“She’s still rocking the gatekeeping”: Billy Corgan and Courtney Love agree that Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon is “the worst”
It’s not every day two alt-rock heavyweights sit down and casually reopen the vault on ’90s indie drama.
Appearing on Billy Corgan’s The Magnificent Others podcast, Courtney Love joins the Smashing Pumpkins 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.
The conversation, which finds former frenemies comfortable spilling alt-rock tea, soon drifts toward the idea of “gatekeeping” in indie circles – a charge they level at Sonic Youth, or more specifically, its bassist Kim Gordon.
READ MORE: Hole bassist on the “public witch trial” that followed her leaving the band – and why she was “pissed” at Courtney Love “turning away”
“I barely know Thurston [Moore], but he was never a gatekeeper type,” says Corgan. “But his partner was the worst.”
“She was the worst, and she kind of still is,” Love adds, with Corgan noting, “Oh she’s still rocking the gatekeeping.”
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 ’90s where Gordon was “really horrible”, while Corgan points to an early backstage encounter that set the tone for their relationship.
“I came into their dressing room because we were all playing this festival – Kurt [Cobain] was playing, Nine Inch Nails was playing, [The Pixies’] Black Francis was playing, Urge Overkill was there… 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,” says Corgan.
The feeling, it seems, hasn’t exactly been one-sided. In her 2015 memoir Girl in a Band, Gordon took her own shots at both artists, writing, “I have a low tolerance for manipulative, egomaniacal behavior, and usually have to remind myself that the person might be mentally ill… Courtney asked us for advice about her ‘secret affair’ with Billy Corgan. 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.”
Back in the present, The Hole frontwoman turns her attention to Kurt Cobain, offering her interpretation of the Nirvana track Heart-Shaped Box. She claims the line “Hey, wait, I got a new complaint / Forever in debt to your priceless advice” was “literally about Kim,” pointing to what she describes as Cobain’s frustrations with Gordon’s influence (Sonic Youth famously helped Nirvana sign to DGC Records).
“He was so mad at her,” Love says. “Kurt’s whole thing was… he hid his light under a bushel for Bleach, because, one, Seattle, which he wasn’t from, two, Kim Gordon.”
Recounting early encounters with Cobain and the wider Seattle scene, Love continues, “When I first saw Nirvana in Portland, Oregon, there was … 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’m not stupid. I saw it and that’s what led to me and him having an interaction. I was like, ‘You fake guitar player, I get it.’ But that was the Seattle element. And I didn’t know till I hung out with him 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.”
Watch the full interview below.
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