Melissa Auf der Maur | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

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

Yes. 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 by, 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. If I have lots of them. Oh my goodness.

Deeply penetrating questions and, uh, and the... Your spirit is squeezed into the pages. It's the origin story. It is near you. All right. So let's, let's unordinary story.

So we'll start with Nick and Linda. Oh, yes. - Thank you. - Take me to Nick and Linda. My parents, um,

“I love that you remember that, yeah, they, they're,”

without, you know, I always say that you and Courtney,

were my grunge parents and that my parents. I live in omnipresent shadows at my cool Montreal parents. Both music journalists, culture journalists, activists, like everything, good 70s, 60s, counter, culture 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, 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.

Yeah, okay, well, that's also what's interesting is, because I grew up in the shadow of a larger than life person. My father was a journalist-turn politician,

“but also a man about town ran out of it.”

Abon people. Abon people. Abon people. Abutta that day, smoking, drinking, intense lifestyle, not unlike the people of the rock band that you and I were not.

But the people, other people in rock band. But this might have something to do with us ending up in those, that those people, or even romantically being involved with types of people. Yeah, so it is true, actually. So he was both, like, remarkable and impossible.

And he, you know, I grew up on the campaign trails on, you know, election nights. 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, they'd say, Nick, you're so inconsistent.

And he said, the party's 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 like, he was a radical socialist who wanted to fight for the people.

Um, I didn't know this, right, if I did, I forgot. 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. 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. Yeah, she, um, she had me as a single mother because she didn't tell my father I was born until I was two.

So they had a 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 chip handsies. My mother was a radical independent hippie woman who brought her little girl on that trip.

When she and I spent my second birthday, St. Patrick's Day, uh, 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.”

No man came from my mother and my father, public, mania, you know, he gave me that ability to walk into this spotlight. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I met you, I think you were 19 or 18.

Yeah, probably. And, like, you know, you University, I think was still kind of generally in the mix. I was at university. It was summer. Cool.

91. What's that? Tell me about the face. Yeah. So no one wanted me to go to the face school.

Yeah, 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 was a 70s.

And it was a public school in 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 at the fine arts department at Concordia, which was the thing.

And the hope was to be a photographer or just an artist. Art.

For me, it was always a multimedia photography in school based 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 did 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 love rock music, but I did not like having to compromise my photo passion. So that turned into becoming an obsessive documentary. Why is by the way, turns out that, of course, century later, a little bit of my photos are in the memoir. But following the memoir is my 90s rock photography museum exhibit in photo book that

comes out in September. So I took a role to film every day in whole and the smashing pumpkins. Wow. And I have 15. Did you notice me taking photos on stage?

Every show? Yeah, you're busy. But I especially once I joined the pumpkins. And I didn't have to play like sidekick back a vocalist, foot switches, timers. I had three cameras on every stage that we played.

And I'm going to deliver you in another time and amazing, like, photo walk.

Just my. So I took a role of film a day and now it's been a quarter century. And now my documentary in photography is actually going to get a light of day because the archive is now deemed as a time capsule, which is. And yeah, because I know many ways that 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 Seliger, a fancy photography. You 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 back stage, I hadn't seen him since Lollapoulos in '95. And I was delivering him a little polaroid from my Lollapoulosive photography. And he was like, I remember you at 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 back. I'm going to take pictures and I realized that culture that we had of like anti-carrying,

but you and I didn't do that. We were very like passionate care. We didn't pretend we didn't want to. I just wish I documented more. Yeah, well, you were busy and you also had other people documenting for you.

It was. That'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. I'm going to become an art photographer." So I'll just find this new language which was documentary. Oh. Okay.

Yes. July 23rd, 1991. That's our day. See this 'cause I can't speak French. Love, fuf, on the cell, electronic.

My god, I love that. Quebecers are going to love this. So the Fufu Nene Creek is the Canada CBGB's translated in French.

The Fufu Nene Creek, the crazy punk club you played your first Montreal show.

Yes. Everyone translates to electric buttocks. Okay, do not know that. Yeah. See if you this.

What happened? What happened that night? What did they do? We'll get there. See if this shocked memory.

My number is that the sun was still up when we were playing. Well, it was July. If you're probably right. It's a dark room. But you're probably right.

It was a loony Tuesday. This. You might not remember. I have the flyer. Loony's in Canada are one dollar coins.

So you were playing for one dollar on a Tuesday. I was a ticket girl at that venue. Okay. She got it for free. I got it for free from my one dollar show, but mainly there was a subpop logo on the

flyer. You know, when it heard of your band, you had that 12 inch. And I was my night off because nobody really buys a one dollar ticket.

“So I just, I think I said to my roommates, some subpop band is playing.”

Let's go see them. Yes. I was one of, I think, 20 people. Yeah. It was very, very smart.

It's very smart. Yeah, that's what happened next. I believe I was playing the soul in one of our songs.

And as I was playing a beer bottle smashed against my guitar. Yes. I don't think it broke, but I, but the beer kind of splattered. And I immediately kind of world up to see who threw 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 just, the way that 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 roommate. The people around Bruce seemed to kind of almost like not me. Yeah. And as soon as I saw the body language of people going away from Bruce, I threw my guitar

off. Mitch 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, he didn't seem”

to want to fight, even though he just throwing a beer bottle at me. We also had a rule which he might remember in the band, which is no matter what happens keep playing. Yeah. So even though I'm in the crowd choking Bruce to the ground, like like this, the best.

And once I kind of like, I don't know, another way to put it, it's kind of like, you know, when you, when you alpha 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.

Well, you finish my running mouth. Yeah. 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 watching a show. I, with every song and becoming as if I've never heard music before, like, oh wait, because it was more slick, more romantic. Well, it's Courtney, your, 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's so much more realized and magnificent than a lot of the other band. We had a plan. Well, of course. You had a vision.

I had never heard of you before.

I'd never heard it, like, won me so quick and I was getting, like, I felt like the sound of the universe and everything goes inside me that I didn't know was coming out. And literally halfway through the show, Bruce, who's watching next me, it's like, what the, because wrong with these guys. And I looked, I'm like, what?

He's like, they're so full, they're not, they're not playing in 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 and, I don't remember”

the heck. So he was screaming, drop the attitude, soul, drop the attitude, soul knows like, why are you doing this to these people? You had been tuning your guitar and said, I'm just tuning my guitar, soul, and the two of you had that banter, you started your song, he threw the beer bottle and as he threw

the beer bottle and then you jumped off stage in my mind, it like imprinted was, he just ruined my favorite ban 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 that you got up, finished your set and then he 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. When I was angry in particular, or when you were angry collectively, we tended to play better, especially back then. Of course. You probably got to really get on that.

Yeah. All the same version of I am one. It was so good and then meanwhile, you know, in terms of for other people's perspective, Darcy and James being your bookends, which I write about in the book, of why I ended up because I was 19, I didn't, I loved music, but I didn't play music yet.

But all in one summer, I saw the pumpkins, Sonic Youth, the breeders and whole. Every single one I'm 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. 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 two, he seemed like a radically incredible drummer, compared to the more kind of punk, I don't know, they just, I had him in front of me. He was like years a most, exactly. He was like years ahead of most indie drummers. So between the rhythm section, you're commanding like, "Strangle, hey, I, I was a shy person.

your gear off, and what is this 19 year old girl sitting there?"

You said something like, "Hi, I'm Alyssa for Montreal, and I'm very sorry that my roommate through a beer bottle that you, I apologize for all of Canada." I said, "I, I said, on behalf of Montreal, Canada, I apologize, and I will follow your band. I love your band, and then maybe became friends."

And I did, I did ask you why did he throw the beer bottle, and you said, "He, he thought you had too much attitude, and I remember thinking, "Well, yeah, I'm a parent, you're at a rock band." Well, it's 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 that to punk to grunge. I did not understand, even like I had kind of miss Sabbath. I did not have riff oriented, so 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 genre. James had a great quote once, and it ended up being on the cover of a magazine, as

only James E. Highlander. The quote was, "We're like Led Zeppelin, but without all the elves." Right, even though I like elves, but you also didn't, 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, I said you like one postcard and then I remember. I still have something you sent. And then I got a return to sender, a couple of years later.

That's on the eve of Simon's 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, come, you know, their next, their next frontier. But we did see each other after that on the, oh, but that was my months later. Shelly peppers, 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 Jam and she was opening for us, but it's okay. It was, it was Pearl Jam Pumpkin's chili peppers. Are you sure? I'm positive.

Because I also went to the Cal Palas show two months later in San Francisco.

“Where were we kicked off the bill, so everyone had to 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 Pumpkin's Pearl Jam, chili peppers, and then Nirvana, Pearl Jam chili pepper. It's Pearl Jam blew up on the tour. So that's where they started.

So when they started, they were kind of an unknown entity, got it. And by the head midway through the tour, the audience has started coming early to see them as well. So I went down to Burlington for a month from Montreal, it's only like hour drive for you. I didn't, with all due respect to flee, and everybody wasn't like, I wasn't there for

the chili peppers or Pearl Jam, it was there for the Pumpkins. And that's when we signed each other again, and then you were just like taking off. That's when your world started getting with it. So in my mind, and correct me, you know, we're kind of pen paly, you're kind of over here, good, the beautiful, but a chili painting up there in Montreal.

Yeah, 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.

I after that summer decided I've got to get a base. They started found mentors with guys kind of year-age in my rock scene in Montreal. They invited me to their jam space, they lent me a base in SVT amp, and I 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 members Steve Durand, I met at the pool table at when I was DJing because I was a cassette DJ at the dive bar, the cassette DJ. Cassette DJ.

That's playing taking the hipster thing to it. Well, it literally was hip. I started there at 19 and I was DJing before I was even playing base. And all I did was make mix tapes, 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 Audit Repeat the whole album. And I would occasionally be like, we're only playing one album for this hour. Thank you.

And this cute guy that I had never met a bike career guy came up to me, he was like, "Is

this the pumpkins?" 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 want to, he 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 six show when Samy's dream exploded and you were coming through town

at the Samy's dream to her fall of '93.

“What year would Samy's dream come out in spring of '93?”

I feel like it came out about September of '93, this song's about writing to me. So it was November '93. But we were touring constantly, so we would've been touring before. Yeah. Yeah.

And I had not really seen you since the Gish moment. So like two years had gone by. I had learned to taught myself to play bass. Got an 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 the DJs as a lizard and

punk and they were like the main rock promoters who were always like the most powerful

people in the town. And I called them and I said, "Hey, I'd love to open up for the punkins when they come through." And they're like, "Milissa, we love you, but they're touring with Swarve Driver. They didn't ask for a local opener."

I was like, "Come on, do it for me." Like, "Sorry, can't do it." So what did I do next, Billy? I don't remember. Oh my god, this isn't that the best part of the story other than the beer bottle.

“I wrote a letter, dear Billy, remember me, Melissa, in 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 Fand Peobox. Wow. I sent that to the Virgin Records Peobox. Who's Mr. attentive to his fans?

Billy? Got the letter? I had my phone number in there. And the week of the show, the local promoters who said, "Sorry, Melissa, call me or they're tailed between the legs."

And said, "The punkins people just called and you're opening up." Billy said, "Milissa's band should open up." So I showed up as sound check. The poster is still punkins, sort of driver. We were squeezed onto the bill at the very last moment.

And I remember so well loading into this giant venue and only ever played tiny clubs a size of this stage. My memory is about a two-two-two. That's a beautiful seat. Yes, from the droplet.

Yes. 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, like seven, the place was already packed, sold out, months

and advance, you guys were on the mega-rise. And you saw me at sound check, gave me a big brother hug. I was so grateful and you can't wait and you watch from the side of the stage. And that was kind of like, 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 won't remember, but I remember." And you said, "Well, one day, maybe you'll play in my band."

And literally, I could have never--

Perfectively, by the way. Yes. And maybe I could have never seen you again. That confidence that you gave me, that Billy Gorgon, told me I was good enough to play in the pumpkins one day.

I was like, "That's it, music is calling. I'm doing it." Yes, I'm doing it. I do remember watching the gig and I remember thinking, "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 base players, I'm like, "Bases easy." And I, you know, I get e-lead. All these base 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 start with that you like to play base. Okay. But it's also that you like feel it, you know, like it's a deep emotional.

But base is usually the last instrument chosen, you see. Most base players are failed guitar players or they get stuck in base to be in the band. They really want to be a guitar player, but, you know, there's somebody's buddy, you know, where you can play base. Maybe it's different for women, maybe women, you know, being like the glue and the maternal

figure, I always say that the base is a mother, when I won the Gibson Award, you know,

way and I said, you know, owed to the mother of all instruments. The base is the instrument that is unnoticed but no one can live without." Yeah. So it's a feminine force in there. Yeah.

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 in base, is she only there for eye candy? And they would ask Darcy that directly in a offensive way. Old school days.

“Um, but, you know, even extending to working with people like Nicole, do you, of Fierrentino?”

Oh, yes. People would say to me, do you have a particular fetish for women on base and I, what I would say is, um, 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 base for the smashing pumpkins, you're the most aggressive.

Oh, really? In the pocket. Yeah. What does that mean? We don't know.

No, but I'm saying, if this is, if this is the, if anybody wants to envision, we work with computers now. Yeah. If this is the, if this is the heart of the beat, right? This is the kick drum.

And this is the click of the kick drum, okay? You either play on top or behind, okay? Of course, you traditionally played a bit behind. I play slightly on top on the base on the recordings. You, you play a little bit more aggressively in pocket than I do.

So when we played together in, in Montreal recently, first time in 25 years, I was like,

oh, there's that posso. It's a different. 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. Because I haven't played. Well, 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 I think it's just the”

way you feel. 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 a universe or something, yeah.

So for us through Jimmy and I, it was a bit of adjustment when you first joined the

punch. Right. Because you were a little bit more aggressive side of the pocket. Yes. At some point, had to adjust it's own.

Trusting. I wonder, okay. I wonder what that did. Which is why I think we toured for 11 months on the Sheena record. Probably the last four or five months was when it really locked in and became its own animal.

Interesting. Because Jimmy also has an interesting, 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. And the last big Europe tour with Mike Garcin, 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. I don't know how I'm doing it, but he's like, that could be really hard for some people. Yeah. Yeah, you guys play seven and three quarters instead of eight bars.

Oh, because we'd rush to jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump the down. Yeah. Interesting. But let's go back in the story. Okay.

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I remember the day I feel like I was in my house in Chicago, but I remember the day when Courtney called me, Courtney love. Very important, yes. If you don't, if you need a Courtney definition, a Courtney calls me and says, I need a base player and you know, Kristen tragically had died, this horrible story.

In the wake of another item. Well, yeah, I mean, it was all, 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 mall and 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 base players for whole, when 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 long as to, which is good.

Sure.

And we can talk about sisterly relationship in a 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 to decide to think that she was going through. If you remember at one point, she had that fancy and 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. But she was, she was very focused on not only her own self-perception beauty, but the way other people sort of, not whether or not they thought her beautiful, but whether they had the right to say who she was or who she was.

So that was a big deal. And that's when made her such a pioneer, ugly, and I'm pretty on the inside, ugly from the bat, like all of, yes, she was just about to the inside out and female. And to really talk about that, let's call it all of it in a very open way. Yep.

Yep. So what do you say? When I wake up in my makeup, you know, you know, 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 behind the same thing I never heard of.

And she said, well, how beautiful I said, she's really beautiful. Aww. Thank you. I did not feel. I felt like some makeupless red head, so in my mind, because obviously I'm revisiting something

from over 30 years ago. And in my mind, it was kind of a two-fold, well, I thrown up the disclaimer. Mm. So I haven't out when it's just, I offered you for the job for whole, because I believed you could do the job.

But at the same time, I kind of had an out if she didn't want you because either you weren't the right person or she was going to be weirded out by having somebody that was more convention illegal standing next to her. And I feel like it moved very quickly from there. I mean, they had redding booked and they needed a base blur in like four weeks.

Yeah. They had been holding additions from my side, meanwhile, I had, I mean, first of all, you were headlining Lollapalusa. You'd had my phone number because I wrote a thank you billi for letting me open up for your band at the PO box phone number.

You magically called me from tour and you said, I have good news and great news. I'm headlining Lollapalusa, 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 no, I know what's happening.

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

Okay. And what did I say? I don't remember. I said, no, thank you.

“You think I want to join that band in a wake of death?”

And you talk about it in your, in your great book here. No, thank you, Billy, what are you thinking? Even the gold girls cry. You had met Courtney briefly. Yes.

The same summer that I met you, whole played the same week that the pumpkin's played. I think that's when she tried to encourage you to sleep with her roti. Yes, exactly. I had exactly. She said, are you the girl talking to her roti?

Come, we're all sexually frustrated. That was the first words of Courtney's mouth, too. 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 had a day off. We went for lunch. I remember walking you through my neighborhood, showed you my mother's house, and we sat down

on 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, all female rock band

and never have to tour or work?

No. And so what happened next, because then you went to New York on all the plots and she joined you on stage.

I always am in vision that would happen.

“Can we talk about the backstory in that rule a bit?”

Because it's something that's not off explored. Yes. Please do. All I know is I said, no, you left Montreal. I went to lawal clues the next day, dropped a gram of mushrooms, didn't even say goodbye to you.

Perfect. It's loved. And that was it. Am I mine? I never even thought about it until.

Well, the backstory of her coming on lawal clues, it 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 widows version of Yoko, I don't know, nice. And I mean this respect with her. Of course.

Love the linen family. Yeah. We're talking about, we're not talking about Yoko Ono after John Lennon was a sessney. We're talking about the weight people talked about Yoko after the Beatles. Exactly.

The Damon, who brought this? Yes. 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. I told the band, Courtney is going to join us on tour.

And Courtney is going to get up during lawal of clues and perform a song or two in the band went, okay, yeah, because there are sense of sweet people. Yeah. Yes. But we thank you because that's not something most people understand about that band.

But 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, her heroic icon, but a man who left his wife and daughter to me is like with a part of the most upset about that.

You lived it and I lived it in my own verses. Yes. When you saw Francis in the crib and you saw where's my life going to go, there was that

period of time where it was very, very touching go for lack of a better first word as a

Saul go. Right. 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 paycheck house scape that even me and empowered woman from a single mother didn't realize until I wrote my book, how much that was still dictating culture. The what they did to Courtney, they burned her at the stake. I joined accidentally in the end, I said yes, but we'll get to that part after is that your paternal sort of instinct of helping your friend be a hero at that moment in

the morning 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 with the killing her husband. Yeah. Is that that? And so whatever contribution that it did seem to shift the narrative. Yeah, some glad.

However, you know, they're still the crowd out there still going on. And that's July of '94, Redding Festival late August '94 is booked. Whole is in like a primo slot. They still don't have a base 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 whole are back home in Seattle. She's on tour morning with you. They're auditioning, base player after base player after base player. Courtney has not seen them met them.

I guess nothing is working and my writing is assuming she gave the job to find a base player to Eric. Yeah. So they were out there just like getting girls to come through a practice base in Seattle. 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 have been you. My roommate, I come home for a city, I come home from school, I remember it's like Courtney love called like, oh God, really. Courtney love called again.

Courtney love called. I was like. Yeah, put it this way. That call wasn't going to stop until you picked up. Now it's stopping and I remember and I write about it to the tea in my memoir.

I'm like, it's midnight. She's probably still up. I'm going to call this 206 number and tell her, hey, thanks so much for the invite, but I'm not interested. She picks up the phone, it's like after midnight in Seattle, it's like, hey, so Billy said

you said no, I need you to get on the plane and tell me to my face. It's like, um, actually, in that point, she is convincing. She's charismatic. She's she's incredibly charismatic.

“I'm unbelievably intelligent too, because she, I think she kind of excites what we're”

having. Stop for a second.

You had a mental dossier on what kind of boys you like, what kind of music you were into. Probably even the photography thing, you're already she knew probably knew I was a Pisces.

Well, that first, I'm sure I talked about that, but the point is she knew she'd already

made up of mine. 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. I hung up and oddly that week because it had gone around the 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 a lifetime opportunity.

I had my community telling me that 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 or little overnight case in my base and like I took it to Seattle and in my memoir, it's called the one way to take it to Seattle. And I just like, I get there and no turning back like she just sucked me in.

And I did it for women. And I saw her patty and Francis living in this giant house with security and security tape from the suicide weird like fan's 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 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 base player. I on that flight to Seattle, listen to live through this on my cassette walk when I hadn't even listened to the record because it was more feminist like pop rock than I like fantasy. So I wasn't even I respected it, but I wasn't a fan of the band. I kind of liked in a weird way, pretty on the inside more.

But when I flew on that plane to meet them and listened to live through this, I understood what was happened. This woman, those lyrics about women, that's when I understood.

They, you know, apocryphal problems, the first one really is pure court in an era.

Yeah. And LA and Zembo's clown room and court needs to, court need bashing her way through saying, I don't know what I'm doing, but intuitively I'm here and loud.

“And you know, even, you know, convincing Kim Gordon, my favorite non favorite 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'm interested.

I said how much she, she goes, I had to give Kim Gordon six grand and a bunch of pot. Yeah. And that's like her. The entire calculus. You knew the calculus.

The entire calculus of sleeping with critics, working with Sonic youth. She was going to get her way through, no, no matter what. The friend Michael's type. And that's, and that's when I met her was, was she was on tour on that record. Yeah.

And she had, even in, in 91 poor, nobody knew who she was other than some rock critic people. She had a vision of where she was going to go. Yeah. The second record, you really see the, the, the influence of Kurt's success.

Absolutely. People overly attribute Kurt's influence as 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 ban in the world who kicked open the doors to the pixies and, and, and Sonic youth and all these other bands suddenly that everybody's on the world stage all of a sudden because of Kurt's courage and, and in, in, in, in incredible talent. Yeah.

The third album, which is the one and we'll get to that in a second. The third one really is is really the first time, someone in this case, me sits down and, and, and gets her to be on the record. What do you want to say? Yeah.

Can we say, can we say in a more skilled way? And more world domination top 40, you know, like the, the, the, the, well, that was the, that was just wanted. But the business model was there by the way, that there's, you know, she often talks, talk and talks about the influence of Albini and, and making, in utero, as Kurt's

sort of recoil reaction to the success of nevermind.

like a record to go in it to win it. I do feel like I have to rewind to one thing to live through this, because you are a man who, you know, came in for the third record, I remember thinking, wow, we're doing the thing. She already was being underestimated as a song or her an ericoping underestimated as song

writers for the, through this, everyone said, Kurt wrote that record. Yes. I still to this day say, first of all, listen to doll parts in Miss World. This is one riff, our three chords repeated over and over, this isn't, it's about the power of the lyrics.

I've always said, oh, and I said, if anything, she inspired Kurt's lyrics.

Like I was so pissed and you as a, incredible songwriter and kind of song, dark, dervive who came in for the third record, we should pledge to the people, ericoncourtney roklow for this, like Kurt influences 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, basically, when I was

told the time, he helped me with one chorus. Exactly. So the way she's in the closet right in her cheap box, that's, and I heard that at the time, that wasn't a costumeist reorganization or reaction, as we know, Courtney can be very reactive to media narratives.

Yep.

So at the time, contemporaneous, if that's the right word, to what was happening, I was

told, his only influence on this record is this one chorus, I don't even know it's asking for it. If you live through this with me, I swear, that I would die for you and not make sense because and that's the one, and literally, just 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 not male-dominated, but now the lyrics, I hear his evolution of lyrics by the time heart shape box, happens. It's like her. My rep is a lyric writer, is wholly responsible to her.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I can speak about it directly, because you knew the Gisham so well. It's true. She calls me on the phone and said, "I'm paraphrasing."

I wish I could do the, "What the, what the, what the, what the, what the, what the, is with the hippie lyrics." Exactly. Which is my tendency, too. She made us both smarter, because she calls, she calls, she calls, she calls, 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 T with, why is that person not writing lyrics? Why are you hiding behind this hippie haze?" Interesting.

Why are you writing like hippie haze, Donovan lyrics, in some sort of sentimental mode, as opposed to talking about what you actually talk about in reality?

“And she's the one who puts that thumb on me and said, "And that's why Simey's stream”

was such a watershed," because I was like, "Okay, I will do that." And she's an a lyric writer, as you know, so if you're in that, let's call that Star Trek kind of 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

will. So I'm totally transparent, so I don't know this for a fact. I know it's called in the milieu of the information that flows through, because as most people would understand, my version and my tracing through that particular, my life

with her in early '90s into the mid '90s, it's never really been told.

And that's why I'm not here to talk about that, but we are talking about something that's very particular, because you come in on the back end of this. And I actually refer to the two of you, because you're my weird, grunge parents. 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 play in Chicago, the guy who invited me to the band doesn't come to the show, but James E. Hot does, and 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 Melon Colley, we played on a pukle pop stage.

It was whole, and pumpkins, also, screaming tree, or chius, 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 thing, yeah, it was some group here or something.

and you're mad that I'm with some groupy. Right, yes, there was a lot of like volatile love shit between you, the way it's the way she would say it, because she's very hippy 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.

Yeah, it's like the lyrics thing where she's like holding you a candle will get, yes, exactly, she wants you to raise. Yes.

“You're, you're not going to remember, and I remember, I think I didn't even say this in my”

book, or maybe I got edited out, but that day at Pucopop, 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 on my never saw them again.

I didn't want to think I heard them, but she was like, oh, and I remember thinking, oh, it's a pun between the, this rivalry, and I'm just like this little, this daughter that gets pulled between the two, but I, you know, I kind of, that's my role as a base player, and as like the younger one to everybody, is like kind of got like, and that's why my book, even the good girls will cry, there was something, I was like, I'm, I'm good

for everybody. I'm here, everyone can trust me. I'm angelic, I'm not a difficult, but my issue is that I ended up kind of evaporating my own sense of what I was supposed to, because I was living in the shadow of everybody. I think why do you mention 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 talk about in the book that this ice princess who had like become the good, pretty girl to the wild court name, so that did a following my orders, lost my best friend, Patty, to like a powerful producer who got a ghost drummer, and the drummer from the whole, becomes like living on the street, like it was so painful. It was very dark, too.

Darkest never I had. I messed up. I was also worth pointing out that in this period that you join whole Courtney's Hollywood thing kicks in. We're now she's in movies.

Thank you. Do you know how to moralizing that was? I went through all of that, we pulled that record celebrity scan out of like two, two years, three million dollars so much work. I'm like, just waiting for her.

I want to play a music, and I am waiting for the girl who's now becoming a Hollywood movie star. I was so, best. 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, we hear record, and she's going to put our tour on hold. To go make Hollywood movies, are you joking, whenever we play LA, all those Hollywood movie stars Brad Pitt, her boyfriend Edward Norton, they all want to be on the state that we're on. And you want to go be in movies?

I was so pissed, but the time, yeah, it could be fair to her. Culture shifter. She wanted to be peace.

She could be 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. 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 keep on the metallic 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? She did not support that, we got there and she left, and I love the beauty. Her loyalty was, I liked your defending her actually. No, it's not actually.

Actually, I'm going to be critical for a second, her loyalty, and this is why we did

make good bed fellows, but we're good friends. Her loyalty is to whatever burning ambition she has at any particular moment. 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, and it's still in communication. I mean, we're talking about an active relationship, we don't talk about her.

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, but people like that, and I'm generalized. 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.

Yep. And we accept you for you are, but at the same point. You can't treat us like toys that we can be picked up in a day. 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

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

I am proud of it, but I had a lot of inter-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 like,”

"Hey, Melissa, talk to her about committing to this other tour," we were also to be fair to all of us. What was the state of 90s rock music by 99, corn, limps, biscuit, like Blink 182. It was not like an inspiring environment. No, you would call alternative bands that play guitar that sat in the middle of the spectrum.

They were neither Lilith, and they were neither new metal, and 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 scan.

I was being put really in this role as like pretty girl at the photo shoots, and I was

“so 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 hole on a flight from Vancouver to LA. We had, we had played glass delivery, we had lied to all these incredible, this Canadian festival. And when I saw that she was not her, she was no longer 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 landed in LA, I'm like terrified, like talking to a lawyer, how am I going to tell Courtney that I'm leaving her band, do you know, terrifying that is, you, again, how do you have my rotary phone number in in Laurel Canyon, I don't know how, but I'm home that week, kind of like, I got to get out of this bad relationship

with this bandhole, Billy Corgan calls me in a parallel universe, Darcy has evaporated while you're making this record, literally I pick up the phone in this Chicago familiar voice who changes my life, every time he calls, says the stars of a line, Melissa, it's

time for you to join my band, like, first of all, Billy, I'm in hold, 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, you knew that I had to leave hold to join your band and write all of a sudden, at that moment, I had already made my decision to leave hold, but then I had this, like, other problem coming in, which is if I leave hold to join the pumpkins, the explosion between my grunge parents and the, the pawn in your weird relationship, 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, if you don't take, because I have the facts, it's actually in my book, when I tell her that I am leaving and then she picks up on, I don't tell her, I'm leaving to join you, but somehow she finds out that I'm also about to join you

on your missing bass player, last album of the 90s, she writes me this incredible facts,

it's like fine, but yes, you better, the narrative was going to be hers, of course. When 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 was kind of hilarious and cool. Let me, let me to code, you have your own version of, quote, Courtney to coding, I'm

going to decode it for you, as somebody was in the game longer, she picked one clean shot there with Stick, but couldn't hate on me and couldn't hate on you. It was very respectful, also saying, so you get one clean shot that will stick, and the fact that's in your book shows you, yeah, no, it's like master with language, it's like master, I'm going to pick the one thing that's going to stick.

And ultimately, what's interesting, and this is back to probably the conversation we've

light process, like, all I, I felt like the whole, everyone controlled my life, like

including you, and it wasn't your fault that you gave me an amazing opportunity, which,

“you know, and we paid you well, so you did, and also, I don't know if you're going to remember”

this, but on that phone call, I said, I don't know, and I was saying kind of, no, again, to this second life-changing thing, and, and it was because I felt like I had no more myself, and I knew that part of it. Well, of course, because you and I had them in talking, because you, and Courtney, are so big, and I had just sort of like evaporated. But you had evaporated completely, and also, again, my father had died. I was like trauma.

I had very much in grief of my own of my omnipresent father who, you know, I took me a while to come out of that 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 Molder, Flood, or Mixing What I Think, is your best record in many ways. Some people agree with me. I think it's actually, it's my favorite record. I mean,

Simon's dream and Gish mean so much to me, vis-raily, it's my favorite record of years. It's grown, it's really grown in stature in the last ten years. As it should. And I sat there in the studio and like, as if like you 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 I give you a different perspective. Yeah, I'm just telling you that was”

my evaporator, but I got to give you a different perspective. Yeah. There is truth in this kind of not so much that you owe me. It was like, I felt I had the best line of what was best for you. Now, if that's pedantic or two-mentary or the teacher telling the student how to live their life, but in my estimation, it was a perfect fit. Now, I'll give you why. Okay. We only needed someone to do the tour, which ended up being 11 months. Yep. We didn't need you to join

the band, although I asked you, perform it at least to say you were in the band, because we didn't want to yet tell people that the band was breaking up. Yeah. I waited till the middle of 2000 to do that. Famously on K Rock out here on with Tammy Heidi, one of my favorite DJs all time, May 23rd, 2000, I went on the radio live on K Rock and and jokingly said retired if I didn't bring me. We're all there. Remember this? Yes. Well, as I actually was presented by you that it was

your last tour, your last record, you're breaking up. So I probably missed that public announcement in my mind. I knew. Yeah, you know, I was doing the farewell. What I'm trying to say to you is this. This is, and, and, no, you were helping me. But no, but, but it's true. No, but I'm saying there is, there is a certain truth to like, it's not in you owe me. It's like a, 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 never discussed and this is, until right now, people.

This is a perfect venue to discuss it. Can I hold your hand or do you tell me? Sure. Is it actually? Okay. I was not open to you when I was in your band. I was quite...

“Oh, I understand. But everything. I understand. Okay. But here's the thing. Yes.”

And you, and you talking about evaporating and, and let's, 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 "Arty Melissa," the "Botta Cheli Melissa" had sort of gotten lost. - Of course. - In the maze of Courtney Colts, whole politics, disappointment, waiting around for her to decide she gave, she called. - Corporate takeover of the music world, corporate.

- So, gloves. - So, and look, you know us pretty well. I mean, you know the whole entire band. - Yep. - And so, you are one of the only people on the planet. I mean, it's a very smallest of people that actually knows how the pumpkins operated internally. - Yeah. - Not the summer. - Virtually 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 face 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 that way. But the thing you don't understand until this moment is, I saw this emulation in a sense of like, you're going to learn how to be a musician. - Well, I'm glad. - We're going to, we're going to, you're going to go to Pumpkin's College. - Listen, I say it in my book, which was whole was my, my bachelor's in humanity and the Pumpkin's

was my master's degree. - But I'm saying, I, you knew that. - And I didn't know that until I was in about, 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 Darcy. - You are. - I was annoyed or something at the way, but it was a musical problem.

Because the expectation in the Pumpkin's as you know was, you're going to have to know these 50 or 60 songs.

“You can't, you have to not forget them. - Yeah, you can't make mistakes. There's no days off. You can't get sick.”

- Yes, I'll show you that in the hospital if you really got to go to the hospital. - I, yes.

- So you, you lived the boot camp. - I did. - But here's the thing, in a cycling back to this.

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

is incidental. So in you're evaporating and you're getting lost and sitting around and all these years waiting to make a record, it was like, hey, once 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 in the changing settlers and the tuning is being different than the thing. And like, what? - I'll just stick to you because you were at the last pumpkin show December 2nd, 2000. - Five hours show. - It was four hours for now. - Okay. - It had a few breaks, but we played, it was either 38 or 43 songs. - Yeah, and you changed the set list almost every night on the tour. So every night I'm waiting

to hand the guitar taxes and sane, color-coated like my own, I don't even know what you're saying.

“I could not play a show without a whole like the member, the changing of the notes is that's what's on.”

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 solar records after that, but that's how I was able to make records. As I joined the pumpkins for one year, 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 where the 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 other than carrying and birthing a child. - Truly. - I love you and I'm, I'm, I'm by, we had that experience together. A couple things. - Yeah.

Because you were there, it's self-serving, but it's, it's my show. Being in a group that was disintegrating in, in any way, it's the second group and a row of the year-in that's disintegrating. - So you're so depressing? - Yes. At least getting-- - At 90s ending, by the way. We don't have, we can't forget about that. - That's actually the, that's actually the best point of all. - Heart breaking, I think we all kind of felt intuitively that this, this story's over.

- Over. I know. And I still mourn it. My book is really mourning of the, the, the change of the melody. - I was thinking about, I feel like you're the first person from our generation that's sort of encapsulated the, the era. In a, in a holographic three-dimensional way, other people have written stuff, but it's usually just settling scores in it.

- Yeah. I dedicate the book to the decade that defined me in 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 obviously it was a music fan first, but then I got swept in, thanks to you, in the inside of this magic and destruction. And so-- - So what does it take you? - Simultaneous with the same thing happening with the corporate and digital rise that was happening in an hour arc, is that I, as an outsider who, meanwhile, was looking at it through more of a a lens of art history, you know, for me, bought a celly. I always look at my role in history is through

like from the woman who posed for Botticelli for Birth of Venus, to me. I don't see it as less of an arc of that. - Obviously. - And I, in that arc of the end of analog-- - Is the point, sorry, is the point that we know about a celly, but we don't know her name? - Yeah, exactly. Her name is Simultata. And she died of consumption in her 20s. And she's one of the most famous, you know, red head faces in the world.

“And I, that in photography, that's what I was working on. And I, 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

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. - That's, it's fully fleshed now, yeah. - And that, to me-- - Wait till eight, I kicks in. - It's happening in this terrifying. I am going on this tour of this memoir to be the voice of that last analog decade, so that I as a woman, so that I, for my 14-year-old daughter, can bring as much I can through weaving these tales with you, the magic that we carried in that last decade,

to be able to spin it. - It might go down as though, as the last true analog. - We are. - Generation had already happened. We are the last, it's where the pro-human pro analog generation

“that has gifts to give the future. And I want to highlight that's why we're making this documentary,”

that's why I'm writing this book, so I am taking my photos out of the archive, is I want to slowly

go on tour to speak to people, whether they're gen X 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. So, there's hope. - They want things to tag tie. - They want authenticity, and they want people like us who live to be for this. - Live to be for this. - I think you're not going to be able to tell Trump that.

- I do. - Yes. - Obviously, memory is what memory is. I'm going to hold you 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're telling me. Whatever you're saying, tell me I'm handling you. - Yeah, what are you? - Star. - This was the day I opened up for you, and you told me, I was going to be in your band one day. - What do you got to go this way? - This is selfie,

'cause 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. - I got a little bit of chili. - 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... - I don't shame you.

- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, let me finish. There's almost a reflexive feeling of like, "Do I have to defend this or give my side of the story?" And I had a couple 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, no, I'm not quibbling now. What I'm saying 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, I'm not accusing you of an accurate 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, let me finish this thing. 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.

- Yeah, well, I hope you can see that because that's 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. - 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 really accurate. - Because in very, I see a nature, I let it go. - Right. And 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.

- 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, boy. That's what, that's why I do want to correct you. - Okay, great. That was at the part of the book. So let me tell you 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

was to Courtney. It's a 90's story. - It's a 90's 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 your 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. - No, I didn't know.”

- The memoir is different than like an analytical biographer. - Because it's ultimately a story. - It's subjective. And I want, and my experience of what happened is what matters. Not what actually did what did Billy say or what did, so my experience. - I do need to correct you on one thing. - Oh good, I can't wait to hear the correction. But I am, I'm just proud of myself. Even coming

here on the show today, having never talked to you about any of this until right now, is that I found

my story. Like, I got to tell my story to people to read. - Thank you. It's not, it's not the, hey, I was around all these famous people. - No. - Let me tell you the inside bass ball. 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 you probably don't know. - Yeah. - 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, you know, more known people, you, and Courtney, and reframing a lot of that, but also our generation. I had an outsider inside a review of our generation and what happened, which was both terrible. - Like a journalist, not a photographer. - Yes, exactly. And a daughter of two journalists. - Yes. - Okay, so. - Well, my God, here it is. - No, no, it's not, it's not. - It's honestly fairly subtle. - Yeah, okay. - So the context for this, this, this correction,

with the capital C. - Boyle, alert for the book. - No, no, it's, it's, it's, I understand reading it, why you probably have a memory that's slightly different than mine. What happened was, we did this 11 months, you were, it took a while to click in, of course, people were doing the classic worst rc, what happened to the band, all that stuff, the band is internally falling apart. The record companies abandoning us, the venues are smaller, but as the tour goes on,

“it actually catches momentum. I know, if you remember that, but about half way through the tour,”

a journalist in Chicago actually pulled me aside after I announced the band was breaking up and said, you're insane to break the band up now. He said, he said, you have so much momentum, you've actually recaptured true organic momentum, do not break up the band. My, my, my publisher at the time, a man named Tom Sturgis, son of the, 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, this stuff that's helpful for me to hear because I was so arm's length. I didn't even, like in my mind, I was just like saying, I don't know if it was our relationship was kind of a poorly distant. - Yes. - We love each other, but it was like, you do your thing,

I'll do my thing. - Okay, so I'll see on stage. But here's the thing that you, be probably don't

remember and, 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 would remember. I go to the promoters in Chicago, Jam Productions, and I say, we're going to do a final show of 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 match show, that's where we started full circle. But I'd like to do an arena show,

“because we've been with a lot of big shows in Europe. I'd like to do that set, 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, New York. I like to do like the former Staples Center, Madison Square Garden, and come home to Chicago do the United Center where the bowls play, and then we end up at the Metro, and that's it. Bob's your uncle's band's done. And that was that was real. The band was going to end. So here's where you can probably do 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. They told me to pound sand, and I think we're better way to put it, but that's the nice version. You can imagine the Chicago version of that. The tickets go on sale, and they blow out in five minutes. I mean, the demand is through the roof. They literally 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. No, they said, no, we can,

you just told me we can do it. We'll 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, now, 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, I actually have all the tapes, believe me. Really? Yes, I have the end to all our rehearsals. I have them all. Amazing. That's cute for the pumpkins documentary make one day. Here's the crux of the story, and we'll get to wrap it up. In the interim, as we're rehearsing

for the final shows, I'm going in the studio during the night or the day, and I'm finishing what is machine to two. Okay, which I kind of try 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 too, or if anybody's ever seen us play playing.

Yeah, I mean, we are the best. Fire. I mean, we're on it. I mean, I truly have never played a

base like that again in my life. Okay, point proven. So I came to you and I said, listen, I've got this crazy idea. Just hear me out. I know you want to get out of here. I know you want to get out. I know you're planning your vacation to Tahit or whatever. January, second. Yes. I don't remember. 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've played

the last show. So we will literally be writing and documenting the last glimmers of this band because I thought the band would ever get back together. We're going to actually record a poshiumous record that no one knows we're doing. We will do it in secret. I've already got everyone's agreement that we will record a record in secret. I need four weeks of your time. That's all I need. And what I want to do is I either want to go ahead and release it. I want to go ahead

and release it or I want to put in the can. So some future data. It'll have some value. It was like, oh, you thought the band ended here. We actually had this little quota 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 was I said, it'll be a worts and all project, meaning whatever comes out. 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 press. 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? I can understand. I heard this whole book

by heart and 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, but politely I love you, but I got to get the hell out of here. That's not what happened. I tried to sell you life for more weeks of commitment so that we could document what we created and I wanted you to be part of that 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

write them. 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, I didn't understand why James said no to it. Jimmy was fine with it. Did James say no to? He said absolutely. 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 like the similar fashion and photography and had mutual friends,

“maybe I kind of knew he was going to say no one that's why I said it's all good. That's interesting.”

I obviously now the writer and me more and said we don't have that kind of document. I did me didn't you ever go to write together, even though you then invited me to Chicago and wrote one song when my solo record and it was more I didn't get to use that either. Okay, I am sad about that. No, but it's fine. But I actually am impressed that you didn't have me harder. You just sort of let me be the frozen, no thank you. I very strange. I'm actually, because I feel like if you

had insisted harder, I maybe you wouldn't have said that's the dividing line and I think as adults

and 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 moments along the way, it was because I thought I had a better version of it for you. But at the end of the day, but 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. I didn't trust anybody. I didn't, I was traumatized. I was traumatized by all of the things that

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 from what's good for me. I really felt like no one”

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

But you both end me towards you. We really deeply care about our soul 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

that like some better physical crazy fantasy that I needed to live out. But you did not how me to stay. And I'm pretty grateful for that too. Thank you. But I am, it's a surprise that I was time to go. Yeah. I mean, in many ways, it's, you know, if you could read it almost in the shadow that it's, it's somebody trying to hold onto something, you know, for another heartbeat. Right. You, you're saying. Oh, well, all of it. Yeah. Yeah. The death of the band was very traumatic for me.

“Absolutely. No one I guess that's what's said is that because I had the sort of daughter,”

everyone owns me living in the shadow issue that I, which is definitely what this book is about. And that's, I think, why, like, underdogs will like this book. Is it about someone who survived being in the shadow of everybody? And got to 25 years later, be my own person and tell it my ways that I did not have time to consider you and what you were going through, which was you had lost our, so 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. Yeah. We were in trauma collectively, entering a future that we all sensitive Pisces freaks new 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 mourning and individual trauma that didn't allow us to see the other is an eye 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 the all of her shoes won in terrible. So 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 the huge pumpkin, the big boss, he, you know, he's always had control. I don't have, so I think we're

we're at now is that we're really good friends for each other because we now see the perspective and you forgive me for not saying yes to that cool opportunity. I forgive you for like, I thought you just tried to own me so that you could get something from me, which like, what did you know you could have had any base 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 than that. Sure, but there's been multiple fatalities along the way and it's 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, 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 Garcin, my Garcin. Yeah, sweet Garcin. 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. Yeah, I made this happen. I made us happen. Let's put it that way. I love you. I love you. Thank you. Thank you. Fun. And best of luck on the book. Oh, thank you.