie vinyl releases and more.
Topics Include:
- Billy working on book for 10 years, restarted multiple times
- Billy buys lots of records but isn't fussy collector
- Prioritizes clean vinyl condition over perfect covers or variants
- Worked at record store in 80s, understands collector mindset
- Collects obscure major label releases from 60s and 70s
- Searches for forgotten bands with no online information trace
- Loves jazz on 10-inch records from late 50s/early 60s
- Record collection has no organization, total mess at home
- Bought thousand records on last tour, resells some
- Machina originally sprawling concept record about band breaking up
- Virgin Records treated band poorly despite massive previous sales
- Never finished complete Machina vision during original 2000 sessions
- Released truncated 15-song Machina I album through Virgin/EMI
- Band toured 11 months knowing they'd break up afterward
- Three weeks before breakup, Billy rushed to finish leftover recordings
- Record company rejected finished Machina II
- Billy dumped complete Machina II free on internet in 2000
- First major band to release album free online, predating Radiohead
- Machina II became viral sensation, fans loved the record
- Produced only 25 hand-cut vinyl copies of Machina II
- Each copy uniquely wrapped in printed tape, all different
- Sent copies to Robert Smith, fans; now worth thousands
- Years of legal battles with Universal over complete release
- Initial "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" vinyl release
- Alterations for Mellon Collie running order
- New Machina box set finally coming through Madame ZuZu's
- Box contains 80 songs: complete vision plus extra tracks
- Universal separately reissuing original Machina I album remastered
- ZWAN vinyl reissue underway
- Archive contains over 60,000 pieces of physical media
- Hundreds of live concert recordings from 90s tours available
- Billy passionate about rewarding dedicated fans who dig crates
Enter to win a record from us to celebrate Ep500
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Vinyl Guide, the podcast for record collectors and music nerds. |
| 0:10.1 | Here's your host, the biggest record nerd of them all, Nate Goyer. |
| 0:13.4 | Oh man, here we are. |
| 0:15.7 | Welcome to episode 500 of the Vinyl Guide, the podcast for record collectors and music nerds. |
| 0:23.4 | And ladies gentlemen, episode 500, I am so proud to be sharing today's episode with you. |
| 0:30.2 | And I would ask you just for a couple of minutes, allow me to indulge. |
| 0:35.6 | I want to, there's a lot of stuff going on around |
| 0:37.8 | episode 500, and I want to make sure I share it and I set the table correctly because there's a |
| 0:42.4 | lot going on. So I know people like to fast forward sometimes through the beginnings of |
| 0:46.5 | podcasts. Please don't do this one. Just give me a few moments because I think you'll enjoy it more |
| 0:52.7 | when you see all the moving parts here. |
| 0:54.6 | So we've been building up to episode 500. We've been here 10 years now. And every week |
| 1:00.0 | putting out episodes, sometimes multiple times a week. And we're very proud of and work |
| 1:04.7 | hard on every episode. However, every time we hit a milestone, like 100 or 200, 300, |
| 1:10.2 | et cetera, we try to make it a bit extra special. I try to get some of those people that I've always wanted to have on the show. I've got a list of folks, the top gets that I want on the show, that I know are record collectors, that I know it have interesting stories, but I just haven't been able to land them as of yet. And it can be very tricky to get a guest on. |
| 1:28.8 | A lot of times they may be willing to talk, but they don't have something to promote, or they're |
| 1:32.8 | busy, or the stars don't align, and that's okay. |
| 1:36.6 | But when it comes time for these milestones, we really try extra, extra, extra hard. |
| 1:40.7 | So, for example, episode 100 was Henry Rollins, the first time he was on the show. |
| 1:45.8 | Episode 200 was Stephen Van Zant of East Street Band and Underground Garage. Episode 300 was Peter Frampton. |
| 1:52.7 | 400 was Mark Marin. So when it came to 500, I knew we had to dig deep. And I started reaching out to my |
| 2:00.0 | contacts and PR agents and everything. |
... |
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