The Billy Corgan Fender Stratocaster

Fender has recently released a new line of Strats that carry the name of the alt-rock star Billy Corgan. Being from Chicago too, we are happy to see that he has teamed up with such a legendary brand like Fender. The Smashing Pumpkins were a very influential group in the 90's and it is exciting to see what they are up to today.

Fender news conducted a wonderful interview with Billy, that you can find here.

But here is a snippit of it:

FN: What attracts you to the Stratocaster?
BC: Hmm, where can I start? Well, my first real guitar was a Fender Mustang®. It was more of an economic thing—I couldn’t really afford any other guitar, and I think I got it for a couple hundred bucks. And I always loved that it had this sort of Indian thing—you know, there wasn’t a lot of sustain on the guitar, and I think in my early playing I was sort of attracted to that kind of Cure style of playing, even though I didn’t know the Cure existed—but that sort of open-string-y type thing. So in the early days of the band, that’s what I played, but I could never get the gain that I wanted. And then Jimmy (Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin) actually sold me my first Stratocaster, which was a 1973-ish-era Strat®. And playing the Stratocaster through a high-gain amp—it suddenly was like it evoked all the things that I liked that I’d been hearing on recordings, whether it was Hendrix or Blackmore. And I’d never put it together—it was never a choice of, like, “Yeah, I want to play a Stratocaster.” I just got one, and when I played it, it suddenly brought alive what I was looking for in music.

Read more on Fender's website.
View our listing of Fenders on The Chicago Music Exchange Website.