22 May 23 - 29, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents female wrestlers but some of the toughest wrestlers in the world. And we present very, very tough-minded and independent prod- ucts as far as it goes from the female side.” Ultimately, the entertainment industry will still favor some cliches, but Corgan wants his wrestling world to reflect reality. “Of course, we play with those sort of probes at different times because that’s part of the entertainment,” he says. “But at the end of the day, if wrestling is a morality play, you want the strongest and best people on both sides of the aisle, whether male, female, or in our case we have Max who’s a superstar, who’s a non-binary, and wrestles as a non-bi- nary person, wrestles both men and females. We want to present the best foot forward and something that represents American culture very strongly in the 21st century.” There’s also a pragmatic business focus to his line of thinking. “Speaking as a promoter, why would you not want to attract 50% of the country to come see your product, whether it’s on tele- vision or live?” he says. “So presenting women in the best light is the same reason I would present men in the best light. I want men and women to come and enjoy the show, and I want women dragging their hus- bands just as I want husbands dragging their wives and their girlfriends.” He brought the Crockett Cup to DFW, Corgan says, because of the history of “very strong NWA ties in Dallas.” He points to the legendary Von Erich wrestling family and says he wanted the event to return to places where the NWA was once prominent. He re- cently bought at an auction a “Von Erich- era” wrestling belt from the late ’70s. While Corgan loves “the history, and bringing the modern NWA back into those old NWA strongholds,” he’s ready to put in the work to build up the organization. “We’re not delusional. We don’t think we can just flip a switch and all the old fans come back out,” he says. “We have to rebuild trust and confidence in what the NWA rep- resents. But I think certainly if you’re a fan of the old NWA product, which obviously the Von Erich family certainly represented — and what a great promotion that was back in the day — well, I think those fans would see that the modern NWA is very much in the same lineage.” Besides the Von Erichs, who are having a bit of a resurgence after being recently de- picted by stars Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White in the film The Iron Claw, another bit of wrestling lore of which Corgan is a fan is the story of Mildred Burke, whose belt he has also purchased as a collectible. “When Mildred Burke became the fe- male champion, I think in 1937 or so, women couldn’t wrestle legally in many states in the United States,” he says. “... I love that the modern NWA is part of telling that story and reclaiming Mildred’s legacy. And telling that story becomes part of how we identify what we represent in essence, in honoring her sacrifice and how she built the modern wrestling business, that’s a way that we sort of both honor that, but also say, this is also what we want to represent. We want to rep- resent opportunity.” But while he’s steadfastly committed to his new project, Corgan wrestles himself with keeping his vision unclouded. “I question myself in wrestling every day,” he says. “It’s a very difficult business to navi- gate. For example, when we’re there in Dallas for the Crockett Cup, we’ll probably have something like 70 wrestlers in the building. Convincing 70 wrestlers, on any given day, that you’re going the right way as a company, that you have the vision to take this company to a greater thing. … Of course, I have to navi- gate my own world, whether it’s my band, my wife, my friends who sit there and shake their head and say, ‘Why would you want to go into this den of vipers?’ But I really do love profes- sional wrestling.” He recently took his son to work at a wrestling show in Chicago. They stayed from 5 to 11 p.m., watching matches and in- teracting with the wrestlers. “It’s those experiences that are very ephemeral,” Corgan says. “I think in many ways it’s easier for my son to understand my life in professional wrestling than it is for him to understand my life in music. He comes with me to my musical life and Daddy’s play- ing in front of 10,000 people. It’s kind of con- fusing to him. I mean, he knows that I do music, but he doesn’t understand why 10,000 people are there. He goes to a local wrestling show, he gets to meet the wrestlers, he gets to sit there and enjoy the product himself. It’s an easier translation for him.” But Corgan isn’t cramming Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness down his kids’ ears. “What we try to do as a family is just in- clude our kids in everything,” he says, before outlining his family’s various endeavors. His wife is in the fashion business and has a clothing brand, House of Gilles, with her de- signer father, Gilles Mendel. The couple also run a vegan tea house called Madam Zuzu’s in northern Chicago. “Our message to our kids is, Mommy and Daddy are living their dreams,” Corgan says. “It’s very hard. It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of sacrifice. But as long as we hang together as a family, we’ll have a good time. And so we feel that’s a really good way to sort of send the message that everything comes with a sacrifice. But if you love what you do, it’s not as much of a sacrifice, as my father would say, digging a ditch. And that’s what I was trying to do. ... Working in wrestling some- how was some kind of a weird dream. I didn’t know when I was watching wrestling at 4 years old, I’d be working in the same business that I was watching on television, but here I am.” Corgan has conquered, or at the very least dipped into, many dream projects. Keeping with modern times, he is soon to be hosting a podcast on Bill Maher’s new network. “I can’t talk about the show yet, but being kind of a bigger sort of voice in that world is kind of the next hill to conquer,” he says. At a time when people are sensitive to conflict, Corgan doesn’t find it difficult to promote a fighting sport. “We’re never far away from what people are really going through,” he says. “The economy isn’t great. Obviously, it’s a political season and there’s an intense politics going on right now in terms of world politics, both with Ukraine and what’s going on in Israel and Gaza. So I guess the simple answer is just we’re escapist fare. When I go on stage to sing a song and something is going on in the world and my heart is heavy from what’s going on in the world, sometimes it’s hard to go on stage. But then you realize that’s kind of your job. Your job is to let people have that two hours of feeling something more in- tensely or getting away from it. “And that’s what wrestling is really good at. Like I said, it’s supposed to just be a lot of fun. It’s make-believe, and that’s the best part of it. But we’re not unaware of what’s going on in the world. It’s not an antidote. It’s just a temporary potion to kind of make it feel a little better for a little while.” ‘But You Cannot Destroy the Heart’ After decades of touring with the Pumpkins, Corgan’s relationship with his band and fans changed as the group has aged gracefully from an innovative force in alt-rock to be- coming a legacy band. “Well, you go through really weird times. You start by having this incredible success in the early part of your musical life and then at some point it sort of inverts,” he says. “Your fans, they start having a life, they start having children, they start getting that second job or whatever, and you’re not the center of their focus. And you go through this period of like, am I going the wrong way? Am I supposed to keep doing what I’m doing? And if you can get past that, in our case, put the band back together after so many years and go out, I think we’ve had about five successful years now in a row since James [Iha] came back.” The musician seems incredibly grateful that his music is finding new audiences among younger generations. “Then you start seeing this incredible other thing happen where people start bringing their kids to the shows where I meet teenagers who found us on Spotify, and they don’t know anything about the glory days of the ‘90s,” he says. “All they know is they like your new song that they heard on the radio. So you get into this multi-genera- tional thing, and that becomes really plea- surable because you start to realize that your music has survived, and it means something to people past, let’s say, one generation.” After the many ups and downs, exits, re- turns, arrests and public sparring among the band members, Corgan says this is a harmo- nious time for the group. “Right now, it’s probably the best time that the band’s ever had in terms of just feeling good inside,” he says. “We’re having a lot of fun. I think we’re playing some 50 shows in the next five months. We’re touring with Green Day — big stadium tour, which is quite an honor. We’re about to do a full tour of Europe for the first time, I think in five years. So just crazy busy, just crazy, crazy, crazy. And right now I’m trying to finish a new record before I go on tour, so I’m literally coming up to talk to you and I go right back down to work.” Something’s gotta give, though, as they say. For Corgan, it’s not having the time to relax. “I’m actually really lazy, which is belied by my lifestyle, which is not lazy,” he says. “But my greatest pleasure in life is just to hang out with my kids and my wife and read a good book. So I was up about 6 this morn- ing reading a new book by Werner Herzog, a great film director.” Though he may struggle to find time to enjoy the literature of New German Cinema pioneers, Corgan is grateful for the opportu- nities he’s afforded. “I mean, that’s the crazy thing is I have a really beautiful life,” he says. “I thank my wife all the time. She’s given me the life I never thought I would have. I mean, I cer- tainly had a lot of success in life, and I’ve gotten a lot of crazy things, professional wrestling being one of them. But just hav- ing great family time is probably the great- est joy in life. And all I can do at times when I’m away from my family is just to point to the fact that I am living my dream out.” His own experiences with a heroin-ad- dicted musician father had a deep influence on his parenting style, as he says. “When I had my first kid, or at least my wife had our first kid eight years ago, I real- ized pretty quickly that I didn’t want my son growing up with a father who was looking backwards in the mirror at his life,” Corgan says. “ I dealt with that a lot with my own fa- ther who was a musician. So when I was growing up, I kept hearing about what should have happened, what didn’t happen, and hearing his bitterness about the way his life had turned out. So that’s been a great source of inspiration to me to keep going, to keep striving so that when my son looks at me, even if I’m not there every moment that he would want me to be, and my daughter as well, [they] can at least be proud of me that I’m doing something that I believe in.” Courtesy of Crockett Cup The Crockett Cup debuted in Texas last week. Live Ringer from p21
