The enemy of my enemy is also my enemy.
Photo-Illustration: Mark Mainz/Getty Images;Robin Marchant/Getty Images for Vulture
Courtney Love and Billy Corgan have been friends, enemies, lovers, and everything in between. But throughout their tumultuous relationship, they’ve always been able to agree on one thing: hating Kim Gordon. Love guested on Corgan’s podcast, The Magnificent Others, and reviving Woodstock ’94–era beef seemed as good a thing to talk about as that Hole reunion Love keeps edging us with. “She was really horrible in the ’90s,” Love said of Gordon. “I remember in Holland I was hanging out with you, and they [Sonic Youth] were so mean.” Love also claims the line “forever in debt to your priceless advice” in Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” is a dig at Gordon and her puritanical punk ethics.
Gordon came up because Love was talking about her friendship with Lana Del Rey. Both Del Rey and Love get slammed in Gordon’s book, Girl in a Band. Gordon said Love had “tarantula L.A. glamour — sociopathy, narcissism.” Of Del Rey, Gordon originally wrote, “If she really truly believes it’s beautiful when young musicians go out on a hot flame of drugs and depression, why doesn’t she just off herself?” That line got changed to the less vitriolic “Does she truly believe it’s beautiful when young musicians go out on a hot flame of drugs and depression, or is it just her persona?” when the book hit shelves. Love says Del Rey asked, “Who is Kim Gordon?” at the time. “A question, by the way, billions are still asking,” Corgan replies.
Corgan’s in the memoir too. “Courtney asked us for advice about her ‘secret affair’ with Billy Corgan,” Gordon writes. “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.”
Who is or is not punk rock is still something Love and Corgan deny Gordon the right to arbitrate. Corgan and Love argue that avoiding being catchy and fun and poppy is just as inauthentic as mindlessly chasing trends. “The real sellout was those of us that bent to the market, the market of Kim Gordon,” Love says. “To this day, they still scream about authenticity, but most of them that I’ve tracked didn’t come from an authentic place.”
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