Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan said there are legitimate reasons to think that comedian Bill Burr might be his half brother and admits some of his own friends have asked.
The news that the two Bills might have the same father went viral in late January when comedian Howie Mandel hosted Burr on his podcast without telling him he had also invited Corgan.
During the awkward encounter, Burr admitted there may be some truth to the rumor but called Mandel “an asshole” for the forced family reunion.
He also asked Corgan, “Did you ever think the fact that I never told that story [meant] that maybe you shouldn’t?”
Mandel later apologized for blindsiding Burr and insisted he “only tried to do something good.”
Corgan tells People that his exchange with Burr and Mandel was “one of those rare moments where I think all three of us really didn’t know where it was going. And you see that, and that’s what makes it sort of interesting.”
The 57-year-old musician said “there’s enough energy” between all of them to prove that “it’s not a bit, because it’s really about confronting something in a way that none of us really knew what that confrontation would lead to, and you see it play out.”
He added: “You see jokes, but you also see kind of like, oh, there’s something there.”
Corgan’s father, William Corgan, died in 2021.
Corgan is basing his theory that Burr could be his brother on a comment his stepmother made. He told Mandel during a November appearance on the podcast that his dad once told him he had another son named Bill who was born around the same time he was.
Despite acknowledging the possibility he’s related to Burr, Corgan admits when a friend pushed him on it, he told the guy he wasn’t sure they were related.
“A really good friend of mine said to me, looking around, ‘OK, now tell me the truth.’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re related.’ And then my friend said, ‘Well, I think you are.’”
Corgan conceded it was possible “because he really does look like my father in a way that’s almost shocking to me.”
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He told People that the friend told him to get a DNA test, but he didn’t say whether he had been swabbed yet.
That’s partially because he thinks the lack of a definitive answer on his connection to Burr ― whom he calls “an amazing, talented and funny person” ― is “part of what makes [the story] intriguing.”
“It’s taken on a life of its own. It’s sort of strange,” Corgan said. “It really started from honest things, which are, my father may have fathered 12 other children, and the facts of Bill’s life actually do match the story that I was told. There’s no invention there.”