Billy Corgan still doesn’t know if Bill Burr is his half-brother — and he hasn’t taken a DNA test to find out.
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman, 57, said in a new interview with People that his close friends have grilled him about his half-brother drama with Burr, 56, which came to a head when they both appeared on Howie Mandel’s podcast in January.
Corgan said he had to convince his friends that him ambushing Burr, 56, on Mandel’s podcast to discuss their possible familial relationship was not faked for drama.
“A really good friend of mine said to me, looking around, ‘Okay, now tell me the truth.’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re related,’” Corgan told the outlet. “And then my friend said, ‘Well, I think you are. And I said, ‘Well, I guess it’s possible because he really does look like my father in a way that’s almost shocking to me.’”
Corgan added, “So then my friend goes, ‘Well then get a DNA test.’”
The musician reiterated that, despite his friends’ and some fan’s suspicions, the podcast ambush incident wasn’t “a bit.”
“It 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,”he explained. “There’s enough energy there that that’s why 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. You see jokes, but you also see kind of like, oh, there’s something there.”
“It’s taken on a life of its own. It’s sort of strange,” Corgan added of the half-brother situation. “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.”
Late last year, Corgan told Mandel that his stepmom believed Burr was the singer’s half-brother.
“And my father did once tell me that I had a half brother named Bill,” Corgan admitted, “who was basically born around the same time as me. He told me on my 18th birthday. This is all totally true. I swear to God.”
Then in January, Mandel surprised Burr on his podcast by bringing out Corgan. That infuriated the stand-up comedian, who called Mandel “an a–hole” and accused him of creating the stunt for “the f – – king ratings.”
Mandel later apologized for setting Burr up and insisted that he “only tried to do something good.”
Despite the drama, Corgan called Burr “an amazing, talented and funny person” in his interview with People.
