The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - Melissa Auf der Maur | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

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

The bass is the instrument that is unnoticed, but no one can live without. As I was playing a beer bottle smashed against my guitar, so even though I'm in the crowd choking Bruce to the ground, like this, the best. I got back on stage, picked up a guitar, and finished the song. That is when you captured my heart. I remember. You said, wow, one day maybe you'll play in my band.

Okay, here we go. We're going to get to the tough. I've been waiting 25 years to ask you these questions. And here's your new book. I have lots of deeply penetrating questions and concerns. Your spirit is squeezed into those pages. It's the origin story of me and do. All right.

So let's an origin story. So we'll start with Nick and Linda. Oh, yes. Take me to Nick and Linda. My parents, I love that you remember that, yeah, They're without, you know, I always say that you and Courtney were my grunge parents and that my parents, I live in omnipresent shadows of my cool Montreal parents, both music journalists, culture journalists, activists, like everything good 70s, 60s counterculture raised me with the idea that the golden thread to a purpose in life is just to know what you, Melissa, loves, needs to do. Never work for the man, never work for anybody else, but your. your vision of what the world needs. And so they're the best role models.

My father died, as you know, like super long ago, but with him, I feel like the baton was further past that I really look up to my parents. And they were the best role models for what I feel like the 21st century needs more of, which is unique individualism. Talk a bit about, though, your dad's sort of cult personality in Montreal. Yeah, okay.

Well, that's also what's interesting is because I grew up in the shadow of a larger-than-life person, father was a journalist turned politician, but also a man about town ran out of a bon vivant, a bon vivant, budivardier, smoking, drinking, intense lifestyle, not unlike the people of the rock bands that you and I were not, but the people, other people in rock bands. But this might have something us, something to do with us ending up in those things with those people or even romantically being involved with those types of people. Yes, it is true, actually. So he, he was both like,

remarkable and impossible. And he, you know, I grew up on the campaign trails, you know, election night. What was his political platform? He was proud. He was an independent and he founded about 10 different Montreal independent movement parties. And every time he left a party and they'd say, Nick, you're so inconsistent. He's like, the parties change. I don't change. And his thing was entirely the people have the power. Yeah. Corporate government, don't trust them. So he was just. just like he was a radical socialist who wanted to fight for the people. I didn't know this or if I did, I'd forgotten, but I saw some illusion in doing the research to interview you about this kind of traveling with your parents, like gypsy life. That's my mother, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that? So my father injected me with all the political public facing stuff, and my mother injected

me with the no man is ever going to define who you are. She chose to be. She got that one through. Yes. She had me as a single mother because she didn't tell my father I was born until I was two. So they had a romantic weekend. She had what she wanted. And before I met my father, I had lived in a circus caravan in Wales, a British post office truck in Morocco and a hut in Kenya, Africa with Chippanzis. My mother was a radical independent hippie woman who brought her little girl on that trip when she, and I spent my second birthday, same. Patrick's Day, 1974 in Africa. In a, like, I have the photo of my birthday party in an African tribe of children and me, which is, I think, where I got injected with the travel nomad came from my mother and my father, public mania, you know, he gave me that ability to walk into the spotlight with you.

Yeah. Yeah. I met you, I think you were 19 or 18. Yeah, probably. So, yeah. University, I think, was still kind of generally in the mix. I was at university. It was summer of 91.

Tell me about the face school. No one wanted me to go to the face school, so I'm a little jealous. My father didn't love the idea. My mother was determined to go to an experimental art school where they did not have to learn English history or math until later. And the foundation was fine arts core education. And the trick, it was a 70s. It was like the LaGuardia, the fame school of New York, and it was a public school, and the idea was,

if you get kids to do art and performance, they will like education, which was true. Because when I ended up in university, which is what I left to join rock bands, I didn't want to leave, because I had been loving school my whole life. Yeah. So it was an amazing art school, and I went straight into University of the Fine Arts Department at Concordia,

which was the cool- And the hope was to be a photographer or just an artist? Artist. For me, it was always multimedia, photography in school, base at home in my room. So I always envisioned I'd be able to marry the two together. And I was like, oh, I could maybe be like a rock photographer as a musician, but it was to be a fine arts photographer, like a conceptual artist with photography as my core. Yes.

Yes. How'd that work out? Well, I got hijacked by rock bands. And I persevered. in that I was actually angry at you for convincing me that I'm planting the seed of destiny, which was join a rock band. I loved rock music,

but I did not like having to compromise my photo passion, so that turned into becoming an obsessive documentarian. Wise, by the way. Turns out that a course a century later, a little bit of my photos are in the memoir, but following the memoir is my 90s rock photography museum exhibit and photo book that comes out in September. So I took a roll of film every day in hole in The Smashing Pumpkins.

Wow. And I have 15. Did you notice me taking photos on stage every show? Not at all. Yeah, you were busy. But I especially once I joined the pumpkins and I didn't have to play like sidekick backup vocalist, foot switches, timers. I had three cameras on every stage that we played. And I'm going to deliver you in another time, an amazing, like, photo album.

I love that. I love that. But so I took a roll of film a day and now it's been a couple of. a quarter of century, and now my documentarian photography is actually going to get a light of day because the archive is now deemed as a time capsule, which it is. Yeah, because I know many ways that period is

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

I genuinely was like, this is so exciting. I'm on tour with pavement. I'm on tour with back. I'm going to take pictures. And I realized that culture that we had of like anti-caring, but you and I didn't do that. We were very passionate care. We didn't pretend we didn't want to like.

I just wish I'd documented more. Yeah. Well, you were busy and you also had other people documenting for you, whereas I- It's a different discussion. I didn't. I didn't. I had to document for myself, but I also was mainly a photo student

who was like, I can't go to RISD you and become an art photographer, so I'll just find this new language, which was documentary. Oh. Yeah. Okay. Yes. July 23, 1991. That's our day.

See this because I can't speak French. Le Fufonis Electronics. Oh, my God. I love that. Quebecers are going to love this. So Le Fufon Electrique is Canada's CBGI's translated in French. Le Fufonetrike, the Crazy Punk Club, you played your first Montreal show in July and anyone translates to electric buttocks.

Okay, did not know that. See if you, this job... What happened? What happened that night? We'll get there. We'll get there. See if this jogs your memory. My memory is that the sun was still up when we were playing. Well, it was July. You're probably right.

It's a dark room, but you're probably right. You were playing. It was a Looney Tuesday. This, you might not remember. I have the flyer. Loonies in Canada are $1 coins. So you were playing for $1 on a Tuesday. I was a ticket girl at that venue.

Okay. So you got in for free? I got him for free for my $1 show, but mainly there was a sub-pop logo on the flyer. No one had heard of your band. You had that 12-inch. And it was my night off because nobody really buys a $1 ticket. So I just, I said to my roommates,

some sub-pop band is playing. Let's go see them. Yes. I was one of, I think, 20 people in the audience. Very small audience. Very sparse. Yes, what happened next? I believe I was playing the solo in one of our songs.

So I was intently looking at my guitar sort of here. And as I was playing a beer bottle smashed against my guitar, I don't think it broke. But the beer kind of splattered. And I immediately kind of whirled up to see who through the bottle. There's only 20 people out there. And usually when that happens, people aren't in a big hurry to let you know who threw the bottle. It's just the way the crowds work.

But for whatever reason, when I gave the death glare, the people around your roommate, what was your roommate saying? Bruce. Bruce, good name for a roommate. The people around Bruce seemed to kind of almost like not me. And as soon as I saw the body language of people going away from Bruce, I threw my guitar off, mid-strum, dove into the crowd, and began strangling him to the ground. I remember.

And I just remember the look of terror in his eyes because he didn't seem to want to fight even though he'd just thrown a beer bottle at me. We also had a rule which you might remember in the band which is no matter what happens, keep playing. So even though I'm in the crowd choking Bruce to the ground like this. The best.

And once I kind of like a, I don't know another way to put it, it's kind of like, you know, when you alpha, a dog and the dog sort of submits. Bruce sort of submitted to the moment, so I was done choking. I was like, I made my point. Yeah, but the bigger point you made, which is always my favorite part.

Wait, wait, wait, let me finish my little, feel. So then I got back on stage, picked up a guitar, and finished the song. That is when you captured my heart. That's when I thought, so from my perspective, I'm standing in the audience with Bruce, my roommate, who actually is just my roommate's boyfriend,

who happened to have moved in. So we're working. watching a show, I, with every song, am becoming as if I've never heard music before, like, oh, wait, because it was more slick, more romantic. Well, as Courtney, your erstwhile bandmate used to say, it's unfair because the pumpkins on their first album sounded like a second album. It's true. It was so much more realized and magnificent than a lot of the other bands. We had a plan. Well, of course. You had a vision. I had never heard of you before. I'd never heard it. It, like, won me so quick. And I was getting like, I felt like the sounds of the universe and everything that was inside me that I didn't know was coming out. And literally halfway through the show, Bruce, who's watching next me, he's like, what the fuck is wrong with these guys? And I looked, I'm like, what? He's like, they're so full of it. They're not playing an arena. They're playing a punk club. Why are they acting like this? And I was like, it's amazing. This is so, like, grandiose. And so then he started. heckling you.

I don't remember the heckling. So he was screaming, drop the fucking attitude, soul, drop the fucking attitude. And I was like, why are you doing this to these people? You had been tuning your guitar and said,

I'm just tuning my guitar, Tull. And the two of you had that banter, you started your song, he threw the beer bottle. And as he threw the beer bottle, and then you jumped off stage, in my mind, like imprinted,

was he just ruined my favorite band show. Now this band is not going to continue playing, and there's an answer in this band for me. And this is where, like, the real song, you got up, finished your set, and then you said, you finished that song, and you said, Montreal, we have one more for you.

And you played, I am one. And it changed every cell in my body, which is why later, a thousand years later, I play that song, I hear that song, and I thought, wow, that is some amazing balls and confidence, and that's when I be lined to the side stage after the show. When I was angry in particular, we were angry collectively, we tended to play better, especially back then. Of course.

Well, you probably got a really good wall-uping version of IM-1. It was so good. And then meanwhile, you know, in terms of for other people's perspective, Darcy and James being your bookends, which I write about in the book, of why I ended up, because I was 19, I loved music, but I didn't play music yet. But all in one summer, I saw the pumpkins, Sonic Youth, the Breeders, and Whole. Every single one, I'm with cool, wallflower, stoic girls on bass, and it was not intellectual,

but I understood that's my position. That's where I could fit in. But there was, so, between Darcy and this effeminate other person on this stage, I'm like, this is welcoming, and I obviously noticed Jimmy. Jimmy, as a bass player, that was the other, kind of, like, missing part, too. he seemed like a radically incredible drummer compared to the more kind of punk. He hadn't been impressed.

He was light years ahead of most indie drummers. So between the rhythm section, you're commanding like strangle play. I don't, I was a shy person. Do you remember what happened when I walked side stage? You got off stage. You're moving your gear off on what is this 19-year-old girl. You said something like,

Hi, I'm Melissa, for Montreal, and I'm very sorry that my roommate threw a beer bottle at you. I apologize for all of Canada. I said, on behalf of Montreal, Canada, I apologize, and I will follow your band. I love your band, and then we became friends. And I did ask you, why did he throw at the beer bottle, and you said, he thought you had too much attitude. And I remember thinking, well, yeah. You're in a rock band. Well, it's the only way to play that type of music.

Well, also, we should talk about in terms of what made the pumpkins different, which actually is what I think the inspiration I got when you kind of parted the sea for me, is that I had missed. I grew up with the 80s, the Cure, the Smiths, which obviously you have a love for Depeche Mode, all that too, but what I had missed was glam, classic rock. And so I went from like that to punk to grunge. I did not understand, even like I had kind of missed Sabbath. Like I did not have riff-oriented.

So I, that was my gateway to all of that was you. And it felt more who I am, which is more fantastical, more fantasy, more romantic. You know, I was not a big, punk didn't resonate with me. I want fantasy and drama, like Depeche Mode and The Cure, or what you gave me, which was that. So I feel like you gave me classic rock, but through a lens of a new, you know, a new generation.

Yeah, well, James had a great quote once. And it ended up being on the cover of a magazine. It's only James Ehow. I don't remember. The quote was, we're like Led Zeppelin, well, without all the elves. Right, even though I like elves, but you also didn't have, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, perfect.

Okay, so we stayed in touch after that. Yeah, I remember you gave me your address. We became pen, I sent you like one postcard, and then I remember. I still have something you sent. Yeah. And then I got a return to sender a couple of years later. That's on the eve of Siamese Dream. So the little band that had made their first record that blew my mind, all of a sudden was on Virgin making their big, you know, their next frontier.

But we did see each other after that on the... Oh, that was like months later. Chili Peppers Tour. Yeah, that was literally November of 91. So it was like, I met you with the beer. bottle, then I saw you opening for Pearl Jim and chili peppers. Sorry, Pearl Jam was opening for us, but it's okay. It was Pearl Jam, Pumpkins, chili peppers.

Are you sure? I'm positive. Because I also went to the Cow Palace show two months later in San Francisco. I mean where we kicked off the bill so Nirvana could be on the bill? Correct. Because I thought that, oh my God, then I have that wrong in my book, because I thought it was pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Chili Peppers, and then Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Chili peppers.

Pearl Jam blew up on the two. So when they started, they were kind of an unknown entity. Got it. And by the head, midway through the tour, the audiences started coming early to see them as well. So I went down to Burlington, Vermont, from Montreal. It's only an hour drive for you. I didn't, with all due respect, to flee.

And everybody wasn't like, I wasn't there for the chili peppers or Pearl Gym. I was there for the pumpkins. And that's when we saw each other again. And then you were just like taking off. Like, that's when your world started getting a big. Yeah. So in my mind, and correct me, you're,

and correct me, you're kind of pen-paly, you're kind of over here. Yeah. You're the beautiful but a chely painting up there in Montreal. Yes, exactly. And we'd see a kind of cross pass here and there. But then there's this moment where you're in this band Tinker. So talk about Tinker a little bit. Well, totally pumpkins inspired.

After that summer decided I've got to get a base. I started, found mentors with guys kind of your age in my rock scene in Montreal. they invited me to their jam space, they lent me a bass, an SVT amp. And within like six months, I was playing in a band with all guys. And then I formed this band tinker, which I think existed for not more than a year

by the time I even left Montreal. But so the band tinker, the other band member, Steve Durand, I met at the pool table at when I was DJing, because I was a cassette DJ at the dive bar. Cassette DJ. Cassette DJ. That's really taking the hipster thing.

to another level. Well, it literally was I started there at 19. I was DJing before I was even playing bass, and all I did was make mixtapes, press play, play pool, not take requests. And after I saw your show, I went to Sam the Record Man, and I bought

the Gish cassette, and I played it on auto repeat the whole album. And I would occasionally be like, we're only playing one album for this hour, thank you. And I was playing Gish, playing pool. Yeah.

And this cute guy, I'd never met a bike career guy, came up to me, he was like, is this the pumpkins? And I was like, how do you know that? Because, you know, that was that time where your secret, like, favorite band was, like,

only yours. He was like, I just saw them in Toronto last week. And he had seen the same show, but in Toronto. And he instantly, like, I won my trust. And I said, I got a gym space around the corner. We started this little band tinker. and it was only our sixth show when

Siamese Dream exploded and you were coming through town with the Siamese Dream tour fall of 93. Siamy's Dream came out in spring of 93? I feel like it came out about September of 93. This sounds about right for me. So it was November of 93. But we were touring constantly. So we would have been touring before the album came out,

while the album was coming on after. And I had not really seen you since the game. gish moment. So like two years had gone by. I had learned, taught myself to play bass, got indoctrinated through older guys that never made a pass to me that took me very seriously as a woman who wanted to make music, started a band with guys, and we had played a handful of shows. And because I was a ticket girl, DJ, I knew all the promoters, and I called my promoter friends, the guy who, you know, the guys who brought Nirvana and Jesus Lizard and Pumpkins, they were like the main and rock promoters who were always like the most powerful people in the town.

And I called them and I said, hey, I'd love to open up for the pumpkins when they come through. And they're like, Melissa, we love you. But they're touring with swerve driver. They didn't ask for a local opener. I was like, come on, do it for me. He's like, sorry, I can't do it. So what did I do next, Billy? I don't remember.

Oh, my God. This isn't the best part of the story other than the beer bottle. I wrote a letter. Dear Billy, remember me, Melissa and the beer bottle? I now have my own band, and I'd love to open up with you when you come through town. Care of Virgin fan P.O. Box. Wow. I sent Matt to the Virgin Records P.O. box.

Who's Mr. attentive to his fans? Billy got the fucking letter. I had my phone number in there. And the week of the show, the local promoters who said, sorry, Melissa, called near their tail between their legs. and said, the pumpkins people just called and you're opening up. Billy said, Melissa's band should open up.

So I showed up a sound check. The poster is still like pumpkins, swerve driver. You know, we were squeeze onto the bill at the very last moment. And I remember so well loading into this giant venue, I'd only ever played, like, tiny clubs the size of this stage. It's a beautiful, yes, metropolis.

The best venue in Canada, I think, actually. And it was such a huge honor. We got to be the opening slot. And by the time we went on at like seven, the place was already packed, sold out months in advance. You know, you guys were on the mega rise. And I, you saw me at Soundcheck, gave me a like big brother hug.

I was so grateful and you can't wait. And then you watch from the side of the stage. And that was like, kind of like I, in many ways, played for you because you were the gateway, the one that sort of, inspired me to even pick up the base. And then I walked off stage and you said, which you won't remember, but I remember, you said, wow, one day maybe you'll play in my band.

And literally I could have never- Profetically, by the way. Yes, and maybe I could have never seen you again that confidence that you gave me that Billy Corrigan told me I was good enough to play in the pumpkins one day. I was like, that's it. Music was calling. I saw something.

I do remember watching the gig, and I remember thinking like, oh, okay. I mean, I don't even know what I was doing or how I did it because I taught myself. You know, I had these, like, a great support network, but it's, I always, you know, I say this, and I feel, I apologize on behalf of all bass players. And my bass is easy.

But I'm like, and I, you know, Getty Lee, all these bass players that I've met, and I always say that. And they're like, well, it's not really true because you have to kind of, like, embody it. So I guess whether it's the Pisces, you know, emotional, it was easy for me to play. I think it starts with that you like to play bass. Okay. But it's also that you like feel it, you know, like it's a deep emotional.

But bass is usually the last instrument chosen, you see. Most bass players are failed guitar players or they get stuck on bass to be in the band. They don't, they really want to be a guitar player, but, you know, there's somebody's buddy and that, well, you can play bass. Maybe it's different for women. Maybe women, you know, being like the glue and the maternal figure, I always say that the bass is the mother. When I won the Gibson Award, you know, Best Bass Player 99 with whole, I said, I had to write my speech on the way and I said, you know, owed to the mother of all instruments that the base is the instrument that is unnoticed but no one can live without. So it's a feminine force in there. I will say because I got asked a lot about it.

In the beginning, it was a sexist question. Why do you have a girl on base? Is she only there for eye candy? And they would ask Darcy that directly in an offensive way. Old school days. But even extending to working with people like Nicole Dier of Fierrantino, people would say to me, do you have a particular fetish for women on base? And what I would say is women tend to play with a different pocket than men do on the base.

And in the pumpkin's world, the base actually has to be a bit behind. of all the females that ever played bass for the smashing pumpkins, you're the most aggressive in the pocket, yeah. What does that mean? We don't know. No, but I'm saying if this is, if anybody wants to envision,

because we work with computers now, if this is the heart of the beat, right? This is the kick drum, and this is the click of the kick drum, you either play on top or behind. Okay, Darcy traditionally played a bit behind. I play slightly on top on the bass on the recordings. You play a little bit more aggressively pocketwise than I view.

So when we played together in Montreal recently, the first time in 25 years, I was like, oh, there's that pocket. So it's a different, interesting. And here's the thing. What's interesting about musicians is they tend to have a consistent pocket. So your pocket is unchanged from 25 years ago. You still play in the exact. Because I haven't been playing.

Wow. You still play in the exact same spot on the beat. What does that mean? I want science, like, neurological people to explain what that is or spiritual metaphysical. Yeah. I think it's as simple as the musician feels the spot in the rhythm, which is most exciting to them. It's probably something cool about quantum physics and time in there, that like where my time zone is in the universe or something. So for us, for Jimmy and I, it was a bit of adjustment when you first joined the pumpkins because you were a little bit more on the aggressive side of the pocket.

Yes. And so the band at some point had to adjust its own pocket. Yeah. Interesting. I wonder, okay. I wonder what that did to the performances. You know, I think we toured for 11 months on the Machina record. Probably the last four or five months was when it really locked in and became its own animal. Mm-hmm. Interesting because Jimmy also has an interesting, like, like time pocket that's unique. And I remember when we were touring at our height, which was that European tour, which was the best at the whole, the end, the last. big Europe tour with Mike Garson. I remember, because Mike was such a cool intellectual music person to talk to on the bus, he said, he's like, wow, the way you play with Jimmy. I had never noticed. He was like, Jimmy's, like, sense of, like, journey of a song, and he's like, you never fall off.

I'm like, really? In my mind, I was just like, I'm just following him. I don't know how I'm doing it. But he's like, that could be really hard for some people. Mike used to say, you guys play seven and three quarters instead of eight bars. Oh, because we'd rush to the end. Jump the down. Yes.

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That's code others to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Prize picks. It's good to be right. I remember the day, I feel like I was in my house in Chicago, but I remember the day, where Courtney called me, Courtney Love. Very important, yes. If you don't, any, if you need a Courtney definition. Courtney calls me and says, I need a bass player. And, you know, Kristen tragically had died, this horrible story.

In the wake of another icon of death. Well, yeah, I mean, it was all a lot of sorrow. Yeah. So I certainly had my moment of pause about whether I wanted to throw you into this M-A-W. But I remember, the one thing I remember saying to Courtney, I said, I've got the perfect person for you. Okay.

What made me perfect? Okay. Well, I was right. I mean, you were the perfect person. I mean, when people think of whole, because there were other good bass players for whole, but you became the one that people. Well, I stuck it out the longest, too. Well, that's part of the job.

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

her cool themes. Like ugly on the inside. She was very focused on not only her own, self-perception beauty but the way other people sort of not not whether or not they thought her beautiful but whether they had the right to say who she was or who she wasn't that was a big deal that's what made her such a pioneer ugly and pretty on the inside ugly from the bat like all of yes she was just the best or the inside out female and to really talk about that let's call it that all of it in a very open way um so what did you say when i wake up in my makeup you know what i mean all of it incredible. So I said, I said, I have the perfect person for you, but there's only one problem. She's really beautiful. Are you going to be okay with that? Oh, my God. This is behind the scenes that I never heard of.

And she said, well, how beautiful. I said, she's really beautiful. Oh, thank you. I did not feel. I felt like some makeupless redhead freakbook. So in my mind, because obviously I'm revisiting something from over 30 years ago, in my mind, it was kind of a two-fold. Well, I've thrown. up the disclaimer. So I have an out when it's just, I offered you for the job for Hull, because I believed you could do the job. But at the same time, I kind of had an out if she didn't want you because either you weren't the right person or she was going to be weirded out by having somebody that was more conventionally beautiful standing next to her. And I feel like it moved very quickly from there. I mean, they had Redding booked and they needed a baseball player in like

four weeks. Yeah. They had been hoping. holding auditions from my side. Meanwhile, I had, I mean, first of all, you were headlining Lollapalooza. You'd had my phone number because I wrote a thank you, Billy, for letting me open up for your band at the P.O. Box phone number. You magically called me from tour, and you said, I have good news and great news. I'm headlining Lollapalooza. I have a day off in Montreal. We can go to lunch. Great news. You're going to join my friend Courtney's band. Obviously, I'm in the know. I know what's I don't think we've ever discussed it. What I did do is I made sure that if she wanted to connect with you,

that she'd have to go back through me. Yes. So I'm calling you at that point to sort of vet it out the other way to make sure that it's not a fait accompli. Okay. And what did I say? I don't remember. I said, no thank you.

You think I want to join that band in the wake of death? And you talk about it in your great book here. Yes. No, thank you. Billy, what are you thinking? are you thinking? Even the girl, girls cry. You had met Courtney briefly prior to the same summer that I met you, the whole play, the same week that the pumpkins played. I think that's when she tried to encourage you to sleep with her, Rody. Yes, exactly. I, exactly. She said, are you the

girl talking to Rody? Kim, we're all sexually frustrated. That was the first words out of Courtney's mouth to me. Shades of things to come. Yes. So you called me. I said, absolutely not. There was not even a consideration. You said, well, talk to me when I get to Montreal. You We got a day off, we went for lunch. I remember walking you through my neighborhood, showed you my mother's house, and we sat down in a park. And you said, so tell me, why don't you want to join Courtney's band? And I said, I have my own life, and that sounds like hell.

And you said to me, are you sure you don't want to be in the biggest female rock band and never have to tour or work? I remember you said, and I said, that sounds horrible. No. And so what happened next? And you went to New York on Lollapalooza and she joined you on stage. Yes. I always envision that what happened.

Can we talk about the backstory in there a little bit? Because it's something that's not off-explore. Yes, please do. All I know is I said no, you left Montreal. I went to Lala Poulouse the next day, dropped a grandma mushrooms, didn't even say goodbye to you. Perfect. And that was it. In my mind, I never even thought about it until.

Well, the backstory of her coming on Lollapalooza was. She was still in mourning over Kurt's tragic death. This is July. He had died in April. Yep. Yes. And we're much more conscious of these things now, and I think I felt intuitively. I saw the sort of narrative lining up that they were going to turn her into kind of a widow's version of Yoko Ono. Not, and I mean this respectfully. Of course. I love the Lennon family. Yeah. We're talking about, we're not talking about Yoko Ono after John Lennon was assassinated. We're talking. We're talking. talking about the way people talked about Yoko after the Beatles broke. Exactly. The demon who broke out that everyone's favorite bands. So I saw this narrative lining up and out of some sort of weird loyalty, fidelity, and also I guess I was willing to emulate my marriage. Yeah. I told the band, Courtney is going to join us on tour. So, and Courtney's going to get up during Lollapalooza and perform a song or two. And the

band went, okay. Yeah, because they're sensitive of sweet people. Yeah. Yes, but we, we, thank you, because that's not something most people understand about that band. Of course, I do. There was a sense that getting her back out in the world, instead of behind a haze of whatever mourning, was valuable. Empowering a woman who was abandoned and left behind by, yes, a heroic icon, but a man who left his wife and daughter. To me, is like the part that I'm most upset about it.

You lived it and I lived it in my own version. Yes. Yeah, I was very impressive. Francis in the crib and you saw where's my life going to go. There was that period of time where it was a very, very touch and go, for lack of a better phrase. Where does this all go? Because there was a, there seemed to be, at the moment, there seemed to be a need to pin the blame on somebody. Absolutely. And we lived in a patriarch hellscape that even me, an empowered woman from a single mother didn't realize until I wrote my book, how. how much that was still dictating culture. What they did to Courtney, they burned her at the stake, I joined accidentally in the end, I said yes,

but we'll get to that part after, is that your paternal sort of instinct of helping your friend be a hero at that moment in mourning, and then my eventual joining of her band, I think we both were there instinctively to help support the feminine force that was going to be destroyed for having and be blamed for not just, breaking up the bank, killing her husband.

I mean, yeah. And so whatever contribution that, that, it did seem to shift the narrative. Yes, I'm glad. However, you know, there's still the crowd out there still going on. And that's July of 94. Reading Festival, late August 94 is booked. Hole is in like a primo slot.

They still don't have a bass player. You are hanging out with Courtney on tour. And I guess what happened is you said, the girl from Montreal said, no. Meanwhile, Patty and Eric from Hull are back home in Seattle. She's on tour morning with you. They're auditioning bass player after bass player after bass player. Courtney has not seen them, met them.

I guess nothing is working. Am I right in assuming she gave the job to find a bass player to Eric? Yeah, so they were out there just like getting girls to come through a practice base in Seattle. Well, she's on tour. She somehow was relying on Billy's recommendation. And all I know is what happened next is that my roommate, I guess somebody gave her my phone number, must be new. Probably.

I come home from university. I come home from school. My roommate's like, Courtney Love called. I'm like, oh, God, really? Courtney Love called again. Corny Love called. I was like, wow. That call wasn't going to stop until you picked up.

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

It's like after midnight in Seattle. She's like, hey, so Billy said you said, no. I needed to get on the plane and tell me to my face. It's like, um, uh, actually in that point, she is convincing. She's charismatic. She's incredibly charismatic. Unbelievably intelligent, too, because she, I think she kind of like, sideswaped me with 10.

Stop for saying. She'd already done her research on you. She had a mental dossier. Right. What kind of boys you liked, what kind of music you were into. Probably even the photography thing. Oh, yeah. You were already, she knew.

Probably knew I was a Pisces. Well, that first, I'm sure I talked about that. But a point is she knew she'd already made up in mind you were going to join the band. That's it. And guess what? She got me to join the band in one phone call. And it was as simple as get on the plane, bring your base. My people are going to call you.

And I hung up. And oddly that week, because it had gone around that Billy from the Pumpkins had recommended me to join Whole, everybody knew Whole, everybody. My boyfriend band member, Steve, my father both said to me, you should probably do that. I was like, what the, what? I already told everybody I'm not doing it. And all of a sudden, Montreal was telling me, sounds like a great once-in-lifetime opportunity. So I had my community telling me, then I had this, like, incredible wild woman call me. I was like, fine, I'll get on the plane to meet her. And I just found last week the photo my mother took of me getting on the plane with a little overnight case in my base and like a ticket to Seattle. And in my memoir, it's called The One Way Ticket to Seattle.

And I just like, I get there, no turning back. Like she just sucked me in. And I did it for women. When I saw her Patty and Frances living in this giant house. with security and security tape from the suicide. Weird, like, fans vigil. But it's worth pointing out that now you're at the house where he killed himself is just right there.

It's not like she's living somewhere else. No, she's living in it. It's unbelievable. I joined for that pocket of women and for the women of the world. I literally understood that through my strange mentor, Billy, I had a job to do for women, and that I understood, I'm doing this to get women's stories out there and to put us on a male-dominated landscape.

And it was like a mega calling, like, through the ages of art history. It wasn't not about, like, even rock music, actually, because your band was the band that I felt as a bass player. I, on that flight to Seattle, listened to live through this on my cassette Walkman. I hadn't even listened to the record because it was more feminist, like, pop rock than I. Like, I liked fantasy. So I wasn't even, I respect.

today, but I wasn't a fan of the band. I kind of liked in a weird way pretty on the inside more. But when I flew on that plane to meet them and listened to live through this, I understood what was happened. This woman, those lyrics about women, that's what I understood. Of the three, you know, apocryphal, whole records. Yeah. The first one really is pure Courtney and Eric.

Yeah. And L.A. and Jumbo's Clown Room and Courtney bashing her. way through saying, I don't know what I'm doing, but intuitively I'm here. I'm loud. And, you know, even, you know, convincing Kim Gordon, my favorite, non-favorit person in the world. To produce. She gives, I said, why'd you get Kim Gordon to produce? Because I won't get a bad record review. Yeah. I mean, it's true. I said how much she goes, I had to give Kim Gordon six grand and a bunch of pot. Yeah, and that's like her, the entire calculus. She knew the calculus is incredible.

calculus of sleeping with critics, working with Sonic youth. She was going to get her way through no matter what. The friend Michael Stipe. And that's when I met her was she was on tour on that record. And she had, even in 91 poor, nobody knew who she was other than some rock critic people. She had a vision of where she was going to go. The second record, you really see the influence of Kurt's success. of songs. People overly attribute Kurt's influences if he was sitting there telling her what to write.

Thank you. Everybody was under that sway. You could not be. This was the biggest band in the world who kicked open the doors to the Pixies and Ansonic Youth and all these other bands. Suddenly everybody's on the world stage all of a sudden because of Kurt's courage and incredible talent. The third album, which is the one, and we'll get to that in a second, the third one really is really the first. time someone in my in this case me sits down and and and gets her to be on the record what do you want to say yeah well and can we say can we say in a more skilled way and more world domination top 40 you know like the there was much more that's what she wanted what the business model was there by the way there's um you know she often talks talked talked and talks about the influence of albini

and making in utero as Kurt's sort of recoil reaction to the success of Nevermind. In her mind, that was a mistake, not because he made a bad record, it just wasn't produced like a record to go in it to win it. I do feel like I have to rewind to one thing that lived through this, because you are a man who came in for the third record. I remember thinking, wow, we're doing this thing. She already was being underestimated as a song where her and Eric were being underestimated to the songwriters, we'll live through this.

Everyone said, Kurt wrote that record. Yes. I, still to this day, say, first of all, listen to Dull Parts and Miss World. This is one riff or three chords repeated over and over. This isn't, it's about the power of the lyrics. I've always said, whole, and I said, if anything, she inspired Kurt's lyrics. Like, I was so pissed. And you as an incredible songwriter and kind of song, Doctor vibe, who came in for the third record,

we should pledge to the people Eric and Courtney wrote for this like Kurt's influence was undeniable to everyone including my own band I asked her I asked her at the time before the second record came out how much is you and how much is him and she said at the time

so I'm going based on what I was told at time he helped me with one horace exactly so the point being is otherwise he's in the closet right in heart shape box Exactly. And I heard that at the time. That wasn't posthumous reorganization or reaction. As we know, Courtney can be very reactive to media narratives.

Yeah. So at the time, contemporaneous, if that's the right word, to what was happening, I was told, his only influence on this record is this one course. I don't even know. It's asking for it. If you live through this with me, I swear that I would die for you. And that makes sense because, and that's the one, literally, that is the title of the record. I have this influence on him in reverse. Which she really did.

And that's why I'm always shocked, of course, because it's a male-dominated universe, is that actually the universe is probably female-dominated, but the planet Earth is very male-dominated. But now, the lyrics, I hear his evolution of lyrics by the time Heart-shaped Box happens. It's like her. My rep is a lyric writer is wholly responsible to her.

Yeah, exactly. So I can speak about it directly because you knew the Gish album. Yeah. well. She called me on the phone and said, I'm paraphrasing, I wish you could do the, what the what the fuck is with the hippie lyrics. Exactly, which is my tendency, too. She made us both smarter because she's all the thing that will forever stick with me, and this is where I am forever grateful, she said, why can't the person that I talk to on the phone or have a tea with,

why is that person not writing lyrics? Why are you hiding behind this hippie Hayes? Interesting. Why are you writing like hippie Hayes Donovan lyrics in some sort of sentimental mode as opposed to talking about what you actually talk about in reality? And she's the one who puts that thumb on me and said, and that's why Simey's dream was such a watershed because I was like, okay, I will do that.

And she's an ace lyric writer, as you know. So she said a really, so if you're in that, let's call it that, Star Trek kind of, you know, good, bad, black, white, oppositional force, which we did have, particularly at that time. It was like, okay, I'm going to do that better than you think I can. And that's what, so I'm totally transparent. So I don't know this for a fact. I know it sort of, you know, let's call it in the milieu of the information that flows through

because as most people wouldn't understand, my version and my, my, my, my, my traipsing through that particular art, you know, my life with her in early 90s into the mid-90s, it's never really been told. And that's not here to talk about that, but we are talking about something that's very particular because you come in on the back end of this. Yeah, and I actually refer to the two of you,

because you're my weird grunge parents, or like, you found me, put me with her, then I went to you after. I actually, I think in the memoir I even say, it's not my story to tell, but I talk about your, this on and off again. I talk about when we played in Chicago, the guy who invited me to the band doesn't come to the show, but James I say, I guess they're on an off again, period. It was like the two of you were in such argumentative,

and I remember, actually, we saw each other right before melancholy. We played on a pure, pop stage. It was hole in the pumpkins, also screaming tree or caius. It was like an amazing bill and you two were not speaking and I weirdly went to see you backstage and the two of you were like in an argument. But on the same bill was happening. She was hanging out with some groupie or something. Okay. Well, all I know is. I was kind of like, I was like, but wait, you know, you're, we're not together and you're mad that I'm with some group each other. Yes. There was a lot of like volatile love shit between you. The way, the way. The way.

she would say it because she's very hippie about love the types of things, no pun intended. Isn't that I was interested in someone else other than her. It was that I was sleeping with someone below my station. Yes, exactly. It's like the lyrics thing where she's like holding you a candle that will get. Yes, she wants you to read. Yes. So, but we're, you're not going to remember and I remember, I think I didn't even say this in my book or maybe I got edited out. But that day at Pucopomp, you gave me a CD. rough, like early mixes of melancholy. And I, of course, went backstage or on the plane the next day. I'm like, oh, Billy gave me some. She was like, what? She took them.

I never saw them again. I didn't even think I heard them. But she was like, and I remember thinking, oh, am I just a pawn between these, this rivalry? And I'm just like this little, this daughter that gets pulled between these two. But I, you know, I kind of, that's my role. He's a bass player. And as like the younger one to everybody is, I kind of got like, And that's why my book, even the good girls will cry.

There was something, I was like, I'm good for everybody. I'm here. Everyone can trust me. I'm angelic. I'm not difficult. But my issue is that I ended up kind of evaporating my own sense of what I was supposed to, because I was living in the shadow of everybody. I'm glad you mentioned that because it is personal, but it's part of our shared story. That was part of my issue with you in the late 90s is when you started to evaporate.

How could I not? But absolutely, by the time I joined your band, my heart was frozen. I had, like, literally, I'd talk about in the book that this ice princess who had, like, become the good, pretty girl to the wild Courtney, to the, da, da, following my orders,

lost my best friend Patty to, like, a powerful producer who got a ghost drummer, and the drummer from hold becomes, like, living on the street. Like, it was so painful. What was very dark, too? Dark as never. I had. And stop one second.

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

But to be fair to her. Culture shifter. She wanted to be huge. She can speak for herself, but to be fair to her, that was always her vision. It's true. She started as an actress. I mean, for her, it's power of culture changing. I get it.

But she was so good as a rock performer and musician and songwriter. And I had put in so much. I even for half a second, we don't have to get into them, but Q Prime, the Metallica managers that we had, you had for a second. I was even feeling for them. They had pulled all the stops for us to be the biggest, like you had said in the park in front of my mother's house. Do you want to be in the biggest female rock band in the 90s?

No, but I was. And guess what happened? If she did not support that, we got there and she left. And I left the ban. Her loyalty was... I like that you're defending her, actually. No, it's not. Actually, I'm going to be critical for a second.

Her loyalty, and this is why we didn't make good bedfellows, but we're good friends. Yeah. Her loyalty is to whatever burning ambition she has at any particular moment. Yeah. And if I was going to be critical, it's been issues with loyalty. And I think in our case, two people are still in her life. Yeah. And it's still in communication, right?

I mean, we're talking about an active relationship here. We're not talking about, you know, we haven't talked to her in 10 years. I mean, I just saw her the other day. Yeah, we're closer than ever. And you're on her new record. Yeah. But people like that, and I'm generalizing. Yes.

The hardest lesson they learn is to understand who's truly loyal. And who's in it for the right reasons, which is we love you. Yeah. And we accept you for who you are. But at the same point, you can't treat us like toys that we can be picked up and booked down. That burning ambition burns bridges. And I, when I left that band, I felt incredibly, although we stayed on good terms-ish, even though we didn't get to this part of the story, maybe you want to get us there.

But I left. Is that when I realized her loyalty to music was not where I had just like saccharacterial. five years of my precious life to support this joint vision of becoming the, and I wasn't even like, I was proud of celebrity skin, more so now, but at the time I was pretty bummed about the super slickness of it and losing our bass, losing our drummer, it all felt so, you know, like the biggest sellout slash success.

I am proud of it, but I had a lot of inner conflicts around the making of that record. And by the time I saw that she wasn't going to commit, like I remember the managers were like, like, hey, Melissa, talk to her about, like, committing to this other tour. We were doing, also, to be fair to all of us, what was the state of 90s rock music by 99, corn, limp biscuit, like, Blink 182. It was not, like, an inspiring environment. No, you would call alternative bands that play guitar that sat sort of in the middle of the spectrum.

They were neither Lilith and they were neither new metal. And we were kind of... We were all kind of getting crushed in that. And our identity is back to, actually, I love, thank you, you brought up me evaporating. So by 98, I'm on tour with a hole, and I'm basically an ice princess, by the way, my father died while making celebrity skin. I was being put really in this role as, like, pretty girl at the photo shoots, and all of a sudden I was just becoming this, like, mannequin to Courtney's, like, Hollywood. And I was being mined for my beauty, which I had, when you met me, I'm glad you think I was pretty, but I did not wear makeup. I did not look at myself in the mirror. I did not think of myself as a pretty girl. I thought,

of myself as like a powerful, like, hippie who could bring love and change to the universe or something. I'm still trying to be that. But I was demoralized. By the time I was writing my resignation letter to Hull on a flight from Vancouver to L.A. We had ruled. We had played Glastonbury. We headlined to all these incredible, this Canadian festival. And when I saw that she was not her, she was no longer were committed to it. I was it. My heart left. I was like, I'm done. I'm not, I can't do this anymore for her. She's not doing it for the music. I wrote this letter. I land in L.A. I'm, like, terrified, like, talking to a lawyer. How am I going to tell Courtney that I'm leaving her band? Do you know how terrifying that is? You, again, how do you have my rotary phone number in Laurel

Cannon? I don't know how, but I'm home that week where I'm like, I got to get out of this bad relationship with this band hole. Billy Corgan calls me in a parallel universe. Darcy has evaporated while you're making this record. Yes. Literally, I pick up the phone in this Chicago familiar voice who changes my life every time he calls, says, the stars have aligned, Melissa.

It's time for you to join my band. Like, first of all, Billy, I'm in hole, but how do you know that I am about to leave? Somehow you just picked up on it. You must have obviously knew that she was, like, making movies. You probably could tell that there was something shifting. How the f you knew that I had to leave hole to join your band? And right, all of a sudden, at that moment,

I had already made my decision to leave whole, but then I had this, like, other problem coming in, which is if I leave hole to join the pumpkins, the explosion between my grunge parents and the pawn in your weird relationship up what's going to, like, massively have, you know, so that what I don't remember, do you know what happened? Did Courtney ever, like, say, fuck you, don't take it? Because I have the facts. It's actually in my book. When I tell her that I am leaving and then she picks up on, I don't tell her I'm leaving to join you, but somehow she finds out that I'm also about to join you on your missing bass player

last album of the 90s. She writes me this incredible facts. It's like, fine. But you better. The narrative was going to be hers. Of course. What did she call you my purse? She said, so Melissa's going to go become Billy Corgan's purse. And that was like how the only public statement she made about me leaving the band. Yeah. It was kind of hilarious and cool.

Let me decode. You have your own version of Courtney decoding. I'm going to decode it for you as somebody was in the game longer. Yeah. She picked one clean shot that would stick, but couldn't hate on me and couldn't hate on you. It was very respectful ultimately. So I'm saying, so you get one clean shot that'll stick. And the fact that it's in your book shows you.

Yeah. No, it's like. Master with language. It's like, I'm going to pick the one thing that's going to stick. Yeah. And ultimately, what's interesting, and this is back to probably the conversation we've never had by the time I join your band. And I am, like, practically an evaporated, like, process. Like, all I felt like the whole, everyone controlled my life, like, including you.

And it wasn't your fault that you gave me an amazing opportunity, which, you know, when I... And we paid you well, too. Yes, you did. And also, I don't know if you're going to remember this. on that phone call, I said, I don't know. You did say I don't know. And I was saying kind of no again to this second life-changing thing. And it was because I felt like I had no more myself.

Yes, I had to know that part of it. Well, of course, because you and I had been talking because you and Courtney were so big. And I had just sort of like evaporated. Well, you had evaporated. Completely. And also, again, my father had died. I was like, trauma, yeah.

I had very much in grief of my own, of my omnipresent father, who, you know, it took me a while to come out of personality. Yes. And so you actually said the same thing, get on the plane and come listen to the record. And of course, by the time I got to Chicago and Alan Mulder Flood are mixing what I think is your best record in many ways.

Some people agree with that. I think it's actually, it's my favorite record. I mean, Siamese Dream and Gish mean so much to me, viscerally, but it's my favorite record of yours. It's really grown in, stature in the last 10 years. As it should. And I sat there in the studio. I'm like, as if I can say no to play this music, he's annoying because he still controls me and he kind of owns me in a weird way, which was painful for me. I think that's why you... Can I give you a different perspective on that?

Yeah, I'm just telling you that was my evaporated girl, like, problem. But I want to give you a different perspective on that. There is truth in this kind of, not so much that you owed me. It was like, I felt I had the best line on what was best for you. Now, if that's... pedantic or tumentary or the teacher telling the student how to live their life. But in my estimation, it was a perfect fit, and I'll give you why. Okay. We only needed someone to do the tour, which ended up being 11 months. We didn't need you to join the band, although I asked you performatively to say you were in the band

because we didn't want to yet tell people that the band was breaking up. I waited until the middle of 2000 to do that, famously on K-Rock out here with Tammy Heidi, one of my favorite DJs of all time, May 20. 23rd 2000. I went on the radio live on K Rock and jokingly said we're tired of fighting Brittany. World, I remember this, yes. Well, I actually was presented by you that it was your last tour, your last record and you're breaking up. So I probably missed that public announcement. In my mind, I knew I was joined the farewell tour. What I'm trying to say to you is this, this is. No, you were helping me.

But no, but I'm saying there is a certain truth to like, it's not a you owe me. It's like, I kind of know what's best for you. And up to that point, You could argue. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't. But here's the other thing that you don't understand because we've never discussed it. And this is a perfect. This is a perfect venue to discuss it. Can I hold your hand, ready to tell me? Sure. Because actually, I was not open to you when I was in your band. I was quite angry about everything. I understand that. Okay. But here's the thing. Yes. And you talking about evaporating. And I'm going to give my definition to what it means to me when you say that. The Melissa that I knew, the pre-band. Melissa, the Artie Melissa, the Botticelli Melissa, had sort of gotten lost. Of course. In the maze of Courtney Colt's whole politics, disappointment, waiting around for her to decide she gave us. Corporate takeover of the music world. Corporate gloss. And look,

you know us pretty well. I mean, you know the entire band. Yeah. And so you are one of the only people on the planet. I mean, it's a very small list of people that actually knows how the pumpkins operated internally. Yeah. Not the public. Spiritually, metaphysically, of course. So in my estimation, it wasn't just, hey, here's somebody I can trust, somebody who, you know, to Courtney's phrase, can look the part, be the part, and do the gig. And by the way, everybody was comfortable because we were not bringing in an outsider. This is a family member in anyways.

But the thing you don't understand until this moment is, I saw it as immolation in the sense of like, you're going to learn how to be a musician. You did. Well, I mean, we're going to, you're going to go to Pumpkins College. Listen, I say it in my book, which was whole was my, my bachelor's in humanity, and the pumpkins was my master's in music. But I'm saying I knew that at the time. And I didn't know that until I was in it. I know. People have asked through the years, it comes from an incident that happened one time. We almost never had anyone in rehearsals in the band, especially in the early days. We worked almost wholly alone. And there was an incident where somebody was in the room, and they didn't like the way I talked to Darcy. I was annoyed or something.

It was a musical problem. It wasn't a personal issue. We weren't fighting about chocolate. It was something about music. Because the expectation in the pumpkins, as you know, was you're going to have to know these 50 or 60 songs. You cannot forget them. You can't make mistakes. There's no days off. You can't get sick. Yes. I joined that band. I know.

You really got to go to the hospital. Yes. Okay, so you lived the boot camp. I did. But here's the thing. And I'm cycling back to this. This person pulled me aside and said, I was kind of a bit off put by the way you talked to Darcy. And I said, you understand what you're doing is a weird reverse form of sexism.

I speak to everybody in the band like a musician. And when they're on the floor, we are musicians and we speak to each other like musicians. If you want me to speak differently to her because she's a woman. a woman, you're actually being disrespectful. Yeah. She's not a woman in a band. She's a musician in a band. The fact that she's female, in my eyes, is incidental.

Yeah. So in you're evaporating. Yes. And you're getting lost and sitting around and all these years waiting to make a record. It was like, hey, let's, why don't you get on this rocket ship for a year? It was the best. No, 100%. You knew I did it.

It changed me forever. that binder of the song how I had to play that every night and the changing set list and the tuning's being different than the thing. And like, what that's... I'll statistic at you because you were at the last pumpkin show, December 2nd, 2000.

Five-hour show? It was four hours, four and a half. Okay. It had a few breaks, but we played, it was either 38 or 43 songs. And you changed the set list almost every night on the tour. So every night, I'm waiting to hand

the guitar text, this insane, color-coded, like, my own. I don't even read music. I could not play a show without a whole, like, remember the changing of the notes? I mean, I want to thank you for my music education. It started in 1991 when I heard the music. Joining your band was the decade bookend to be able to, you know, you made me the bass player that I became for really just making two solo records

after that, but that's how I was able to. make records as I joined the pumpkins for one year and I toured the world and it embedded into my cellular. Like, I am the bass player and the woman I am as a true road worthy cellular changed person for having played 182 shows in that one year. I didn't know we played. Yeah, I counted all the things for the, for the memoir. And it was the greatest physical experience of my life. life other than caring and birthing a child. Truly, it was. I love you, and I'm glad we had that experience together.

A couple things. Yeah. Because you were there, it's self-serving, but it's my show. Yes. Being in a group that was disintegrating, in many ways, the second group in a row that you're in that's disintegrating. Oh, so depressing, yes. At least getting...

And the 90s ending, by the way. We can't forget about that. That's actually the best point of all. Heartbreaking for all this. I think we all kind of felt intuitively that this story's over. Over. I know. And I still mourn it.

My book is really mourning of the change of the millennium. I was thinking about it. I feel like you're the first person from our generation that's sort of encapsulated the era in a holographic three-dimensional way. Other people have written stuff, but it's usually just settling scores and agenda. I dedicate the book to the decade that defined me. my generation, I would have never picked any other time to become a woman. That decade and what I witnessed as an outsider insider, because I obviously was a music fan first, but then I got swept in, thanks to you, in the inside of this magic and destruction. And so simultaneous. Simultaneous,

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

Oh, I see. And I, in that arc of the end of analog art... Sorry, is the point that we know Badacelli, but we don't know her name? Yeah, her name is Simoneta. And she died of consumption in her 20s. And she's one of the most famous, you know, redhead faces in the world.

And in photography, that's what I was working on. And in my photo book, I'm going to be showing my studies. And turning the camera on me was so that I could become the muse to the female photographer. And I was taking it, taking agency for the muses of Botticelli, basically. So by the time we're in 2000 and 2001, I recognized that the 20th century was ending. The corporate digital monsters were coming to eat our souls. which we are now seeing has happened. It's fully fleshed now, yeah.

And that to me... Wait till AI kicks in. It's happening and it's terrifying. I am going on this tour of this memoir to be the voice of that last analog decade so that I, as a woman, so that I, for my 14-year-old daughter, can bring as much I can through weaving these tails with you,

the magic that we carried in that last decade to be able to spin it back into the people. We might go down as the last true analog generation. It already happened. We are the last, we're the pro-human pro-analogue generation that has gifts to give the future. And I want to highlight that's why we're making this documentary. That's why I'm writing this book. It's why I'm taking my photos out of the archive is I want to solely go on tour to speak to people,

whether they're Gen Xers or teenagers now. Well, if I can give you one statistic that might encourage you right now, based on our most recent data from Spotify, 53% of the Pumpkin's audience is under 35. Yeah, so cool. There's hope. They want something tactile. They want authenticity, and they want people like us

who lived before this. Lived before this, lived through this. You're not going to be able to trump that. I do. Yes. Obviously, memory is what memory is. I'm going to hold your book up again. Yes.

I highly encourage people to read this beautiful book. There's even a couple pictures of me in there. I brought here, give it to me while you were telling me. Whatever you're saying, tell me on my hand, I knew time. Yeah? What are you doing? Aw. This was the day I opened up for you and you told me I was going to be in your band one day.

We've got to go this way. That's a selfie because I apparently went to school for selfies because I was taking photos of myself in 94 when nobody else was. But that's my Billy and Melissa selfie. My little Botticelli. Yeah. There's things in there where you're telling a story that involves me, and I'm like, I don't quite remember it like that. Oh, interesting. And it's going to happen.

As somebody who's dealt with public shame a lot, there's that almost- I don't shame you. No, no, no, no, let me finish. There's almost a reflexive feeling of like, do I have to defend this or give my side of the story? And I had a couple days, and I resisted the temptation to write you to kind of quibble with the story. Oh, thank you. You waited till right now. No, no, I'm not quibbling now.

Okay. What I'm saying is, is that as somebody who's in the book, I had to kind of do this thing of like, and I feel like it was around Christmas, I had to do this thing like, because I do believe memory is not accurate. Correct. So what I'm saying, and I'm not accusing you of inaccurate memory, what I'm saying is, is you told your story and you told it with integrity. And with my own sense of, so memoirs.

So let me officially. So I had to make. I made peace with it because at the end of day, I'm supportive of you telling your story. Yes. And I think that goes to the nature of our relationship now for over 30 years. I value your take on it even if I don't always agree or understand. I hope you can see that because that's at the root of my faith in you. Of course.

This is why you wrote to me and said, do you want to be on my podcast to support your book? Because I don't know how to get through the algorithm because I just joined Instagram a year ago. I need help to get this story out because I actually. remain in the analog world and I quit when I became a mother. I didn't know that. Yeah, I don't write music and I don't, you know, I really removed myself from everything when I became a mother. And now I'm kind of coming back to tell my story. But I want you not now to tell me the parts that don't seem like accurate. I can't really remember because in very Piscian nature, I let it go. Right. And you, what I like about what you're saying most importantly is that the same person who witnessed my

evaporation and by the time I joined your band, my sort of like arms length to everybody, because I did not trust anybody. Including me, by the way. Yeah, I mean, I didn't trust anybody. And I fell in love with some like other dude who was sort of adding an extra shadow to my life. I was like. And not just any dude. Right. So there was a lot of like shadows. I was cast. I was just, you know, it was a hard time for me. That's why I wasn't open to your invitation for your next music project. Okay. That's what that's where I do want to correct you. Okay. Great. That was it the part of the book. So let me tell you, please, please, yeah. One thing is that you cared of what I'm realizing 25 years later I write this book. And it's not only about Billy Corrigan, obviously.

It's about my parents. It's about who I was in high school. It's about who I was to Courtney. It's a 90s story. And it's how also a good girl who really did good things for other people. I was sort of like a, I was a good daughter. I was a good bass player. I was a supportive person. I lost myself along the way. And I had to find myself to take agency for my own life. And this book is solely, because you're right, memory is inaccurate. And I took a lot of memory and memoir classes. And they actually encourage you to follow your personal intuition of your story that you need to tell. And you're actually encouraged to change facts even. The memoir is different than like an analytical biography. Because it's ultimately a story. It's subjective. And I want to,

And my experience of what happened is what matters, not what actually did what did Billy say or what did. So my experience- I do need to correct you on one thing. Oh good, I can't wait to hear the correction. But I am just proud of myself, even coming here on the show today, having never talked to you about any of this until right now,

is that I found my story. Like, I got to tell my story. Well, that's why I encourage people to read it. Thank you. Yeah. It's not the, hey, I was around all these famous people, let me tell you the inside baseball, and I was lucky to be there. It's like, no, I was part of this story. Here's my side of the story, which most of you probably don't know. Yeah, because who knows? And then in hindsight, and I think we're doing it here today, too. You can also help people understand your value in that story. And I get to help understand these radical and, you know, more known people, you and Courtney and reframing a lot of that, but also our generation. I had an outsider, insider review of our generation and what happened. which was both terrible. Like a journalist and a photographer.

Yes, exactly. And a daughter of two journalists. Yes. Okay, so. Well, my God, here it is. No, no, it's honestly fairly subtle. Yeah, okay. So the context for this, this correction, with the capital C.

Spoiler alert for the book. No, no, it's, it's, it's, I understand reading it why you probably have a, a memory that's slightly different than mine. What happened was, we did this 11-month tour. It took a while to click in. Of course, people were doing the classic where Starcy, what happened to the band, all that stuff.

The band is internally falling apart. The record company is abandoning us. The venues are smaller, but as the tour goes on, it actually catches momentum. I don't know if you remember that, but about halfway through the tour, a journalist in Chicago actually pulled me aside

after I announced the band was breaking up and said, you're insane to break the band up now. He said, you have so much momentum. We've actually recapture true organic momentum. Do not break up the band. My publisher at the time, a man named Tom Sturgis, son of the great screenwriter, Preston Sturgis, and the man who gave me my first publishing deal,

he came to Chicago and said, do not break up the band. And this is the stuff that's helpful for me to hear because I was so armedly, I didn't even, like, in my mind, I was just like, save myself. I knew nothing. Our relationship was kind of cordially distant. Yes.

We love each other, but it was like, you do your thing, I'll do my thing. Okay, so I'll see you on stage. But here's the thing that you probably don't remember. And I think the reason I'm not just saying it to sort of try to correct the record. I want you to understand there's a point to this. Great. So this band is gathering momentum and gathering momentum. And by the time we get to the band's final, this is something you probably wouldn't remember. I go to the promoters in Chicago, jam productions, and I say, we're going to do a final show. A band's going to break. up okay fine what do you want to do i said i want to do the last show at the metro that's where we started full circle but i'd like to do an arena show uh because we've done a lot of big shows in europe uh i'd like to do that set uh i think two days before the final show day off and then we'll do the final show but i also want to do a show in i think we should do the same show in los angeles in new yorks i like to do like uh the former staple center madison square garden then come home to chicago do the

United Center where the Bowles play, and then we end at the metro, and that's it. Bob's your uncle, the band's done. And that was, that was real. The band was going to end. Yeah. So here's where you, he's probably what you don't remember. Number one, we put the tickets on sale. They told me I was, they told me there's no way you're going to sell out Los Angeles in New York and you're crazy, so we're not going to do it. Okay. They told me to pound sand, and I think of a better way to put it, but that's the nice version. You can imagine the Chicago version of that. The ticket's gone sale and they blow out in five minutes. I mean, the demand is through the roof.

They literally call me the same day and say, okay, now we're ready to put Los Angeles. And I said, we just advertise. These are the last shows. So we can't, yeah. No, they said, no, we can put the shows on before. You can do L.A. and New York and then go to Chicago. And I said, you just told me we can do it.

Well, look at the ticket sales and now they're doing the music business thing. Oh, now you're hot. Now we want you. And so I said, no, forget that. Okay. That's why we didn't. I wish we had played those shows, but anyway. Well, I mean, we were still good at that moment.

So, like, what an incredible. We rehearsed, I think, approximately three to four weeks to do the final show. I actually have all the tapes, believe it. Really? Yes, I have the entire. All our rehearsals. I have them all. Amazing.

That's cute for the Pumpkins documentary you make one day. But here's the crux of the story, and we'll get to wrapping it up. In the interim as we're rehearsing for the final shows, going in the studio during the night or the day, and I'm finishing what is Machina 2. Okay, which I kind of vaguely only remember. I'm trying to finish up all the tapes. Now, I have a band that's got momentum. We have public momentum.

We have internal momentum. We're playing great. I mean, there's a lot of fire on that tour. If anybody's ever seen us play playing in Korea, I mean, we are on. Oh, my God, the best. Fire. I mean, we're on fire. I mean, I truly have never played a bass like that again in my life.

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

January 2nd. Yes. I don't remember this. I've already arranged with the Metro, if you're willing, that we would go in the Metro in January of 2000. So we'll be on the same stage that we played the last show. So we will literally be writing and documenting. the last glimmers of this band, because I thought the band would never get back together,

we're going to actually record a posthumous record that no one knows we're doing. We will do it in secret. I've already got everyone's agreement that we will record in secret. I need four weeks of your time. That's all I need. And what I want to do is I either want to go ahead and release it,

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

It doesn't have to be perfect. It's a process of documentary of the band disintegrating. Okay. It's like putting a camera on someone as they take their last breath. So we'll film it. Wow. We'll record it and then we'll figure out what to do with it. And you go, I appreciate what you're saying, no. Do you know I have no recollection of this? Yeah, I can understand why. And I wrote this whole book by heart. I never even looked at anything. I remembered everything. I erased that at my mind.

So, so wow, you really saw an evaporated human being because I don't remember that. So in the book, what you say is, is I come to you kind of at the end of the cycle. And I'm trying to convince you to soldier on. And you go politely, I love you, but I got to get the hell out of here. That's not what happened. I tried to sell you on four more weeks of commitment so that we could document what we created. And I wanted you to be part of that. A recorded thing because I never got to record with you. I am sad. No, no, it's okay. I actually, well, if I were me now, I would have recommended I don't do it. But you can understand why after that I felt like kind of, I wasn't mad.

I was just kind of like, do you not understand what you just said no to? I didn't. I can understand why James said no to it. Jimmy was fine with it. Did James say no to? He said absolutely not. Oh, I must have been in sync with James. No, but actually at that point,

because as you know, James and I were really close on the road because we liked the similar fashion and photography and had mutual friends, maybe I kind of knew he was gonna say no, and that's why I said. It's all good. That's interesting. I, obviously, now wish we had. The writer and me mourns that we don't have that document.

We didn't ever got to write together, even though you then invited me to Chicago and wrote one song with my solo record, and it was more, I didn't get to use that either. Okay, I am sad about that. No, but that's fine. But I actually am impressed that you didn't have me harder, that you just sort of let me be the frozen.

No, thank you. Very strange. I'm actually, because I feel like if you had insisted harder, maybe you couldn't convince me. I think that's the dividing line, and I think as adults, now we can talk about it. The dividing line is, I've always had respect for you. Thank you.

And if there's any pressure in any of the moment, along the way, it was because I thought I had a better version of it for you. But if at the end of the day, but if at the end of the day you didn't believe it, I didn't want it. Well, I think it's because at that point, we nailed it earlier was I didn't trust anybody. I didn't, I was very, I was traumatized. I was traumatized by all of the things that happened. I didn't trust you anymore. That's why I got to read the book to read about the traumas.

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

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

But you both and me towards you, we really deeply care about our sole purpose in this lifetime of ours, and that I now know very much so that you were looking out for me as this young girl, like, some metaphysical crazy fantasy that I needed to live out, but you did not hound me to stay,

and I'm pretty grateful for that too. Thank you. But I am surprised that I don't remember. It was time to go. Yeah. I mean, in many ways, it's, you know, if you could read it almost in the shadow of it, it's somebody trying to hold on to something,

you know, for another heartbeat. Right. You, you're saying. Well, all of it. Yeah, yeah. The death of the band was very traumatic for you. Of course. No, and I guess that's what's sad,

is that because I had this sort of daughter, everyone owns me living in the shableness, shadow issue that I, which is definitely what this book is about. And that's, I think, why like underdogs will like this book, is it's about someone who survived being in the shadow of everybody and got to 25 years later be my own person and tell it my way is that I did not have time to consider you and what you were going through, which was you had lost Darcy. Your band was evaporating and breaking in as a Pumpkin's fan. You know, had I not been in the band, I would have been mourning with you, but instead I was traumatized like everybody was,

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

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

Yeah, the one thing I would say is an addendum to that is, yeah. You know, the pumpkins has died various deaths along the way. Yeah, now you, yes, you have a whole other chapter that happened. Sure, but there's been multiple fatalities along the way, and sadly even real fatalities. But the thing I would point out to you, and I would say this to privately, in the exact same way is it was a very close circle. Yeah. And yes, we had different people come in, but the only people we let in the circle in those 14, 13 years, whatever it was, was you and Garson, Mike Garson.

Oh, yeah, sweet Garson. Yeah, I am honored, as you know, and obviously I was there from the ground up in that beer bottle moment, and my pledge to you then, truly was a pledge from a, for, I was the one who came to you. I was the one who opened the spiritual relationship. So it's your fault. Yeah, I made this happen. I made us happen. Let's put it that way. I love you. I love you too. Fun. And best of luck on the book. Oh, thank you.