“She was very, very honest, almost to a fault. Most singers are actors. Sinéad was not an actor.” Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan recalls Sunday dinners with Sinéad O'Connor while she was holed up in a friend's attic

Billy Corgan and Sinead O'Connor.

Smashing Pumpkins frontman and bandleader Billy Corgan has paid tribute to the late Irish singer/songwriter Sinéad O'Connor, recalling how he got to know her while she was living, temporarily, in a mutual friend's attic.

In the spring of 2016, O'Connor moved into the Chicago home of drummer Matt Walker, who she knew as Morrissey's drummer: Walker had also played with Smashing Pumpkins during Jimmy Chamberlin's absence from the band, and had remained friends with Corgan. The two musicians subsequently got to know one another over dinners at Walker's home in the suburb of Wilmette, as Corgan recalls in a new interview in The Irish Times.