Life's interview w/ Courtney Jan 15, 1995
Interview by David Fricke
When Nirvana's Kurt Cobain killed himself last April, Courtney Love became rock's most infamous widow. Hailed as an avenging punk angel, skewered as an opportunist who married into celebrity, she is, in fact, an informed and opinionated woman, an acclaimed songwriter with her band, Hole, and a mother of her two-year-old daughter, Frances. Here, for the first time, she talks about the long shadow Cobain casts on her life and music.
There is only one ground rule for this interview. "If I start to cry," Courtney Love says over the phone before we meet, "I will probably get up and leave the room. Don't be offended." As it turns out, she does cry- part way into the third hour of our first session in a hotel suite in Buffalo, New York. It would have come as a greater shock if she didn't. This is the first time Love has spoken for the record, in grim extensive detail, about the death by gunshot last April of her husband, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain; about the accelerating emotional distress that cumulated in his suicide; her own slow recovery from hysteria and despair; and a long shadow he casts on her life and music.
But Love does not leave the room; she just keeps talking through the tears. "He killed himself in this coat," she says, as she points to a heavy brown jacket next to her on the sofa-a coat that she has been wearing for the past couple of days to fend off the chill. "I washed the blood off it. It's not sentimental. I just washed one of my other coats too."
Yet when I suggest we take a break, Love bolts upright and scrubs away the tears. "I don't want to," she snaps. "You knew this was going to happen. It's just better to do it like this. I'm not defensive. I have to do this."
The idea was that Love, now on tour with her band, Hole, for the first time in two years, would talk about talk about Cobain's death once and for all. But this interview, done I three sessions in Buffalo and Montreal, is really just part of a longer, purgative process.
Now every note and word Love sings on stage in her diamond-hard shriek rings loud with the resonance of recent history, including the fatal drug overdose of Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff just two months after Cobain's suicide. When Love delivers the core line of Asking For It, from Hole's second album, Live Through This-"If you live through this with me/ I swear that I will die for you"-in front of a seething crowd at a club in Rochester, New York, she raises her eyes to the ceiling in a supplicatory glare that is unapologetically direct.
Even as a widow, Love is one of the most polarising figures in rock'n'roll. Ever since she met Cobain in 1990 (they married in 1992), Love has been hailed as an avenging punk rock angel with a barbed lyrical tongue, and skewered as a drug-fuelled opportunist who married into celebrity and regularly embroiders the truth about her life and art. In fact, she's a lot more complicated than that: a punk rock devotee with surprising pop savvy; a media sharpie who cries "victim" then asks for the days press clips; a highly informed and opinionated woman (on just about every subject); a mother who genuinely fears for the future of her two-year-old daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.
"My goal keeps me alive," Love says firmly. "And no personal issue is going to interfere with that. If people try to put me in that crazy box-"crazy fucking Courtney"-go ahead. But if you think you're going to stop me from where I'm going, you're not going to do it. I work my ass off. I deliver the goddamn goods. And I will deliver again."
Born in 1965, Courtney is the daughter of Hank Harrison, an early, minor Grateful Dead associate, and Linda Carroll, an Oregon therapist who made headlines of her own last year when one of her clients, the fugitive 1960's radical Katherine Ann Power, surrendered to authorities. Love was five when her parents split. She went through a series of stepfathers and, at various times during adolescence, lived with her mother on a farm in New Zealand, did time in Oregon reformatory for shoplifting, supported herself as a stripper and hung out with punks in Liverpool.
Love was a veteran of several bands by the time she started Hole with Eric Erlandson in 1990. Hole then became a fixture in the US underground on the basis of two independent singles, Dicknail and Retard Girl, and the 1991 debut album Pretty On The Inside. With her marriage to Cobain, Love put Hole on hold and entered two years of wedded turbulence that ended with her husband's death.
Even with the passage of time, the healing friendship of REM's Michael Stipe, Hole's return to action and the sunshine presence of her daughter Frances on the tour bus, Love still live in lingering darkness. She admits her relationship with Nirvana's Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl is rocky. "There are issues between me, Krist and Dave that need to be resolved," Love says. "But I want the line of communication to be open for Frances's sake as much as mine."
And there is the feeling of loneliness that has actually grown in recent days. "I used to be able to talk to Kurt more, wherever he is," Love explains soberly. "But now he's really gone. I used to feel like mourning him was really selfish because it would make him feel guilty. And the best thing to do was pray for him and show him joy, so he could feel the vibration of the joy.
"But now I know he's dissipated, and he's gone. There's not anything left. Not even to talk to."
Courtney: ... his lighting is better than the Associated Press lighting! See your lighting's great - what's their problem? Okay, they don't even get us, alright ... hope you're filming this (rattles her icecubes) a diva at work ... grrrr ... darling ...
Jabba: Well here we are outside backstage at the Big Day Out for 1999 and we're joined by the band Hole, holy my goodness gracious, we've waited all day and you're finally here.
Courtney: I know, I'm obsessed with my lighting. I'm such a diva �
Jabba: That's what you should've done with your career, done lights for bands �
Courtney: I don't know enough about it, I'm not a Streisand-type enough yet �
Jabba: Hole's latest album, their third album � I hope you haven't covered this forever and ever, but the record's dedicated to "all the stolen water of Los Angeles".
Courtney: We've covered that forever and ever.
Melissa: That was a mistake actually.
Jabba: Was it?
Melissa: No. (laughs)
Jabba: Was there really water stolen from Los Angeles?
Melissa: No, opposite. There was water stolen to Los Angeles to make it the paradise that it is �
Courtney: We pump it in. We started pumping it in in 1905 from Owen's Valley which was a real fertile valley and we turned it into a desert. We've just been stealing water ever since, in LA
Melissa: It's a fake paradise.
Courtney: It's like Vegas, only lusher. Totally is �
Jabba: We were there at Christmas!
Courtney: Pretty huh? Well it's fake. But we like that about it �
Jabba: Are you kind of relieved to be out of your home country at the moment, cos it seems to be crazy.
Courtney: The Clinton thing?
Jabba: And the Saddam thing.
Courtney: Most of us don't turn on our televisions ... most Americans � You know what it is, it's a bunch of people at CNN talking to each other. Americans have tuned it out. And I can speak for everyone I know. From someone like your grandma, to little kids. No-one cares. It's the stupidest damnest most embarrassing thing in the history of our country since I've been alive.
Jabba: What about the Teletubbies?
Courtney: They're great! (Her eyes light up.)
Jabba: You watch them?
Courtney: Are you kidding? My daughter, oh � I love them. I wish that when she was really little, that instead of having 'Barney', she'd've had the Teletubbies. I love them � "La, la" (imitates a Teletubby) � their little tummies (rubs her tummy in a Teletubby way), they've got little televisions, they're like � I love them.
Jabba: Is the band a fan of the Teletubbies? Eric looks ambivalent. Sam starts counting them off on her fingers.
Sam: It's Lala, Po, I forget the other � Courtney starts holding her tummy again and making noises �
Jabba: Bret Easton Ellis, he claims that they are evil.
Courtney: Well he's just a cynical, jaded old twat.
Melissa: He's afraid of aliens.
Courtney: No, be diplomatic. I think he's cynical, I think he's from that cynical generation. He needs to get hip and get happy � we're very happy that Australia is such a happy country full of happy people. And that you like us, thank you very much.
Jabba: We're all ex-convicts you know.
Courtney: But I think maybe that's why we get along. Yeah, (looks at Melissa) her Dad was kind of an outlaw, and my Dad is evil (looks at the camera) �
Melissa : We're all outlaws � we're very fun loving criminals.
Courtney: We're the fun loving criminals. Yeah. I love that you're all good looking too �
Melissa: Healthy, good looking.
Courtney: � I see the most handsome audiences here in Australia that I've ever seen. Try an audience in England, (looks at camera again) no offence.
Jabba: So what's the next spot on the tour? England? "Yeah, we were just in Australia, man, that audience, what a bunch of ugly �"
Courtney: You know why we don't kiss much butt in England? They have to sign that crazy contract, and then I torture them. I love torturing the British press ...
Jabba: What a fun life! Cruising round �
Courtney: There is the Murdoch problem, but I can ignore it. I can deal with the Murdoch thing.
Jabba: You can deal with Murdoch?
Courtney: Well I dunno if I can deal with it � Sean Penn just wrote an excellent letter to Fox, about not using the private jet to fly to a premiere. It'll be on a national syndicated wire, I just read it this morning. It made me laugh harder than anything I've read in a long time. Sean Penn, (does her favourite chest-thumping 'props' gesture) soul mate � so we're gonna play, we're really happy � we're gonna play a Hoodoo Gurus song tonight I think.
Jabba: One of the Hoodoo Gurus is here in another band �
Courtney: I know, I know, and we asked him to � there were two Hoodoo Gurus here � we asked him to play guitar, cos I unfortunately, we just started, decided to do this song 'Bittersweet' tonight, and cos it's such a great song � (Courtney and Melissa start singing together "Don't cry/for a love gone wrong/don't cry/used to be my favourite song/he's so bittersweet")
Courtney: Come on! (Courtney spends some time admonishing Melissa cos she can't remember how the song goes.)
Jabba: Do you need more practice before �?
Courtney: That's the whole thing, it's bungee-jumping right? It's bungee-jumping, so we got the guitar player - at first he was reluctant, now he's gonna play on it.
Jabba: (talking to Sam) Do you know 'Bittersweet'?
Sam: I only learned it two hours ago.
Jabba: What about Men at Work, would you do a Men at Work song?
Melissa: I would.
Courtney: 'Bittersweet' is one of the greatest pop songs of the 80s. If it had been put out two years ago, those guys would've been like jillionaires. So, I really want � props (chest-thumping gesture again) �
Jabba: Maybe the royalties from your performance.
Courtney: No, I don't think it's gonna do anything � but thank you Australia for great pop songs.
Jabba: Your people are winding me up �
Courtney: I know, but I like you! Okay, one more question.
Jabba: Oh, okay. (Jabba searches through his notes desperately.) Sam notices Jabba's t-shirt, which Jabba thought was Wesley Snipes.
Sam: I love your shirt. That's Coo Mo Dee, that's totally representin' New York! That's awesome.
Jabba: A reputable scientist offers to clone the members of Hole so the real members can pursue a life of leisure. Would you do it?
Courtney: Ask Sam, she's really good at this stuff.
Sam: Yes. Yeah. We talk about it all the time, and we've come to the collective conclusion, yes.
Courtney: Only if they would clone Rick Rubin and I could just be Rick Rubin for a day.
Jabba: Who would you be Eric?
Eric: (Looks stumped.) A lot of dead people that I'd wanna be.
Courtney: You'd be Kate Moss for a day. You've been inside of Kate Moss. (She laughs as Eric attacks her.) We've gotta go man, I gotta play, I'm sorry, I wanna talk to you all night.
And with that, they were gone.