POP-CULTURE COLUMN: Long live rock, killed by the CIA
By Dan Brown Who killed rock and roll? Turns out it was the CIA. This, according to a theory forwarded by Billy Corgan, lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins. “The industry purposely dialed down the ability of rock stars to have a voice,” he said on his podcast a month ago, as reported by Rolling Stone and other media outlets. He was talking about the end of his band's heyday in the 1990s: “Some people assert that the CIA was involved in all that, again, above my pay grade, but I saw it happen. I did witness it happen.” Corgan was speaking with his fellow 1990s rock star, Courtney Love. (Full disclosure: I haven’t seen or heard the whole podcast.) He described how it was MTV, the fondly remembered music channel, that played a key role in rock’s supposed demise. “If you were at MTV or around MTV [in] 1997, ’98, suddenly they decided rock was out, when rock was still very, very high up in the thing and it was replaced by rap, right? Their standards and practices immediately shifted.” Now, I love a crackpot conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but there are much simpler explanations than the Central Intelligence Agency teamed up with MTV – such as Corgan, Love and the rest were making bad music. The bald singer said rock gods were sidelined like it’s a bad thing, but perhaps the music-buying public just got sick of what his band was offering, as can happen with any product. Smashing Pumpkins albums are no different from commodities like hand soap, hubcaps, and sundried tomatoes: They sell for as long as the market demands them. Consumers are fickle yet rational. And perhaps the truth is Corgan and his bandmates could not keep up with the changing tastes of music fans. It’s few musicians who have a career that spans decades. People who want a stable life don’t become rockers. Now, I won’t lie to you. I have rocked out to the Smashing Pumpkins. Not all their songs are mediocre. I particularly remember one day in the spring of 1995 when I was walking across campus on my way to handing in my final assignment of the first year of journalism school at Ryerson University singing “Today is the greatest day I’ve ever known” out loud. I felt elated screaming those lyrics. That Corgan-written song captured my feelings at that moment. Flash-forward all the way to 2026 and the same singer comes off as . . . entitled. Who knows, he could be right. Maybe all the music-industry executives and radio and TV programmers did get together around a big oak table to decide that rap was the new rock. Or maybe, just maybe, later Smashing Pumpkins albums sucked canal water, and rap video drew more advertisers to MTV. By the way, should rappers feel abused that hip-hop, in turn, took over as the dominant form of pop music over rap? Is the secret music cabal responsible for that shift in taste, too, Billy? But back to the CIA’s influence on the Billboard Hot 100. Readers with long memories know this isn’t the first time the American intelligence agency has been accused of meddling in the development of pop music. I mean, wasn’t it convenient at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius at Woodstock, in 1969, that the heavens opened up and the crowd of peace-lovers got soaked with rain? So clearly the decades-old rumours are true: If the CIA and MTV did actually join forces to hurt Billy Corgan’s feelings, then it’s obvious CIA agents seeded the clouds above Max Yasgur’s farm with silver iodide to make it pour on the festival of love, peace and music. Someone in the Nixon Administration wanted all those hippies to go home. Possibly even Tricky Dick himself. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
