After a successful career spanning 28 years, selling in excess of 20 million records in the US, multiple sold out world tours and a recent name change, Smashing Pumpkins frontman William Patrick “Billy” Corgan has finally announced his greatest achievement to date: becoming a father.
According to Alternative Nation, Corgan and his longtime girlfriend Chloe Mendel welcomed their son Augustus Juppiter into the world on November 16th.
The arrival of Augustus explains the uncharacteristic silence from Corgan over the past month, with the couple remaining tight-lipped over any further details surrounding the birth.
Whilst he may be older than most first-time fathers (he’s 48), he has had plenty of experience as a fatherly figure, managing his own band through breakups, reunions, deaths and addictions.
The arrival of his first child is likely to see Corgan focus more on fatherhood and the importance of family as opposed to the rock star lifestyle that he has lived out in the past.
This would only have been reinforced to Corgan by the recent death of Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, for whom Corgan penned this touching eulogy. The importance of fatherhood was also affirmed in the Obituary penned by Weiland’s ex-wife Mary Forsberg Weilandm on behalf of Scott’s two children. On Weiland’s relationship with his kids, Mary recalled that “Even after Scott and I split up, I spent countless hours trying to calm his paranoid fits, pushing him into the shower and filling him with coffee, just so that I could drop him into the audience at Noah’s talent show, or Lucy’s musical.”
Having known Weiland firsthand throughout such events, Corgan is sure to know all about certain ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ of fatherhood.
We’d like to extend Corgan and his new family a happy Christmas and a wonderful new year.