Courtney Love
Love performing with Hole at SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas, March 2010
Background information
Birth name	Courtney Michelle Harrison[1]
Also known as	Courtney Love
Born	(1964-07-09) July 9, 1964 (age 47) San Francisco, California, U.S.
Genres	Alternative rock
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician, actress, visual artist
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards
Years active	1982–present
Labels	Sympathy for the Record Industry, Sub Pop, Caroline, DGC / Geffen, City Slang, Universal, Virgin, Mercury
Associated acts	Hole, Babes in Toyland, Sugar Babydoll, Pagan Babies, Faith No More, Emilie Autumn
Notable instruments
Fender Jazzmaster[2] Fender Vista Venus[3] Rickenbacker 360[4] Rickenbacker 425[5]

Courtney Michelle Love (born Courtney Michelle Harrison; July 9, 1964)^[1] is an American singer-songwriter, musician, actress and artist. Love initially gained notoriety in the Los Angeles indie rock scene with her band Hole, which she formed in 1989 with Eric Erlandson. Their debut album, Pretty on the Inside (1991) garnered them critical praise, and they went on to achieve international critical and commercial acclaim for their following albums, Live Through This (1994) and Celebrity Skin (1998).

Love also had a career in acting, originally landing small roles in Alex Cox films in the 1980s. In 1996, Love starred in The People vs. Larry Flynt alongside Woody Harrelson, and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance. She later had a brief solo career in the early 2000s after the dissolution of Hole, releasing America's Sweetheart (2004), and went through several rehab sentences and run-ins with the the law until achieving sobriety. In 2009, Love reformed Hole with new members and released Nobody's Daughter (2010). In 2012, she debuted an art exhibit featuring a collection of her own paintings and drawings titled "And She's Not Even Pretty".

Love was married to the late Kurt Cobain, frontman of the grunge band Nirvana, with whom she has a daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.^[6] Throughout her career, Love's wild stage antics and subversive feminist attitude have polarized audiences and critics,^[7][8] with Rolling Stone once calling her "the most controversial woman in the history of rock."^[9][10]

Early life[link]

Courtney Michelle Harrison was born in 1964 in San Francisco, California, to Linda Carroll, a psychotherapist, and Hank Harrison, a publisher who had some association with the Grateful Dead; at five years old, Love was included in a group picture on the back of the band's third album, Aoxomoxoa (1969).^[11][12][13] Her parents divorced in 1969, with custody being awarded to Carroll after she alleged that Harrison had fed LSD to Love when she was three years old, an allegation which he denied.^[14] Carroll then remarried, eventually giving birth to two more daughters and adopting a son. Harrison at some point claimed to be the granddaughter of Marlon Brando.^[15][16]

Love had a nomadic and troubled childhood. She moved with her family to Marcola, Oregon in 1970, and then briefly lived in New Zealand before being sent back to live with her stepfather in Oregon.^[16] At age 14, Love was arrested for shoplifting a t-shirt and was sent to Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility.^[16][17] According to the Oregon's Children's Services Division, Love was then moved to over 20 different facilities and foster homes between 1978 and 1980.^[17] At age 16, Love moved to Portland, where she began working illegally as an exotic dancer,^{[13][16][18][19][20]} and briefly as a DJ at Portland's community radio station, KBOO.^[21] She also took job opportunities working briefly at dance halls in Japan and Taiwan,^[16][22] and wrote missives under the name "Courtney Michelle" in punk-zine Maximumrocknroll on local Portland bands Poison Idea and Rancid Vat.^[23][24]

Love has said that she "didn't have a lot of social skills" as a teenager,^[25] and that she learned a lot of them while frequenting gay clubs with friends.^[19][26]

In 1981, a social worker discovered a trust fund established for Love by her mother's adoptive parents, which provided her with a $500 monthly stipend, and she gained legal emancipation.^[16] She subsequently traveled to Ireland where she took two semesters at Trinity College studying theology,^[27][28] and relocated briefly to England where she became friends with musicians Julian Cope^[29][30] and Ian McCulloch.^[31]

Love intermittently took classes at Portland State University studying English,^[32] as well as San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute, where she took a film class taught by George Kuchar and starred in one of his short films.^[33][34] Love began a budding acting career, starring in two Alex Cox films in the late 1980s (Sid and Nancy and Straight to Hell), but was ultimately dissatisfied with acting and returned to stripping, where she was recognized and photographed by customers at a bar in McMinnville, Oregon.^[13][35] Love then retreated to Anchorage, Alaska for several months where she continued to strip to support herself.^[13][16]

Music career[link]

Love initially began several music projects in the 1980s, first forming Sugar Babydoll, and then having a brief stint as a singer in Faith No More after "demanding" them to let her be in their band.^[13] Love later formed the Pagan Babies with friend Kat Bjelland, Jennifer Finch and Janis Tanaka, recording one 4-track demo before disbanding soon after.^[36][37] Love briefly played bass in Bjelland's group Babes In Toyland in 1987 before being ejected from the band.^[38]

Hole (1989-2002)[link]

In 1989, Love taught herself to play guitar and moved to Los Angeles, where she placed an ad in Flipside, reading: "I want to start a band. My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac"^[39] to which guitarist Eric Erlandson replied. Love then bought her neighbor Lisa Roberts a bass guitar, and recruited drummer Caroline Rue at a Gwar concert. Love named the band Hole.

Hole played their first show in November 1989 at Raji's after three months of rehearsal, and began making singles on the Long Beach, California, independent label Sympathy for the Record Industry. Their first single, titled "Retard Girl," was issued in spring 1990. Disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer jokingly said that Love would often "stalk him" at a Denny's restaurant, insisting that he should give "Retard Girl" air time on his station, KROQ.^[16] One year later, the band debuted their second single, "Dicknail" through Sub Pop Records.

Influenced by the sounds and style of no wave and noise rock bands, Love convinced Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon to produce Hole's first studio album. The album, titled Pretty on the Inside, was released in August 1991 on Caroline Records, produced by Gordon and Gumball's Don Fleming. The album gained a following in the United Kingdom, charting at 59 on the UK Albums Chart,^[40] as well as its lead single, "Teenage Whore" entering the country's Indie chart at number one.^[41] Pretty on the Inside received generally positive critical acclaim,^[42] and was labelled one of the 20 best albums of the year by Spin Magazine.^[43] The band toured the United States and Europe in support of the record.

Hole recorded their second album, Live Through This, in the fall of 1993 in Atlanta and released it in April 1994, just four days after Love's husband, Kurt Cobain, was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound in their home. The album featured a new lineup, with Kristen Pfaff on bass and Patty Schemel on drums. In June 1994, Pfaff died of an apparent heroin overdose,^[13] and Love recruited bassist Melissa Auf der Maur for the band's upcoming tour. Throughout the months preceding the tour, Love was rarely seen in public, spending her time in her home or visiting the Namgyal Buddhist Monastery in New York.^[34]

Meanwhile, Live Through This was an immense commercial and critical success, receiving rave reviews from major music periodicals^[44] and going certified gold. By April 1995, it went platinum. It 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.^[45]

The live performances for Hole's 1994 and 1995 tours became notorious in the media due to Love's fraught emotional state,^[13] with Love often altering hurtful song lyrics toward herself, dedicating songs to Cobain and Pfaff, provoking fans, throwing guitars into the audience,^[46] and breaking into screaming fits onstage.^[47]

In 1997, the band released a compilation album, My Body, The Hand Grenade, which featured material from the band's earliest recordings in 1989 up until 1995, and, in September 1998, released their third studio album, Celebrity Skin, which featured a stark power pop sound as opposed to the group's earlier punk rock influences. Rolling Stone called the album "accessible, fiery and intimate—often at the same time [...] a basic guitar record that's anything but basic."^[48] Celebrity Skin went on to go multi-platinum, and topped "Best of Year" lists at Spin, the Village Voice, and other periodicals.^[49] The album garnered the band their first and only No. 1 hit single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart with the 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.^[50] 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".^[51]

After touring for Celebrity Skin finished, Auf der Maur left the band to tour with The Smashing Pumpkins; Hole's touring drummer Samantha Maloney left soon after. Love and Erlandson continued to pursue with the band, and released the single "Be A Man"— an outtake from the Celebrity Skin sessions— for the soundtrack of the Oliver Stone film Any Given Sunday (1999). The group became dormant in the following two years, and on May 24, 2002, officially announced their breakup amid continuing litigation with Universal Music Group over their record contract.

Solo career (2003-2008)[link]

Love performing in London, England on her 43rd birthday (2007).

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.^[52][53]

In 2002, Love began composing an album with Linda Perry; the record, America's Sweetheart, was 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,^[54] 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 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.^[55]

In 2006, Love started recording what was going to be her second solo album, How Dirty Girls Get Clean,^[25][56] collaborating with again with Perry and Billy Corgan in the writing and recording. Love had written several songs, including an anti-cocaine song titled "Loser Dust", during her time in rehab in 2005.^[57]

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 the album, 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.^[58]

Hole reformation (2008-present)[link]

Love performing in Philadelphia, 2010

On June 17, 2009, NME reported that Hole would be reuniting. Former Hole guitarist 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 "he's out of his mind, Hole is my band, my name, and my Trademark".^[59]

Nobody's Daughter was released worldwide as a Hole album on April 27, 2010. For the new line-up, Love recruited guitarist Micko Larkin, Shawn Dailey (bass guitar), and Stu Fisher (drums, percussion). Nobody's Daughter featured a great deal of material written and recorded for Love's aborted solo album, How Dirty Girls Get Clean, including "Pacific Coast Highway", "Letter to God", "Samantha", and "Never Go Hungry", although they were re-produced with 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.^[60] Hole performed on The Late Show with David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

The album received mixed reviews. 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."^[61] 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."^[62]

The album's subject matter was largely centered on Love's tumultuous life between 2003 and 2007, and featured a polished folk-rock sound with much more acoustic work than previous Hole albums. Love toured Europe, Japan, and the United States promoting the album in the spring and summer of 2010, ending the tour at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival in September.^[63] In the summer of 2011, the band played at several festivals in Russia, and toured in Australia and Brazil in early 2012.

Acting career[link]

Love worked with director Alex Cox on her first two films; she gained a small part in the Sid Vicious biopic Sid and Nancy (1986), and was then given the leading role in his following film, Straight to Hell (1987),^[64] which caught the attention of artist Andy Warhol. That year, Love appeared in an episode of Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes with Robbie Nevil in a segment titled "C'est la Vie", in which she is dressed in vintage clothes and discussed "bag ladies".^[65][66] She also had a part in the 1988 Ramones music video for "I Wanna Be Sedated", appearing as a bride among dozens of party guests.^[67][68] In 1989, Love abandoned her career as an actress to pursue music.

In 1996, Love began obtaining small acting parts again in Basquiat and Feeling Minnesota (1996), before landing the co-starring role of Larry Flynt's wife, Althea, in Miloš Forman's 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt, against Columbia Pictures' reluctance due to her low profile and "troubled" past.^[69] Love received critical acclaim, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, and a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress,^[70] for what film critic Roger Ebert called "quite a performance; Love proves she is not a rock star pretending to act, but a true actress".^[71] She won several other awards from various film critic associations for the performance.

Other roles include: starring opposite Jim Carrey in the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon (1999); as Joan Vollmer in Beat (2000) alongside Kiefer Sutherland; and 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.^[72] She followed with another leading part in the thriller film Trapped (2002), alongside Kevin Bacon and Charlize Theron.

Other projects[link]

Courtney Love with Terry Richardson during New York Fashion Week 2011

In 2004, Love collaborated with illustrators Misaho Kujiradou and Ai Yazawa to create a manga comic, Princess Ai.^[73] The story is based in part on Love's life, and involves the main character's search for her place in the world; it was written by Stu Levy under the name D.J. Milky, and released by his publishing company Tokyopop.^[74]

Although Love said she would "never write a book",^[75] she did publish a memoir in 2006 titled Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love. The memoir was 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,^[76] 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".^[77] Love attended various fashion shows in 2009 and 2010, and performed with Hole at several of the shows, including the Givenchy fashion party in Paris. She also started a fashion blog titled What Courtney Wore Today [2]. In October 2010, Love and Michael Mouris created an animated short film detailing Love's "kooky" fashion sense, titled The Dark Night of the Soul.

In late September 2011, it was announced that Love was writing a "tell-all" memoir about her life with Kurt Cobain, her Hollywood career, and her substance abuse issues.^[78][79] Love signed a book deal with William Morrow and Company, and is expected to release it in the fall of 2012.^[78]

Love announced in April 2012 that she would be holding an art exhibit at the Fred Torres Collaborations in New York titled "And She's Not Even Pretty", which contains over forty drawings and paintings by Love. The works feature various women in different emotional states, some accompanied by poems and song lyrics.^[80] The exhibit opened on May 2, 2012, and is set to run until mid-June.

Personal life[link]

Relationships[link]

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.^[81] 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.^[81] 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.^[81] 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,^[82] 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."^[83]

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.^[84][85] 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.^[84] "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."^[84]

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^[86] and Love later referred to their wedding as "a joke"; an annulment was filed within the first few months of the marriage.^[87][88] In 1991, Love also dated The Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Billy Corgan.^[89] 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".^[13] The two were together for several years and were at one point engaged,^[90] but separated in 1999.^[91] Love was also romantically linked to Trent Reznor in 1995 and British comedian Steve Coogan in the mid-2000s.^[92][93]

Love's relationship with her daughter, Frances, has also been turbulent. In 2003, Love temporarily lost custody of the 11-year-old, who went to live with Kurt Cobain's mother, Wendy O'Connor.^[94] 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."^[94] In October 2011, Love dejectedly told Vanity Fair that she had no real connection to her daughter.^[95]

Substance abuse[link]

Love speaking with Russell Brand in Los Angeles, 2008

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.^[22] 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."^[22] 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."^[22]

Love's struggles with drug abuse have been the 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.^[96] Love claimed she was misquoted, and asserted that she stopped using heroin when she discovered she was pregnant.^[13] "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."^[97] Nonetheless, the publication of the article lead to a lengthy battle with the Los Angeles County Court in which custody of the then-infant Frances was taken away from Love and Cobain; Frances was placed under the care of Love's sister, Jamie, for several months.

In 2004, Love's drug use came to public attention again. 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.^[98] That same evening, Love was arrested in Manhattan for possession of a controlled substance after performing at a concert.^[98] Love protested her arrest, denying charges and describing the drugs found on her as "one expired Percocet and one Ambien".^[99] The police, however, alleged possession of oxycodone and hydrocodone without prescription.^[100] 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.^[101][102]

After several probation violations in early 2006, Love was sentenced to six months of lock down rehab after struggles with prescription drugs and cocaine.^[98][103] 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."^[57]

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.^[104][105] Love has also admitted to abusing rohypnol and opiates.^[13][106] In May 2011, Love made 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."^[107] Love has credited Buddhism as having helped her through her addictions.^[108]

Legal issues[link]

Love has dealt with many legal issues throughout her career. She punched Kathleen Hanna in the face during Lollapalooza in 1995 after Hanna allegedly made a drug joke about daughter Frances Bean,^[109] 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 a verbal altercation with a flight attendant.^[110]

More recently, in 2003 and 2004, Love faced several court cases over alleged drug possession and unpaid bills.^[111]

In 2006, Love stated that she was planning on selling the rights to Nirvana's catalogue,^[112] eventually selling 25% of the catalogue later that year.^[113] "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."^[113]

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, first beginning while she was battling serious drug addictions in 2003.^[114] Public statements made in 2009 later confirmed these suspicions: "It was fraud after fraud," said Love, "But nobody believed me until now."^[114] 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.^[114] "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."^[114][115]

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.^[116]

Beliefs[link]

Love has explored a number of different religions, saying: "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."^[25] She has practised Nichiren Buddhism since 1990,^{[13][90][117]} and chants Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō daily.^[13][117]

Love has advocated for several causes, including stricter gun control laws, reform of the "corrupt" record industry,^[118][119] and gay rights; during a 1997 award speech at VH1's Fashion Awards, Love said "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."^[120] Love voted against California's Proposition 8 during the 2008 elections.^[121] 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".^[122]

Love is also self-identified feminist,^[123][124] 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.'"^[7]

Music and influences[link]

Love performing at Carnegie Hall, 2009

Love has mentioned an array of artists as being influences throughout her career, and has most often cited new wave and post-punk musicians as being great influences on her. Such musical acts as Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, Neil Young,^[125] Patti Smith,^[13] Swans,^[126] 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.^[127][128] 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.^[39]

Love's varying genre interests were illustrated in a 1991 interview with Flipside, in which she stated: "There's a part of me that wants to have a grindcore band and another that wants to have a Raspberries-type pop band."^[125] Over the course of Hole's career, the band experimented with several different stylistic elements, from punk to noise rock as well as more mellow alternative rock, power pop, and folk techniques.

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",^[85] 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.^[85]

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.^[2] 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[link]

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 highly aggressive and critical toward cultural definitions of women and their roles in society.^[129] 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.^[130]

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.^[131] 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.^[131]

Legacy[link]

Once labelled by Rolling Stone as "the most controversial woman in the history of rock",^[9][10] 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.^[132] 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."^[133] 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."^[84] 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."^[16]

Love has been parodied and referred to in several popular television shows, most notably Family Guy^[134] and South Park,^[135] as well as a Simpsons episode, where a cartoonized version of her was featured on a Wheaties cereal box.^[136] In January 2007, Molly Shannon performed a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch parodying Love's sobriety.^[137]

She has also been referred to several times in the music world: musician Lois Maffeo had a short-lived band named Courtney Love, which she released several singles with. Love was also mentioned in the song "You Only Get What You Give" by the New Radicals,^[138] and punk band Nerf Herder wrote a song titled "Courtney" as an ode to her.

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.^[139] Love's devoted gay fanbase was later written about in a New York Press article in 2010.^[140] 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.^[140]

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".^[141] 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".^[142]

Works[link]

Discography[link]

Hole

• Pretty on the Inside (1991)
• Live Through This (1994)
• Celebrity Skin (1998)
• Nobody's Daughter (2010)

Courtney Love

• America's Sweetheart (2004)

Filmography and credits[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Princess Ai (co-creator, 2004–2005, 2008)
• Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love (2007)

References[link]