by Everett True
Nothing seemed more natural than Hole’s presence there in that playground of the privileged. Nothing could’ve seemed more out of place. At the Sunset Marquis, even the cigarette machine is hidden away in the basement.
Later, we talked.
“There are two types of people,” Courtney told me. “Those who are masochists and sadists, and those who are perfectly square who have no desire to inflict pain or get pain, and that’s the majority of people. You and me, Everett, we’re in the minority. But then we’re a little bit more sensitive than a lot of stupid people who are happy to be in a nice relationship and live a nice life and not desire anything else. They don’t desire truth and they don’t desire hate. They don’t desire evil or decadence or purity . . .
“That’s fine,” she continued. “I envy these people, those Russian farmers who live to be 120 on yoghurt with their simple lives. They don’t have any stress. But it’s so fun,” she said, drawing out the word like a plea for help, “to be like we are and to me the most fun part of it all is when you show bone. I’m so full of shit that when I’m honest enough to show some bone, it’s almost like a Christ thing. It feels pure when I do it, even if it’s a deep emotional lie.”
Courtney always was in touch with her dark side.
“Men are intimidated by me, but I’m past caring about it,” she said. “They’re intimidated because I wasn’t raised coquettishly and don’t know how to be real demure. I don’t know the tricks in that realm, and I haven’t taken the time to learn them because I feel I have other stuff to do. I have relationships with people who are brave enough to deal with me and I don’t want to deal with people who aren’t.
“I’ve always been hated by the pen-pushers, the people who answer telephones,” she said. “The people who love me are the people behind those telephones, people with power: [cult English pop star] Julian Cope, Elvis Costello, [filmmaker] Alex Cox and . . . Everett True.”
That one cracked me up, I can tell you.
We talked long, ceaselessly, with energy and a burning passion. About everything, anything – anything that Courtney thought I wanted to hear. About her flirtations with ancient British rock stars and being bullied at school, the media’s expectations of women, vaginal accoutrements, love, desire and hatred.
Before we started, Courtney showered and carelessly changed into my white flannel hotel dressing gown. Her feet were uncovered, bare thighs prominently displaying their whiter-than-whiteness, laughing at Jill while the bassist grew more and more paranoid. Courtney sent all the other members away out of the room, so we were alone together, intimate.
For 30 minutes, I avoided asking the lady a direct question. I knew it would annoy her. Once she started to speak, my life didn’t stand still for years, until late one summer when it ground to a juddering halt. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Hi ET.
OK, my memory is shite too, but I do remember our first interview with you and how evil you were and how you were just trying to get into Courtney’s knickers. I remember getting Chinese food with you in Seattle during those sad surreal days after Kurt’s death. I remember filming you push him out on stage in a wheelchair at Reading. I remember climbing fences with you to go see Elastica in the tent at Reading. I remember you getting up on stage with us in St Louis and singing some songs. I remember shooting smack with you in CBGBs. I’m joking, of course. Sorry. I remember the Vox interview and photo session at Olympic studios.
Eric
I have read so many part-truths and lies about Courtney that it becomes difficult to sort out fact from fiction, even in my own memories. Did Courtney first meet Kurt in Portland in 1990, as reported in some detail both in the semi-official Poppy Z Brite Courtney Love biography, and Charles Cross’ exhaustive examination (and further creation) of the Cobain mythology Heavier Than Heaven?1 Not according to Eric Erlandson, who was dating her back then – or other close friends. Not according to the couple themselves, either.
In an interview with Sassy2 in January 1992, they reported that their first meeting took place at another concert altogether. “I saw him play in Portland in 19883,” Courtney told journalist Christina Kelly. “I thought he was passionate and cute, but I couldn’t tell if he was smart, or had any integrity. And then I met him at a show about a year ago.”
“ Butthole Surfers,” says Kurt. “And L7,” adds Courtney. “I really pursued him, not too aggressive, but aggressive enough that some girls would have been embarrassed by it.”
Yet each time I read the ‘official’ version of Kurt and Courtney’s first meeting, it grows more and more detailed, a delightful little fantasy incorporating Dave Pirner (Soul Asylum singer who had tousled blond hair like Kurt’s), punk rock, an impromptu wrestling match and exchange of guitar case stickers. Absolute bullshit. Oh, and let’s not forget the perfumed heart-shaped box filled with “three dried roses, a tiny porcelain doll, a miniature teacup and shellac-covered seashells” that she was supposed to have sent to Kurt in Olympia in late 1990. Bullshit. She wasn’t interested in Kurt back then.
Did Courtney have any influence on her friend, Babes In Toyland singer Kat Bjelland’s famed ‘ kinderwhore’ look or music – a look and music she later took for her own? Not according to Kat’s Minneapolis boyfriend of the time. How long was Courtney married to her first husband, the cross-dressing Falling James of LA punk band The Leaving Trains? Surely longer than to consummate the relationship the one time she told me about.
OK. Here’s what I (sort of ) know. Courtney Love was born Courtney Michelle Harrison on July 9, 1964 in San Francisco: her father Hank Harrison was a Grateful Dead roadie, and was rumoured to have been responsible for booking the Hell’s Angels security at the infamous Rolling Stones free concert on December 6, 1969, at Altamont Raceway near Livermore in northern California.4 Her mother, Linda Carroll, later became a therapist – notorious in the US counterculture for convincing fugitive radical Katherine Ann Power to turn herself over to the authorities after 23 years on the run.5
Courtney changed her name several times, moved around at length during her teens – from Portland (in a reform school) to New Zealand to Japan, where she became a stripper, to Ireland and England in 1981, where she met Julian Cope and members of Echo & The Bunnymen. She sang in an early version of Faith No More, and in Babes In Toyland briefly, and formed the extremely gothic Sugar Baby Doll in Minneapolis with Jennifer Finch and Kat Bjelland. She auditioned for the role of Sid Vicious’ girlfriend Nancy Spungen in Alex Cox’s 1986 punk biopic Sid And Nancy, and ended up with a lead role in the same director’s spoof spaghetti western Straight To Hell. In Portland, she plotted out her future plans for ‘making it’ in the music industry in her scrawled girly diaries6 – later found by Olympia singer-songwriter Lois Maffeo, the diaries going on to inspire the formation of Lois’ sweet, lo-fi Courtney Love band.
“You have to understand, Courtney was a character,” comments Rich Jensen. “She was somebody who would go down to Portland’s X-Ray Café Monday night poetry readings and give screaming presentations about her anatomy. She wanted to be a recognised, powerful character on the streets of Portland. So when she leaves her diary, everyone in the house takes a great deal of pleasure in reading from it.”
Back in LA, she continued her part-time work as a stripper, and in 1989 answered an ad in The Recycler , placed by Eric Erlandson, seeking “people into Big Black, The Stooges, Abba and Fleetwood Mac” for a new band, Hole.
“In the beginning, it was more about assault,” explains Eric. “We had three guitar-players . . . one guy into speed metal, Courtney’s Rickenbacker insanities, and me doing my weird tunings and voicings. Slowly, the whole mess got more and more refined. And then it was just Courtney and myself on guitar. I was always into New York bands where there would be two guitarists playing different parts off of each other. We didn’t have the skills for standard rock/pop guitar playing. So, we came up with our own version of what we heard coming out of New York.”
It’s possib
le Courtney saw Nirvana play at the Satyricon show in Portland – but she probably wouldn’t have been too impressed. (Her tastes always did run to nu metal and bad English New Wave.) Her opinion probably changed after the record store where she was working was sent the first batch of Sub Pop records.
“I wouldn’t have a band at all if it wasn’t for Mudhoney,” Courtney told me in 1992. “After Kat kicked me out of my own band, I got really depressed and moved back to Portland and was just going to be a stripper for the rest of my life. But I heard ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’ one night and I was saved. I knew I could scream on key like that. So I moved to Seattle for two days because Portland was seriously a pit, trying to find someone to start a band. I figured there must be cool girls in Seattle who knew who Mudhoney and Big Black and The Fall were. But after two days I realised I had to move back to LA instead. Don’t ask me why, LA’s gross. I just belong there. But I sent Jennifer this record for that Christmas and it rejuvenated both of us and she talked me into moving to LA to start a side band with her. And we sat down and listened to it, over and over. It was really whole, it still is. That’s how I got the name for my band, after the whole of Mudhoney.”
“She sent down Bleach and the ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’ 12-inch to me in LA,” confirms Jennifer, “and goes, ‘Look at what is going on in the Northwest.’ I put on both records and I say, ‘You know, Mudhoney could really make some money.’ ”
After Jennifer became romantically involved with Grohl, Courtney started showing more of an interest in Nirvana; although she was by then dating the Smashing Pumpkins’ singer, the rather self-centred and pompous Billy Corgan, she was attracted towards the energy emanating from Seattle and its rather geeky stars like Arm because she was a geek herself. Both grunge and Sonic Youth influenced the first Hole album, 1991’s Pretty On The Inside. Indeed the Youth’s bassist Kim Gordon co-produced the scouring, invigorating record. Pure, nasty, howling and distorted with misplaced rage it’s easily the most poignant music Courtney has recorded.
But Arm had already rejected her . . .
“The first time I met Courtney Love was over the phone,” recalls photographer Charles Peterson. “I went over to Mark Arm’s place and Mark’s like, ‘Here, talk to Courtney.’ I was like, ‘Courtney?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, she’s in that band Hole, you know?’ She was extraordinarily abrasive. She had a certain energy or a charm about her; it’s not really a charm. Maybe intriguing. It ties into the whole punk lust thing.”
Hole were named after Mark Arm. It’s really convoluted: something to do with the ‘hole in Mark Arm’s soul’.
“Courtney, the queen of spin,” laughs Charles. “By the time I met her in the flesh, she was with Kurt. It’s weird, because I don’t really think of them together. A lot of times I would see Courtney out, or I would see Kurt out. Very rarely I would see the two of them together.”
There’s a lyric on ‘Asking For It’ from Hole’s second album Live Through This7 that is drawn directly from the second interview I did with Courtney in my Cricklewood flat in ’91. “Every time that I sell myself to you,” she sings, “I feel a little bit cheaper than I need to/ I will tear the petals off of you/ Rose red, I will make you tell the truth.” The way she phrases the lyric is a reference to topics we talked about during our first interviews. Likewise, ‘Softer Softest’ with its opening lines “I tell you everything/ I hope you won’t tell on me,” is a reference to a relationship that went far beyond standard press/artist.
Sure, our relationship was . . . what? Friends and peers tell me how Courtney took advantage of me, how she used my position for her own ends and then dumped me, how she’s manipulative and insanely ambitious and a bad, bad person. Others might say she’s matured in recent years, grown into a fine actress and strong defender of certain rights, sometimes female. They usually agree on the relationship part, however. Sure. Except that Courtney never ‘dumped’ me. We drifted apart, as often happens with friends. There was a Barney Hoskyns novel, The Lonely Planet Boy, that came out in 1995, based around the fictionalised relationship of a naïve male, middle-class English rock critic and corrupting female rock star/diva, she leading him into a sordid lifestyle of drugs and emasculating sex. The parallels seemed uncanny. Sure. I’m prepared to believe all that. That’s what attracted all of us to her initially, right? The forbidden fruit is the sweetest.
Courtney was insanely great fun to be with, had a most endearing way of turning to me for help and succour with her little girl lost eyes when she was at her most fucked-up, and could be relied upon to create a situation where none had previously existed. Is that bad? She made me feel special, like I was the most special person in the world when I was with her. Fuck all you dull nine-to-fives who can’t even perform that simple trick.
On our first meeting, I found myself rubbing whiskey away from her groin. That was about as close as we ever got, and as close as I wanted to get. Whenever we’d first meet, I’d make her cry through being mean when drunk, which I always was – referring to her weight, or lack of voice or talent. I didn’t want to be that way. She made me like that – and yeah, I loved it.
Oh, and listening back to some of the bootlegs of Hole shows from ’91, ’92 and ’95 . . . who’s to say I didn’t encourage her to misbehave, too?
Here’s the secret to why I loved Hole: the music. Those first two singles I received, unsolicited in the post, ‘Retard Girl’ and ‘ Dicknail’, seemed like an entry to a darker, more turbulent world. Eric’s guitars were weighed down with a claustrophobic intensity. The lyrics were spiteful and full of passion. The reason I fell for ‘Retard Girl’ was that all of its meanness and blackness and squirming reminded me of Lydia Lunch8, Sonic Youth and my other Eighties passions. I liked the fact nothing was cleaned up, that this was far removed from gregarious pop. The drums and bass were heavy, relentless. The guitar seemed to chuckle with maliciousness. ‘ Dicknail’, meanwhile, was pure Babes In Toyland, and I wasn’t going to resist that. Listen to the voice. Isn’t the promise of trouble seductive in itself ?
You’ve seen those rock movies with ‘groupies’ in, like Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. They aren’t fiction. These stories actually happened, albeit without the cosy endings. It’s odd. Ask me what I hate about rock music, and I’ll tell you straight out. Axl Rose and those ridiculous things Steven Tyler ties round his head. Heroin and disrespect towards women. Crap situations where the people are there only for the party, the drugs – not the music. Johnny Thunders and the Velvets. The guitar used as a penis extension.
Yet I lived through all of that, and I loved most of it.
“I only ever asked Courtney Love out on a date to impress you,” Kurt Cobain once confessed to me.
I never knew whether to believe him. Was he winding me up? For, troubled as Kurt was, he had a wicked sense of humour. The singer claimed the incident happened the same night that I introduced the couple to each other, at a concert by Austin’s favourite retarded sons, Butthole Surfers, in LA, May 1991. It’s possible, certainly. How would I know?
Years after that Surfers gig, I was still bumping into strangers who delighted in recounting how they’d helped pour me into a taxi that night, how they’d been personally insulted by me, how they’d heard all about me from other people present. Also, as Kurt liked to remind me, when he first encountered Courtney and I at that show, we were rolling around on the floor in the VIP area upstairs at the Hollywood Palladium, out of our heads.
“Afterwards, when you and me were back at the apartment,” Kurt continued, “you kept going on and on about how wonderful this girl Courtney Love was, how you’d only just met her and how you were going to make her into the biggest star in the world and everything. So I decided to act like an arrogant, pissy rock star. I started boasting about how I could get a date with her if I wanted. So I did. I phoned Courtney up right there and then, at two in the morning, and arranged to meet her the following day. I never showed up, though. I only did it to impress you.”9
Sure. Maybe
it is true. Maybe Kurt did ask Courtney out that night at the Palladium because he wanted to show off in front of me. Crazier things have happened. Kurt knew me. Courtney knew me. And it’s true that he wouldn’t have spoken to her if I hadn’t been there . . .
Certainly Kurt knew me well enough to recognise the signs of infatuation in his drunken English buddy. Infatuation? Sure. Sure, I was infatuated with Courtney. Even on our first meeting, she had this knack of making you feel you were the most important person in the world while she spoke to you. Kurt realised this. Indeed, he probably couldn’t have avoided it. I was drunk. I would have been going on and on about her. So: what better way to show off in front of a friend than to ask his crush out?
Every story has to begin somewhere. Over the following years, both Kurt and Courtney would remind me that I’d introduced them. “You’re the one to blame,” they’d say laughing, aware of how much the critics looked down upon their marriage and saw Courtney as a gold-digger. “Don’t worry, you’ll get 10 per cent of all royalties.”10
I remember the concert. It took place during my first visit to LA. How could I forget it? Butthole Surfers, Redd Kross and L7 – what a great triple bill! I wasn’t on the guest list, so I turned up early during the soundcheck to blag my way in, walking straight past the queue of punks and freaks stretched out across the tarmac patrolled suspiciously by security with guns. There, I bumped into Redd Kross (and Beastie Boys) manager, John Silva. Unbeknown to me, Silva had also been managing Nirvana for several months.