Billy Corgan and Courtney Love go way back. Hole's head honcho briefly dated the Smashing Pumpkins founder in 1991; she claims most of Siamese Dream is about her. Corgan co-wrote several songs on Hole's 1998 classic Celebrity Skin, and Hole's Melissa Auf der Maur did a stint as the Pumpkins' bassist during the tour supporting 2000's Machina/The Machines Of God. Today, Love has taken a break from teasing a non-existent Hole reunion and chronicling her journey toward Geese fandom to guest on Corgan's podcast The Magnificent Others.
"This is going to be a 100-part series," Corgan jokes at the outset of the 107-minute chat. Though the episode begins with a lot of talk about Love's childhood, Corgan and Love have a lot to say about the '90s indie scene and its gatekeepers. Corgan remembers the first time he saw Love, "shoulders back," noting the contrast with her peers: "You remember the ranks of the indie girls back in the day. They were hardly charismatic." Love reflects on her desire to "crush the competition" because "it was room for only one back then," citing the way the music industry pitted acts like the Bangles and Go-Go's against each other.
About 45 minutes into the show, Corgan, who was the subject of a lot of hipster scorn in those days, pushes the conversation toward "the pernicious and horrific meanness of the indie community at the time." Love says, "You know I'm friends with Thurston Moore now? Speaking of gatekeepers," to which Corgan replies, "He was never a gatekeeper type. His partner was the worst."
The partner in question, Kim Gordon, is no fan of Love or Corgan. She had harsh words for both in her 2015 memoir Girl In A Band. In the book, Gordon decried Love's "tarantula LA glamour -- sociopathy, narcissism" and remarked, "I have a low tolerance for manipulative, egomaniacal behavior, and usually have to remind myself that the person might be mentally ill." Gordon also wrote, "Courtney asked us for advice about her 'secret affair' with Billy Corgan. I thought, Ewwww, at even the mention of Billy Corgan, whom nobody liked because he was such a crybaby, and Smashing Pumpkins took themselves way too seriously and were in no way punk rock."
Let that color your perspective on this podcast's anecdote about an interaction Love and Corgan had with Sonic Youth. "She was really horrible in the '90s," Love recalls. "I remember in Holland I was hanging out with you and they were so mean." Corgan continues, "I was a fan and I came in to pay my respects and I was treated so rudely by them." Eventually, Love declares that Kurt Cobain's sarcastic "Heart-Shaped Box" lyric "Forever in debt to your priceless advice" was about Gordon. She also alleges that Gordon sold "all of Thurston's vinyl" to pay for their daughter's college education.
Corgan later suggests that the riot grrrl scene in Olympia, Washington was "obsessed" with Love because they believed she was betraying her upper class roots by pretending to be "from the trailers" like her husband, Cobain. "Let's macro out," Corgan says. "Why was the riot grrrl crowd — why were they obsessed with you? Class traitor. Think about it. You're a class traitor."
The conversation progresses to a discussion of the role of class in music snobbery and the proliferation of "sexless" music. Love says she loved all kinds of music but went all-in on noisy music in the early '90s to appease people like Gordon, who produced Hole's debut album. "The real sellout was those of us that bent to the market, the market of Kim Gordon," Love says. "To this day they still scream about authenticity, but most of them that I've tracked didn't come from an authentic place," Corgan later declares. "They have a mental conception of authenticity, they don't have a real conception of authenticity."
Watch the interview below.
Love's former bandmate Auf der Maur guested on The Magnificent Others three weeks ago while promoting her new book Even The Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir.
