10 things that you might not know about Billy Corgan

On March 17th, 1967, was born in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, outside of Chicago. To celebrate the Smashing Pumpkins and Zwan singer, here are 10 things you might not know about him:

1. In the early ‘80s, Billy made a short movie with his friends calledAlien 1/2. In the flick, which was inspired by Ridley Scott’sAlien, the boys play astronauts who travel to a distant planet, only to be attacked by an alien, which was portrayed by a plush “Tasmanian Devil.” They defeat him with a pink hair dryer “gun.”

2. Later in the ‘80s, Billy wrote music opinion pieces for his high school paper, correctly predicting that U2, R.E.M, Metallica would break out to become huge acts.

3. Billy said that growing up he was a loner who collected baseball cards.

4. Billy once worked as a dishwasher at a Chinese food restaurant.

5. Corgan has a red birthmark on his left hand. In fact, he named one of his earlier bands The Marked because both he and the group’s drummer had port-wine stains.

6. In their early days, Billy played bass for The Smashing Pumpkins alongside James Iha on guitar. The third member of the band was a drum machine.

7. When the Pumpkins played the Reading Festival in 1992, Billy was so frustrated over sound quality and other issues that he broke his guitar and threw it into the crowd. As luck would have it, the instrument hit the band’s record company’s President in the head.

8. Billy reportedly began shaving his head when he started losing his hair in the 90s. The last footage of the singer with locks is in the Pumpkins’ video for “Bullet with Butterfly Wings.”

9. Billy co-wrote the Hole song “Celebrity Skin” with Courtney Love. They remained friends for some time after that and during a period in 2006, Billy lived with Love and her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, in Courtney’s Hollywood home.

10. Billy is such a huge fan of professional wrestling that he started his own wrestling company, Resistance Pro Wrestling. They put on monthly events in the Chicago area but in 2014, the rocker left the company.

This article was first published on iheart.com and is republished here with permission