Melissa Auf der Maur | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

In this deeply personal conversation, Billy Corgan and Melissa Auf der Maur reunite after 25 years to unpack the full story: how a $1 Tuesday night show sparked one of rock's most unlikely friendships, how Billy secretly recommended Melissa to Courtney Love, and why she almost said no — twice. The two dive into the early days of the Smashing Pumpkins, the chaos of underground rock clubs, Courtney's Hollywood pivot that gutted the band, the rise of grunge, and how a single moment of pure rock-and-roll intensity changed both of their lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:00Speaker 03

  The bass is the instrument that is unnoticed, but no one can live without.

• 1:05Billy Corgan?

  As I was playing a beer bottle smashed against my guitar.

• 1:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:09Billy Corgan?

  So even though I'm in the crowd choking Bruce to the ground, like this.

• 1:15Speaker 03

  The best.

• 1:15Billy Corgan?

  I got back on stage, picked up a guitar, and finished the song.

• 1:19Speaker 03

  That is when you captured my heart, I remember. You said, "Wow, one day maybe you'll play in my band."

• 1:30Billy Corgan?

  Okay, here we go. We're going to get to the tough. I've been waiting 25 years to ask you these questions. And here's your new book.

• 1:41Billy Corgan?

  I have lots of

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Oh my goodness.

• 1:43Billy Corgan?

  deeply penetrating questions and

• 1:47Speaker 03

  Your spirit is squeezed into those pages. It's the origin story of me and you.

• 1:53Billy Corgan?

  All right, so let's, let's an origin story. So we'll start with Nick and Linda.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 1:58Billy Corgan?

  Take me to Nick and Linda.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  My parents, I love that you remember that, yeah, they, they're without, you know, I always say that you and Courtney were my grunge parents and not my parents. I live in omnipresent shadows of my cool Montreal parents, both music journalists, culture journalists, activists, like everything good 70s, 60s counterculture raised me with the idea that The golden thread to a purpose in life is just to know what you, Melissa, loves, needs to do. Never work for the man, never work for anybody else but your, your vision of what the world needs. And so they're the best role models. My father died, as you know, like, super long ago, but with him, I feel like the baton was further passed

• 2:43Speaker 03

  that I, I really look up to my parents. And they were the best role models for what I feel like the 21st century needs more of, which is unique individualism.

• 2:52Billy Corgan?

  Talk a bit about, though, your dad's sort of cult personality in Montreal.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay. Well, that's also what's interesting is, because I grew up in the shadow of a larger-than-life person. My father was a journalist turned politician, but also a man about town, ran out of-

• 3:09Billy Corgan?

  A bon vivant.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  A bon vivant, boulevardier, smoking, drinking, intense lifestyle, not unlike the people of the rock bands that you and I were not, but the people, other people in rock bands.

• 3:19Billy Corgan?

  But this might have something else, something to do with us ending up in those bands, with those people, or even romantically being involved with those types of people.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  Yes, it is true, actually. So he, he was both like remarkable and impossible. And he, you know, I grew up on the campaign trails, you know, election nights.

• 3:37Billy Corgan?

  What was his political platform?

• 3:39Speaker 03

  He was proud, he was an independent, and he founded about 10 different Montreal independent movement parties. And every time he left a party, they'd say, Nick, you're so inconsistent. He's like, the parties change, I don't change. And his thing was entirely, the people have the power.

• 3:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  Corporate, government, don't entrust them. So he was just like, he was a radical socialist who wanted to fight for the people.

• 4:05Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know this, or if I did, I'd forgotten, but I saw some allusion in, in, in doing the research to interview you about this kind of traveling with your parents, like, gypsy life.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  That's my mother, yeah.

• 4:16Billy Corgan?

  Can you talk a little bit about that?

• 4:18Speaker 03

  So my father injected me with all the political, public-facing stuff, and my mother injected me with the, no man is ever going to define who you are. She chose to be a-

• 4:28Billy Corgan?

  She got that one through.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Yes, she um, she had me as a single mother because she didn't tell my father I was born until I was two. So they had a, they had a romantic weekend. She had what she wanted. And before I met my father, I had lived in a circus caravan in Wales, a British post office truck in Morocco, and a hut in Kenya, Africa with chimpanzees. My mother was a radical, independent hippie woman who brought her little girl on that trip. When she, and I spent my second birthday, St. Patrick's Day, nineteen seventy-four in Africa. In a, like, I have the photo of my birthday party and an African tribe of children and me, which is, I think, where I got injected with the travel nomad came from my mother and my father.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  Public mania, you know, he, he gave me that ability to walk into the spotlight with you.

• 5:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 5:25Billy Corgan?

  I met you, I think you were nineteen or eighteen.

• 5:28Speaker 03

  Nineteen, yeah, probably, like, yeah.

• 5:31Billy Corgan?

  University, I think, was still kind of generally in the mix.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  I was at university, it was summer of ninety-one.

• 5:37Billy Corgan?

  What's the, tell me about the face.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:39Billy Corgan?

  No one, no one wanted me to go to the face school, so I'm a little jealous.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  My father didn't love the idea. My mother was determined to go to an experimental art school where they did not have to learn English, history, or math until later. And the foundation was fine arts core education. And the trick, it was a seventies, it was like the LaGuardia, the Fame School of New York. And it was a public school. And the idea was if you get kids to do art and performance, they will like education, which was true. Because when I ended up in university, which is what I left to join rock bands, I didn't want to leave because I had been loving school my whole life.

• 6:19Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  So it was an amazing art school. And I went straight into University of the Fine Arts Department at Concordia, which was the-

• 6:25Billy Corgan?

  And the hope was to be a photographer or just an artiste?

• 6:28Speaker 03

  Art, for me, it was always multimedia, photography.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  In school, base at home in my room. So I always envisioned I'd be able to marry the two together. And I was like, oh, I could maybe be like a rock photographer as a musician, but it was to be a fine arts photographer, like a conceptual artist with photography as my core.

• 6:50Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 6:52Billy Corgan?

  How did that work out?

• 6:53Speaker 03

  Well, I got hijacked by rock bands and I persevered in that I was like actually angry at you for convincing me that I'm planting the seed of destiny, which was join a rock band. I loved rock music, but I did not like having to compromise my photo passion. So that turned into becoming an obsessive documentarian.

• 7:16Billy Corgan?

  Wise, by the way.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  Turns out that a quarter century later, a little bit of my photos are in the memoir, but following the memoir is my 90s rock photography museum exhibit and photo book that comes out in September. So I took a roll of film every day in Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins.

• 7:35Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  And I have 15. Did you notice me taking photos on stage every show?

• 7:39Billy Corgan?

  Not at all.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, you were busy, but I especially once I joined the Pumpkins and I didn't have to play like sidekick backup vocalist, foot switches, timers. I had three cameras on every stage that we played. And I'm going to deliver you in another time, an amazing like photo album. Just my, but so I took a roll of film a day and now it's been a quarter century. And now my documentarian photography is actually going to get in light of day because the archive is now deemed as a time capsule, which it is.

• 8:11Billy Corgan?

  And yeah, because I know in many ways it's that that period is under documented.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  And lost in the analog digital transition. So even the people who documented it, and as you know, we, we came from like indie cool. And then all of a sudden we were like Mark Sillinger fancy photography. We didn't have the in between. So there's actually an under documented. DIY vibe and that's what I did like I recently ran into Beck when he was playing with Boston Pops at Tanglewood and like doing and when I walked backstage I hadn't seen him since Lollapalooza 95 and I was delivering him a little Polaroid from my Lollapalooza photography and he was like I remember you had a camera and you were the only one who wasn't embarrassed to take a picture because everyone in the 90s pretended they didn't care but you were like a tourist and it's true I genuinely

• 9:00Speaker 03

  was like this is so exciting I'm on tour with Pavement I'm on tour back I'm gonna take pictures and I realized that culture that we had of like anti caring but you and I didn't do that we were very like passionate care we didn't pretend we didn't wanna like

• 9:13Billy Corgan?

  I just wish I documented more

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, well you were busy and you also had other people documenting for you whereas I

• 9:20Billy Corgan?

  That's a different discussion

• 9:21Speaker 03

  I didn't I didn't I had to document for myself but I also was mainly a photo student who was like I can't go to RISD and become an art photographer so I'll just find this new language which was documentary

• 9:34Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, okay

• 9:35Speaker 03

  Yes

• 9:36Billy Corgan?

  July 23rd 1991

• 9:38Speaker 03

  That's our day

• 9:41Billy Corgan?

  See this because I can't speak French La Fouf Bonneuse Elektrique

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Oh my god, I love that Quebecers are gonna love this so Les Foufons Elektriques is Canada's CBGB's translated in French Les Foufons Elektriques, the crazy punk club you played your first Montreal show in July 91 translates to Electric Buttocks

• 10:02Billy Corgan?

  Okay, did not know that

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Yeah

• 10:05Billy Corgan?

  See if you this jog

• 10:06Speaker 03

  What happened? What happened that night?

• 10:08Billy Corgan?

  We'll get there, we'll get there. See if this jogs your memory. My memory is that the sun was still up when we were playing

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Well, it was July. You're probably right. It's a dark room but you're probably right. You were playing. It was a Looney Tuesday. This you might not remember. I have the flyer. Loonies in Canada are one dollar coins. So you were playing for one dollar on a Tuesday. I was a ticket girl at that venue and

• 10:31Billy Corgan?

  So you got in for free?

• 10:32Speaker 03

  I got in for free for my one dollar show but mainly there was a Sub Pop logo on the flyer. No one had heard of your band. You had that 12 inch. And I it was my night off because nobody really buys a one dollar ticket but so I just I think I said to my roommates some Sub Pop band is playing. Let's go see them.

• 10:50Billy Corgan?

  Yes

• 10:51Speaker 03

  I was one of I think 20 people in the audience

• 10:54Billy Corgan?

  Very, very small audience

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Very sparse. Yes, what happened next?

• 10:58Billy Corgan?

  I believe I was playing the solo in one of our songs. So I was intently looking at my guitar sort of here and as I was playing, a beer bottle smashed against my guitar.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:10Billy Corgan?

  I don't think it broke. But the beer kind of splattered. And I immediately kind of whirled up to see who threw the bottle. There's only 20 people out there. And usually when that happens,

• 11:26Billy Corgan?

  people aren't in a big hurry to let you know who threw the bottle. It's just the way the crowds work. But for whatever reason, when I gave the death glare, the people around your roommate. What was your roommate's name?

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Bruce.

• 11:39Billy Corgan?

  Bruce. Good name for a roommate. The people around Bruce seemed to kind of almost like not me.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:47Billy Corgan?

  And as soon as I saw the body language of people going away from Bruce.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  You could tell.

• 11:51Billy Corgan?

  I threw my guitar off.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 11:53Billy Corgan?

  Mid strum, dove into the crowd and began strangling him to the ground.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  I remember.

• 11:58Billy Corgan?

  And I just remember the look of terror in his eyes. Because he didn't seem to want to fight, even though he'd just thrown a beer bottle at me.

• 12:07Billy Corgan?

  We also had a rule, which you might remember in the band, which is no matter what happens, keep playing.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:12Billy Corgan?

  So even though I'm in the crowd choking Bruce to the ground. Like this.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  The best.

• 12:21Billy Corgan?

  And once I, kind of like a, I don't know another way to put it. It's kind of like, you know, when you alpha a dog and the dog sort of submits. Bruce sort of submitted to the moment. So I was done choking. I was like, I made my point.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. But the bigger point you made, which is always my favorite part.

• 12:38Billy Corgan?

  Let me finish my little spiel. So then I got back on stage, picked up a guitar and finished the song.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Yes. That is when you captured my heart. That's when I thought. So from my perspective, I'm standing in the audience with Bruce, my roommate, who actually is just my roommate's boyfriend who happened to have moved in. So. We're watching a show. I, with every song, am becoming as if I've never heard music before, like, "Oh, oh, wait." Because it was more slick, more romantic.

• 13:09Billy Corgan?

  Well, as Courtney, your erstwhile bandmate, used to say, "It's unfair because the pumpkins on their first album sounded like a second album."

• 13:16Speaker 03

  It's true. It was so much more realized and magnificent than a lot of the other bands.

• 13:24Billy Corgan?

  We had a plan.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  Well, of course. You had a vision. I had never heard of you before. I'd never heard of... It, like, won me so quick. And I was getting like, I felt like the sounds of the universe and everything that was inside me that I didn't know was coming out. And literally halfway through the show, Bruce, who's watching next to me, is like, "What the [__] is wrong with these guys?" And I looked, I'm like, "What?" He's like, "They're so full of... They're not, they're not playing an arena. They're playing a punk club. Why are they acting like this?" And I was like, "It's amazing. This is so, like, grandiose." So then he started heckling you.

• 13:56Billy Corgan?

  I don't remember the heckling.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  So he was screaming, "Drop the [__] attitude, Soul. Drop the [__] attitude, Soul." And I was like, "Why are you doing this to these people?" You had been tuning your guitar and said, "I'm just tuning my [__] guitar, Soul." And the two of you had that banter. You started your song. He threw the beer bottle. And as he threw the beer bottle, and then you jumped offstage, in my mind, like, imprinted was, "He just ruined my favorite band's show. Now this band is not going to continue playing, and there's an answer in this band for me." And this is where, like, the real swan, that you got up, finished your set, and then you said, you finished that song, and you said, "Montreal, we have one more for you." And you played "I Am One."

• 14:42Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  And it changed every cell in my body, which is why later, a thousand years later, I play that song, I hear that song, and I thought, "Wow, that is some amazing balls and confidence." And that's when I beelined to the side stage after the show.

• 14:58Billy Corgan?

  When I was angry in particular, or we were angry collectively, we tended to play better, especially back then.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 15:03Billy Corgan?

  You probably got a really good walloping version of "I Am One."

• 15:07Speaker 03

  It was so good. And then meanwhile, you know, in terms of for other people's perspective... Darcy and James being your bookends, which I write about in the book, of why I ended up, because I was 19, I didn't, I loved music, but I didn't play music yet. But all in one summer, I saw The Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, The Breeders, and Hole. Every single one of them with cool wallflower stoic girls on bass. And it was not intellectual, but I understood that's my position. That's where I could fit in. But there was, so between Darcy and this effeminate other person on this stage, I'm like, this is welcoming. And I, and I obviously noticed Jimmy. Jimmy, as a bass player, that was the other kind of like missing part two.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  He seemed like a radically incredible drummer compared to the more kind of punk. I don't, I hadn't been impressed.

• 15:58Billy Corgan?

  He was light years of most.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 15:59Billy Corgan?

  He was light years ahead of most indie drummers.

• 16:01Speaker 03

  So the, between the rhythm section, you're commanding like, strangle, play. I don't, I was a shy person. Do you remember what happened when I walked side stage? You got offstage, you're moving your gear off. And what does this 19 year old girl say to you?

• 16:20Billy Corgan?

  You said something like, hi, I'm Melissa from Montreal. And I'm very sorry that my roommate threw a beer bottle at you. I apologize for all of Canada.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  I said, I, I said, on behalf of Montreal, Canada, I apologize and I will follow your band. I love your band. And then we became friends.

• 16:36Billy Corgan?

  And I did, I did ask you, why did he throw the beer bottle? And you said, he, he thought you had too much attitude. And I remember thinking, well, yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  You're in a rock band.

• 16:46Billy Corgan?

  Well, it's the only way to play that type of music.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Well, also, we should talk about in terms of what made The Pumpkins different, which actually is what I think the inspiration I got when I, when you kind of parted the sea for me, is that I had missed, I grew up with the eighties, The Cure, The Smiths, which obviously you have a love for Depeche Mode, all that too. But what I had missed was.

• 17:10Billy Corgan?

  Classic rock.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Glam, classic rock. And so I went from like that to punk to grunge. I did not understand, even like, I had kind of missed Sabbath. Like, I did not have riff oriented. So I, that was my gateway to all of that was you. And it felt more who I am, which is more fantastical, more fantasy, more romantic. You know, I was not a big. Punk didn't resonate with me. I want fantasy and drama like Depeche Mode and The Cure. Or what you gave me, which was that. So I feel like you gave me classic rock, but through a lens of a new, you know, a new generation.

• 17:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, well, James had a great quote once. And it ended up being on the cover of a magazine. It's only Jamesy how we put it.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  I don't remember.

• 17:57Billy Corgan?

  The quote was, we're like Led Zeppelin, but without all the elves.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  Right, even though I like elves, but he also didn't have, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

• 18:07Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so we stayed in touch after that.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I remember you gave me your address. We became, I sent you like one postcard and then I remember.

• 18:16Billy Corgan?

  I still have something you sent.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then I got a return to sender a couple of years later. That's on the eve of Siamese Dream. So the little band that had made their first record that blew my mind all of a sudden was on Virgin, making their big, you know, their next, their next frontier.

• 18:36Billy Corgan?

  But we did see each other after that on the.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  Oh, that was like months later.

• 18:40Billy Corgan?

  Chili Peppers tour.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  That was literally November of 91. So it was like, I met you with the beer bottle. Then I saw you opening for Pearl Jam and Chili Peppers.

• 18:51Billy Corgan?

  Was opening for us, but it's okay.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  It was.

• 18:53Billy Corgan?

  It was Pearl Jam, Pumpkins, Chili Peppers.

• 18:56Speaker 03

  Are you sure?

• 18:56Billy Corgan?

  I'm positive.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  Because I also went to the Cow Palace show two months later in San Francisco.

• 19:01Billy Corgan?

  Where we were kicked off the bill, so Nirvana could be on the bill?

• 19:04Speaker 03

  Correct. Because I thought that, oh my God, then I have that wrong in my book. Because I thought it was Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Chili Peppers, and then Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Chili Peppers.

• 19:14Billy Corgan?

  Pearl Jam blew up on the tour.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  So that's why they were on the second.

• 19:17Billy Corgan?

  They were kind of an unknown entity.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 19:19Billy Corgan?

  And by the midway through the tour, the audiences started coming early to see them as well.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  So I went down to Burlington, Vermont, from Montreal. It's only like hour drive for you. I didn't, with all due respect, to flee. And everybody wasn't like, I wasn't there for the Chili Peppers or Pearl Jam. I was there for the Pumpkins. And that's when we saw each other again. And then you were just like taking off. Like, that's when your world started getting big.

• 19:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So in my mind, and correct me, you're, you know, we're kind of pen palley, you're kind of over here. You have the beautiful Botticelli painting up there in Montreal.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly.

• 19:53Billy Corgan?

  And, and we'd see each other, you know, cross paths here and there. But then there's this moment where you're in this band, Tinker. So talk about Tinker a little bit.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  Well.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  Totally Pumpkins inspired. I, after that summer, decided I've got to get a bass. I started, uh, found mentors with guys kind of your age in my rock scene in Montreal. They invited me to their jam space. They lent me a bass, an SVT amp, and I, within like, six months, I was playing in a band with all guys.

• 20:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  And then I formed this band Tinker, which I think existed for not more than a year by the time I even left Montreal. But so the band Tinker, um, the other band member, Steve Durand, I met at the pool table at, when I was DJing, because I was a cassette DJ at the dive bar.

• 20:41Billy Corgan?

  Cassette DJ?

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Cassette DJ.

• 20:43Billy Corgan?

  That's really taking the hipster thing to another level.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  Well, it literally was hip. I started there at 19. I was DJing before I was even playing bass. And all I did was make mixtapes, press play, play pool, not take requests. And after I saw your show.

• 21:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  I went to Sam the Record Man and I bought the Gish cassette. And I played it on auto repeat, the whole album. And I would occasionally be like, we're only playing one album for this hour. Thank you. And I was playing Gish, playing pool.

• 21:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 21:16Speaker 03

  And this cute guy, I'd never met a bike courier guy, came up to me. He's like, is this the Pumpkins? And I was like, how do you know that? Because, you know, that was that time where your secret, like, favorite band was like only yours. He's like, I just saw them in Toronto last week. And he had seen the same, uh, show, but in, in Toronto. And he instantly, like, I want, he won my trust. And I said, I got a jam space around the corner. We started this little band Tinker. And, uh, it was only our sixth show when Siamese Dream exploded and you were coming through town with the Siamese Dream Tour, fall of 93. What year, Siamese Dream came out in spring of 93?

• 21:59Billy Corgan?

  I feel like it came out about September of 93. That sounds about right to me.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  So it was November of 93.

• 22:06Billy Corgan?

  But we were touring constantly, so we would have been touring before the album came out, while the album was coming out after.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  And I had not really seen you since the Gish moment.

• 22:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  So like, two years had gone by. I had learned, taught myself to play bass, got indoctrinated through older guys that never made a pass to me, that took me very seriously as a woman who wanted to make music, started a band with guys, and we had played a handful of shows. And because I was a ticket girl DJ, I knew all the promoters, and I called my promoter friends, the guy who, you know, the guys who brought Nirvana and Jesus Lizard and Pumpkins, they were like the main rock promoters, who were always like the most powerful people in the town. And I called them and I said, hey, I'd love to open up for the Pumpkins when they come through. And they're like, Melissa, we love you, but they're touring with Swerve Driver, they didn't ask for a local opener. I was like, come on, do it

• 22:57Speaker 03

  for me. He's like, sorry, can't do it. So what did I do next, Billy?

• 23:01Billy Corgan?

  I don't remember.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. This is the best part of the story, other than the beer bottle. I wrote a letter. Dear Billy, remember me, Melissa and the beer bottle? I now have my own band, and I'd love to open up with you when you come through town. Care of Virgin Fan P O Box.

• 23:19Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  I sent that to the Virgin Records P O Box. Who's Mr. Attentive to his fans? Billy got the letter. I had my phone number in there. And the week of the show, the local promoters who said, sorry, Melissa, called me with their tail between their legs and said, the Pumpkins people just called and you're opening up. Billy said Melissa's band should open up. So I showed up as soundcheck. The poster is still like Pumpkins, Swerve Driver. You know, we were squeezed onto the bill at the very last moment. And I remember so well, loading into this giant venue, I'd only ever played like tiny clubs the size of this stage.

• 24:04Billy Corgan?

  If my memory is about two, two thousand seat theater.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Metropolis, the best venue in Canada, I think, actually. And it was such a huge honor. We got to be the opening slot. And by the time we went on at like seven, the place was already packed, sold out months in advance. You know, you guys were on the mega rise. And I, you saw me at soundcheck, gave me a like, big brother hug. I was so grateful. And you're, can't wait. And you watch from the side of the stage. And that was like, kind of like I, in many ways, played for you because you were the gateway, the one that sort of inspired me to even pick up the bass. And then I walked offstage and you

• 24:46Speaker 03

  said, which you won't remember, but I remember, you said, wow, one day, maybe you'll play in my band. And literally, I could have never

• 24:56Billy Corgan?

  Prophetically, by the way.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  Yes. And maybe I could have never seen you again, that confidence that you gave me, that Billy Corgan told me I was good enough to play in the Pumpkins one day. I was like, that's it. Music is calling. I'm doing it.

• 25:13Billy Corgan?

  I do remember watching the gig and I remember thinking like, oh, okay.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  I mean, I don't even know what I was doing or how I did it because I taught myself. You know, I had these, like a great support network, but it's, I always, you know, I say this and I feel, I apologize on behalf of all bass players, and my bass is easy. But I'm like, and I, you know, Geddy Lee, all these bass players that I've met, and I always say that. And they're like, well, it's not really true because you have to kind of like embody it. So I guess whether it's the Pisces, you know, emotional, it was easy for me to play.

• 25:47Billy Corgan?

  It starts with that you like to play bass.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Okay. But it's also that you like feel it, you know, like it's a deep emotional.

• 25:52Billy Corgan?

  But bass is usually the last instrument chosen, you see. Most bass players are failed guitar players, or they get stuck on bass to be in the band. They don't, they really wanted to be a guitar player, but you know, there's somebody's buddy and well, you can play bass.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Maybe it's different for women. Maybe women, you know, being like the glue and the maternal figure. I always say that the bass is the mother. When I won the Gibson Award, you know, bass, best bass player in 99 with Hole, I said, I had to write my speech on the way and I said, you know, ode to the mother of all instruments. The bass is the instrument that is unnoticed, but no one can live without. So it's a feminine force in there.

• 26:31Billy Corgan?

  I will say, because I got asked a lot about it, in the beginning, it was a sexist question. Why do you have a girl on bass? Is she only there for eye candy? And they would ask Darcy that directly in an offensive way.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  Old school days.

• 26:43Billy Corgan?

  But you know, even extending to working with people like Nicole Fiorentino.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:49Billy Corgan?

  People would say to me, is, do you have a particular fetish for women on bass? And I would, what I would say is,

• 26:57Billy Corgan?

  Women tend to play with a different pocket than men do on the bass. And in the Pumpkins world, the bass actually has to be a bit behind. Of all the females that ever played bass for the Smashing Pumpkins, you're the most aggressive.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 27:13Billy Corgan?

  In the pocket, yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  What does that mean? We don't know.

• 27:16Billy Corgan?

  No, but I'm saying if this is, if this is the, if, if, if anybody wants to envision, because we work with computers now.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:23Billy Corgan?

  If this is the, if this is the heart of the beat, right? This is the kick drum and this is the click of the kick drum. Okay, you either play on top or behind. Okay, Darcy traditionally played a bit behind. I play slightly on top on the bass on the recordings. You, you play a little bit more aggressively pocket wise than I do. So when we played together in, in Montreal recently, first time in 25 years, I was like, oh, there's that pocket.

• 27:52Speaker 03

  So it's a different, interesting.

• 27:53Billy Corgan?

  And here's the thing, what's interesting about musicians is they tend to have a consistent pocket. So your pocket is unchanged from 25 years ago. You still play.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  Because I haven't been playing, wow.

• 28:03Billy Corgan?

  You still play in the exact same spot on the beat.

• 28:06Speaker 03

  What does that mean? I want science, like neurological people to explain what that is or spiritual metaphysical.

• 28:11Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. It's, I, I think it's as simple as the musician feels the spot in the, in the rhythm, which is most exciting to them.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  It's probably something cool about quantum physics and time in there. That like where my time zone is in the universe or something, yeah.

• 28:26Billy Corgan?

  So for us, Jimmy and I, it was a bit of adjustment when you first joined the Pumpkins because you were a little bit more on the aggressive side of the pocket.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 28:34Billy Corgan?

  And so the band at some point had to adjust.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:36Billy Corgan?

  Its own pocket.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  I wonder, okay, I wonder what that did to the performances.

• 28:42Billy Corgan?

  I think we toured for 11 months on the Machina record. Probably the last four or five months was when it really locked in and became its own animal.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Interesting, because Jimmy also has an interesting like like time pocket that's unique. And I remember when we were touring at our height, which was that European tour, which was the best at the the whole the and the last big Europe tour with Mike Garson. I remember, because Mike was such a cool intellectual music person to talk to on the bus, he said, he's like, wow, the way you play with Jimmy. I had never noticed. He was like Jimmy's like sense of like journey of a song. And he's like, you never fall off. I'm like, really? I in my mind, I was just like, I'm just following him. I don't know how I'm doing it. But he's like, that could be really hard for some people. But

• 29:28Billy Corgan?

  Mike used to say, you guys play seven and three quarters instead of eight bars.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  Oh, because we'd rush

• 29:35Billy Corgan?

  We'd jump, jump, jump the downbeat.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 29:38Billy Corgan?

  But let's go back in the story.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  Okay.

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• 31:26Billy Corgan?

  I remember the day, I feel like I was in my house in Chicago, but I remember the day where Courtney called me Courtney Love.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  Very important, yes.

• 31:33Billy Corgan?

  If you don't, if you need a Courtney definition. Courtney calls me and says, I need a bass player. And, you know, Kristen tragically had died, this horrible story.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  In the wake of another icon of death.

• 31:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I mean, it was all, it was all a lot of sorrow.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:54Billy Corgan?

  So I certainly had my moment of pause about whether I wanted to throw you into this MAW. M A W. But I remember, the one thing I remember saying to Courtney, I said, I've got the perfect person for you. Okay.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  What made me perfect? Okay.

• 32:14Billy Corgan?

  Well, I was right. I mean, you were the perfect person. I mean, when people think of Hole, because there were other good bass players for Hole, but you became the one that people.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Well, I stuck it out the longest, too.

• 32:23Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's part of the job.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Well, she wanted me there longest, too, which is great.

• 32:27Billy Corgan?

  Sure. And we can talk about the sisterly relationship in a second, but, but the first thing I said, because I knew how self-conscious she was about other females and perceptions of beauty and people attacking her as not beautiful enough and all these types of things that she was going through. If you remember, at one point, she had that fanzine briefly when Kurt was still alive and she called it, but she's not even pretty.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that was so much of her cool themes, like ugly on the inside.

• 32:55Billy Corgan?

  She was very focused on not only her own self-perception of beauty, but the way other people sort of, not, not whether or not they thought her beautiful, but whether they had the right to say who she was or who she wasn't. That was a big deal.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  That's what made her such a pioneer, ugly, pretty on the inside, ugly from the back, like all of, yeah, she was just the best for the inside out female.

• 33:19Billy Corgan?

  And to really talk about that, let's call it, all of it in a very open way. Yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  So what did you say?

• 33:28Billy Corgan?

  When I wake up in my makeup, you know what I mean?

• 33:29Speaker 03

  That's so incredible.

• 33:30Billy Corgan?

  So I said, I said, um, I have the perfect person for you, but there's only one problem. She's really beautiful. Are you gonna be okay with that?

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, this is behind the scenes that I never heard of.

• 33:43Billy Corgan?

  And, and, and she said, well, how beautiful. I said, she's really beautiful.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you. I did not feel, I felt like some makeupless redhead freak.

• 33:52Billy Corgan?

  In my mind, because obviously I'm revisiting something from over 30 years ago. In my mind, it was kind of a twofold. Well, I've thrown up the disclaimer. So I have an out when it's just, I, I offered you for the job for whole, because I believed you could do the job. But at the same time, I kind of had an out. If she didn't want you, because either you weren't the right person, or she was going to be weirded out by having somebody that was more conventionally beautiful standing next to her. And, um, and I, I feel like it moved very quickly from there.

• 34:23Speaker 03

  I mean, they had Redding booked and they needed a bass player in like four weeks.

• 34:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  They had been holding auditions from my side. Meanwhile, I had, I mean, first of all, you were headlining Lollapalooza. You'd had my phone number because I wrote a thank you, Billy, for letting me open up for your band at the P O. Box phone number. You magically called me from tour and you said, I have good news and great news. I'm headlining Lollapalooza. I have a day off in Montreal. We can go to lunch. Great news. You're going to join my friend Courtney's band. Obviously, I'm in the know. I know what's happening with all.

• 35:00Billy Corgan?

  Sorry, because, because we, I don't think we've ever discussed it. What I did do is I made sure that if she wanted to connect with you, that she'd have to go back through me.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:08Billy Corgan?

  So I'm calling you at that point.

• 35:10Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 35:11Billy Corgan?

  To sort of vet it out the other way, to make sure that it's not a fait accompli. Okay.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  And what did I say?

• 35:17Billy Corgan?

  I don't remember.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  I said, no, thank you. You think I want to join that band in the wake of death?

• 35:22Billy Corgan?

  And you talk about it in your, in your great book here.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Yes. No, thank you, Billy. What are you thinking?

• 35:29Billy Corgan?

  Even the girl girls cry. You had met Courtney briefly.

• 35:31Speaker 03

  Yes, the same summer that I met you, whole play, the same week that the pumpkins played.

• 35:36Billy Corgan?

  I think that's when she tried to encourage you to sleep with her roadie.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. I, exactly. She said, are you the girl talking to our roadie? Come, we're all sexually frustrated. That was the first words out of Courtney's mouth to me.

• 35:48Billy Corgan?

  Shades of Things to Come.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Yes. So you called me, I said, absolutely not. There was not even a consideration. You said, well, talk to me when I get to Montreal. You had a day off. We went for lunch. I remember walking you through my neighborhood, showed you my mother's house. And we sat down in a park and you said, so tell me, why don't you want to join Courtney's band? And I said, I have my own life and that sounds like hell. And you said to me, are you sure you don't want to be in the biggest female rock band and never have to tour or work? I remember you said, and I said, that sounds horrible. No. And so what happened next? Cause then you went to New York on Lollapalooza and she joined you on stage. I always envisioned that what happened.

• 36:30Billy Corgan?

  Can we talk about the backstory in there a little bit? Cause it's, it's something that's not often explored.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  Yes, please do. All I know is I said, no, you left Montreal. I went to Lollapalooza the next day, dropped a grandma mushrooms, didn't even say goodbye to you. Just like left and that was it. In my mind, I never even thought about it until.

• 36:48Billy Corgan?

  Well, the backstory of her coming on Lollapalooza was she was still in mourning over Kurt's tragic death.

• 36:54Speaker 03

  This is July. He had died in April. Yep.

• 36:57Billy Corgan?

  Yes. And

• 37:00Billy Corgan?

  we're much more conscious of these things now. And I think I felt intuitively, I saw this sort of narrative lining up that they were going to turn her into kind of a widow's version of Yoko Ono. Not, and I mean this respectfully, because I love the Lennon family.

• 37:19Billy Corgan?

  We're talking about, we're not talking about Yoko Ono after John Lennon was assassinated. We're talking about the way people talked about Yoko after the Beatles broke up.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  Exactly. The demon who broke up everyone's favorite band.

• 37:30Billy Corgan?

  So I saw this narrative lining up and out of some sort of weird loyalty fidelity and also I guess I was willing to immolate my marriage.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:38Billy Corgan?

  I told the band Courtney is going to join us on tour.

• 37:41Speaker 03

  So.

• 37:42Billy Corgan?

  And Courtney's going to get up during La La Palooza and perform a song or two. And the band went, okay.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, because they're sensitive, sweet people. Yeah.

• 37:51Billy Corgan?

  Yes, but we, we, thank you, because that's not something most people understand about that band, but.

• 37:56Speaker 03

  Of course, I do.

• 37:57Billy Corgan?

  There was, there was a sense that getting her back out in the world.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 38:03Billy Corgan?

  Instead of behind a haze of whatever mourning was valuable.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  Empowering a woman who was abandoned and left behind by, yes, a heroic icon, but a man who left his wife and daughter. To me is like the part that I'm most upset about.

• 38:19Billy Corgan?

  You lived it and I lived it in my own version.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah, I was very impressed that you did that.

• 38:23Billy Corgan?

  Francis in the crib and you saw where's my life going to go. There was that period of time where it was very, very touch and go, for lack of a better phrase. Uh, where does this all go? Um, because there was, there seemed to be at the moment, there seemed to be a need to pin the blame on somebody.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And we lived in a, uh, patriarch hellscape that even me, an empowered woman from a single mother, didn't realize until I wrote my book, how much that was still dictating culture. The what they did to Courtney, they burned her at the stake. I joined accidentally in the end. I said, yes, but we'll get to that part after. Is that your paternal sort of instinct of helping your friend be a hero at that moment in mourning? And then my eventual joining of her band, I think we both were there instinctively to help support the feminine force that was going to be destroyed for having and be blamed for not just breaking up the, killing her husband. I mean.

• 39:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. That and so whatever contribution that that it did seem to shift the narrative.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm glad.

• 39:33Billy Corgan?

  However, you know, there's still the crowd out there still going on, but.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  And that's July of 94, Reading Festival, late August 94 is booked. Hole is in like a primo slot. They still don't have a bass player. You are hanging out with Courtney on tour. And I guess what happened is you said, the girl from Montreal said, no. Meanwhile, Patty and Eric from Hole are back home in Seattle. She's on tour morning with you. They're auditioning bass player after bass player after bass player. Courtney has not seen them, met them. I guess nothing is working.

• 40:05Billy Corgan?

  Am I right in assuming she gave the job to find a bass player to Eric?

• 40:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. So they were out there just like getting girls to come through a practice base in Seattle while she's on tour. She somehow was relying on Billy's recommendation and and all I know is what happened next is that my roommate, I guess somebody gave her my phone number, my husband, you, my roommate. I come home from university. I come home from school. My roommate's like, Courtney Love called. I'm like, oh, God, really? Courtney Love called again. Courtney Love called. I was like.

• 40:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, put it this way, that that call wasn't going to stop until you picked up.

• 40:41Speaker 03

  No stopping. And I remember and I write about it to the T in my memoir. I'm like, it's midnight. She's probably still up. I'm going to call this 206 number and tell her, hey, thanks so much for the invite, but I'm not interested.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  She picks up the phone. It's like after midnight in Seattle. She's like, hey, so Billy said, you said, no. I need you to get on the plane and tell me to my face.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  It's like, um, uh, actually, in that point, she is convincing. She's charismatic. She's.

• 41:14Billy Corgan?

  She's incredibly charismatic.

• 41:15Speaker 03

  Unbelievably intelligent, too, because she I think she kind of like side swapped you with 10.

• 41:19Billy Corgan?

  Stop for a second. She'd already done her research on you. She had a mental dossier on.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 41:25Billy Corgan?

  What kind of boys you liked.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 41:27Billy Corgan?

  What kind of music you were into.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Probably even the photography thing.

• 41:30Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  You're already.

• 41:31Billy Corgan?

  She knew.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  Probably knew I was a Pisces.

• 41:34Billy Corgan?

  Well, that first, I'm sure I talked about that.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:36Billy Corgan?

  But the point is, she knew, she'd already made up a mind, you were gonna join the band.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:40Billy Corgan?

  That's it.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  And guess what? She got me to join the band in one phone call, and it was as simple as, get on the plane, bring your bass, my people are gonna call you. And I hung up, and oddly, that week, because it had gone around that Billy from the Pumpkins had recommended me to join Hole. Everybody knew Hole, everybody. My boyfriend band member, Steve, my father, both said to me, you should probably do that. I was like, what the, what? I already told everybody I'm not doing it. And all of a sudden, Montreal was telling me, sounds like a great once in a lifetime opportunity. So they, I had my community telling me, then I had this like incredible wild woman call me. I was like, fine, I'll get on the plane to meet her.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  And I just found last week, the photo my mother took of me getting on the plane with a little overnight case of my bass, and like a ticket to Seattle.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  And in my memoir, it's called The One Way Ticket to Seattle. And I just like, I get there, no turning back. Like, she just sucked me in, and I did it for women. When I saw her, Patty, and Francis, living in this giant house with security and, security tape from the suicide, weird, like, fans vigil.

• 42:55Billy Corgan?

  But it's, it's worth pointing out that now you're at the house where, where he killed himself is just right there. It's not like she's living somewhere else.

• 43:02Speaker 03

  No, she's living in it. It's unbelievable. I joined for that pocket of women and for the women of the world. I literally understood that through my strange mentor, Billy, I had a job to do for women. And then I understood that I'm doing this to get women's stories out there and to put us on a male dominated landscape. And it was like a mega calling, like, through the ages of art history. It was not about, like, even rock music, actually, because your band was. Was the band that I felt as a bass player. I on that flight to Seattle, listened to Live Through This on my cassette Walkman. I hadn't even listened to the record because it was more feminist, like pop rock than I like. I liked fantasy.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  So I wasn't even, I respected it, but I wasn't a fan of the band. I kind of liked in a weird way, pretty on the inside more. But when I flew on that plane to meet them and listen to Live Through This.

• 43:56Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  I understood what was happening. This woman, those lyrics about women, that's what I understood.

• 44:02Billy Corgan?

  Three, you know, apocryphal.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 44:05Billy Corgan?

  Whole records.

• 44:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:07Billy Corgan?

  The first one really is pure Courtney and Eric.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:12Billy Corgan?

  And LA and Jumbo's Clown Room and Courtney, Courtney bashing her way through saying, I don't know what I'm doing, but intuitively I'm here.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  I'm loud.

• 44:23Billy Corgan?

  And, you know, even, you know, convincing Kim Gordon, my favorite, non-favorite person in the world.

• 44:30Speaker 03

  To produce.

• 44:31Billy Corgan?

  She gives, I said, why'd you get Kim Gordon to produce? Cause I won't get a bad record review.

• 44:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it's true.

• 44:37Billy Corgan?

  I said, how much she, she goes, I had to give Kim Gordon six grand and a bunch of pot.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. And that's like.

• 44:44Billy Corgan?

  The entire calculus.

• 44:45Speaker 03

  She knew the calculus.

• 44:46Billy Corgan?

  The entire calculus of sleeping with critics.

• 44:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:49Billy Corgan?

  Working with Sonic Youth. She was gonna get her way through no, no matter what.

• 44:54Speaker 03

  The friend, Michael Stipe.

• 44:55Billy Corgan?

  And, and that's, and that's, that's when I met her was, was she was on tour on that record.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:00Billy Corgan?

  And um, she had even in, in 91, poor, nobody knew who she was other than some rock critic people. She had a vision of where she was gonna go.

• 45:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:10Billy Corgan?

  The second record, you really see the, the, the influence of Kurt's success.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  Of songs.

• 45:16Billy Corgan?

  People overly attribute Kurt's influence as if he was sitting there telling her what to write.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 45:22Billy Corgan?

  Everybody was under that sway. You couldn't not be. This was the biggest band in the world who kicked open the doors to, to the Pixies and, and Sonic Youth and all these other bands. Suddenly the, everybody's on the world stage all of a sudden because of Kurt's courage and, and, and incredible talent. The third album, which is the one, and we'll get to that in a second. The third one really is, is really the first time someone, in this case, me, sits down and gets her to be on the record. What do you want to say?

• 45:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:54Billy Corgan?

  And can we say, can we say it in a more skilled way?

• 45:57Speaker 03

  And more world domination, top 40, you know, like the, there was much more, that's what she wanted.

• 46:03Billy Corgan?

  Well, the business model was there. And by the way, there's, you know, she often talks, talk and talks about the influence of Albini and, and making In Utero.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:17Billy Corgan?

  As Kurt's sort of recoil reaction to the success of Nevermind. In her mind, that was a mistake.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:23Billy Corgan?

  Not because he made a bad record. It just wasn't produced like a record to go in it to win it.

• 46:27Speaker 03

  I do feel like I have to rewind to one thing, but live through this because you are a man who, you know, came in for the third record. I remember thinking, wow, we're doing this thing. She already was being underestimated as a songwriter. Her and Eric were being underestimated as songwriters for Live Through This. Everyone said Kurt wrote that record.

• 46:46Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 46:47Speaker 03

  I still to this day say, first of all, listen to Doll Parts and Miss World. This is one riff or three chords repeated over and over. This isn't, it's about the power of the lyrics. I've always said, and I said, if anything, she inspired Kurt's lyrics. Like, I was so pissed. And you as a incredible songwriter and kind of song doctor vibe who came in for the third record, we should pledge to the people. Eric and Courtney wrote Live For This. Like Kurt's influence was undeniable to everyone, including my own band.

• 47:22Billy Corgan?

  I asked her, I asked her at the time, before the second record came out,

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:28Billy Corgan?

  How much is you and how much is him? And she said at the time, so I'm going based on what I was told at the time, he helped me with one chorus.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  Exactly. So the point being is-

• 47:38Billy Corgan?

  Otherwise, he's in the closet writing Heart Shaped Box.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 47:41Billy Corgan?

  And I heard that at the time. That wasn't posthumous reorganization or reaction. As we know, Courtney can be very reactive to media narratives.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 47:50Billy Corgan?

  So at the time, contemporaneous, if that's the right word, to what was happening, I was told, his only influence on this record is this one chorus. I don't even know-

• 47:59Speaker 03

  It's asking for it. If you live through this with me, I swear that I would die for you.

• 48:04Billy Corgan?

  Well, that sounds like your own, yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 03

  And that makes sense because, and that's the one-

• 48:08Billy Corgan?

  And her response was, I have this influence on him in reverse.

• 48:13Speaker 03

  Which she really did. And that's why I'm always shocked, of course, because a male dominated universe is that, actually, the universe is probably female dominated, but the planet Earth is very male dominated. But no, the lyrics, I hear his evolution of lyrics by the time Heart Shaped Box happens. It's like her.

• 48:29Billy Corgan?

  She, my, my, my rep as a lyric writer is wholly responsible to her.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 48:36Billy Corgan?

  I can speak about it directly, because you knew the Gish album so well.

• 48:41Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 48:42Billy Corgan?

  She called me on the phone and said, I'm paraphrasing, I wish I could do the, what

• 48:50Billy Corgan?

  the is with the hippie lyrics?

• 48:52Speaker 03

  Exactly, which is my tendency too. She made us both smarter.

• 48:56Billy Corgan?

  Well, well, she called, she called, the, the, the thing that will forever stick with me, and this is where I am forever grateful, she said, why can't the person that I talk to on the phone or have a tea with, why is that person not writing lyrics? Why are you hiding behind this hippie haze?

• 49:14Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 49:14Billy Corgan?

  Why are you writing like hippie haze Donovan lyrics in some sort of sentimental mode as opposed to talking about what you actually talk about in reality? And she's the one who put that, that, that, that thumb on me and said, and that's why Siamese Dream was such a watershed, because I was like, okay, you, I will do that. And she's an ace lyric writer, as you know. So she said a really, so if you're in that, let's call it that Star Trek kind of, you know, good, bad, black, white oppositional force, which we did have, particularly at that time. It was like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do that better than you think I can. And that's what, so I, I'm totally transparent.

• 49:56Billy Corgan?

  So I don't know this for a fact. I know it sort of, you know, let's call it in, in the milieu of the information that flows through, because as, as most people.

• 50:08Billy Corgan?

  Wouldn't understand. My version and my, my, my traipsing through that particular, you know, my life with her in early 90s into the mid 90s, it's, it's never really been told. And that's, I'm not here to talk about that, but we are talking about something that's very particular because you come in on the back end of this.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I actually refer to the two of you because you're my weird grunge parents or like you found me, put me with her, then I went to you after. I actually, I think in the memoir, I even say it's not my story to tell, but I talk about your, this on and off again. I talk about when we played in Chicago, the guy who invited me to the band doesn't come to the show, but James Eha does. And I remember I say, I guess they're on and off again, period. It was like the two of you were in such argumentative. And I remember actually we saw each other right before melancholy. We played on a Pukal Pop stage. It was Hole and Pumpkins also Screaming Tree or Kias. It was like an amazing bill and you two were not speaking and I weirdly went to see you

• 51:14Speaker 03

  backstage and the two of you were like in an argument.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  But on the same bill, what was happening?

• 51:20Billy Corgan?

  She was mad that I was hanging out with some groupie or something.

• 51:21Speaker 03

  Okay. Well, all I know is.

• 51:22Billy Corgan?

  I was kind of like, I was like, but wait, you know, you're, you're, we're not together and you're mad that I'm with some groupie chick.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  Right, yes. There was a lot of like volatile love shit between you, which was weird.

• 51:34Billy Corgan?

  The way she would say it, because she's very hippie about love, the types of things, no pun intended, isn't, isn't that I was interested in someone else other than her. It was that I was sleeping with someone below my station.

• 51:48Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. It's like the lyrics thing where she's like, holding you accountable, get, yes, exactly. She wants you to raise.

• 51:54Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  So, but you're, you're not going to remember. And I remember, I think I didn't even say this in my book, or maybe I got edited out, but that day at Pukal Pop, you gave me a CD, rough, like early mixes of melancholy.

• 52:08Speaker 03

  And I, of course, went backstage or on the plane the next day. I'm like, oh, Billy gave me some. She was like, what? She took them. I never saw them again. I didn't even think I heard them. But she was like, and I remember thinking, oh, am I just a pawn between these, this rivalry? And I'm just like this little, this daughter that gets pulled between these two, but I, you know, I kind of, that's my role as a bass player and as like the younger one to everybody is I kind of got like, and I, that's why my book, Even the Good Girls Will Cry, there was something, it was like, I'm, I'm good for everybody. I'm here. Everyone can trust me. I'm angelic. I'm not a difficult. But my issue is that I ended up

• 52:47Speaker 03

  kind of evaporating my own sense of what I was supposed to, because I was living in the shadow of everybody.

• 52:54Billy Corgan?

  I'm glad you mentioned that because, because it is personal, but it's part of our shared story. That was part of my issue with you in the late 90s is when you started to evaporate.

• 53:04Speaker 03

  How could I not? But absolutely. By the time I joined your band, my heart was frozen. I had like, literally, I talk about in the book, that this ice princess who had like become the good, pretty girl to the wild Courtney, to the, duh, duh, following my orders, lost my best friend Patty to like a powerful producer who got a ghost drummer and the drummer from Hold becomes like living on the street. Like, it was so painful.

• 53:30Billy Corgan?

  Well, it was very dark, too.

• 53:31Speaker 03

  Darkest ever.

• 53:32Billy Corgan?

  And stop, one second. It's also worth pointing out that in this period that you joined Hold,

• 53:39Billy Corgan?

  Courtney's Hollywood thing kicks in where now she's in movies.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  Thank you. Do you know how demoralizing that was? I went through all of that. We pulled that record celebrity skin out of like two, two years, $3 million, so much work. I'm like, just waiting for her. I want to play music and I am waiting for the girl who's now becoming a Hollywood movie star. I was so pissed. When I realized like, oh my God, we just did all this. Courtney showed up, the record label pays all this money. We have a hit record and she's going to put our tour on hold to go make Hollywood movies? Are you joking? Whenever we play LA, all those Hollywood movie stars, Brad Pitt, her boyfriend Edward Norton, they all want to be on the stage that we're on and you want to go be in movies? I was so pissed by the time.

• 54:26Billy Corgan?

  But to be fair to her.

• 54:26Speaker 03

  Yes, good for her. Culture shifter. She wanted to be huge.

• 54:29Billy Corgan?

  She can speak for herself, but to be fair to her, that was always her vision.

• 54:32Speaker 03

  It's true. She started as an actress. I mean, for her, it's power of culture changing. I get it. But she was so good as a rock performer and musician and songwriter. And I had put in so much. I even for half a second, we don't have to get into them, but Q Trump, Q Prime, the Metallica managers that we had, you had for a second. I was even feeling for them. They had pulled all the stops for us to be the biggest, like you had said, in the park in front of my mother's house. Do you want to be in the biggest female rock band of the 90s? No, but I was. And guess what happened? If she did not support that, we got there and she left. And I left the band.

• 55:10Billy Corgan?

  Well, her loyalty, her loyalty was.

• 55:12Speaker 03

  I like that you're defending her, actually.

• 55:14Billy Corgan?

  No, it's not. Actually, I'm going to be critical for a second. Her, her loyalty, and this is why we didn't make good bedfellows, but we're good friends.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:25Billy Corgan?

  Uh, her loyalty is to whatever burning ambition she has at any particular moment. And, and, and, and if I was going to be critical, it's, it's, it's been issues with loyalty. And I think in our case, as two people are still in her life.

• 55:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:40Billy Corgan?

  And it's still in communication, right? I mean, we're talking about an active relationship here. We're not talking about.

• 55:44Speaker 03

  Love her.

• 55:45Billy Corgan?

  You know, we haven't talked to her in 10 years. I mean, I just saw her the other day.

• 55:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're closer than ever.

• 55:50Billy Corgan?

  And you're on her new record.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:52Billy Corgan?

  But

• 55:55Billy Corgan?

  people like that, and I'm generalizing.

• 55:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 55:58Billy Corgan?

  The hardest lesson they learn is to understand who's truly loyal and who's in it for the right reasons, which is, we love you.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:06Billy Corgan?

  And we accept you for who you are, but at the same point.

• 56:08Speaker 03

  True.

• 56:09Billy Corgan?

  You can't treat us like toys that we can be picked up and put down.

• 56:11Speaker 03

  That burning ambition burns bridges. And I, when I left that band, I felt incredibly, although we stayed on good terms-ish, even though I, we didn't get to this part of the story. Maybe you want to get us there, but I left.

• 56:26Billy Corgan?

  Good, good.

• 56:27Speaker 03

  Is that when I realized her loyalty to music was not where I had just like sacrificed five years of my precious life to support this joint vision of becoming the, and I wasn't even like. I was proud of Celebrity Skin, more so now, but at the time I was pretty bummed about the super slickness of it and losing our bass, or losing our drummer. It all felt so, you know, like the biggest sellout slash success. I am proud of it, but I had a lot of inner conflicts around the making of that record. And by the time I saw that she wasn't going to commit, like I remember the managers were like, hey, Melissa, talk to her about like committing to this other tour we were doing. Also, to be fair to all of us, what was the state of 90s rock music by 99?

• 57:10Speaker 03

  Korn, Limp Bizkit, like Blink 182? It was not like an inspiring environment.

• 57:16Billy Corgan?

  No, you would call alternative bands that played guitar that sat sort of in the middle of the spectrum. They were neither Lilith and they were neither nu metal.

• 57:24Speaker 03

  And we were kind of-

• 57:25Billy Corgan?

  We were all kind of getting crushed in that.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  And our identities, back to, actually, I love, thank you, you brought up me evaporating. So by 98, I'm on tour with Hole and I'm basically an ice princess. By the way, my father died while making Celebrity Skin. I was being put really in this role as like pretty girl at the photo shoots and all of a sudden I was just becoming this like mannequin to Courtney's like Hollywood. And I was being mined for my beauty, which I had, when you met me, I'm glad you think I'm, was pretty, but I did not wear makeup. I did not look at myself in the mirror. I did not think of myself as a pretty girl. I thought of myself as like a powerful like hippie who could bring love and change to the universe or something. I'm still trying to be that.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  But um, I was demoralized. By the time I was writing my resignation letter to Hole on a flight from Vancouver to LA, we had ruled, we had played Glastonbury, we headlined all these incredible, this Canadian festival. And when I saw that she was not her, she was no longer committed to it, I um, I was it, my heart left. I was like, I'm done. I'm not, I can't do this anymore for her. She's not doing it for the music. I wrote this letter, I land in LA, I'm like terrified, like talking to a lawyer, how am I going to tell Courtney that I'm leaving her band? Do you know how terrifying that is? You, again, how do you have my rotary phone number in Laurel Canyon?

• 58:54Speaker 03

  I don't know how, but I'm home that week where I'm like, I gotta get out of this bad relationship with this band Hole.

• 59:02Speaker 03

  Billy Corgan calls me in a parallel universe. Darcy has evaporated while you're making this record.

• 59:10Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 59:10Speaker 03

  Literally, I pick up the phone and this Chicago familiar voice who changes my life every time he calls says, "The stars have aligned, Melissa. It's time for you to join my band." Like, first of all, Billy, I'm in Hole, but how do you know that I am about to leave? Somehow you just picked up on it? You must have obviously knew that she was like making movies. You probably could tell that there was something shifting. How the [bleep] you knew that I had to leave Hole to join your band? And right all of a sudden, at that moment, I had already made my decision to leave Hole, but then I had this like other problem coming in, which is if I leave Hole to join The Pumpkins,

• 59:50Speaker 03

  the explosion between my grunge parents and the pawn in your weird relationship was going to like massively have, you know, so that what I don't remember. Do you know what happened? Did Courtney ever like say, "You don't take?" Because I have the facts. It's actually in my book. When I tell her that I am leaving and then she picks up on, I don't tell her I'm leaving to join you, but somehow she finds out that I'm also about to join you on your missing bass player last album of the 90s. She writes me this incredible fax. It's like, "Fine, but you better." The narrative was going to be hers.

• 1:00:35Billy Corgan?

  Of course. What did she call you? My purse?

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  She said, "So Melissa's gonna go become Billy Corgan's purse." And that was like how the only public statement she made about me leaving the band.

• 1:00:50Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  Was kind of hilarious and cool.

• 1:00:53Billy Corgan?

  Let me decode. You have your own version of Courtney decoding. I'm gonna decode it for you. As somebody who was in the game longer.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Billy Corgan?

  She picked one clean shot that would stick, but couldn't hate on me and couldn't hate on you.

• 1:01:11Speaker 03

  It was very respectful ultimately.

• 1:01:12Billy Corgan?

  So I'm saying, yeah, so you get one clean shot that'll stick.

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 1:01:16Billy Corgan?

  And the fact that it's in your book shows you.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's like.

• 1:01:19Billy Corgan?

  It's a master with language. It's like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick the one thing that's gonna stick.

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, and ultimately, what's interesting, and this is back to probably the conversation we've never had of by the time I join your band and I am like practically an evaporated like princess. Like, all I, I felt like the whole, everyone controlled my life, like, including you. And it wasn't your fault that you gave me an amazing opportunity, which, you know, when I.

• 1:01:46Billy Corgan?

  And we paid you well, too.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  Yes, you did. And also, I don't know if you're gonna remember this, but on that phone call, I said, I don't know.

• 1:01:52Billy Corgan?

  You did say I don't know.

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  And I was saying kind of no again to this second life-changing thing. And, and it was because I felt like I had no more myself.

• 1:02:01Billy Corgan?

  Yes, I didn't know that part of it.

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  Well, of course, because you and I hadn't been talking, because you and Courtney were so big, and I had just sort of like evaporated.

• 1:02:07Billy Corgan?

  Well, you had evaporated.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  Completely. And also, again, my father had died. I was like.

• 1:02:13Billy Corgan?

  Yes, trauma.

• 1:02:13Speaker 03

  I had very much in grief of my own, of my omnipresent father, who, you know, it took me a while to come out of that.

• 1:02:19Billy Corgan?

  Big personality.

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  Yes, and so you actually said the same thing, get on the plane and come listen to the record. And of course, by the time I got to Chicago and Alan Mulder Flood are mixing what I think is your best record in many ways.

• 1:02:38Billy Corgan?

  Some, some people agree with that.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  I think it's actually, it's my favorite record. I mean, Siamese Dream and Gish mean so much to me viscerally, but it's my favorite record of yours.

• 1:02:48Billy Corgan?

  It's, it's grown, it's really grown in stature in the last 10 years.

• 1:02:50Speaker 03

  As it should. And I sat there in the studio, I'm like, as if I can say no to play this music. He's annoying because he still controls me and he kind of owns me in a weird way, which was painful for me. I think that's why.

• 1:03:04Billy Corgan?

  Can I give you a different perspective on that?

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm just telling you, that was my evaporated girl like problem.

• 1:03:08Billy Corgan?

  But I want to give you a different perspective on that. There is truth in this kind of not so much that you owed me. It was like, I felt I had the best line on what was best for you. Now, if that's pedantic or two-mentary or the teacher telling the student how to live their life, but in my estimation, it was a perfect fit and I'll give you why.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:03:28Billy Corgan?

  We only needed someone to do the tour, which ended up being 11 months.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:03:33Billy Corgan?

  We didn't need you to join the band, although I asked you performatively to say you were in the band because we didn't want to yet tell people that the band was breaking up.

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:41Billy Corgan?

  I waited till the middle of 2000 to do that, famously on K-Rock out here on, with Tammy Heidi, one of my favorite DJs of all time. May 23rd, 2000, I went on the radio, live on K-Rock and jokingly said, we're tired of fighting Britney.

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  World, I remember this, yes. Whereas I actually was presented by you that it was your last tour, your last record and you're breaking up. So I probably missed that public announcement. In my mind, I knew I was joining the farewell tour.

• 1:04:07Billy Corgan?

  What I'm trying to say to you is this is.

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  No, you were helping me.

• 1:04:11Billy Corgan?

  But no, but it's true. No, but I'm saying there is, there is a certain truth to like, it's not a you owe me. It's like, I kind of know what's best for you. And up to that point, you could argue, maybe I did, maybe I didn't. But, but here's the other thing that you don't understand because we've never discussed it and this is.

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  Until right now, people.

• 1:04:26Billy Corgan?

  This is a perfect venue to discuss it.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  Can I hold your hand where you tell me?

• 1:04:29Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  Because actually, I was not open to you when I was in your band. I was quite angry about everything.

• 1:04:36Billy Corgan?

  I understand that. Okay. But here's the thing.

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:04:40Billy Corgan?

  And you talking about evaporating and let's, I'm going to give my definition of what it means to me when you say that. The Melissa that I knew, the pre-band Melissa, the arty Melissa, the Botticelli Melissa had sort of gotten lost.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 1:04:56Billy Corgan?

  In the maze of Courtney Colt's whole politics, disappointment, waiting around for her to decide she gave.

• 1:05:03Speaker 03

  Corporate takeover of the music world, corporate gloss.

• 1:05:08Billy Corgan?

  And look, you know us pretty well. I mean, you know the entire band.

• 1:05:12Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:05:14Billy Corgan?

  And so you are one of the only people on the planet. I mean, it's a very small list of people that actually knows how the pumpkins operated internally.

• 1:05:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:22Billy Corgan?

  Not the public.

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  Spiritually, metaphysically, of course.

• 1:05:25Billy Corgan?

  So in my estimation, it wasn't just, hey, here's somebody I can trust. Somebody who, you know, to Courtney's phrase, can look the part, be the part and do the gig. And by the way, everybody was comfortable because we're not bringing in an outsider. This is a family member in many ways. But the thing you don't understand until this moment is, I saw it as immolation in the sense of like, you're going to learn how to be a musician.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  You did. Well, I mean.

• 1:05:49Billy Corgan?

  We're gonna, we're gonna, you're gonna go to pumpkins college.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  Listen, I say it in my book, which was whole was my, uh, my bachelor's in humanity and the pumpkins was my master's.

• 1:05:59Billy Corgan?

  But I'm saying I, I knew that at the time.

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  And I didn't know that till I was in it. I know.

• 1:06:05Billy Corgan?

  People have asked through the years, um, it, it, it comes from an incident that happened one time. We almost never had anyone in rehearsals in the band, especially in the early days. We were, we worked almost wholly alone. And there was an incident where somebody was, uh, in the room and they didn't like the way I talked to Darcy. I was annoyed or something. It was a musical problem. It wasn't a personal issue. We weren't fighting about chocolate. We, we, it was something about music because the expectation in the pumpkins, as you know, was you're going to have to know these 50 or 60 songs. You can't, you cannot forget them.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. You can't make mistakes. There's no days off. You can't get sick. Yes, I joined that band. I know.

• 1:06:48Billy Corgan?

  If you really got to go to the hospital.

• 1:06:49Speaker 03

  I, yes.

• 1:06:50Billy Corgan?

  Okay. So you, you lived the boot camp.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  I did.

• 1:06:52Billy Corgan?

  But here's the thing, and I'm cycling back to this. This person pulled me aside and said, I was kind of a bit off put by the way you talked to Darcy. And I said, you understand what you're doing is a weird reverse form of sexism. I speak to everybody in the band like a musician.

• 1:07:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:07:11Billy Corgan?

  And when they're on the floor, we are musicians and we speak to each other like musicians. If you want me to speak differently to her because she's a woman, you're actually being disrespectful.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:21Billy Corgan?

  She's not a woman in a band. She's a musician in the band. The fact that she's female in my eyes is, is incidental.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:07:28Billy Corgan?

  So in your evaporating.

• 1:07:30Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:07:30Billy Corgan?

  And in your, and you're, you're getting lost and sitting around in all these years of waiting to make a record. It was like, hey, let's, why don't you get on this rocket ship for a year?

• 1:07:40Speaker 03

  It was the best. No, 100%. You knew I did it. It changed me forever. That that binder of the song, how I had to play that every night and the changing setlist and the tunings being different than the thing and like, what the

• 1:07:58Billy Corgan?

  I'll statistic you because you were at the last Pumpkins show, December 2nd, 2000.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  Five hour show?

• 1:08:03Billy Corgan?

  It was four hours, four and a half.

• 1:08:04Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:08:05Billy Corgan?

  It had a few breaks, but we played, it was either 38 or 43 songs.

• 1:08:11Speaker 03

  And you changed the setlist almost every night on the tour. So every night I'm waiting to hand the guitar text, this insane color-coded, like, my own, I don't even read music. I could not play a show without a whole, like, remember the changing of the notes? These sets were so, I mean, I want to thank you for my music education. It started in 1991 when I heard the music. Joining your band was the decade bookend to be able to, you know, you made me the bass player that I became for really just making two solo records after that. But that's how I was able to make records is I joined The Pumpkins for one year and

• 1:08:51Speaker 03

  I toured the world and it embedded into my cellular. Like, I am the bass player and the woman I am as a true, road-worthy, cellular-changed person for having played 182 shows in that one year.

• 1:09:10Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know we played.

• 1:09:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I counted all the things for the memoir and it was the greatest physical experience of my life, other than caring and birthing a child. Truly, it was.

• 1:09:22Billy Corgan?

  I love you and I'm glad we had that experience together.

• 1:09:24Speaker 03

  I love you too.

• 1:09:26Billy Corgan?

  Couple things.

• 1:09:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Billy Corgan?

  Because you were there, it's self-serving, but it's my show.

• 1:09:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:09:38Billy Corgan?

  Being in a group that was disintegrating, in many ways, the second group in a row that you're in that's disintegrating.

• 1:09:43Speaker 03

  Oh, so depressing, yes. And the 90s ending, by the way. We can't forget about that.

• 1:09:50Billy Corgan?

  That's actually the best point of all.

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  Heartbreaking for all of us.

• 1:09:53Billy Corgan?

  I think we all kind of felt intuitively that this story's over.

• 1:09:57Speaker 03

  Over. I know. And I still mourn it. My book is really mourning of the change of the millennium.

• 1:10:04Billy Corgan?

  I was thinking about it. I feel like you're the first person from our generation that's sort of encapsulated the era in a holographic, three-dimensional way. Other people have written stuff, but it's usually just settling scores and agenda.

• 1:10:16Speaker 03

  I dedicate the book to the decade that defined me and my generation. I would have never picked any other time to become a woman. That decade and what I witnessed as an outsider insider, because I obviously was a music fan first, but then I got swept in, thanks to you, in the inside of this magic and destruction.

• 1:10:38Billy Corgan?

  And so simultaneous.

• 1:10:39Speaker 03

  Simultaneous with the same thing happening with the corporate and digital rise that was happening in an hour arc is that I, as an outsider who meanwhile was looking at it through more of a lens of art history. You know, for me, Botticelli, I always look at my role in history is through like from the woman who posed for Botticelli for Birth of Venus to me, I don't see it as less of an arc of that.

• 1:11:03Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  And I, in that arc of the end of analog art.

• 1:11:09Billy Corgan?

  Sorry, is the point that we know Botticelli, but we don't know her name?

• 1:11:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Her name is Simonetta, and she died of consumption in her 20s. And she's one of the most famous, you know, redhead faces in the world. And that in photography, that's what I was working on. And in my photo book, I'm going to be showing my studies. And turning the camera on me was so that I could become the muse to the female photographer. And I was taking it, taking agency for the muses of Botticelli, basically. So by the time we're in 2000 and 2001, I recognized that the 20th century was ending. The corporate digital monsters were coming to eat our souls, which we are now seeing has happened.

• 1:11:51Billy Corgan?

  Yes, it's fully fleshed now.

• 1:11:52Speaker 03

  And that to me.

• 1:11:54Billy Corgan?

  Wait till AI kicks in.

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  It's happening and it's terrifying. I am going on this tour of this memoir. To be the voice of that last analog decade. So that I, as a woman, so that I, for my 14 year old daughter, can bring as much I can through weaving these tales with you, the magic that we carried in that last decade, to be able to spin it back into people.

• 1:12:19Billy Corgan?

  As the last true analog generation.

• 1:12:21Speaker 03

  It already happened. It is, we are the last, it's, we're the pro-human, pro-analog generation that has gifts to give the future. And I want to highlight, that's why we're making this documentary. That's why I'm writing this book. It's why I'm taking my photos out of the archive is I want to solely go on tour to speak to people, whether they're Gen Xers or teenagers now.

• 1:12:43Billy Corgan?

  If I can give you one statistic that might encourage you right now, based on our most recent data from Spotify, 53% of the Pumpkins' audience is under 35.

• 1:12:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, so cool.

• 1:12:54Billy Corgan?

  So.

• 1:12:54Speaker 03

  There's hope.

• 1:12:56Billy Corgan?

  They want something tactile.

• 1:12:59Speaker 03

  They want authenticity and they want people like us who lived before this. Lived before this, lived through this.

• 1:13:07Billy Corgan?

  You're not going to be able to trump that. I do.

• 1:13:11Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:13:12Billy Corgan?

  Obviously, memory is what memory is. I'm going to hold your book up again.

• 1:13:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:13:16Billy Corgan?

  I highly encourage people to read this beautiful book. There's even a couple of pictures of me in there.

• 1:13:22Speaker 03

  I brought, here, give it to me while you're telling me. Whatever you're saying, tell me I'm handing you something. Yeah, what are you saying?

• 1:13:28Billy Corgan?

  Aw.

• 1:13:30Speaker 03

  This was the day I opened up for you and you told me I was going to be in your band one day.

• 1:13:34Billy Corgan?

  Right, I gotta go this way.

• 1:13:35Speaker 03

  This is selfie, because I apparently went to school for selfies, because I was taking photos of myself in 94 when nobody else was. But that's my Billy and Melissa selfie.

• 1:13:44Billy Corgan?

  My little Botticelli.

• 1:13:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:48Billy Corgan?

  There's things in there where you're telling a story that involves me and I'm like, I don't quite remember it like that.

• 1:13:53Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:13:54Billy Corgan?

  And.

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  It's gonna happen.

• 1:13:55Billy Corgan?

  As somebody who's dealt with public shame a lot, there's that.

• 1:13:59Speaker 03

  I don't shame you.

• 1:14:00Billy Corgan?

  No, no, no, no, no. Let me finish. There's almost a reflexive feeling of like, do I have to defend this or give my side of the story? And I had a couple of days and I resisted the temptation to write you to kind of quibble with the story.

• 1:14:15Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you. You waited till right now?

• 1:14:16Billy Corgan?

  No, no, no, I'm not, actually, I'm not quibbling now. What I'm saying is, is that.

• 1:14:22Billy Corgan?

  As somebody who's in the book, I had to kind of do this thing of like, and I feel like it was around Christmas, I had to do this thing like,

• 1:14:33Billy Corgan?

  because I do believe memory is not accurate.

• 1:14:36Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 1:14:36Billy Corgan?

  So what I'm saying, and I'm not accusing you of inaccurate memory, what I'm saying is, is you told your story and you told it with integrity.

• 1:14:45Speaker 03

  And with my own sense of, so memoirs.

• 1:14:49Billy Corgan?

  Let me finish this. So I had to make, I made peace with it because at the end of the day, I'm supportive of you telling your story.

• 1:14:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:14:57Billy Corgan?

  And I think that goes to the nature of our relationship now for over 30 years. I value your take on it, even if I don't always agree or understand.

• 1:15:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, also.

• 1:15:06Billy Corgan?

  I hope you can see that because that's at the, that's at the root of my faith in you.

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  Of course. This is why you wrote to me and said, do you want to be on my podcast to support your book? Because I don't know how to get through the algorithm because I just joined Instagram a year ago. I need help to get this story out because I actually remain in the analog world and I quit when I became a mother. I did not.

• 1:15:24Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't write music and I don't, you know, I, I really removed myself from everything when I became a mother and now I'm kind of coming back to tell my story. But I want you not now to tell me the parts that don't seem like accurate.

• 1:15:41Billy Corgan?

  Because in very Piscean nature, I let it go.

• 1:15:44Speaker 03

  Right. And you, what I like about what you're saying, most importantly, is that the same person who witnessed my evaporation, and by the time I joined your band, my sort of like arms length to everybody, because I did not trust anybody.

• 1:15:56Billy Corgan?

  Including me, by the way.

• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I didn't trust anybody and I fell in love with some like other dude who was sort of adding an extra shadow to my life. I was like.

• 1:16:05Billy Corgan?

  And not just any dude.

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  Right. So there was a lot of like shadows. I was cast. I was just, you know, it was a hard time for me. That's why I wasn't open to your invitation for your next music project.

• 1:16:15Billy Corgan?

  Okay, but that's what, that's where I do want to correct you.

• 1:16:18Speaker 03

  Okay. Great. That was the part of the book. So let me tell you.

• 1:16:21Billy Corgan?

  Please, please.

• 1:16:22Speaker 03

  One thing is that you cared of what I'm realizing 25 years later, I write this book. And it's not only about Billy Corgan, obviously. It's about my parents. It's about. Who I was in high school. It's about who I was to Courtney. It's a, it is.

• 1:16:37Billy Corgan?

  It's a 90s story.

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  And it's how also a good girl who really did good things for other people. I was sort of like a, I was a good daughter. I was a good bass player. I was a supportive person. I lost myself along the way. And I had to find myself to take agency for my own life. And this book is solely, because you're right, memory is inaccurate. And I took a lot of memory, memoir classes and they actually encourage you to follow your personal intuition of your story that you need to tell. And you're actually encouraged to change facts even.

• 1:17:12Billy Corgan?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:17:13Speaker 03

  The memoir is different than like an analytical biography.

• 1:17:16Billy Corgan?

  Because it's ultimately a story.

• 1:17:17Speaker 03

  It's subjective.

• 1:17:18Billy Corgan?

  Yep.

• 1:17:18Speaker 03

  And I want, and my experience of what happened is what matters, not what actually did, what did Billy say or what did? So my experience.

• 1:17:26Billy Corgan?

  I do need to correct you on one thing.

• 1:17:27Speaker 03

  Oh, good. I can't wait to hear the correction. But I am, I'm just proud of myself, even coming here on the show today, having never talked to you about any of this until right now, is that I found my story. Like I, I got to tell my story.

• 1:17:41Billy Corgan?

  That's why I encourage people to read it.

• 1:17:42Speaker 03

  Thank you. Yeah.

• 1:17:43Billy Corgan?

  It's not, it's not the, hey, I was around all these famous people.

• 1:17:49Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:17:50Billy Corgan?

  Let me tell you the inside baseball and I was lucky to be there. It's like, no, I was part of this story. Here's my side of the story, which most of you probably don't know.

• 1:17:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, because who knows?

• 1:17:59Billy Corgan?

  And then in hindsight, and I think we're doing it here today too, you can also help people understand your value in that story.

• 1:18:06Speaker 03

  And I get to help understand these radical and, you know, more known people, you and Courtney and reframing a lot of that, but also our generation. I had an outsider insider view of our generation and what happened, which was both terrible.

• 1:18:21Billy Corgan?

  Like a journalist and a photographer.

• 1:18:22Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. And a daughter of two journalists.

• 1:18:25Billy Corgan?

  Yes. Okay, so.

• 1:18:26Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, here it is.

• 1:18:28Billy Corgan?

  No, no, it's honestly, it's honestly fairly subtle.

• 1:18:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:18:31Billy Corgan?

  So the context for this, this, this correction with a capital C.

• 1:18:37Speaker 03

  Spoiler alert for the book, yes?

• 1:18:39Billy Corgan?

  No, no, it's, it's, it's, I understand, reading it, why you probably have a, a, a memory that's slightly different than mine.

• 1:18:48Billy Corgan?

  What happened was, uh, we did this 11 month tour. It took a while to click in. Of course, people were doing the classic, where's Darcy? What happened to the band? All that stuff. The band is internally falling apart. Uh, the record company is abandoning us. The venues are smaller, but as the tour goes on, it actually catches momentum. I don't know if you remember that, but about halfway through the tour, a journalist in Chicago actually pulled me aside after I announced the band was breaking up and said, you're insane to break the band up now. He said, he said, you have so much momentum. You've actually recaptured true organic momentum. Do not break up the band. My publisher, my publisher at the time, a man named Tom Sturgis, um, son of the, of the great, uh, screenwriter Preston Sturgis.

• 1:19:30Billy Corgan?

  And the man who gave me my first publishing deal, he came to Chicago and said, do not break up the band.

• 1:19:34Speaker 03

  And this is the, the stuff that's helpful for me to hear because I was so armsy. I didn't even like, in my mind, I was just like, I knew nothing.

• 1:19:43Billy Corgan?

  Our relationship was kind of cordially distant.

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:19:46Billy Corgan?

  Uh, we love each other, but it was like, you do your thing. I'll do my thing. Okay. So, uh, I'll see you on stage. But here's the thing that you probably don't remember. And, and I think the reason I'm, I'm not just saying it to sort of try to correct the record. I want you to understand there's a point to this.

• 1:20:01Speaker 03

  Great.

• 1:20:02Billy Corgan?

  So this band is gathering momentum and gathering momentum. And by the time we get to the band's final, uh, this is something you probably wouldn't remember. Uh, I go to the promoters in Chicago, Jam Productions, and I say, we're going to do a final show. The band's going to break up. Okay, fine. What do you want to do? I said, I want to do the last show at the Metro. That's where we started, full circle. But I'd like to do an arena show, uh, cause we've been a lot of big shows in Europe. Uh, I'd like to do that set, uh, I think two days before the final show, day off, and then we'll do the final show. But I also want to do a show in, uh, I, I think we should do the same show in Los Angeles and New York. So I'd like to do like, uh, the Forum or Staples Center, Madison Square Garden,

• 1:20:46Billy Corgan?

  then come home to Chicago, do the United Center where the bowls play. And then we, we end at the Metro and that's it. Bob's your uncle, the band's done. And that was, that was real. The band was going to end.

• 1:20:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:56Billy Corgan?

  So here's where you, here's probably what you don't remember. Number one, uh, we put the tickets on sale. Uh, they told me I was, they told me there's no way you're going to sell out Los Angeles and New York and you're crazy, so we're not going to do it.

• 1:21:08Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:21:09Billy Corgan?

  They told me to pound sand and I think of a better way to put it, but that's the nice version.

• 1:21:15Billy Corgan?

  Uh, you can imagine the Chicago version of that. The tickets go on sale and they blow out in five minutes. I mean, the demand is through the roof. They literally called me the same day and say, okay, now we're ready to put Los Angeles. And I said, we just advertised, these are the last shows.

• 1:21:29Speaker 03

  Uh huh, so we can't, yeah.

• 1:21:31Billy Corgan?

  No, they said, no, we can, we can put the shows on before. You can do LA and New York and then go to Chicago.

• 1:21:36Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:21:36Billy Corgan?

  And I said, you just told me we couldn't do it. Well, look at the ticket sales and now they're doing the music business thing. Oh, now you're hot, now we want you. And so I said, no, forget that.

• 1:21:45Speaker 03

  Okay, that's why we didn't, I wish we had played those shows, but anyway.

• 1:21:48Billy Corgan?

  Well.

• 1:21:49Speaker 03

  I mean, we were still good at that moment, so like, what an incredible.

• 1:21:52Billy Corgan?

  We rehearsed, I think approximately three to four weeks to do the final show. I actually have, I actually have all the tapes, believe me.

• 1:21:59Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:22:00Billy Corgan?

  Yes, I have the, all our rehearsals, I have them all.

• 1:22:02Speaker 03

  Amazing, that's cute for the Pumpkins documentary you make one day.

• 1:22:07Billy Corgan?

  But here's, here's, here's the crux of the story, you know, we'll get to wrapping it up.

• 1:22:15Billy Corgan?

  In, in the, in the interim, as we're rehearsing for the final shows, I'm going in the studio during the night or the day, and I'm finishing what is Machina 2.

• 1:22:24Speaker 03

  Okay, which I kind of vaguely only remember.

• 1:22:27Billy Corgan?

  I'm trying to finish up all the tapes. Now, I have a band that's got momentum, we have public momentum, we have internal momentum, we're playing great. I mean, there's a lot of fire on that tour. If anybody's ever seen us play, playing in Korea, I mean, we are.

• 1:22:39Speaker 03

  Oh my God, the best.

• 1:22:40Billy Corgan?

  Fire, I mean, we're on.

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  I mean, I truly have never played a bass like that again in my life.

• 1:22:44Billy Corgan?

  Okay, point proven. So, so I came to you and I said, listen, I've got this crazy idea. Just hear me out, I know you want to get out of here. I know you want to get out of here. I know you're planning your vacation to Tahiti or whatever. January 2nd.

• 1:23:00Speaker 03

  Yes, I don't remember this.

• 1:23:02Billy Corgan?

  I've already arranged with the Metro, if you're willing, that we would go in the Metro in January of 2000. So we'll, we'll, we'll be on the same stage that we played the last show. So we will literally be writing and, and, and documenting the, the last glimmers of this band, because I thought the band would never get back together. We're going to actually record a posthumous record that no one knows we're doing. We will do it in secret, I've already got everyone's agreement, that we will record a record in secret. I need four weeks of your time, that's all I need. And what I want to do is, I either want to go ahead and release it. I either want to go ahead and release it,

• 1:23:43Billy Corgan?

  or I want to put in a can so some future date it'll have some value. It's like, oh, you thought the band ended here. We actually had this little coda of four weeks where we went in. And I, and the other pitch I said to you, because I could see your eyes kind of going, oh, God, he's roping me in, was, was I said, it's, it'll be a warts and all project, meaning whatever comes out of it.

• 1:24:04Speaker 03

  It doesn't have to be perfect.

• 1:24:05Billy Corgan?

  It's, it's a docu, it's, it's a process of document, documentary of the band disintegrating.

• 1:24:11Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:24:12Billy Corgan?

  It's like, uh, it's like putting a camera on someone as they take their last breaths. So we'll film it.

• 1:24:17Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:24:17Billy Corgan?

  We'll record it and then we'll figure out what to do with it. And you go, I appreciate what you're saying. No.

• 1:24:24Speaker 03

  Do you know I have no recollection of this?

• 1:24:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I can understand why.

• 1:24:27Speaker 03

  And I wrote this whole book by heart. I never even looked at anything. I remembered everything. I erased that out of my mind.

• 1:24:32Billy Corgan?

  So, so.

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  Wow, you really saw an evaporated human being because I don't remember that.

• 1:24:37Billy Corgan?

  So in the book, what you say is, is I come to you kind of at the end of the cycle. And I'm trying to convince you to soldier on. And you go politely, I love you, but I got to get the hell out of here. That's not what happened. I tried to sell you on four more weeks of commitment so that we could document what we created. And I wanted you to be part of that.

• 1:24:56Speaker 03

  A recorded thing because I never got to record with you. I am sad.

• 1:25:01Billy Corgan?

  No, no, it's okay.

• 1:25:01Speaker 03

  I actually, well, if I were me now, I would have recommended I do it.

• 1:25:05Billy Corgan?

  Why after that I felt like kind of, I wasn't mad. I was just kind of like, do you not understand what you just said? No, I can understand why James said no to it. Jimmy was fine with it.

• 1:25:15Speaker 03

  Did James say no to?

• 1:25:16Billy Corgan?

  He said absolutely not.

• 1:25:17Speaker 03

  Oh, I must have been in sync with James. No, but actually at that point, because as you know, James and I were really close on the road because we liked the similar fashion and photography and had mutual friends. Maybe I kind of knew he was going to say no and that's why I said no.

• 1:25:32Billy Corgan?

  It's all good. It was meant to be.

• 1:25:33Speaker 03

  That's interesting. I, obviously now, wish we had.

• 1:25:38Billy Corgan?

  The writer in me mourns that we don't have that document.

• 1:25:40Speaker 03

  I didn't write a document. I didn't, we didn't even ever got to write together, even though you then invited me to Chicago and wrote one song on my solo record. And it was more, I didn't get to use that either. Okay, I am sad about that.

• 1:25:51Billy Corgan?

  No, but it's fine.

• 1:25:53Speaker 03

  But I actually am impressed that you didn't hound me harder. That you just sort of let me be the frozen. No, thank you. I'm very strange. I'm actually, because I feel like if you had insisted harder, maybe you couldn't have convinced me.

• 1:26:06Billy Corgan?

  That's the dividing line, and I think as adults now, we can talk about it. The dividing line is, I've always had respect for you.

• 1:26:12Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:26:13Billy Corgan?

  And if there's any pressure in any of the moments along the way, it was because I thought I had a better version of it for you. But if at the end of the day, but if at the end of the day, you didn't believe it, I didn't want it.

• 1:26:25Speaker 03

  Well, I think it's because at that point, we nailed it earlier, is I didn't trust anybody. I didn't, I was very.

• 1:26:30Billy Corgan?

  Well, you were traumatized.

• 1:26:30Speaker 03

  I was traumatized by all of the things that happened. I didn't trust you anymore.

• 1:26:34Billy Corgan?

  So I gotta read the book to read about the trauma.

• 1:26:36Speaker 03

  And I didn't trust you. I think, I think in my mind, there was this feeling of they only want me for the value that I can offer them and their world. They don't want me for what's good for me. I really felt like no one had, was looking out for me, that everybody, I mean, and if you see the world of the brutal, brutal music industry that it was, I mean, why should I trust anyone? And I, I really felt like my value was only worth, you know.

• 1:27:07Billy Corgan?

  I get it.

• 1:27:08Speaker 03

  Worth it for what it brought to you. But I now know, especially because of the testament to time, in the same way that Courtney and I are so close now, and she really did forgive me for leaving the band. I mean, she had other stuff to do and she had to like self-destruct after that.

• 1:27:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:22Speaker 03

  But you both and me, towards you, we really deeply care about our sole purpose in this lifetime of ours. And that I now know very much so that you were looking out for me as this young girl, like some metaphysical crazy fantasy that I needed to live out. But you did not hound me to stay, and I'm pretty grateful for that, too. Thank you. But I am surprised that I don't remember.

• 1:27:50Billy Corgan?

  It was time to go.

• 1:27:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:52Billy Corgan?

  I mean, in many ways, it's, you know, if you could read it almost in the shadow of it, it's, it's, it's somebody trying to hold on to something, you know, for another heartbeat.

• 1:28:01Speaker 03

  Right. You, you're saying?

• 1:28:03Billy Corgan?

  Well, all of it.

• 1:28:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:04Billy Corgan?

  The death of the band was

• 1:28:06Speaker 03

  was very traumatic for you, of course. No, and I guess that's what's sad is that because I had this sort of daughter, everyone owns me, living in the shadow issue that I, which is definitely what this book is about. And that's, I think, why, like, underdogs will like this book is it's about someone who survived being in the shadow of everybody and got to 25 years later, be my own person and tell it my way is that I did not have time to consider you and what you were going through, which was you had lost Darcy, your band was evaporating and breaking in as a Pumpkins fan. You know, had I not been in the band, I would have been mourning with you. But instead, I was traumatized like everybody was, and I was mourning ultimately for our generation

• 1:28:51Speaker 03

  and everything we all lost.

• 1:28:53Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:53Speaker 03

  We were in trauma collectively, entering a future that we all sensitive Pisces freaks knew was gonna be pretty weird. Like, we felt, you know, the writing was on the wall of where we were all gonna go as a culture. And I think we all retreated into our own mourning and warning and individual drama that didn't allow us to see the others. And I, same with Courtney, it took me a decade to even really see what happened to Courtney after I left. You know, yeah, she became this huge Hollywood star, but then had never mourned the death of her husband, had never mourned the fact that people accused her of killing her. That all of us just went terrible, so evil.

• 1:29:37Billy Corgan?

  Including your own father.

• 1:29:38Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so I think that we all retreated and we weren't able to be there for each other. I was definitely not there for you. You know, I didn't have any perspective of what Billy was going through because in my mind, I'm like the huge pumpkin, the big boss, he, you know, he's always had control. I don't have, so I think where we're at now is that we're really good friends for each other because we now see the perspective, and you forgive me for not saying yes to that cool opportunity. I forgive you for, like, I thought you just tried to own me so that you could get something from me, which like, what did you, you could have had any bass player, but you chose me.

• 1:30:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, the one thing I would say as an addendum to that is

• 1:30:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:20Billy Corgan?

  You know, the pumpkins has died various deaths along the way.

• 1:30:24Speaker 03

  Now you, yes, you have a whole other chapter that happened.

• 1:30:26Billy Corgan?

  Sure, but but there's been multiple fatalities along the way. And and sadly, even real fatalities. But but the thing I would point out to you, and I would say this to you privately in the in the exact same way is it was a very close circle.

• 1:30:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:45Billy Corgan?

  And and yes, we had different people come in, but the only people we let in the circle in those 14, 13 years, whatever it was, was you and Garson, Mike Garson.

• 1:30:55Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Sweet Garson. Yeah, I am honored, as you know, and obviously I was there from the ground up in that beer bottle moment and my pledge to you then truly was a pledge from a for I was the one who came to you. I was the one who opened the spiritual relationship.

• 1:31:11Billy Corgan?

  It's your fault.

• 1:31:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I made this happen. I made us happen. Let's put it that way.

• 1:31:16Billy Corgan?

  I love you.

• 1:31:17Speaker 03

  I love you too.

• 1:31:18Billy Corgan?

  Thank you for doing the show.

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  Fun.

• 1:31:20Billy Corgan?

  And best of luck on the book.

• 1:31:21Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you.