If you ever needed proof that old feuds never die, take this new interview with Billy Corgan and Hole singer Courtney Love as solid evidence. This week, the Smashing Pumpkins’ frontman had his longtime friend on his The Magnificent Others podcast on Wednesday. After nearly 45 minutes of chitchat, they got around to talking s*** about Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and how “horrible” they find her to be.
Around 45 minutes in, Corgan lambasted the hipster culture of the early ’90s rock scene and the “pernicious and horrific meanness of the indie community at the time.” Love then pointed out that she is now” friends with Thurston Moore,” founding guitarist of Sonic Youth. She joked that he was one of the “gatekeepers” they were speaking of.
In response, Corgan said, “He was never a gatekeeper type. His partner was the worst.” This is a clear shot at Gordon, who formed the band with Moore and was married to him from 1984 until 2013.
“She was really horrible in the ’90s,” Love said of Gordon. “I remember in Holland I was hanging out with you, and they were so mean.” Corgan chimed in, “I was a fan, and I came in to pay my respects, and I was treated so rudely by them.”
Kim Gordon served as producer on Hole’s first album in 1991
Love later claimed that her late husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, penned a sarcastic lyric in the song “Heart-Shaped Box” about Gordon: “Forever in debt to your priceless advice.” The singer also alleged that Gordon sold “all of Thurston’s vinyl” to fund their daughter’s college tuition.
Notably, Gordan produced Hole’s debut album, Pretty on the Inside (1991). Love now sees that record as a product of trying to please the musician’s perceived elitism. “The real sellout was those of us that bent to the market, the market of Kim Gordon,” Love said.
Corgan then added, “To this day, they still scream about authenticity, but most of them that I’ve tracked didn’t come from an authentic place. They have a mental conception of authenticity; they don’t have a real conception of authenticity.”
Love and Corgan’s harsh comments come years after Gordon wrote some unkind things about them in her 2015 memoir
So how would Gordon feel about all this? Well, there’s a chance she is unsurprised and unbothered. She has long been open about her scorn for both Billy Corgan and Courtney Love.
In her memoir, Girl In A Band, she derided Love’s “tarantula LA glamour — sociopathy, narcissism.” She added, “I have a low tolerance for manipulative, egomaniacal behavior, and usually have to remind myself that the person might be mentally ill.”
Gordon then went on to make some pretty hefty claims. “Courtney asked us for advice about her ‘secret affair’ with Billy Corgan,” she alleged. “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.”
Some beefs get squashed, and some continue to simmer. It sounds like this one is staying in the pot for now.
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