23rd
The other night when I was on John Everhart’s Newtown Radio show, he shared a story that Bob Nastanovich had told him in an interview a while back. I’m going to share it with you here, and you can pass it along like folklore. You know, the oral tradition. Bob Nastanovich should be a kind of folk hero, right? Anyway, in the summer of 1996, Dennis Flemion of the Frogs was drafted to replace the touring keyboard player in the Smashing Pumpkins who had died of a drug overdose. Bob was friends with Flemion, and as a favor drove him out to a gig in Kansas. As a token of gratitude, Flemion gave Bob a handful of tickets and backstage passes. Bob scalped his extra tickets in the parking lot, and went backstage where he was introduced to Billy Corgan. Corgan was very upset about this, still super-bitter about “Range Life”, and gave Bob a limp handshake and refused to look him in the eye. He was very rude and bitchy. After that, Bob took a walk around the arena with his handful of backstage passes, searching the venue for the most intense and obnoxious-looking teenage fans. When he selected a kid, he would tell them “Hey, Billy is feeling down, so he wants some superfans backstage — if you see him, go up to him and really freak out, he’ll love it!” Wouldn’t you just love to see these kids, and watch them backstage with Corgan?
And why shouldn’t he have held a grudge, exactly? That was one cold line.
