At the end of last year, there was some juicy gossip that Jessica Simpson and Billy Corgan were maybe dating each other. They were spotted out together, and Jessica even gave some cryptic tweets about Billy “braiding” her prayers or something. For his part, tabloids reported that Billy was “very caught up in Jessica’s mystique”. I always imagined Jessica’s mystique must be an aura of burritos, corn dogs and glitter, but her boobs probably mesmerized the dude who at one point dated Courtney Love. Anyway, long story short, they were working on some music together, and nothing really seemed to be happening between for real. Billy seemed to disappear, and Jessica went on to be dumb as a box of hair on Oprah, and then “flirt up a storm” with Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner.

However! Billy has a new interview in Rolling Stone, and he discussed his feelings for Jessica. This interview is pretty interesting, and the escalation to the Jessica part is good. He sounds like such an egotistic jerk:

Former Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan has been snapped with Jessica Simpson and Tila Tequila in recent months, and now he has broken a long silence to talk about love, life and his music. He gave a long interview to Rolling Stone, and you’ll have to buy the issue to read it, but below is the press release with some of his choice remarks.

Here are the first two sentences of Rolling Stone’s first Billy Corgan feature in a decade: Unless you count what he’s done to his career, Billy Corgan has never attempted suicide. Until recently, there were plenty of mornings when he’d wake up to a stark choice: “Go eat breakfast, or go kill yourself.”

When Rolling Stone met with Corgan in Los Angeles in early February, the Smashing Pumpkins founder had a lot to say about a very rough 10 years. “There’s a lot of days where you feel forgotten,” Corgan says at one point. In a soul-baring, wide-ranging interview, Corgan discusses the idiosyncratic spiritual beliefs that saved him from suicidal depression (including his association with a vintage hippie cult called Source Family); opens up for the first time about his 2009 split with drummer Jimmy Chamberlin (Corgan says he fired him); reveals his father’s heroin addiction (his dad was arrested two years ago with a needle still in his arm); says that he “loves” Jessica Simpson; and much more.

Corgan on His Critics:
“Do I belong in the conversation about the best artists in the world? My answer is yes, I do,” he says. “I’ve been too productive for too long, and despite what anybody wants to strip away from me, I am influential. I am. So all the Pitchforks in the world can try to strip me of every ounce of dignity, but I belong.”

On the Pumpkins’ Breakup:
“Rather than break up the band, what I should have done is chuck James [Iha] out,” Corgan says. “I should have just said to Jimmy [Chamberlin], ‘You go to rehab, and we’ll continue, and James, get the f*ck out of here.’ Instead, I fell on my sword for James, for what I thought was a friend.”

On His Spiritual Beliefs:
Corgan subscribes to the fashionable idea that we’re building to a cataclysm, or at least a major vibrational shift, in 2012; he wonders what was really in the H1N1 vaccine; he fears that the United States is headed toward a Soviet Union-style economic collapse… But when pressed on details, he backs off: “I don’t want to be a dead hero,” he says.

On “Loving” Jessica Simpson:
“If I go, ‘Oh, we’re just friends,’ then it’s like, ‘Did they go out, did he dump her or she dump him, what happened?’ It has nothing to do with any of that. Sometimes people just like being around each other, and good things come out of that. My goal in life is to love whoever I think is worth loving, and I think if people knew her like I knew her, they would love her like I do. It’s really simple.”

[From Huffington Post]

“My goal in life is to love whoever I think is worth loving, and I think if people knew her like I knew her, they would love her like I do. It’s really simple.” I mean, I get the sentiment, I really do. But why does he sound like such a pompous horse’s ass when he says it? But really, I adore “if people knew her like I knew her, they would love her like I do” because whenever I hear a dude say that about Jessica, I think “He’s talking about her boobs.” And Billy probably is. They probably edited that out. “if people knew her [boobs] like I knew her [boobs], they would love her [boobs] like I do.”

Billy on May 22, 2007; Billy and Jessica in NY on December 4, 2009. Credit: INFphoto.com.