I know you didn't think we were done talking about the Courtney Love/Billy Corgan podcast. We might never be done talking about the Courtney Love/Billy Corgan podcast. Yesterday, Corgan had a fascinating conversation with Love on his show The Magnificent Others, and we posted about their interview — specifically about the two rockers' tense relationships with '90s indie hipster types, Kim Gordon in particular. But that wasn't the only tense relationship that Love mentioned on the podcast. Dave Grohl came up, too.
Love and Grohl have obviously known each other since the early '90s, when Grohl was in Nirvana with Love's late husband Kurt Cobain. Since Cobain's suicide, the two of them, along with Krist Novoselic, have been in charge of Nirvana's licensing, and they got into a legal battle over it in the early '00s. In a particularly ugly moment in 2012, Love tweeted that Grohl had once tried to seduce her daughter Francis Beat Cobain; both Grohl and Francis Bean denied it. But the two have seemingly had a more cordial relationship in recent years, and they shared the stage when Nirvana were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2014.
Late in the podcast interview with Billy Corgan, Love admonished Grohl to let the world know that the two of them are "cool" these days. It's a bit of a tangent in the middle of Corgan talking about making amends with Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong. Here's what Love said:
Grohl, come out with it and just say we’re cool. Like, come out with it. Be man enough to man up, because you’re the übermensch who 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?
‘Cause he’s got a friendship with Paul. And Paul has — Dave has not the talent of Paul, let’s be clear, but they both have the bitch wife — haunting, dark shadow. They both have the cool guy dying — haunting, dark, tragically haunted. So they’re buddies. Is that why? I've really analyzed it.
Dave, it would really behoove me if the straight white males that are your base, if you will, would stop picking on me! The millennials, in particular. Gen Z is not picking on me anymore. But your heart drops whenever somebody that you're cool with, or maybe just remotely cool with — this is you in the press. Like, Oh my god, this is still happening?
Corgan responds, "Well I can confirm that I’ve spent time with you and Dave together, and Dave doesn’t have any issue with you. So." Love agrees that this part of the conversation is "so stupid," but she keeps going with it for a bit:
How many songs has he written? I can't write a song about — I'm just gonna be bitchy for a second. 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 ASMR thing of upload the color, I don't know, brown, whatever. And he's written like four songs about me! And they're hits! I'm like, wait, what? What about me? I don't get it, particularly at that time, when he wrote those songs.
She illustrated that point further by saying that the late Scott Weiland, her "drug buddy," wrote two "mean" songs about her. She also mentions being friends with Mark Lanegan and members of Tool and then being upset when they made disparaging comments or wore disparaging shirts about her. That part of the conversation happens around the 1:35:48 mark of the podcast.
The context for the Paul McCartney thing: In 2012, McCartney and the surviving Nirvana members performed together at the 12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy benefit, and Love told TMZ that she was "not amused" by the performance. Love was quoted as saying, "Look, if John were alive, it would be cool," and TMZ reported, "Love is also upset at Krist and Dave for calling tonight's show a Nirvana reunion because she says Kurt was the heart and soul of the legendary band."
