America's Sweetheart is the debut solo album by Courtney Love, released in 2004. Her first release since Hole's break-up, the album - which was delayed for three years - was preceded by much negative publicity over Love's legal problems and drug issues at the time.

Background and history

Recording process and production

Though the original recordings for America's Sweetheart were made at a château in the south of France in 2003, the concept of Love's first solo album was conceived as early as 2001, when rough versions of songs later to appear on America's Sweetheart were being recorded. Critics who had heard the recordings referred to the tracks as "her best recordings yet."Access Hollywood report on Nirvana recordings and Courtney Love's upcoming release, 2002. Also around this time, Love began doing live performances, notably at both Ventura's Majestic Theater and the Hollywood Bowl in October 2001, at which early versions of songs (such as "But Julian, I'm A Little Bit Older Than You" and "All the Drugs") were performed. v 3.0">Hassler, Jenny. Holelive.com - The Ultimate Hole Trading Community

Artist/Band Information

Courtney Michelle LoveAlthough some sources give Love's natal name as "Love Michelle Harrison," her listing on the California Birth Index from the Center for Health Statistics gives a natal name of "Courtney Michelle Harrison." Between adoptions from several step-fathers, she has 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 music career and after the end of her first marriage (of which the legal records still feature the name "Courtney Michelle Menely"). According to the same statistics list above, the natal status of Courtney's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, already include "Love" as the mother's maiden surname. (born Courtney Michelle Harrison; July 9, 1964) is an American vocalist, lyricist, musician and actress, perhaps best known as frontwoman and rhythm guitarist for alternative rock band Hole. She also received massive media attention over her marriage to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, before and after his suicide in 1994.

After an unstable childhood and adolescence, Love sought to form a rock band from an early age, and founded Hole in 1989 at the age of 25. The band released several albums in the 1990s, debuting with Pretty on the Inside (1991), an underground hit, especially in the United Kingdom. The band followed with two highly acclaimed albums, Live Through This (1994) and Celebrity Skin (1998). Love also starred in several films throughout the '90s, most notably The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996), for which she won a Golden Globe nomination.

Hole would officially disband in 2002, and Love became a media spectacle in the latter part of the decade due to a series of legal troubles and battles with drug addiction, largely amidst the release of her first solo album. In 2007, Love announced her sobriety after a lengthy court-ordered rehab, and began working on a fifth album. In 2009, Love reformed Hole with new members, and released the group's fourth album, Nobody's Daughter (2010).

Love has also attracted significant media attention over the years for her wild stage performances and subversive feminism. According to the British newspaper, The Guardian, Rolling Stone once called Love "the most controversial woman in rock history."

Early life

Courtney Michelle Harrison was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Linda Carroll, a therapist, and Hank Harrison, a publisher. According to Love, her mother named her after the alcoholic, fledgling debutante protagonist of a 1956 "dime-store novel" called Chocolates for Breakfast by Pamela Moore. Love would discover, in later years, that her biological grandmother was novelist Paula Fox and her great-grandmother was Cuban-born screenwriter Elsie Fox; Fox had given Linda Carroll up for adoption when she was an infant.

Love's family were part of the burgeoning hippie scene of the 1960s. Linda Carroll was raised in a wealthy Catholic family, and ventured into the subcultures of San Francisco where she met Hank Harrison, and the two soon married. Harrison was an "amateur acid maker", according to Love, and was briefly a road manager for The Grateful Dead. At five years old, Love was featured on the back of the Grateful Dead's third album, Aoxomoxoa (1969), sitting under a tree among the band members and various roadies and musicians.

Carroll and Harrison's marriage wouldn't last long, and they filed for a divorce by the time Love was five. During a child custody case following her parents' divorce, Love alleges that her mother and one of her friends presented letters implying her father had given LSD to the three-year-old child. Love's father denies this allegation, and in a San Francisco Chronicle article in 1995 Love admitted, "I don't know if it actually happened" but insisted it was alleged in court. Journalists Max Wallace and Ian Halperin later claimed to have searched through "hundreds of pages of transcripts from the divorce proceedings" and concluded that there was no such reference.Wallace, Max and Halperin, Ian. Love & Death. Atria, 2004. ISBN 0-7434-8483-5, p. 29 Nonetheless, the trial concluded with full custody being awarded to Love's mother. Love spent her childhood settled in countercultural hippie communes in Oregon.Azerrad, Michael. Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. Doubleday, 1994. ISBN 0-385-47199-8, p. 170 Love and her two half-sisters relocated to Eugene with their mother, where she studied psychotherapy at the University of Oregon, and shortly married a man named Frank Rodriguez.

CourtneyLoveyoung.pngthumbright160pxChildhood photograph of Love, early 1970s.In 1972, Love's mother relocated to New Zealand with Love's half sisters, but left Love behind in the United States under the care of a family friend. Love soon after moved to Portland, Oregon to live with her ex-stepfather. At age 12, Love applied to join the Mickey Mouse Club,; As revealed in her scrapbook, Dirty Blonde, Love was a teenage fan of the Bay City Rollers: "...from the collages of her favorite rockers (in her case, the Bay City Rollers), to scrawled lists of artists and things she yearned to learn more about to pages of poems and daydreams..." but was reportedly rejected after reading a Sylvia Plath poem for her audition.Rockland, Kate. , New York Times, 5th November 2006: "The book offers several gems; one is a 1976 rejection letter from the Mickey Mouse Club. 'I read Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy,"' Love says, 'grinning widely.'"

;Teenage years (1977-1980)

At age 14, Love was arrested for shoplifting a t-shirt and was sent to juvenile hall, and later Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility in Salem. While in juvenile hall, Love was exposed to rock music for the first time: she was given Patti Smith's Horses and The Pretenders' self-titled album. Love eventually reunited with her family in New Zealand at age 15, only to be sent to another boarding school soon after.

At age 16, Love gained legal emancipation from her family and traveled to England, Ireland, and Japan, living on a trust fund established for her by her mother's adoptive parents. "'I talked one of my mother's gurus, of which she had many, into letting me live with him. He got $3,000 a month from my trust fund, which he'd spend on boys, and I went to the junior high, where my friends were teenage prostitutes. They were so glamorous, I just wanted to hang out with them. Melissa, Melinda and Melody. I ended up going through the juvenile system with them because I got arrested shoplifting a Kiss T-shirt.' She was 13." While in Ireland, Love took two semesters at Trinity College in Dublin and worked as a photographer for Hot Press.Love, Courtney. "So, he said he'd get me into Trinity in Dublin . So, I took two semesters there. And I started taking photos for Hot Press, and I met eh, Julian Cope one night, and uh, and uh, and uh... these crazy things happened. And he said, "come live in my house" and he gave me his keys." Interview on Later... with Jools Holland on May 2, 1995. Love was given 500 dollars each month and began taking jobs in strip clubs to make extra money. In England, she moved into the Liverpool home of musician Julian Cope, of The Teardrop Explodes, and became a regular at rock shows. In his autobiography Head-On, Cope refers to her as "the adolescent" in place of her name. She also developed a friendship with Ian McCulloch of Echo and the Bunnymen.

Love returned to Portland at age 17, still pursuing music, and became part of the city's punk rock scene. According to Love, she briefly worked as a DJ at Portland's community radio station, KBOO, and wrote an article under the name "Courtney Michelle" in punk zine MRR: "I wrote three or four of these missives from Portland, all about Poison Idea and Rancid Vat. But of course being me, I wrote something controversial and got a cross burned on my lawn. I wrote that Tom 'Pig' was a neo-fascist or something."

Love's interest in punk rock flourished, and she immersed herself with alternative and countercultural groups of people— "I was quite the terror in Portland," Love said in retrospect. Love befriended fellow punk kids and strippers, and often hung out at local gay bars with drag queens: "I didn't ever really talk until I started hanging out in '80 or '81 with drag queens at the Metropolis in Portland (now the live music club Dante's). I was very, very quiet. So much so that at one point when I was very young I was diagnosed as a probable autistic. And then I started hanging around with bitchy drag queens and with Ursula and Robin, and they basically raised me. I found my inner bitch and I ran with her."

Though still a minor, Love returned to work as an exotic dancer in various venues in Portland, lying to club owners in order to get jobs. Love worked at several clubs, including the Star Theater and the infamous Mary's Dine & Dance. With her income from stripping, she was able to rent an apartment in Northwest Portland with two of her friends. Between 1980 and 1982, she frequently traveled up and down the West Coast in search of local music scenes, and while doing so, adopted the name "Courtney Love."

Music career

1982-1988: Early musical endeavors

Love began her music career with a brief stint as lead singer of Faith No More. According to Love, she showed up to a concert in San Francisco in 1982 wearing a wedding gown, and basically "demanded" to be in their band, wanting to replace their lead singer. She was 18 years old. Her work in the band was brief, though she later maintained a friendship with band member Roddy Bottum.

At age 20, in 1984, Love met Kat Bjelland in Portland at the Satyricon nightclub, and the two began a friendship that was marked by drug experimentation. Both were extremely interested in music, however, and they decided to form a band together, called Sugar Babydoll.Interview with Kat Bjelland. Edited by Liz Evans. Women, Sex and Rock'N'Roll: In Their Own Words. Rivers Orum Press/Pandora List, 1994. The pair recruited bassist Jennifer Finch in Los Angeles, whom Love had also become friends with. The group wouldn't last long, however, and they ended up parting ways in 1985 after fighting and troubles revolving individual drug dependency.

Love and Bjelland, still friends, moved to San Francisco the following year and formed a band called The Pagan Babies, with Deidre Schletter and Janis Tanaka, but the band would dismember after recording one demo. Lastly, Love played bass in Kat Bjelland's band Babes In Toyland in Minneapolis for a short time but was kicked out of this group as well.

Love briefly attended several colleges between 1985 and 1987 during her many relocations, spending little more than six months to a year at each— she took classes at Portland State University, as well as San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute, studying English and Buddhism, but never invested enough time to graduate.

Unsuccessful in her musical endeavors thus far, Love, an inexperienced actress, submitted an audition tape to director Alex Cox, which earned her a bit part in the Sid Vicious biopic Sid and Nancy (1986). Impressed by Love, Cox offered her $40,000 for a leading role in his following film Straight to Hell (1987), which she filmed in Spain in 1986. Love was ultimately dissatisfied with the experience and the "low level of celebrity" that it brought her, and returned to stripping, where she was recognized and photographed by customers at a bar in McMinnville, Oregon. Love then retreated to Alaska for several months where she continued to strip to support herself, all the while writing song lyrics and aspiring to form a band. Love would say in retrospect, "I was 24, and I was looming on 25, and if I hadn't made it for real by 25, that was it."

1989-1993: Hole and Pretty on the Inside

Hole 1991 ad.pngthumbright210pxFlyer made by Courtney Love promoting a Hole show in 1991. Note that lyrics which would later appear in the song "Violet" are featured on the flyer.

In 1989, Love moved to Los Angeles— burnt out on acting, she taught herself to play guitar and set out to form her own band. She placed an ad in Flipside, reading: "I want to start a band. My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac"Who Killed Kurt Cobain?: The Mysterious Death of an Icon (pp. 54) to which Eric Erlandson, along with over a dozen other musicians, replied. Love ultimately chose Erlandson. After a cycle of several bass players and drummers, Love and Erlandson recruited bassist Jill Emery and drummer Caroline Rue into the band, which they named Hole. The band's name allegedly came from a quote from Euripides' Medea which read "there's a hole that pierces my soul"Later... With Jools Holland Interview— Courtney Love, 1995 as well as a conversation Love had with her mother.

Amidst the formation of Hole, Love met and married "Falling" James Moreland, vocalist of The Leaving Trains. Love said in later years that the two married as "a joke", and an annulment was filed within a few months of the marriage.Bush, John. at Allmusic

Meanwhile, Hole played their first gig in November 1989 after three months of rehearsal, and made singles on the Long Beach, California, independent label Sympathy for the Record Industry. Their first single, titled "Retard Girl," was issued in spring 1990, and had been produced by Love's then ex-husband Moreland. One year later, the band debuted their second single, "Dicknail" through Sub Pop Records. The group began to gain a following in Los Angeles and a decent local fanbase.

Influenced by the sounds and style of no wave rock bands, Love sought out Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon to produce the band's first studio album, a proposal to which Gordon accepted. Hole's debut album Pretty on the Inside (1991) was released in September 1991 on Caroline Records, produced by Gordon and Gumball's Don Fleming. It sold well for an independent release and received specifically favorable reviews in the British alternative music press, charting at 59 on the UK Albums Chart in October 1991. The New Yorker referred to it as "the most compelling album to have been released in 1991" and Spin also labeled it one of the 20 best albums of the year. Love went on tour with Hole to promote the record in the United States following a lengthy tour of Europe and the UK, where Love was touted as a "darling" of their alternative rock scene. Several years after the album's release, Love made comments that though the album was "the truth", it was also an act of proving herself to her "indie peers" who had "made fun of her" for liking R.E.M. and The Smiths. She also and referred to the creation of the album as a sort of self-exorcism.

During this period, Love had befriended many figures in the alternative rock scene, including Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins (whom she briefly dated). In January 1989, Love had her first encounter with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in Portland at the Satyricon nightclub, where she had often hung out in her teenage years. Cobain and his band, Nirvana, who were still relatively underground at the time, were playing at the club that night. Cobain passed by a booth where Love was seated with a friend, and she blurted to him, "You look like Dave Pirner" (lead singer of Soul Asylum). The two purportedly playfully wrestled on the floor in front of a jukebox that night, but Love left the club before Cobain did. Eventually, through mutual friends and other chance encounters, Love and Cobain began dating in 1991, and were married in 1992. They gave birth to their only daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, in August 1992.

1994-1995: Commercial breakthrough

The marriage between Love and Cobain lasted up until 1994; Cobain was experiencing immense success with his band Nirvana, and Love was in the studio recording Hole's sophomore album, Live Through This (1994). In April 1994, Cobain was found dead in the couple's Seattle home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Both Love and Cobain had been staying in separate rehabilitation centers in California at the time due to heroin abuse; Cobain checked himself out of the center during treatment and vanished, returning to Seattle without telling anyone. His body was found in their home on April 8, 1994, four days before the release of Hole's Live Through This. A memorial was held for Cobain two days later at the Seattle Center, with a pre-recorded message of Love reading Cobain's suicide note, while crying and chastising him. Near the end of the vigil, Love arrived at the park and distributed some of Cobain's clothing to those who still remained.

The tragedy in Love's personal life occurred during Hole's biggest achievement thus far— Live Through This, recorded in the fall of 1993 in Atlanta, would garner much attention, not only because of it being the group's first commercial album, but also because of its release date, just days after Cobain committed suicide. The album featured a new lineup, with Kristen Pfaff on bass and Patty Schemel on drums; Jill Emery and Caroline Rue had both left the band in 1992. Less than two months after the release of Live Through This, on June 16, Kristen Pfaff died of an apparent heroin overdose. Love soon after recruited 22-year-old bassist Melissa Auf der Maur for the band's upcoming tour.

The live performances for Hole's 1994 and 1995 tours became notorious due to Love's emotional state at the time; they were described as "part therapy and part eulogy", with Love often altering hurtful song lyrics toward herself, dedicating songs to Cobain and Pfaff, provoking fans, throwing guitars into the audience, and breaking into screaming fits onstage. Disgruntled Nirvana fans—many of whom had been adherents to conspiracy theories alleging that Love had murdered Cobain— threw shotgun shells at her onstage.

The dramatic nature of the tour came to public light on the Fourth of July, 1995— while playing at the Lollapalooza Music Festival, Love punched Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna in the face, after pelting her with candy and throwing a lit cigarette at her. Hanna had allegedly made a joke about Love's daughter shooting up in a closet. Following the incident, Hanna pressed charges, and Love pled guilty and underwent anger management classes.

In spite of the recent tragedies in Love's life and the highly emotional tour, Live Through This was an immense commercial and critical success. Spin and the Village Voice declared it "Album of the Year" and by November the record was certified gold. By April 1995, it went platinum. Entertainment Weekly gave it a positive review, noting the lyrical content of the songs and Love's dealings with it: "Life in the media spotlight, motherhood, being called Nirvana's Yoko Ono, the idea that love and sex strip women of their dignity-these and other thoughts are on her mind, and her frazzled, occasionally venomous observations make for what amounts to a shrink session with a beat." Columnist Geoffrey Himes noted the album's reactiveness toward "the impossible situation that confronts women when they are asked to be both wild sources of pleasure and unblemished mother figures."

Live Through This went on to be declared one of the best albums of all time by Rolling Stone magazine in their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time issue in 2003.

1996-1999: Hiatus and Celebrity Skin

Following the success of Live Through This, Hole went on a hiatus beginning in 1996 while Love acted in several films. In 1997, the band released a compilation album, My Body, The Hand Grenade through City Slang records, which featured material from the band's earliest recordings in 1989 up until 1995— the album featured several singles and live tracks, and was described as an anthology of the band's progression from punk rock to more mainstream alternative rock tastes.

While My Body, The Hand Grenade was hitting store shelves, Hole was in the studio recording Celebrity Skin, which featured a more pop rock style than the band's previous albums. Released in September 1998, Celebrity Skin was noted for its commercial style, and received positive critical reaction. Rolling Stone gave the album four out of five 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 multi-platinum, 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. The album is noted for being the only Hole album to garner a #1 hit single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, with its title track, "Celebrity Skin".

During the release and promotion of Celebrity Skin, Love and Fender designed a low-price Squier brand guitar, called Vista Venus (as Cobain did in 1994, doing the design of his Fender Jag-Stang). The instrument featured a shape inspired by Mercury, Stratocaster, and Rickenbacker's solidbodies and had a single-coil and a humbucker pickup. In an early 1999 interview, Love said about the Venus: "I wanted a guitar that sounded really warm and pop, but which required just one box to go dirty (...) And something that could also be your first band guitar. I didn't want it all teched out. I wanted it real simple, with just one pickup switch. Because I think that cultural revolutions are in the hands of guitar players". 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 the U.S. on a tour with Marilyn Manson. The two bands mocked each other on stage. Hole dropped off the tour, citing the obligation to pay 50% of Manson's staging costs as a reason. The singers of both bands told MTV there was no animosity and they were happy to end the tour. Hole finished the year's dates with Imperial Teen opening.MTV.com: "". Retrieved 18 June 2007.

2000-2007: Solo work and interruptions

Courtney Love on stage crop.jpgthumb160pxrightLove performing in London, England on her 43rd birthday (2007).With Hole in disarray, Love began a "punk rock femme supergroup" called Bastard during autumn 2001, enlisting Schemel, Veruca Salt co-frontwoman Louise Post, and bassist Gina Crosley, whom Post recommended. Though a demo was completed, the project never reached fruition: conflicts between Love and Crosley, then between Love and replacement bassist Corey Parks from Nashville Pussy, led to the group's demise. On May 24, 2002, Hole officially announced their breakup amid continuing litigation with Universal Music Group.

A whirlwind of legal troubles surrounded Love beginning in 2003, when public attention fell on her for various arrests and drug charges, most notably after the release of her solo album, America's Sweetheart.Donegan, Lawrence. Sunday Magazine: December 2003. Love had begun composing the album with Linda Perry in 2002.

America's Sweetheart, released on Virgin Records in February 2004, was embraced by critics with mixed reviews. Spin called it a "jaw-dropping act of artistic will and a fiery, proper follow-up to 1994’s Live Through This" and awarded it eight out of ten stars, while Rolling Stone suggested that, "for people who enjoy watching celebrities fall apart, America's Sweetheart should be more fun than an Osbournes marathon."

The album sold a disappointing 86,000 copies in its first three months, with the singles Mono and "Hold on to Me", both of which earned competent spots on album charts. Love has publicly expressed her regret over the record several times; in 2010, while speaking at the Oxford Union, Love called it "a crap record", and reasoned that her drug issues at the time were to blame.

2004-2007: "The Letterman Years"

It was clear during promotion of the album that Courtney was not as sober as she had claimed; she performed on The Late Show with David Letterman on March 17, 2004, followed by a chaotic interview which included Love standing on Letterman's desk and flashing her breasts. The same evening following the Letterman appearance, Love was arrested for possession of a controlled substance after a live performance in New York City. In public appearances, Love protested her arrest, denying charges and describing the drugs found on her as "one expired Percocet and one Ambien". The police, however, alleged possession of oxycodone and hydrocodone without prescription.

In August 2005, after several violations of rehab sentences, Love was sentenced to six months in lock down rehab, which ended in February 2006. She made a public statement after her release, saying: "I would just like to thank the court for allowing me these 90 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." Love has jokingly referred to the years of 2004-2007 as "The Letterman Years", referencing her public breakdown and drug troubles first surfacing during her infamous interview with David Letterman in 2004. "I should not be alive after what I went through during The Letterman Period," Love said in an interview with The Times.

In June 2005, Love started recording what was going to be her second solo album, Nobody's Daughter, collaborating with Linda Perry and Billy Corgan in the writing and recording of the album. Love had written several songs, including an anti-cocaine song entitled "Loser Dust", during her time in rehab.

Some tracks and demos from the album (initially planned for release in 2008) were leaked on the internet in 2006, and a documentary entitled The Return of Courtney Love, detailing the making of Nobody's Daughter, aired on the British television network in the fall of that year. A rough acoustic version of "Never Go Hungry Again", recorded during an interview for The Times in November, was also released. Incomplete audio clips of the song "Samantha", originating from an interview with NPR, were also distributed on the internet in 2007.

2008-present: Hole and Nobody's Daughter

CourtneyLove Ottowa.pngthumbleft180pxLove performing at Ottawa Bluesfest, 2010.

On June 17, 2009, NME reported that Hole would be reuniting. Former Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson stated in Spin magazine that contractually no reunion can take place without his involvement; therefore Nobody's Daughter would remain Love's solo record, as opposed to a "Hole" record. Love responded to Erlandson's comments in a Twitter post, claiming that "he's out of his MIND, Hole is MY band, MY name, and MY Trademark". Shortly after this quarrel, Love began posting new Hole logos, stage ideas, and guitar pick ideas on her Facebook page, implying, though not confirming, that Hole had reformed.

Nobody's Daughter was released worldwide as a Hole album in April 2010. Hole now consists of Courtney Love (guitar, vocals), Micko Larkin (guitar), Shawn Dailey (bass guitar), and Stu Fisher (drums, percussion). Some songs from the sessions with Linda Perry and Billy Corgan are on the album, including "Pacific Coast Highway", "Letter to God", "Samantha", and "Never Go Hungry", although they have been re-produced with Micko Larkin.

The first single from Nobody's Daughter was "Skinny Little Bitch", which was the most added song on alternative rock radio in early March 2010. Hole performed on The Late Show with David Letterman on April 27, 2010, and Courtney Love was interviewed. Hole also performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on April 29, 2010, on the outdoor stage.

The album received mixed reviews, though the majority of them leant toward positive. Rolling Stone gave the album three out of five stars, saying that Love "worked hard on these songs, instead of just babbling a bunch of druggy bullshit and assuming people would buy it, the way she did on her 2004 flop, America's Sweetheart." Slant Magazine also gave the album three out of five stars, saying "It's Marianne Faithfull's substance-ravaged voice that comes to mind most often while listening to songs like "Honey" and "For Once in Your Life." The latter track is, in fact, one of Love's most raw and vulnerable vocal performances to date. Co-penned by Linda Perry, the song offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a woman who, for the last 15 years, has been as famous for being a rock star as she's been for being a victim."

Love toured Europe, Japan, and the United States promoting the album in the spring and summer of 2010, ending the tour at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival in September.

Acting career

Love actually entered the entertainment industry through cinema in Alex Cox's 1986 biopic Sid and Nancy, playing a small role as Nancy Spungen's friend, Gretchen. Cox, impressed by Love's personality and energy, gave her a major role in his subsequent spaghetti western, Straight to Hell (1987). LarryFlyntCourtneyLove.pngthumbright250pxLove as Althea Flynt in The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996), which garnered her critical acclaim as an actress and a Golden Globe nomination.

Nearly a decade later, in 1996, Love returned to acting in between her success and work with Hole. She had small parts in Basquiat and Feeling Minnesota, but her greatest film achievement thus far came in the role of Larry Flynt's wife, Althea, in Miloš Forman's 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt, opposite Woody Harrelson as Flynt. The role marked her first major acting part. Forman chose Love, unaware of her history as a musician, because she was "an extremely talented actress." Initially, Columbia Pictures had been hesitant to hire Love for the role, because she wasn't a "big enough name", and they were also worried about her "troubled" past. Nonetheless, Forman fought the company and Love was given the role; however, Columbia Pictures refused to insure her during the making of the film. Ultimately, Forman, co-star Woody Harrelson, Oliver Stone, Michael Hausman, and Love herself pooled their money together in order to pay for her insurance, which demanded weekly urine tests.

Love passed every urine test while making the film, and the work paid off— she received unanimous critical acclaim upon the film's release, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama and a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress. Film critic Roger Ebert called her work in the film "quite a performance; Love proves she is not a rock star pretending to act, but a true actress". During this time she began a relationship with Edward Norton, which after four years would become her longest.

The late 1990s— after Hole released Celebrity Skin— saw Love in the party film 200 Cigarettes (1998), and starring opposite Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon (1999). In 2001, Love returned to acting and took a leading role in Julie Johnson (2001) as Lili Taylor's lesbian lover, for which she won an Outstanding Actress award at L.A.'s Outfest. She followed with another leading part in the thriller film Trapped (2002), alongside Kevin Bacon and Charlize Theron.

Personal life

Love is a member of Soka Gakkai, having started exploring the religion in 1991. Love stated that in 1990, she would chant Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō daily, and in retrospect, has credited her spiritual awakening as a being responsible for her success with Hole. Through her mother's biological mother, Love is a distant relative of actor Douglas Fairbanks.

;Relationships

Love's most prolific relationship was with fellow rock musician Kurt Cobain, whom she initially met in Portland, Oregon in 1989. They later became reacquainted through Jennifer Finch, one of Love's longtime friends and former bandmates, who was dating Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl at the time. Love told Grohl she had a crush on Cobain, and later sent him a heart-shaped box with a letter and porcelain doll head inside of it. Love and Cobain officially began dating in 1991, and were married on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii, on February 24, 1992. Love wore a satin and lace dress once owned by actress Frances Farmer, and Cobain wore green pajamas. Six months later, on August 18, the couple's only child, a daughter named Frances Bean Cobain, was born. In 1994, Cobain committed suicide. In speaking of her marriage with Kurt Cobain, she has been adamant about the fact that she loved him,"I loved my husband very, and I did everything I could to protect him..." VH1 Behind the Music: Courtney Love, quotation but in more recent years has been less open about continuing to discuss it. In a 2010 interview with NME, Love said she was "sick of talking about it". "I am not his spokesperson on Earth," she told the magazine. "I don't know what he'd be like now; he could be into society girls, he could be into fat girls, he could be homosexual. We don't know, he died at 27."

Beginning in 1996, Love dated actor Edward Norton when the two met on the set of The People vs. Larry Flynt. Her relationship with Edward was described as her "most stable"; Norton would later become daughter Frances Bean's godfather. The two were together for several years and were at one point engaged, but separated in 1999. Love was also romantically linked to Trent Reznor in 1995 and once left a suicide note in her room in the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood after a fight with Reznor. According to her book Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love, she left a suicide-note-like apology letter addressed to deceased husband Kurt Cobain and daughter Frances Bean, saying that I love you. Please forgive me. ... You are both too beautiful for me. I love you forever. Love was also briefly involved with British comedian Steve Coogan in the mid-2000s.Alan Carr: Chatty Man. Courtney Love Interview. 25 February 2010. Channel 4 (UK)

;Substance abuse battles

Russell Brand and Courtney Love.jpgthumbrightLove speaking with Russell Brand in Los Angeles, 2008.

Love's struggle with drug abuse has also been subject of many media outlets, first beginning in a Vanity Fair article by Lynn Hirschberg in 1992, which alluded that Love was addicted to heroin during her pregnancy.Love, Courtney. MTV Interview, 1994: "If you read Vanity Fair, you probably think I swig Jack Daniel's first thing in the morning, after I smoke my crack and don't see my daughter for ten days." Though Love has admitted she used heroin before she knew she was pregnant, she asserts that she stopped "damn fast": "My daughter knows I did drugs in my first trimester of pregnancy. She weighed 7lb 6oz when she was born and she was healthy. were excellent parents and I say that despite pretty much always having an edge on." In 2004, Love's drug use came to public attention again while she promoted her solo album, which ended in a six-month sentence to lock down rehab after struggles with prescription drugs and cocaine. In retrospect, Love has jokingly referred to 2004-2007 as "The Letterman Years", in reference to her public breakdown and drug-fueled behavior first surfacing during her infamous interview with David Letterman in 2004.David Letterman Interview: Courtney Love (27 April 2010); "The Letterman years..."

A lifelong smoker, Love has publicly expressed both anger toward recent smoking bans and simultaneous dismay at her own cigarette habit. In 2007, Love was ordered by doctors to quit the habit after nodules were found in her throat (presumably as a result of her career in punk rock vocals as well as smoking). In a 2010 interview, Love commented, saying: "Someone compared me to Bette Davis in that I make smoking cool for kids. And I think it was a tragic and truthful statement. And it made me feel, as you can imagine, just horrible. Then they challenged me to quit smoking — because if I can quit smoking, anyone can quit smoking. So while I am smoking a cigarette right now, I have written 'The Last Pack' with a Sharpie on every pack since then. And I'm gearing up to quit."

;Political advocacy

Love has advocated for several liberal causes, including stricter gun control laws and reform of the "corrupt" record industry. Love has also been an advocate for gay rights; during a 1997 award speech at VH1's Fashion Awards, Love said "I think that great personal style is being true to yourself and speaking your mind, which, since I'm up here, I'm going to do... I feel that keeping gay people in the closet with our actions and attitudes is cruel and tacky, and most of all, it's boring. I think we need to respect each other and ourselves, and who we are, and what we are, and not be afraid to be what we are, whether we're gay, or straight, or... insane." Love voted against California's Proposition 8 during the 2008 elections.

Love is also self-identified feminist, a theme that has not only come across in her music, but in her own persona. Love was written about in the journal Bad Subjects for her subversive feminism and "slut/diva" image, and her "self-conscious parody of female sex roles", which is often misinterpreted because the public "only sees the 'slut' without the critique of the system that creates categories like 'slut.'"

In more recent years, Love has been known for her frequent usage of social networking sites such as Twitter. In January 2011, it was announced that Love was being sued for defamation of fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir, whom Love referred to as a "drug-pushing prostitute" in a Twitter posting. The case, which is reportedly the first of its kind, was set for a court hearing in February. In March 2011, Love's attorneys settled the case.

Influences and musical style

Love has often cited new wave and punk groups/musicians as being great influences on her; such musical acts as Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, and Joy Division have been mentioned by Love, including songs by several of them being covered by Hole in live performances and, in some cases, studio recordings as album b-sides.Doll Parts single. ©1995 DGC/Geffen Records. "Do It Clean" lyrics by Echo and the Bunnymen In the early '90s, Hole as a group was greatly influenced by no wave music— in the initial advertisement placed by Love which resulted in Hole's formation, she cited Fleetwood Mac, Sonic Youth, and Big Black as her three major musical influences.

In a 1995 interview with Kurt Loder, Love divulged that in the late 1980s, guitarist Joe Strummer of The Clash told her that she was "the worst guitar player he'd ever heard", but she insisted she had improved by the early 1990s: "I'm fine... I have my style... and, you know what's funny, is most of the songs are complete Bauhaus rip-offs." During the same interview, Love said she was greatly influenced by guitarists Will Sergeant of Echo and the Bunnymen and Johnny Marr of The Smiths.

Although emphasis on new wave and punk rock influence has been noted by Love as well as critics, her favorite artists vary across genres and time periods. In her teenage years, Love was cited listening to jazz and lounge singers such as Billie Holliday and Frank Sinatra, as well as punk rock acts such as Flipper and The Dead Kennedys. Over the course of Hole's career, the band has done various live and studio covers from a wide array of artists, such as: Fleetwood Mac, The Velvet Underground, Wipers, The Germs, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Donovan, Nirvana, Guns N' Roses, Neil Young, Leadbelly, Duran Duran, and Carole King.

Although Hole's sound changed over the course of the band's career, the pretty/ugly dynamic has often been noted as a consistent theme in Love's music, most prominently in Hole's first two studio albums. In conjunction with the extremes between beauty and ugliness, Love's musical style has also been remarked for its layering of harsh and abrasive riffs which often bury more sophisticated musical arrangements. Upon the release of Pretty on the Inside, the album was lauded for its "fascination with the repulsive aspects of L.A.— superficiality, sexism, violence, and drugs." In Love's later musical career, however, on both Celebrity Skin and her solo America's Sweetheart, Los Angeles and the state of California was cast in a different light; such songs as "Malibu", "Sunset Marquis", and "Celebrity Skin" all highlight aspects of the glamourous nature of L.A. and its relationship with Love's own life. Celebrity Skin has been referred to as Love's "personal love letter to Los Angeles."

In terms of musical equipment, Love has used several different guitars during her career. In 1989 and the early 1990s, Love was seen several times with a Rickenbacker onstage, and, more often, a Fender Jazzmaster, which she played in the music video for "Miss World"; Love's Jazzmaster is now on display at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City. In the later '90s, Love played several Fender Stratocasters, as well as her own line of Squier Venus guitars. Most recently, in 2010, Love played a Rickenbacker 360 while touring.

Legacy

Though Love was branded by Rolling Stone as "the most controversial woman in the history of rock" (according to British newspaper The Guardian), her legacy in the music world— particularly that of alternative rock and female-driven musical acts— has been of significance.

Most notable has been her vision of female potential in rock music— an industry and art form that has been notorious for its male dominance. Of the slew of female-driven rock and punk bands that emerged in the 1990s— from alternative punk bands such as L7 to "riot grrrl" musical acts like Bikini Kill— Hole was also perhaps the most successful of its time, garnering a widespread fanbase, critical accolades, and notable album sales.

Likewise, Love has been cited as a gay icon by several LGBT publications, such as The Advocate, likely due to her perseverance and endurance through adverse situations in her life. Love's devoted gay fanbase was later written about in a when Hole released their fourth album in 2010. In the article, John Russel writes:

In more recent years, Love's presence in music has been noted: in 2004, Spin magazine ranked Love #18 in their list of "The 50 Greatest Rock Frontmen Of All Time", calling her "a great band leader because onstage or off, she always makes sure we're paying attention.". In January 2002, Love ranked at #14 in Q Magazines list of "100 Women Who Rock the World". The Biography Channel called Love "Outspoken, brash, and sometimes out of control", and "one of alternative rock's most fascinating figures."

Discography

;Hole

*Pretty on the Inside (1991)

*Live Through This (1994)

*Celebrity Skin (1998)

*Nobody's Daughter (2010)

;Solo

*America's Sweetheart (2004)

Filmography

As herself

See also

* Hole

* List of female rock singers

* Live Through This (1994)

*List of 54th Golden Globe Award nominees

* List of feminists

* List of punk rock bands

* Kurt Cobain

* Grunge

* Riot grrrl

* List of alternative rock artists

* Gay icons

* List of Buddhists

References