Love originally started her career as an actress with a bit parts in Alex Cox films, most notably Sid and Nancy (1986), but turned her focus to music and moved to Los Angeles in 1989 where she formed Hole. Originally influenced by noise rock and no wave music, the band went on to receive considerable critical praise and released several successful albums in the 1990s, most notably Live Through This (1994) and Celebrity Skin (1998). Love also received massive media attention over her 1992 marriage to Kurt Cobain.
She would later gain recognition as an actress for her award-nominated performance in The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), and continued to occasionally star in films. Hole disbanded in 2002, and Love had a brief solo career before reforming the band with new members in 2009 and releasing a fourth album, Nobody's Daughter (2010). Throughout her music career, Love's wild stage antics and subversive feminist attitude have polarized audiences and critics, with Rolling Stone once calling her "the most controversial woman in rock history."
Early life of Courtney Love
Courtney Michelle Harrison was born in San Francisco, California, to Linda Carroll, a psychotherapist, and Hank Harrison, a publisher. Love would discover, in later years, that her biological grandmother was novelist Paula Fox and her great-grandmother was Cuban-born screenwriter Elsie Fox; Fox had given Linda Carroll up for adoption when she was an infant.
Love's father was a publisher and briefly a road manager for the The Grateful Dead, and, at five years old, she was featured on the back of the Grateful Dead's third album, Aoxomoxoa (1969), sitting under a tree among the band members and various roadies and musicians.
Carroll and Harrison filed for a divorce shortly thereafter, and it was alleged in court that Harrison had fed LSD to Love when she was three years old. Harrison denied the allegation, and Love admitted that she couldn't remember it, but insisted it was alleged in court.The trial concluded with full custody being awarded to Love's mother. Soon after, Carroll remarried, eventually giving birth to two more daughters and adopting a son.
Love relocated with her family to the small town of Marcola, Oregon in the early 1970s, and Linda studied psychotherapy at the University of Oregon. In 1972, Love's mother relocated to New Zealand with Love's half-siblings and stepfather, but left Love behind in the United States under the care of a friend. Love eventually reunited with her family, but was kicked out of her boarding school in New Zealand and was returned to Oregon where she lived in foster homes. Linda eventually returned to Oregon as well and divorced her second husband, later marrying a third.
At age 14, Love was arrested for criminal mischief and theft after shoplifting a KISS t-shirt and was sent to Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility. According to documents by the facility committee from 1979, Love caused problems in the program because of her "boisterous, negative, and hurtful behavior". The same report also noted that Love's "academic ability is seen to be far beyond the typical student at Hillcrest". Other documents from the Oregon's Children's Services Division noted that it was "evident that Courtney has been in search of the family life she has always been deprived of for so many years", and has "rejected substitutes as unworthy".According to a data sheet which logged Love's juvenile placements, she was shuffled between over 20 different facilities and foster homes between 1978 and 1980.
At age 16, Love moved to Portland, Oregon, and worked as an exotic dancer in various venues in the city, lying about her age to club owners in order to get jobs. According to Love, she also briefly worked as a DJ at Portland's community radio station, KBOO, and wrote an article under the name "Courtney Michelle" in punk zine MRR: "I wrote three or four of these missives from Portland, all about Poison Idea and Rancid Vat. But of course being me, I wrote something controversial and got a cross burned on my lawn. I wrote that Tom 'Pig' was a neo-fascist or something."
Love has said that she "didn't have a lot of social skills" as a teenager, and was "raised by her friends and drag queens" at gay clubs in Portland. Love later took a job opportunity to work at a dance hall in Japan, but was deported within a month after the Japanese government closed down the dance ring due to the employment of underage girls. Love returned to Portland, where a social worker discovered a trust fund established for her by her mother's adoptive parents, and she gained legal emancipation.
She subsequently traveled to England and Ireland,, where she took two semesters at Trinity College and took photos for Hot Press. She briefly moved into the Liverpool home of musician Julian Cope, of The Teardrop Explodes, and became a regular at rock shows, also developing a friendship with Ian McCulloch of Echo and the Bunnymen.
In 1982, Love's Visa expired and she returned to Portland, and got a job as a disc jockey. Through the job, she met Rozz Rezabek of a local band, Theatre of Sheep, and the two had a brief relationship. After the relationship ended, 19-year-old Love returned to the far East in order to make more money for herself, and ended up stripping in Taiwan, where her passport was allegedly taken from her by a club owner. According to Love, she feared she was going to "become a sex slave", and returned to the United States.
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| Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain |
Personal life of Courtney Love
Relationships of Courtney Love
Love's most prolific relationship was with fellow rock musician Kurt Cobain. The two first encountered one another at the Satyricon nightclub in January 1989, where Nirvana was playing a show. Cobain passed by a booth where Love was seated with a friend, and she blurted to him, "You look like Dave Pirner" (lead singer of Soul Asylum). The two purportedly playfully wrestled on the floor in front of a jukebox that night, but Love left the club before Cobain did. They later became reacquainted through Jennifer Finch, one of Love's longtime friends and former bandmates, who was dating Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl at the time. Love told Grohl she had a crush on Cobain, and later sent him a heart-shaped box with a letter and porcelain doll head inside of it. Love and Cobain officially began dating in 1991, and were married on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii, on February 24, 1992. Love wore a satin and lace dress once owned by actress Frances Farmer, and Cobain wore green pajamas. Six months later, on August 18, the couple's only child, a daughter named Frances Bean Cobain, was born. In 1994, Cobain committed suicide. In speaking of her marriage with Kurt Cobain, she has been adamant about the fact that she loved him, but in more recent years has been less inclined to discuss it. In a 2010 interview with NME, Love said she was "sick of talking about it". "I am not his spokesperson on Earth," she told the magazine. "I don't know what he'd be like now; he could be into society girls, he could be into fat girls, he could be homosexual. We don't know, he died at 27."
During their relationship and after his death, it was widely insinuated by the media that Love was something of a "groupie" and had married Cobain in order to achieve fame. Love mentioned in a 1994 interview that she felt "competitive" after having married Cobain, and discussed the media's perception of their relationship. "It's a complicated issue for me because so many people have called me a groupie since I married a rock star," said Love. "I just wish that his band was smaller. You know, when we started dating, our bands were about the same. Actually, Hole's first record Pretty on the Inside sold more than Nirvana's first record Bleach. Of course, that was before they got huge. I married one of the best songwriters of my generation. If my goals were minor, the professional side of my relationship with Kurt wouldn't bother me that much."
Prior to her relationship with Cobain, she married "Falling" James Moreland, vocalist of The Leaving Trains, in Las Vegas in 1989. Moreland was a transvestite[88] and Love later referred to their wedding as "a joke"; an annulment was filed within the first few months of the marriage. In 1991, Love also dated The Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Billy Corgan. Beginning in 1996, Love dated actor Edward Norton when the two met on the set of The People vs. Larry Flynt. Her relationship with Edward was described as her "most stable". The two were together for several years and were at one point engaged, but separated in 1999. Love was also romantically linked to Trent Reznor in 1995 and once left a suicide note in her room in the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood after a fight with Reznor. Love was also briefly involved with British comedian Steve Coogan in the mid-2000s.
Love's relationship with her daughter, Frances, has likewise been turbulent. After a 2003 oxycodone overdose, Love temporarily lost custody of the 13-year-old, who went to live with Kurt Cobain's mother, Wendy O'Connor. Love regained custody of Frances in January 2005. In December 2009, it was reported that Love had "lost" custody of Frances again, though her spokesperson Keith Fink told the media: "Courtney's been clean for years and is perfectly fine. This is simply about Frances preferring to live with her grandmother at this time. Frances is 17 and a strong-willed child, and this is a decision she made on her own." Nonetheless, legal guardianship of Frances was placed in the hands of O'Connor, whom had guardianship over Frances until her 18th birthday in August 2010.
Music career of Courtney Love
Early endeavors: 1983-1988
Love started her first musical project in the early 1980s, an on-and-off band called Sugar Babydoll that never reached fruition. The beginning of her musical career was a brief stint as lead singer of Faith No More. According to Love, she showed up to a concert in San Francisco wearing a wedding gown, and basically "demanded" to be in the band. She was only part of the group for a short amount of time, but later maintained a friendship with Roddy Bottum.
At age 20, in 1984, Love met Kat Bjelland in Portland at the Satyricon nightclub, and the two became friends, often experimenting musically with friend Jennifer Finch, a bassist. Love and Bjelland moved to San Francisco the following year and formed a band called The Pagan Babies, with Deidre Schletter and Janis Tanaka, but the band dissolved in the summer of 1985 after recording one demo, largely due to fighting and troubles involving drug abuse. Love briefly played bass in Kat Bjelland's band Babes In Toyland in Minneapolis for a short time but was kicked out of this group as well. Love stayed in Minneapolis and got a gig as a promoter for rock shows, promoting concerts by bands such as The Butthole Surfers, but left to Los Angeles soon after.
In-between relocations, Love took classes at Portland State University, as well as San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute, studying English and Buddhism, but never invested enough time to graduate.
Love starred in two Alex Cox films in the late 1980s, but was ultimately dissatisfied with acting and the "low level of celebrity" that it brought her, particularly in New York, and returned to stripping, where she was recognized and photographed by customers at a bar in McMinnville, Oregon. Love then retreated to Alaska for several months where she continued to strip to support herself.
Hole and breakthrough: 1989-1995
All about: Hole (band)
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| Courtney Love promoting a Hole show in 1991, Los Angeles. |
In 1989, Love boarded a Greyhound bus from Alaska to Los Angeles—dissatisfied with acting, the 24-year-old taught herself to play guitar and set out to form her own band. She placed an ad in Flipside, reading: "I want to start a band. My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac" to which Eric Erlandson, along with over a dozen other musicians, replied. Love ultimately chose Erlandson. After a cycle of several bass players and drummers, Love and Erlandson recruited bassist Jill Emery and drummer Caroline Rue into the band, which they named Hole. The band's name allegedly came from a quote from Euripides' Medea which read "there's a hole that pierces my soul" and a conversation Love had with her mother about her upbringing.
Hole played their first gig in November 1989 at Raji's after three months of rehearsal, and made singles on the Long Beach, California, independent label Sympathy for the Record Industry. Their first single, titled "Retard Girl," was issued in spring 1990, and had been produced by Love's then ex-husband Moreland. Disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer jokingly said that Love would often "stalk him" at a downtown Denny's, showing him the band's single and insisting that he should give it air time on his station, KROQ-FM. One year later, the band debuted their second single, "Dicknail" through Sub Pop Records, and began to gain a following in Los Angeles, and eventually garnered them a national club tour.
Influenced by the sounds and style of no wave rock bands, Love sought out Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon to produce the band's first studio album, a proposal which Gordon accepted. Hole's debut album Pretty on the Inside (1991) was released in September 1991 on Caroline Records, produced by Gordon and Gumball's Don Fleming. It sold well for an independent release and received specifically favorable reviews in the British alternative music press, charting at 59 on the UK Albums Chart in October 1991. The New Yorker referred to it as "the most compelling album to have been released in 1991" and Spin also labeled it one of the 20 best albums of the year. Love went on tour with Hole to promote the record in Europe and the United States. Several years after the album's release, Love made comments that though the album was "the truth", it was also an act of proving herself to her "indie peers" who had "made fun of her" for liking R.E.M. and The Smiths. She also referred to the creation of the album as a sort of self-exorcism. Shortly after the release of Pretty on the Inside, Love began dating Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, and they were married in 1992, giving birth to a daughter, Frances.
Hole released their second album, Live Through This in 1994, and in poor timing, just four days after Love's husband, Cobain, was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound in their home. The album had been recorded in the fall of 1993 in Atlanta, and garnered a great deal of attention, not only because of it being the group's first commercial album, but also because of its untimely release date. The album featured a new lineup, with Kristen Pfaff on bass and Patty Schemel on drums; Jill Emery and Caroline Rue had both left the band in 1992. Less than two months after the release of Live Through This, on June 16, Kristen Pfaff died of an apparent heroin overdose.Love soon after recruited 22-year-old bassist Melissa Auf der Maur for the band's upcoming tour. Throughout the months preceding the tour, Love was rarely seen in public, and had Namgyal Buddhist monks move into her home to help her deal with the recent tragedies.
In spite of the recent tragedies and highly emotional tour, Live Through This was an immense commercial and critical success. Spin and the Village Voice declared it "Album of the Year" and by November the record was certified gold. By April 1995, it went platinum. Entertainment Weekly gave it a positive review, noting the lyrical content of the songs and Love's dealings with it: "Life in the media spotlight, motherhood, being called Nirvana's Yoko Ono, the idea that love and sex strip women of their dignity-these and other thoughts are on her mind, and her frazzled, occasionally venomous observations make for what amounts to a shrink session with a beat." Columnist Geoffrey Himes noted the album's reactiveness toward "the impossible situation that confronts women when they are asked to be both wild sources of pleasure and unblemished mother figures.
The album's subject matter ranged from themes of pregnancy, rape, and relationships to conformity, child abuse, and suicide. Live Through This went on to be declared one of the best albums of all time by Rolling Stone magazine in their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time issue in 2003.
Commercial success: 1996-1999
Following the success of Live Through This, Hole went on a hiatus beginning in 1996 while Love acted in several films. In 1997, the band released a compilation album, My Body, The Hand Grenade through City Slang records, which featured material from the band's earliest recordings in 1989 up until 1995— the album featured several singles and live tracks, and was described as an anthology of the band's progression from punk rock to more mainstream alternative rock tastes.
While My Body, The Hand Grenade was being released, Hole was in the studio recording Celebrity Skin, which featured a more pop rock style than the band's previous albums. Released in September 1998, Celebrity Skin was noted for its pop rock-influenced style, and received positive critical reaction. Rolling Stone gave the album four out of five stars, saying, "the album teems with sonic knockouts that make you see all sorts of stars. It's accessible, fiery and intimate—often at the same time. Here is a basic guitar record that's anything but basic." Celebrity Skin went on to go multi-platinum, and topped "Best of Year" lists at Spin, the Village Voice, and other periodicals. Erlandson was still the lead guitarist, and now there were Melissa Auf der Maur's backup vocals and bass, but drummer Patty Schemel was replaced by a session drummer during the recording. The album is noted for being the only Hole album to garner a No. 1 hit single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, with its title track, "Celebrity Skin".
During the release and promotion of Celebrity Skin, Love and Fender designed a low-price Squier brand guitar, called Vista Venus (as Cobain did in 1994, doing the design of his Fender Jag-Stang). The instrument featured a shape inspired by Mercury, Stratocaster, and Rickenbacker's solidbodies and had a single-coil and a humbucker pickup. In an early 1999 interview, Love said about the Venus: "I wanted a guitar that sounded really warm and pop, but which required just one box to go dirty (...) And something that could also be your first band guitar. I didn't want it all teched out. I wanted it real simple, with just one pickup switch. Because I think that cultural revolutions are in the hands of guitar players". She also declared, "my Venus is better than the Jag-Stang". The Squier Vista Venus model is currently discontinued, as is the Jag-Stang as of 2006.
Solo career: 2000-2008
With Hole in disarray, Love began a "punk rock femme supergroup" called Bastard during autumn 2001, enlisting Schemel, Veruca Salt co-frontwoman Louise Post, and bassist Gina Crosley, whom Post recommended. Though a demo was completed, the project never reached fruition. On May 24, 2002, Hole officially announced their breakup amid continuing litigation with Universal Music Group over their record contract.
A whirlwind of legal troubles surrounded Love beginning in 2003, when public attention fell on her for various arrests and drug charges, most notably after the release of her solo album, America's Sweetheart. During the promotion for the record, Love battled various highly-publicized legal issues as well as drug sentences, which eventually resulted in six months of lockdown rehab. Love had begun composing the album with Linda Perry in 2002. America's Sweetheart, released on Virgin Records in February 2004, was embraced by critics with mixed reviews. Spin called it a "jaw-dropping act of artistic will and a fiery, proper follow-up to 1994’s Live Through This" and awarded it eight out of ten stars, while Rolling Stone suggested that, "for people who enjoy watching celebrities fall apart, America's Sweetheart should be more fun than an Osbournes marathon."
The album sold a disappointing 86,000 copies in its first three months, with the singles Mono and "Hold on to Me", both of which earned competent spots on album charts. Love has publicly expressed her regret over the record several times, calling it "a crap record", reasoning that her drug issues at the time were to blame.
In June 2005, Love started recording what was going to be her second solo album, Nobody's Daughter, collaborating with Linda Perry and Billy Corgan in the writing and recording. Love had written several songs, including an anti-cocaine song entitled "Loser Dust", during her time in rehab.
Some tracks and demos from the album (initially planned for release in 2008) were leaked on the internet in 2006, and a documentary entitled The Return of Courtney Love, detailing the making of Nobody's Daughter, aired on the British television network in the fall of that year. A rough acoustic version of "Never Go Hungry Again", recorded during an interview for The Times in November, was also released. Incomplete audio clips of the song "Samantha", originating from an interview with NPR, were also distributed on the internet in 2007.
Hole reformation: 2009-present
On June 17, 2009, NME reported that Hole would be reuniting. Former Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson stated in Spin magazine that contractually no reunion can take place without his involvement; therefore Nobody's Daughter would remain Love's solo record, as opposed to a "Hole" record. Love responded to Erlandson's comments in a Twitter post, claiming that "he's out of his mind, Hole is my band, my name, and my Trademark".
Nobody's Daughter was released worldwide as a Hole album in April 2010. Hole now consists of Love (guitar, vocals), Micko Larkin (guitar), Shawn Dailey (bass guitar), and Stu Fisher (drums, percussion). Some songs from the sessions with Linda Perry and Billy Corgan are on the album, including "Pacific Coast Highway", "Letter to God", "Samantha", and "Never Go Hungry", although they have been re-produced with Micko Larkin.
The first single from Nobody's Daughter was "Skinny Little Bitch", which was the most added song on alternative rock radio in early March 2010. Hole performed on The Late Show with David Letterman on April 27, 2010, and Courtney Love was interviewed. Hole also performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on April 29, 2010, on the outdoor stage.
The album received mixed reviews, though the majority of them leant toward positive. Rolling Stone gave the album three out of five stars, saying that Love "worked hard on these songs, instead of just babbling a bunch of druggy bullshit and assuming people would buy it, the way she did on her 2004 flop, America's Sweetheart." Slant Magazine also gave the album three out of five stars, saying "It's Marianne Faithfull's substance-ravaged voice that comes to mind most often while listening to songs like "Honey" and "For Once in Your Life." The latter track is, in fact, one of Love's most raw and vulnerable vocal performances to date. Co-penned by Linda Perry, the song offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a woman who, for the last 15 years, has been as famous for being a rock star as she's been for being a victim.
Acting career of Courtney Love
Love actually started out acting before breaking into the music industry. In 1987, she submitted an audition tape to director Alex Cox, which earned her a bit part in the Sid Vicious biopic Sid and Nancy (1986). Impressed by Love's energy and "star attitude", Cox offered her $40,000 for a leading role in his following film Straight to Hell (1987), which she filmed in Spain in 1986.Straight to Hell was a critical flop, and in 1987, Love starred in Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes television show with Robbie Nevil in a segment titled "C'est la Vie" (eponymous for Neville's hit song). The segment features Love dressed in vintage clothes from the Paramount costume department discussing her aspirations about being a poet and an English major, but how she "mostly would have been a bag lady".
Nearly a decade later, in 1996, Love returned to acting in the midst of her success and work with Hole. She had small parts in Basquiat and Feeling Minnesota, but her largest role came in that of Larry Flynt's wife, Althea, in Miloš Forman's 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt, opposite Woody Harrelson as Flynt. Forman chose Love, unaware of her history as a musician, because she was "an extremely talented actress."Initially, Columbia Pictures had been hesitant to hire Love for the role, because she wasn't a "big enough name", and they were also worried about her "troubled" past.Nonetheless, Forman fought the company and Love was given the role; however, Columbia Pictures refused to insure her during the making of the film. Ultimately, Forman, co-star Woody Harrelson, Oliver Stone, Michael Hausman, and Love herself pooled their money together in order to pay for her insurance, which demanded weekly urine tests, which she passed.
Love received unanimous critical acclaim upon the film's release, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama and a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress. Film critic Roger Ebert called her work in the film "quite a performance; Love proves she is not a rock star pretending to act, but a true actress".
The late 1990s— after Hole released Celebrity Skin— saw Love in the party film 200 Cigarettes (1998), and starring opposite Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon (1999). In 2001, Love returned to acting and took a leading role in Julie Johnson (2001) as Lili Taylor's lesbian lover, for which she won an Outstanding Actress award at L.A.'s Outfest. She followed with another leading part in the thriller film Trapped (2002), alongside Kevin Bacon and Charlize Theron.
Other projects of Courtney Love
In 2004, Love collaborated with manga illustrators Misaho Kujiradou and Ai Yazawa to create a manga series title Princess Ai, based in part on Love's life. Love wrote the stories for the series, and it was released through Tokyopop in two volumes between 2004 and 2005. The manga focused on an amnesiac alien who is transported to Tokyo where she becomes a rock star, and the key to her past is locked inside of a heart-shaped box. The series was released by publishing company Tokyopop, and was also featured in Japanese shōjo magazine Wings.
Although Love said she would "never write a book",she did publish a memoir in 2006 titled Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love. The memoir was composed of years' worth of diary entries, poems, letters, drawings, personal photos, and lyric compositions spanning from Love's childhood up until the year 2006, shortly after her release from a six-month rehab sentence. The book was generally well-reviewed by critics, and Love did book readings in promotion for it.
In more recent years, Love has expressed a great deal of interest in fashion, coining her flamboyant outfits and accessories with the term "kook".
Substance abuses of Courtney Love
Love has struggled with substance abuse problems for a great deal of her life. Love admitted to trying marijuana in her teenage years, but was first introduced to heavier drugs at age 16 while living in Taiwan, using heroin after mistaking it for cocaine. She also revealed that she first tried cocaine with friend Jennifer Finch at age 19; Finch shot an entire roll of film of them as they did lines of the drug, but Love referred to it as "[not] a very pleasant experience." According to Love, "Later that day Jennifer gulped down a bunch of Dilaudid and overdosed. I had never driven a car in my life, but I threw her in a car, and drove her to the hospital, and the doctors saved her life. After that, I was really scared of drugs.
As Love transitioned into the public eye in the 1990s, her struggle with drug abuse was subject of many media outlets, first beginning in a Vanity Fair article by Lynn Hirschberg in 1992, which alluded that Love was addicted to heroin during her pregnancy.[98] Though Love has admitted she used heroin before she knew she was pregnant, she asserts that she stopped "damn fast": "My daughter knows I did drugs in my first trimester of pregnancy. She weighed 7lb 6oz when she was born and she was healthy. [Kurt and I] were excellent parents and I say that despite pretty much always having an edge on."
In 2004, Love's drug use came to public attention again while she promoted her solo album. On March 17, 2004, Love, clearly intoxicated, was interviewed on The Late Show with David Letterman, which ended chaotically with her standing on Letterman's desk and exposing her breasts. That same evening, Love was arrested in Manhattan for possession of a controlled substance after performing at a concert. Love protested her arrest, denying charges and describing the drugs found on her as "one expired Percocet and one Ambien". The police, however, alleged possession of oxycodone and hydrocodone without prescription. On August 14, 2005, Love participated in the Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson, and her erratic behavior while onstage led many to believe that she was inebriated, despite her declaration during the show that she had been "clean and sober" for a year.
After several probation violations in early 2006, Love was sentenced to six months of lock down rehab after struggles with prescription drugs and cocaine. She made a public statement after her release, saying: "I would just like to thank the court for allowing me these 90 days... It helped me deal with a very gnarly drug problem, which is behind me... I've just been playing guitar and taking care of my daughter. I want to [take this opportunity] to let the community know I'm doing great... I've been really inspired and have remained inspired."
In retrospect, Love has jokingly referred to 2004-2007 as "The Letterman Years", in reference to her public breakdown and drug-fueled behavior first surfacing during a chaotic interview with David Letterman in 2004. Love has also admitted to abusing rohypnol and other opiates. In May 2011, Love made public statements that she was "tired" of her reputation as a drug addict: "I've been maligned as this drug freak for years, and I'm getting tired of it. That's not the way I live anymore. I try to work a good program. I don't do smack. I don't do crack anymore. Love has credited Buddhism as having helped her through her addictions several times.
Legal issues of Courtney Love
Love has dealt with many legal issues throughout her career. She infamously punched Kathleen Hanna in the face during Lollapalooza in 1995 after Hanna allegedly made a drug joke about daughter Frances Bean, and was sentenced to anger management classes after Hanna pressed charges. The same year, an Australian court ordered Love to "be on good behavior" for a month after she pleaded guilty to verbally abusing a flight attendant who ordered her to keep her legs down while she was resting them against a wall.
More recently, in 2003 and 2004, Love faced several court cases over alleged drug possession, unpaid bills, as well as for having allegedly struck an audience member with a microphone stand while performing in New York.
In 2006, Love stated that she was planning on selling the rights to Nirvana's catalogue,eventually selling 25% of the catalogue later that year. "I'm thinking about selling off all of Kurt's publishing. All of the rights, everything. It's not a financial decision; it's an emotional one", said Love. "He was the best friend I've ever had, but Kurt and I were only married for three years, and now I need to have my own life. I'm always 'the widow' and that drives me nuts. That money has been cursed since the day it started to come in. It's not really my money."
During the same time period, Love made several public remarks insinuating that large sums of money from Cobain's estate had been siphoned off for several years unbeknownst to her, first beginning while she was battling serious drug addictions in 2003. Public statements made in 2009 later confirmed these suspicions: "It was fraud after fraud," said Love, "But nobody believed me until now. Nearly 200 credit cards were reportedly registered under Cobain's name, and investigators were able to track cars as well as real estate in New Jersey that had been purchased under his social security number. "I know who they are," Love said. "It had been going on since when I went cuckoo-bananas in 2003... I did a check on my deceased husband's social security number and he has a house in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He bought it last year. I would like to know how. He should probably get his ass back home if that is the case." Love hired private investigators as well as forensic accountants in order to find the identity thieves.
In March 2011, Love settled a court case against her by fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir for allegedly posting defamatory statements about the designer on Twitter.
Beliefs of Courtney Love
Love is a member of Soka Gakkai, a branch of Nichiren Buddhism, having started exploring the religion in 1991. Love stated that in 1990, she would chant Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō daily, and in retrospect, has credited her spiritual awakening as a being responsible for her success with Hole. Love has stated that she has also explored several other religions: "I have tried it all— I've been a Christian, I've been a Catholic, I've been totally New Age, I've been Episcopalian, I've tried Scientology... and I find that Buddhism is the most amazing, transcendent path to enlightenment for me."
Love has advocated for several liberal causes, including stricter gun control laws and reform of the "corrupt" record industry. Love has also been an advocate for gay rights; during a 1997 award speech at VH1's Fashion Awards, Love said "I think that great personal style is being true to yourself and speaking your mind, which, since I'm up here, I'm going to do... I feel that keeping gay people in the closet with our actions and attitudes is cruel and tacky, and most of all, it's boring. I think we need to respect each other and ourselves, and who we are, and what we are, and not be afraid to be what we are, whether we're gay, or straight, or... insane." Love voted against California's Proposition 8 during the 2008 elections.
In January 2011, while attending an Oxford Union debate, Love publicly endorsed her support of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, and called it "a step in the right direction for democracy".
Love is also self-identified feminist, a theme that has not only come across in her music, but in her own persona. Love was written about in the journal Bad Subjects for her subversive feminism and "slut/diva" image, and her "self-conscious parody of female sex roles", which is often misinterpreted because the public "only sees the 'slut' without the critique of the system that creates categories like 'slut.'"
Music and influences of Courtney Love
Love has often cited new wave and punk groups/musicians as being great influences on her. Such musical acts as Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, and Joy Division have been mentioned by Love, including songs by several of them being covered by Hole in live performances and, in some cases, studio recordings as album B-sides. In the early '90s, Hole as a group was greatly influenced by no wave music— in the initial advertisement placed by Love which resulted in Hole's formation, she cited Fleetwood Mac, Sonic Youth, and Big Black as her three major musical influences.
In a 1995 interview with Kurt Loder, Love divulged that in the late 1980s, guitarist Joe Strummer of The Clash told her that she was "the worst guitar player he'd ever heard", but she insisted she had improved by the early 1990s: "I'm fine... I have my style... and, you know what's funny, is most of the songs [from Pretty on the Inside] are complete Bauhaus rip-offs." During the same interview, Love said she was greatly influenced by guitarists Will Sergeant of Echo and the Bunnymen and Johnny Marr of the Smiths.
In terms of musical equipment, Love has used several different guitars during her career. In 1989 and the early 1990s, Love was seen several times with a Rickenbacker onstage, and, more often, a Fender Jazzmaster, which she played in the music video for "Miss World"; Love's Jazzmaster is now on display at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City. In the later '90s, Love played several Fender Stratocasters, as well as her own line of Squier Venus guitars. Most recently, in 2010, Love played a Rickenbacker 360 while touring.
Writing style of Courtney Love
Love's song lyrics are often told from a female's point of view, and her earlier work, particularly on Hole's first two albums, was noted for being aggressive and highly critical toward cultural definitions of women and their roles in society.[130] Common themes and references present in Love's earlier lyrics (particularly those on Pretty on the Inside and Live Through This) include body image, rape, suicide, misogyny, conformity, elitism, pregnancy, prostitution, and death.
Her later work was more introspective in its lyrics as opposed to aggressive; Hole's Celebrity Skin and Love's solo album, America's Sweetheart, focused more on celebrity life, Hollywood, and drug addiction, while also carrying on past themes of vanity and body image, and Nobody's Daughter was lyrically reflective of Love's past relationships and her struggle to sobriety, with the majority of its lyrics having been written while Love was in rehab in 2006.
Although Hole's sound changed over the course of the band's career, the pretty/ugly dynamic has often been noted as a consistent theme in Love's music, most prominently in Hole's first two studio albums. In conjunction with the extremes between beauty and ugliness, Love's musical style has also been remarked for its layering of harsh and abrasive riffs which often bury more sophisticated musical arrangements.
Vocal ability of Courtney Love
According to Love, she "never wanted to be a singer", but rather aspired to be a skilled guitarist. "I'm such a lazy bastard though that I never did that," Love said. "You have to stay in your room and play every Zeppelin record, and I didn't.... [it ended up that] I was always the only person with the nerve to sing, and so I got stuck with it." Thus, Love has had distinctive vocal styles that varied across her music career. Initially she was noted for her screaming abilities and powerful, harsh vocals, which were showcased in Hole's debut Pretty on the Inside. Rolling Stone referred to her singing on the album as "full-moon bawling".
On the band's second album, Live Through This, Love's vocals ranged from screaming to more mellow singing and harmonies. In David Browne's 1994 Entertainment Weekly review of Live Through This, he praised her voice, calling it a "thick, reedy instrument that makes her sound like the younger, brattier sister of Johnny Rotten [that] stands out like a suited IBM executive at Lollapalooza."Love's vocals on Celebrity Skin were more polished and controlled than those on either of the previous albums, which accompanied the record's softer pop rock musical elements. In 2010 upon the release of Nobody's Daughter, her vocal range was described as "croaky" but "tentative" during live performances, and Pitchfork likened her vocals on the album to those of Bob Dylan.
In popular culture Courtney Love
Once labelled by Rolling Stone as "the most controversial woman in the history of rock", Love's sometimes outrageous behavior has given her a lasting place in pop culture, as well as a polarizing reputation in the media. She has also been influential in the music world, particularly in the area of alternative rock and female-driven musical acts. In a 1996 New York Magazine piece on women in rock music, it was noted that Love "had the ambition most people would associate with a male rock star... one thing you have to admire her for is that she refuses— just refuses— to be overlooked in any way." In a 1994 interview, Pamela Des Barres likened Love to "Iggy Pop in a shredded antique wedding dress," or "a female Lou Reed who screams like Exene." Writer Charles Cross said of her, "Her work is not always great art, but it's always interesting art. She is certainly capable of taking her clothes off, crowdsurfing, grabbing some kid and pulling them onstage— and rarely does it seem like artifice."
Love has been parodied and referred to in several popular television shows, most notably Family Guy and South Park, as well as a Simpsons episode, where a cartoonized version of her was featured on a Wheaties cereal box. In January 2007, Molly Shannon performed a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch parodying Love's sobriety, with Shannon drunkenly stumbling across the stage in a babydoll dress with smeared lipstick and rambling while smoking a cigarette.
She has also been referred to several times in the music world. Musician Lois Maffeo had a short-lived band named Courtney Love. Love is also mentioned in the song "You Only Get What You Give" by the New Radicals. Punk band Nerf Herder wrote a song titled "Courtney" as an ode to her.
Likewise, Love has been cited as a gay icon by several LGBT publications, such as The Advocate, probably due to her perseverance and endurance through adverse situations in her life. Love's devoted gay fanbase was later written about in a New York Press article when Hole released their fourth album in 2010. In the article, John Russel writes:
Of course, it’s never been easy to be a Courtney Love fan. Even when she was at the top of her game there was always some kind of controversy, some reason to write her off as either a sell-out or a nut job, or both. And people don’t exactly take you seriously when you say that you love Courtney Love. Rock snobs—straight guys in particular—tend to turn their noses up at you... [gay men] adopted Courtney as their patron saint while others knelt at the altar of Madonna. And while riot grrrl culture may have long ago disowned her, Love’s queer fanbase doggedly sticks by her."
In 2004, Spin magazine ranked Love No. 18 in their list of "The 50 Greatest Rock Frontmen Of All Time", calling her "a great band leader because onstage or off, she always makes sure we're paying attention". In January 2002, Love ranked at No. 14 in Q Magazine's list of "100 Women Who Rock the World". The Biography Channel called Love "outspoken, brash, and sometimes out of control", and "one of alternative rock's most fascinating figures".
Discography
Filmography
1986 Sid and Nancy Gretchen
1987 Straight to Hell Velma
1988 Tapeheads Norman's spanker Uncredited
1996 Basquiat Big Pink
Feeling Minnesota Rhonda the Waitress
The People vs. Larry Flynt Althea Leasure Flynt Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress
Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Most Promising Actress
Florida Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress
New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress
Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
Nominated — Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress
Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama
1999 200 Cigarettes Lucy
Man on the Moon Lynne Margulies
2000 Beat Joan Vollmer Burroughs
2001 Julie Johnson Claire L.A. Outfest Award for Best Actress
2002 Trapped Cheryl
2005 Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula Caligula Short film
As herself:
Year Film/program Notes
1987 Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes Segment "C'est la vie"
1992 1991: The Year Punk Broke
1995 Not Bad for a Girl
1997 Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's Uncredited
1998 Kurt & Courtney
1999 Clara Bow: Discovering the It Girl Narrator (documentary)
2000 Bounce: Behind the Velvet Rope
2001 Last Party 2000
Crossover
2003 Mayor of the Sunset Strip
2004 (This Is Known As) The Blues Scale
2006 The Return of Courtney Love Channel 4 special
2010 Alan Carr Chatty Man Channel 4 interview
All about Courtney Love:
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