Martha's MusicThe Smashing Pumpkins are partnering with Easter Seals Dixon Center to launch the "New Beginnings: Reaching America's Vets" campaign. The program hopes to raise awareness and resources to provide jobs, education and wellness for military families and veterans.
"Unlike a lot of things that I've been involved in, this came from my own heart," Corgan tells ABC Radio about the new initiative. "I felt there was an absence in American culture to the way the vets were being perceived and treated, and so I reached out to somebody who could help me." That somebody was Colonel David W. Sutherland, who's involved in Easter Seals' military and veterans services.
"We had a very sophisticated, long conversation about these issues, and I wanted to know how I could help," adds Corgan. Sutherland helped Corgan figure out the best way to frame the message of the new initiative.
"We have a lot of valuable members of our society that are sort of being kind of marginalized because of political arguments and social arguments," Corgan notes. "To me this is a civic issue and I think it is a very, very easy issue to step in and talk about. Probably one of the easiest things I've ever done in my life in terms of activism."
The launch of "New Beginnings: Reaching America's Vets" will coincide with the beginning of The Smashing Pumpkins' tour with Marilyn Manson. Dubbed The End Times tour, the co-headlining trek will begin July 7 in Concord, California, and will be dedicated to America's veterans and military families. Corgan and the Pumpkins previously touched on the struggles of military families in their video for "Drum + Fife," a single from their latest album, Monuments to an Elegy. The clip features four children pretending to play war before real bombs begin to explode around them.
As for whether or not fans who are coming to rock out with the Pumpkins and Manson will be open to this very serious message, Corgan says he's not worried about that.
"As an artist I think what you do is you do what you believe in," he tells ABC Radio. "And people who are open to it will follow it, not in a servile way but in a way that they see energy and truth in it. Manson and I represent a part of American culture that's not always on nightly news. But we're there and why are we there and why do we have staying power? Because we do represent something that is counter."
Corgan spoke to ABC Radio Tuesday at an event promoting Live Nation National Concert Day, which raises awareness of all the big summer tours that are criss-crossing the country this summer. From now through Saturday, if you buy at least two concert tickets, you'll get $30 in Live Nation concert cash good towards your next concert tickets purchase.
So what's Corgan's favorite summer concert memory? A heavy metal extravaganza, as it turns out.
"You know, I was very poor so I didn't get to see a lot of concerts," he laughs. "One that sticks out in my mind is that I saw Rainbow, UFO and Riot, if anybody remembers Riot, great band. That was my second concert that I ever saw. And that spirit of everybody in a shed, as we call them in the music business, having a great night in the summer -- hot, balmy, the band's rockin' -- that sticks with you always."
The End Times tour will run through August 8 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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