It\u2019s not every day two alt-rock heavyweights sit down and casually reopen the vault on \u201990s indie drama.<\/p>\n
Appearing on Billy Corgan<\/a>\u2019s The Magnificent Others podcast, Courtney Love<\/a> joins the Smashing Pumpkins<\/a> leader for a wide-ranging chat, trading war stories about their rock journey and dishing plenty of unfiltered dirt on the industry and its players.<\/p>\n The conversation, which finds former frenemies comfortable spilling alt-rock tea, soon drifts toward the idea of \u201cgatekeeping\u201d in indie circles \u2013 a charge they level at Sonic Youth<\/a>, or more specifically, its bassist Kim Gordon<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI barely know Thurston [Moore], but he was never a gatekeeper type,\u201d says Corgan. \u201cBut his partner was the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe was the worst, and she kind of still is,\u201d Love adds, with Corgan noting, \u201cOh she\u2019s still rocking the gatekeeping.\u201d<\/p>\n From there, the discussion spirals into a mix of personal anecdotes and not-so-buried grievances. Love recalls a run-in in Europe in the \u201990s where Gordon was \u201creally horrible\u201d, while Corgan points to an early backstage encounter that set the tone for their relationship.<\/p>\n \u201cI came into their dressing room because we were all playing this festival \u2013 Kurt [Cobain] was playing, Nine Inch Nails was playing, [The Pixies\u2019] Black Francis was playing, Urge Overkill was there\u2026 I was a fan [of Sonic Youth], and I came in to pay my respects, and I was treated so rudely by her, and that was the beginning of the horrible relationship,\u201d says Corgan.<\/p>\n The feeling, it seems, hasn\u2019t exactly been one-sided. In her 2015 memoir Girl in a Band, Gordon took her own shots at both artists, writing, \u201cI have a low tolerance for manipulative, egomaniacal behavior, and usually have to remind myself that the person might be mentally ill\u2026 Courtney asked us for advice about her \u2018secret affair\u2019 with Billy Corgan. I thought, Ewwww, at even the mention of Billy Corgan, whom nobody liked because he was such a crybaby, and Smashing Pumpkins took themselves way too seriously and were in no way punk rock.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in the present, The Hole<\/a> frontwoman turns her attention to Kurt Cobain, offering her interpretation of the Nirvana<\/a> track Heart-Shaped Box. She claims the line \u201cHey, wait, I got a new complaint \/ Forever in debt to your priceless advice\u201d was \u201cliterally about Kim,\u201d pointing to what she describes as Cobain\u2019s frustrations with Gordon\u2019s influence (Sonic Youth famously helped Nirvana sign to DGC Records).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cHe was so mad at her,\u201d Love says. \u201cKurt\u2019s whole thing was\u2026 he hid his light under a bushel for Bleach, because, one, Seattle, which he wasn\u2019t from, two, Kim Gordon.\u201d<\/p>\n Recounting early encounters with Cobain and the wider Seattle scene, Love continues, \u201cWhen I first saw Nirvana in Portland, Oregon, there was \u2026 Jason Everman [who played in Nirvana and Soundgarden]. And he had long hair like a Soundgarden guy. And I watched Kurt at a little club called Satyricon turn his Fender all the way down. I saw it. I\u2019m not stupid. I saw it and that\u2019s what led to me and him having an interaction. I was like, \u2018You fake guitar player, I get it.\u2019 But that was the Seattle element. And I didn\u2019t know till I hung out with him about the Kim\u2026. I know I was scarred by Kim. So scarred that I had to write her a letter kissing her ass to get \u2013 you don\u2019t go for the husband, the cool husband. You go for the wife. And she produced my first album to her eternal regret.\u201d<\/p>\n Watch the full interview below.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not every day two alt-rock heavyweights sit down and casually reopen the vault on \u201990s indie drama.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[10240,96,128,3584,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-512448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-artist","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-rock","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}