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{{Infobox musical artist {{Infobox musical artist
|Name = Courtney Love |Name = Courtney Love

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Courtney Love
Musical artist

Courtney Michelle Love (born July 9 1964) is an American rock musician and Golden Globe-nominated actress, best-known as lead singer for the now-defunct alternative rock band Hole and for her two-year marriage to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Rolling Stone has called Love "the most controversial woman in the history of rock."

Biography

Early life

Courtney Love was born Courtney Michelle Harrison, on July 9, 1964, at 2:08 p.m., in San Francisco, California, where her parents first met and married. Her mother, Linda Carroll (née Risi), and father, Hank Harrison, had known each other only a few months when she became pregnant. Harrison worked in some capacity with The Grateful Dead, and the young family appears on the back cover of their 1969 album, Aoxomoxoa.

Love's biological family broke apart rapidly while she was still very young. During a child custody case following Love's parents' divorce, both her mother and one of her girlfriends presented letters to the court implying her father had given the child, then four years old, LSD. Harrison denies this allegation and has passed polygraph tests; however, these allegations led to full custody being awarded to Love's mother.

Love spent a troubled childhood with her mother as she wandered through three husbands and as many hippie communes in Oregon, various schools (many of which kicked her out) including a boarding school in Nelson, New Zealand. Before arriving in New Zealand, Love had been left in the United States with a therapist, while her mother, the new husband and her half-sisters went on ahead; when she was sent for, it was to send her to the boarding school in Nelson.

While in boarding school, Love wrote poetry, joined a Bay City Rollers fan club, and, at the age of 12 (once back in the U.S., ostensibly), applied to join the Mickey Mouse Club; she was rejected after reading a poem by Sylvia Plath at the audition.

By the time she was a teenager, Love was a veteran of reform schools, foster homes and juvenile halls. She had stolen a KISS t-shirt from Woolworth's, and, when no family surfaced to claim responsibility, Love spent the next three years shuttling between foster families and detainment facilities. No placement was ever permanent. Love would later tell biographer Poppy Z. Brite that she was turned on to punk rock during this time by a social worker in the juvenile hall who gave her three records: The Pretenders, Squeeze, and Nevermind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.

At 15, Love emancipated herself from her family and travelled around the U.S., England and Republic of Ireland, living on a trust fund established for her by her mother's adoptive parents. During her time in England, Love met, befriended and moved in with musician Julian Cope in his Toxteth, Liverpool home, and became a regular face at rock shows.

Eventually, she would head back to the states, ending up in Portland, Oregon, still avidly pursuing music. Love's first rock musician boyfriend was Rozz Rezabek of the Portland band band Theatre of Sheep, who had an affair with her while she was still underage. Though the two wrote each other copious love letters, Love has said in many interviews that he did not take her virginity; she claims her first sexual encounter was a one-night stand with Michael Mooney, a sometimes-guitarist for Echo & the Bunnymen and later to Spiritualized. Mooney denies this ever happened.

In her late teens, Love came in and out of foster homes and state facilities. She worked sporadically in Japan, Taiwan, Guam, Los Angeles and Alaska as a stripper, a job she returned to at several points in her life before becoming famous. She later told Liz Evans of The Guardian that this job provided her with a great deal of creative inspiration.

“Writing songs has a lot to do with your sexuality…I danced for a while and just being around that made me aware of what people use. And if you grow up being blessed with a certain beauty or a certain intelligence that enhances your beauty, you can get into a better position in life. Stripping can be really powerful... it’s how I got a guitar. It’s how I had a band.”

At age 22, Love moved back to Portland, then on to Los Angeles, California in 1987 with fellow musician Kat Bjelland. She and Bjelland formed their first band there, which lasted just two gigs and a demo tape. Love and Bjelland tried to launch another band in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but broke up again. Love eventually crossed paths with The Leaving Trains, and married lead singer Falling James Moreland "as a joke": the marriage was annulled in court soon after, and their relationship became acrimonious.

Since her early 20s, Love developed personal relationships with many musicians who would later become alternative rock icons, among them Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, and Jeff Buckley.

Early musical career

At age eighteen, Love purchased her first instrument, a Casio keyboard, and became the singer in the all-female pop-rock band Sugar Baby Doll with Bjelland and Jennifer Finch. None of this material has ever been officially released. Love and Bjelland also formed a band called The Pagan Babies in San Francisco, with Diedre Schletter on drums and Janis Tanaka on bass. The band recorded a demo of four tracks before splitting up.

Love had more early success as an actress, appearing as the best friend of Nancy Spungen in Alex Cox's Sid Vicious biopic Sid and Nancy in 1986, and in Cox's Straight to Hell in 1987, as well as some small roles on television episodes. Love has also appeared in the music video for The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated", dressed as a bride and being carried away by a man at the end of the song.

Love then began her professional music career with a brief stint as the lead singer of Faith No More, until she was kicked out of the band sometime around 1985. Lead singer Roddy Bottum described the band at the time as "democratic", saying that Love's dominating personality did not fit in, though the two have remained friends.

Returning to music in her adopted hometown Minneapolis, Love claims she co-founded Babes in Toyland as bassist with Bjelland, but this is denied by others ; either way, acrimony between Love and Bjelland led to Love's quick exit from the band. The band's biographer claims she stole house receipts to attend a Butthole Surfers concert.

In 1989, Love taught herself to play guitar and set out to form her own band. To do so, she placed an ad in an issue of Flipside, to which Eric Erlandson replied. Love and Erlandson co-founded Hole and are the only two members to remain constant throughout the band's history. The group made their first gig in November 1989, after three months of rehearsal, and quickly started releasing singles on the Long Beach, California independent label Sympathy for the Record Industry. The band's debut album Pretty on the Inside was released in early 1991 on Caroline Records and was produced by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Don Fleming of the band Gumball. It sold well for an independent release and received ecstatic reviews in the influential British alternative music press.

Love and marriage

Love met Kurt Cobain at a Butthole Surfers concert in 1989, and they eventually fell in love in October/November 1991. Love and Cobain were married on Waikiki Beach, Hawaii on February 14, 1992. On August 18 of that year, the couple's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born.

The public image of the new Love-Cobain family was tarnished by a 1992 article in Vanity Fair entitled "Strange Love," in which it was alleged that Love had continued using heroin in the early stages of pregnancy. As a result, Child Welfare Services briefly investigated the Cobains' fitness as parents, removing Frances Bean from their custody for a short period. Love claims to this day that she was misquoted, saying she told author Lynn Hirschberg that she'd stopped using the drug once she learned she was pregnant.

On April 8, 1994, a week before the release of Hole's breakthrough album Live Through This, Kurt Cobain was found dead of a shotgun wound to the head in his home in Seattle, Washington. The death was ruled a suicide by authorities, and Love read his suicide note to assembled, mourning fans at a memorial service in Seattle a few days after his body was found. Clearly crying, she interrupted the note frequently to express her anger and sorrow ("Kurt, the worst crime I can think of is for you to just continue being a rock star when you fucking hate it, just fucking stop"), even inciting the crowd to call him an "asshole" for leaving everyone behind. On the audio recording that day you can hear the crowd obey. Finally, Love implored Nirvana fans not to listen to Cobain's infamous final words, "It's better to burn out than fade away," a lyric cribbed from Neil Young's "My My, Hey Hey."

Live Through This tour (1994)

The band was struck by disaster again when bassist Kristen Pfaff died of an apparent heroin overdose on June 16, 1994, just two months after Cobain's death and the new album's release.

A few months later, Love told MTV's Kurt Loder, "you know...people go back to work. This is what I do. I gotta make a living." Hole recruited 21-year-old bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur (a recommendation of Billy Corgan's) to fill in for Pfaff, and took Hole on the road, appearing for the first time since Cobain's death at the Reading Festival in England. The band's performance was written up by famous 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."

Meanwhile, Live Through This was a commercial and critical success. Rolling Stone, Spin and Village Voice all declared it "Album of the Year", and by November the record was certified gold. By April 1995, it went platinum.

Hole next embarked on a tour opening for Nine Inch Nails, where Love received a death threat before the first show began. When advised against playing, Love responded "it's from a girl, it's bullshit...besides, if someone were to shoot me onstage, what a nice footnote to rock'n'roll history."

At a show in Pittsburgh, during the Lollapalooza tour, a shotgun shell was thrown onstage. "Is this what you want? Thanks. Goodbye," she said, and the band simply left the stage. At another show, Love hurled her guitar at a concertgoer, telling a reporter later "He kept yelling, 'Who's your next victim?' and then named all these rock-star guys I've been involved with or allegedly involved with...it was just so hard to concentrate hearing all those names. Sometimes they hold up T-shirts with pictures of Kurt on them. They abuse me, I abuse them."

Celebrity Skin era (1996-2000)

In 1998, Hole released Celebrity Skin. Rolling Stone gave the album four stars, saying "the album teems with sonic knockouts that make you see all sorts of stars. It's accessible, fiery and intimate – often at the same time. Here is a basic guitar record that's anything but basic." Celebrity Skin went on to go multiplatinum, and topped "Best of Year" lists at Spin, the Village Voice, and other periodicals. Erlandson was still the lead guitarist, and now there were Melissa Auf Der Maur's backup vocals and bass, but drummer Patty Schemel was replaced by a session drummer during the recording. There have been conflicting reports from the band members over whether this was due to drug problems or enmity between Schemel and the album's producer, Michael Beinhorn.

Around this time, Love created with Fender's low-price sub-brand Squier her personal line of guitars, Vista Venus (as Cobain did in 1994, doing the design of his Fender Jag-Stang). The instrument featured a shape inspired on Mercury, Stratocaster and Rickenbacker's solidbodies and had a single and a humbucker pickup. In an early 1999 interview, Love said about the Venus: "I wanted a guitar that sounded really warm and pop, but which required just one box to go dirty (...) And something that could also be your first band guitar. I didn't want it all teched out. I wanted it real simple, with just one pickup switch. Because I think that cultural revolutions are in the hands of guitar players". She also declared, "my Venus is better than the Jag-Stang". The Squier Vista Venus model is currently discontinued, as is the Jag-Stang as of 2006.

Hole toured Australia in 1999 to support the album, then hit the U.S. on an ultimately failed co-headlining tour with Marilyn Manson. The two bands often mocked each other on stage. Hole eventually dropped off the tour, citing their obligation to pay 50% of Manson's staging costs as a major reason. The singers of both bands told MTV there was no personal animosity, and they were happy to end the tour. Hole finished off the year's dates with Imperial Teen opening.

In May 2000, Love spoke in New York at the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference, giving a speech criticizing the major American record labels. The speech was then reproduced on the news site Salon.com, and was, at the time, their most popular article to date. In the speech, Love accused the major labels of devising a corrupt system of recording contracts to make the labels millions, while the band itself "may as well be working at a 7-Eleven."

Going solo (2001-2004)

With Hole fallen into disarray, Love attempted to begin a "punk rock femme supergroup" called Bastard during summer/autumn of 2001, enlisting Schemel, Veruca Salt 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, reportedly led to the group's demise. On May 24th, 2002, Hole announced their breakup amid continuing litigation with Universal Music Group.

On September 21, 2002, MTV2 aired 24 Hours of Love, a live special that Love hosted. For the special, Love took control of MTV2's airwaves for 24 hours, playing a selection of videos that she wanted to see, taking calls from viewers, and inviting guests into the studio.

In October 2001, Love had performed solo a few times, and almost three years later she released her first solo album, America's Sweetheart. The album was a commercial flop and received a mixed reaction from critics. Spin called it a "jawdropping act of artistic will", while Rolling Stone proclaimed "For people who enjoy watching celebrities fall apart, America's Sweetheart should be more fun than an Osbournes marathon." The record was re-recorded and finished at a difficult time, while Love was either fresh from or still undergoing drug rehab, and in its first three months the album sold about 86,000 copies, according to Nielsen Soundscan.

In 2004, Love worked with manga artists Ai Yazawa, Misaho Kujiradou and DJ Milky (pen name of TOKYOPOP CEO Stu Levy) to create her personal series, Princess Ai, in Japan.

Present day (2005-2007)

In June 2005, three months after being released from court-ordered drug rehabilitation (see Controversy section, below), Love started recording her second solo LP, tentatively titled How Dirty Girls Get Clean. She began writing the new material during rehab. Song titles include "My Bedroom Walls", "Pacific Coast Highway", "Sunset Marquis", and an anti-cocaine rant named "Loser Dust", among others. Former 4 Non Blondes singer Linda Perry is producing the record. Long time friend Billy Corgan has also assisted Love in writing and recording some tracks. A documentary about the making of the record, entitled The Return of Courtney Love, was filmed, written and produced by Will Yapp and aired on British TV network More4 on September 27, which resulted in leaking of sound clips of some of the songs off of How Dirty Girls Get Clean. The first entire song to be available for downloading was "Never Go Hungry Again", recorded in a rough acoustic version during an interview for The Times in November.

Love has released a memoir/diary collection book, Dirty Blonde, in October 2006, and her sophomore album is slated for a 2007 release..

She currently lives in Hollywood with her daughter.

Film career

Her first film credit was a small role in the film Sid and Nancy. Love was persistent in her attempts to land the role of Nancy Spungen in the film, and at one point sent director Alex Cox a videotape in which she described her suitability for the part. (This video often turns up online, and has been featured on various VH1 "Before They Were Rock Stars" shows.)

Love received considerable acclaim for her role as Larry Flynt's wife, Althea, in Miloš Forman's 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt, opposite Woody Harrelson as Flynt. She received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama.

She was also praised for her supporting role in the 1998 Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, which starred Jim Carrey as Kaufman. Other notable film credits include Trapped, Basquiat, 200 Cigarettes, and Feeling Minnesota.

Controversy

Legal problems

In recent years, Love has faced legal action for some of her more rock and roll behavior:

  • In 2003, Love pleaded not guilty to felony drug charges related to possession of painkillers. In February of 2004, an arrest warrant was issued for Love after she failed to appear at a preliminary hearing. The warrant was subsequently rescinded when she appeared in court on February 18. She released her first solo album, America's Sweetheart, just eight days earlier, on February 10.
  • On her fortieth birthday, July 9, 2004, Love missed a scheduled court appearance relating to an attempted break-in at a boyfriend's house and was found in contempt of court. Her attorney later said she missed the appearance due to medical problems. Later in the month she appeared in court and was sentenced to an 18-month probation and drug rehabilitation program.
  • In January 2005, Love regained the custody of her daughter that she had lost in October 2003, after completing a state-enforced rehabilitation program and enduring a probational period. Child welfare authorities alluded to drug addiction when responding to the press on the matter, though they didn't comment directly.
  • On August 19, 2005, Love admitted using drugs in violation of her probation terms. She was ordered into a 28-day drug treatment program by a judge who initially 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 6 months in lock down rehab.
  • On February 3, 2006, Love was released from house arrest and issued the following statement: "I would just like to thank the court for allowing me these ninety days... 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 to let the community know I'm doing great... I've been really inspired and have remained inspired."

Family history

Love is estranged from her parents, writer Hank Harrison and therapist Linda Carroll, both of whom have spoken publicly about the lack of a relationship with their daughter.

Estrangement runs through Love's family background: Carroll was adopted by an Italian-American couple at birth, retaining no contact with her birth father or her birth mother, whom she later discovered was the well-known children's writer Paula Fox (herself also adopted). Carroll penned an autobiography titled Her Mother's Daughter, released in 2006, about her dysfunctional relationship with both adoptive mother and elder daughter

Conflicting news stories began to appear in August 2003 regarding Love's family tree, some of them remarking that Love's mother, Linda Carroll, had taken DNA tests, and that the results proved that Carroll's father was actor Marlon Brando. The news reports implied this disclosure would appear in Carroll's then-forthcoming memoir. Later that month, however, a spokeswoman for Carroll's publisher, Doubleday, told the New York Daily News, "There was nothing in Linda Carroll's book proposal about Marlon Brando, nor will there be anything in the book about him. I've spoken to her and she has told me that there is no truth to the suggestion that she is related to Marlon Brando." The story bears a significant possibility of truth: Carroll's mother Paula Fox did, by most accounts, have an affair with Brando, but since that time the truth has yet to be confirmed publicly by any of the parties involved.

Love has declared later that she is "at least five-eighths Jewish" and "partly Irish" by ancestry.

Cobain conspiracy

Since Cobain's death, conspiracy theories have speculated that he was murdered at Love's instigation. The theory gained media attention with the release of Nick Broomfield's documentary Kurt & Courtney in 1998. Kurt & Courtney featured interviews with, among others, Love's father Hank Harrison and private investigator Tom Grant, who said they believed Love ordered her husband murdered. The film also included an interview with punk singer El Duce, who claimed that Love offered him $50,000 to kill Cobain. However, Broomfield declared at the end of the documentary that he did not believe the evidence pointed to Love being a murderer. Broomfield later noted that he believed Cobain committed suicide.

Other media coverage

Love has often been noted in the press for her behaviour, including cursing at paparazzi and a sometimes physical disagreement with Cobain's alleged former girlfriend, folksinger Mary Lou Lord. Love also received attention when she posed nude for British magazines Q in 2003 and Pop in 2006.

In August 2005, tabloid papers such as News of the World began reporting that Love became pregnant during an affair with British actor and comedian Steve Coogan. Coogan's spokeswoman, alongside Love's publicists, have discredited the story as "nonsense".

Trivia

  • In 2006, Roddy Bottum, Faith No More's keyboardist and Courtney's ex-bandmate, wrote and recorded with her the song "Love, Love, Love" for the film Adam & Steve.
  • In Utero, the title of Nirvana's final original album, comes from a poem written by Love.
  • Love has been a Nichiren Buddhist since age 24, on and off, and introduced Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson to the faith. Love is known for having had experiences with Tibetan Buddhism (after reading Sogyal Rinpoche's The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying during the period Cobain died, she decided to give him a Tibetan funeral. Love also spent two weeks meditating and participating of ceremonies for Green Tara at Namgyal temple in Ithaca, New York, and left part of her husband's ashes for making deity statues named tsatsas) and Baptist Evangelicalism after it, but returned to her original faith in 2005, during her latest stint in rehab. Until late 1990s, Love was part of Nichiren Shoshu, the Buddhist branch to which she introduced Erlandson, but since 2005, she practices with the lay organization Soka Gakkai International (SGI). Love has also been a known practitioner of yoga, particularly the kundalini and ashtanga schools.
  • Love was cast to star as legendary cowgirl Texas Guinan in the story of her life, called Hello Sucker!. The film was never made.
  • There was a late '80s/early '90s Olympia band named Courtney Love, led by Lois Maffeo, that existed before Love's own music career took off. The band released three records on the Kill Rock Stars record label.
  • In her early career, Love adopted a "kinderwhore" look, which she was accused of having imitated after Kat Bjelland. Love stated that the look was inspired by Christina Amphlett of 1980s rock group Divinyls. Love's style has since evolved toward more sophisticated designer labels.
  • Love used to have three tattoos during her early career. Two of them are still visible: a vine of four-leafed clovers on her left ankle, and a small letter "K" (which stands for Kurt) on the top of the abdomen. The third one was placed on the right side of her upper back, and it first was an artwork including a star in the middle of a vine, but later changed to a big angel. It seems to have been lasered circa 2004-2005.
  • Love was engaged to People vs. Larry Flynt costar Edward Norton in the late 1990s. She told Spin that she would have been "happier if I married Edward. I'll regret that to my dying day".

Discography

Albums

With Hole

Solo

Singles

With Hole

Solo

  • Mono (2004) US Rock Singles #18 UK #41
  • Hold On To Me (2004) US Rock Singles #39
  • Letter To God (2007)

Filmography

Notes

  1. ^ Although some sources give Love's birth name as "Love Michelle Harrison", her listing on the California Birth Index from the Center for Health Statistics gives a birth name of "Courtney Michelle Harrison". Between adoptions from several stepfathers, she also gone by the names "Courtney Michelle Rodriguez" and "Courtney Michelle Menely". The name change to "Courtney Michelle Love" happened in early 1990s, in the beginning of her musical career. According to the same statistics list above, the birth status of Courtney's 1992-born daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, already include "Love" as the mother's maiden surname.
  2. London Guardian, August 30, 1994
  3. http://www.moonwashedrose.com/media/hart15.html
  4. James Hunter reviews Celebrity Skin
  5. Entry for Celebrity Skin at Acclaimed Music
  6. Drown Soda: Fender Squier Vista Venus
  7. Hole Tones: The Secrets Of Celebrity Skin's Smooth Sound
  8. http://www.chartattack.com/road/reviews/1999/19990302-hole.html
  9. "Courtney Love does the math" "an unedited transcript of Courtney Love's speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference, given in New York on May 16, 2000."
  10. http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/1018
  11. http://www.juicemagazine.com/COREYPARKS.html
  12. FOX News — Did Virgin Records Use Her?
  13. ^ Courtney Is Cleared, Ready To Rock
  14. TheTimes.co.uk: Podcasts
  15. Blood On The Tracks — Moonwashedrose's September 2006 Interview with Courtney Love
  16. Courtney Love Fighting For Custody Of Daughter Frances Bean
  17. Courtney Love Regains Custody Of Frances Bean Cobain
  18. Teary-Eyed Courtney Love Ordered Back To Rehab By Judge
  19. The Guardian: Sins of the mothers
  20. Brando Shocks Courtney Love
  21. Courtney Love Not Brando's Granddaughter
  22. Courting disaster
  23. Nirvanafreak.net — Articles & Interviews — Endless Love
  24. Template:Dlw-inline

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