This is a special kind of Hell. Billy Corgan, leader of the Smashing Pumpkins, writing on his blog a couple of years ago about what his life was like in 1997, after the Mellon Collie tour ended and he got back home:
I really have become a ’rat in the cage’’¦fans sit outside my house and wait for me at all hours of the day’¦sometimes people sneak up on me from behind bushes’¦I have 3 stalkers, one who rights letters about how he dreams at night of me raping him (we have to call the police)’¦people fuck on my lawn (and brag about it to other fans), steal my garbage and post the contents on the internet, or, ha-ha-ha, smash pumpkins on my porch’¦I have the constant feeling people are watching me in my house’¦ I try at all times to avoid the windows, or I pull my shades down on sunny days’¦it feels like a state of siege, and I try to just stay numb as best I know how’¦work is the one place I feel safe’¦
As someone who’s ochlophobic, I can’t imagine a worse existence.
