The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - Courtney Love | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

In this long-awaited conversation, Billy Corgan sits down with Courtney Love. Courtney reflects on her fractured childhood, counterculture upbringing, and complicated family history—growing up around drugs, instability, and radical independence. From juvenile hall to early psychedelics, she traces the shift from feeling like a victim to becoming a force. Together, they take direct aim at the myths: the gatekeeping of the ’90s indie scene, the class politics hiding behind “authenticity,” and the real price women in rock paid for ambition. Along the way: punk beginnings, ABBA vs. Zeppelin, and an unflinching look at confidence, control, and survival.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I was confident after that. I got cocky. I got cocky. I was confident. First time I ever laid eyes on you, the memory I have is the shoulders, kind of thrown back. Yeah. And it's just this confidence. I throw out 10,000 tangents so no one can get to me.

Sure. Well, I've chased you down many others. I know, Billy. Like, this is terrifying. My two memories of watching you play at the Avalon that night, you know, was the cool guitar stuff happening. and then this just never-ending screen. And what is the source of this? You wouldn't give me money for smokes.

You're still mad. I am. Courtney, thank you for being on my podcast. Anytime, Billy Corgan. I love it. Okay, well, this is going to be a hundred-part series. I know. So this is part one and two.

I know. Okay, let's start here. Okay. I'm going to jump around a little bit, which I sure doesn't surprise you. No, I do that too. Let's talk a little bit about mom and dad. Oh, wow. Wow.

My blood just ran cold. Oh, my God, of all things, Porgan. Okay. Dad was an interesting guy. Yeah. In the Grateful Dead world. Yeah. And then in the Irish Holy Grail world.

And in the LSD giving LSD to his child at the Hayd Ashbury world, you know, he's got a hero's journey, as lame as he was. was, oh, in the Steve Jobs, working at Apple before any one world, and then getting fired from Apple, because Wozniak liked him, and getting fired from, he would attract, like, Peter Albin from the Big Brother. You know, Peter Albin, you do too. It's like a very... Big Brother in the Holy Company? Yeah, he was that guy. Okay. He was that guy. I don't think he's the guy that went to Texas. You know this stuff. You're like AI. He didn't go to Texas and get Janice back, but he was in Big Brother. Okay. Am I wrong?

I'm not... You were just doing forensic on electric ruins. I'm in the snob crowd that likes Janice without the holding company. Me too. I thought they were a really bad band. So there's something there. Well, yeah, the recording in Chicago, you would know about that. Yeah.

It's a crap recording, honestly. It's hard to get through it. I understand. It's still gold. So Peter Albin, if I'm not, my father, he was... Have you heard Janice Joplin's? It's very raw. her recordings early on like 64 with Yorma from from from the airplane they're called the

typewriter tapes because somebody's typing why they're singing I heard some really raw it's her singing it's her singing early blues with Jorma playing guitar I've heard something from Texas it's on Spotify you can find it yeah no no this is when she's in San Francisco and she's like 18 years old yeah because she went there twice and people think the hate was this really great place my memory of of the hate aspery, other than my father giving me acid from about three to six, until my mother noticed and he got his custody taken away, is that it was dank and dirty and awful and people wore on heroin.

And so the whole, and or early meth, right? So the whole Summer of Love thing, they just used the same footage over and over, like two days in Golden Gate Park. Not kidding. Well, it was the apotheosis they had it. They actually got it on tape. The whole Fillmore thing was. dark and the Janice thing that tracks is that she ended up on smack she ended up in sex

work tracks for me I get it and had you go back to Texas twice well it is a gold rush town von dieck absolutely I always think the way towns reformed it never leaves their the lane the lane no you're right you're right you're right you mason you're right you're mason you're Mormon. The DNA thing is real. Okay, so let's talk about mom a little bit. She doesn't really have a hero's journey that I've figured out yet. Maybe she has to pass. Well, isn't she just like the classic white intellectual, snobby therapist type?

Yeah, but adopted by rich Italians, who I adored, who couldn't have children, who wanted a blonde, blue-eyed child. My mother's mostly Jewish, but she is blonde and blue-eyed. It took some 23 me to figure that one out. But she always would try when she became a hippie. So she inherited a lot of money from the Reese's, who I adored. It is said, because my father is not credible, that he was the treasurer of Bohemian Grove. But then my sister showed me the country house that I thought was the other way.

It's in Russian River. It's right on. Oh, I know Russian River. Oh, right on, right next to Guernville, right on. Bohemian Grove. It's a big old house with like the naughty pine and the eames share. They were really rich. They lived at 999 Green Street in the entire penthouse, dormant maids.

My mother had a maid when she lived in the avenues named Modell. But then we would get up at 5am and stuff. My stepfather's boots, who was a garbage man with newspapers. So I'm pretty class neutral because I've been all the things. No, I really am. I've been on food stamps. My mother inherited a lot of money. And they met, my mother and father met at a dizzy Gillespie after party.

My mother was kind of a bit of a groupie. She had fur coat, hot pants, looked a little like Mary Ann Faithful. And all her friends like her best friend was Abigail Folger. Let's start there. Oh, yeah. Okay. I mean, honestly, I didn't know that Manson lived in San Francisco. When I read that book, Chaos, the scales fell from my eyes.

because there's erasus, all of his first children were with, like, Petaluma moneyed women, Petaluma, and then I was like, there's just no difference between the murderers and the murdered in this world of mine. And also the M.K. Ultra child, this is on social media. I thought M.K. Ultra was Q&O. No, no, this is a totally different thing. It's real. I mean, my father was too stupid to be a spook. Do you ever see the stuff where they say that even Jessica Simpson's in MK.? Ultra kid. Come on. We're all MK Ultrasa. People in the Midwest probably aren't, but we all are. Well, you may not remember this, but you used to say way, way back in the day, you've got to be Jewish to me. And I was like, no, I'm... To you? Yeah. I thought you had the people... I do, I do have, I do have some blood in there.

Right. Well, I'm married to a Jew, but my kids are Jews. A Chinese Jew, though. As my friend, as my friend said when he found it, I was in love with a Chinese Jew, he said, did you make her in a test tube. For you, yeah, dynasties, dynasties. Dynastics. It's really, I wish I thought in dynastas. It's really interesting being with a woman who's steeped both, because, you know, her one side is Polish-Russian.

Okay. And we know how that rolls. Yeah. Like, you will not kill us. Yeah. We're going to win, no matter what. Right. And the other side is dynastic.

It's really interesting being with those bloodlines. Five thousand years. Oh, we know what we're doing. Yeah. Absolutely. Dynastic. Yeah, it's all about the family. Yeah.

It's all about billing. So it took me a while to figure out because, you know, in the American ethos, a woman of ambition, it's like, oh, they just want your money. A call it. An Eastern woman, the money is money. Incidental. No. I want to rule the world. Yeah.

Do you know tracking that recently, Rupert Murdoch cut some kids out of his will, but I knew this would happen. He put the Wendy Dang Murdoch kids back in. I was like, yeah. I knew that. Justice for Wendy Dang Murdoch. He was married to a very ambitious from Heart Scrabble. A woman named Wendy Dang, and she was Chinese. Oh, I do you remember that?

Yeah, she became a translator. And, I mean, this woman was, people were really pissed off at her. I loved it. I loved it. I like her. Like, yeah. And then they got a divorce over some weird. And then she had two kids, but I have two daughters.

He kicked some kids out of his well, and he put those daughters back in. Yeah. Dynastic. Dynastic. Of course, you referred to the LSD Times, but... I don't remember it. And also, I went to a neurologist at King's College, or Burial College, London, and my friend knew this neurologist. I didn't want to find out any of the bad stuff that happens when toddlers' brains. But I wanted to find out the good stuff, and it wasn't just San Francisco people that dose their toddlers and kids. It was a lot of Brits. A lot of Brits did it, too. And she said, I said, what's the commonality with us? That's a little trance.

tribe of LSD toddlers. And she said, and kids, two young kids, like under 10. And she said, well, you all are pretty chaotic. And sometimes you're really OCD controlling. And you're all really open-minded. I'm like, yeah, I know there's that. Oh. And I kind of know more information, but I was pleased with those two. It would seem, though, if, I mean, I didn't have that experience, not that I know it, my father was constantly smoking weed. So I was stone half my childhood. Right. But you liked a, you liked a psychedelic, what I meant. You'd like to. You'd like to, a mushroom? When we first met in the early 90s, it was a lot of LSD.

Yeah. Mushrooms less so. I like that about you, though. You were very, like, la-di-da, with your bell around your neck, you were like exploring the vacuum. La-di-da. Well, I came from such a colorless world. Yeah. That the throw open the gates to.

And the sky was made available. Sure. I mean, you're very colorful when I met you. Yeah. But I'm saying is it was like, oh, there's this other thing. I'd felt it in literature by reading, you know, whether it was. But look at this palette that you chose. It's like a mauve-pink, a silvery gold.

Astrologically, I'm moving heavy into Venus right now. We can talk about that. Oh, wow. Okay. Nice thing is my daughter has the same thing in her chart. Oh, really? So we share this. It's coming for me.

It's an emerging love of color and smell and food. I was born with that. But I've never had it my whole life. You old, you know, you had color. No, no, no, but, but I'm saying is it wasn't from here. It was an aesthetic attraction, but it didn't come from within. Oh, I felt like it was super genuine. You know what, though, with the music, with the musicality,

I think that that's maybe what sold it. And then as you progress, like, Madame Zuzzoos, I was like, wait, he's into tea. And the cats and the wrestling, I love your, and your house, that house is a regency, No, it's pre-regency jewel box. Yeah. I've been in that house. Yeah. I've been in that house where you were on a very green couch playing Xbox,

and I was with my guitar play, and you look like Bob Geldof in the wall. You did, you're like this. And you wouldn't get off this very stiff couch that was not comfortable. Yeah. And me and Lisa were decorating the Christmas ticket. What? He's like Bob Geldof in the wall. That's what it felt like.

Yeah, but that house is crazy beautiful. Like I saw Oprah's house. I saw that architect Roe. Your house is the best. It's weathering heights. Didn't I say that to you then? You did. That November, I don't know what year, is not sometime.

Oh, wait, or something? I think I, at some point I invited you to come back and stay and you said, I don't, I'm scared to Miss Haversham or something. No, and smoking, which I don't do anymore. I was scared of smoking in there. And it was beautiful. It was on the lake. It was no, I was, we're still there.

Christmas, it was like raging wind. It was watering heights. I'm pointing these details out not to, dive down the rabbit hole of them, you're welcome to. But, you know, like a lot of our generation, you got divorces and, you know. Death. Huh? Death. A lot of death. Good times. Good times. So it begins this period. I think if my memory serves as eight or nine,

because I went back and refreshed my memory. But, you know, eight or nine, your life goes from whatever it was to suddenly you're, you know, you're going to Eugene and Portland. Oh, me. back of me. There's different, now there's different stepdad's. You know, I'd think it's not exclusive to us that. That happened. That's why when I went to the neurologist, there's a bunch of kids that had LSD,

it made me feel good. Oh, I see. But as I like to say, you know, we grew up with that boomer, those boomer parents who were more, my joke is they were more obsessed with cocaine and yoga. Or weed in yoga. Sure, but I'm saying we all were kind of the byproducts of this. Yeah, like Lachki kids or. Yeah.

Too much Gilligan's Island, you know. Yeah, no, we went there and our parents like, that's garbage because they were like, you're, you told me about your dad having like long hair and a fur coat and a purse. I'm like, I hear that. I also suspect. In 72, by the way. By this. 72. Did you have a Camaro in high school?

Yes. Okay. That like puts you in a whole privilege available from the rest of us. Slow down. I've been making fun of that Camaro. I just want to get it right. I inherited the family 1975 Camero, which my. which my dad later stole from me.

Okay. They signed over the title. What color was your Camaro? Silver. Black interior. Wow, that's hot. I'll let you imagine what went on in a carmado in high school. Lucky you.

That's a scorecard. I have an amazing story that I can't tell here. I'll tell you about the Camaro. Okay. I mean, it's an amazing story. It's one I've never told publicly. I'm taking up my Bougie ring. It really is upsetting me.

So I guess I'm just pointing at the fact that, you know, so so begins this disassociative life of different people and mom getting divorced. Or hypervigilant, too. Which leads to, okay, hypervigilance. And disassociative. They're both. They're both in there. Well, I'm from living.

I mean, I'm here. But it strikes me that, you know, it's, it, it arcs a particular way, which is, let's call it not good. Yeah. You know, chaotic and not good. Foster home group. No, no, I chose that. I chose that. Okay.

Explain that then. Okay. I was safer. well, I heard the runaways and they were really glazing juvenile hall. And I started kind of investigating without a

without the internet. And actually it was a good gig. Because I was safer there. I was safer there than I was in any part of my biological or stepfamily. What was unsafe about your biological family? I just didn't like it.

And I mean, you say that I mean, like, as a kid, it's not like I just didn't like it or, I didn't know how to form that yet. But I was scared most of the time. I was scared. Was it emotional judgment? Yeah, I was really abandoned in that family. I knew I didn't like my mother. I knew it was a bad match, as I like to say.

You know, I didn't like her. You guys have never really had any kind of warmth there, right? No, no, it was, I'm glad I was born. I'm glad she had me. I thought I was here to raise hell. And I just wanted to get away. And the juvie thing seemed glamorous and like a good gig. And honestly, most of it was.

Most of it was. Those hippies in Oregon, not in the central part, not when I was in the Hillcrest part, but I turned myself in over nothing, over shoplifting a kiss t-shirt. That's not untrue. At a Woolworth, just so you know, I had to walk out with the kiss t-shirt three times to get caught at the Woolworths at Lloyd Center in Eugene. Oh, no, Lloyd Center's in Portland, sorry. Oh, I was in Portland because Kiss was playing the Enormadome, and I thought just like I could walk in there.

I thought I could just walk in without. So I had this T-shirt that resonated with this show, and I got arrested after the third time. It's like, I'm not getting that show. I just kind of feeling, I was, let's try this juby thing. And I got arrested. I wouldn't give money. That was in Portland.

My mother had a very fancy lawyer who came up from San Francisco with her because she had so much money. So she had her own lawyer. And Eugene, his name was. was Jeff, and he came to pick me up after I finally gave my name. I think he said something to me, but I was like, and then I did something again so I could get, I don't even know where I was put, not with my mother. She was in New Zealand at the time, but her lawyer was still around, young guy, and I did something else to get in. Oh, also I was with her guru who was getting a fortune.

I knew I had a trust fund, not a big one. I hate saying trust fund because people assume it's huge. Yeah. Like 500 bucks a month for. Grandpa Jack. Like, when you're a kid, that's still a lot of money. It's a fortune. And it enabled me to come to England. It enabled me to, with my best friend Robin, like live in Liverpool. It enabled me to go up to London.

It enabled me to con them a lot and like see my real father in Ireland, Dublin. And they only did do, along with stripping. But, you know, that's also. We're not there yet. They're not there yet. So Michael's son was this guy's name. And he was my mother's guru. And he'd come up from San Francisco also to live off her.

but also ended up doing gestalt therapy with my teachers. I peeked down and see my teachers naked. That was horrific. Like, they all fell into this cult thing with my mother from my Montessori school. So, yeah, he was a really gay guy. And he, when I came back from New Zealand because I was kicked out of boarding school, he took me in. My mother was going to send me to this place. I saw the pamphlet for emotionally messed up children.

I saw the pamphlet. There was a kid on the front. And we stopped in Tahiti and I got Michael's son to take me on if he could build my trust fund at Wells Fargo. Okay. I wasn't going that place. Yeah. So I was 10. And I lived there for not quite two years.

I lied that I was 12 when I went to juvenile. You lived where? With Michael Sun and Eugene Oregon. Okay. But stop there for a second. You know, because my son's 10 now. Oh, wow. 10.

What's your self-perception at 10? did you think you were a good kid misunderstood? Like, what's the... Just sad. Just like sad and abandoned. Like, self, you go back and you have a whole fantasy construct for your personality. Like, oh, I said something. Or, oh, I could understand sarcasm.

You can't. You can't. So I don't know really what happened to that kid. Because the kid is really hard now. Hard, funny, deflective, all the things. But, you know, you're not thinking about what grown up. I mean, the sex stuff was appalling. And then my mother put me on drugs.

So she put me on Valium in New Zealand and then Ritalin. And, you know, I'm in 12-step. You in Ritalin. Can you imagine? Oh, my God. The one, everyone tries to chase that first tie. I can't remember any but one, which is the most beautiful spring is Eugene Morgan. They have Daphne, which is a really ugly shrub, but if you've never smelled Daphne, you know nothing.

All these women named Daphne in England. I'm like, but you don't know what it smells like. And Eugene, because it's in the Willamette Valley and the HOH Valley in Washington, that is like the most, the oldest rainforest in the world. And, you know, people from Yale come up to the HOH and hike it, and they end up in Aberdeen, Washington afterwards. Like, it's both things. Class neutral, I'm saying.

So, you know, whenever, you know, I read a book on roses. And Portland Rose is used in every English rose that they do at, like, Kew Gardens. they have to. It makes them hearty. The Duchess of Cornwall Rose, which I have a lot of Camilla roses in my backyard. I love Camilla. She probably took more than me. She's the queen. I kind of just dig it.

So in celebration, I have these roses from her. It's half Portland Rose. I was like, what? And then I read this book on roses. It's like this thing. It's like the history of roses. But anyway, in spring, Eugene Oregon bursts, burst, Jasmine, honeysuckle, rotodendrum, Camilla.

I've never seen anything like it again. And I looked outside Michael Sohn's house. And, you know, this is like 77. He's getting $2,000 a month for me doing nothing. He's just building an annex. And lots of boys are coming through. And he had wheat and he had volume. So I'd go to sixth grade, seventh grade,

with the weed and the volume to make friends. Like, I didn't know what to do. That's when I came back. I had a bit of a New Zealand accent. I was really into the Bay City Rollers. It was like the Bay City Rollers were the shit. And I had tartan at the bottom of my pants. And not because I'm cool.

It wasn't Bowie. I didn't know who Bowie was yet. He'd been on top of the pops over there. They were always like eight weeks old because they were not satellites back then. So anyway, I had this Bowie haircut, but it was a rabis city rollers haircut. So, yeah. I can hear the dogs. Just FYI.

You won't hear them in the house. Okay, good. That's fine. Anyway, sorry. And I got really picked on. Like I got beat out of me a few times. with these stoner girls. Like they have Led Zeppelin belt buckles, and they were cool.

But there was no ABBA in America. That freaked me out. Where's the ABBA? Yeah. I mean, my first literal head orgasm was to Waterloo. Have you seen the, have you seen the Haba documentary that's out? No, but the BBC has like 10 habit documentaries. Right, but this one that's just come out.

And they never actually got that big in America. That's part of the documentary. That's what I'm telling you. Like Dancing Queen was it. Which is wild. Like there was a single week in New Zealand. Oh, they were huge in New Zealand. Australian, New Zealand was the biggest part for them, actually.

Like they were, but they were bigger than they were in the UK. And the BBC documentaries I've seen, there's one just on Agnitha. Did you know that before she joined Abba, she wrote a song that kicked the Beatles off of the Swedish charts and the whole Nordic charts? I had listened to her early solo work. I mean, it's very like beer hall, kitsy. Like they did that kind of beer hall. She has one of the great voices of all time. Yeah.

And what a voice. My head orgasm was Waterloo. And like, you know, Rock is like, you can drop a needle anywhere on S-O-S-S and it's perfect. I'm with that, but also. So that was more S-A-T-R-D-A-Y night. That song is great. That song is one of the great songs of all time. I don't know who wrote it, but that song is catchy.

It might have been Mickey Moe. Mickey Most might have been involved with them. Okay. They were from Dunedin. Do you know Mickey Most as a producer? He's good on that rap. I know the name. Mickey most, well, he was Donovan, yard birds, animals.

That guy. Was he a melter type that kicked, you know, bass players off? No, I don't know about that. It was a different world. But the thing about Mickey Mouse, he was the first producer to figure out that a song was like a mini movie. Right. He was a Don Arden connective, right? I don't know, but he had a lot of influence, and I don't think people have connected the dots. I think he had a lot of influence on the Beatles thinking that way, because he started doing that before the Beatles started doing it.

Like a mini movie. Yeah, the song was like a mini movie. So when you think of like, when you think of some of those great animal songs, it's like you're in a certain room. It's not just the animals being the animals. You know what I mean? Oh, no. It's like they set the scene.

And then we go up to like. Rob Russell and then we get to Sergeant Pepper. Because you think about, you know, you're talking about four-track recording. Yeah. So in order to achieve atmosphere, you've got maybe one or two chances to do it within the realm of a recording. It's not like now where you can layer a bunch of sit-tars. You've got to kind of pick one thing. to kind of denote aesthetic vibe.

I saw Chris Martin give an award to George Martin one time. I don't know what it was on because there's not a day that goes by. I don't think about George Martin. I'm like, no. I don't think about, what? I didn't believe them. Okay, base city rollers were great. They were great.

And Rock and Roller Love Letter was also great. That's a good one. Come for me. But I got beat up. And I'll tell you about getting beat up. seventh grade, junior high, I would come from fourth form in British Commonwealth education. I knew some Latin. I knew some French verbs. I knew. Had you started your Shakespeare education? Yes, I had. And I definitely had. And the other blessing about Oregon is the best Shakespeare festival, probably in America, is in National Oregon.

And so I had gone there a few times as a little camp, so I'd already done that. I'd bagged a little Shakespeare. And then, you know, the British Commonwealth Education. And then the girls with the lead sepulent Bill Buck was. There was no need for what I knew. Handwriting. Like, that's why Nick Cave's handwriting is so interesting. That's what I infected you with, and your handwriting is so interesting. Thank a British Commonwealth education in New Zealand. I'm not kidding. Like, that handwriting that they teach you, what's called? It's called something. I forget. Proper ink, proper pen. Like, it's real. In seventh grade in Eugene, Oregon, With Caligraphy, you're not talking about.

No, it's called something that I'm forgetting because my brain is, and yours isn't, I've watched a few of these podcasts and your vocabulary is deathly. And I was like, how am I going to spar with this guy? You're fine. Okay. So how do we get from girls with bell buckles beating you up to DJ punk rock? I'll tell you how. There's one thing and one girl beating me up, and that was my birth, other than the scream in the Nile. That was my birth. Tracy Shannon was my birth. Big girl. Big girl. I'd been beat up twice with the whole school watching. Pretty face or no? No. Pretty much about to be not a pretty face for whatever reason. And I'm in the bathroom and fourth, fourth farm. It's a fourth farm, whatever lunch. Lunch. There's two lunches. These twins, all in rabbit for coats. These, um, these, um, these other girls, Desiree, these other girls, you call me a, no, I didn't. You call me a liar. Me, me. Yeah, yeah. Pushing around.

And I was reading one of those madras, we're about the same age, those moddress Indian shirts. I was living with the guru. And seventh grade, I'm living with the guru, and the whole school's there. And I'm little. I'm scrappy. I don't have tits. I'm scrappy. Right?

But I've been beat up twice. And Tracy Shannon comes for me. I don't know what happened, Billy, but I'm on top of her. I see red, and they're pulling me off. Like, I win this fight, but then some. So this temper emerges to defend myself for the first time that happened. So when you ask about self-conception, it was just being victimized. I see.

And I didn't understand it. So I don't understand sarcasm. I don't have a f*** moment. Except Tracy Shannon was my moment. And now I'd be in jail for whatever I did. But like, she was beating me up, but she was much bigger. And that was the birth of my temper. Okay.

And I was confident after that. I got cocky. I got cocky. I was confident. I even tried to hunting life with the other girls, like the black. But girls from the reservation, like, you know, these other girls that ended up going to do me with me. It's funny you say that because the first time I ever laid eyes on you, the memory I have is the shoulders kind of thrown back. Yeah.

And this just this confidence. Came from beating up Tracy Shet. Okay, but I'm saying, you know, you remember the ranks of the indie girls back in the day. Yeah. They were hardly like charismatic. Well, the charisma thing probably is my own thing. No, I get that, but I'm saying. But the beat up Tracy Shannon thing, I walked on from there.

I was like, I'm, I didn't know where I was, but I was somewhere. Sorry, I'm having a, I'm my own moment. Okay. I want to hear it. No, shoulders back. You know, you have great shoulders. Yeah. You know what I mean?

You have this beautiful kind of carriage. And just this kind of confidence is rare for the time. You know, all the girls growing up listening to Susie were not confident women. They were more puny, too. They were smaller. Well, there was the coquettish version. Yeah. There was the, I'm not really a lesbian, but I'm a lesbian.

Right. You know, there was the skin. The pretty, the cat, the dinita, right. The pretty skinhead girl. Okay. You know, you'd be like, why are you skinhead? You're pretty? You know, they're like, yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean? There weren't a lot of, like, charismatic shoulders back. But you met me after I started my band. I had to do in the minds first. Like, I had to. Well, we're getting there, yeah. Crush the competition, if you will. Because it was only, it was room for only one back then.

And it was like even in the 80s, the Bengals, the go-goes, there was only room for one. And now we're just in the 90s, we're just coming out of that. Sure. And now, I just want to say one thing, like with Emerald Fennell or Marco Robbie, those women are young enough to be real feminist and like left elbows. You know what I mean? Like, you know, we weren't my generation. Well, I guess what I'm after here. But I was demanded to me and I was like, no, fuck off.

Sure, but you're smart enough to figure out what I'm after here, which is like, you know, people look at one end of the telescope and they see a rank contour and out of control child, you know, and, you know, there are the easy threads, which is, that's kind of stupid, right? That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So I want people to understand there's a layer of sophistication here that has to do with somebody making decisions. In some cases, binary and other cases more complicated, that builds, uh, builds the machine of you. So when you've foist yourself onto the public consciousness, it's shocking.

but if you know the story, it's actually not that shot. No, it's much more nuanced than the cheap shot of it. That's kind of what I'm after. And it's more complex, as you said. Like, usually when I talk to somebody, even in Mark Marone,

the one podcast other than you I've ever done. Yeah. And it wasn't visual. And I throw out 10,000 tangents so no one can get to me. And I've done that for a long time. Sure. Well, I've chased you down many rabbits.

I know, Billy. Like, this is terrifying. This one's a little scary. Nothing but love. Nothing but love. As I once told you, you name yourself love for a reason. I mean, and Pat Smear made me, too, because he had that Robert Indiana little love thing from Darby. And I wanted to be loveless because I felt more honest.

And he was like, no, there's two words people love, free and love. And they're like, this, this. And then I kind of got into it. And then he gave my name to this Tonk Rock, LA Weekly column, LUV. But as the first time, my name was in print. I'm like, yeah, I'm going with it. This is great. But I did like it.

It sounds like porn star, but I was like, yeah, no, this is cool. It's it contradicts. Okay, so 14, 15, 16, 17, you're on your way to the U.S. Which was really good. Okay, there's you going to Juvie, but there's also you showing up in England. Well, the counselors in Eugene were really cool in the course of one month. This is crazy. Three men, all men, one had returned from England.

They were all at Skip Wars, too. Skip was for credit at college. So these guys were like deadheads, cool guys. They brought me, one guy brought me Patty Smith back from England along with Chrissy Hind and Squeeze, just saying, squeeze was the third one. Good lyrics. And he goes, absolutely. He goes, these remind you, these remind me of you.

And they let me sit in the day room. And, you know, the Tuesday and Thursday was the gene change. And everyone went for the tightest genes. After that, I went for the loosest. I stopped carrying. and it blew my mind. These two women looked amazing. I like the squeeze record, too.

And then another guy gives me horses. This reminds me of you. I was like, what the hell? And then I looked. I'm like, okay. And then my foster father, Kenny, I was looking at the Buckingham Knicks record he had. And he always slept.

He was a real, what's the word? Good with the ladies. And he was beautiful. And they all would come in with like these thin gold chains and this blonde hair doing a steamy thing. And I looked at Buckingham Knicks. I was like, And then Kenny interrupts me like, this reminds me of you.

It's horses again. So I'm holding Stevie Nix and Lizzie in one hand and Patty and the other. Well, there it is. And there it is. There it is. One hand in each. And also when I came back from New Zealand, Flea and Mac was on the radio with Dreams.

And it was reassuring that one woman was on the radio. Because I went from Abba, kind of being my mother's, to Stevie being my mother. It was super, it was the year. I remember Lonely Boy was on the radio. Shannon, about the dog, was on the radio. Like, I remember the top 40 at the time. I was listening in sixth grade.

I started listening to Casey Kasem religiously. And then Dr. Demento, did you listen to after Casey Kaysen? And Dr. Demento liked a little bit of New Wave and punk. The first time I heard the tubes, don't touch me there, was Dr. Demento. And I remember playing a lot of Zappa. Yeah, he did. And I didn't understand Zappa at all. My dad liked Zappa.

I just didn't. When I did a lot of. of drugs one time and they were kind of downers. I lined up south. Louisals ate my flesh. Coltrane. I don't mean to be cliche. Mingus. I was like, I'm going to listen to difficult music on smack. And I'm going to be honest, I could hear it for once and then I couldn't hear it anymore. Yeah, you're not big on difficult music. No. I can do trout mask replica just fine. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Like, no, I can't do jazz. I can't. It's so complex for me. And I just never understood the codes of it. I know when it's beautiful. I know what jazz is and I know what good jazz is.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you understand the roots of jazz, it actually makes a ton of sense. Oh, intellectually, I wish I understood it. Yeah, but it's one of those things where you're not really sure if you're listening because you're supposed to listen or you're listening because you enjoy it. That's right. That's where it's complicated. I'd rather be honest about it. You know, the Lomax field recordings, that's I love. But when it gets to jazz, I'm like, lost. And why should I bother with something that I don't or pretend that I do, trying to be intellectual about it. I think you would enjoy West Coast jazz. What's that?

Who's that? That's Jerry Mulligan and even Charlie Parker used to come out here and do sessions. I think that's what you would most resonate. Chet Baker is probably the thing you would most understand. You know, I was friends with Wayne Shorter who just passed. Oh, God bless. He was a really, it was Buddhist. And I always had, and I still have access to Herbie Hancock.

And those guys play with Miles. Yeah, but the West Coast iteration of jazz, I think, what you would most do. So, Chet Baker. Well, Chet Baker is the thing that the Goss like. I like Chet Baker. The goss like Chetbaker for some reason, probably because he was on smack. And he was beautiful. And also the funny Valentine is amazing. Beautiful cat, but obviously troubled. But that world, that 50s, SoCal, because you got to understand. Swing band. Okay, but form follows function. Okay. Can you explain that to me? I'm so dumb right now. No, no, here. Okay, so imagine you're Charlie Parker. You are the number one Bob guy in the world.

Right. You're a total savant. Yeah. You come out and you're playing some place in Pasadena. Yeah. And everybody's just chill. The music is more chill. You can't be Charlie Parker, New York, Charlie Parker. Because they're so sensitive, he goes more to the waves and the vibe. So he's still doing Charlie. So you acclimate. Is that what Wormt Paul is? He said it yesterday. I don't want to be done, but I never have. Isn't that phrase?

Okay, you're playing a club, 1955. You're playing some club in Santa Monica. And it's a beautiful night. And you know how this world is out here? Yeah, it's a little more show. Nobody wants to. It's like going to Holland. When you go to Holland and play it.

No one wants to spoil the party. So the music is reflective of the vibe that they're in. Remember playing the Paradiso and those Dutch people? It's like, they're so chill. What the fuck do you do? Like, no, you just play your slow songs because they're just like. Well, you know what I would do. We would play more aggressive.

I know, me too. too upset them. Me too, to upset them. You want me both, baby. The Dutch, man. And then, you know, you go to the Nordics and they love death metal. They want you to, they, the Norway, like, Norway. What else is there to do? I think of a lot. They're inside nine months a year. They don't have, like, they don't have, they have great societies, but they don't have, like, rebellion coded in there. Okay. Let's, let's keep on. Okay. Okay, sorry. I actually was listening to LIBACC recently. Really? You have that you. were. Do you remember the first thing you ever said to me? It was supposed to make me contrarian. And I was like, oh my God, I knew he'd do this. You're like, what do you think of, this first thing you ever said? What do you think of Ingbe? I can't even say his name. Ingbey, Momstein. Yeah, Momstein. And I was like, you know what, I'm not biting.

I'm not doing this. I totally understood what you were doing, trying to alienate a girl, right? Like a girl. And I love this, whatever, two weeks ago. I'm playing at NAM, which is the your show and I was like, I have nothing. And then it was like, I remember, I called them the Bristol or something, but I remember the Bilsen, the Bilsen. And I was at this, Susie, she's a producer's house, just singing that vocal that we, that you help me with for the other Billy. It's like, the world of Billy's.

And I saw that she had a new Bilsen. I'm like, I won them. I won them. I called it a Baker, but I won. Vincent. Vincent. No. Vincent.

It's Binson. Okay, but I knew what it was. She's referencing the famous oil can. It's not that famous. It's like a Corvair famous. Well, if you know your Floyd history, it is famous. That's what he said. That's what Chris Barrow said.

It's what Dave Gilmore and Richard Wright, the pianist keyboard player used to use to create that out. But is that what they called the album metal? That I don't know. Because it's, isn't it, okay, is it the beta of the VHS? Is it the beta of Real to Real? No. Why not? It makes sense to me. It's like a cassette on metal. Am I wrong?

It's different. I'm trying to be a gearhead. You're not doing well. I suck. So the whole boy, I feel like Leeds like that, right? Navarro. I don't mean to tangent, but I want to tell you one thing about leads. Because Will Sargent is on my record shredding, but it's Will Sergeant shredding. You're talking about the record that you're still working on at the time of this recording. Yeah, I have. First album and how many years? 16? Sure. Okay. Robert Smith took that long. I was around for the last one.

Yep. You helped me with Samantha on that last one. That was a hell of a song. But anyway, one day, justice for nobody's daughter, it will happen. In any event, Will Sargent plays from the Bundyman, who I met in 81. Which is crazy. Dreams come true, man. What can we say is a mutual echo appreciation society? One of the greatest bands. I couldn't agree more.

And also the deep cuts, what I would do on. Honestly, and what I've wanted to do, somebody pitched a movie to me about me and Robin being in Liverpool and the lens of two teenage American girls being in Liverpool. It's a really great film idea. It's like my almost famous. I really wanted to get it made. In any event, and I think that like a Mamma Mia level for not just our generation, but millennials at this point, but Gen Z. I really understand Gen Z as online as I like them. I really like them. I see their clothes. I seem like you. I like them. I like them first. I like them first and then they like me. I am the moment, me and Charlie X, EX, but in any event, I want you to have it leads because Will Sargent does these incredible leads. I don't think he's ever played outside the Bunnyman other than his solo stuff.

Maybe, I'm wrong. I think you're generally directionally accurate, yes. Something like that. I mean, because I would know. If you said to me, where can I hear Will Sergeant not on the Bunnyman, I would go, well, his solo records, and I don't know. So that tracks. He sent me some soundclubs of his screen.

boring stuff, it's astonishing. I sent him to Bush Walker and my manager, JD, the producer, Bush Walker, and in any of it, the lead thing. When I heard Dave Navarro, okay, not on Jane Says, from Jay Zixon, not on Jane says, but on Ocean Song or, and I met him and I'm like, you're from the valley. I can tell by your leads. He wasn't, but he's from Bel Air on the tip, the valley side of Bel Air, I got to say. That's where he's from.

So I guess his geography from his leads. Okay? Like, leads are a guy thing. There are women that can do leads great that generally... Yes, you, you, one of the first significant conversations we had about music, you said, I don't understand what you're doing on the guitar. Why do you have to... I think your leads are phenomenal. No, but I'm saying as you...

Your leads are special, and your bass play is insane. But you wanted to understand not so much you were castigating me for playing leads, which is what... most indie people did, which is they weren't cool. No, these are phenomenal. You were like, you know, the Gish one on rhinoceros is when I went, it's like, okay, we'll stay with them. You know, they wear hats, but we'll stay. And I was in the one band that Eric can be bought with my stripping money that we were touring in.

And I was listening to Gish, and I heard rhinoceros is like, to this day, I play rhinoceros for kids. And I'm like, this is the perfect rock song. This is it. This is it. And your leads were, your bass was insane. The bridge was insane. The other thing I didn't like, honestly. if I want this was the title.

Because it's a pun. I was like, oh, my God, this boy needs words. That's early psychedelic LSD problems. I love it. Okay, now that I know that, I can let it go. It's been a little resentment. Why do you call that? I know what he called that.

She knows the nose. Yeah. But the rest is perfect. It's flawless song. Absolutely. Your bass is flawless. And I really think your bass is a great strength. then your leads, except when you're wanking off at NAM.

But that's different. The beautiful majestic stuff. I've been listening to Melancholy recently in the opening track is that kind of funeral for a friend thing, the composition that you really worked on. Yeah. Yellow Big Road. That was amazing. Melancholy was amazing.

So I get the track you were on. But leads, they're kind of male, you know. Very male. Unless it's you. It's changed a bit. It's changed a bit. There are a lot of phenomenal young female guitar players coming out of the scene. There's a lot of female everything right now, which is great.

Great. There were. More, more better. Oh, no, more better. And Argen, like, I feel like he was way more rapaciously competitive. And you had to be to succeed. There was no other system at will. No.

Because if anybody would romanticize the 90s as a more egalitarian time, the, the, they don't know what the, they're talking about. The pernicious and horrific. meanness of the indie community at that time, of which both of us have had our sort of battles with. You know, I'm friends with Thurston Moore now, speaking to gatekeepers. He's like mellow. He got a divorce. He's like a sun bear out of captivity.

But hold on, one second. I barely know Thurston. Me neither. I didn't know him very well. Okay. But he was never a gaykeeper type. No, it was his wife. His partner was the worst.

He was the worst. And she kind of still is like, oh, she's still rocking the game. gatekeeping. I know you in her book. This is so hilarious. I'm friendly with Lana Del, right? In fact, at one point, we were really good friends. And she put me in her house in Malibu for a year, rent-free, like, what the hell? Also, she was really great at helping me get out of town because I need to get out of the life. And I had bad people around me, and she could play them because she's like, got this upper middle class thing as well. So she could play these guys that were really harming my life.

You want to hear something that you don't know? Okay. So my wife's brother, my wife has his five brothers, one full and four half, had a kind of romantic moment with her. She was sort of obsessed with him and then eventually ghosted him. What does he do? He's out here working, you know. Okay. Okay, that's secret. So, you know, funny that there's a, I've never met her.

She's fantastic. She's a fantastic girl. She's obviously very bright. And she's a real friend, you know, she's done things for me that nobody's ever done in our business, particularly another woman. in any event, Kim wrote about Lana Del Rey. Oh, Jesus. No, in her book, she says horrible things about me being a tarantial and stuff.

But, like, a narcissistic Hollywood obsessed tarantula. Oh, Kim, I'm so scared of spiders. I wish she'd done something else. Like, a bear, maybe. I'll take a bear. Eagle. I'll take an eagle. In any event, she puts down Lana, she calls her all these names.

Because Lana in one of her very few early interviews, and she still doesn't do many now, said, I wish I was dead. She was 27. She said, I wish I was dead. She named 27-year-olds. And my daughter, Frances, like, raised as her on Twitter. And then Lana was like, I'm so sorry. And now they're friends.

They were friends when Kim wrote this. And then her defense of it, she didn't know Lana Delray. And Lana was like, who is Kim Gordon? Totally other generation. Did not grow up. A question, by the way, billions are still asking. Maybe not so many millions because I don't think she had some. I'll go with billions.

Yeah, okay. Who is Kim Gordon? She was really horrible in the 90s. She was really, I remember in Holland, I was hanging out with you, and they were so mean. It was like, I didn't. Yes, I came into their dressing room because we were all playing this festival. Kurt was playing too, and Nine-Each Nails was playing. Yeah, it was a big deal.

I wasn't. I wasn't. You were. I feel like Urge Overkill played that even. Urge was there. You came over on the boat with her. I came over on the boat with Urge. I didn't leave with them.

But I came in, I was a fan, and I came in to pay my respects, and I was treated so rudely by her. I was cute. You know the current lyric, the lyric from Kurt, which is, you know, your priceless advice. Hey, wait, I've got a new couple. Ever help me finish it? Oh, my God. No, no, no. It's the lyric.

I mean, what the actual. I'm so sorry. Never. Oh, my God. Hey, wait, I've got a new goodbye. Forever. her in debt to your priceless advice. That's about Kim. That's literally about Kim. And there's a, like, he was so mad at her. He was because, you know, his whole thing was,

he, believe or not, he hit his light, well, you know this, under a bushel for bleat. Because one, Seattle, which he wasn't from, two, Kim Gordon. Back to pernicious indie politics. Yeah, Indy politics. He wasn't from Seattle. And when I first saw Nirvana in Port La Dorgan, there was Jason, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, Houston? Oh, no, Jason. Jason Everman, right? Yeah, I know Jason. And he was, he had long hair like a sound garden guy. And I watched her at a little club called Satiricon turned his, his fender all the way down.

I saw it. I'm not stupid. I saw it. And that's what led to me and him having an interaction. I was like, you fake guitar player. I get it. Right. And a whole thing. But that was the Seattle element. And I didn't know until I hung out with them about the Kim Hill. I know. I was scarred by Kim so scarred that I had to write her a letter kissing her ass to get you don't go for the husband the cool husband you go for the wife and um she produced my first album to her eternal regret. Do you remember what she paid her because you told me? I can't remember it was done important. She never came by. She came by once for 10 minutes. You said you said you gave her six grand in a bag of pot. Correct. Yeah. She was, she's from L.A. And I went to it there once when I was so social with her.

I went with her once to her father's house. And the whole thing is about, she's from Culver City like Jennifer Finch. But the whole, my father was UCLA professor. I don't want to give her too much time, but the important thing is that her brother was a junkie. I think that made her, I don't know what made her, art made her pernicious. Because she was really a bad force in the whole thing, you know. Were you ever attracted to the band, Sonny Kew? I loved what they were doing with the guitars.

I loved the graphics, the graphics. Yeah. And the drummer. Niroaldo? No, the drummer. I forget. Bill? I forgot a Lirvana Lairich just now.

Don't ask me anything. No, but the drummer, the drummer and Thurston were always super nice and very friendly. And, you know, you know how it is. You got the generational politic. They're an older band. Yeah. Which seems, you know, they're probably 30. But, you know, when you're 24, they're the next generation.

Yeah. So the drummer and Thurston were always super nice and would answer any questions. I just named with Steve. I talked to Thurston about gear, you know. I remember talking to Thurston once about how they traveled with their guitars and kind of a weird, they would just put their guitars in this weird road case with no cases. They would just basically put like 12 guitars in like a thing and just put it in a, like, almost like a box. Let me cap this conversation.

I've got the best story. It's really quick. So when Thurston and Kim got divorced, because, you know, their daughter is in Chicago at school. Don't know if you know that. Kim sold all of Thurston's album, vinyl, for a vast amount of money behind his bag. do you pay for her education? I'm sorry to call it. It is one of the greatest things I've ever heard.

And, you know, he lives in London with his incredible new wife. He's, like, free. He's happy. Happy guy. Playing his jazz love, ecstasy, music, Sunrah, whole thing. He's a great guy. They came over to my house for the Oscars, which is one in the morning over there. They're great.

Let's move on. Because these people were dicks. They were dicks. Anyway, one was a dick. I mean, you know, How much did scar you? It scarred Kurt. So the whole point I'm making about Kurt is bleach,

is him hiding his light under a bushel. And it's not until one of those riot girls is in a polyamorous, non-consensual to him relationship, which really scars him. And he asked me the first question, and the first question is like, well, do you know polyamory?

I'm like, I know polygamy? And I was like, no, when he told me in the situation, I'm like, this is, no, you didn't give, No, you got to get permission for that. Anyway, she was one of the riot girls that was really under the enthralling, whatever, spelled, the Sonic Chaos bullshit. And he got so angry. He was like, I'm over it, because she didn't like about a girl, which was about her. And she said something about populism and capitalism and capitalism and how dare you write this song about me.

And he got so mad. And he told me he had two thoughts. And this is like true. It's crazy because they talked about me a lot. I didn't really know. There was a band called Courtney Love up there in Evergreenham. That crowd was obsessed with you. Obsessed, but I didn't know this.

Can I give you a- Wait, stop. Can I give you a theory why they were obsessed with you? Well, because there was a band called Courtney Love, Portland. No, no. Here's why they, because look, you can analyze one moment in time. Yeah. Let's go back to form and false function on this yet.

Okay, right. Let's macro out. Why was the riot girl crowd? Why were they obsessed with you? Because that was really ambitious? Portland? Ready? Okay.

class trader. Did they know that my mother was upper middle class? How do they know? Think about it. Think about it. You're a class traitor. Because I'm hard, scrabble, I exed, pieced out that family at 11. How did, really?

How would they know my roots? I pretend that I was from the trailers and I kind of was. Like knows like. Because I'm literate? Listen. Wow, this is really blowing my mind. What? Well, Kurt wasn't. He was really from the trailers. So was I. I know. But when Toby Vale smashed a cake and said, how dare you write that song about me? And there were three bleaches in the planet. Sub Pop had one. Chris had one. Kurt had one. He lit candles. He stole the cake from Safeway. Toby Vale comes over in her Doc Martins. He plays her about a girl. She smashes the cake and walks out. I think something happened to the bleach, you know, acetate.

And he had candles. He's like, this. First thought of getting the best drummer in the world, I don't care if he's in Warrant. Second thought, I'm going to affect Courtney girl, even if I hate her. That's what he told me. And I'm going to write all. I'm going to write, I'm with the word embodied, but that wasn't a word then. I'm going to write great songs because I can.

Right. And I had that same feeling I'm pretty in the inside. Even though people love pretty in the inside, I could, I could, I could, I could with an R.m. song. I couldn't write Killing Moon. but I could put lesser bunyman songs. I had a guitar player who was really good. I mean, at best, at my best,

there was a reliable rhythmist, but I must have lived to even try and play guitar, which is probably a good thing for the world. But anyway, that I understood, you'd love to say skill set, I understood the Peter Buck of it all. You know what I mean? Yes.

You talked about Peter Buck a lot. Well, instead I love R.E.M. so much. And Leonard Cohn were like my two real go-toes, and Navy's and Dillon, and definitely Beatles. Okay, so I understood what I could do with a good band, but I also understood, like, this is the market right now, and I'm going to go all the way in and write great lyrics and do noise music.

So the fact that, like, people even like those songs to this day, there was a 30th anniversary. I was like, I wanted to see at this huge tattoo mall in London. And there's, like, thousands of people that I was like, this is weird. This is weird. I mean, and then I got a little more respect for that album. but like Leach, it was that. It was, I'm going to cleave to this market.

There was a, like with GIFs, there was no selling out. The real sellout is those of us that bent, bent to the market, the market of Kim Gordon, whatever you want to call it. The market of the Indipa. Yeah, I mean, I think that's what irritated. Pavement's entire career is bending to that will. That's what continues. It was funny because they're still irritated, which is amazing. I mean, we're talking about 35 years of irritation.

Get over it. Well, yeah. I mean, like I own a tea house and I got. little kids, you know, like, get over it. Yeah, yeah. You're selling, you're selling your ex-husband's vinyl collection to put your, not really, but that's a word. What I'm saying is, is the, is the, gatekeepers scream, to this day, they still scream about authenticity, but most of them, at least the way I've tracked, uh, didn't come from an authentic place. No. They're, they have a, they have a, they have a, or they married well now, or they're in human resources,

because they didn't like choruses. Okay, but they have a mental conception of authenticity. They don't have a real conception of authenticity. Do you understand? Okay, explain that. Like, go back to Evergreen College and like, you know, this whole. You had to make choices based on a whole set of fact, a whole host of factors. Okay. How am I going to eat?

What am I going to do? Who do I want to be? Yeah. Who do I have to sleep with or not? Or not? Okay. I just went there with you. You don't get to sit there and say, my dad's got a university.

and he's going to take care of me when I'm in the band that nobody wants to listen to. So just because you... Do you think those girls and boys were trapped by those constructs, though? My dad owns a university. I mean... Of course they're trapped by it. Right. That's why they make sexless music.

Right. Why? Why? Because they don't... They don't under... It's like... The reason... Madonna comes from, like, lower working class, right?

Like, yeah, no, you're right. There's a lack of... there's a lack of wanting to have sex Isn't that shocking? Like, I mean, isn't it? For a woman it is, I think. No, no, I don't mean it this way. I'm saying it.

The boys there, too. They stay boys. They were like, it's like, it's like you don't really understand the true cost of vulnerability because you don't have to live it. Vulnerability is the whole show for me. I think, I agree.

Okay. People that are vulnerable on stage, to this day, to this day, pop kids. You know what I mean? Like, vulnerability is everything. And if you can't get friends with your vulnerability, you cannot manufacture vulnerability. You texted me last night. We were talking about Youngblood and the girl I mentor, Baby Queen, and you were talking, and they're kind of the same.

They're definitely peers. They definitely with each other, whatever. And it's funny that we both sort of picked up on the thread of both of them. But you said something about how they fit everything, but they can't backtrack, integrity? What did you mean by that text? This, this, this, the, the construct of the current generation, let's call it the current musical generation, because obviously there's different ages at play. So it's not just one. These are Gen Z kids, right?

Youngblood's 28. That's what I know. She's 25. Okay. So, okay. 26, sorry. If, if your, if your audience has been raised on pop, they don't respond to indie alternative language the way that we did. No, but she loves drowned. She listened to all those. Okay, God bless, but let me finish why I'm telling you. Okay.

When you found the bunny men or Joy Division or Bauhaus or sisters, New Order, Susie. You felt like you'd found like the secret to the universe. Yeah. There are people making music for what I'm actually doing. From Mero Smith to that. It's like, what? Well, that's what I said the other day because I just did a benefit for Stephen Tyler's benefit.

I know, Stephen Tyler. I mean, a god, but yeah. No, but to, because I was talking to a friend actually that works on the show, who's a friend of Stevens. To us, Aerosmith was an alternative band. Oh, yeah, you had the guy from Ariel Speedwagon on this podcast. Season's a wither. Who is, oh, wait, you see me crying, which I actually got Steven took before. I can't hit any notes, but those Vegas horror gigs.

Baby, what you done. Tell them to your head. Oh, my God, track 10 or track 12 on toys in the attic. and nobody knows about it. Okay, but when you find that, like I found Cheap Trick or you found... Well, Cheap Trick is the whole sauce. Like, there it is. Okay, but what I'm saying, when you find it, you're like, oh, my God, these guys have the manual to get me out of here.

Yeah, and also with Cheap Trick, you're hearing the weirdest lyrics on the radio. Why do you think, listen... Because we... You know what I said to Michael's type recently? I'm like, I couldn't afford REM. Do you understand? I had to hang out with upper middle class, middle class girls who could get the juice and the rumors and the new singles.

Like, I'm like, I didn't have to afford cheap trick. He got kind of mad. But then he realized that was right, which is like, mom and dad are rolling on the couch, rock and rolling, got my kids records out or mommy was a whack in the Philippines. That's on the radio. It's free of charge. Like, like, I love R.E.M. I love them so much.

But they cost a little money to get. You know what I mean? Like, you had to buy the singles for money. And Chief Trick was free. And that's important, I think. Just to finish the point. Okay, sorry. Have you found, like I have, that people's obsessions often belie their greatest fear?

Tell me what you mean. Okay. So my argument is the reason the upper middle class to snobby rich kid class, almost predominantly white, by the way. And middle, middle, go with middle, because it is middle class too. It goes to upper, but middle. But they need the upper middle class to give it. The legitimacy. Yes, thank you.

Okay. Why are they so obsessed to this day with? the concept of authenticity. To their own detriment, too. They end up not wealthy. They end up not doing as well as their parents. They end up making a lot of music that people don't want to listen to. Because they choose to make music that doesn't have choruses and is sexless.

You're 100% right. To this day. You know, I mean. But they secretly listen to Abbot at home. That's the strangest thing. Yeah. I don't want to name. There's a band that's like getting huge.

And I tried listening to it. And I'm like, okay, this is weird and cool. I get white people love them. But there's a. level of purposeful naivete because I went back and listened to their first record. I'm like, oh, this is bullshit. They're trying to be wired, trying to be gang for. They're trying to be trying to be gangor. They're trying to give it. It's almost like

naivete, like purposeful, naive art. Yeah, it's calculated naivete or calculated. I think they just let go. Fained innocence. Well, the singer is 100% in. And I don't think you can fake the way he's singing or what he's doing. But there is a, the cult that's growing up around them on the East Coast is like, I'll talk to me about it later.

I don't want to be a... I don't want to be... But I do like them. I do get the point. I do genuinely like a few of the songs, but at the same time I'm seeing the marketing growing up around these bands, this artist that is all about this thing we're talking about, authenticity, extraction of youth.

I think they're probably innocence, but like the people around them. Yeah. I think Jimmy Chamber of the Pumpkins, made this point to me recently, and it was interesting what he was after. His argument was our early music was predicated on survival. Where it's noble is we made really interesting choices as our path to survival. Gish. And it showed the rest of us up.

The true selling out was those that sold out our spirit over here on the West Coast, whether it was Kurt coming from serious working class, with us me, come from all the things, right? That street, the, you know, the penthouse, all the things. I love that you said. I was a class traitor, by the way, I'm stuck on that. But selling ourselves out was far, far bigger of sin, which you got accused of the worst sin because you were embodied and not selling yourself out. And now that we're 35, 37 years later, it's like, oh, how did people like my first album? I wasn't even present for it, right? if I'd have written to my level, I would have, I, well, can I give you, because I, tell me about me a class trader, though, because you had a Camero, man.

Okay, let's, let's, let's do one thing, and then we'll go back to class. Okay, okay. I had to look up the date. The date we first met, I believe we talked on the phone briefly before that, that's my memory, but the, we did. The date of our first meeting in person was October 29, 1991. You were playing the Avalon. Oh, yeah, never mind hadn't come out, out of, the rest of us. Right. I wouldn't think it was 91. No, it's November. The Avalon Club was formerly a club named Tuts.

It was a second floor venue. So it was a house. He wasn't your metro? Wasn't that same? No, no. Your first gig in Chicago. I thought we were bigger than that. Okay.

No. It would have held about 400 people max. You had a good. Didn't we see the poor guy from material issue who Valerie loves me that night? He was probably there, yeah. Yeah, Jim. I was friends with Jim. Jim, unfortunately, killed himself.

I know. Oh, God, that song. He got made fun of, too, a lot. Because he was on a major label. For my generation, absolutely the most talented guy in Chicago. Hands down. He was shockingly talented. I've covered that song.

It was one of the really good covers I did. I want to tell you a quick story about material issue because I love this story. Okay. They come on stage. I see him one of these things that's like $3 show type of thing. Father he loves me. Okay. But this is before the record deal.

They were the first band assigned with the major label. Yeah, they were in a major label. Outside of ministry or something, right? Right. They come on stage. He's carrying an amp this big. Really? He puts it on a chair, right?

Somebody puts a microphone in front of it. The drummer goes, one, two, three, four. They do a pitch perfect, hit every note version of Ballroom Blitz by the suite. Oh, wow. And I'm in the audience with the little amp. A punter going. And I go, oh, my God. And I was in love with this half black, half white skinhead girl, who is the most beautiful alt girl.

Uh-huh. I was in, like, in love with their. And I had, I thought it was having this soulful relationship. You probably were. And she had, she had, you know, was the classic alt girls. There were three roommates, three girls living in this apartment, really close to Wrigley Field where the Cubs play. Same neighborhood as the metro and all that. Right.

You did you live by there, right? That's where I lived. And that's where we had our apocryphal moment. Anyway, you know, I'm over there. We're talking about, you know, she liked the, she like, who'd she like, um, kudu gurus. Oh, my God. sweet. Hello. She liked the Huda gurus. Amazing now. Okay, so she had good taste of music, but she was a skinhead.

All that, Australian. Everybody thought she was the most beautiful girl of the crime. Right, right. But she was a skinhead. Right. And one day, you know, it's morning and we've slept together the night before and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And oh, that's a dinner on a show. Okay. Okay. So I'm in her, I'm in her cool apartment with like, you know, veils over the lamps and, you know, whatever. And it's morning, you know, and I'm just hanging out being the boyfriend. At least I thought I was the boyfriend.

And she goes outside and says, oh, I got to go say hi to somebody or something. So I don't think anything of it. And about 30 minutes goes by and she doesn't come back. Yeah. So when I start to get suspicious. And before I went and looked, because I had a feeling, I asked the roommate who I later slept with, but that's another story. God, we were such sluts in revenge. In revenge.

But I said to the roommate. Yeah, I get that. I said to the roommate, who's she talking to? And she's like, and the way she acted, it was like, oh, you know, her friend. So I knew I was cooked. So I go to like, you know, the classic, like you go up to the window, like to look, like, oh, here goes my life. And I look out and she's talking to gym. Oh, wow.

And I thought I'm dead. She's talking and obviously enamored with the most talented guy in the city. Yeah. And I'm just some. He was on a major label, like the Buckpets. weren't as good. By the way, and everybody, and he had weird hair, and everybody gave him, I think that fed into how he killed himself. But here's the other part of the story you need to know.

He was so ostracized. This is before the pumpkins. Yeah, I know. So I'm just some guy with a dream. No, but I'm saying, you're looking out the window and the girl you think you're in love with and you think's in love with you. It's talking to him. Well, of course. You're like, I'm damned day.

Hello, the guy in the band. We, you know, I would have felt more comfortable if she was talking to like a road scholar who was up for a Nobel Prize, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, the guy in the band and you see that guy. That world, we're all going to go with the guy in the band or the girl in the van. Like, that's how it works, baby. Hi, I'm Allison Hagendorf and music is my world, but I also love the energy of a great game, and I recently found a way to make watching even more fun.

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We met in October of 1991 and at the Avalon Ballroom. So you were going to go there. And then I'll remind you the story. Okay. You and the whole band pull up to my apartment. Yeah. Where I was living with Hippie Bob. I don't remember him. He would have been around.

I remember you had like a wacko soap plant, Melrose vibe, Mexican Virgin Guadalupe Candle and I was like, why is that in Chicago? But it was very cool that you had that. Go on. Hippie Bob. Yeah, I remember Hippie Bob. Yeah, you guys came. came, we met, and then you went over for sound check,

which I don't think I went to. Then you came back, hung out for a while, and then I went and saw the gig. Okay. All right. So, yeah. And this guy was made of Amethyst? Because it was pretty on your back port,

and we both took, you're not big on drugs, but we both took a Vicodam. Oh, I love Vicodam. I mean, that was great. I was like, I think you provided it, and I think I was like, get it more. Can I have more? Yeah, I was big on Vicodin.

I was big on opi as clearly because that happened. But, you know, not then. Not then. I was being really restrained about drug use, really restrained. Nobody's going to sign a junkie, and I knew that. You know, I knew that. So I touched it in. Let's pause here because I alluded to briefly in talking you about doing this interview.

But it's interesting to me because when I met you, you would have been like, what, 24? Yeah, around there. Yeah. So maybe a touch older, but... Really? Is it 25 now? Okay. Oh, no, I was. Because I was at Jumbos Clown Room in the 7th Vale. And this guy at the Jumbos Clown Room was like, if you don't make... If you don't get signed by 25, I'm starting wrestling and you're built for it.

And I was like, female wrestling, I was like, off. It's not going to happen. Michael, his name was Michael. You could have drawn a lot of money in wrestling. He said, he was saying, you'll be using Chanel tampons and driving a Jean-Paul go to eight. He must have been from Chicago. I mean, something like that. Michael, anyway, I won that bet because it was a real bet. He was the manager at Jumbos Cloud Room. And, yeah, somehow I did it. But I was, maybe I was 26. I was smitten with you, but, you know, usually when you're smitten with somebody and they're about 25, there's usually an arc like, okay, they got a high school when they're 18. And how much life could they have lived in this time? Whoa.

So I started poking around from the first meeting about, you know, your origin story. And you were very evasive. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. No, I like to tell people I was so much trailer park and I was just a goth. Yes. Because at one point. Because it's too complicated otherwise.

Like all the class stuff. At one point, I just, I wouldn't let it go. As you know, I tend to. You're like, yes, thank you. God bless. Next layer. What's the next layer? Yeah.

Yeah. But at one point. And I guess maybe in frustration, I was poking around when you were living in probably Portland when you were 19 or 20. And you just weren't giving me a suitable answer. Japan. But I'm saying, you know, I'm trying to get a sense of. By the way, let me just say that the people think of the lowest points in my life, probably because I'm American, probably because I'm durable. Jubey, a delightful experience.

I'm not even kidding. Getting trapped by the acousin to Japan, delightful. I'm not even kidding. Like, people think it's, I understand Japan is because I was American and nobody would do with me, but I really was trafficked by the Acusa out of Portland with all these other girls from Idaho, from Utah, from Washington State that, you know, I don't know what happened, but I went to the, because it took my passport, but I after five months went to the Japanese embassy, not the American. Why was I so dumb? Because I, you know what? I knew at that point it would generate press. It was called. you know, whatever slavery then. And I was like, if I go to, they're more discreet. And they just put me on a, they gave me first class, too. First class flight back to Portland, eye rolling.

And I have my Hyundai guitar and the yama. So that people think was the good stuff was horrible. And people think the bad stuff was really good. Right. But I'm putting myself in the story here. Right. Okay. Which is, you know, I'm a smitten indie wannabe rock star.

And, you know, I've just seen you play. And, you know, if anybody saw you in the first album era. Yeah. You know, what it lacked in beetle chords, it made up for in complete sheer visceral energy. I mean, if you're going to go there, that's why I said with the Kim Gordon era with pretty on the inside. Like, this is our own, this is the market. All right, I'm going all the way in, you know. Yeah, I mean, the things I remember were Eric's kind of a tonal approach to guitar.

which I found really interesting as a nerd. Yeah. Combined. He had nerd chops, though. He had the whole Kevin Shields. I'm a fan of Eric. Yeah, I am too. He wasn't always a fan of me,

but we made our piece, which is all good. But the point is, my two memories of watching you play at the Avalon that night, you know, was the cool guitar stuff happening and then this just never-ending screen. And what is the source of this, whatever that, It was like a white hot rage.

Yeah. And it was performative, yes, but it was coming. It was sourced from somewhere. Well, that's what I'm saying. Now, the band I've talked about in New York, like, he couldn't fake that kind of singing. I've been listening for three days. You couldn't fake the level of playing and singing you were due. You couldn't fake it.

You know, you couldn't fake it. You know, we were just talking about this like with the kids. Like, they're behind a pop veneer. They're multimedia because they're online. Like, but there are certain things we can see with these pop kids where they can't fake it, like the good stuff. You know what I mean? When the indie world would give me about playing solos and playing, they used to say too good.

That was always a fun one to us. Yeah, you played too well. You played, you were technically great. So they, I loved it. I was like, oh, man, I don't care if they wear hats. This song is, this album's great. Because we had the same pelvis list and I was like, they wear hats. But let me give you an addendum to that.

Yeah, what? What no snob from, you know, the village voice could ever understand was, I had no concern with what they thought about my playing. My shadow was my father, who was a failed musician, drug dealer, you know, very, very bitter, who basically said, if you're going to do this,

because he resisted it for years. Yeah. If you're going to do this, you must play at this level or you're not. Oh, well, good for him, though. No, what I'm saying is people don't understand. That's a working-class shadow. My dad wasn't teaching it.

Berkeley and said, son, if you want to be good, you got to be as... Oh, my father wished he was teaching in Berkeley, but he was a failure. But I'm saying is, it's not like my dad said, you know, you got to be as good as a Django or you don't belong on stage. My dad was like, if you can't play as good as Albert King or you can't play as as good as Stevie Ray Vaughan or Jimmy Hendrix, get the fuck off the stage. I mean, that's great. And he would illustrate what he meant, not from a place of erudite, you know, snobbery from

from a place of when this guy hits this note this way, it sends lightning bolts through my brain. My dad talked about seeing Albert King. Do you know anything about Albert King? Not really, no. Okay, because I know you love music stuff. Albert King played a flying V upside down with the strings upside down. Whoa.

Okay. When you listen to Stevie Ray Vaughn or Joe Bonamasser or Jimmy Hendrix or Carlos Santana, the great soloist. King of Marine County. Yeah. Okay. Including Jerry. Okay.

God bless Jerry. I can't. I know you can't, but God bless Jerry. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. You lived it.

Aren't you on the cover of one of the records or something? I say it's not me. Apparently, it's a mountain girl's daughter. I don't know. Hank told me. Everything Hank told me is not true. Now you got to imagine a bear of a man, African American, came up through all that. I knew that.

Racist crap that all those great pioneers had to deal with. Green Book. All that. Now, imagine. imagine him embraced by the hippies in the 60s because why Bill Graham put him on a bill at the Fillmore and the hippies embraced Albert King. And there's actually a live record of him playing at the Fillmore in that time called blues power. I think it's called. Who was the African-Americans that also played Woodstock that all the hippies liked?

Richie Havens? Yes. Okay. Okay. Who played with one finger basically. Yeah. He was really. His albums are fantastic.

I'm a big Richie fans. My parents had that. Okay. So imagine my dad, skinny, white guy. With the purse. Not yet. Okay. No, this is early days now.

Okay. This is 66, 67. Are you even born? I would either just about been born or somewhere in this. So my dad's, whatever. He's a, you know, him and my mom met at a high school dance that my dad was playing. Okay. Okay.

So he's in that world. He's in the in the in, need, need, need, world. Okay. He goes to see Albert King at some club. Okay. Here's this bear of a man playing a flying V upside down. What guitar did my dad play? A flying V.

Yeah. Okay. Which I still have. Yeah. So my dad's in this crowd. You know what I mean? He's total working class. One of six children, incest.

Grandmother got the beat out of her. Saw like Irish Chicago? Southern Illinois. No, like redneck, bootlegging, all of it. Is this when the Mormons come in? That's earlier. Okay. I know, but like, is that the side?

Okay. Yes. Okay. Okay. So imagine he's complete working class. His mother is, you know, you know, addicted to horrible, horrific men. And he sees this guy. He's got no tangential relationship to other than he's growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood.

And he loves to go across the street and listen to gospel music at the church. Right. And he sees this guy who's from the same sort of class level that he is, but obviously, difference between a young white guy and an August black bluesman who's, you know, traveled the trails. But they're meeting in this cultural moment of the 60s where because through the genius of Bill Graham, Bill Graham says to the white kids in San Francisco, you need to listen to this guy. Yeah. So here my dad is seeing him on this trail that Bill Graham, you know, ignites. And here is Albert King in Chicago. My dad, for 50 years of my life, would talk about when Albert King would hit that string, what it would do to his senses. It was like somebody trying to describe lightning in a guitar.

So when I'm on stage at the Avalon, and by the way, the Avalon is the first time we ever played me, James and Darcy in a drum machine. Okay. Okay? So I'd been on that stage and I sort of knew that feeling. Yeah. Okay. it isn't Sonic youth

over my shoulder it isn't Das Dammin It isn't the replacement It isn't the replacements It isn't whoever anybody threw at us at that time You know what I mean It isn't Albini Well no but I'm saying is

No I mean he's brilliant But he was a dick All the gods of the time Right right Including Soul Asylum and Husker do I think Solisama was a great live I'm not making a musical judge I'm saying is I didn't care at all about their hall of Titans.

You know what I'm saying? I was raised to believe if you're going to play guitar and you can't play like this. I got it. This is the shout of making you level up. Got it. And it's a working. I totally received that. The reason I'm even going down this rabbit hole is to say, I think that's what people

didn't understand about you, what motivated you as an artist, what motivated you and what you wanted to say. I don't even know. What do you think isn't, doctor? We had a ton of conversations about at the time. Okay. What did I say? You basically said, and correct me if this strikes you was wrong. Okay.

You acknowledged the shadow of the indie world on what you needed to navigate to get where you wanted to go. Yeah. At the same time saying, I know there are a bunch of pricks, but that's just the way it is. Well, that's what I just been saying. Okay. Adding your Latin Dribuscial going all the way to Kim Gordon, like all the way. Like the rest of it, this is the gate. keeper, I am glanding her. She needs me. I need her. This is what's going to happen.

Like, understand the politics of it really arose. I want to say this. Sure. You were, even though they didn't like you and you didn't like them, you had different goals. You were in the Midwest, which, believe it or not really protected you. Like, I couldn't afford to not understand the politics. And like kids have to be online now. Try doing indie politics. It distracts so much every musicality. And so, you know, I mean, screaming was my only option. It was something I was good at, too. And my lyrics were fire, and I knew they were great.

And, you know, the hiding light. I wish sometimes, I'm glad it turned out the way it is, but I wish sometimes I'd follow that R-A-M narrative. Do you mean with my playing with my band? We got there eventually. Yeah, we did. But, like, getting short was like, oh, my God. But I'm telling you the ambition that we had to be on major labels, me, you, you, Kurt,

those of us that did it, that fury that Kurt felt. when Toby Vale, like, screamed in him about about a girl. How could you write something so popular, so capitalist, and think I'd be impressed? I mean, these people, what the... You know, and the thing is, like, unless they, these women, unless they married real well, where are they now?

And some of them are my friends. Some of them are people that I love, who went down that rabbit hole. I'll be specific, you know, the babes girls, right? Like, I love Kat. I love her. She's still with us. But it's a matter of you didn't write,

you were so capable. She had Paul McCartney Chuck. Her guitar playing was on another level for any woman I'd ever met. Her musicality, her sense of the Paul of it all, right? And I remember once in Minneapolis, when she started Babes in Toyland, I was yammering on about the Beatles, whatever.

We got in a huge fight. She's like, well, I know who's Paul and who's John. Like, I was like, actually, you're by Paul. But I'll take Paul. I'll take Paul. day long. And it was, it was a big insult of the time. Like, really? Paul's an insult. And, okay, John's good too, but John's like, John was great, but John is representative in that moment of, like, the punk part. Like, I'm punk and you're just Paul. I'm like, God, I wish I was

Paul. Like, one finger of Paul would be great. But the fact that they didn't follow the Lee Rinaldoza record, like, she could write choruses, but she didn't want to, right? And like, you know, I'd see her on like my own, you know, biographies of Courtney Love and like, going on there non-consensually like everybody did, my family members did. You know, the other people that ever asked like Jennifer Finch, right? Can not, you know, what do you think about this? Like, please, you know, do it. But cat would go on non-consensually. I mean, isn't that insane now that the culture has changed? Like people, your family members, not that I really like, I like a few of them. But, you know, Kat, other people, like go in my old

bass player, like, whatever, so full of resentment that they non-consensually go on the E-True Hollywood story, go on behind the music without your permission. I mean, have you had that happened to you? Not as much as you, but I've had it, yeah. I think because women are just so mean to each other, but any way, what they used to be. But anyway, Cass said, she wanted to be famous and I wanted to play music. That goes back to my class traitor. I mean, what the actual man? Why were they so mad at Dylan? Oh, because he betrayed them by going electric? How is that class traitor, though? Wasn't you working class Jewish from Hibbing?

Let me tell you a story and see if you remember this story. Okay. We were both in London together. We were in a relationship at the time. I remember that. Good times. You wouldn't give me money for smokes. You're still mad.

I am because I'd take a tube back to Kat in Wood Green, and that tube was like, and now I live there, it's a long way from Central London to go on. I'm just saying, I had to buy, in England, you can do this, buy five cigarettes at a time with like a shilling, like a pence, whatever. All right, go on. I hadn't yet outgrown my parochial, you know. Oh, right.

Roman Catholic sort of stodginess. Yeah, I remember things. Yeah, I'm remembering. So God bless on that. Yeah, no. I love the innocent. No resistance. No resistance to the criticism.

Okay, no. Okay, but here we are. And you have more money than me. Well, I had the only money between us. Fish and chips. for days. I think I was living on a, at the time I was living on a 75 pound per diem a week. Oh, no, I know. It was, it was marmite thin. You knew enough to complain about not getting cigarettes, but you also knew that we couldn't afford a cab right across London. So we walked.

Right. I don't know if you remember this. So I'll get to it. The reason we had to walk across London, and you can imagine the two of us in 1990, whatever, walking across London. Yeah. I kind of knew it, though from 81, right? Did I know a little bit about London? Oh, you had, you had, you had chops. You had chops. Yeah. We were staying in Hyde Park.

Yeah. And the reason we had to walk across London is you had to do something, you had to get your passport updated or something. There was some sort of contrivance where I need to get a stamp or something or I'm not going to be able to do X, Y, or Z. Okay. You did or I did? You did.

Oh, okay, okay. So we had to go to some. It was a contrivance? Not a contrivance in the sense. That's why we're walking. Okay. That's the reason we're walking across London. Okay, great.

That's the contrivance. I'm probably abusing the word. Tell me the right use of the word, please. Well, it means when you fake something. Okay, so I'm using it wrong. Okay, contrived, right? Contrived, right? Okay, no, you caught me.

That's good. Okay. So I don't know what the right word, but that's the reason. A reason. All right. Come down to our level. So here we are in the English sun walking two hours one direction and two hours back the other way. Oh, man.

It felt it was very long. It was very long. Okay. So you can imagine two hours this way and two hours that way. In the sun. Yeah. That would suck. Arguments, jokes.

We're jokes. You know, leave me alone. Don't talk to me for 20 minutes. I'm going to walk ahead of you. Virgin Megastar. Somewhere around there. Okay. Okay.

So here we are. We're walking and walking, walking. We go to the thing. We go to the passport thing. There's a beautiful coquettish moment where I asked to see your passport and you don't want to let me see it because I'm going to find out your real name. Oh, wow. Was it still like Manioli or something? You're also telling people a different age, which was, which was, I busted. One does that from the jump, my friend.

I busted that you were, you're, I thought we were the same age. No, I'm older. But a woman does that from the jump. Let's put it this way. I figured it out that day. All right. Okay. But here's the beautiful memory and this is why I want to loop it back into what we're talking about. And I think this has been the most interesting part of our discussion today. We're walking back. We have no money. You're mad at me that I won't buy you.

cigarettes, you know, and we're so poor. I'm still mad. I don't even smoke, but I'm, okay, go on. And we're walking, you know, we're on some high street somewhere, and we're walking past the Prada store. And you stop in front of the window, and, you know, you're gazing at Prada's current line. True story across my heart, okay? And, you know, I'm hot, I'm tired, I'm annoyed, you're mad at me still.

And so after about a minute of you gazing, I go, come on, let's go. The come on let's go wasn't just based on let's go. It was like, why are you staring? You indie girl. I know why I was staring. I know exactly what happened. I know exactly. Do you remember?

Was it Mary Jane's? No, but I'll get to it. Okay. I'm sure yes, but no. Because whenever I see those kind of references, stuff that we've done in the culture reflected in. mass consumption. I remember in the early, I still am.

I get shocked. I get shocked. I'm like, wait, what? Like, no, it wasn't that. Okay. So I'm kind of annoyed because I'm thinking, like, to me, it's the equivalent of me standing outside of Mercedes Ben's dealership and looking at the car that I can't afford. Right.

So I'm staring at the product store up for a little. And I'm like, I don't know why. We don't have any money for anything. Right. Food. You know what I mean? Why are you looking at Prada? I feel guilty.

I even want it. No, no, no. Okay, go and go on. No, this is one of my favorite stories. Okay, go. And I said, like, something along the lines, like, what are you looking at that stuff for? We can't afford it or you can't afford it. And you go, as only you can do, you go, one day, I'm going to have it all.

That is so late-stage capitalism. But you knew. Yeah, I mean, I always knew. You knew. I didn't know you like that then. No, you knew about yourself, didn't you? But that's different. My thing was more of a, like, you know, what they used to call making it.

I call it making it. Okay, but my version of making it wasn't your version of making. Your version of making, you had a lot more, you had a lot more arc in your ambition than I did. I wanted to sell out the metro, you know. Oh, no. Did you hear that lyric? There's no business, like show business, like no business, I know. Bethel Merman, yeah.

Yeah, right. There's that in that song, the one you just helped me with. And then I go, you can call a sell-outs now. Wait. Yeah, you can tell, there's no more tickets to the garden. That's how that song ends. Yeah. You can call it, I forget the rhyme.

It's a really good song too, but there's no more tickets to the garden. You can call us sell us now. Yeah, now. Yeah, that's a great line. Yeah, but like, I've been saving that line for a long time and to put it on what I know is going to be a wildfire of a song. Like, it's going to go into people's heads. Oh, my God, revenge of the nerds.

But if we're talking comparative values, right? Yeah. Because your ambition definitely led me to a greater ambition. that I'm often accused of being overly ambitious. Your ambition was far greater than mine, and you actually opened me up to see it in a bigger... Do you know what I realized about women and ambition or even men and ambition?

Like, I noticed, I was watching Donald Trump, of all things, in his first term, on a Rona Barrett, like 80s, you know, when he was building... And it was this crazy little dragon, whatever. And I'm no fan of that guys, but Rona Barrett asks him the word ambition. Like, it's probably the one manner

Donald Trump knows, It's like the one courtesy he knows. Don't say the word ambition. And then I went down a rabbit hole. Did Donald Trump ever say the word ambition? He has not. And what I realized about the word ambition is that I learned it from Madonna and the whole I'm going to run the world and the whole blonde ambition thing. But people think it's rude.

They really think it's rude. They think it's rude. And honestly, if Donald Trump knows that it's rude from West Point or wherever his father, like men know, men of a certain age know. I mean, that was my narrative was like, oh, my God. got Madonna over here. By the way, Trump once called page six, he's like, I dated Madonna, just whatever. You got Madonna over here going blonde ambition is working for her. And then when she's older, it's not cute anymore. People find that where, and I started using that same trope that Madonna had laid down. Like, ambition isn't about, I mean, I was ambitious for sure,

that like embracing it publicly, it's rude. People don't like it. They like Oshops. They like Elvis, my mama. They like Appapai when you're successful. They really do. when you're on the way. If Donald Trump hid the word ambitious, what the, you know what I mean? Like that got my brain. That broke my brain. So yes, I was crazy, ambitious, but people prefer when you hide that. Well, my point was slightly different, but thank you. No, it's contributory. So, but my point is, is the gatekeeper indie system, if we had succumb to that, including your husband. Well, we did on album one, you didn't. Sure. But the point. is, is at some point you blew past it, he blew past it. But you have to get angry enough to blow it about that.

Sure. First of all, you have to believe in enough for it to be cowed by it. But secondarily, you have to ultimately figure out that it's bullshit to blow past it. And thank God that we all did, and I'm including a bunch of other people in this category, because we would have never made the music and we would be basically forgotten. Think about when REM got big. And I mean, I didn't know them yet, but like Michael on South Central Rain would, like, like he was so. freaked out, he turned his back on the audience. Like, Bono never did that, but Michael did. And also, with Green Day, you know, they come out at the gate. Right after Kurt died, they were a good mood. They were a good mood. Duky was a good mood, and everybody needed it in that world needed a good mood.

The other thing is a great, Harvilla has a great show called 60 songs that was playing in the 90s. By the way, he's at like 150 songs now. But the one on Green Day and Duky, he goes back to Gilman Street, which is in Berkeley. The number one rule, it was straight at it. It was no major label bands here ever. It was painted on the wall.

And poor Green Day. I mean, I saw a picture of Billy Joe. I mean, he's from Berkeley. Like, he's got a grateful of his sticker on the back of their first man. I'm like, no! But he does. Berkeley is a whole milieu. Anyway, Robert Villas sourced, like their first live show.

And the bridge of one song is literal Beatles. Like, they were obviously penny-wise, like their peers, they were better. And that was apparent from show one. The three of them. And with the no, and like Harvilla's sources, tape. So when I first met Billy Joe, you know, he wasn't in any position to take my side, as it were, that he did, like from day one. And I brought him this thing record of Kurtz because it was Bay Area Punk and he would appreciate it. And, you know, we just really got along from day one.

But the point being that he was tormented, even in 94, they tormented him, you know, even after everything that happened. Yeah, well, he was publicly. critical of me in that same. But probably he was told to be, Billy. But let me, let me, but. We didn't have a lot of character then because we couldn't, you know, like, go on. No, but I, because I don't want people to twist what I'm saying. Yeah.

You know, we met, Green Day and I met during the Lollapalooza Tour 94, which you were on with us for a hot minute. And we, you know, we don't, you know, I'd be out there playing basketball with the monks and all that. Oh, with that tour, right. And they were the snotty little young band. Is I on that tour ever, really? Don't you remember?

we took you on tour with us? Not Lala. Yeah. Oh, God, I don't remember. Look, do you remember the 90s? You weren't really there, but go on. The monks were on. Oh, I do remember the monks, yes.

But the reason we took you on tour or the reason I asked the band, and the band, to their credit, was totally cool with it. I said, I didn't like the way you were being framed in public as like, you know, this kind of Yoko Ono character, that the story was overwhelming

your musical opportunity. Yeah. And I said, and I think I suggested, that's my memory of it, that the best thing for you to do is just get out in front of people and play. Yeah, it was. So we would stop our show. It saved my life doing that.

No matter how I was, it would save my life. So we would stop our show somewhere in the middle, and you would come out and play one or two songs. Oh, wow. I don't remember that at all, but thank you. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, I was on a lot of drugs. But back to, back to Billy Joe at first time.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's typical. Like he was saying everybody was talking. Teenager, too. God bless. Okay. I mean, look, we've all proven our metal. Yeah.

So I have no issue with it. But there's this really beautiful moment where we were playing a bridge school benefit. And, you know, so imagine I met Green. I've never, he's never asked me to play him. So, oh, Neil, Neil, if you're out there, I've been listening to Harvest five days straight. Please, God, okay. I don't think they do it anymore. There's still a, yeah, Lana just played with Neil recently, Eden told me, and apparently she belted.

She belted rock. Oh, God bless. Yep. Anyway, to try to wrap this story up in our interview today. So I met them on the Lollapalooza tour, and you know, you're together every day for 40 shows. So you get to know people a little bit. And then the next thing I know is like Billy's saying negative stuff about me in the press. So I'm playing a bridge school benefit somewhere like 98, 2000, somewhere around there, 9-9.

And I look and I see them, you know, in the backstage area there where the Grateful Dead, the Shoreline, you know what I mean? That's like, you know, they have the big dead skull in the backstage. No, shoreline, yeah, yeah. So it's, we're in grateful dead. Played with lawn, actually. We're in Grateful Deadland. And I look across the dressing room, and I see all these cabanas. And I look and I see Billy Joan.

I think, oh, God, because I'm from Chicago. Doesn't it, to me, too, every time somebody that's great to you says something mean about in the press because they feel obligated like Lannigan did. Your heart drops and my heart drops. It's like, wait, what? You are my friend. You are my friend. I don't want to stir up any controversy because Billy and Joe and are great. I'm saying, in general, they all did it to me.

And a lot of them did it to you. And I mean, I remember a guy from Tool wearing a free Francis Bean shirt in the 90s. I was like, wait, what? We were friends. Like, like, a lot. Like, I understand it now that they were obligated to say something. Or, you know, growl. Like, come out with it and just say we're cool.

Like, come out with it, right? Like, be man enough to man up because you're the Uberman. And has all the straight males. And we're cool. But you won't say it because you're afraid you'll lose your audience. You're afraid it'll affect your relationship with literal Paul McCartney. because he's got a friendship with Paul. And Dave has not the talent of Paul.

Let's be clear. But they both have the wife haunting dark shadow. They both have the cool guy dying, haunting dark, tragically, haunted. So they're buddies. Is that why? Like, I really, have analysts with Dave, it would really behoove me if the straight white males that you are, your base, if you will, stop picking on me. Like, the millennials in particular. Like, Gen Z is not picking on me anymore.

And to be, and to be. But, you know, your heart drops are never somebody that you're cool with or maybe just remotely cool with. This is you in the process. Like, oh, my God, this is still happening? Well, I can confirm that I've, you know, I've spent time with you and Dave together. And Dave doesn't have any issue with you. So. I don't know.

I want to say that to his base. It's so stupid. Anyway, anyway. No, but what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is there's the stuff that goes on behind the castle walls and their stuff goes out front. Yeah, because he needs that image. I mean, he needs. Sure. And also.

Well, obviously. How many songs has he written? Like, I can't write a song about, I'm just going to be for a second, let me, you can cut it or not. I couldn't write a song about Dave Grohl to save my life. If I had to, I'd do the, you know, ASMR thing of like, upload the color, I don't know, brown, whatever. Upload Dave, say the AI, upload whatever, you know, all. And he's written like four songs about me, and there are hits. I'm like, wait, what?

Like, what about me? I don't get it. Particularly at that time when you wrote those songs. You're good to write hits about it. Oh, my God. Okay, I'll give you a great one. Scott Winland, my friend. I start to finish my Billy Joe story, though.

Scott Weiland, my friend, my drug buddy, my friend. Nothing romantic, just my buddy, right? Saved him from Cry Help once, probably to his detriment. But in any event, wrote two songs about me. One's called Two Cool, Queenie, something else. And we're buddies, and they're mean. And I'm like, Scott, what the fuck you're doing? Why are you writing?

It's like, listen, it's lazy, but you're just. too good to not write songs about. I'm like, why? Like the suicide, blonde thing, the movie start thing, and like, all the fact that you've had. It was crazy. Like, why have you written mean songs about me, Scott? And we were friends.

Anyway, go on, Billy Joe. Let me finish my Billy Joe. Okay, all right, sorry. I don't want to get into what his criticism was because it ultimately would make him seem hypocritical. And I'm not interested in doing it because I like Billy Joe. I know. I said, I saw you on here.

Like, God bless Irving Azo. I'm like, yeah, no. With Irving Azov. My wife has become friendly with Billy. bit and loves them and is a huge fan of his. So it's like all is good in the hood. We went on tour with them in 2025. Amazing. Amazing tour. Even my praise of them cost me my relationship with Linda Ramon because she didn't like what I said about Green Day and the Ramones. I mean, I've lived it with Green Day in my own kind of interesting. They're great, man. I think they're great guys. Do you.

So we're in agreement on Billy. Billy's one of the great songwriters of our generation. Deceptively simple when I was trying to try to sing that. Truly a great talent. So if anybody miss understands what I'm saying. Understand that as I sit here right now. Are you so political? Of course you like him and he likes you. No, no, no. What I don't want people to do is twist and create drama where there's no drama. Okay. But I am telling the story about the past. Okay. Because I think it illustrates kind of what we're talking about. Okay. So here, you know, there I am in my little Victorian mansion in, you know, 94. And, you know, here is, you know, or 95, whatever. And here's Billy Joe criticizing me for whatever. You can look it up if you want. I don't want. I don't want. I don't want the view. I'll tell you when the camera's off. Anyway, so. Four or five years later, there I am at Bridge School, you know, Neil's charity event, beautiful event. Yeah. So it's a beautiful Marin County day. You know, I'm backstage in the shadow of the Grateful Dead School, which by the way when I- feel the way about Marin County.

I think it's all. It's all it's all there. It's all upper class. And there I see Billy. There I see Billy. And I think, and again, I'm from Chicago. So the Chicago politic is if you see somebody that's been talking smack about you, you have two choices.

Choice one is to turn tail and pretend that you didn't see them. But no, you've been humiliated on some point. Sometimes that's happened to me. Whether or not they know or two, you've got to go up and sort of slay the beast where they stand. It doesn't mean it's a fight. It means you're not going to take it laying down. I've done both, but yeah, I feel you. So I'm standing there contemplating, so this is all credit to Billy,

I'm standing there contemplating whether I want to address this situation because I'm not going to take lightly what he said. And he comes up to me. And my first reaction is like, oh, this isn't going to be good. Right. Right. And again, I'm right out of central casting. I think he's going to do the snotty, say the punk rock thing. Well, that's what I'm thinking.

Right. And he says, I have to tell you that I'm very sorry about what I said. Oh, I love it. And he explained his logic. He explained his regret. And I said, that almost makes me cry. Like he's my kid. I guess what I'm trying to.

He's around my age, but I still feel like he's my kid. This is what I'm trying to say. And this is what I think is. more valuable. And this is where part of our haranguing today is castigating the indie rock system of the 90s and its bullying and its perniciousness, particularly in its bullying of you, which to a certain extent continues, mine less so, but it's there. I could give a fuck about how it continues. Like, I'm over it. Well, when you win, there's nothing to crow about. We won.

Yeah, okay. But it doesn't mean it didn't hurt at the time. I mean, it doesn't mean it didn't scar. Okay, but the point is that when we really look at our generation, our shared generation, I think this is a good place to end. Okay. And we'll pick it up some other time because there's so much more to talk. Yeah, I want to hear the class trader thing. How would they know my class of just all sorts of places?

Maybe not in front of a camera. Yeah, maybe not. But here's the point I'm trying to make. If you look at the records the snobs made versus the records that the ones who got past the snobbery made or who didn't give from the beginning, which was or the hunger. Okay, you stack the, let's call it, the non-hypster records in one pile and the hipster records in an aisle. You're not kidding. It's like this.

It's class. That's crazy. You've changed my world, Billy Corgan, as always. So the obsession, you know, the Malcolmist's obsession with me 35 years later, but lies a certain point, which is, A, they didn't have the chops to get there, or B, they accepted a worldview, which was ultimately limiting to their talent. I think that the second one is the generous one. And I think it's, I'm trying to be nice.

I know, but I think we can afford generosity. I think we can afford it at this point. Like we may be scarred by now. Well, that's very Shakespearean of you. I mean, there we go. There we go. Hamlet and Hamlet, having to talk. I love you, man.

All right.