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Over the weekend, Billy Corgan took to social media to announce he entered an auction to win Courtney Love's handwritten lyrics to the Hole song "Violet," which was (in)famously written about him.
“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 about and I’d love to put that on my wall," the Smashing Pumpkins frontman said in an Instagram reel. "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.”
The auction is part of a fundraiser hosted by wildlife sanctuary Ellis Park and runs until December 15. All proceeds will benefit the Jakarta Animal Aid Network, which helps support rescued animals in Sumatra, Indonesia that are under the organization's care. You can enter the auction here.
Corgan also shared a screenshot of an NME article about the song on his Instagram story. In the interview, Love said “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 bejeweled amethyst sky.”
“She forgot to mention that I wrote one of the heart-rending couplets contained therein," he captioned the story. "But I will always love this song. Love you Court.”
"Violet" is the opening track on Hole's sophomore album, 1994's Live Through This. Corgan and Love dated in the early '90s, before she got together with Kurt Cobain. They briefly rekindled their romance in the mid-2000s. See Corgan's reel below.