Billy Corgan has revealed that he has entered the auction to win Courtney Love‘s handwritten lyrics to the Hole song ‘Violet’.
The Smashing Pumpkins frontman took to his official Instagram account to post a video clip in which he shared that he has purchased three tickets for the auction of Love’s handwritten lyrics for Hole’s 1994 track. The auction is part of a fundraiser by the wildlife sanctuary Ellis Park, which is running until December 15. All proceeds will go to the charity, which is dedicated to caring for rescued animals in Sumatra and was founded by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ Warren Ellis.
“Hello friends. I have a very special announcement. Check this out. I just bought my ticket for the Ellis Park Wildlife Sanctuary auction for the lyrics for ‘Violet’ written by Courtney Love,” he began in the video.
“Now, it’s made a lot of press this week that this auction’s going off so I’ve actually bought my ticket because I’d like to win these lyrics because I think it’s about a guy I know a little bit and I’d love to put that on my wall. Anyway, support this if you want to, Ellispark.org and you can enter the auction as well but you gotta buy a ticket. I got three tickets for 20 bucks So I am in it to win it.”
Corgan also shared an Instagram story of a screenshot of NME‘s article in which Love gave us an exclusive quote about the meaning of the song and revealed: “It’s not just about Billy Corgan, as many might assume; it’s about sitting on the fire escape of his flat, sipping cheap wine and taking a Vicodin (oh, to be young!) while the Chicago sun sets, leaving behind a bejewelled amethyst sky.”
He captioned the screenshot by saying: “She forgot to mention that I wrote one of the heart-rending couplets contained therein. But I will always love this song. Love you Court.”
‘Violet’ served as the opening track to the band’s second album ‘Live Through This’ in 1994, and was written by Love three years earlier during Hole’s tour ahead of the release of their 1991 debut album ‘Pretty On The Inside’. You can bid for the lyric pages here.
Love wrote ‘Violet’ alongside Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson, with whom she formed the band in 1989. The lyrics first appeared on a flyer that Love designed to advertise a Hole show at the Jabberjaw venue in Los Angeles in August 1991. The pages going up for auction were discovered by Love when she was researching her memoir and found them in an old notebook, which had been returned to her by police after spending years in a stolen locker.
The band released four three studio albums before disbanding in 2002. A reunion took place in 2009, resulting in their fourth album ‘Nobody’s Daughter’, before they split again in 2012.
The song has long been thought to have been written about Corgan, with whom Love was in a relationship in 1990. “Sometimes I just channel whatever comes. I realise my comment on Jools Holland was a bit mean – I was just being bitchy beefy. But someone has to uphold the standards of good faith beef!,” she told NME in an exclusive quote.
Love is referencing comments made on Later…with Jools Holland in 1995, when she said ‘Violet’ was “a song about a jerk, I hexed him and now he’s losing his hair”.
Speaking to NME about founding Ellis Park, Warren Ellis recent told us: “I wasn’t aware of the effect that it would have on me. This development led to this community springing up around it. All of the people that followed my music became engaged in it. It’s been lovely to see the music side spill into the park.
“I was thinking to do it during the lockdown. I’m really good friends with Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers, and he’s done really good things in opening a school in Silver Lake, so I called him and said, ‘I’m thinking of opening up this sanctuary’. He just said, ‘Maaaan, you gotta do it – it will open your heart to something you didn’t believe it was imaginable! I totally encourage and implore you to do it!’ He was right. I didn’t think of getting anything back from it. It has changed my life and had a really profound effect on me.”
In other news, Corgan recently claimed that he can write songs that sound like any era of the band, explaining: “in five minutes I could write you something that would sound like a song that would’ve been on ‘Siamese Dream.’”