Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, who has reportedly been canoodling with Jessica Simpson lately, is featured in a new interview with Rolling Stone magazine (which features US Olympic Gold-Medalist Shaun White on the cover) wherein he talks a bit about Jessica, his band and (among other things) his spiritual beliefs. Here are a few preview excerpts from his RS interview:

Here are the first two sentences of Rolling Stone’s first Billy Corgan feature in a decade: Unless you count what he’s done to his career, Billy Corgan has never attempted suicide. Until recently, there were plenty of mornings when he’d wake up to a stark choice: “Go eat breakfast, or go kill yourself.” When Rolling Stone met with Corgan in Los Angeles in early February, the Smashing Pumpkins founder had a lot to say about a very rough 10 years. “There’s a lot of days where you feel forgotten,” Corgan says at one point. In a soul-baring, wide-ranging interview, Corgan discusses the idiosyncratic spiritual beliefs that saved him from suicidal depression (including his association with a vintage hippie cult called Source Family); opens up for the first time about his 2009 split with drummer Jimmy Chamberlin (Corgan says he fired him); reveals his father’s heroin addiction (his dad was arrested two years ago with a needle still in his arm); says that he “loves” Jessica Simpson; and much more.

Corgan on His Critics:
“Do I belong in the conversation about the best artists in the world? My answer is yes, I do,” he says. “I’ve been too productive for too long, and despite what anybody wants to strip away from me, I am influential. I am. So all the Pitchforks in the world can try to strip me of every ounce of dignity, but I belong.”

On the Pumpkins’ Breakup:
“Rather than break up the band, what I should have done is chuck James [Iha] out,” Corgan says. “I should have just said to Jimmy [Chamberlin], ‘You go to rehab, and we’ll continue, and James, get the fuck out of here.’ Instead, I fell on my sword for James, for what I thought was a friend.”

On His Spiritual Beliefs:
Corgan subscribes to the fashionable idea that we’re building to a cataclysm, or at least a major vibrational shift, in 2012; he wonders what was really in the H1N1 vaccine; he fears that the United States is headed toward a Soviet Union-style economic collapse… But when pressed on details, he backs off: “I don’t want to be a dead hero,” he says.

On “Loving” Jessica Simpson:
“If I go, ‘Oh, we’re just friends,’ then it’s like, ‘Did they go out, did he dump her or she dump him, what happened?’ It has nothing to do with any of that. Sometimes people just like being around each other, and good things come out of that. My goal in life is to love whoever I think is worth loving, and I think if people knew her like I knew her, they would love her like I do. It’s really simple.”

Oh man … a bit delusional, totally power-hungry, somewhat paranoid and he prolly really loves Jessica Simpson … yep, sounds like Billy Corgan. I’m curious to read the full text of this interview with Rolling Stone magazine. With Courtney Love back on the scene again, you knew it was only a matter of time before Billy wanted a piece of the limelight. I’m afraid that 2010 is gonna be the new 1996.

[Source]