Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan talked about his friendship with the embattled Marilyn Manson and defended his friendship with Manson in the wake of the sexual misconduct allegations against him in recent years.
Corgan, who spoke about the relationship on Popcast, said his decision to stand by Manson, whose real name is Brian Warner, was not meant as a judgment on the accusations themselves.
“I think that ultimately, as a Christian person… you have to stand by your friends, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have an opinion, and that doesn’t mean you’re not critical,” Corgan said.
Corgan also noted that prosecutors spent years examining the case before declining to move forward. “In his case, and I’m not here to adjudicate it, but the DA looked at the case for five years,” he said. “In some cases, I knew personal things behind the scenes that are not in the public sphere. I personally didn’t feel that he was guilty of the things he was being charged with, and ultimately, the fact that the DA didn’t pursue it.”
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman said he weighed the seriousness of the accusations against the person he has known for close to three decades. “So, basically, the person that I knew and the way it all kind of went down, even though it was an elongated process, was commensurate with the person that I knew. You know what I mean? It’s like, it all kind of lined up. But, I wasn’t there. I can’t be there for everything.”
Corgan also highlighted the family connections between the two musicians. “The other thing that people should know, and it may get lost in the gloss here is Manson’s wife Lindsay is a twin. And her twin is Ashley, and Ashley’s married to James Iha of the Pumpkins. So, Manson’s basically a part of our family — there’s a deeper set of relationships there. Plus, I knew Manson’s parents.”
He added that if the allegations had ever been proven, he would have accepted a different outcome. “People would ask me privately, ‘Well, what happens if…’ and I’d say, ‘If he’s guilty, or anybody in that situation is guilty, they should go to jail,'” Corgan said.
Corgan’s comments arrive after a lengthy legal and public saga over the allegations against Manson, one that ended at the prosecutorial level rather than in a courtroom. The distinction matters, because the decision not to press charges was based on time limits and evidentiary standards, not on a finding that the accusations were false.
District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced on January 24, 2025 that no charges would be filed against Warner following a comprehensive four-year investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department into allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault.
Hochman summarized the reasoning in a direct statement. “We have determined that allegations of domestic violence fall outside of the statute of limitations, and we cannot prove charges of sexual assault beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.
The pattern was not new for prosecutors in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County DA’s Office had already declined to file charges in 2018 over an alleged 2011 incident, citing the statute of limitations and an “absence of corroboration.”
