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Wikipedia
Courtney Michelle Love[1] (born Courtney Michelle Harrison on July 9, 1964) is an Americanrock musician and actress.[2][3] Love is primarily known as lead singer, guitarist and lyricist foralternative rock band Hole, as well as for her publicity-ridden marriage to the late Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain.
Following a turbulent childhood, Love made her debut in the entertainment industry with a bit part in Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy (1986). Eventually finding her passion in rock music rather than acting, Love formed Hole in 1989 with guitarist Eric Erlandson. Hole released several albums throughout the 1990s, Live Through This (1994) being most prolific — a critical and commercial success upon its release, as well as coinciding with the suicide of Love's husband, Kurt Cobain.
Love would return to acting with a Golden Globe-nominated role in The People vs. Larry Flynt(1996), and gain even more commercial attention with Hole's third album, Celebrity Skin (1998) before disbanding the group several years later. In 2009, after various drug grapples and legal issues, Love reformed Hole with an entirely new lineup, and released Nobody's Daughter (2010).
Over the course of her career, Love has attracted significant media attention over the years for her wild stage performances, subversive feminism— both in her behavior and music lyrics,[4] as well as her candid treatment of her grapples with drug addiction.[5] In 2006, Rolling Stone called Love "the most controversial woman in rock history
Life and early career
Courtney Michelle Harrison was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Linda Carroll, a therapist, and Hank Harrison, a publisher.[7][8][9] Love's mother, Linda, was adopted by anItalian-American couple at birth, retaining no contact with her birth father or her birth mother, whom she later discovered was children's author Paula Fox. Through Paula Fox, Love is related to actor Douglas Fairbanks (through Fairbanks' mother).[10] According to Love, her mother named her after the alcoholic, fledgling debutanteprotagonist of a 1956 "dime-store novel" called Chocolates for Breakfast by Pamela Moore.[11]
1967-1985: Childhood and teenage years
Love's family separated soon after her birth. During a child custody case following her parents' divorce, her mother and one of her friends presented letters implying her father had given LSD to the three-year-old child.[12] Harrison denies this allegation[13] and has passedpolygraph tests; however, these allegations led to full custody being awarded to Love's mother.
Love, under custody of her mother, spent a troubled childhood settled in countercultural hippiecommunes in Oregon.[14] Love and her two half-sisters relocated to Eugene with their mother, where she studied psychotherapy at the University of Oregon. Love's mother re-married to a man named Frank Rodriguez, but the couple divorced by the time Love was seven years old.
In 1972, Love's mother re-married yet again, and relocated to New Zealand with Love's half sisters, but left Love behind in the United States under the care of a family friend. Eventually, custody of ten-year-old Love was granted to her former stepfather, Rodriguez, whom she lived with in Portland, Oregon. Love immersed herself in art and child acting classes, as well as dabbling in music; she wrote her first song in fifth grade.[11] At age twelve, Love applied to join the Mickey Mouse Club;[15] Love was rejected after reading the poem "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath for her audition.[16] After leaving the care of Rodriguez at age fourteen, Love was arrested for shoplifting a KISS t-shirt and was sent to the juvenile hall, and later Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility, a reformatory in nearby Salem. While in juvenile hall, Love was exposed to rock music for the first time: she was given Patti Smith's Horses and The Pretenders' self-titled album. "I realized that you could do something that was completely subversive that didn't involve violence or felonies", Love would later say.
Love eventually reunited with her family in New Zealand at age fifteen, only to be sent to another boarding school soon after.[12]
At age sixteen— after being juggled between the homes of her ex-stepfather, friends, and various reform schools— Love gained legal emancipation from her family and left Oregon, traveling around the U.S., England, Ireland, and Japan, living on a trust fund established for her by her mother's adoptive parents.[17] While in Ireland, Love took two semesters at Trinity College in Dublin and worked as a photographer forHotpress.[18] Love was given 500 dollars each month[11] and began taking jobs in strip clubs to make extra money.[11] In England, she moved into the Toxteth, Liverpool, home of musician Julian Cope, of The Teardrop Explodes, and became a regular at rock shows. In his autobiography Head-On, Cope refers to her as "the adolescent" in place of her name.[19][20] She also developed a friendship with Ian McCulloch of Echo and the Bunnymen.[21]
Following her stint in Europe and short-lived Japan excursion, Love returned to Portland at age seventeen, still pursuing music, which she had a growing passion for, and became part of the city's punk rock scene. According to Love, she briefly worked as a DJ at Portland's community radio station, KBOO,[22] and immersed herself with alternative and countercultural groups of people[23]— "I was quite the terror in Portland", Love said in retrospect.[11] When there were no bands playing in town, Love would pass time by hanging out with punk kids, strippers, and gay men, and often hung out at local gay bars with drag queens: "I didn't ever really talk until I started hanging out in '80 or '81 with drag queens at the Metropolis in Portland. I was very, very quiet. So much so that at one point when I was very young I was diagnosed as a probable autistic. And then I started hanging around with bitchy drag queens and with [my friends] Ursula and Robin, and they basically raised me. I found my inner bitch and I ran with her."[24]
Meanwhile, Love returned to work as an erotic dancer in various venues that would illegally hire underage girls, and would tell lies to club owners in order to get jobs. Love worked at several strip clubs in Oregon and California, catapulting herself up and down the west coast to various cities, largely in search of local music scenes.
Love briefly attended several colleges between 1985 and 1987 during her many relocations, spending little more than six months to a year at each— she took classes at Portland State University,[25] as well as San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute, studying English and Buddhism, but never invested enough time to graduate.[26] While in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, she met and married "Falling" James Moreland, lead singer of the band The Leaving Trains.[27] Their marriage was short-lived and was ultimately annulled.
1986-1988: Early musical endeavors
Love began her music career with a brief stint as lead singer of Faith No More. According to Love, she showed up to a concert in San Francisco in 1982 wearing a wedding gown, and basically "demanded" to be in their band,[11] wanting to replace their lead singer. Her work in the band was short-lived, though she later maintained a friendship with band member Roddy Bottum.
At 22, Love moved back to Portland, then to Los Angeles in 1987 with musician Kat Bjelland, beginning a period in which she formed bands with Bjelland only to be ousted from each. The pair first formed a band in Los Angeles, with Jennifer Finch, called Sugar Baby Doll (alternately Sugar Babylon).[28] Love and Bjelland's fashion style was conflictingly similar, with both of them donning dirty babydoll dresses, plastic hair clips, ripped stockings and overdone, smeared makeup. An argument between the two raged over who had come up with their style, later dubbed "kinderwhore". Love claimed she took the style from Christina Amphlett of 1980s Australian rock group, Divinyls.[29]
Love and Bjelland formed a band called The Pagan Babies in San Francisco, with Deidre Schletter on drums and Janis Tanaka on bass.[30]The band recorded a demo of four tracks, then ejected Love and renamed themselves the Italian Whorenuns. Lastly, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bjelland started her longest-running band, Babes in Toyland. Love played bass in the band for a short time but was kicked out of this group as well.[31]
Unsuccessful in her musical endeavors thus far, Love, an inexperienced actress, decided to pursue an acting career, and sent an audition tape to Alex Cox in hopes of playing Nancy Spungen in his upcoming Sid Vicious biopic Sid and Nancy (1986). Though she wasn't cast as the iconic Spungen, Cox gave her a small role as Spungen's friend, Gretchen. Impressed by Love's personality and energy, Cox gave her a major role in his spaghetti western, Straight to Hell (1987).
1989-1993: Hole, Pretty on the Inside, and critical success
Main article: Hole (band)
In 1989, Love returned to Los Angeles— burnt out on acting, she 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",[32] to which Eric Erlandson, along with over a dozen other musicians, replied. Love would later say that she knew Eric was "the one" as soon as they met and that she picked Erlandson because he had a "Thurston Moore quality about him", and that he played guitar "like a girl."[33] After a cycle of several bass players and drummers, Love and Erlandson recruited bassist Jill Emery and drummer Caroline Rue; Hole was officially formed. The band's name allegedly came from a quote from Euripides' Medea which read "there's a hole that pierces my soul",[34] as well as a conversation Love had with her mother.[35]
The group played their first gig in November 1989 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 solely on 7" vinyl, with B-sides "Phonebill Song" and "Johnnie's in the Bathroom". One year later, the band debuted their second single, "Dicknail"— a song which heavily alludes to rape— on 7" vinyl through Sub Pop Records. The group began to gain a following in Los Angeles and a decent local fanbase.
Influenced by the sounds and style of no wave rock bands such as Sonic Youth, Love sought out Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon to produce the band's first studio album, a proposal to which Gordon accepted. Hole's debut album Pretty on the Inside (1991) was released in September 1991 on Caroline Records, produced by Gordon andGumball's Don Fleming. It sold well for an independent release and received specifically favorable reviews in the British alternative music press,[36] charting at 59 on the UK Albums Chart in October 1991. Upon the album's release, Q Magazine called it "loud, ugly and deliberately shocking",[37] while The New Yorker referred to it as "the most compelling album to have been released in 1991".[38] Spin also labeled it one of the 20 best albums of the year.[39] Love went on tour with Hole to promote the record in the United States following a lengthy tour of Europe and the UK, where Love was touted as a "darling" of their alternative rock scene.
Pretty on the Inside also spawned the band's third single, "Teenage Whore", which was released on vinyl and CD with B-sides of "Drown Soda" and "Burn Black". In retrospect, Love has commented that the album contains "nothing melodic",[11] though she often opens her shows with the album's title track. 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.[40] She also referred to the creation of the album as a sort of self-exorcism:[41] "It was all about the expression of my experience. I was not coming from a black void; I was trying to create light... I was trying to heal."[41]
Relationship with Kurt Cobain
During this period, Love had befriended many figures in the alternative rock scene, including Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins (whom she briefly dated).[42] In January 1989, Love had her first encounter with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in Portland at the Satyricon nightclub, where she had often hung out in her teenage years. Cobain and his band, Nirvana, who were still relatively underground at the time, were playing at the club that night with the Oily Bloodmen. 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.[43]
Though the two would not meet again for almost two years, Love was infatuated with Cobain, and followed his career up until 1990, when they became reacquainted through Jennifer Finch, one of Love's longtime friends and former bandmates, who was dating Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl at the time.[43] 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.[43] Love and Cobain officially began dating in 1991. Early on, Cobain broke off dates and ignored Love's advances because he wasn't sure he wanted a relationship. Cobain noted, "I was determined to be a bachelor for a few months [...] But I knew that I liked Courtney so much right away that it was a really hard struggle to stay away from her for so many months."[44]
Love and Cobain married on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii, on February 24, 1992. Love wore a satin and lace dress once owned by the actress Frances Farmer, and Cobain wore green pajamas, because he'd been "too lazy to put on a tux"[citation needed]. Six months later, on August 18, the couple's only child, a daughter named Frances Bean Cobain, was born.
1994-1995: Commercial breakthrough and Cobain's suicide
The marriage between Love and Cobain lasted up until 1994, when a hounding press and mounting substance-abuse issues began to individually damage them; Cobain was experiencing immense success with his band Nirvana, and Love was in the studio recording Hole's sophomore album, Live Through This (1994). In April 1994, Cobain was found dead in the couple's Seattle home of a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Both Love and Cobain had been staying in separate rehabilitation centers in California at the time due to heroin abuse; Cobain checked himself out of the center during treatment and vanished, returning to Seattle without telling anyone. His body was found in their home on April 8, 1994, four days before the release of Hole's Live Through This.
Love immediately left Los Angeles and returned to the couple's Seattle home with their nanny and two year old Frances upon news of his death, where a media circus awaited. A memorial was held for Cobain two days later at the Seattle Center, with pre-recorded messages fromKrist Novoselic and Courtney Love— Love's message included a reading of Cobain's suicide note, while crying and chastising him. Near the end of the vigil, Love arrived at the park and distributed some of Cobain's clothing to those who still remained.[45]
The tragedy in Love's personal life occurred during Hole's biggest achievement thus far— Live Through This, recorded in the fall of 1993 in Atlanta, would garner much attention, not only because of it being the group's first commercial album, but also because of its release date, just days after Cobain committed suicide. 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.[46] Love soon after recruited 22-year-old bassist Melissa Auf der Maur on Billy Corgan's recommendation. and took Hole on the road, appearing at the Reading Festival in England. The band's performance was written up by broadcaster John Peel in The Guardian:
| “ | Courtney's first appearance backstage certainly caught the attention. Swaying wildly and with lipstick smeared on her face, hands and, I think, her back, as well as on the collar of her dress, the singer would have drawn whistles of astonishment in Bedlam. After a brief word with supporters at the foot of the stage, she reeled away, knocking over a wastebin, and disappeared. Minutes later she was onstage giving a performance which verged on the heroic... Love steered her band through a set which dared you to pity either her recent history or that of the band...the band teetered on the edge of chaos, generating a tension which I cannot remember having felt before from any stage.[47] | ” |
The live performances for Hole's 1994 and 1995 tours became notorious due to Love's emotional state at the time; they were described as "part therapy and part eulogy",[11] with Love often altering hurtful song lyrics toward herself, dedicating songs to Cobain and Pfaff, provoking and reacting to audience members, throwing guitars into the audience,[48] and breaking into screaming fits onstage. The dramatic nature of the tour came to public light on the Fourth of July, 1995— while playing at the Lollapalooza Music Festival, Love punched Bikini Kill singerKathleen Hanna in the face, after pelting her with candy and throwing a lit cigarette at her.[49] Hanna had allegedly made a joke about Love's daughter shooting up in a closet. Love commented on the ordeal, saying "She insulted my daughter in a very, very wicked and evil way. I actually had intended to give her candy and walk away." Following the incident, Hanna pressed charges, and Love pled guilty and underwent anger management classes.
In spite of the recent tragedies in Love's life and the 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 wentplatinum. 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."[50] 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."[51]
The album later received much attention from the media, including promotion on MTV, as well as having five album singles which were fairly successful on the Billboard charts, with "Doll Parts" peaking at number 4 in the top Modern Rock Tracks. Several other singles, b-sides, and compilations (including songs which did not make it onto the final album) were released prior, including several songs written by Love ("Beautiful Son", "Old Age") as well as covers of Carole King's "He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)", and "Pale Blue Eyes" by The Velvet Underground.
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.[52]
1996-1998: Major acting debut and Celebrity Skin
In 1996, Love won the role of Larry Flynt's wife, Althea, in Miloš Forman's 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt, opposite Woody Harrelson as Flynt. The role marked her first major acting part, having only dabbled in film with small roles in the late 1980s. Forman chose Love for the part, unaware of her history as a musician, because she was "an extremely talented actress."[53] 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.[53]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.[53]
Love passed every urine test while making the film, and the work paid off— she 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".[54] During this time she began a relationship with Edward Norton, which after four years would become her longest. The two became engaged but broke up.[55] In October 2010, Love presented an award to director Miloš Forman at the Zurich Film Festival in honor of his work, which included a screening of the film.[56]
In January 1998, Love presented a speech at the American Civil Liberties Union conference in California, which was crashed by filmmakerNick Broomfield, who was directing his documentary, Kurt & Courtney (1998), which lent to theories that Love was involved in Cobain's death.[57]
The same year, 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 commercial 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."[58] Celebrity Skin went on to go multi-platinum, and topped "Best of Year" lists at Spin, the Village Voice, and other periodicals.[59] 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.[60]The album is noted for being the only Hole album to garner a #1 hit single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, with its title track, "Celebrity Skin".
Love and Fender's low-price Squier brand created her line of guitars, Vista Venus[61] (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".[62] The Squier Vista Venus model is currently discontinued, as is the Jag-Stang as of 2006.
Hole toured Australia in 1999 to support the album, then the U.S. on a tour with Marilyn Manson. The two bands mocked each other on stage.[63] Hole dropped off the tour, citing the obligation to pay 50% of Manson's staging costs as a reason. The singers of both bands told MTV there was no animosity and they were happy to end the tour. Hole finished the year's dates with Imperial Teen opening.[64]
In May 2000, Love spoke in New York at the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference, criticizing the major American record labels. The speech was reproduced on the news site Salon.com.[65] Love accused the labels of a corrupt system of recording contracts to make the labels millions, while the artists and bands "may as well be working at a 7-Eleven". Love addressed issues of corporate filtering of music,equity for musicians, and the potential of the digital revolution to overthrow corporate music companies:
It's not piracy when kids swap music over the Internet using Napster or Gnutella or Freenet or iMesh or beaming their CDs into a MyPlay.com music locker. It's piracy when those guys that run those companies make side deals with the cartel lawyers and label heads so that they can be "the labels' friend," and not the artists'. Recording artists have essentially been giving their music away for free under the old system, so new technology that exposes our music to a larger audience can only be a good thing. Why aren't these companies working with us to create some peace?There were a billion music downloads last year, but music sales are up. Where's the evidence that downloads hurt business? Downloads are creating more demand [...] Since I've basically been giving my music away for free under the old system, I'm not afraid of wireless, MP3 files or any of the other threats to my copyrights. Anything that makes my music more available to more people is great.[65]
The same year, Love gave another speech promoting stricter gun control laws at the Million Mom March in Washington D.C., referring to America's gun laws as "nihilistic and barbaric",[66] and using deceased husband Kurt Cobain and their daughter Frances as an example of how gun accessibility can destroy families[66]— "Three children will shoot themselves in this country before the sun goes down. In a moment of desperation and chaos, life is ended, because a gun was hand and near, and probably unregistered. If you think guns are good for protection, ask my daughter Frances, who will never have her father... Ask her if it's good protection. Guns are so easily available for people suffering from depression. Out of the 32,000 killed by handguns each year, over half of those are suicides. There is help out there. Please ask for it. I wish Kurt had."
Later career
1999-2003: Post-Hole era and other projects
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: conflicts between Love and Crosley, then between Love and replacement bassist Corey Parks from Nashville Pussy, led to the group's demise.[67][68] 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), alongsideKevin Bacon and Charlize Theron. On May 24, 2002, Hole officially announced their breakup amid continuing litigation with Universal Music Group.
In 2003, Love collaborated with Tokyopop and artist Ai Yazawa to create a manga titled Princess Ai; the titular character is a based on Love herself, as a sort of fantasy alter-ego. The story deals with an amnesiac girl named Ai who was torn from her homeland, and awakens in present-day Tokyo. Remembering nothing of her life except her own name, the only clue she has to her identity is a heart-shaped box. The manga was fairly successful in Japan, and has been printed in English-speaking countries as well.
Around the same time that Princess Ai was released, Love published Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love, which is a scrapbook-style collection of photos, diary entries, song lyrics, and artwork compiled by Love, telling her life story. She attended subsequent book signings to promote its release.
Love also worked with photographer David LaChapelle, appearing on the cover of his book 'Heaven to Hell' depicting the pieta.[69]
2004-2007: Solo album, media and career interruptions
Though Love dabbled in heroin and other drugs in her teenage years and earlier career, her largest series of public breakdowns (both involving drug use and legal trouble) began in 2003, one year before the release of her solo album, America's Sweetheart.
On October 2, 2003, Love was arrested in Los Angeles while breaking windows to enter the home of her boyfriend, manager and producer Jim Barber. Barber did not press charges (Love says she had paid for the home), but the police charged her with being under the influence of a controlled substance.[70] Released on bail, four hours later Love was treated for an accidental overdose of oxycodone.[71] Eight days later, on October 10, Frances Bean was taken by the L. A. County Department of Children and Family Services and placed with Cobain's mother, Wendy O'Connor.[72] Authorities ordered a 72-hour hospital evaluation of Love's health, but she walked from the facility, claiming she was ready to head to rehab. When Love didn't attend, her lawyer said he may move to have the police department's toxicology reports re-examined. In public appearances, Love protested her arrest, denying charges and describing the drugs found on her as "one expired Percocet and one Ambien".[73] The police, however, alleged possession of oxycodone andhydrocodone without prescription.[74] She had released her first solo album, America's Sweetheart, eight days earlier.
America's Sweetheart, released on Virgin Records, was a critical flop. Spin called it a "jawdropping act of artistic will", while Rolling Stone suggested that, "for people who enjoy watching celebrities fall apart,America's Sweetheart should be more fun than an Osbournes marathon."
In early 2004, as she had completed her first batch of songs, and after drummer Patty Schemel departed for the second time, Love asked Hole ex-drummer Samantha Maloney to fly to France and add drums to the album. Returning to the States, Maloney was put in charge of assembling Love's live band. After auditions, Maloney reconnected with guitarist Radio Sloan and found guitarist Lisa Leveridge and bassist Dvin Kirakosian,[75] and the four women formed the core of Love's backing band. Violinist Emilie Autumn later joined the band.[76]
Mono was the first single released from America's Sweetheart, including music video was directed by Chris Milk. The song peaked at #19 onBillboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart, now known as Alternative Songs chart. The album sold about 86,000 copies in its first three months, according to Nielsen Soundscan. "Hold on to Me" was the second and final single to be released from America's Sweetheart, peaking at #39 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart.
It was apparent during the promotion for America's Sweetheart that Love was not clean and sober as she had claimed in interviews. Courtney appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman on March 17, 2004, performing the song "Hold on to Me", followed by a chaotic interview, which included Love standing on Letterman's desk and flashing her breasts.
During this period, an estimated $20 million belonging to Love and her daughter was apparently siphoned off in a case still being investigated by the FBI.[77][78] "It was my hell time. I was doing cocaine and had incredible financial trouble. $20 million was stolen from us and at the time I couldn't do the math very well. So I took this drug to help me. It turned out the crazy math was real. The FBI looked at the paperwork and saw $1.2 million to the UK, $180,000 to Nice. It was the former boyfriend and the two assistants. They had power of attorney and they purchased property. They started in about 2000 without me knowing and I got more out of it. I think they thought she will die. In fact I should not be alive after what I went through in the Letterman period."[79][80]
British artist Stella Vine frequently painted Courtney Love in works such as Courtney black cab(2004).[81] Vine publicly defended Love and has said that her paintings depicting Love such as Courtney guilty were made during Love's trial when Vine felt Love was under attack by the media.[82] Identifying with Love's life story, Vine said: "She's one of those people who are prepared to put the truth out, warts and all, even though you will be attacked for it.[82]
Public attention also fell on Love at this time due to her notorious use of social networking websites such as Twitter, Myspace, and Facebook. Love has, in recent years, become well-known for often posting confusing, stream of consciousness-like statements in her personal blogs and tweets.[83]
After a state-enforced rehabilitation program and probation, Love regained custody of her daughter in January 2005. Child welfare authorities alluded to drug addiction when responding to the press, although they didn't comment directly.[84][85]
On August 19, 2005, Love admitted using drugs in violation of her probation. She was ordered into a 28-day treatment program by a judge who said "my belief was that you need to go to the county jail." This program was also violated, and on September 21 she was sentenced to six months in lock down rehab.[86] An LA Times piece on Love and her current legal troubles and drug use referred to her as "a mattress on the freeway — tattered, hazardous and in need of police attention."[11][87] In the article, which contained interviews with Love, she expressed her fear: "To stand there and receive this, 'The state of California vs. Courtney Love Cobain....' I almost fell to my knees. I don't think I have ever been that scared."
Love was released from house arrest on February 3, 2006, and said: "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."[88] Love, a practicingBuddhist, credited the religion as having "saved her life" following the rehab and house arrest.[11][89] Love has been quoted saying that she began practicing the religion as early as 1991.[11]
In 2006, Love reportedly sold 25% of Nirvana's catalog for $50 million. In April 2007, Love auctioned the bulk of Cobain's belongings with a portion going to charity,[90] after stating that her house "looked like a mausoleum."[91] In July of that year, Love travelled to Europe with her band.
In retrospect, Love has jokingly referred to 2004-2007 as "The Letterman Years", in reference to her public breakdown and outrageous behavior first surfacing during her infamous interview with David Letterman in 2004.[92][93]
2008-present: Return to music and Nobody's Daughter
In June 2005, three months after her release from a lengthy drug rehabilitation sentence, Love started recording what was going to be her second solo LP, Nobody's Daughter.[94] An anti-cocaine song entitled "Loser Dust", as well as other new songs ("My Bedroom Walls", "Pacific Coast Highway", "Sunset Marquis"), were written during her time in rehab.[88] Former 4 Non Blondes singer Linda Perrystarted as the producer of the record with the writing and recording collaboration of Billy Corgan.
Some tracks and demos from the album (initially planned for release in 2008[95]) were put on the internet in 2006. The Return of Courtney Love, a documentary about the making of Nobody's Daughter, was filmed, written, and produced by Will Yapp and aired on the British television networkMore4 on September 27, 2006. This resulted in distribution of clips of some of its songs. The first entire song available for downloading was a rough acoustic version of "Never Go Hungry Again", recorded during an interview for The Times in November.[96] Incomplete audio clips of the song "Samantha", originating from an interview with NPR.org, were also distributed on the Internet in May 2007.[97]
On June 17, 2009, NME reported that Hole would be reuniting. Former Hole guitarist Eric Erlandsonstated 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". Shortly after this quarrel, Love began posting new Hole logos, stage ideas, and guitar pick ideas on her Facebook page, implying, though not confirming, that Hole had reformed.
Nobody's Daughter was released worldwide as a Hole album in April 2010. Hole now consists of Courtney 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 Corganare 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 is "Skinny Little Bitch", which was the most added song on alternative rock radio in early March 2010.[98] 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."[99] 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."[100]
Love toured Europe, Japan, and the United States promoting the album in the spring and summer of 2010, ending the tour at Seattle'sBumbershoot festival in September.[101]
Influences, themes, and style
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.[102][103] 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.[32]
Although emphasis on new wave and punk rock influence has been noted by Love as well as critics, her favorite artists vary across genres and time periods. In her teenage years, Love was cited listening to jazz and lounge singers such as Billie Holliday and Frank Sinatra, as well as punk rock acts such as Flipper and The Dead Kennedys.[23] Over the course of Hole's career, the band has done various live and studio covers from a wide array of artists, such as: Fleetwood Mac, The Velvet Underground, Wipers, The Germs, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan,Donovan, Nirvana, Guns N' Roses, Neil Young, Leadbelly, Duran Duran, and Carole King.
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.[104] 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.[104] Upon the release of Pretty on the Inside, the album was lauded for its "fascination with the repulsive aspects of L.A.— superficiality, sexism, violence, and drugs." In Love's later musical career, however, on both Celebrity Skin and her solo America's Sweetheart, Los Angeles and the state of California was cast in a different light; such songs as "Malibu", "Sunset Marquis", and "Celebrity Skin" all highlight aspects of the glamourous nature of L.A. and its relationship with Love's own life. Celebrity Skin has been referred to as Love's "personal love letter to Los Angeles."[11]
Feminism
Love is a self-identified feminist.[105][106] Issues of women's roles in society has been a largely recurring theme in not only her music, but her persona as well; in 1995, Love was written on in the journal Bad Subjects for her subversive feminism and "slut/diva" image, and the ways these gender and sexuality issues are dealt with in her music. Excerpts from the article read:
"Female sexuality has always been forced to conform to a social mold — either locked behind closed doors or exploited for the pleasure of the male consumer. We expect women to conform to one form or the other, but Courtney [Love] gives us both — the glistening sex doll and the screeching life buried under the pink plastic. In the process, she forces us to question our need to place women in fixed sexual identities. She has appropriated the identity of the whore and plastered it and herself all over the American media — tabloids, MTV, Newsweek, etc. With Courtney, the complexities of performing hyper-sexuality are constantly at play. Why does the world love to hate Courtney? Because she is a slut; because she is totally fucked up; because she'll fuck anything; because she is out of control. Or is she?... Is she really a slut, or is she just manipulating the image of a slut? How much of Courtney's out-of-control-sex-slut shtick is self-created? My guess is a lot more than people tend to believe.
In the song Violet she sings, 'Go on take everything, take everything I want you to.' By telling 'him' (whoever the male may be in this context) to take everything, she deprives him of his agency and power. Somehow, if the woman strips, lays down naked with her legs spread, and says, 'Go ahead. Fuck me any way you want,' rape just doesn't seem quite the same. If a woman tells a man to take everything from her, then he has no power to 'rob' her. Likewise, if she strips away her own 'dignity' and adopts the identity of the slut, then no one has the power to take her dignity from her... unfortunately, as gender roles exist and are understood today, the majority of people, male and female, do not have the capacity to understand Courtney's self-conscious parody of female sex roles; they only see the 'slut' without the critique of the system that creates categories like 'slut.'"[107]
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