Late last year, Billy Corgan shared an unexpected story about how comedian Bill Burr might be his half-brother. The revelation came during his appearance on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast after the crew mistakenly displayed a photo of Burr behind the Smashing Pumpkins frontman.
“Most of my friends don’t even know this story,” Corgan said at the time. “About 10 years ago, one of my brothers was having a birthday party, and my stepmother was there, she was married to my father. She turned to me and asked, ‘Do you know who Bill Burr is?’ At that point, I had no idea who he was, I didn’t know he was a comedian or anything. He could’ve been the guy down the street.”
Corgan continued, “I thought she was going to comment on a resemblance or something. But instead, she said, ‘I think he might be one of your father’s illegitimate children—one he fathered while being a traveling musician.’ This is a true story. I’m not making this up, and it’s not a joke.”
Just last month, Burr appeared on Mandel’s podcast, where the host decided to orchestrate a surprise meeting between the two men, jokingly calling it a chance to “bring family together.” For the first time ever, Corgan and Burr came face-to-face, but the encounter was far from smooth. Burr called Mandel an “a**hole” for staging the impromptu meeting, while Corgan described the experience as “surreal.”
“It was pretty surreal,” Corgan reflected in a recent GQ interview. “First of all, I’d never met Bill Burr before. Secondly, in person, he really does look like my father. I’d seen photos, but meeting him face-to-face was something else. It was surreal shaking hands with someone you might have a physical connection to while all these questions swirl in your head, especially with cameras rolling. What you saw was a genuinely awkward exchange of, ‘What do we do with this information?’ Bill’s mind is lightning-fast, and he’s so sharply funny, which made the dynamic even more fascinating.”
Corgan added, “He was very gracious about it all. He left the door open to meet again and made it clear I was always welcome in his world. But even in the moment, you could sense this meta element, like we’d both stumbled into something larger than ourselves.”
Burr, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as warm about the whole ordeal. Shortly after the meeting, he voiced his frustration in an interview. “I did not appreciate what Howie did. Not at all,” Burr said bluntly. “Howie pulled that stunt because he’s a Hollywood whore who doesn’t care what happens. He could’ve given me a heads-up, but instead, he just dredged up all this weirdness.”
Whether Burr and Corgan are truly related remains unclear, leaving their potential family connection an intriguing open question.
