Billy Corgan‘s podcast The Magnificent Others was the setting for a reunion between him and former partner Courtney Love, where they shared their issues with “gatekeeper” Kim Gordon.
The pair briefly dated in 1991 and Love went on to claim not only that most of Smashing Pumpkins‘ landmark album ‘Siamese Dream’ is about her, but they stopped writing hits when she was no longer the subject of their songs. Corgan also has co-writing credits on Hole’s 1998 album ‘Celebrity Skin’ and their bassist Melissa Auf der Maur toured with the Pumpkins on the cycle for 2000’s ‘Machina/The Machines Of God’.
During the chat, which lasted an hour and three quarters, Corgan and Love got into the gatekeepers of ’90s indie. Corgan noted that Love had “shoulders back,” adding: “You remember the ranks of the indie girls back in the day. They were hardly charismatic.” Love said she felt a need to “crush the competition” “it was room for only one back then,” when women in music were pitted against each other, like the Bangles and Go-Go’s.
Later, Corgan brings up the “the pernicious and horrific meanness of the indie community at the time”, to which Love said: “You know I’m friends with Thurston Moore now? Speaking of gatekeepers…”
Corgan replied: “He was never a gatekeeper type. His partner was the worst.”
Gordon has spoken of her dislike for both Corgan and Love in the past. In her 2015 memoir Girl In A Band, she criticised Love’s “tarantula LA glamour — sociopathy, narcissism” and wrote: “I have a low tolerance for manipulative, egomaniacal behavior, and usually have to remind myself that the person might be mentally ill.”
“Courtney asked us for advice about her ‘secret affair’ with Billy Corgan,” she commented later. “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.”
“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 returned: “I was a fan and I came in to pay my respects and I was treated so rudely by them.”
Meanwhile, in 2024, Corgan revealed he had entered the auction to win Love‘s handwritten lyrics to the Hole song ‘Violet’.
“Hello friends. I have a very special announcement. Check this out. I just bought my ticket for the Ellis Park Wildlife Sanctuary auction for the lyrics for ‘Violet’ written by Courtney Love,” he began in a video.
“Now, it’s made a lot of press this week that this auction’s going off so I’ve actually bought my ticket because I’d like to win these lyrics because I think it’s about a guy I know a little bit and I’d love to put that on my wall. Anyway, support this if you want to, Ellispark.org and you can enter the auction as well but you gotta buy a ticket. I got three tickets for 20 bucks So I am in it to win it.”
Corgan also shared an Instagram story of a screenshot of NME‘s article in which Love gave us an exclusive quote about the meaning of the song and revealed: “It’s not just about Billy Corgan, as many might assume; it’s about sitting on the fire escape of his flat, sipping cheap wine and taking a Vicodin (oh, to be young!) while the Chicago sun sets, leaving behind a bejewelled amethyst sky.”
He captioned the screenshot by saying: “She forgot to mention that I wrote one of the heart-rending couplets contained therein. But I will always love this song. Love you Court.”
Auf der Maur appeared on the podcast a few weeks ago and spoke about the influence that her past bandmate had on the artists around her – as well as the misconception that her husband, Kurt Cobain, wrote a lot of her music.
“Even in 1991, nobody knew who [Courtney] was other than some rock critic people, but she had a vision of where she was going to go,” shared Corgan, adding that it was when Hole released their 1994 record that everyone “could really see the influence of Kurt’s success”.
Addressing the rumours that Cobain wrote a large portion of the instrumentals for the record, he added: “People overly attribute Kurt’s influence, as if he was sitting there and telling her what to write. Everybody was under that sway — you couldn’t not be.
“[Nirvana] was the biggest band in the world, who kicked open the door to Pixies and Sonic Youth and all of these other bands. Everybody was on the world stage all of a sudden because of Kurt’s courage and incredible talent.”
Auf der Maur agreed: “She and Eric [Erlandson, guitarist] were already being underestimated as songwriters in ‘Live Through This’. Everyone said, ‘Kurt wrote that record’. I still say to this day, listen to ‘Doll Parts’ and ‘Miss World’ – it’s one riff and three chords repeated over and over.
“It’s about the power of the lyrics [that Courtney added]. I’ve always said that, if anything, she inspired Kurt’s lyrics,” the bassist added, citing the way that she saw Cobain’s lyricism change after meeting Courtney. “I was so pissed [to see her work diminished]. We should pledge to the people, Eric and Courtney wrote ‘Live Through This’.”
After adding that “Kurt’s influence is undeniable to everyone”, Corgan then chimed in to say that he asked Love directly in the mid ’90s about how much of ‘Live Through This’ was written by Cobain, to which the frontwoman clarified: “His only influence on the record was one chorus”.
Corgan admitted in 2023 that he cried when he heard the news of Kurt Cobain‘s death as he felt like he had lost his “greatest opponent”.
“I want to beat the best. I don’t want to win the championship because it’s just me and a bunch of jabronis — to use a wrestling term,” he told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1.
He continued: “It’s like Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest sports competitor I’ll ever see in my lifetime.”
Love also made headlines when she shared an update on her growing “appreciation” for Geese, and jokingly told “gatekeeper” fans of theirs to “get off my back”.