Courtney Love | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode: Courtney Love | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan
Date: April 1, 2026
Host: Billy Corgan
Guest: Courtney Love

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Episode Overview

This deeply candid conversation between Billy Corgan and Courtney Love traverses the turbulent, charismatic, and fiercely ambitious journey of Courtney Love—from her chaotic upbringing and early brushes with counterculture, to her emergence as a driving force in rock music, and the complex gender, class, and industry politics she navigated along the way. Both artists share personal stories and reflect on the genesis of authenticity, trauma, ambition, and survival in a fiercely competitive scene, all threaded with mutual respect and sharp wit.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Life and Family Dynamics

• Courtney details the eccentric, chaotic influence of her parents, including a Grateful Dead-connected father who gave her LSD as a child, and a mother enmeshed with upper-class, intellectual circles.

  • “My memory of the Haight Asbury, other than my father giving me acid from about 3 to 6 ... it was dank and dirty and awful and people were on heroin ... the whole Summer of Love thing, they just use the same footage over and over.” (02:50, Courtney Love)

• Class and identity are recurring themes—a sense of being between worlds, having experienced poverty, food stamps, inherited funds, and rarefied circles.

  • “So I'm pretty class neutral. Cause I've been all the things. No, I really am. I've been on food stamps. My mother inherited a lot of money ... I'm pretty class neutral.” (04:27, Courtney Love)

2. Early Encounters With Trauma and Survival

• Courtney opens up about seeking foster care and juvenile hall as (counterintuitively) safer environments than her family, and how early violence and confrontation led her to develop confidence.
  • “I was safer there than I was in any part of my biological or step family.” (16:55, Courtney Love)
  • “Tracy Shannon was my birth. Big girl. Big girl. ... that was the burst of my temper. Okay. And I was confident after that. I got cocky. I got cocky. I was confident.” (29:19, Courtney Love)

3. Ambition, Authenticity, and Indierock Gatekeeping

• The conversation repeatedly circles back to being “class traitors” and the pernicious, often hypocritical, sense of “authenticity” enforced by indie communities.

  • “You had to be to succeed. You had to be [competitive]. There was no other system ... if anybody would romanticize the 90s as a more egalitarian time, they don't know about the horrific meanness of the indie community.” (45:11, Billy Corgan)
  • “I was really ambitious. Portland. ... Class traitor.” (53:52, Courtney Love)
  • “They married well now, or they're in human resources because they didn't like choruses.” (57:16, Courtney Love)

• Both artists discuss being targets of gatekeeping and how critics still obsess over their careers decades later.

  • “The obsession, you know, the Malcolmist obsession with me 35 years later belies a certain point...” (107:10, Billy Corgan)
  • “I could Give a about how it continues. ... But it doesn't mean it didn't hurt at the time.” (106:14, Courtney Love)

4. Intersection of Gender, Ambition & Image

• Courtney reflects on how embracing ambition, especially as a woman, is culturally policed and maligned.

  • “What I realized about the word ambition is ... people think it's rude. They really think it's rude. … if Donald Trump hid the word ambitious, what the. ... That up my brain. That broke my brain. So, yes, I was crazy ambitious, but people prefer when you hide that.” (94:45, Courtney Love)

• They dissect the limited space for women in rock, referencing contemporaries and how 80s/90s alternative scenes ostracized visible female ambition.

  • “There was room for only one back then ... the Bengals, the Go Gos. There's only room for one.” (31:09, Courtney Love)
  • “All the girls growing up listening to Susie were not confident women.” (30:27, Billy Corgan)

5. On Musical Influences and Surviving the Scene

• Both recount being shaped by their obsessions as kids—Cheap Trick (“the whole sauce”), ABBA, and the importance of radio vs. inaccessible college rock.

  • “REM ... they cost a little money to get. ... Cheap Trick was free. And that's important.” (61:04, Courtney Love)

• They express reverence for outlier influences, discuss gear, the meaning of leads, and the impact of “working-class shadows”—motivations inherited from tough upbringings and unsentimental expectations.

  • “My shadow was my father. ... If you're going to do this, you must play at this level or you're not.” (77:30, Billy Corgan)

6. Cultural Wars & Relationships in the Alternative Era

• They reminisce about key 90s cultural moments (meeting at Avalon Club, indie posturing, gatekeeping women like Kim Gordon), and friendships and rifts with figures like Kurt Cobain, Green Day, Scott Weiland.
  • “The lyric from Kurt ... 'Hey, wait, I've got a new forever in debt to your priceless advice.' That's about Kim. … He was so mad at her.” (48:38, Courtney Love)
  • “I want people to understand there's a layer of sophistication here that has to do with somebody making decisions ... that builds the machine of you.” (31:56, Billy Corgan)
  • “So we would stop our show somewhere in the middle, and you would come out and play one or two songs. … you saved my life doing that.” (98:38, Billy Corgan & 98:39, Courtney Love)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Confidence Born of Survival

“Tracy Shannon was my birth ... that was my birth. ... that was the burst of my temper. And I was confident after that. I got cocky. I got cocky. I was confident.”
— Courtney Love (29:19)

On the Reality of the 60s Counterculture

“My memory of the Haight Asbury ... it was dank and dirty and awful and people were on heroin ... the whole Summer of Love thing, they just use the same footage over and over.”
— Courtney Love (02:50)

Indie Scene Gatekeeping & Class Warfare

“Class traitor.”
— Billy Corgan (53:55)
“I exit pieced out that family at 11. How really how would they know my roots? I pretend I was from the trailers and I kind of was ...”
— Courtney Love (54:04)

Gender, Ambition and the Double Standard

“What I realized about the word ambition is ... people think it's rude. … So, yes, I was crazy ambitious, but people prefer when you hide that.”
— Courtney Love (94:45)

Vulnerability & Authenticity

“Vulnerability is the whole show for me.”
— Courtney Love (58:40)
“You cannot manufacture vulnerability.”
— Billy Corgan (58:54)

On Surviving Indie Policing

“We won. But it doesn't mean it didn't hurt at the time.”
— Billy Corgan (106:17)

On Remaking the Narrative

“I want people to understand there's a layer of sophistication here that has to do with somebody making decisions ... that builds the machine of you. ... So when you foist yourself onto the public consciousness, it's shocking, but if you know the story, it's actually not that shocking.”
— Billy Corgan (31:56)

The Spark of Ambition

“One day, I'm gonna have it all.”
— Courtney Love (92:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Family Background, LSD Childhood, Summer of Love critique: 00:58–03:54
• Foster Care, Early Survival Strategies, Discovering Music: 16:38–29:19
• Indie Gatekeeping, Class in the Scene, Ambition: 45:11–57:16
• On Being a Woman in Rock, Role Models: 31:09–36:41
• Cultural Wars: Kim Gordon, Kurt Cobain, & Indie Purity: 47:05–57:25
• Critical Story: Avalon gig memory, Early Meeting: 65:09–77:08
• Survival, Vulnerability, How Trauma Informs Art: 58:40–59:55
• The Cost of Authenticity and Survival in Music: 63:41–66:04
• Ambition and the Show Business Dream: 93:13–95:22
• Closing Thoughts: Legacy vs. the Indierock System: 106:14–107:28

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Structure, Tone, & Takeaways

• The episode is a raw, rollicking, fast-moving dialogue, rich with sharp humor, sudden vulnerability, and winding stories.
• Both guests candidly discuss their own myths, traumas, the cultural machinery they endured, and the importance of ambition and self-invention—especially for women and class migrants in alternative music.
• The conversation honors their peers and sometimes adversaries, and attempts to set the record straight about the messy, necessary drive behind their creativity and survival.

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For Listeners

Those unfamiliar with the episode will come away with:

• A nuanced understanding of the roots of Courtney Love’s power and confidence.
• Insight into music scene politics, especially the gendered, classed, and generational battles of the 80s and 90s.
• Corgan and Love’s mutual respect and candor in unpacking their own narratives, triumphs, and wounds from living at the center—and the margins—of rock history.
• Stories behind pivotal career moments, relationships with other artists, and how determination and authenticity can cut through even the hardest walls of cultural resistance.

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Transcript

[Courtney Love]

I was confident after that. I got cocky. I got cocky. I was confident.

[Billy Corgan]

First time I ever laid eyes on you. The memory I have is the shoulders kind of thrown back.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

And this just this confidence.

[Courtney Love]

I throw out 10,000 tangents so no one can get to me.

[Billy Corgan]

Sure. Well, I've chased you down many rabbit holes.

[Courtney Love]

I know, Billy. Like, this is terrifying.

[Billy Corgan]

My true memories of watching you play at the Avalon that night, you know, was the cool guitar stuff happening and then this just never ending scream. And what is the source of this?

[Courtney Love]

You wouldn't give me money for smokes.

[Billy Corgan]

You're still mad.

[Courtney Love]

I am.

[Billy Corgan]

Courtney, thank you for being on my podcast.

[Courtney Love]

Anytime. Billy Corgan.

[Billy Corgan]

I love it. Okay, well, it's going to be a hundred part series.

[Courtney Love]

I know.

[Billy Corgan]

This is part one and two. I know. Okay, let's start here. Okay. I'm gonna jump around a little bit, which I'm sure doesn't surprise you.

[Courtney Love]

No, I do that too.

[Billy Corgan]

Let's talk a little bit about mom and dad.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, wow.

[Billy Corgan]

Wow.

[Courtney Love]

I just. My blood just ran cold. Oh, my God. Of all things Porgan. Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

Dad was an interesting guy.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

In the Grateful Dead world.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. And then in the. The Iris Holy Grail world. And in the lsd giving LSD to his child at the Haight Ashbury world. You know, he's got a hero's journey as lame as he was. Oh. In the Steve Jobs working at Apple before anyone world. And then getting fired from Apple because Wozniak liked him. And getting fired from. He. He would attract like Peter Albin from the Big Brother. You know, Peter Alboman. You do, too. It's like a very Big Brother in the Holding Company. Yeah. He was that guy.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay.

[Courtney Love]

He was that guy. I don't think he's the guy that went to Texas. You know this stuff. You're like a. He didn't go to Texas and get Janice back, but he was in Big Brother. Okay. Am I wrong? You were just doing Forensic Electric.

[Billy Corgan]

I'm in the snob crowd that likes Janice without the holding company.

[Courtney Love]

Me too. I thought they were a really bad band.

[Billy Corgan]

So there's something there.

[Courtney Love]

Well, yeah. The recording in Chicago, you would know about that. Yeah, It's a crap recording. Honestly, it's hard to get through it. I understand it's still gold. So Peter Albin, if I'm not correct, my father, he was.

[Billy Corgan]

Have you heard Janis Joplin's. It's very raw. Her recordings early on, like 64. With yorma from. From. There's one from the Airplane. They're called the typewriter tapes because somebody's typing while they're singing.

[Courtney Love]

I heard some really raw.

[Billy Corgan]

It's her singing. It's her singing early blues with Jorma playing guitar.

[Courtney Love]

I've heard stuff from Text.

[Billy Corgan]

It's on Spotify. You can find it. Yeah, no, no. This is when she's in San Francisco and she's like 18 years old.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. Because she went there twice. And people think the Haight was this really great place. My memory of the Haight Asbury, other than my father giving me acid from about 3 to 6 until my mother noticed and he got his custody taken away, is that it was dank and dirty and awful and people were on heroin and so the whole. And or early meth. Right. So the whole Summer of Love thing, they just use the same footage over and over. Like two days in Golden Gate Park. It. Not kidding. Like it's.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, it was the apotheosis.

[Courtney Love]

They had it.

[Billy Corgan]

They actually got it.

[Courtney Love]

The whole Fillmore thing was dark. And the Janice thing that tracks is that she ended up on. On smack. She ended up in sex work tracks for me. I get it. And they had to go back to Texas twice.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, it is a gold rush town.

[Courtney Love]

Klondike. Absolutely.

[Billy Corgan]

I always think the way towns are formed, it never leaves their DNA.

[Courtney Love]

No, you're right, you're right.

[Billy Corgan]

Like, look at Chicago.

[Courtney Love]

You're right. You Mason. You're right. You freemason. You Mormon. That the DNA thing is real.

[Billy Corgan]

God bless. Okay, so let's talk about mom a little bit.

[Courtney Love]

She doesn't really have a hero's journey that I've figured out yet. Maybe she has to pass.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, she's just. Isn't she just like the classic white, intellectual, snobby therapist.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, but adopted by rich Italians who I adored, who couldn't have children. Who wanted a blonde blue eyed child. My mother's mostly Jewish, so. But she is blond and blue eyed. It took some 23andMe to figure that one out. But she always would try. And when she became a hippie. So she inherited a lot of money from the Reese's, who I adored. It is said because my father is not credible that he was the treasurer of Bohemian Grove. But then my sister showed me the country house that I thought was the other way. It's in Russian River. It's right on.

[Billy Corgan]

Oh, I know Russian River.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, right on. Right next to Guernville. Right on. Boyhood Mean Grove. Like, it's a big old house with like the knotty pine and the Eames share. They Were really rich. They lived at 999 Green street in the entire penthouse. Doormans, maids. My mother had a maid when she lived in the avenues named Maudel. But then we would. We would get up at 5am and stuff my stepfather's boots who was a garbage man with newspapers. So I'm pretty class neutral. Cause I've been all the things. No, I really am. I've been on food stamps. My mother inherited a lot of money and they met. My mother and father met at a Dizzy Gillespie after party. My mother was kind of a bit of a groupie. She had fur coat, hot pants, looked a little like Marianne Faithful. And all her friends, like her best friend was Abigail Folger. Let's start there.

[Billy Corgan]

Oh, yeah, Okay.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, honestly, I didn't know that Manson lived in San Francisco. When I read that book Chaos, the scales fell through my eyes because there's heiresses. All of his first children were with like petaluma. Moneyed women. Petaluma. And then I was like, there's just no difference between the murderers and the murdered in this world of mine. And also the MKUltra child disses on social media. I was. I thought MK Ultra was QAnon.

[Billy Corgan]

No, no, this is a totally different.

[Courtney Love]

It's real. I mean, my father was too stupid to be a spook.

[Billy Corgan]

Do you ever see the stuff where they say that even Jessica Simpson's an MK Ultra kid?

[Courtney Love]

Come on. We're all MK Ultra. People in the Midwest probably aren't, but we all are. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. But not very stable, put it that way.

[Billy Corgan]

And to this point, no one knows who your biological grandfather is. Right. On your mother's side, or is that

[Courtney Love]

just on my mother's side? I kind of do now. That's not how you think. But the fact that I went and asked and I had to go through Warren.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah, but you. I don't care the name unless you want to say it. But I mean, you know.

[Courtney Love]

No, I thought it was Marlon Brando. Which tracks because my grandmother. When you told both of them.

[Billy Corgan]

Because you told me this before, it kind of floated out into the ether. When you told me that, I thought. That makes so much sense.

[Courtney Love]

Right, but it's not true. It's a big six foot seven. What?

[Billy Corgan]

No, it's more the. It's more the. The. The outlier personality.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. When I met him, I thought he was super repulsive. And that tracked. I was like, oh, I must be related to this guy. And you know. No, he was really. He. Warren Beatty walked me over there. They Were neighbors the same compound where Jack Nicholson lived? I think he still might. And the.

[Billy Corgan]

Is that up there in Mulholland?

[Courtney Love]

Mulholland. And the hot tub is still there. I was just saying it's. Jackson was in a very small house, but Warren lived with Annette. And then in the middle was Marlon. And I was friends with Warren Beatty, and he at one point said he really felt for me about this. I lobbied him. It's like, I just want to meet him. I don't want anything from Marlon Brando. And. And then Warren, he said, marlon wants a note from you. So I wrote him a note. I don't want anything from you. You know, I've teased this in the press here and there, but, like, you know, after I gave him my word that I didn't want anything from him, and then I went. I had to pee. And I went in the bathroom and I looked at a toothbrush. Nah. You know, like, nah, maybe I'm too much of a feminist, but I was like, I don't need your last name. It. Right. And no, really, that's how I felt when I went in the bathroom. Also. I gave my word. I also gave my word.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. So you are honorable that way.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, I think I am. Like, honor amongst thieves vibes, for sure. But, you know, I'm glad I didn't, because it turned out he wasn't even my grandfather. So, yeah, the comedy there is okay, but there's the comedy there.

[Billy Corgan]

Let me ask you this, and you don't have to answer if you don't,

[Courtney Love]

but honestly, like, the whole podcast that Lily Anouk is doing with, did you cut in this podcast?

[Billy Corgan]

Rarely.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, I think you got very rarely. You got. I don't know what to do. Okay, go on. We'll talk about later.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay.

[Courtney Love]

He was a publicist, and he's adorable. And, well, he tracks, too. He also did all the publicity, and he gave that up to get. To do, like, only Jewish charity publicity in la. And I was like, the SAG Home for the A's. Jewish Home for the A's. You know, like, l'. Chaim. L' Chaim Telecast. It all tracks. There it is. There you go.

[Billy Corgan]

But you were raised.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, he's from Chicago, too. See, he's from Chicago. Rose. Esther. Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, you may not remember this, but you used to say way, way back in the day, you've got to be Jewish. To me.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

And I was like, no, I'm to you.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. I thought you had the people.

[Billy Corgan]

I do. I do have. I do have some blood in there. Right. Well, I'm married to a Jew. Kids are Jews.

[Courtney Love]

A Chinese Jew, though, gymnastics, as.

[Billy Corgan]

As my friend said when he found out I was in love with a Chinese Jew, he said, did you make her in a test tube for.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. Dynasties, dynasties, dynastics. I wish. I thought in Dynasty.

[Billy Corgan]

It's really interesting being with a woman who's steeped both because, you know, her one side is Polish, Russian.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

And we know how that rolls.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Like, you will not kill us. We're going to win no matter what.

[Courtney Love]

Right.

[Billy Corgan]

And the other side is dynastic. It's really interesting being with those bloodlines 5,000 years off.

[Courtney Love]

We know what we're doing.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Courtney Love]

Dynastics.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. It's all about the family.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

It's all about building. So it took me a while to figure out because, you know, in the American ethos, a woman of ambition, it's like, oh, they just want your money. An Eastern woman. The money is money.

[Courtney Love]

Incidental.

[Billy Corgan]

No, I want to. I want to rule the world.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. Do you know tracking that recently, Rupert Murdoch cut some kids out of his will. But I knew this would happen. He put the Wendy Dang Murdoch kids back in. I was like, yeah, I knew that. Justice for Wendy Dang Murdoch. He was married to a very ambitious from Hardscrabble. Okay. A woman named Wendy Dang. And she was Tenese and she.

[Billy Corgan]

Oh, I do remember that.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. And she became a translator. And I mean, this woman was. People were really pissed off at her. I loved it. I loved it. I like her. Like. Yeah. And then they got a divorce over some weird shit. And then she had two kids by him. Two girls, two daughters. He kicked some kids out of his will and he put those daughters back in. Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Dynastic.

[Courtney Love]

Dynastic.

[Billy Corgan]

Of course, you referred to the LSD times, but I don't remember it.

[Courtney Love]

And also I went to a neurologist at King's College or Imperial College, London, and my friend knew this neurologist. I didn't want to find out any of the bad stuff that happens when toddlers brains, but I wanted to find out the good stuff. And it wasn't just San Francisco people that dosed their toddlers and kids. It was a lot of Brits. A lot of Brits did it too. And she said. I said, what's the commonality with us, this little tribe of LSD toddlers? And she said, and kids too young kids, like under 10. And she said, well, you all are pretty chaotic, and sometimes you're really OCD controlling and you're all really open minded. I'm like, yeah, no, there's that kind of. No more information. But I was pleased with.

[Billy Corgan]

It would seem though, if. I mean, I didn't have that experience. Not that I know of. My father was constantly smoking weed, so I was stoned half my childhood.

[Courtney Love]

Right.

[Billy Corgan]

Like.

[Courtney Love]

But you liked a. You liked a psychedelic what I met. You liked a mushroom.

[Billy Corgan]

Uh, we were. It's when we first met in the early 90s, it was. It was a lot of LSD.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Mushrooms, less LSD.

[Courtney Love]

I like that about you, though. You were very like, la dee da with your bell around your neck. You were like exploring the vacuum. La dee da.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, I came from such a colorless world.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

That the throw open the gates to.

[Courtney Love]

And the sky was made of amethyst.

[Billy Corgan]

Sure.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, you're very colorful when I met you.

[Billy Corgan]

But I'm saying is, it was like, oh, there's this other thing. I'd felt it in literature by reading, you know, whether it's.

[Courtney Love]

But look at this palette that you chose. It's like a mauvey pink, a silvery gold.

[Billy Corgan]

Astrologically, I'm moving heavy into Venus right now. We can talk about that often.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

Nice thing is my daughter has the same thing in her chart.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, really?

[Billy Corgan]

So we share this. It's coming for me. It's an emerging love of color and smell and food that I've never had.

[Courtney Love]

I was born with that, but I've

[Billy Corgan]

never had it my whole life.

[Courtney Love]

You all, you know, you had Color night.

[Billy Corgan]

No, no, no. But, but, but I'm saying is, it wasn't from here. It was an aesthetic attraction, but it didn't come from here. Oh.

[Courtney Love]

I felt like it was super genuine. You know what, though, with the music, with the musicality, I think that that's maybe what sold it. And then as you progress, like Madam Zuzu, I was like, wait, he's into tea and the cats and the wrestling. I love your. And your house. That house. That house is a Regency. No, it's pre Regency jewel box. Yeah, I've been in the house.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

I've been in that house where you were on a very green couch playing Xbox and I was with my guitar player. And you look like Bob Geldoff in the wall. You did you like this. And you wouldn't get off this very stiff couch that was not comfortable.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

And me and Lisa were decorating the Christmas ticket.

[Billy Corgan]

What?

[Courtney Love]

He's like. He's like Bob geld up in the wall.

[Billy Corgan]

That's what it felt like.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, but that house is crazy beautiful. Like, I saw Oprah's house. I saw that architect row. Your house is the best. It's very. It's Weathering Heights. Didn't I say that to you then?

[Billy Corgan]

You did that.

[Courtney Love]

November. I don't know what year. It's not. Sometime.08 or something.

[Billy Corgan]

I think I. At some point, I invited you to come back and stay, and you said, I don't. I'm scared of Ms. Habersham or something.

[Courtney Love]

No. And smoking, because I don't do anymore. I was scared of smoking in there. And it was beautiful. It was on the lake. It was. It was no braver.

[Billy Corgan]

We're still there.

[Courtney Love]

Christmas was like Raging Wind and it was Wuthering Heights.

[Billy Corgan]

I'm pointing these details out, not to dive down the rabbit hole of them. You're welcome to. But, you know, like a lot of our generation, you got divorces and, you know.

[Courtney Love]

Death.

[Billy Corgan]

Huh?

[Courtney Love]

Death.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

A lot of death.

[Billy Corgan]

Good times.

[Courtney Love]

Good times.

[Billy Corgan]

So it begins this period, I think, if my memory serves as eight or nine, because I went back and refreshed my memory. But, you know, eight or nine, your life goes from whatever it was to suddenly you're, you know, you're going to Eugene and Portland, and they're. There's different now. There's different stepdads. And, you know, I think it's. It's not exclusive to us that. That.

[Courtney Love]

That happened. That's why when I went to the neurologist, there's a bunch of kids that had lsd. It made me feel good.

[Billy Corgan]

Oh, I see. But as I like to say, you know, we. We grew up with that boomer. Those boomer parents who were more. My joke is they were more obsessed with cocaine and yoga or weed and yoga. Sure. But. But I'm saying we all were kind of the byproducts of this. Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

Like latchkey kids or step kids or parents.

[Billy Corgan]

Too much Gilligan's island, you know?

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. No, we went there and our parents, like, that's garbage. Because they were like, you're. You told me about your dad having, like, long hair and a fur coat and a purse. I'm like, I hear that. I also suspect 72. Clarify this.

[Billy Corgan]

72.

[Courtney Love]

Did you have a Camaro in high school?

[Billy Corgan]

Yes.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. That might put you at a whole privileged level from the rest of us.

[Billy Corgan]

Slow down.

[Courtney Love]

I've been making fun of that Camaro. I just want to get it right.

[Billy Corgan]

I inherited the family 1975 Camaro, which my dad later stole from me.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

They signed over the title.

[Courtney Love]

What Color was your Camaro.

[Billy Corgan]

Silver, black interior.

[Courtney Love]

Wow, that's hard.

[Billy Corgan]

I'll let you imagine what went on in that Camaro in high school.

[Courtney Love]

Lucky you. That's a scorecard.

[Billy Corgan]

I have an amazing story that I can't tell here. I'll tell you about the Camaro.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

I mean, it's an amazing story. It's one I've never told publicly.

[Courtney Love]

I'm taking off my bougie ring. It really is upsetting me.

[Billy Corgan]

So I guess I'm just pointing at the fact that, you know, so. So begins this disassociative life of different people and mom getting divorced and hyper vigilant, which leads to. Okay, hyper vigil, but also disassociated.

[Courtney Love]

They're both.

[Billy Corgan]

They're both in there from living it. I mean, I'm here, but. But it strikes me that, you know, it's. It. It arcs it a particular way, which is. Let's call it not good.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. You know, you chaotic and not.

[Billy Corgan]

Foster home group.

[Courtney Love]

No, no, I chose that. I chose.

[Billy Corgan]

Explain that then.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. I was safer. Well, I heard the runaways, and they were really blazing juvenile hall, and I started kind of investigating without a. Without Internet. And actually, it was a good gig because I was safer there. I was safer there than I was in any part of my biological or step family. And.

[Billy Corgan]

Stop.

[Courtney Love]

What.

[Billy Corgan]

What was unsafe about your biological family?

[Courtney Love]

I just didn't like it. And, I mean, you say that when, like, as a kid. It's not like I just didn't like it or I didn't know how to form that yet, but I was scared. Most of the time. I was scared.

[Billy Corgan]

And was it emotional judgment?

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. I was really abandoned in that family. I knew I didn't like my mother. I knew it was a bad match, as I like to say. You know, I didn't like.

[Billy Corgan]

You guys have never really had any kind of warmth.

[Courtney Love]

No, no, it was. I'm glad I was born. I'm glad she had me, and I was here to raise hell, and I just wanted to get away. And the. The juvie thing seemed glamorous and like a good gig. And honestly, most of it was. Most of it was those hippies in Oregon. Not in the central part. Not when I was in. In the Hillcrest part, but I turned myself in over nothing. Over shellfishing a Kiss T shirt. That's. That's not untrue. At a Woolworths. Just so you know, I had to walk out with the Kiss T shirt three times to get caught at the Woolworths at Lloyd center in. In Eugene. Oh, no, Lloyd Center's in Portland. Sorry. Oh, I was in Portland because Kiss was playing the enormous. And I thought just like I walk in there that I could just walk in without. So I had this T shirt that resonated with this show. And I got arrested after the third time. It's like, I'm not getting that show. I just kind of feeling I was, let's try this juvie thing. And I got arrested. I wouldn't give my. That was in Portland. My mother had a very fancy lawyer who came up from San Francisco with her because she had so much money. So she had her own lawyer. And Eugene, his name was Jeff. And he came to pick me up after I finally gave my name. I think he said something to me, but I was like. And then I did something again so I could get. I don't even know where I was put. Not with my mother. She was in New Zealand at the time, but her lawyer was still around. Young guy. And I did something else to get in. Oh, also I was with her guru who was getting a fortune. I knew I had a trust fund. Not a big one. I hate saying trust fund because people assume it's huge. Yeah, like 500 bucks a month from Grandpa Jack.

[Billy Corgan]

Like when you're kid, that's still a lot of money.

[Courtney Love]

That's a fortune. And it enabled me to come to England. It enabled me to. With my best friend Robin, like live in Liverpool. It enabled me to go up to London. It enabled me to. To con them a lot and like see my real father in Ireland. Dublin. Enable me to do. Along with stripping. But you know, that's. That's awesome.

[Billy Corgan]

We're not there yet.

[Courtney Love]

They're not there yet. So Michael sun was this guy's name and he was my mother's guru. And he'd come up from San Francisco also to live off her, but also ended up doing gestalt therapy with my teach. I'd peek down and see my teachers naked. It was horrific. Like they all fell into this cult thing with my mother from my Montessori school. So, yeah, he. He was. He was a really gay guy and he. When I came back from New Zealand because I was kicked out of boarding school, he was. He took me in. My mother was going to send me to this place. I saw the pamphlet for emotionally messed up children. I saw the pamphlet. There's a. The kid on the front. And we stopped in Tahiti and I got Michael's son to take me on if he could build my trust fund. Well, At Wells Fargo. Okay, I wasn't going that place. Yeah, So I was 10.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, so.

[Courtney Love]

And I lived there for. For not quite two years. I lied that I was 12 when I went.

[Billy Corgan]

You lived where?

[Courtney Love]

With Michael Sun In Eugene, Oregon.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, but stop there for a second. 10, you know, because my son's 10 now.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, wow.

[Billy Corgan]

10. What's your self. What's your self perception at 10? Did you think you were a good kid? Misunderstood? Like, what's the. What are the.

[Courtney Love]

Just sad. Just like sad and abandoned. Like, so you go back and you have a whole fantasy construct for your personality. Like, oh, I said. Or oh, I could understand sarcasm.

[Billy Corgan]

You can't.

[Courtney Love]

You can't. So I don't know really what happened to that kid, because the kid is really hard now. Hard, funny, deflective, all the things. But, you know, you're not thinking about what grownups. I mean, the sex stuff was appalling. And then my mother put me on drugs, so she put me on Valium in New Zealand and then Ritalin and, you know, I'm in 12 step.

[Billy Corgan]

But you and Ritalin, can you imagine?

[Courtney Love]

Oh my God, the one everyone tries to chase that first high. I can't remember any but one. Which is the most beautiful spring is Eugene, Oregon. They have Daphne, which is a really ugly shrub, but if you've never smelled Daphne, you know nothing. All these women named Daphne in England, I'm like, but you don't know what it smells like. And Eugene, because it's in the Willamette Valley and the Hoh Valley in Washington, that is like the most, the old. I think it's the oldest rainforest in the world. And, you know, people from Yale come up to the Hoh and hike it, and they end up in Aberdeen, Washington afterwards. Like, it's both things. Class neutral, I'm saying. So, you know, whenever, you know, I, I read a book on roses and Portland rose is used in every English rose that they do at like Kew Gardens. They have to. It makes them hearty. The Duchess of Cornwall rose, which I have a lot of Camilla roses in my backyard. I, I love Camilla. She probably took more than me, so she's the queen. I kind of just dig it. So I, in celebration, I have these roses from her, but it's half Portland rose. I was like, what? And then I read this book on roses. It's like this thick. It's like the history of roses. But anyway, in spring, Eugene, Oregon, bursts, burst jasmine, honeysuckle, rhododendron. Camilla. I've never seen anything like it. Again. And I looked outside Michael Son's house and, you know, this is like 77. He's getting 2000 bucks a month for me doing nothing. He's just building up annex and lots of boys are coming through. And he had wheat and he had Valium. So I'd go to sixth grade, seventh grade, with the weed and the volume to make friends. Like, I didn't know what to do. That's when I came back. I had a bit of a New Zealand accent. I was really into the basic rollers. Like, the Base City Rollers were the. And I had tartan at the bottom of my pants. And not because I'm cool. It wasn't Bowie. I didn't know who Bowie was yet. He'd been on Top of the Pops over there. They were always like 8 weeks old, because they were not satellites back then. So anyway, I had this Bowie hair company was. It was a basic rollers haircut. So, yeah, I can hear the dogs. Just FYI.

[Billy Corgan]

You won't hear them. You won't hear them in the mic.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, good. That's fine. Anyway, sorry. And I got really picked on. Like, I got beat out of me a few times with these stoner girls. Like, they have Led Zeppelin belt buckles and they're cool. But there was no ABBA in America. That freaked me out. Where's the abba?

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, my first literal head orgasm was to Waterloo.

[Billy Corgan]

Have you seen the. Have you seen the ABBA documentary that's out?

[Courtney Love]

No, but the ABC has like 10 ABBA documentaries.

[Billy Corgan]

Right, but this one that's just come out and they never actually got that big in America. That's part of the documentary.

[Courtney Love]

That's what I'm telling you. Like dancing, which is wild. It's up like, there was a single week in New Zealand, by the way.

[Billy Corgan]

Oh, they were huge in New Zealand.

[Courtney Love]

Australia and New Zealand was the biggest part for them, actually. Like, they were. But they were bigger than they were in the uk and the. The BBC documentaries I've seen, there's one just on Agnetha. Did you know that before she joined abba, she wrote a song that kicked the Beatles off of the Swedish charts and the old Nordic charts.

[Billy Corgan]

I have listened to her early solo work.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, it's very like beer hall kitschy. Like, they did that kind of beer hall.

[Billy Corgan]

She has one of the great voices of all time.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

And what a voice.

[Courtney Love]

My head orgasm was Waterloo. And like, you know, rock is like. You can drop a needle anywhere on SOS and it's perfect. I'M with that.

[Billy Corgan]

But also that was more S a T Y D A Y N I.

[Courtney Love]

That song is great. That song is one of the great songs of all time that. I don't know who wrote it, but that song is catchy.

[Billy Corgan]

Might have been Mickey Mo. Mickey Most might have been involved with them.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. They were from Dunedin.

[Billy Corgan]

Do you know Mickey Most is a producer. You should go down that route.

[Courtney Love]

I know the name Mickey Moe won.

[Billy Corgan]

Mickey Most. Well, he was Donovan. Yardbirds, Animals.

[Courtney Love]

That guy. Was he a melter type that kicked, you know, bass players off?

[Billy Corgan]

No, I don't know about that. It was a different world. But the thing about Mickey Mouse, he was the first producer to figure out that a song was like a mini movie.

[Courtney Love]

Right. He was a Don Arden connective. Right.

[Billy Corgan]

I don't know. But he had a lot of influence. And I don't think people have connected the dots. I think he had a lot of influence on the Beatles thinking that way. Because he started doing that before the

[Courtney Love]

Beatles started doing like a mini movie.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah, that a song was like a mini movie. So when you think of, like when you think of some of those great animal songs, it's like you're in a certain room. It's not just the animals being the animals, you know, I mean, like.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, no, it's.

[Billy Corgan]

It's like they set the scene and

[Courtney Love]

then we go up cinematic Rob Russell and then we get to sergeant Pepper.

[Billy Corgan]

You know, you're talking about four track recording.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

So in order to achieve atmosphere, you've got maybe one or two chances to do it within the realm of a recording. It's not like now where you can layer a bunch of sitars. You got to kind of pick one thing to kind of denote aesthetic vibe.

[Courtney Love]

I saw Chris Martin give an award to George Martin one time. I don't know what it was on. Because there's not a day that goes by I don't think about George Martin. I'm like, no, I don't think about what. I didn't believe him. Okay. Basically, rollers were great. They were great. And Rock and Roll Love Letter was also great. Come, come for me. But I got beat up. And I'll tell you about getting beat up. Seventh grade, junior high. I'm coming from fourth form in. In. In an English in British Commonwealth education. I knew some Latin. I knew some French verbs. I knew.

[Billy Corgan]

Had you started your Shakespeare education?

[Courtney Love]

Yes, I had and I definitely had. And the other blessing about Oregon is the best Shakespeare festival probably in America is in Ashland, Oregon. And so I had gone There a few times as a little camp. So I'd already done that. I'd bagged a little Shakespeare. And then, you know, the British Commonwealth

[Billy Corgan]

education, and then the girls with the Led Zeppelin Bill buckles.

[Courtney Love]

There was. There was no need. For what? I knew handwriting. Like. That's why Nick Cave's handwriting is so interesting. That's what I infected you with. And your handwriting is so interesting. Think British Commonwealth education in New Zealand. I'm not kidding. Like, that handwriting that they teach you. What's it called? It's called something I forget. Proper ink. Proper pen, like in seventh grade in Eugene, Oregon, with calligraphy.

[Billy Corgan]

You're not talking about.

[Courtney Love]

No, it's called something that I'm forgetting because of my brain. Brain is. And yours isn't. I've watched a few of these podcasts, and your vocabulary is deathly. And I was like, how am I gonna spar with this guy?

[Billy Corgan]

You're fine.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

So how do we get from girls with belt buckles beating you up to tv, dj, punk rock?

[Courtney Love]

I'll tell you how. There's one thing of one girl beating me up, and that was my birth. Other than the scream in Minneapolis. That was my birth. Tracy Shannon was my birth. Big girl. Big girl. I'd been beat up twice with the whole school watching.

[Billy Corgan]

This is a pretty face, or.

[Courtney Love]

No, no, pretty much about to be. Not a pretty face for whatever reason. And I'm in the bathroom in fourth. Fourth form. Is it fourth form? Whatever. Lunch. There's two lunches. These twins all in rabbit for coats. These. These other girls. Desiree. These other girls. You call me a. No, I didn't. You call me a liar. Meet, meet, meet. Pushing around. And I was reading one of those madras. We're about the same age. Those Madras Indian shirts. I was living with the guru and seventh grade, I'm living with the guru, and the whole school's there. And I'm little. I'm scrappy. I don't have tits. I'm scrappy, right? But I've been beat up twice. And Tracy Shannon comes for me. I don't know what happened, Billy, but I'm on top of her. I see red, and they're pulling me off. Like, I win this fight, but then some. So this temper emerges to defend myself for the first time that happened. So when you ask about self conception, it was just being victimized.

[Billy Corgan]

I see.

[Courtney Love]

And I didn't understand it. So I don't understand sarcasm. I don't have a moment. Except Tracy Shannon was my moment. And now I'd be In jail for whatever I did. But, like, she was beating me up and she was much bigger. And that was the burst of my temper. Okay. And I was confident after that. I got cocky. I got cocky. I was confident. I even carried a hunting knife with the other girls. Like the. The Blackfoot girls from the reservation. Like, you know, these other girls that ended up going to say that.

[Billy Corgan]

Because the first time I ever laid eyes on you, the memory I have is the shoulders kind of thrown back.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

And this just.

[Courtney Love]

This confidence came from beating up Tracy Shan.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. But I'm saying, you know, you remember the ranks of the indie girls back in the day.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

They were hardly, like, charismatic.

[Courtney Love]

Well, the charisma thing probably is my own thing.

[Billy Corgan]

No, I get that, but I'm saying.

[Courtney Love]

But the beat up Tracy Shannon thing, I walked on from there. I was like, yeah, but again, I didn't know where I was, but I was somewhere.

[Billy Corgan]

Sorry, I'm having a. I'm my own moment.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, I want to hear it.

[Billy Corgan]

No, shoulders back. You know, you have great shoulders.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

You know, I mean, you have this beautiful kind of carriage. And just this kind of confidence is rare for the time. You know, all the girls growing up listening to Susie were not confident women.

[Courtney Love]

They were more puny, too. They were smaller.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, there was the coquettish version.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

There was the cat. I'm not really a lesbian, but I'm a lesbian.

[Courtney Love]

Right.

[Billy Corgan]

You know, there was the Danita, the pretty.

[Courtney Love]

The cat. The Danita, the pretty.

[Billy Corgan]

The pretty skinhead girl.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

You know, you. You'd be like, why are you skinhead? You're pretty. You know, there's like.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

You know, I mean, there weren't a lot of, like, charismatic shoulders back.

[Courtney Love]

But you met me after I started my band, I had to do in the mines first. Like, I had to.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, we're getting there. Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

Crush the competition, if you will. There was, because it was only. There was room for only one back then. It was like, even the 80s. There was the Bengals, the Go Gos. There's only room for one. And now we're just in the 90s. We're just coming out of that.

[Billy Corgan]

Sure.

[Courtney Love]

And now I just want to say one thing. Like, with Emerald Fennell or Margot Robbie, those women are young enough to be real feminists and, like, make left elbows. You know what I mean? Like, you know, we weren't my generation.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, I guess what I'm after here.

[Courtney Love]

But I was demanded to be. And I was like, no, tough, sure.

[Billy Corgan]

But you're. You're smart enough to figure out what I'm after here, which is like, you know, people look at one end of the telescope and they see a rank on tour and out of control child, you know, and. And, you know, they're. They're the easy threads, which is.

[Courtney Love]

That's kind of stupid, right?

[Billy Corgan]

That's what I'm saying.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

So I want people to understand there's a layer of sophistication here that has to do with somebody making decisions, in some cases binary and other cases more complicated. That builds. Builds the machine of you. So when you foist yourself onto the public consciousness, it's shocking, but if you know the story, it's actually not that shocking.

[Courtney Love]

No, it's much more nuanced than the cheap shot.

[Billy Corgan]

That's kind of what I'm after.

[Courtney Love]

And it's more complex, as you said. Like, usually when I talk to somebody, even a Marc Marone, the one podcast other than you, I've ever done.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

And it wasn't visual. And I throw out 10,000 tangents so no one can get to me. And I've done that for a long time.

[Billy Corgan]

Sure. Well, I've chased you down many rabbit holes.

[Courtney Love]

I know, Billy. Like, this is terrifying. This one's a little scary.

[Billy Corgan]

Nothing but love.

[Courtney Love]

Nothing but love.

[Billy Corgan]

As I once told you, you name yourself love for a reason.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, and Pat Smear made me too, because he had that Robert, Indiana, little love thing from Darby. And I wanted to be loveless because it felt more honest. And he was like, no, there's two words, people. Love, Free and love. And they like this, this. And then I kind of got into it, and then he gave my name to this Tonk Rock LA Weekly column.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

L, U, V. But it was the first time my name was in print. I'm like, yeah, I'm going with it. This is great. But I did like it. It sounded like porn star, but I was like, yeah, no, this is cool. It's. It contradicts.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, so 14, 15, 16, 17, you're on your way to juvie, to the

[Courtney Love]

UK, which was weeks ago.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, there's you going to juvie, but there's also you showing up in England.

[Courtney Love]

Well, the counselors in Eugene were really cool. In the course of one month. This is crazy. Three men, all men, one had returned from England. They were all at Skip Wars. Two of them were skippers for credit at college. So these guys were like Deadheads, cool guys. They brought me. One guy brought me Patti Smith back from England, along with Chrissy Hind and Squeeze. Just saying Squeeze. Was the third one Good lyrics. And he goes, absolutely. He goes, these remind you of. These remind me of you. And they let me sit in the day room. And, you know, the. The Tuesday and Thursday was the gene change. And everyone went for the tightest jeans after that, I went for the loosest. I stopped caring and it blew my mind. Like, these two women looked amazing. I like the Squeeze record, too. And then another guy gives me horses, like, this reminds me of you. I was like, what the hell? And then I looked. I'm like, okay. And then my foster father, Kenny, I was looking at the Buckingham Knicks record he had, and he always slept. He was a real. He was a real. What's the word? Good with the ladies. And he was beautiful. And they all would come in with these thin gold chains and this blonde hair doing a Stevie thing. And I looked at Buckingham Nicks. I was like. And then Kenny interrupts. He's like, this reminds me of you. It's horses again. So I'm holding Stevie Nicks and Lindsay in one hand and Patty in the other.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, there it is.

[Courtney Love]

And there it is. There it is. One hand in each. And also, when I came back from New Zealand, Stevie was on Fleab. Mac was on the radio with Dreams. And it was reassuring that one woman was on the radio. Because I went from abba, kind of being my mother's, to Stevie being my mother. It was super. It was the year. I remember Lonely Boy was on the radio. Shannon, but the Dog was on the radio. Like, I remember the top 40 at the time. I was also listening. In sixth grade, I started listening to Casey Kasem religiously. And then Dr. Demento. Did you listen after Casey Kasem?

[Billy Corgan]

Of course I'd listen to music.

[Courtney Love]

And Dr. Demento liked a little bit of new wave and punk. The first time I heard the Tubes, Don't Touch me, there was Dr. Demento.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. And I was playing a lot of Zappa.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, he did. And I didn't understand Zappa at all. But the other.

[Billy Corgan]

My dad likes Zappa.

[Courtney Love]

I just didn't. When I did a lot of drugs one time, and they were kind of downers. I lit. I lined up Weasels ate my flesh, Coltrane. I don't mean to be cliche. Mingus. I was like, I'm gonna listen to difficult music on smack. And I'm gonna be honest. I could hear it for once, and then I couldn't hear it anymore.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah, you're not big on difficult music.

[Courtney Love]

No, I can do trout mask replica just fine. Thank You, Corgan. Thank you. Like, no, I can't do jazz. I can't. It's so complex for me, and I just never understood the codes of it. I know when it's beautiful. I know what jazz is, and I know what good jazz is. That's.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, if you understand the roots of jazz, it actually makes a ton of sense.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, intellectually, I wish I understood it.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. But it's one of those things where you're not really sure if you're listening because you're supposed to listen, or you're listening because you enjoy it.

[Courtney Love]

That's right.

[Billy Corgan]

That's where it gets harder.

[Courtney Love]

That's right. And I'd rather be honest about it. You know, the Lomax field recordings that I love. But when it gets to jazz, I'm, like, lost. And why should I bother with something that I don't understand or pretend that I do? Trying to be intellectual.

[Billy Corgan]

I think you would enjoy west coast jazz.

[Courtney Love]

What's that? Who's that?

[Billy Corgan]

That's Gerry Mulligan. And even Charlie Parker used to come out here and do sessions. I think that's what you would most resonate. Chet Baker is probably the thing you would most understand because a lot of

[Courtney Love]

times I was friends with Wayne Shorter, who just passed.

[Billy Corgan]

Oh, God bless.

[Courtney Love]

He was a really. He was Buddhist. And I always had. And I still have access to Herbie, Hancock and those guys play with Miles.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. But the west coast iteration of jazz, I think, is what you would most.

[Courtney Love]

So, Chet Baker.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, Chet Baker's the thing that the goths like.

[Courtney Love]

I like Chet Baker.

[Billy Corgan]

The goths like Chet Baker for some reason. Probably because he was on smack and he was beautiful.

[Courtney Love]

And also, the funny Valentine is amazing.

[Billy Corgan]

Beautiful cat, but obviously troubled. But. Yeah, but that. That world, that 50s SoCal. Cause you gotta understand swing bad. Okay? But form follows function.

[Courtney Love]

Okay? Could you explain that to me? I'm so dumb right now.

[Billy Corgan]

No, here. Okay, so imagine you're Charlie Parker. You are the number one bop guy in the world, right? You're a total savant. You come out and you're playing some place in Pasadena, and everybody's just chill. The music is more chill. You can't be Charlie Parker. New York Charlie Parker, because they're so sensitive. He goes more to the waves and the vibe. So he's still doing Charlie.

[Courtney Love]

So you acclimate. Is that what form falls? You said it yesterday night. I don't want to be dumb, but I never understood that phrase.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, you're playing a club, 1955. You're playing some club in Santa Monica and it's a beautiful night. You know how this world is out here.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. It's a little more show.

[Billy Corgan]

Nobody, nobody. Nobody wants to.

[Courtney Love]

It's like going to Holland. When you go to Holland, no one

[Billy Corgan]

wants to spoil the party. So the music is reflective of the vibe that they're in.

[Courtney Love]

Remember playing the Paradiso and those Dutch people, it's like, they're so chill. What the. Do you do, like. No, you just play your slow songs. Because they're just. They're just like, no.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, you know what I would do? We would play more aggressive.

[Courtney Love]

I know. Me too.

[Billy Corgan]

To upset.

[Courtney Love]

Me too. To upset them. You and me both, baby. The Dutch man. And then, you know, you go to the Nordics and they love death metal. They want you to. They. The Norway. Like, Norway.

[Billy Corgan]

What else is there to do? I think they're inside nine months a year.

[Courtney Love]

They don't have, like. They don't have. They have great societies, but they don't have, like, rebellion coded in there.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, let's. Let's keep Liebach.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. Sorry.

[Billy Corgan]

I actually was listening to Liveach recently.

[Courtney Love]

Really? Yeah, that you were, you know, the first. Do you remember the first thing you ever said to me? It supposed to make me contrarian. And I was like, oh, my God, I knew he'd do this. You're like, what do you think of this? First thing you ever said. What do you think of Ingbe? I can't even say his name. Yngbe Malls.

[Billy Corgan]

Momstein.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, Momstein. And I was like, you know what? I'm not biting. Not doing this. No, I totally understood what you were doing. Trying to alienate a girl. Right? Like a girl. And I. I love this. Whatever. Two weeks ago, I'm playing at Naming, which is the gear show. And I was like, I have nothing. And then it was like. I remember I called them the Bristol or something, but I remember the Bilson. The Bilson. And I was at this Susie, she's a producer's house, just singing that vocal that we. That you helped me with for the other Billy, the World of Billy's. And I saw that she had a new Bilson. I'm like, I won Nam. I won Nim. I called it a baker, but I won because Binson.

[Billy Corgan]

No, it's Benson.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. But I knew what it was.

[Billy Corgan]

She's referencing the famous oil.

[Courtney Love]

It's not that famous. It's like a Corvair famous.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, if you know your Floyd history, it is famous.

[Courtney Love]

That's what he said. That's what Chris Bowers said it's what

[Billy Corgan]

Dave Gilmore and Richard Wright, the pianist keyboard player used to use to create that.

[Courtney Love]

But is that why they called the album Metal?

[Billy Corgan]

That I don't know.

[Courtney Love]

Because it's metal, isn't it? Okay. Is it the beta of the vhs? Is it the beta of Reel to real?

[Billy Corgan]

No.

[Courtney Love]

Why not? It makes sense to me. It's like a cassette on metal. Am I wrong?

[Billy Corgan]

It's. It's different. Yes.

[Courtney Love]

I'm trying to be a gearhead.

[Billy Corgan]

You're not doing well.

[Courtney Love]

I suck. So the homeboy. I feel like leads like that. Right. Navarro, I don't mean to tangent, but I want to tell you one thing about leads because Will Sargent is on my record shredding. But it's Will Sargent's writing and you're

[Billy Corgan]

talking about the record that you're.

[Courtney Love]

My record that you're still working on

[Billy Corgan]

at the time of this recording.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

First album in how many years?

[Courtney Love]

Sixteen.

[Billy Corgan]

Sure.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. Robert Smith took that long.

[Billy Corgan]

I was around for the last one.

[Courtney Love]

Yep. You helped me with Samantha on that last one. That was a hell of a song. But anyway, one day. Justice for Nobody's daughter. It will happen in any event. Will Sargent plays from the Bunnyman, who I met in 81, which is crazy Dreams come true, man.

[Billy Corgan]

And what can we say is a mutual Echo Appreciation Society. One of the greatest fans.

[Courtney Love]

I couldn't agree more. And also the deep cuts. What I would do honestly and what I've wanted to do. Somebody pitched a movie to me about me and Robin being in Liverpool and the lens of two teenage American girls being in Liverpool. It's a really great film idea. It's like my Almost Famous. I really wanted to get it made in any event. And. And I think that like a Mamma Mia level for not just our generation, but millennials at this point. But Gen Z. I really understand Gen Z as online as. I like them. I really like them. I see their.

[Billy Corgan]

They sort of like you.

[Courtney Love]

I like them. I like them first. I like them first and then they like me. I am the moment. Me and Charlie xcx. But in any event, a bunch of it Leads. Because Will Sargent does these incredible leads. I don't think he's ever played outside the Bunnyman other than his solo stuff.

[Billy Corgan]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you're generally directionally accurate.

[Courtney Love]

Yes, something like that.

[Billy Corgan]

And I mean because I would know.

[Courtney Love]

Well, this is.

[Billy Corgan]

And if you said to me, where can I heal Will Sargent? Not on the Bunnyman. I would go will his solo records. And I Don't know. So that's. That's right.

[Courtney Love]

He sent me some soundclouds of his scoring stuff. It's astonishing. I sent to Bush Walker, my manager, J.D. the producer, Bush Walker. And in any event, the lead thing. When I heard Dave Navarro. Okay, not on Jane says. From Jane's. Dixon. Not on Jane Says. But on Ocean Song or. And I met him, and I'm like, you're from the Valley. I can tell by your leads. He wasn't. But he's from Bel Air, on the tip. The valley side of Bel Air, I gotta say. And that's where he's from. So I guessed his geography from his leads. Okay. Like, leads are a guy thing. There are women that can do leads. Great. That generally.

[Billy Corgan]

Yes, you can.

[Courtney Love]

You.

[Billy Corgan]

You. One of the first significant conversations we had about music, you said, I don't understand what you're doing on the guitar. Why do you have to. What is with this?

[Courtney Love]

I think your leads are phenomenal.

[Billy Corgan]

No, but I'm saying your leads are special.

[Courtney Love]

And your bass playing is insane.

[Billy Corgan]

But you. But you wanted to understand. Not so much. You were castigating me for playing leads, which is what most indie people did, which is. They weren't cool. No, you were like. You were like the G. You know,

[Courtney Love]

the Gish one on Rhinoceros is when I would. It's like, okay, we'll stay with them. You know, get. They wear hats, but we'll stay. And I was in the one van that Eric and me bought with my stripping money that we were touring in. And I was listening to Gish and I heard Rhinoceros is like, to this day, I play Rhinoceros for kids. I'm like, this is the perfect rock song. This is it. This is it. And your leads were. Your bass was insane. The bridge was insane. The other thing I didn't like, honestly, Billy, if I'm honest, was the title, because it's a pun. Comes like, oh, my God, this boy needs words.

[Billy Corgan]

That's. That's. That's early psychedelic LSD problems.

[Courtney Love]

I like it. Okay. Now that I know that I can. I can let it go. It's been a little resentment. Like, why do you call it that? I know what he called that. She knows. The nose. The right. Yeah. But the rest is perfect. Flawless song. Absolutely flawless. Your bass is flawless. And you. I really think your bass is a great strength. And then your leads. Except when you're wanking off at Nam, but that's different. The beautiful, majestic stuff. I even listened to Melancholy recently. And the opening track Is that kind of Funeral for a Friend thing, the composition that you really worked on. And, yeah, Yellow Patro, that was amazing. Melancholy was amazing. So I get the track you were on, but leads, they're kind of male,

[Billy Corgan]

you know, very male.

[Courtney Love]

Unless it's you.

[Billy Corgan]

It's changed a bit. It's changed a bit. There are a lot of phenomenal young female guitar players coming out of the scene.

[Courtney Love]

There's a lot. There's a lot of female everything right now, which is great.

[Billy Corgan]

Great.

[Courtney Love]

There weren't.

[Billy Corgan]

More. Better.

[Courtney Love]

More better. And Arjen, like, I feel like he was way more rapaciously competitive. And you had to be to succeed. You had to be.

[Billy Corgan]

There was no other system at will. Because if anybody would romanticize the 90s as a more egalitarian time, they don't know what the pernicious and horrific meanness of the indie community at that time, which both of us have had our sort of battles with.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, you know, I'm friends with Thurston more now. Speaking of gatekeepers. He's like, mellow. He got a divorce. He's like a sun bear.

[Billy Corgan]

But. But look, I.

[Courtney Love]

Out of captivity.

[Billy Corgan]

But hold on one second. I barely know Thurston and I.

[Courtney Love]

Me neither. I didn't know him very well.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. But he was never a gatekeeper type.

[Courtney Love]

No, it was his wife.

[Billy Corgan]

His partner was the worst.

[Courtney Love]

He was the worst. And she kind of still is like,

[Billy Corgan]

oh, she's still rocking the gatekeeping.

[Courtney Love]

I know. You and her book. This is so hilarious. I'm. I'm friendly with Lana Del. Right. In fact, at one point, we were really good friends and she put me in her house in Malibu for a year, rent free. Like, what the hell? Also, she was really great at helping me get out of town because I need to get out of the life. And I had bad people around me and she could play them because she's like, got this upper middle class thing as well, so she could play these guys that were really harming my life.

[Billy Corgan]

Want to hear something that you don't know?

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

So my wife's brother. My wife has five brothers. One full and four half had a kind of romantic moment with her. She was sort of obsessed with him and then eventually ghosted him.

[Courtney Love]

What does he do?

[Billy Corgan]

He's out here working, you know.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. Okay. That's secret.

[Billy Corgan]

So isn't that funny that there's this.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, I've never met her.

[Billy Corgan]

I know. You speak very hard.

[Courtney Love]

She's a fantastic girl.

[Billy Corgan]

She's obviously very bright and she's a

[Courtney Love]

real friend you know, she's done things for me that nobody's ever done in our business, particularly another woman. In any event, Kim wrote about Lana Del Rey.

[Billy Corgan]

Oh, Jesus, no.

[Courtney Love]

In her book. Like, she says horrible things about me being a tarantula and stuff, but, like a narcissistic, Hollywood obsessed tarantula. Oh, Kim, I'm so scared of spiders. I wish she'd done something else, like another bear maybe. I'll take a bear. Eagle. I'll take an eagle. In any event, she puts down Lana, she calls her all these names. Because Lana, in one of her very few early interviews, she still doesn't do many now, said, I wish I was dead. She was 27. She said, I wish I was dead. She named 27 year olds. And my daughter Frances, like, raged at her on Twitter. And then Lana's like, I'm so sorry. And now they're friends. They were friends when Kim wrote this. And she called. And then her defense of it, she didn't know Lana Del Rey. And Lana was like, who is Kim Gordon? Totally. Other generation did not grow up gay.

[Billy Corgan]

Kept a question, by the way, billions are still asking.

[Courtney Love]

Maybe not so many millions, because I don't think she had.

[Billy Corgan]

I'll go with billions.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, okay. She was really horrible in the 90s. She was really. I remember in Holland, I was hanging out with you and. And they were so mean. It was like. Like I didn't.

[Billy Corgan]

Yes. I came in there. I came into their dressing room because we were all playing this festival.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Kurt was playing, too.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Nine Inch Nails was playing.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. It was a big deal.

[Billy Corgan]

Black Francis was playing.

[Courtney Love]

I wasn't.

[Billy Corgan]

You were.

[Courtney Love]

I feel like Urge Overkill played that.

[Billy Corgan]

Even Urge was there. You came over on the boat with her.

[Courtney Love]

I came over on the boat with hers. Yep.

[Billy Corgan]

I didn't leave with them, but I. I came in. I was a fan. And I came in to pay my respects. And I was treated so rudely by her. That was the beginning of, you know, the relationship.

[Courtney Love]

The lyric from Kurt, which is your priceless advice. Hey, wait, I've got a new Ever. Help me finish it. Oh, my God. No, no, no. It's the lyric. I mean, what? The actual. I'm so sorry. Never. Oh, my God. Hey, wait. I've got a new forever in debt to your priceless advice. That's about Kim. That's literally about Kim. And there's like. He was so mad at her. He was. Because, you know, his whole thing was Kurt's whole thing was he. Believe it or not, he hit his light. Well, you know this. Under a bushel for bleach. Because one, Seattle, which he wasn't from.

[Billy Corgan]

Two, Kim Gordon, back to pernicious indie politics.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, indie politics. He wasn't from Seattle. And when I first saw Nirvana in Portland, Oregon, there was Jason, this, this.

[Billy Corgan]

This newsted. No, no, Jason.

[Courtney Love]

Jason Everman. Right.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah, I know Jason.

[Courtney Love]

And he was. He had long hair, like a Soundgarden guy. And I watched Kurt at a little club called Satiricon. Turned his. His Fender all the way down. I saw it. I'm not stupid. I saw it. And that's what led to me and him having an interaction. I was like, are you fake guitar player? And whole thing. But that was the Seattle element. And I didn't know till I hung out with them about the Kim I know. I was scarred by Kim. So scarred that I had to write her a letter kissing her ass to get. You don't go for the husband, the cool husband. You go for the wife. And she produced my first album to her eternal regret.

[Billy Corgan]

Do you remember what you paid her? Because you told me.

[Courtney Love]

I can't remember. It was done in port. She never came by. She came by once for 10 minutes.

[Billy Corgan]

You said you gave her six grand and a bag of pots. Does that sound right?

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. She was. She's from la. And I went with her once when I was so social with her. I went with her once to her father's house. And the whole thing is about. She's from Culver City, like Jennifer Finch. But the whole. Her father was UCLA professor. I don't wanna give her too much time, but the important thing is that her brother was a junkie. I think that made her. I don't know what made her permit art, made her pernicious, but she was really a bad force in the whole thing. Thing, you know. Were you ever attracted to the band Sonic Youth?

[Billy Corgan]

I loved what they were doing with the guitars.

[Courtney Love]

I loved the graphics. The graphics.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. And the drummer. No, the drummer.

[Courtney Love]

I forget.

[Billy Corgan]

Bill.

[Courtney Love]

I forgot just now, like, don't ask me anything.

[Billy Corgan]

No, but the drummer. The drummer, the drummer and. And Thurston were always super nice and very friendly and, you know. You know how it is. You got the generational politic. They're an older band.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Which seems, you know, they're probably 30, but, you know, when you're 24, they're the next generation.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

So the drummer and Thurston were always super nice and would answer any questions. I talked to Thurston about gear, you know, like, I remember talking to Thurston Once.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, he's a gearhead. Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

About how. How they travel with their guitars in kind of a weird. They would just put their guitars in this weird road case with no cases. They would just basically put like 12 guitars in like a thing and just put it in a bike almost like a box.

[Courtney Love]

Let me cap this conversation. I've got the best story. It's really quick. So when Thurston and Kim got divorced because, you know, their daughter is in Chicago at school, don't know if you know that Kim sold all of Thurston's album vinyl for a vast amount of money behind his bag to pay for her education, the kids education. I'm sorry, to college. It is one of the greatest things I've ever heard. And you know, he lives in London with his incredible new wife. He's like free. He's happy, happy guy. Playing his jazz, love ecstasy music, Sun Ra, whole thing. He's a great guy. They came over to my house for the Oscars, which is one in the morning over there. They're great. Let's move on because these people are dicks. They were dicks. Anyway, one was a dick.

[Billy Corgan]

I mean, I, you know, how much

[Courtney Love]

did it scar you? It kind scarred Kurt. So the whole point I'm making about Kurt is bleach is him hiding his light under a bushel. And it's not until one of those riot girls is in a polyamorous non consensual to him relationship, which really scars him that. And he asked me the first one, the first question is like, would you know polyamory? I'm like, I know polygamy. And I was like, no. When he told me the situation, I'm like, this is no, you didn't give. No, you got to give permission for that. Anyway, she was one of the riot girls that was really under the enthralling whatever spelled the Sonic Apes bullshit. And he got so angry. He was like, I'm over it. Because she didn't like about a girl, which was about her. And she said something about populism and capitalism and how dare you write this song about me? And he got so mad and he told me he had two thoughts. And this is like true. It's crazy because they talked about me a lot. I didn't really know there was a band called Courtney Love up there in Evergreen.

[Billy Corgan]

That crowd was obsessed with you.

[Courtney Love]

Obsessed. But I didn't know this.

[Billy Corgan]

Can I give you. Wait, stop. Can I give you a theory why they were obsessed with you?

[Courtney Love]

Well, because there was a band called Courtney Love Portland.

[Billy Corgan]

No, no. Here's why they because look you can. You can. You can analyze one moment in time.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

So that whatever you want.

[Courtney Love]

Let's go back to form follows function on this yet.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. Right.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

Let's. Let's macro out. Why was the riot girl crowd? Why were they obsessed with you?

[Courtney Love]

Because I was really ambitious. Portland.

[Billy Corgan]

Ready?

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

Class traitor.

[Courtney Love]

Did they know that my mother was upper middle class?

[Billy Corgan]

Think about it. Think about it. Think about it.

[Courtney Love]

You're a class trader because I'm hardscrabble. I exit pieced out that family at 11. How really how would they know my roots? I pretend I was from the trailers

[Billy Corgan]

and I kind of was like knows

[Courtney Love]

like because I'm literate.

[Billy Corgan]

Listen.

[Courtney Love]

Wow, this is really blowing my mind. What? Well, Kurt wasn't. He was really from the trailers. So was I. I know but when Toby Vale smashed a cake and said how dare you write that song about me? And there were three bleaches in the planet. Sub Pop had one. Chris had one. Kurt had one. He lit candles. He stole a cake from Safeway. Toby Vale comes over in her Doc Martens. He plays her about a girl. She smashes the cake and walks out. And I think something happened to the bleach. You know, acetate. And he had candles. He's like this. First thought, I'm getting the best drummer in the world. I don't care if he's in warrant. Second thought, I'm gonna fat Courtney girl even if I hate her. That's what he told me. And I'm gonna write. Oh, I'm gonna write to. I'm with the word embodied. But that wasn't a word. Then I'm gonna write great songs because I can, right? And I have that same feeling on pretty on the inside. Even though people love pretty on the inside. I could. I could with an R E M song. I. I couldn't write Killing Moon, but I could be up with lesser Bunnyman songs. I had a guitar player who was really good. I mean at best, at my best I was a reliable rhythmist. But I've lost all will to even try and play guitar. Which is probably a good thing for the world. But anyway. But I understood you love to say skill set. I understood the. The art, the Peter Buck of it all. You know what I mean?

[Billy Corgan]

And instead I talked about Peter Buck a lot.

[Courtney Love]

Well, instead I loved REM so much and Leonard Cohen were like my two real Go to's and maybe some Dylan and definitely Beatles. Okay? So I understood what I could do with a good Band. But I also understood, like, this is the market right now. And I'm gonna go all the way in and write great lyrics and do noise. Noise music. So the fact that, like, people even like those songs to this day. There was a 30th anniversary I was like, I wanted to see at this huge tattoo mall in London and there's like thousands of people that I was like, this is weird. This is weird. I mean, and then I got a little more respect for that album. But like bleach, it was that it was. I'm going to cleave to this market. There was a, like, with gifts. There was no selling out. The real sellout is those of us that bent. Bent to the market. The market of Kim Gordon, whatever you want to call it, the market of the indie pop.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. I mean, I think that's what irritated Pavement's entire career.

[Courtney Love]

Well, that's bending to that.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, that's what continues. It's funny because they're still irritated, which is amazing. I mean, we're talking about 35 years

[Courtney Love]

of irritation over it.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, yeah, I mean, like, I own a tea house and I got little kids, you know, like, get over it.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, yeah. You're selling. You're selling your ex husband's vinyl collection to put your. Not really, but. Doesn't work.

[Billy Corgan]

What I'm saying is, is. Is the. Is the gatekeepers scream. To this day, they still scream about authenticity, but most of them, at least the way I've tracked, didn't come from an authentic place.

[Courtney Love]

No, they're.

[Billy Corgan]

They're. They have a. They have a.

[Courtney Love]

Or they married well now, or they're in human resources because they didn't like choruses.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. But they have a men mental conception of authenticity. They don't have a real conception of authenticity.

[Courtney Love]

Do you understand that? Like, go back to Evergreen College and like, you know, this, this whole.

[Billy Corgan]

You had to make choices based on a whole set of fact, a whole host of factors.

[Courtney Love]

Right?

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. How am I going to eat? What am I going to do? Who do I want to be?

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Who do I have to sleep with? Or not.

[Courtney Love]

Or not.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. You don't get to sit there and say, my dad's got a university gig and he's going to take care of me when I'm in the band that nobody wants to listen to. So just because you think those girls

[Courtney Love]

and boys were trapped by those constructs, though my dad owns a university.

[Billy Corgan]

I mean, of course they're trapped by it.

[Courtney Love]

Right.

[Billy Corgan]

That's why they make sexless music.

[Courtney Love]

Right. Why wait why? Why?

[Billy Corgan]

Because they don't. They don't under. It's like, the reason Madonna comes from,

[Courtney Love]

like, lower working class, right? Like, sec. Yeah, no, you're right. There's a lack of. There's a lack of wanting to have sex in some.

[Billy Corgan]

Isn't that shocking? Like, I mean, it. Isn't it For a woman?

[Courtney Love]

It is, I think. I mean.

[Billy Corgan]

No, no, I don't mean it this way.

[Courtney Love]

The boys there, too. They stay boys. They're really.

[Billy Corgan]

It's like you don't really understand the true cost of vulnerability because you don't have to live it.

[Courtney Love]

Vulnerability is the whole show for me. I think. I agree.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay.

[Courtney Love]

People that are vulnerable on stage to this day. To this day. Pop. Pop kids, you know? I mean, like, vulnerability is everything. And if you can't get friends with

[Billy Corgan]

your vulnerability, you cannot manufacture vulnerability.

[Courtney Love]

You texted me last night. We're talking about Youngblood and the girl I mentor, Baby Queen. And you were talking, and they're kind of the same. They're definitely peers. They definitely. With each other, whatever. And it's funny that we both sort of picked up on the thread of both of them, but you said something about how they f. With everything, but they can't backtrack. Integrity. What. What did you mean by that?

[Billy Corgan]

This. This. This. The. The construct of the current generation. Let's call it the current musical generation, because obviously there's different ages at play, so it's not just one yet.

[Courtney Love]

These are Gen Z kids. Right?

[Billy Corgan]

Young blood's 28. That's what I know.

[Courtney Love]

She's 25.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, so. Okay, 26.

[Courtney Love]

26.

[Billy Corgan]

Sorry, if. If you're. If your audience has been raised on Pocket, they don't respond to indie alternative language the way that we did.

[Courtney Love]

No, but she loves Drowned. She can tell.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, God bless. But let me finish. Why I'm telling you.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

When you found the Bunnyman or Joy Division or Bauhaus or Sisters New Order, you felt like you'd found, like, the secret to the universe. Yeah, there are people.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

No, yeah, there are people making music for what?

[Courtney Love]

I'm actually from Aerosmith to that. It's like. What?

[Billy Corgan]

Well, that's what I said the other day, because I just did a benefit.

[Courtney Love]

It.

[Billy Corgan]

Steven Tyler.

[Courtney Love]

I know. Stephen Tyler. I mean, a God. But.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah, no, but. But. But to. Because I was talking to a friend, actually, that works on the show who's a friend of Steven's. To us. Aerosmith was an alternative band.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, yeah. You had the guy from REO Speedwagon on this podcast.

[Billy Corgan]

Seasons Of Wither, who is.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, wait, you see me crying. Which I actually got Stephen to perform. I can't hit any notes, but it was those Vegas horror gigs.

[Billy Corgan]

Baby, what you doing?

[Courtney Love]

Oh, my God. Track 10 or track 12 on. On toys in the Attic, and nobody knows about it.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, but I'm. When you find that, like, I found Cheap Trick or you found.

[Courtney Love]

Well, Cheap Trick is the whole sauce, like, there.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, but what I'm saying, when you find it, you're like, oh, my God, these guys have the manual to get me out of here.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. And also with Cheap Trick, you're hearing the weirdest lyrics on the radio.

[Billy Corgan]

Why do you think? Listen, because we.

[Courtney Love]

You know what I said to Michael Stipe recently? I'm like, I couldn't afford R.E.M. do you understand? Like, I had to hang out with upper middle class, middle class girls who could get the juice and the rumors and the new singles. Like, yeah, I'm like, I didn't have to afford Cheap Trick. He got kind of mad, but then he realized I was right, which is like, mom and dad are rolling on the couch. Rock and rolling, rolling. Got my Kiss records out. Or Mommy was a whack in the Philippines. That's on the radio. It's free of charge. Like, I. I love REM I love them so much, but they cost a little money to get. You know what I mean? Like, you had to buy the singles for money, and Chief Drag was free. And that's important.

[Billy Corgan]

I think just to finish the point, I was.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, sorry.

[Billy Corgan]

Have you found, like, I have, that people's obsessions often belie their greatest fear.

[Courtney Love]

Tell me what you mean.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, so my argument is the reason the upper middle class to snobby rich kid class, almost predominantly white, by the way.

[Courtney Love]

And middle. Middle. Go with middle. Because it is middle class, too. Well, I think it goes to upper. But.

[Billy Corgan]

But they need the upper middle class to give it the legitimacy. Yes, thank you.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, I hear you.

[Billy Corgan]

Why are they so obsessed to this day with the concept of authenticity?

[Courtney Love]

To their own detriment, too. They end up not wealthy. They end up not doing as well.

[Billy Corgan]

They end up making a lot of music that people don't want to listen

[Courtney Love]

to because they choose to make music that doesn't have choruses and is sexless. You're 100% right. Right. To this day. You know, I mean, but they.

[Billy Corgan]

They secretly listen to AB at home. That's the strangest thing.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, there's a. I don't want. There's a band that's like getting huge And I tried listening to it, and I'm like, okay, this is weird and cool. I get why people love them. But there's a level of purposeful naivete. Because I went back and listened to their first record, I'm like, oh, this is. They're trying to be wired, trying to be Game four. They're trying. Here they've given up. It's almost like naivete, Like. Like purposeful naive.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah, it's calculated naivete or calculated.

[Courtney Love]

I think they just let go.

[Billy Corgan]

Feigned innocence.

[Courtney Love]

Because I'll tell you, well, the singer is 100 in, and I don't think you can fake the way he's singing or what he's doing. But there is a. The cult that's growing up around them on the east coast is like, I'll talk to you about it later. I don't want to be. I don't want to be. But I do like them. I do get the point. I do genuinely like a few of the songs, but at the same time, I'm seeing the marketing growing up around this. This. These bands, this artist that is all about this thing. We're talking about authenticity, extraction of youth. I think they're probably innocents, but like the people around them.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. I think Jimmy Chamberlain, the drummer of the Pumpkins, made this point to me recently, and it was interesting what he was after. His argument was, our early music was predicated on survival. Where it's noble is we made really interesting choices as our path to survival.

[Courtney Love]

Gish. And it showed the rest of us up the truth. Selling out was those of us that sold out our spirit over here on the West Coast. Whether it was Kurt coming from serious working class, whether we come from all the. All the things. Right. That street, the. You know, the penthouse, all the things. I love that you said I was a class trader, by the way. I'm stuck on that. That selling ourselves out was far, far bigger. A sin, which you got accused of the worst sin because you were embodied and not selling yourself out. And now that we're 35, 37 years later, it's like, how do people like my first album? I wasn't even present for it. Right, right. If I'd have written to my level, I would have.

[Billy Corgan]

I. What can I give you? Because I.

[Courtney Love]

Tell me about being a class trainer, though, because you had a Camaro, man.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, let's. Let's. Let's do one thing, and then we'll go back to class. Okay? Okay. I had to look up the date. The date we first met. I believe we Talked on the phone briefly before that. That's my memory. But we did. The date of our first meeting in person was October 29, 1991. You were playing the Avalon.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, yeah. Nevermind. Hadn't come back out yet and smashed the out of the rest of us.

[Billy Corgan]

Right.

[Courtney Love]

Everyone thinks it was 91. No, it's November.

[Billy Corgan]

The Avalon Club was formerly a club named Tuts. It was a second floor venue. So it was a house.

[Courtney Love]

It wasn't your Metro wasn't that same. Oh, wow.

[Billy Corgan]

Your first gig in Chicago. I looked at it, I thought we

[Courtney Love]

were bigger than that. Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

No, it would have held about 400 people max. You had a gig.

[Courtney Love]

Didn't we see the poor guy from Material Issue who wrote Valerie Loves Me that night?

[Billy Corgan]

He was probably there. Yeah, yeah, Jim. I was friends with Jim. Jim unfortunately killed himself.

[Courtney Love]

I know, but God, that song, he got made fun of too. A lot because he was on a

[Billy Corgan]

major label for my generation. Absolutely the most talented guy in Chicago, hands down. He was shockingly talented.

[Courtney Love]

I've covered that song. It was one of the really good covers I did.

[Billy Corgan]

I want to tell you a quick story about Material Issue because I love this story.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

They come on stage, I see him. One of these things. It's like three dollar show type of thing.

[Courtney Love]

Valerie Loves me.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, but this is before the record deal. This is before they were the first band to sign with the Major League.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

They were outside of ministry or something.

[Courtney Love]

Right, right.

[Billy Corgan]

They come on stage, he's carrying an amp this big. Really? He puts it on a chair, right. Somebody puts a microphone in front of it. The drummer goes 1, 2, 3, 4. They do a pitch perfect hit. Every note version of Ballroom Blitz by the Suite.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, wow.

[Billy Corgan]

And I'm in the audience with a little app of punter going, going. And I go, oh my God. And I was in. And I was in love with this half black, half white skinhead girl who was the most beautiful alt girl. I was in, like in love with her. And I had, I had, I thought I was having this soulful relationship.

[Courtney Love]

You probably were.

[Billy Corgan]

And, and, and she had, she had. You know, it was the classic alt girls. There were three roommates, three girls living in this apartment really close to Wrigley Field where the Cubs play. Same neighborhood as the Metro and all that.

[Courtney Love]

Right, right. You. Do you live by there, right?

[Billy Corgan]

That's where I lived. And that's where we had our apocryphal moment. Anyway, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm over there. We're talking about you know, she liked the. She, like. Who'd she like?

[Courtney Love]

Hoodoo gurus. Oh, my God. Bittersweet hello.

[Billy Corgan]

She liked the Huda gurus.

[Courtney Love]

Amazing.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, so she had good taste in music, but she was a skinhead Australian. Everybody thought she was the most beautiful girl of the crowd, but she was a skinhead. And. And. And one day, you know, it's. It's. It's morning and we've slept together the night, and. Da da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, that's a dinner and a show. Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. So I'm in her cool apartment with, like, you know, veils over the. Over the lamps and, you know, whatever. And this morning, you know, and I'm just hanging out, being the boyfriend. At least I thought I was the boyfriend. And she goes outside and says, oh, I gotta go say hi to somebody or something. So I don't think anything of it. And about 30 minutes goes by and she doesn't come back. So I start to get suspicious. And before I. Before I went and looked, because I had a feeling, I. I asked the roommate who I later slept with, but that's another story.

[Courtney Love]

God.

[Billy Corgan]

We were in revenge. In revenge. But I said to the roommate.

[Courtney Love]

I get that.

[Billy Corgan]

I said to the roommate, who's she talking to? And she's like. And the way she acted, it was like, oh, you know, her friend. So I knew I was cooked. So I go to, like, you know, the classic. Like, you go up to the window, like, to look like, oh, here goes my life. And I look out, and she's talking to Jim.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, wow.

[Billy Corgan]

And I thought, I'm dead. I'm. She's. She's talking and obviously enamored with the most talented guy in the. In the city.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

And I'm just some.

[Courtney Love]

He was on a major label like the Buck Pets, who weren't as good, by the way. Everybody. And he had weird hair, and everybody gave him. I think that fed into how he.

[Billy Corgan]

But here's the other part of the story you need to know.

[Courtney Love]

He was so ostracized.

[Billy Corgan]

This is before the pumpkins.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, I know.

[Billy Corgan]

So I'm just some guy.

[Courtney Love]

I know.

[Billy Corgan]

They were big with a dream. No, but I'm saying you're looking out the window, and the girl you think you're in love with, and you think in love with you, the guy in the band is talking to him.

[Courtney Love]

Well, of course.

[Billy Corgan]

You're like, damn.

[Courtney Love]

Hello. The guy in the band. We. We.

[Billy Corgan]

You know, I would have felt more comfortable if she was talking to, like, a road scholar. Who was up for a Nobel Prize? You know what I'm saying? When you're a musician and you see

[Courtney Love]

that guy, that world, we're all going to go with the guy in the band or the girl in the band. Like, that's how it works, baby. Hi, I'm Alison Hagendorf, and music is my world. But I also love the energy of a great game, and I recently found a way to make watching even more fun. Shoot your shot on Prize picks and get $50 instantly in lineups when you play your first $5. That's right. Prize Picks is now giving you $50 in lineups when you sign up and play your first $5. Prize picks makes every dunk, every dime, and every board that much more exciting. So don't miss this chance to get started on America's number one app for sports picks. Prize Picks is daily fantasy, and honestly, one of the easiest ways to feel more connected to the games you're already watching. You just pick more or less on player projections, things like points, rebounds, assists, or strikeouts, and build a lineup of two to six players. If your picks are right, you could cash in. I love that you can do it across so many sports, too. Basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, tennis, golf, pretty much everything. And one feature I've been having fun with is stacks, where you can pick multiple stats for the same player in one lineup. So if someone's having a big night, you can go to more on points, assists, and rebounds all in the same lineup. Kind of reminds me of building a playlist. You trust your instincts, mix the right players together, and when it hits, it just feels right. They also just launch early payouts, which is really cool. If your player gets off to a hot start, you now have the option to cash out before the game even finishes. And the best part, it's available in all 50 states, including California, so it's super easy to get started. Download the Prize Picks app today and use Code Others to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That's code others to get $50 in lineups AFTER you play your first $5 lineup lineup. Prize picks it's good to be right. We met in October of 1991 at the Avalon Ballroom. So you're gonna go there and then.

[Billy Corgan]

Oh, you. I'll remind you of the story.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, so you and the whole band

[Billy Corgan]

pull up to my apartment.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Where I was living with hippie Bob.

[Courtney Love]

I don't remember him.

[Billy Corgan]

He would have been around.

[Courtney Love]

I remember you had like a wacko soap plant, Melrose vibe, Mexican Virgin Guadalupe candle. And I was like, why is that in Chicago? But it was very cool that you had that go on Hippie Bob. Yeah, I remember Hippie Bob.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. You guys came, we met, and then you went over for soundcheck, which I don't think I went to. Then you came back, hung out for a while, and then we. I went and saw the gig.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

All right.

[Courtney Love]

So. Yeah. And the sky was made of amethyst because it was very pretty on your back porch. And we both took. You're not big on drugs, but we both took a Vicodin. And I love.

[Billy Corgan]

Oh, I love Vicodin.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, that was great. I was like, I think you provided it. And I think I was like, can I have more? Can I have more?

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. I was big on Vicodin.

[Courtney Love]

I was big on op eds, clearly, because that happened. But, you know, not then. Not then. I was being really restrained about drug use. Really restrained. Nobody's gonna sign a junkie. And I knew that. That, you know, I knew that.

[Billy Corgan]

So let's pause here because I alluded to briefly in talking about doing this interview. But it. It's interesting to me because when I met you, you would have been like, what, 24?

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. Somewhere. Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

So maybe a touch older, but really was 25 now.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. Oh, no, I was. Because I. I was at Jumbo's Clown Room in the seven Failure. And this guy at the Jumbo's Clown was like, if you don't make. If you don't get signed by 25, I'm starting wrestling. And you're built for it. And I was like, female wrestling. I was like, off. It's not going to happen. Michael. His name was Michael.

[Billy Corgan]

You could. You could have drawn a lot of money in wrestling.

[Courtney Love]

He said, here's what he said. He's like, you'll be using Chanel tampons and, like, driving a Jean Paul Godier.

[Billy Corgan]

He must have been from Chicago.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, something like that, Michael. Anyway, I won that bet because it was a real bet. I was like, you. He was the manager of Jumbo's Clown Room. And yeah, somehow I did it.

[Billy Corgan]

But I was.

[Courtney Love]

But I was.

[Billy Corgan]

Maybe I was 26, you know, I was. I was smitten with you. But. But, you know, usually when you're smitten with somebody and they're about 25, there's usually an arc. Like, okay, they gotta high school when they're 18, and how much life could they have lived in this time?

[Courtney Love]

Whoa.

[Billy Corgan]

So I start poking around from the first meeting about, you know, Your origin story. And. And you were very evasive. You know what I mean?

[Courtney Love]

Oh, yeah. No, I like to tell people I was so much trailer park and I was just a goth.

[Billy Corgan]

Yes. Because at one point.

[Courtney Love]

Because it's too complicated otherwise. Like all the classic.

[Billy Corgan]

At one point I just. I wouldn't let it go. As, you know, I tend to. Yes, thank you. God bless.

[Courtney Love]

Next layer. What's the next layer?

[Billy Corgan]

But at one point in. I guess maybe in frustration, I was poking around when you were living in probably Portland when you were 19 or 20, and. And you. You just weren't giving me a suitable answer.

[Courtney Love]

Japan.

[Billy Corgan]

But I'm saying, you know, I. I'm trying to get a sense of.

[Courtney Love]

By the way, let me just say that the. The people think of the lowest points in my life. Probably because I'm American, probably because I'm durable. Juvie, a delightful experience. I'm not even kidding. Getting traffic by the Yakuza to Japan. Delightful. I'm not even kidding. Like, people think it's. I understand Japan. It's because I'm. I was American and nobody would with me, but I really was trafficked by the Yakuza out of Portland with all these other girls from Idaho, from Utah, from Washington State that, you know, I don't know what happened, but I went. Went to the. Because I took my passport. But I, after five months, went to the Japanese embassy, not the American. Why was I so dumb? Because I. You know what? I knew at that point I could gen. It would generate press. It was called, you know, whatever slavery then. And I was like, if I go to. They're more discreet. And they just put me on a first. They gave me first class too. First class flight back to Portland, eye rolling. And I have my Hyundai guitar and Yama. So this. That people think was the good stuff was horrible and people thinks the bad stuff was really good.

[Billy Corgan]

Right. But I'm. I'm putting myself in the story here.

[Courtney Love]

Right.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. Which is, you know, I'm a smitten indie wannabe rock star.

[Courtney Love]

Are.

[Billy Corgan]

And you know, I've just seen you play and, you know, if anybody saw you in the first album era.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

You know, what it lacked in Beetle Chords, it made up for in complete sheer visceral energy.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, if you're gonna go there. That's why I said with the Kim Gordon era with Pretty on the Inside, like, this is our own. This is the market. All right. I'm going all the way in, you know.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. I mean, the things I remember were Eric's kind of Atonal approach to guitar, which I found really interesting. As a nerd.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Combined.

[Courtney Love]

He had nerd chops, though. He had the whole Kevin Shields.

[Billy Corgan]

I'm a fan of Eric.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, I am too.

[Billy Corgan]

He wasn't always a fan of me, but we made our piece, which is all good, but the point is, my two memories of watching you play at the Avalon that night, you know, was the cool guitar stuff happening and then this just never ending screaming. And what is the source of this? Whatever that. I mean, it was like a white hot rage.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

And it was performative. Yes. But it was coming. It was sourced from somewhere.

[Courtney Love]

Well, that's why I'm saying that the band I'm talking about in New York, like, he couldn't fake that kind of singing. I've been listening for three days. You couldn't fake the level of playing and singing you were doing. You couldn't fake it. You know? You couldn't fake it. You know. You know, we were just talking about this, like, with the kids. Like, they're behind a pop veneer. They're multimedia because they're online. Like. But there are certain things we can see with these pop kids where they can't fake it. Like the. The good stuff. You know what I mean?

[Billy Corgan]

When. When the indie world would give me about playing solos and playing, they used to say, too good. That was always a fun.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, you played too well. You played. You were technically great. So they. I loved it. I was like, oh, man, I don't care if they wear hats. This song is this album great because we had the same publicist. And I was like, they wear hats.

[Billy Corgan]

But let me give you an addendum to that.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

What? What? What no snob from, you know, the Village Voice could ever understand was. I had no concern with what they thought about my plank. My shadow was my father.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Who was a failed musician, drug dealer, you know, very, very bitter, who basically said, if you're going to do this. Because he resisted it for years. If you're going to do this, you must play at this level or you're not.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, well, good for him, though.

[Billy Corgan]

What I'm saying is, people don't understand that's a working class shadow. My dad wasn't teaching at Berkeley and said, son, if you want to be good, you gotta be.

[Courtney Love]

My father wished he was teaching at Berkeley, but he was a failure.

[Billy Corgan]

But I'm saying is, it's not like my dad said, you know, you got to be as good as Jengo or you don't belong on stage. My dad was like Django. My dad was like, if you can't play as good as Albert King or you can't play as good as Stevie Ray Vaughan or Jimi Hendrix, get the. Off the stage.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, that's great.

[Billy Corgan]

And he would illustrate what he meant. Not from a place of erudite, you know, snobbery. From a place of. When this guy hits this note this way, it sends lightning bolts through my brain. My dad talked about seeing Albert King. Do you know anything about Albert King?

[Courtney Love]

Not really, no.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. Cause I know you love music stuff. Albert King played a flying V upside down with the strings upside down.

[Courtney Love]

Whoa.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay.

[Courtney Love]

Whoa.

[Billy Corgan]

When you listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan or Joe Bonamassa or Jimi Hendrix.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Or Carlos Santana.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

The great. The great soloist.

[Courtney Love]

King of Marin County. Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. Including Jerry. Okay. God bless Jerry.

[Courtney Love]

I can't.

[Billy Corgan]

I know you can't, but God bless Jerry. Stop, stop, stop. You lived it. Aren't you on the COVID of one of the records or something?

[Courtney Love]

Actually, it's not me, apparently. It's Mountain Girl's daughter. I don't know. Hank told me it hip. Everything Hank told me is not true.

[Billy Corgan]

Now, you got to imagine a bear of a man, African American, came up through all that.

[Courtney Love]

I knew that racist crap that all

[Billy Corgan]

those great pioneers had to deal with.

[Courtney Love]

Green Book, all this.

[Billy Corgan]

Now imagine him embraced by the hippies in the 60s because why? Bill Graham put him on a bill at the Fillmore, and the hippies embraced Albert King. And there's actually a live record of him playing at the Fillmore in that time.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. Wow.

[Billy Corgan]

Called Blues Power. I think it's called.

[Courtney Love]

Who was the African American that also played Woodstock that all the hippies liked?

[Billy Corgan]

Richie Havens.

[Courtney Love]

Yes. Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. Okay. Who played with one finger, basically.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

His albums are fantastic. I'm a big fan of fan.

[Courtney Love]

My parents had that.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, so imagine my dad, skinny white

[Courtney Love]

guy with a purse.

[Billy Corgan]

Not yet.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

No. This is early days now.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

This is 66. 66.

[Courtney Love]

Are you even born?

[Billy Corgan]

I would either just about been born or somewhere in this. So my dad's. Whatever. He's a. You know. Him and my mom met at a high school dance that my dad was playing. Okay. Okay, okay. So he's in that world. He's in the eeny neeny world. Okay. He goes to see Albert King at some club. Okay. Here's this bear of a man playing a flying V upside down. What guitar did my dad play?

[Courtney Love]

A flying V. Flying V, yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. Which I still have.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

So my dad's in this crowd, you know, What? I mean, he's total working class. One of six children. Incest. Grandmother got the beat out of her. So, like Irish Chicago, Southern Illinois. No, like redneck bootlegging. All of it.

[Courtney Love]

Is this where the Mormons come in?

[Billy Corgan]

That's earlier.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, good. I know, but, like, is that the. The side.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. Yes.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. So imagine he's complete working class. His mother is, you know. You know, addicted to horrible, horrific men. And he sees this guy he's got no tangential relationship to, other than he's growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood. And he loves to go across the street and listen to gospel music at the church. And he sees this guy who's from the same sort of class level that he is, but obviously difference between a young white guy and an august black bluesman who's traveled the trails. But they're meeting in this cultural moment of the 60s where, through the genius of Bill Graham. Bill Graham says to the white kids in San Francisco, you need to listen to this guy. So here my dad is, seeing him on this trail that Bill Graham, you know, ignites. And here is Albert King in Chicago. My dad, for 50 years of my life, would talk about when Albert King would hit that string, what it would do to his senses. It was like somebody trying to describe lightning in a guitar. So when I'm on stage at the Avalon. And by the way, the Avalon is the first time we ever played, me, James and Darcy in a drum machine.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. So I'd been on that stage and I sort of knew that feeling.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. It isn't Sonic Youth over my shoulder. It isn't Das Domen. It isn't the replacement Das Damen. It isn't the Replacements. It isn't, you know, whoever anybody threw at us at that time.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

You know what I mean? It isn't Albini. Well, no, but I'm saying is.

[Courtney Love]

No. I mean, he's brilliant, but he was

[Billy Corgan]

a dick all the gods of the time.

[Courtney Love]

Right, Right.

[Billy Corgan]

Including Soul Asylum and who Screwed.

[Courtney Love]

I think Soul Asylum was a great live.

[Billy Corgan]

I'm not making a musical judgment. I'm saying is, I didn't care at all about their. Their. Their hall of Titans. You know what I'm saying? I was raised to believe if you're going to play guitar and you can't play like this.

[Courtney Love]

I got it. This is the Shadow making you level up. Got it.

[Billy Corgan]

So.

[Courtney Love]

And it's a work. I totally receive that.

[Billy Corgan]

But the reason I'm even going down this rabbit hole is to say, I think that's what people didn't understand about you, what motivated you as an artist, what motivated you and what you wanted to say.

[Courtney Love]

I don't even know. What do you think isn't.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, we had. We had a ton of conversations about at the time.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. What did I say?

[Billy Corgan]

You basically said, and. And correct me if this strikes you as wrong.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

You acknowledged the shadow of the indie world on what you needed to navigate to get where you wanted to go.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

At the same time saying, I know they're a bunch of pricks, but that's just the way it is.

[Courtney Love]

Well, that's what I've just been saying. Adding your Letting your bushel going all the way to Kim Gordon. Like, all the way. Like the rest of it. This is the gatekeeper. I am glanding her. She needs me. Me, I need her. This is what's going to happen. Okay. Like, the politics of it really arose. I want to say this.

[Billy Corgan]

Sure.

[Courtney Love]

You were. Even though they didn't like you and you didn't like them, you had different goals. You were in the Midwest, which. Which, believe it or not, really protected you. Like, I couldn't afford to not understand the politics. And like, kids have to be online now. Try doing indie politics. It distracts so much every musicality. And so, you know, I mean, screaming was my only option. It was something I was good at, too. And my lyrics were fire and I knew they were great and, you know, the Hiding light. And I wish sometimes I'm glad it turned out the way it did, but I wish sometimes I followed that REM narrative. Do you know what I mean it. With my play.

[Billy Corgan]

We got there eventually.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, we did. But, like, getting for it was like, oh, my God. But I'm telling you, the ambition that we had to be on major labels, me, you, Kurt, you know, those of us that did it. That fury that Kurt felt when Toby Vale, like, screamed at him about. About a girl. How could you write something so populous, so capitalist, and think I'd be impressed? I mean, these people. What the. You know, and the thing is, is, like, unless they. These women, unless they married real well, where are they now? And some of them are my friends. Some of them are people that I love who went down that rabbit hole. I'll be specific. You know, the babes. Girls, right. Like, I love Kat. I love her. She's still with us. But it's a matter of. You didn't write. You were so capable. She had Paul McCartney chop. Her guitar playing was on another level for any woman I'd ever met. Her musicality her sense of the Paul of it. All, right? And I remember once in Minneapolis when she started Babes in Toyland. I was yammering on about the Beatles, whatever. We got in a huge fight. She's like, well, I know who's Paul and who's John? Like, I was like, actually, you're Paul, but I'll take Paul. I'll take Paul all day long. And it was. It was a big insult at the time. Like, really, Paul's an insult. And okay, John's good too, but John is like, John was great, but John is representative in that moment of like the punk part. Like, I'm punk and you're just Paul. I'm like, God, I wish I was Paul. Like, one. One finger of Paul would be great, but the fact that they didn't follow the Lee Ronaldo record. Like, she could write choruses, but she didn't want to. Right? And like, like, you know, I'd see her on, like, my own, you know, biographies of Courtney Love and, like, going on there non consensually, like everybody did. My family members did. You know, the other people that ever asked, like Jennifer Finch. Right. Can I, you know, what do you think about this? Like, please, you know, do it. But Cat would go on, non consensually. I mean, isn't that insane now that the culture has changed? Like, people, your family members. Not that I really like. I like a few of them, but, you know, Kat, other people, like my old bass player, like, whatever, so full of resentment that they non consensually go on the E. True Hollywood Story, go on behind the Music without your permission. I mean, have you had that happen to you?

[Billy Corgan]

Not as much as you, but I've had it.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. I think those women are just so mean to each other. But anyway, they used to be. But anyway, Cassie, she wanted to be famous and I wanted to play music.

[Billy Corgan]

It goes back to my class. Traitor.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, what the actual man.

[Billy Corgan]

Why were they so mad at Dylan?

[Courtney Love]

Oh, because he betrayed them by going electric. How is that class trader, though? Wasn't he working?

[Billy Corgan]

Let me tell you. Let me tell you a story and see if you remember this story.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

We were both in London together. We were in a relationship at the time.

[Courtney Love]

I remember that.

[Billy Corgan]

Good times.

[Courtney Love]

You wouldn't give me money for smokes.

[Billy Corgan]

You're still mad.

[Courtney Love]

I am. Because I had to take a tube back to Cat in Wood Green. And that tube was like, now I live there. It's a long way from central London to go on. I'm just saying I had to buy in England. You can do this. Buy five cigarettes at a time with like a shilling, like a pence, whatever. All right, go on.

[Billy Corgan]

I hadn't yet outgrown my. My parochial, you know.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, right.

[Billy Corgan]

Roman Catholic sort of stodginess. Yeah, I remember that. That came later. So God bless on that.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

No resistance to the criticism.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. No, it was just.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. But here we are and you have

[Courtney Love]

more money than me.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, I had the only money between

[Courtney Love]

us, fish and chips for days.

[Billy Corgan]

I think I was living on a. At the time, I was living on a 75 pound per diem a week.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, no, I know. It was. It was Marmite thin.

[Billy Corgan]

You knew enough to complain about not getting cigarettes, but you also knew that we couldn't afford a cab ride across London, so we walked.

[Courtney Love]

Right.

[Billy Corgan]

I don't know if you remember this, so I'll get to it. The reason we had a walk across London. And you can imagine the two of us in 1990, whatever, walking across London. Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

I kind of knew it, though, from 81. Right. Did I know a little bit about London?

[Billy Corgan]

Oh, you had. You had.

[Courtney Love]

I had chops.

[Billy Corgan]

You had chops.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

We were staying in Hyde park. And the reason we had to walk across London is you had to do something. You had to get your passport updated or something. There was some sort of contrivance where I need to get a stamp or something or I'm not going to be able to do X, Y or Z.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, you did or I did.

[Billy Corgan]

You did.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, okay. Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

So we had to go to some.

[Courtney Love]

It was a contrivance.

[Billy Corgan]

Not a contrivance in the sense. That's why we're walking.

[Courtney Love]

Okay. That's the.

[Billy Corgan]

That's the reason we're walking across London.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, good.

[Billy Corgan]

That's the contrivance. I'm probably abusing the word. Tell me the right use of the word, please.

[Courtney Love]

Well, it means when you fake something.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, so I'm using it wrong.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, Contrived. Right. Contrivance. I'm just saying, with your incredible vocabulary.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, no, you caught me. That's good. Okay, no, so I don't know what the right word, but that's the reason. The. That's the reason. The reason.

[Courtney Love]

All right, come down to our level.

[Billy Corgan]

So here we are in the. In the English sun, walking 2 hours 1 direction and 2 hours back the other way.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, man, I don't know.

[Billy Corgan]

It was very long. Okay, so you can imagine two hours this way and two hours that way in the sun.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, that would suck.

[Billy Corgan]

Arguments, jokes.

[Courtney Love]

Leave me alone.

[Billy Corgan]

You know, leave me alone. Don't talk to me for 20 minutes. I'm going to walk ahead of you.

[Courtney Love]

Virgin Megastar.

[Billy Corgan]

Somewhere around there.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. So here we are. We're walking and walking, walking. We go to the thing. We go to the passport thing. There's a. There's a beautiful coquettish moment where I. I asked to see your passport, and you don't want to let me see it because I'm going to find out your real name and.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, wow. Was this still, like, Manili or something?

[Billy Corgan]

You were also telling people a different age, which was. Which was.

[Courtney Love]

Well, one does that from the jump, my friend.

[Billy Corgan]

I busted that.

[Courtney Love]

You were.

[Billy Corgan]

You're. I thought we were the same age.

[Courtney Love]

No, I'm older. Yeah, well, but a woman does that from the jump.

[Billy Corgan]

Let's put it this way. I figured it out that day.

[Courtney Love]

All right. Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

But here's the beautiful memory. And this is why I want to loop it back into what we're talking about. And I think this has been the most interesting part of our discussion today.

[Courtney Love]

We're.

[Billy Corgan]

We're walking back. We have no money. You're mad at me that I won't buy you cigarettes. You know, and we're so poor, we're still mad.

[Courtney Love]

I don't even smoke, but I'm okay. Go on.

[Billy Corgan]

And we're walking, you know, we're on some high street somewhere, and we're walking past the Prada store, and you stop in front of the window, and, you know, you're gazing at Prada's current line. True story. Crossed my heart. Okay. And you know, I'm hot. I'm tired. I'm annoyed. You're mad at me still. And so after about a minute of you gazing, I go, come on, let's go. The come on, let's go wasn't just based on let's go. It was like, why are you staring? You in between.

[Courtney Love]

Well, I know why I was staring. I know exactly what happened. I know exactly.

[Billy Corgan]

What do you remember?

[Courtney Love]

Was it Mary Janes?

[Billy Corgan]

No, but I'll get to it.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

I'm sure. Yes, but no.

[Courtney Love]

Because whenever I see those kind of references, stuff that we've done in the culture reflected in mass consumption, I remember in the early. I still am. I get shocked. I get shocked. I'm like, wait, what?

[Billy Corgan]

Like, no, it wasn't that.

[Courtney Love]

It.

[Billy Corgan]

So I'm kind of annoyed because I'm thinking, like, to me, it's the equivalent of me standing outside a Mercedes Benz dealership and. And looking at the car that I can't afford.

[Courtney Love]

Right. So I'm staring at the product store for.

[Billy Corgan]

And I'm like, I wonder why we don't have any money for anything.

[Courtney Love]

Right.

[Billy Corgan]

Food. You know what I mean? Why are you looking at Prada?

[Courtney Love]

I feel guilty. I even.

[Billy Corgan]

No, no, no, no.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, going on.

[Billy Corgan]

No, this is a. This is one of my favorite stories.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, go.

[Billy Corgan]

And I said, like, something along the lines, like, what are you looking at that stuff for? We can't afford it. Or you can't afford it. And you go, as only you can do. You go, one day, I'm gonna have it all.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, that is so late stage capitalism.

[Billy Corgan]

But you knew.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, I mean, I always knew. You knew.

[Billy Corgan]

I didn't know you liked that then.

[Courtney Love]

No, you knew about yourself, didn't you?

[Billy Corgan]

But that's different. My thing was more of a. Like, you know what they used to call making it?

[Courtney Love]

I call it making it.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay. But my version of making it wasn't your version of making it. Your version of making. You had a lot more. You had a lot more arc in your ambition than I did. I wanted to sell out the metro, you know.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, no. Did you hear that lyric? There's no business like show business. Like no business. I know.

[Billy Corgan]

That's a merman.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, yeah, right? There's that in that song, the one you just helped me with. And then I go, you can call us sellouts now. Wait, no. Yeah, you could tell. There's no more tickets to the Garden. That's how that song ends.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

You can call it. I forget the rhyme. It's a really good song, too. But there's no more tickets to the Garden. You can call us, sell us now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

It's a great line.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. But, like, I've been saving that line for a long time. And to put it on what I know is going to be a wildfire of a song. Like, it's going to go into people's heads. Oh, my God. Revenge of the Nerds.

[Billy Corgan]

But if we're talking comparative values, right?

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Cause your ambition definitely led me to a greater ambition than I am. I'm often accused of being overly ambitious. Your ambition was far greater than mine. And you actually opened me up to see it in a bigger way.

[Courtney Love]

Do you know what I realized about women and ambition or even men and ambition? Like, I noticed I was watching Donald Trump, of all things, in his first term on A Rona Barrett, like, 80s, you know, when he was building, and it was this crazy little dragon whatever. And I'm no fan of that, guys But Rona Barrett asks him the word ambition. Like, it's probably the one manner Donald Trump knows. Like, the one courtesy. He knows, don't say the word ambition. And then I went down a rabbit hole. Did Donald Trump ever say the word ambition? He has not. And what I realized about the word ambition is that I learned it from Madonna and the whole I'm going to run the world and the whole blonde ambition thing. But people think it's rude. They really think it's rude. They think it's rude. And honestly, if Donald Trump knows that it's rude from West Point or wherever, his father, like, men know. Men of a certain age know. I mean, that was my narrative was like, oh, my God, you've got Madonna over here. By the way, Trump once called the Page Six. He's like, I dated Madonna. Just whatever. You've got Madonna over here going blonde ambitions, working for her. And then when she's older, it's not cute anymore. People find the word. And I started using that same trope that Madonna had laid down. Like, ambition isn't about. I mean, I was ambitious, for sure. That. But, like, embracing it publicly. It's rude. People don't like it. They like all chefs. They like Elvis, My mama. They like apple pie. When you're successful, they really do. And when you're on the way, like, if Donald Trump hid the word ambitious, what the. You know what I mean? Like, that up my brain. That broke my brain. So, yes, I was crazy ambitious, but people prefer when you hide that.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, my point was slightly different, but.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, go on.

[Billy Corgan]

Thank you. No, it's contributory. So. But my point is the gatekeeper indie system, if we had succumbed to that, including your husband.

[Courtney Love]

Well, we did on album one, you didn't.

[Billy Corgan]

Sure. But the point is, at some point, you blew past it. He blew past it. And look at it.

[Courtney Love]

You had to get angry enough to blow past it.

[Billy Corgan]

Sure. First of all, you have to believe it enough for it to be cowed by it. But secondarily, you have to ultimately figure out that it's bullshit to blow past. And thank God that we all did. And I'm including a bunch of other people in this category, because we would have never made the music, and we would be basically forgotten.

[Courtney Love]

Think about when REM Got big. And, I mean, I didn't know them yet, but like Michael on South Central, Rain would, like, he was so freaked out, he turned his back on the audience. Like, Bono never did that, but Michael did. And also with Green Day, you know, they come out at the Gate right after Kurt died. They were a good mood. They were a good mood. Dookie was a good mood. And everybody needed in that world needed a good mood. The other thing is a great. Harvilla has a great show called 60 songs that was playing the 90s. That, by the way, he's at like 150 songs now, but the one on Green Day and Dookie, he play. He goes back to Gilman street, which is in Berkeley. The number one rule, it was Straight Edge. Gilman street was no major label bands here ever. It was painted on the wall. And poor Green Day, I mean, I saw a picture of Billy Joe, he's from Berkeley, like, Like, he's got Grateful Dead sticker on the back of their first van. I'm like, no, but he does Berkeley. It's a whole milieu. Anyway, Roberville sourced like their first live show. And the bridge of one song is literal Beatles. Like, they were obviously Pennywise, like their peers, they were better. And that was apparent from show one, the three of them. And with the note and like Harbilla sources tape. So when I first met Billy Joe, you know, he wasn't in any position to take my side, as it were. But he did, like, from day one. And I brought him this Fang record of Kurt's because it was Bay Area punk and he would appreciate it. And, you know, we just really got along from day one. But the point being that he was tormented. Even in 94. They tormented him, you know, even after everything that happened.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah, well, he was publicly critical of me in that scene.

[Courtney Love]

Probably he was told to be Billy.

[Billy Corgan]

But let me.

[Courtney Love]

We didn't have a lot of character then because we couldn't, you know, like, go on.

[Billy Corgan]

But no, but because. Because I don't want people to twist. Twist what I'm saying.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

You know, we met Green Day and I met during the Lollapalooza tour. 94, which you were also on with us for. For a hot minute. And we, you know, we'd all, you know, I'd be out there playing basketball with the Monks and all that.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, wait, that tour, right.

[Billy Corgan]

And they were the snotty little young

[Courtney Love]

guys on that tour ever, really.

[Billy Corgan]

Don't you remember we took you on tour with them.

[Courtney Love]

Not Lala.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, God, I don't remember. Look, if you remember the 90s, you weren't really there. But go on. The Monks were on. Oh, I do remember the Monks. Yes.

[Billy Corgan]

But the reason we took you on tour, or the reason I asked the band and the band, to their credit, Was totally cool with it. I said I didn't like the way you were being framed in public as, like, you know, this kind of Yoko Ono character, that the story was overwhelming your musical opportunity. And I said it, and I. I think I suggested. That's my memory of it, that the best thing for you to do is just get out in front of people and play.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, it was.

[Billy Corgan]

So we would stop our show.

[Courtney Love]

Saved my life doing that. No matter how up I was, it would save my life.

[Billy Corgan]

So we would stop our show somewhere in the middle, and you would come out and play one or two songs.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, wow. I don't remember that at all, but thank you.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah. Okay.

[Courtney Love]

Sorry. I was on a lot of drugs, but back to.

[Billy Corgan]

Back to Billy Joe at first.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

So, you know. You know, it's typical. Like he was saying, everybody was talking teenager, too. God bless.

[Courtney Love]

Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

I mean, look, we've all proven our metal.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

So I have no issue with it. But there's this really beautiful moment where we were playing a bridge school benefit and. And, you know, so imagine I. I met.

[Courtney Love]

I've never. He's never asked me to play him, so. Neil. Neil, if you're out there. I've been listening to Harvest five days straight. Please, God. Okay.

[Billy Corgan]

I don't think they do it anymore.

[Courtney Love]

There's still a. Yeah. Lana just played with Neil recently. Eden told me, and apparently she belted. She belted rock.

[Billy Corgan]

Oh, God bless.

[Courtney Love]

Yep.

[Billy Corgan]

Anyway, to try to wrap this story up in this. Our interview today, so I, you know, I met them on the Lollapalooza tour. And, you know, you're together every day for 40 shows, so you get to know people a little bit. And then the next thing I know is, like, Billy saying negative stuff about me in the press. So I'm playing a bridge school benefit somewhere like 98, 2000. Somewhere around there. 99. And I look and I see him, you know, in the backstage area there. Where the Grateful Dead. The Shoreline. You know what I mean? That's like. You know, they have the Dead. The big Dead skull.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

Backstage.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, I know Shoreline.

[Billy Corgan]

Yeah.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

So it's. We're in Grateful Dead land with lan. Actually, we're in Grateful Dead land. And I look across the dressing room. There's all these cabanas. And I look and I see Billy Joan. I think, oh, God. Because I'm from Chicago.

[Courtney Love]

Doesn't it to me, too. Every time somebody that's great to you says something mean about you in the press because they feel obligated, like Lanigan did your heart drops? And my heart drops. It's like, wait, what? You are my friend. You are my friend.

[Billy Corgan]

I don't want to stir up any controversy because Billy and Joe and I are great in my.

[Courtney Love]

In general. They all did it.

[Billy Corgan]

And my wife.

[Courtney Love]

A lot of them did it to you. And, I mean, I remember a guy from Tool wearing a free Francis Bean shirt in the 90s. I was like, wait, what? We were friends? Like, Like a lot. Like, I understand it now that they were obligated to say something or, you know, groll. Like, come out with it and just say we're cool. Like, come out with it. Right. Like, be man enough to man up.

[Billy Corgan]

Up.

[Courtney Love]

Because you're the ubermensch that has all the straight males and we're cool. But you won't say it because you're afraid you'll lose your audience. You're afraid it'll affect your relationship with literal Paul McCartney, because he's got a friendship with Paul, and Paul has. Dave has not the talent of Paul. Let's be clear. But they both have the B. Wife, haunting dark shadow. They both have the cool guy dying, haunting, dark, tragically haunted. So they're buddies. Is that why, like, I really. Vandalism with Dave? It would really behoove me if the straight white males that you are, your base, if you will stop picking on me. Like, the millennials in particular. Like, Gen Z is not picking on me anymore.

[Billy Corgan]

And to be.

[Courtney Love]

But, you know, your heart drops whenever somebody that you're cool with or maybe just remotely cool with, this is you in the process. Like, oh, my God, this is still happening.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, I can confirm that. I've, you know, I've spent time with you and Dave together, and Dave doesn't have any issue with you, so I

[Courtney Love]

don't want to say that to his face. It's so stupid. Anyway.

[Billy Corgan]

No, but what I'm saying is. What I'm saying is there's the. There's the stuff that goes behind on behind the Castle Walls, and their stuff goes out front.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah. Because he needs that image. I mean, he needs.

[Billy Corgan]

Sure.

[Courtney Love]

And also.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, obviously. Obviously.

[Courtney Love]

How many songs has he written? Like, I can't write a song about. I'm just gonna be for a second. Let me. You can cut it or not. I couldn't write a song about Dave Grohl to save my life if I had to. I'd do the, you know, ASMR thing of, like, uploading the color. I don't know, brown. Whatever. Upload. Say, the AI Upload. Whatever. You Know all. And he's written, like, four songs about me, and they're hits. I'm like, wait, what? Like, what about me? Like, I don't get it. Particularly at that time when he wrote those songs.

[Billy Corgan]

You're good to write hits about.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, my God. So, okay, I'll give you a great one. Scott Weiland.

[Billy Corgan]

I have to finish my Billy Joe's book.

[Courtney Love]

Scott Weiland, my friend. My drug buddy. My friend. Nothing romantic, just my buddy, right? Saved him from Cry Help once, probably to his detriment. But in any event, wrote two songs about me. One's called Too Cool Queenie, Something Else, and we're buddies, and they're mean, and I'm like, scott, what the are you doing? Why are you writing me? It's like, listen, it's lazy, but you're too good to not write songs about. Like, why? Like, the Suicide blonde thing, the movie star thing, and like, all the. The fact that you've had. It was crazy. Crazy. Like, why have you written mean songs about me, Scott? And we were friends. Anyway. Go on, Billy Joe.

[Billy Corgan]

Let me finish my Billy Joe.

[Courtney Love]

Okay, all right, sorry.

[Billy Corgan]

I don't want to get into what his criticism was because it ultimately would make him seem hypocritical. And I. I'm not interested in doing it because I like Billy Joe. My wife.

[Courtney Love]

No, I saw you on here. Like, God bless Irving Azoff. I'm like, yeah, no, I. With Irving Azoff.

[Billy Corgan]

My wife has become friendly with Billy a bit. Yeah. And loves him and is a huge fan of his. So it's like, all is good in the hood. We went on tour with that.

[Courtney Love]

No household. Right?

[Billy Corgan]

Amazing. I mean, amazing tour. Even my praise of them cost me my relationship with Linda Ramone, because she didn't like what I said about Green Day and the Ramones. I mean, I've lived it with Green Day in my own kind of taste.

[Courtney Love]

Great, man. I think they're great guys. Do it.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay, so we're in agreement on Billy. Billy's one of the great songwriters of our generation.

[Courtney Love]

Deceptively simple when I was trying to sing that song.

[Billy Corgan]

Truly a great talent. So if anybody misunderstands what I'm saying, understand that as I sit here right

[Courtney Love]

now, you're so political. Of course you like him, and he likes you.

[Billy Corgan]

No, no, no. What I don't want people to do is and create drama where there's no drama.

[Courtney Love]

Okay?

[Billy Corgan]

But I am telling a story about the past, okay. Because I think it illustrates kind of what we're talking about.

[Courtney Love]

Okay?

[Billy Corgan]

So here you Know, there I am in my little, you know, Victorian mansion in, you know, 94. And, you know, here is, you know, or 95, whatever. And here's Billy Joe criticizing me for whatever. You can look it up if you want.

[Courtney Love]

I don't.

[Billy Corgan]

So.

[Courtney Love]

So now I don't want. I don't want your view.

[Billy Corgan]

Like, just tell you when the camera's off. Anyway, so four or five years later, there I am at bridge school, you know, Neil's charity event. Beautiful event.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah.

[Billy Corgan]

It's. It's. It's a beautiful Marin county day. You know, I'm backstage in. In the shadow of the Grateful Dead skull, which, by the way, when I

[Courtney Love]

feel the way about Marin County, I.

[Billy Corgan]

It's all. It's all there. And I look and there I see Billy. There I see Billy. And I think. And again, I'm from Chicago. So the Chicago politic is. If you see somebody that's been talking smack about you, you have two choices. Choice one is to turn tail and pretend that you didn't see them, but know you've been humiliated on some. Whether. Whether or not they know. Or two, you gotta go up and sort of slay the beast where they stand. Doesn't mean it's a fight. It means you're not gonna take it laying down.

[Courtney Love]

I've done both, but, yeah, I feel you.

[Billy Corgan]

So I'm standing there contemplating. So this is all. All credit to Billy. I'm standing there contemplating whether I want to address the situation, because I don't. I'm not gonna take lightly what he said. And he comes up to me, and my first reaction is like, oh, this isn't gonna be good.

[Courtney Love]

Right, right.

[Billy Corgan]

And again, I'm right out of central casting. I think he's gonna do the snotty, say, the punk rock thing. Well, that's what I'm thinking.

[Courtney Love]

Right.

[Billy Corgan]

And he says, I have to tell you that I'm very sorry about what I said.

[Courtney Love]

Oh, I love it.

[Billy Corgan]

And he explained his logic, he explained his regret. And I said, that almost makes me

[Courtney Love]

cry, because he's my kid.

[Billy Corgan]

This is, I guess, what I'm trying to.

[Courtney Love]

It's around my age, but I still

[Billy Corgan]

feel like, no, but this is what I'm trying to say. And this is what I think's more valuable. And this is where part of our haranguing today is castigating the indie rock system of the 90s and its bullying and its perniciousness, particularly in its bullying of you, which to a certain extent continues. Mine less so, but it's there.

[Courtney Love]

I could Give a about how it continues. Like, I'm.

[Billy Corgan]

Well, when you win, there's nothing to crow about. We won. But it doesn't mean it didn't hurt at the time.

[Courtney Love]

I mean, it doesn't mean it didn't scar.

[Billy Corgan]

Okay? But the point is that when we really look at our generation, our shared generation, I think this is a good place to end, okay? And we'll pick it up some other time.

[Courtney Love]

Because it's the class trader thing. Like, how would they know my class if just

[Billy Corgan]

maybe not in front of a camera.

[Courtney Love]

Yeah, maybe not.

[Billy Corgan]

But here's the point I'm trying to make. If you look at the records the snobs made versus the records that the ones who got past the snobbery made or who didn't give a from the beginning, which was. Or the hunger, okay, you stack. Let's call it the non hipster records in one pile and the hipster records in another. And it's like. It's like this.

[Courtney Love]

It's class. That's crazy. You changed my world, Billy Corcoran, as always.

[Billy Corgan]

So. So the obsession, you know, the Malcolmist obsession with me 35 years later belies a certain point, which is, A, they didn't have the chops to get there, or B, they accepted a worldview which was ultimately limiting to their talent.

[Courtney Love]

I think that the second one is the generous one one, and I think it's.

[Billy Corgan]

I'm trying to be nice, I know,

[Courtney Love]

but I think we can afford generosity. I think we can afford it at this point. Like, we may be Shakespearean of you. I mean. There we go. There we go. Hamlet and Hamlet having a talk. I love you, man. All right.