As documented here, the relationship between Billy Corgan and Courtney Love has had so many different chapters over the years that you’d probably need more than one volume to get the whole saga down. But the pair seem to have struck a cordial note in middle-age, as Corgan revealed in a recent interview with Alison Hagendorf on her show. “I was just texting with her two days ago,” the Smashing Pumpkins frontman said as talk turned to Love. “We’ll talk once every six or eight weeks. She’s a furious texter, let’s put it that way. It’s a text storm! And it can be about anything, we were talking about Rothschilds one second and what’s in the news next and it’s all good. 1990 is when we first met, they were touring on their first album or single, which was on Caroline at the time, also our label, and the rest is history.”
Corgan, who had a hand in co-writing some of Love’s biggest hits by way of his work on their 1998 album Celebrity Skin, said he was aware that Love was working on new material and that he was keen to collaborate again but respected the fact Love had found a new crew of artistic sparring partners. “I’ve offered to help a couple of times but I think she’s fallen in with some people in England that she likes,” he said. “I’ve heard some stuff, I don’t have any particular opinion, good or bad because I think what’s she’s after is something I don’t totally understand but Courtney doesn’t lack a perspective, that’s never been the issue. But because of her raw musical talent, she’s still reliant on other people to translate. I like to think that in that thing, I’ve been the best partner in translating her version into something that an average fan on the street would understand."
Looking back to his work on Celebrity Skin – he co-wrote two hits in the title track and Malibu alongside album cuts Hit So Hard, Petals and Dying – Corgan said he got to experience up close what Love herself brings to the songwriting process and acknowledged the unbased rumours that have dogged Love throughout her career that she didn’t write her own songs. “Of course, I’ve heard through the years all the different conspiracy theories about who did what, where, when,” Corgan stated. “It’s like saying ‘This great actor isn’t a great actor because somebody else wrote the movie’ and I’m not saying she didn’t write the movie, what I’m saying it, people sometimes confuse the raw talent versus the personality. Courtney wouldn’t have been Courtney and still be Courtney if the raw talent wasn’t part of that equation. You couldn’t write that script the way she wrote it so whether she had help from other people, I’m not really sure or to what extent, I know what I did and my entire attempt, and I do think it has a lot to do with why it’s her most successful record, wasn’t because I was involved, it was because I was able to translate her raw musical vision, which is very specific, it’s a little bit Patti Smith and it’s a little bit Echo & The Bunnymen and it’s a little bit Nirvana, but at the end of the day she’s a unique musical voice and so I was able to break that into the Xs and Os.”
Corgan said he got a call from Celebrity Skin’s producer Michael Beinhorn at the time to congratulate him on his work. “He called me and said, ‘You did a really good job because I totally understand what she wants but I also understand how you made it easy for me to put together so everybody’s happy’,” he recalled. “Because she was on a major label and they wanted a successful record. So for everybody who doubted her ability to be successful as an artist, well that’s the record that brings all those pieces together.”
Watch the full interview with Billy Corgan, where he also discusses his own band, touring with Green Day alongside some inevitable wrestling chat and more below:
