“I didn’t know Corgan, but I knew he wasn’t the easiest person to work with. I thought, ‘This isn’t going to last but it’ll be interesting’”: Jane’s Addiction’s Eric Avery on his brief stint with the Smashing Pumpkins and what he learned from Billy Corgan

Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery has never been one to shy away from musical projects. During his long absence from the band he helped co-found, he joined Garbage and Alanis Morissette’s backing band, and even auditioned for Metallica.

However, Avery points to his brief brush with the Smashing Pumpkins, specifically Billy Corgan, as a core experience that made him a better musician.

“I didn’t know Billy Corgan, but I knew that he wasn’t the easiest person to work with. And so, because of my tendency to have trouble not speaking truth to power, if power needs speaking to, I just thought, ‘This isn’t going to last, but it’ll be interesting. It’ll be an interesting week or two.’ And it really was,” says Avery in an upcoming Bass Player interview.

Jane’s Addiction – (27-05-2024) – The Roundhouse – London, UK – YouTube

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As it turns out, he found “Corgan to be quite an inspiring guy to work with for the two or three weeks that I did.”

“With Corgan, one of the things that he made me see in myself is that all the gadgets, and all the ability to record digitally, and change things up with plugins had really made us lazy,” he explains. “And that creatively, as players, those things became standards for writing parts that you could always fix later with Pro Tools.

“I might have known that before, but working with Corgan, he would go over things over and over and over, and he and Jimmy Chamberlin would be in pre-production for the record they were writing [2007’s Zeitgeist] and say, ‘Okay, let’s try it again, but this time with a cymbal crash here.’ By doing that, they worked really hard, and it certainly was about finding the right thing and not stopping until you got it.”

Avery admits that working with Corgan was crucial in helping him become a better and more hard-working player. “It cast a light on how lazy I had been in some of my decision-making. And how a lot of the people I’d worked with were sort of lazy in the same way of being able to stop and fix it up later instead of finding the right part. I found that inspiring.”

Just last month, the original Jane’s Addiction lineup of Dave Navarro, Eric Avery, Perry Farrell and Stephen Perkins released their first song together, Imminent Redemption, in 34 years. The band is currently in the midst of their North American reunion tour.

Bass Player‘s full interview with Eric Avery will be published later this month.