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[ July 2015 April 1992 ]

July 2015 - Love Is Blind, And So Are The Courtney Love Haters Paula
Mejia:
Shes a terrible mother, the helicopter parents squeal. And John Lennon was
Father of the Year? Of course she wants to be the girl with the most cake;
Love only knows how to live in extremes. Which is what we pay our rock
stars to do.

May 2015 Why I Love Courtney Love Corey Deiterman:

The Love era came to an abrupt end to due to her own personal struggles, which,
despite the public's fascination with them, remain irrelevant to her stature as an
artist. I will not discuss them here, except to say that this kind of tabloid garbage
smearing her as a human being is disgusting and distracts from what she
truly contributed to the music of the 1990s. (...) Love's very public turmoil and
refusal to be anything other than herself, even as a massive celebrity, has just fueled
it. However, her gives-no-fucks-ever attitude is more admirable to me
than any public figure who would play into the media's desire for all our
celebrities to be some phony ideal of a perfect person.
Love's very flaws are what make her such an interesting icon. She is real in a town
full of fakes. The punk-rock ethos that fueled her music early on has never faded in
her heart and mind. Even today, she stirs controversy with almost everything
she says. That's who she is, and it will never change.

May 2015 Will The New Kurt Cobain Doc Spur More Sexist Hate For
Courtney Love? -Julianne Escobedo Shepherd:
To be clear, Im not a Courtney Love apologist; I adore a great amount of her music
and find her deeply fascinating, but I also understand her to be periodically antiwoman enough in her history that it is troubling. None of us are perfect.

May 2015 Why You Should See Lana Del Rey And Courtney Love On
Tour Alex Frank:
There is not much that ties these two together musically. Lana whispers pop songs,
Courtney screams rock; Lana pouts and looks at the floor, Courtney clenches and
stares you down; Lanas an Internet-age star if there ever was one, Courtneys era
was nineties grunge. But they share a bad-girl place in music that is sure to
make these upcoming shows surreal, potentially awkwardand very, very
exciting.
What is a bad girl exactly? Rihanna calls herself one@badgalriribut shes too
beloved to be a real bad girl. A true bad girl must be as reviled as she is adored, and
mostly unafraid of the consequences. (...)
**(Note - Again, a 'bad girl' contextually includes assaulting people)**
Love, for her part, threw her compact at Madonna on live camera during an interview
with MTVs Kurt Loder; has been accused of taking heroin while pregnant, and
threatening to assault the journalist who did the accusing; and, backstage at one
particularly raucous Lollapalooza, physically attacking riot grrrl hero Kathleen
Hanna.

May 2015 Courtney Love Drops New Song, Miss Narcissist

Sandra Song

Reminding you with her scarred voice and suggestive lilt that she's back, better and
bigger than ever, Courtney does what she does best on the track: play the part of
the unapologetic bad girl. Incredibly acidic and loaded with the sort of pent-up
vehemence you'd expect from someone always hit hard by social rags, she attacks
public perception with bratty, tongue-in-cheek lines like "me, me, me, no apologies"
and "Miss Narcissist, it's us versus them," striking back against the roar of caustic
guitar riffs and marking a sonic return to her grunge-era roots.

October 2014 Why Mocking The Isolated Vocals Of Courtney Love Is

Misogynistic Harriet Gibsone:
Isolated performances of women are often leaked, and almost always with
the intention of revealing them to be frauds. Its hard not to view this kind of
online shaming as a form of misogyny, which we often misread as having a simple
comedic intention. Men are rarely exposed in the same way. (...) Rarely do the
truthbarers present us with male artists whose stage presence is led by charisma
and emotion over technical precision, along with an invitation to sneer. (...) While I
by no means condone failure to pay sound engineers, the shaming of Love
is one of those common occurrences that says to female musicians: Dance!
Pose! Perform! Be perfect! Be seen! And if possible, not heard.

September 2014 The Assassination Of Courtney Love Nico Lang:

These discussions are a lot like picking between The Rolling Stones and The Beatles,
saying less about the band itself than the person playing favorites, yet I quickly
found myself heatedly defending Courtney Loves musical legacy against
the trolls of the Internet. The main points of argument were as follows: 1)
Courtney Love didnt write Live Through This 2) Kurt Cobain did and 3) thus, I must
also like the Foo Fighters better than Nirvana. I dont see how number three
necessarily connects to the others, but welcome to arguing with relative strangers on
Facebook, the place where Aristotle goes to die. (...) These discussions are a lot like
picking between The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, saying less about the band itself
than the person playing favorites, yet I quickly found myself heatedly defending
Courtney Loves musical legacy against the trolls of the Internet. The main points of
argument were as follows: 1) Courtney Love didnt write Live Through This 2) Kurt
Cobain did and 3) thus, I must also like the Foo Fighters better than Nirvana. I dont
see how number three necessarily connects to the others, but welcome to
arguing with relative strangers on Facebook, the place where Aristotle goes
to die.
(...) Of course, women have always found their work discredited and
dismissed (...) Live Through This continued marginalization in the cultural
canon might have a lot to do with Courtney Love, but it likely has
everything to do with us.

May 2014 (Vice Magazine) Whats To Love About Courtney Love?

Glenn Waldron:
She polarises opinion like no other modern icon and vacillates in people's minds
almost as much as her own. Vain, vociferous and always on the attack, her actions
and emotions seem above the usual laws of taste, tedium and morality, such is her

bruising realness, her perfect imperfection. She pushes the idea of celebrity to the
edge of destruction, pushes her own fans to the point of synaesthesia (...) The
honesty, when it's interpreted as attention-seeking and plain old wheedling
(which often it is). The shambling, wildly decadent behaviour, for those who
want nice rock stars with clean, happy lives...
For the rest of us, there's not a lot to loathe. Courtney behaves exactly how we would
want her to and she has our collective blessing. She has exchanged privacy, dignity
and the possibility of erasing her past, for fame, power and rock'n'roll. It seems a
pretty fair trade-off. () In the public spotlight, there is no-one else to lovehate so much and this is a bad thing. No-one who uncovers their battered,
uncomfortable self in such an extraordinary way and no-one that lays it
bare so literally either.

May 2014 In Defense Of: Courtney Love William Donnelly:

**(Paragraph dilutes assault charge with pointless online behavior and categorizes
each as reckless when reckless isnt what would be used to describe male
assailants / A man with that history would be completely defined by his assaults and
those assaults wouldnt be bonus trivia of recklessness sprinkled in when writing
about someone)** However, this is not necessarily a new development: Loves talent has always been
accompanied by wild, reckless behavior. () Whether you love or hate her, Love
seems to be here for the long haul. Despiteor perhaps even because ofher brash
attitude, her overall talent and contribution to rock music are undeniable.

April 2014 Season Of The Witch: Courtney Love And The Making Of
Live Through This Kimberly Ballard:
Hundreds of people are suddenly upon her, tearing off her underwear, their tongues
lolling, their vicious fingers pinching, grabbing, penetrating. She feels violated in
ways she never has before, and as she hears them chant pussy-whore-cunt, shes
certain theyll render the flesh from her bones. In grief for their fallen idol, Cobains
followers needed someone to blame and the role of Judas soon fell to his
widow. Fattening itself with stories of marital malice, popular opinion has twisted
Love into a pulp-fiction archetype the cold-eyed, red-lipped femme fatale
wielding a gun over her husbands broken body effectively turning her into
one of the worlds most hated women. (...) The mythologized music of a tortured boyartist like Kurt Cobain will be remembered for decades, yet its his widowed pariah
who has true magic in her fingertips.

November 2013 Everybody Deserves A 2nd Chance Why Not

Courtney Love? Cailyn Cox:
Courtney Love has made more than her fair share of bad decisions in her life, but she
appears to be back on the Hollywood scene and believes she deserves a second
chance. (...) The 49-year-old star has experienced what it feels like to be shunned by
the world (.)

June 2013 In Defense Of Courtney Love Thank God For Courtney

Shes Nuts And Doesnt Give a Fuck Lucy Sweet:
Courtney is one hell of an entertaining interviewee: tangential,
unpredictable, funny and always punk rock. Who is as insane, fabulous and
gossipy as her? Nobody. So lets all raise a glass of lighter fluid to crazy old Court.
Love or hate Ms. Love, the world would be a dull place without her.

November 2012 If She Floats: In Defense Of Courtney Love Nick

Soulsby:
Courtney certainly hasnt helped herself by being more than happy to provoke
journalists but predominantly her problem has been too much information
and saying everything that comes into her head rather than fiendish secret
evil. At the 1992 MTV VMAs Axl Roses then partner Stephanie Seymour asked
Courtney are you a model? Courtney snapped back are you a brain surgeon? It
sums it up really. Theres a comfy acceptance of rock stars going out with pretty
models who know to keep their mouths shut. Yet, for Kurt Cobain, a star with a
progressive attitude, to be attracted to a creative (and attractive) woman from a
similar musical culture and background, one with a sharp sense of humour and no
tolerance of fools theres no credit given.

October 2012 7 Badass Women That Defined The Title Marv

DSouza
(On Courtney Love) This woman doesnt care what you think of her. Shes been called
names that a woman should never hear, but she still holds her fort, strong. There are
a whole lot of people who think she had something to do with her husband and rock
legend Kurt Cobains death. She doesnt give a f**k. Why should you know her?
Because in-spite of all the accusations of drugs, sex and violence, she is still a
badass rocker, an independent mother and more of a man than any man can
be. Watch her beat up an interviewer while he tries to put her on the
spot. She is not taking sh*t from no one. Courtney Love Cobain is a rockstar in the
true sense of the word and as her late husband put it very subtly, Courtney Love is
the best f**k ever!

July 2012 In Defense Of Courtney Love Jessica Jordan-Wrench:

That said, just to be crystal clear: I am not excusing Courtney Loves behaviour.
Courtney Love is often outrageous, herself admitting I found my inner bitch and
ran with her. It is not without reason that Rolling Stone succinctly dubbed Love the
most controversial woman in the history of rock. But she is not evil and Christ!
shes had a rough ride of it.
**(Also note the contradictions here Im not condoning it but its funny! / I enjoy
the scandal of physical assault! but Im not condoning it but shes so
interesting!)**
Just to be clear, I am not (I repeat: NOT) condoning physical violence. Obviously,
assaulting the queen of Riot Grrl is hardly Loves finest hour. But if her assertion is
true I am not surprised Courtney cracked. Plus, I kind of like candy-shower
description. On a side not, I particularly enjoy her disdain at being shown-up infront of Sonic Youth, the elders it seemed everyone was eager to please: Then she
went into Sonic Youths room and tattled and told them this totally exaggerated,
insane story about how I had attacked her out of the blue.
**(Note This is a quote from Courtney about Kathleen Hanna she apparently finds
it entertaining that she tattled despite it being about an assailant making fun of
assault)**

July 2010 Courtney Love Live: The Train That Never Really Wrecks

Tyler Coates:

Youve heard that Courtney Love is a little crazy, right? Her variety of nuttiness is
one reason to see her in concert: to experience something that is
unpredictable and rock n roll, but also something that teeters on the border of
trainwreck. Is there any other musician who can provide such an unexpected and
unpredictable performance?
(...) I might be in the minority here, but I genuinely want Courtney Love to succeed.
Its so easy-and frankly, so cliched-to call for the public humiliation of a
famous person. Granted, those with a penchant for airing their dirty laundry
generally have a need for validation and the inability to ignore criticism, but Im also
someone who thinks that everyone is a bit of a narcissist.

May 2010 True Stories: Nice Girls Rachel Shukert:

It took a special kind of guts to be a fuck-up as a woman, I thought. To say to hell
with being a nice girl, the responsible one, the one who makes sure the man takes
care of himself and eats properly and doesn't take too many drugs. To be just as
nihilistic and self-destructive as a man, knowing all along that you'll get crucified for
it, because somehow, the world will make everything your fault. He'll be a martyr,
and you'll be a succubus. He'll be a genius, and you'll be a groupie. He'll be a hero,
and you'll be an ugly fat crack whore who deserves to die.

May 2010 Standing Up For Courtney Love And Outcasts Everywhere

Anna North:
**(Paraphrased My friend in school tattled on a popular girl who was stealing and
people shunned her for it and Courtney Love represents my friend and outcasts
everywhere and a catalyst for girls who go against the grain)** Like Shukert, and like many people, I keenly felt my social awkwardness at that age,
and I pretty much wanted to be liked at any cost. () Perhaps this is because, as
Shukert says, we're always expected to be "nice girls" except when we're
supposed to be mean, but not too mean, to people we're not supposed to like.

December 2009 Why Courtney Love Was Kurt Cobains Lyrical Equal
Ben Hewitt:
Love is widely perceived as a kind of Lady Macbeth, and her increasingly
unhinged slideshow of celebrity feuds and rock & roll trysts - plus the odd naked
photo shoots - have wiped out any lingering traces of public affection she once
enjoyed. It wasn't just the readers of that infamous issue of Q magazine who felt
they'd seen just a little bit too much of her. (...) Meanwhile, as Cobain's dispirited
musings were propelling Nirvana to stardom, Courtney Love was producing a
torrent of deeply personal and unsettling poetics. For her, words aren't a
disposable commodity. She wrestles and struggles with them, using her ink to stamp
her own persona on her songs, and utilising a wilfully self-conscious desire to be

understood to establish her own sense of identity. If it was hard to tell exactly what
troubled Cobain from his music, there's no such problem with Love.

January 2009 In Defense Of Courtney Love Joshua Neuman:

But the fact remains, that since our Winter Issue hit newsstands last month, weve
been told time and time again (not just by my parents) that our interview with Ms.
Love was the most flattering portrait of her ever paintedthat she never seemed
so likeable, so sympathetic. Thats why its disturbing to see the interview being
used to cast her yet again as a mad woman. Maybe Im wrong. Read the interview in
its entirety and see if you hear the ravings of intolerance. Certainly, Ms. Love is
opinionated, paradoxical, outspoken, candid, and even sometimes
infuriating. But thats why we love her.

November 2006 The People Vs. Courtney Love Lisa Revy:

Love also commits what amounts to a mortal sin by overestimating her own beauty,
talent and achievements, believing utterly in herself in a culture where womens selfesteem is undermined at every turn. (...) Love also commits what amounts to a
mortal sin by overestimating her own beauty, talent and achievements, believing
utterly in herself in a culture where womens self-esteem is undermined at every
turn. (...) Did she merely turn her train wreck of a marriage into fodder for her
celebrity? The Cobain tragedy makes Courtney hard to love. Rock stars marry
models, beautiful, silent creatures, not women like Courtney Love. Being smart,
reckless, drug-addicted, outraged, independent, creative thats mens
work, and shes got some nerve doing it.

November 2006 Love, Actually Caitlin Moran:

Courtney Love was rejected by her parents at 9, raised in institutions and
grew into the wild woman of rock. Our correspondent spent the weekend with
her and found a lonely girl who still yearns to belong. (...) Love gained that title
before Nick Broomfield made a documentary alleging that she may have been
involved in the death of her husband, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana accusations for which,
ultimately, there was no evidence but which still knock into sharp relief anything that
the nearest contender for most controversial woman in rock, Madonna, has had
thrown at her. (...) The problem with Love is, aptly, the problem we also have
with love: that the huge, crazy acts of Love and, indeed, love, are what first
spring to mind when the thing that makes love and, indeed, Love,
worthwhile are the small, silly, brave things.
Love might very well be a gobby, self-dramatising, sporadically delusional (she claims
she will have 16 Vanity Fair covers in her lifetime; before, in a sudden fit of realism,
downgrading it to a mere five) megalomaniac whose name-dropping proclivities
make even the simple act of recalling a phone call read like the cast to Murder on the
Orient Express. (...) Things deteriorated rapidly until, by 2005, after drug busts and
assaults, Love had lost custody of her daughter and was given a court order to
go into rehab.(...) Because if there's a juicy gossip story about Marlon Brando and
Courtney, Love wants to be the first one to e-mail everyone. Because it would, in
some way, make her daughter safer. Because it's amusing. Because, like all of
us, all she really wants to do is know who, and where, and what, and why,
she is.

October 2004 Clawed Up In Tug Of Love Victim Tells Of Catfight

David K. Li:
Cat Fight / Clawed Up She sat on me, pulled my hair, dug her claws nails

into my arm and pinched my left breast for 30 seconds! said rival rocker Kristin King,
recounting an April 25 altercation with Love, which led to felony assault charges
against the bad girl of rock.

April 2004 Love Me, Love My Tantrums Amanda Fortini:

Is there a celebrity more reviled than Courtney Love? In the decade since the
suicide of her husband, Kurt Cobain, whose body was found in a garage apartment at
his Seattle home on April 8, 1994, we have watched her swear, drug, punch,
threaten, litigate, and generally terrorize her way to fame. The spectacle has been
alternately riveting and repellent. Along the way, in spite of her bad behavior or
because of it, Love has made some undeniably powerful music: raw, defiant, so full of
anguish that listening to it is a physically demanding experience.
(...) Love would presumably be thought of as one of our most original female rock
starsa clever provocateur with a sui generis voice. But she rages on airplanes,
lifts her shirt to allow a stranger to suck her breast, shows up at a posh British benefit
dressed as Donald Duck. In short, she behaves like rock stars historically havedrug
use, casual sex, and the trashing of hotel rooms were once considered an essential
part of the machismo of rock 'n' roll.
(...) Last week, Love appeared on TheView in what seemed a bizarre joust for
respectability. Looking radiantly healthyin contrast to her wan mien of recent
monthsLove lucidly defended herself as the women of TheView tried to extract an
apology from her. She explained that throwing a microphone stand is a punk-rock
gesture like guitar-tossing or crowd-surfing and that male rock stars (she cited
Marilyn Manson) often expose themselves in public.

August 1999 (Jane Magazine Cover Story) - The Consummate Role

Model Tony Romando:

But don't be disappointed - she has a bitch of the witch left in her still. She's
impatient, stubborn and quick to call you out. She's exactly who she needs to be
when dealing with those back-stabbing butt-holes in Movieland. So who better than
this sinner-turned-winner to dissect the seven deadly sins of living in the Hollywood
fast lane? () (Interview Question) People are either picking on you or youre
lashing back at them. Do you ever get sick of the anger?

January 1999 (Allure Magazine Cover Story) True Love Christian

Wright:
And why not? After all, she is fascinating. Paradoxical and at times a gasbag,
but fascinating. Every move, every decision, is measured - from her small part
as an East Village groover in next month's 200 Cigarettes (a movie about a group of
peers in New York in the '80s) to the comparative accessibility of Celebrity Skin, the
Hole record that came out in September. She wants to win an Academy Award. She
wants to sell a lot of records. She has a plan. ()
Courtney Love was completely vilified after her husband shot himself in the
spring of 1994: It was her fault, she drove him to it, she hired someone to kill him, it
was the best career choice she ever made - depending on whom you talked to.
Granted, Cobain's death was a defining moment in Love's life. But it was also one of
the few things over which she had no control. "He was the coolest, hardest, most
antisocial guy," she says. "And I was the coolest, hardest, most antisocial girl. Of
course we were going to go out. It was like antipopularity. I was always gonna survive
it. And he was always not gonna survive it."

January 1999 (Sunday Hearld) The People Vs. Courtney Love

Barbara Ellen:

She's clever, funny and engaging, yet also noisy, hungry and relentless. She
wears no make-up and is dressed all in black, her wild, yellow hair dragged back into
a band, her huge green eyes glinting. She looks like a cross between a young, gothy
Bette Midler and a boxfresh china doll. (...) It's great when Love name-drops. When
she does it, she has this air about her- "magisterial", she would call it, but I
think it's just plain cheeky-which makes everyone she mentions seem like
her lady-in-waiting or her butler. ("I call her for advice about certain things"
indeed!) I also like the brazen way Love name-drops all the time. Drew Barrymore,
Jim Carrey, Sporty Spice, Cameron Diaz, George Clooney....

September/October 1998 (ROCKRGRL Magazine Cover Story)

Deconstructing Courtney Carla A. DeSantis:

Talking to Courtney Love is a wild roller coaster ride. One moment she is quiet,
almost whispering, and the next she is making grand, sweeping statements. She
goes from zero to sixty instantly, peppering her rapid-fire, carefully crafted sentences
with equal doses of cuss words and look-em-ups like "rapacious" and "archetype".
She is all about extremes... () No other rock star in recent memory has
been under such constant scrutiny as Love. Even before the suicide of her rock
star husband, Kurt Cobain (an event for which conspiracy-theory mongers have made
futile attempts to indict her), Love was making headlines in her legendary feud with
Vanity Fair magazine. And now everything has escalated. She's not simply a fixture in
the music press, but the mainstream press as well: a recent issue of In Style
magazine featured Love either quoted or pictured five times.

September 1998 (The Baltimore Sun) Kurt And Courtney No

Love Lost (Movie Review) Ann Hornaday:
Maybe it's because its engine is so compromised -- so encrusted with conjecture, so
clogged with hearsay and bad faith -- that "Kurt & Courtney" sputters and eventually
konks out so painfully. Broomfield concludes that there is no basis for the rumor, but
only after taking viewers through a torturous series of interviews with people in
varying degrees of greed- or drug-induced stupor. If a journalist can be judged by the
company he keeps, Broomfield is the ultimate unreliable narrator. (...) The only thing
more hypocritical than Courtney Love as an ACLU spokeswoman is Nick Broomfield -who abuses the First Amendment as much as anyone with this film -- as its watchdog.
This is a dirty piece of work, and everyone it touches -- especially audiences
-- deserved better.

June 1998 (People Magazine) Picks And Pans Review: Kurt And
Courtney Leah Rozen:
Setting out to explore the doomed love of grunge god Kurt Cobain and rocker-singer
Courtney Love, British director Nick Broomfield (Fetishes) doggedly, blindly pursued
every bit of information that came his wayand ended up with this amusing,
scandalmongering piece of poppycock.

May 1998 (Spin Magazine) - Maggot Brains James Sullivan:

"It was one maggot on top of another," said a "Nirvana obsessive" who had just
attended the February premeire of Kurt And Courtney, British director Nick
Broomfield's controversial conspiracy- spinning documentary about the death of Kurt
Cobain. The speaker was referring as much to the impossibly absurd scene outside
San Fransisco's tiny, independently owned Roxie Cinema as to the film, which trots

out a motely procession of ex-associates, some of whom imply Cobain may have
been murdered - and that Courtney Love has something to hide.

November 1997 (Rollingstone Cover Story Women In Rock)

Katherine Dunn:
She is the most controversial woman in the history of rock. She is reviled as often,
and as deeply, as she is revered. Courtney Love - the electric diva of bad girls; a
cranky, eccentric, brilliant pain in the butt. She's a Buddhist, a stage-diver, a fighter
who throws fists up close and verbs at 20 paces. Even Love's critics acknowledge the
incendiary power of her singing, her songwriting talent and her charisma.

September 1997 This Rock Biography Is An Extreme Teen Queen

Degradation Tale James DiGiovanna
This is one of the more amusing and creditable aspects of Brite's book: She
frequently notes where Love's story doesn't match that of other witnesses and
participants. Sometimes it seems Love has lied to make herself appear more hardedged, but usually the lies are pointless, simply rearranging facts for no particular
reason. Who cares if she fucked a groupie or never fucked the rock star she
lived with?
It's this kind of disregard for reality that makes Courtney an interesting
subject...she not only doesn't care about the truth, she seems not to care about a lot
of things that we assume are basic human values, like security, personal safety and
hygiene (when she was young her classmates named her 'Pee Girl' because of her
persistent odor).
Lives on the edge are the stuff of good rock bios, and true rock lifestyle
experimentalists like GG Allin, Sid Vicious and Courtney are interesting for more
than just the sleazy, cheap thrills they lived. There's something about
someone who lives without regard, or in a way largely alien to our
sensibilities, that's compelling.

April 1997 (TIME Magazine Excerpt) "...The most amazing journey of all was taken by Courtney Love. Last year
she was still rocks's open wound. Tread-marked and track-marked, widow of
Kurt Cobain and primal scream of the rock band Hole, she was the id other
rockers warmed their instruments against. This year she's Audrey Hepburn. Ok, not
quite. But for her sizable performance in The People vs. Larry Flynt in which she
played Flynt's formidable and doomed wife Althea, a druggy ex-stripper, Love won
the New York Film Critics Circle Award as Best Supporting Actress. Last month the
same woman who used to apply lipstick the was mashing toddlers crayons was
demurely turned out for the Oscars in a chiffon Versace gown. It was the most
thorough transformation since Eliza Doolittle met Henry Higgins. If Courtney does
become the next Audrey Hepburn, don't say we didn't warn you."

January 1997 (VOGUE Magazine) Labour Of Love Vicki Woods:

Late is nothing. I was ready for stumbling about, loud language, projectile vomiting,
smeared mascara, trashy attitude, tattoos, tiaras. Serious bad taste. Danger. You get
high on danger just from Courtney Loves clippings file, never mind the
lyrics of her songs. (...) In the flesh, Love has a sweetly pretty face and a
knockout smile. She wore very little makeup, only mascara and lip gloss, and
Garren had chopped her hair for the shoot. I imagine he used scissors on her rather
than the steak knife and fork that she must normally employ, so her fashionably
messy bob looked planned, as opposed to an act of nature. I told her she looked

pretty, and she said, Thank you. I thought youd be wrecked, I said. Wrecked?
She threw me a look, pondering wrecked.
(...) But shes a strong woman, Courtney Love. And a brave survivor. Some people
criticized her public display or raw grief and anger after Cobains death.

December 1996 (THE MIRROR) - My Wild Wife Courtney

Wore Stockings and Suspenders in Bed. and So Did I
(James Moreland Assault Account)
**(Note: If one of the women Axl Rose beat talked about his assaults in the midst
of mentioning their sex life, would the emphasis be that it made it hotter and
sexier or paint Axl as a complete asshole despite everything?)**
Wild sex. Beatings. Raging quarrels. Threats. The ecstasy and agony of living with
Courtney Love, the wild woman of rock, has at last been revealed by her first
husband.
"We had a great sex life - but in the end that was the only thing that kept us
together," said transvestite singer James Moreland. "I knew within months it was a
disaster. But when your wife dresses up in stockings and suspenders every night and
makes love to you when you dress the same way, you try your very best to make
your marriage work." Grunge queen Courtney - who was later to marry gun suicide
Nirvana star Kurt Cobain - wed Moreland in Las Vegas after a whirlwind romance. "It
wasn't long before I became a battered husband," he said. "She would go mad for no
reason, and hit me time and time again.
"Once she threatened to pay someone pounds 150 to beat me up because I didn't
agree with her about something." "She was so warped that she even devised a
weight loss programme that involved getting pregnant and having an abortion."

December 1995 (Entertainment Weekly) Courtney Love And

Barbara Walters: Women Who Cry Too Much A.J Jacobs
(Parallels) - Love says inappropriate things (she pleaded guilty to abusing a Qantas
stewardess).
**(Note Abuse isnt inappropriate. Its monstrous and fucking abuse)**
Love says inappropriate things (she pleaded guilty to abusing a Qantas stewardess).

July 1995 Rocks Bad Girl Courtney Love Is More Than The ToughTalking, Headline-making Widow Of Kurt Cobain. The Singer, On Tour in
Camden Today, Is Also A Myth-Maker, Inventing Herself As She Goes
Jennifer Weiner
But who do you look to if you're Courtney Love, brash, bratty lead singer of the
band Hole, an almost-rock star teetering on the brink of fame, and when the renown
that you crave finally arrives, it is because your husband, the truly big rock star, has
killed himself? (...) Even then, her temper was legendary. Love's fights with
industry executives and other musicians won her the reputation of a scheming, selfobsessed witch on wheels - a "psycho hose beast" in the words of producer Steve
Albini; a ''manipulator and a careerist," in the words of former flame Trent Reznor;
''delusional" according to one-time band-mate Kat Bjelland; "a danger to herself,"
according to the incident report Kathleen Hanna filed after Love decked her; a "child
who needs a spanking" in the words of the writer who profiled her for the recent

Vanity Fair.

August 1995 Its Love Or Hate For Tempestuous Courtney Love

Michael Saunders:
To some she is the avatar of a rock goddess, snarling lips smeared blood-red like
those of Kali, a Hindu deity who can be either destructive or charitable. In the latter
guise, she's the Madonna, protective mother of Frances Bean Cobain and sister-savior
to countless girls and young women who idolize Ms. Love as a powerful and
successful woman in a man's world.
She's also the epicenter of a nagging conspiracy theory among some Nirvana fans,
who are hounding her to answer a private investigator's claim that she was behind
Cobain's death. She is either loved or hated; few people who know about her harbor
ambivalence toward her.
(...) Even the perception of Ms. Love's background is polarized. She's often portrayed
as a trust-fund brat whose stipend from a rich relative fueled her global liaisons with
budding rockers -- path that eventually intersected with the rising Kurt Cobain.
Persistent rumors, especially among some Nirvana fans, claim that Hole got a record
deal only because Ms. Love married Kurt Cobain. (...) It fuels the carefully
sculpted bad-girl image, of course, but it's also a symbolically selfdestructive gesture. Jim Morrison and Iggy Pop used it along the journey to
rock godhood; Ms. Love, however, is often scorned for similar actions.
(...) Bad blood existed between the two for several years before the fight,
after which Ms. Hanna charged Ms. Love with assault. (...) Tim Sommer, an
artists and repertoire representative for Atlantic, said a sports expression is the
perfect description of the singer: "You can't stop Courtney Love, you can only
hope to contain her." (...) "I think that 80 percent of the people hate her for
the wrong reasons," Mr. Sommer said. "They hate her for all the sexist
insecure reasons. The bottom line is that when the tape rolls in a recording
session, she delivers the goods. She makes incredible records."

August 1995 (Q-Magazine Cover Story) Courtney Love Interview

Paul Du Noyer
If Courtney Love took a five-year course in Being Boring, she would still not
scrape a pass. () Many wish her well in her titanic efforts to hold everything
together, but to others she is an object of ghoulish awe. () A perfect ending? We
can hope. Somehow its fallen to Courtney Love to redeem the legacy of her
husbands futile demise. Shes undergone what no young woman ought, and
there is intense speculation about her capacity for survival. Like Kurt, shes
been made a symbol of Americas dysfunctional youth. Often, lately, shes
spoken of how important it is to believe in something. () Will her inherent humour,
guts and smartness be enough to save her from getting burnt? There look to be
roughly equal grounds for optimism and for the other thing. Right now she walks the
tightrope, on stilettoes.

June 1995 (Vanity Fair Cover Story) - Love Child Kevin Sessums
Grunge queen Courtney Love is on her way to becoming the most powerful
female rock icon in the country, but she thinks everybody wants her dead. As
Love searches for a new homesome place with witches and vampiresKevin

Sessums talks to the Great White Widos about sex, drugs, her daughter, Frances
Bean, and the suicide of her husband, Kurt Cobain. (...)
Im a Courtney Love fan because I think shes a woman who goes beyond
the limits of anything to say what she wants to say and to do what she
wants to do," a chubby teenager named Holly tells me just before the concert
begins in a small hall on the shore of the Great Salt Lakes Along with hundreds of
other sweet-faced girls and tough-talking boys, she is getting revved up for her idols
entrance. l think shes been through hell and back, says Holly. And shes
survived!

May 1995 Vanity Fair Paints A New Portrait Of Courtney Love

Matthew Gilbert:

Recently, I vowed never again to muse on Courtney Love in this column. The punky grunge diva
has been iconized by every popular magazine this side of Seattle since she became a power
widow. There was nothing left to say. OK, but I can't resist an angelic Miss World on the cover of
June's Vanity Fair, the same magazine that accused her of shooting heroin when pregnant with
daughter Frances Bean.

March 1995 Music Confidential Gina McHatton:

Mothers around the country might scoff at Love for her choices. But what
those mothers may not know is that Courtney has chosen to have her
daughter with her on the road. She is performer, and now the only breadwinner in her home. Love's career forces her on the road. Having Frances with her,
she has to make many sacrifices, but it appears that no sacrifice is as great to
Courtney as deserting Frances and leaving her behind. When Frances is at the
concerts in which Mommy plays, Love insists on "industrial-strength earplugs" and
keeping her off to the side of the stage so Love can see her. Having Frances on the
road allows for the quality time and healing that is very important for a grieving
mother and her child. Love's relationship with Stipe and Corgan not only allows
support and friendship for her, but a strong male influence for Frances.

February 1995 (Spin Magazine Cover Story) Endless Love Craig

Marks:
She indeed has lived through not only the gruesome suicide of her husband and best
friend, Kurt Cobain, but an impossibly unstable childhood, a globe-trotting turn as a
stripper, a whirlwind marriage, a pregnancy lousy with scandal, and the fatal
overdose of Hole's bassist Kristen Pfaff. (...) Not only is Love our very best rock star,
she's happy to oblige. (...) Love's reputation as a 50-foot drama queen plays
itself out with some regularity during our time together. "All I have to do is
lick my finger, stick it up in the air, and shit sticks to it," Love claims, and she's got a
point. With a keen mind, a ruthless sense of humor, and a dizzying mouth,
Love is a lightning rod even while trying to maintain a low profile.

December 1994 (Rollingstone Cover Story) Life Without Kurt

David Fricke:
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-fueled 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 day's press clips; a
highly informed and opinionated woman (on just about every subject) whose America
Online postings read like transmissions straight from the id; an ardent feminist who
can cover the Crystals' 1962 single "He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)" in concert with
both poignancy and irony; a mother who genuinely fears for the future of her 2-yearold daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.

May 1994 (Select Magazine) Love And Death Andrew Harrison:

Talking to Courtney Love is not a linear experience. She's ferociously intelligent and
has a forensic eye for detail, especially in the media. She can haul out any example
of misquotation from her memory like a database, and she has a thing about factchecking that would shame most colleges of journalism.

May 1994 (Spin Magazine Cover Story) Love Conquers All Dennis
Cooper:
Love is a curious superstar. Shes amazing looking, even weirdly gorgeous: fit, paler
than pale, her features both soft and blunt, with a big wad of lipsticked lips, and
huge, perpetually startled blue eyes capable of great ferocity. Watching her strike the
prerequisite bad girl poses for the photographer, I cant help wondering if this
hellishly beautiful, punk-derived image an image she has carefully maintained
with some refinements since her careers earliest beginnings honestly suits the
woman. Like de Beauvoir, Love is very intelligent, kind of workaholic, and full of
curious, knowledgeable takes on her culture. Shes also inherently charismatic,
albeit in a strange, almost anti- way. (...) Me, I like her a lot. And I keep
thinking you would too, but then I dont know.

August 1994 (Entertainment Weekly) - Courtney Love Comes Out Of

Hiding After Two Major Tragedies, Holes Front-woman Is Putting Her
Life Back Together Dana Kennedy:
But the dark side sometimes holds painful, ironic compensations. Overshadowed first
by Cobain, then by Cobains horrifying death, Love, 29, is turning into a symbol far
more complex than anything she envisioned as a teen groupie bent on stardom.
Shes become the Yoko Ono-cum-Jackie Kennedy for the ragged edge of
Generation X. Even though she has appeared on stage only once since Cobains
death performing two spontaneous songs with the Lemonheads in Manhattan last
month her popularity is growing. In fact, she may finally be transcending her
reputation as the rebellious punk-rocker/druggie mama everyone loves to
hate.

February 1993 (The Face Magazine Cover Story) Hole Lotta Love
Amy Raphael:
You can feel her presence in the room before she comes into sight, her
charisma projected in front of her. She smiles, a huge red lipsticky grin and
saucer-round green eyes, and extends a hand. Courtney is the eccentric, artistic,
larger-than-life front person with the strangely addictive personality. (...) Welcome to
the confusion that is Courtney Loves world, to being more famous for being part of
grunges royal family than for fronting a band that could by now have been
successful in its own right.

April 1992 (Details Magazine) Ace In The Hole Caren Myers:

Hole brings out the fetishistic creep in people. Because Courtney Love projects a
bruised, slutty image that is closer to Baby Jane Hudson than Baby Doll.
Because Kurt Cobain from Nirvana once called her "the best fuck in the

world" on TV. Because Hole, an almost all-girl grunge band from L.A, is one of the
most disturbing rock experiences since the Birthday Party. And because, with
Madonna wanting to sign them to her new label, Hole might become the first
successful glamour-grunge crossover band.
On one level, Courtney Love is just one more female kicking against the
circumscribed status of women in rock. But her approach resembles no one
else's. She's not a bleached Joan Jett, proving she can rock as loud as the boys, or a
deranged Debbie Harry, leaking just a little perversity and aggression into a sexy pop
image. Onstage, Love recalls the glamorously fucked-up, self-destructive male
archetype Iggy Pop. Or Nick Cave. Her disheveled vintage dresses and frilly ankle
socks recall the Divinyl's Christina Amphlett, but she incites more hostility than
desire. She knows how to charm an audience, but often, caught in the fury of the
songs, she forgets to. Then she'll throw herself into the front row, partly because it's
a playful, punk rock thing to do, partly as a test to see if they'll treat her well or rip
her clothes off.

BOOK MENTIONS + ESSAYS

[ 2015 1994]
June 2014 Girl Trouble: Panic And Progress In The History Of Young
Women Carol Dyhouse
(Back Cover) Whether it be stories of brazen flappers staying out and up all night
in the 1920s, inappropriate places for Mars bars in the 1960s or Courtney Loves
mere existence in the 1990s, bad girls have been a mass-media staple for more
than a century.

February 2005 A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues And The Women
Who Sing Them Buzzy Jackson:
(Page 1) | (Page 2)
No chronicle of women with attitude would be complete without the mention of the
fabulously self-contradicting Courtney Love. () Like Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie
Holiday, and Etta James, Courtney Love never tried to hide the truth about her
lifestyle from her fans. She took drugs, flirted with women and men, and struggled
with the double standard women faced in the entertainment industry, choosing to
confront the issue publicly rather than pretend it didnt exist. She had cosmetic
surgery after Cobains death and told a journalist she did it so I would take better
photographs and sell records and not be considered the way [former all girl band]
Frightwig was considered Oh theyre fat, theyre ugly, no wonder theyre
screaming...I want my anger to be valid and the only way to do that is to be fairly
attractive.
**(Note Except that subversiveness and appealing to both sides turns on its head
when she beats women, says that feminists arent taken seriously because theyre
ugly, believes that right wing eugenic concepts of beauty reign supreme and loves
them - and generally perpetuates internalized misogyny)**

April 2002 Rockin Out Of The Box: Gender Maneuvering In

Alternative Hard Rock Mimi Schippers
(Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5)

**(Note Despite the fact that regular Hole concert goers are telling her that she
stages sexual assaults and that its a common thing, the author, somehow, finds
staged sexual assaults subversive despite the fact that she literally ruined the lives
of multiple male Hole fans who were actually interested in her band and laughed in
the court room)**
I was stunned. The next morning, as I relayed the story to a friend, her response
shocked me even more than what had transpired the night before. Oh Ive heard
she does that at all her shows. Some guy in L.A. is suing her. Its a part of
their show. () However, when I learned that this was a routine occurrence at Hole
shows, my neatly constructed analytic bubble burst. This was not the ongoing
process of everyday interaction; this was a carnivalesque performance, staged
planned, and arranged. Yet it was a performance that critically examined sexual
assault. Courtney Love constructed the audience as dominated by a certain kind of
man - linebackers in this case- and therefore potentially sexually aggressive. She
chastised women for not taking control of the mosh pit and for not protecting
her. According to Love, the entire audience, including the women and men,
was initially culpable and responsible for making sexual assault likely and
possible. When the assault happened, she publicly named it and fought
back. This was rock performance, but it appeared to be performance with a
feminist political agenda.

2001 Canadian Womens Studies Things To Do With The Ironic And

Unruly Robyn Diner:
In this paper, I wish to show how Liz and Courtney's witty, thought provoking, and
politically-evoking ironies are a powerful tool for political action. (...) What can one
say about Courtney Love that hasn't already been stated, unstated, restated, and
debated? She is the ultimate Queen of Contradictions: both the hypocritical
and the more sincerely ironic kind. Love is thus a mistress of instrumental
irony par excellence. When vilified by the press for her bad mothering techniques,
she responds in "Plump" by singing ". . .I don't do the dishes, I throw them in the
crib." (...) The nice girls and boys might be looking and listening, writes Nicolini, but
what are they getting? Such stagings are also vulnerable to recuperation
and co-option. Indeed, bad girls like Courtney have become hot commodities.

2001 Disruptive Divas: Feminism, Identity & Popular Music Lori

Burns And Melisse Lafrance
(Page 1 | Page 2)
Courtney Love is the angriest disruptive diva profiled, and I consider my analysis of
her work to be very important precisely because both her musical approach and her
political purpose have been unforgivably perverted by the mainstream press. Loves
album Live Through This is a formidable feminist manifesto shamelessly admonishing
male supremacist acts of violence against women and the patriarchal body tyranny
to which women are routinely subjected. () In my view when the press read Hole
and Love as separate phenomena, they enable themselves to both recognize Hole as
a significant and successful popular musical presence and to simultaneously deride
Courtney Love as hysterical, dangerous, and generally ridiculous.

August 1999 The Bust Guide To The New Girl Order Marcelle Karp
& Debbie Stoller

There have been lots of divine cunts in history. () Often a cunt is a woman you hate,
but you just have to hand it to her. () It goes without saying that Madonna has
made a career out of being a bitch who is sort of a cunt but doesnt have the guts to
go all the way, while Courtney Love is too much of a cunt to care if anybody
calls her a bitch.

Spring 1998 Bitch: In Praise Of Difficult Women (Book) Elizabeth

Wurtzel:
(Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3)
**(Note If its a woman thats suffering were going to sympathize and its
misogynistic if you criticize her for that. But if its a man hes a miserable wussy and
he may as well blow his brains out than drag down his wife or anyone else)**
It was easy to say that the witch killed him. She broke his heart, she drove him crazy,
she annoyed him whatever. () But I have a feeling that a person as
miserable, depressed, addicted and reeling as Kurt must have been by the
end of his life was a real pain the ass to deal with. Suicidal souls are
exhausting and emotionally draining to all who get near them. And I think, at a
certain point, even those who love them completely just say, in deeds if not in words:
So fine, blow your brains out. () But the sad side of watching such a talent as
Loves eclipsed by bad behavior calculated or otherwise is that it is just not fair:
Kurt Cobain, her deceased husband, was every bit as much the it-boy of grunge
with his changing hair hues, his dress-donning for videos, and even his willingness to
be half of a very public pair of junkies heading for the junkyard; but in the collective
consciousness, his talent takes precedent over his image. () She has become, in
this way, a model for the New Post-Depressive Woman: saving her tears
and hangovers for her private life, in public she is harsh and hard, like
Roseanne, Carrie Fisher, and other rehab refugees and loony-bin-trip
survivors making a Hollywood living, she is witty overweeningly wise and
wise-cracking, smug and smart but not that smart. Courtney Love believes
a career will set her free, and his is not dumb about doing what it takes.

January 1998 Bad Mothers: The Politics Of Blame In TwentiethCentury America Molly Ladd-Taylor And Lauri Umansky:
(Chapter 23 Moms Dont Rock The Popular Demonization Of
Courtney Love Norma Coates): (Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3):
Love remains under the microscope of mainstream scrutiny, aided and abetted by
forces she herself unleashed as well as factors that are totally out of her control (such
as Cobains suicide). () The mainstream demonization of love as a bad mother is
not surprising. However, her subsequent demonization within rock itself is surprising.
Rock represents oppositional culture in the popular imagination, a space of rampant
sexuality, noise, and unruliness that is best conjured up by the triptych sex, drugs,
and rock and roll. ()
Courtney Loves antics, notoriety, and belligerent persona are the stuff of tabloid
fascination. Following her exploits can provide a safe way to live out ones rock and
roll fantasy without having to clean up the wreckage later. The mainstream media
construct Love as figure through whom we are reminded that however much we may
fantasize or even desire the ideal rock and roll lifestyle, or another transgressive
life-style, it has effects that we would never want to visit upon our children. The
boundaries of acceptable motherhood are thereby policed through the
demonization of Courtney Love. () Love likes to play the bad girl. Flaunting her
transgressive style of mothering lets her antagonize her mainstream detractors, as
well as expose the inherent conservatism and reactionary gender politics which

imbue and haunt rock. () Loves persona could just be a gender-bending reiteration
of the rock and roll bad boy act, with little if any self-consciously feminist politics
attached to it.