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The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Billy Corgan

Music, Arts, Performing Arts

4.6 • 731 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2025

⏱️ 95 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this candid conversation Billy Corgan sits down with Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo who lay bare the real stories behind 45 years of music, marriage, and refusing to play by anyone else’s rules. They reflect on their Roman Catholic upbringings—incense, confessions, and all—and how that shaped them as restless creatives unwilling to settle. From the powerful genesis of “Hell Is for Children” to the revelation that struck when Pat first heard Neil’s guitar, they describe forging a distinct rock identity with no safety net.  They also get frank about living out of a Winnebago with a newborn in tow, the music industry’s disinterest in motherhood, and the intimate give-and-take that still sparks their writing sessions today. Whether it’s a new children’s book on grandparents, reimagining a classic in the studio, or standing up to label pressure in the ’80s, Pat and Neil share how trust, mutual respect, and a shared sense of purpose sustain them—onstage, offstage, and everywhere in between.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

That lyric was the first time I felt somebody understood what I was doing. Oh, no. Oh, good. Thank you. Yeah. There was no can-handbook for this, okay? They didn't care. All they knew was it was time to go back in the studio. It was the only time I was violent in the studio. I threw a stool through the glass window in capital records. You there? I had conquered all that boys clip and everything else. But this next part, oh no, this is something else all together. So, correct me if I'm wrong. Are we all Roman Catholics? Yes. Yes. Raised, yes. Raised, yes. Last masses. Yes. Yes, Polish and Latin.

0:46.3

Lot of incense.

0:47.9

In Jesus on the cross. On the cross. Stations of the cross. Oh, yeah, confession. So I feel like we have some kind of understanding. All of us are both Russ Belmidwester. That's correct. Correct. In the pew, I had my mother to the left, My sister in the end, my mother, myself, my father,

1:04.8

my father's tone deaf, my mother could sing.

1:07.1

And I would be having vertigo with an incense. I had my mother to the left, my sister in the end, my mother, myself, my father, my father's tone deaf,

1:06.0

my mother could sing.

1:07.2

Oh, so you got it.

1:08.1

And I would be having vertigo with an incense, Frank had sensed who's going on, and I'd be going, oh my God, and one pitch, and no pitch. That was pretty good. But you went to Catholic school. I sure did. Our kids did too. I did not. I want to public scope.

1:22.2

Yes, I just, I just, I saw that note on you guys,

1:26.5

and I thought, okay, we gotta start here

1:28.0

because it sort of defines, I think, everything that we get into. Midwest and Roman Catholic. It might have some existence. Rebellion or, yes. I don't know. Are you the same, are you close to the same ages? We are. I'm 57. Oh. No, we're real so we're a lot older than you.

1:44.0

Well, we'll get to how I know both you.

1:46.6

I was just going to ask you about like, did you go to church and the...

1:49.6

I didn't go... Oh. No, we're really. I think so, we're a lot more than you. Well, we'll get to how we know both you.

1:46.7

I was just going to ask you about, like, did you go to church and the... I didn't go to Catholic school. No, but you went to church and the same... My stepmother was a Roman Catholic. It was cool about the Roman Catholic church that we went to. This would have been about, like, 73, 74. They realized that they weren't getting young parishioners.

2:05.7

So they took kind of a side building and they set up like the young cool. They realized that they weren't getting young parishioners.

2:05.0

So they took kind of a side building and they set up like the young cool priests. Correct. And they started doing like day by day. And I remember thinking, Oh, this is so cool. Because now, and the priests would make jokes about the Super Bowl. Correct. That's right. Oh, a priest is talking about the Super Bowl. He said, give him a prediction on the game. Yep. who felt like I was the cool priest.

2:25.3

We had the same thing, absolutely.

2:27.2

I remember my mother saying, yeah, well. He was talking about the super police and giving a prediction on the game. Yep. So you felt like I was the cool priest.

2:25.2

We had the same thing?

2:26.3

Absolutely.

2:27.3

I remember my mother saying, yeah, well,

...

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