LOVE: CORGAN HOGGING CREDIT FOR RECORD The new Hole album, Celebrity Skin, isn't due until September, but already Courtney Love is being forced to defend her abilities. In several interviews, Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan is vehemently claiming to be the mastermind behind the new album, which comes as no surprise to many in the music industry who have long whispered that Love's late husband Kurt Cobain was the wizard behind Hole's earlier successes. But this time, Love is fighting back. In a terse statement to USA TODAY, which Love asked be printed in its entirety, the singer says, guitarist "Eric (Erlandson) and I co-wrote five songs of the 12 on Celebrity Skin with Billy Corgan. Billy does not have a majority of publishing percentage on any one of those songs. (These percentage splits on these songs are registered through ASCAP. Obviously, 100% of the lyrics are mine, as always.) "Billy did, however, spend quality time mentoring and teaching me a craft that I really needed to learn in order to make the record I wanted to make, much like a brilliant music teacher, and that was what was so invaluable to me. "Eric already is a brilliant musician, so our collaboration with Billy yielded a joyful magnificent contribution to a great record. I am incredibly grateful for Billy's skill. "However, I, Melissa Auf der Maur, Patty Schemel, Eric Erlandson and Michael Beinhorn all worked ourselves to the bone to create this record and I feel it's silly and somewhat sexist to credit Billy Corgan with things Billy Corgan did not do based on the assumption that accomplished male musicians are somehow superior to accomplished female musicians, such as myself or Patty or Melissa, not to mention that Eric is possibly one of the greatest male guitarist of our generation or that Michael Beinhorn has produced some of the greatest rock records ever in this decade." Whew! Corgan, whose management company did not return phone calls, had been bit more direct. "Yeah. I am the Svengali," he says in Select, a British rock monthly. In Guitar World, Corgan says he did "the full monty" on some songs, meaning that he wrote the lyrics and music and produced them. Love's efforts to downplay his involvement are bogus, he says. "She encouraged me to write songs with and for them, so I did," he told Select. "There would not be a new Hole album without me." - Karen Thomas, USA Today, June 18, 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - -