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Courtney Michelle Love (born Courtney Michelle Harrison, July 9, 1964) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist.
The daughter of psychotherapist Linda Carroll and writer and ex-Grateful Dead manager Hank Harrison, Love began her career as an actress in her early twenties, landing roles in Alex Cox's cult films Sid and Nancy (1986) and Straight to Hell (1987), and later rose to international prominence as frontwoman of alternative rock band Hole, which she formed in 1989.
Her uninhibited stage presence and confrontational lyrics, combined with publicity surrounding her 1992 marriage to Kurt Cobain, made her a noticeable and controversial figure in the alternative music scene of the 1990s.Love received critical adulation for Hole's 1991 hardcore punk-influenced debut album, and the band's second release, Live Through This (1994), went certified platinum and received wide critical acclaim.
Love returned to film in 1995, and received critical recognition for her performance in Miloš Forman's The People vs.
Larry Flynt, which earned her a Golden Globe Nomination.
Following this, Hole's third release, Celebrity Skin (1998), was nominated for three Grammy awards before the band went dormant in 2000.
Love continued to occasionally act in films, including roles in Man on the Moon (1999), and Trapped (2002), before releasing a solo album, America's Sweetheart (2004), which met with mostly positive reviews but underwhelming sales.
Love re-formed Hole in 2009 with new members, and released the album Nobody's Daughter (2010), which met mixed-positive reviews.1964–81: Early life and educationLove was born Courtney Michelle Harrison in San Francisco, California to psychotherapist Linda Carroll (née Risi) and Hank Harrison, publisher and brief manager of the Grateful Dead.
Love's mother is herself the daughter of novelist Paula Fox and an unidentified father, whom persistent rumors have claimed to be Marlon Brando.
Love's parents divorced in 1969 and her father's custody was withdrawn after her mother alleged that he had fed LSD to Love as a toddler.
In 1970, her mother moved the family to the rural community of Marcola, Oregon, where they lived on a commune.
Love was legally adopted by her stepfather, Frank Rodriguez, with whom her mother gave birth to Love's two half-sisters, and adopted a brother; another male half-sibling died in infancy of a heart defect when Love was ten.
She attended elementary school in Eugene, where she struggled academically and had trouble making friends, though was described as a "creative" child.
At age nine, Love was diagnosed with autism.In 1972, Love's mother divorced Rodriguez and moved the family to New Zealand, where she enrolled Love at the Nelson College for Girls, but Love was ultimately sent back to live in Portland, Oregon with her former stepfather and numerous family friends.
She auditioned for the Mickey Mouse Club at age twelve, and was rejected after reading a Sylvia Plath poem for her audition.
At age fourteen, Love was arrested for shoplifting a t-shirt and was sent to Hillcrest Correctional Facility.
She spent the following several years in foster care before becoming legally emancipated at age sixteen.
Love supported herself by working illegally as an stripper, a DJ, and various odd jobs, and intermittently took classes at Portland State University studying English and philosophy.
Love has said that she "didn't have a lot of social skills", and that she learned them while frequenting gay clubs in Portland.In 1981, Love was granted a small trust fund through her adoptive grandparents, which she used to travel to Ireland; there, she was accepted into Trinity College, and studied theology for two semesters.
In the United Kingdom, she became acquainted with musician Julian Cope in Liverpool and moved into his house briefly before returning to the United States.
Love continued to relocate between Oregon and California, enrolling at San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied film with George Kuchar.
She later took stint jobs doing erotic dancing in Japan.
In 1986, Love landed roles in two Alex Cox films (see Acting career), and then quit acting and retreated to Anchorage, Alaska for several months where she returned to stripping to support herself.1982–88: Faith No More, early projectsLove initially began several music projects in the 1980s, first forming Sugar Babydoll in Portland with friends Ursula Wehr and Robin Barbur.
In 1982, Love attended a Faith No More concert in San Francisco, and "convinced" the members to let her join as a singer.
The group recorded material with Love as a vocalist, but, according to Roddy Bottum, wanted a "male energy", and Love was subsequently kicked out of the band; she and Bottum, however, maintained a friendship in the years after.
Love later formed the Pagan Babies with friend Kat Bjelland, whom she met at the Satyricon club in Portland in 1984: "The best thing that ever happened to me in a way, was Kat," Love said.
Love asked Bjelland to start a band with her as a guitarist, and the two moved to San Francisco in June 1985, where they recruited Love's friend, bassist Jennifer Finch, and drummer Janis Tanaka.
According to Bjelland, "[Courtney\] didn't play an instrument at the time" aside from keyboards, so Bjelland would transpose Love's musical ideas on guitar for her.
The group played several house shows and recorded one 4-track demo before disbanding in late 1985.
Following Pagan Babies, Love moved to Minneapolis where she briefly played bass guitar in Bjelland's group Babes In Toyland in 1987 before being ejected from the band.1989–96: Hole, critical successIn 1989, Love taught herself to play guitar and relocated to Los Angeles, where she placed an ad in a local music zine, reading: "I want to start a band.
My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac" to which guitarist Eric Erlandson replied.
Love recruited Erlandson as lead guitarist, Lisa Roberts, her neighbor, as bassist, and drummer Caroline Rue.
Love named the band Hole after a line from Euripedes' Medea.
Hole played their first show in November 1989 at Raji's after three months of rehearsal.
The band's debut single, "Retard Girl", was issued in April 1990 through the Long Beach indie label Sympathy for the Record Industry, and was given air-time by Rodney Bingenheimer's local station, KROQ.
The following year, the band released their second single, "Dicknail" through Sub Pop Records.With Love influenced by no wave, noise rock and grindcore bands, Hole's first studio album, Pretty on the Inside, captured a particularly abrasive sound and contained disturbing lyrics, described by Q Magazine as "confrontational [and\] genuinely uninhibited." The record was released in September 1991 on Caroline Records, produced by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, with assistant production from Gumball's Don Fleming.
Though Love would later say it was "unlistenable" and "[un\]melodic", the album received generally positive critical reception from indie and punk rock critics and was labeled one of the 20 best albums of the year by Spin Magazine.
It also gained a following in the United Kingdom, charting at 59 on the UK Albums Chart, as well as its lead single, "Teenage Whore" entering the country's indie chart at number one.
The underlying pro-feminist slant of the album's songs led many to mistakenly tag the band as being part of the riot grrl movement, a movement that Love did not associate with.
In support of the record, the band toured in Europe headlining with Mudhoney, and extensively in the United States opening for The Smashing Pumpkins, including shows at the Whisky A Go Go opening for Sonic Youth, and performances at CBGB.
Love designed and distributed flyers promoting the shows, which included cutouts of women and young girls, as well as scattered lyrics and quotes from poems.After the release of Pretty on the Inside, Love began dating Kurt Cobain and became pregnant, which temporarily put her music career on hold.
During Love's pregnancy, Hole recorded a cover of "Over the Edge" for a Wipers tribute album, and recorded their fourth single, "Beautiful Son", which was released in April 1993.
On September 8, 1993, Love and husband Kurt Cobain made their only public performance together at the Rock Against Rape benefit in Hollywood, California, performing two duets, both acoustic versions, of "Pennyroyal Tea" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night".
Love also performed electric versions of two of Hole's new songs, "Doll Parts" and "Miss World", both of which were written for the band's upcoming second release.In October 1993, Hole recorded their second album, titled Live Through This, in Atlanta, Georgia.
The album featured a new lineup, with bassist Kristen Pfaff and drummer Patty Schemel.
Live Through This was released on Geffen's subsidiary DGC label in April 1994, four days after Love's husband, Cobain, was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound in their home.
Two months later, in June 1994, bassist Kristen Pfaff died of a heroin overdose, and Love recruited Melissa Auf der Maur for the band's impending tour.
Throughout the months preceding the tour, Love was rarely seen in public, spending time at her Seattle home, or visiting the Namgyal Buddhist Monastery in New York.Live Through This was a commercial and critical success, hitting platinum sales in April 1995 and receiving unanimous critical accolades.
At their August 26, 1994 performance at the Reading Festival — Love's first public performance following her husband's death — she appeared onstage, tear-drenched, with outstretched arms, mimicking crucifixion.
John Peel wrote in The Guardian that Love's disheveled appearance "would have drawn whistles of astonishment in Bedlam," and that her performance "verged on the heroic...
Love steered her band through a set which dared you to pity either her recent history or that of the band...the band teetered on the edge of chaos, generating a tension which I cannot remember having felt before from any stage." Three days later, Spin reviewed another "devastating" performance by the band in Cleveland, Ohio, writing:During "Doll Parts", after moaning "He only loves those things because he loves to see me break" (instead of "them"), [Love\] wobbled back from the mic almost punch-drunk.
By this time, the band had bailed, and Love was alone singing, "Someday you will ache like I ache," again and again, her voice a faint sob.
She finally stumbled over to a huge speaker and leaned into it like she was about to pass out.
Then, while being led off by an assistant, she stepped back, pulled up her top, then flipped us off with both hands.In February 1995, Hole performed a well-reviewed acoustic set on MTV Unplugged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and continued to tour late into the year, concluding their world tour with an appearance at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards, in which they performed "Violet", and were nominated for Best Music Video for "Doll Parts".1997–2000: Mainstream successAfter Love spent the majority of 1996 acting in films, which included a leading role in The People vs.
Larry Flynt, Hole released a compilation album, My Body, The Hand Grenade as well as an EP titled The First Session which consisted of the band's earliest recordings.
In September 1998, Hole released their third studio album, Celebrity Skin, which marked something of a transformation for Love, featuring a stark power pop sound as opposed to the group's earlier punk rock influences.
Love divulged her ambition of making an album where "art meets commerce ...
there are no compromises made, it has commercial appeal, and it sticks to the [our\] original vision." She claimed to have been influenced by Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, and My Bloody Valentine when writing the album.
Celebrity Skin was well received by critics; Rolling Stone called the album "accessible, fiery and intimate—often at the same time ...
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.
The album garnered the band their only No. 1 hit single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart with the title track "Celebrity Skin".
The band made various appearances promoting the album, including MTV performances and at the 1998 Billboard Music Awards.
Hole toured with Marilyn Manson on the Beautiful Monsters Tour in 1999, but dropped out of the tour nine dates in after a dispute over production costs between Love and Manson; Hole resumed touring with Imperial Teen.Prior to the release and promotion of Celebrity Skin, Love and Fender designed a low-priced Squier brand guitar, called Vista Venus.
The instrument featured a shape inspired by Mercury, Stratocaster, and Rickenbacker's solidbodies and had a single-coil and a humbucker pickup, and was available in 6-string and 12-string versions.
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."After touring for Celebrity Skin finished, Auf der Maur left the band to tour with the Smashing Pumpkins; Hole's touring drummer Samantha Maloney left soon after.
Love and Erlandson continued with the band, and released the single "Be A Man"— an outtake from the Celebrity Skin sessions— for the soundtrack of the Oliver Stone film Any Given Sunday (1999).
The group became dormant in the following two years, and, in May 2002, officially announced their breakup amid continuing litigation with Universal Music Group over their record contract.2001–07: Solo career, America's SweetheartWith 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.
Though a demo was completed, the project never reached fruition.In 2002, Love began composing an album with Linda Perry, titled America's Sweetheart, also reuniting with drummer Patty Schemel.
Love signed with Virgin Records to release it, and initially recorded it in France, but was forced by the label to re-record the entire album in the summer of 2003.
America's Sweetheart was released in February 2004, and 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 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, calling it "a crap record" and reasoning that her drug issues at the time were to blame.
Shortly after the record was released, Love told Kurt Loder on TRL: "I cannot exist as a solo artist.
It's a joke."In 2006, Love started recording what was going to be her second solo album, How Dirty Girls Get Clean, collaborating again with Perry and Billy Corgan in the writing and recording.
Love had written several songs, including an anti-cocaine song titled "Loser Dust", during her time in rehab in 2005.
Love told Billboard: "My hand-eye coordination was so bad [after the drug use\], I didn't even know chords anymore.
It was like my fingers were frozen.
And I wasn't allowed to make noise [in rehab\] ...
I never thought I would work again." 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 the album, 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: Nobody's Daughter, other projectsOn June 17, 2009, NME reported that Hole would be reuniting.
Former Hole guitarist 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 "he's out of his mind, Hole is my band, my name, and my Trademark".
Nobody's Daughter was released worldwide as a Hole album on April 27, 2010.
For the new line-up, Love recruited guitarist Micko Larkin, Shawn Dailey (bass guitar), and Stu Fisher (drums, percussion).
Nobody's Daughter featured a great deal of material written and recorded for Love's aborted solo album, How Dirty Girls Get Clean, including "Pacific Coast Highway", "Letter to God", "Samantha", and "Never Go Hungry", although they were re-produced with Larkin.
The first single from Nobody's Daughter was "Skinny Little Bitch", which became a hit on alternative rock radio in early March 2010.The album received mixed reviews.
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." The album's subject matter was largely centered on Love's tumultuous life between 2003 and 2007, and featured a polished folk-rock sound with much more acoustic work than previous Hole albums.
Love and the band toured internationally from 2010 into late 2012 promoting the record, after which she dropped the Hole name and returned to a solo career.Following a two year tour to promote Nobody's Daughter, Love collaborated with Michael Stipe for the track "Rio Grande", and also contributed guest vocals and co-wrote a track on Fall Out Boy's album, Save Rock and Roll (2013).
A music video, starring Love and the band, was released for the song in March 2014.
After solo performances in December 2012 and January 2013, Love toured North America in 2013, starting in Philadelphia in June.
Initially, the tour had been conceived to promote Love's new album, but was consequently dubbed a "greatest hits" tour due to the impending release of new material.
Love told Billboard that she had recorded eight songs in the studio, which she planned to release in the near future.
"[These songs\] are not my usual (style)," Love said.
"I don't have any Fleetwood Mac references on it.
Usually I always have a Fleetwood Mac reference as well as having, like, Big Black references.
These are very unique songs that sort of magically happened." On December 16, Love released a spoken word recording in conjunction with Garage Magazine, titled "A Spoonful of Bones", a re-working of the song "A Spoonful of Sugar" from Mary Poppins (1964).Influences and styleLove was exposed to the music of Patti Smith and the Pretenders in juvenile hall, which she was greatly influenced by: "You had these two iconic women, and I realized that you could do something that was completely subversive that didn't involve violence [or\] felonies," said Love.
"I stopped making trouble.
I stopped." As a teenager, Love named Flipper, Kate Bush, Soft Cell, Lou Reed, and Dead Kennedys among her favorite artists.
Most prominently, Love was influenced by a multitude of new wave and post-punk bands, such as Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, The Teardrop Explodes, Bauhaus, and Joy Division.
While in Ireland at age fifteen, she saw the The Virgin Prunes perform live in Dublin, and said the experience "framed her [music career\]".
Her varying genre interests were illustrated in a 1991 interview with Flipside, in which she stated: "There's a part of me that wants to have a grindcore band and another that wants to have a Raspberries-type pop band", also citing her admiration for Neil Young.
Conversely, Love also embraced the influence of experimental and punk rock groups, including Sonic Youth, Swans, Big Black, The Germs, and The Stooges.
Love has also expressed great admiration for Fleetwood Mac, with Hole covering their track "Gold Dust Woman" in 1996, as well as using sampling from "Rhiannon" on their noise track "Starbelly" from Pretty on the Inside.Musically, it was remarked in an October 1991 review of her first album that Love's layering of harsh and abrasive riffs buried more sophisticated musical arrangements.
Hole's incorporation of both punk rock and power pop sounds illustrates the band's often divergent musical style, which drew influence from alternating genres.
In 1998, Love stated that Hole had "always been a pop band.
We always had a subtext of pop.
I always talked about it, if you go back ...
what'll sound like some weird Sonic Youth tuning back then to you was sounding like the Raspberries to me, in my demented pop framework."Love possesses a contralto vocal range, and her vocal style has been described as "raw and distinctive." According to Love, she "never wanted to be a singer", but rather aspired to be a skilled guitarist: "I'm such a lazy bastard though that I never did that," Love said.
"You have to stay in your room and play every Zep[pelin\] record, and I didn't ...
[it ended up that\] I was always the only person with the nerve to sing, and so I got stuck with it." She has been oft noted by critics for her husky vocals, and was, in Hole's earliest years, noted for her screaming abilities and punk singing.
Her vocals have been compared to those of Johnny Rotten, and Rolling Stone described them as "lung-busting" and "a corrosive, lunatic wail".
Upon the release of Hole's 2010 album, Nobody's Daughter, critics compared Love's raspy, unpolished vocals to those of Bob Dylan.Love writes from a female's point of view, and her earlier work, particularly on Hole's first two albums, was noted for being notably aggressive and critical toward cultural definitions of women.
Her lyrics have been noted by scholars for "articulating a third-wave feminist consciousness." Common themes present in Love's songs during her early career included body image, rape, suicide, misogyny, conformity, elitism, pregnancy, prostitution, and death.
In a 1991 interview with Everett True, Love said: "I try to place [beautiful imagery\] next to fucked up imagery, because that's how I view things ...
I sometimes feel that no one's taken the time to write about certain things in rock, that there's a certain female point of view that's never been given space." Charles Cross has referred to her lyrics on Live Through This as being "true extensions of her diary," and she has admitted that a great deal of the writing for Pretty on the Inside were excisions from her journals.
Her later work was more lyrically introspective.
Celebrity Skin and America's Sweetheart deal with celebrity life, Hollywood, and drug addiction, while continuing Love's interest in vanity and body image.
Nobody's Daughter was lyrically reflective of Love's past relationships and her struggle to sobriety, with the majority of its lyrics having been written while she was in rehab in 2006.Equipment and gearLove has frequently played a multitude of Fender guitars, including a Jaguar and a vintage 1965 Jazzmaster, the latter of which was purchased by the Hard Rock Cafe and is on display in New York City.
Love is seen playing her Jazzmaster in the music video for "Miss World".
Earlier in Hole's career, between 1989 and 1991, Love primarily played a Rickenbacker 425 because she "preferred the 3/4 neck", but she destroyed the guitar onstage at a 1991 concert opening for The Smashing Pumpkins.
She also often played a guitar made by Mercury, an obscure company that manufactured custom guitars, which she purchased in 1992.
Fender's Vista Venus, designed by Love in 1998, was partially inspired by Rickenbacker guitars as well as her Mercury.
Love's setup has included Fender tube gear, Matchless, Ampeg, Silvertone and a solid-state 1976 Randall Commander.
During her 2010 and more recent tours, Love has played a Rickenbacker 360 onstage.Acting careerLove's first acting role was in a 1984 student short film titled Club Vatican directed by her tutor George Kuchar, while studying at the San Francisco Art Institute.
In 1985, she submitted an audition tape for the role of Nancy Spungen in the Sid Vicious biopic Sid and Nancy (1986), and was given a minor supporting role by director Alex Cox.
Cox then cast her in a leading role in his following film, Straight to Hell (1987), which caught the attention of artist Andy Warhol.
That year, Love appeared in an episode of Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes with Robbie Nevil in a segment titled "C'est la Vie".
She also had a part in the 1988 Ramones music video for "I Wanna Be Sedated", appearing as a bride among dozens of party guests.
In 1989, Love abandoned her career as an actress to pursue music.In 1996, Love began obtaining small acting parts again in Basquiat and Feeling Minnesota (1996), before landing the co-starring role of Larry Flynt's wife, Althea, in Miloš Forman's 1996 film The People vs.
Larry Flynt, against Columbia Pictures' reluctance due to her low profile and "troubled" past.
Love received critical acclaim, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, and a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress, for what film critic Roger Ebert called "quite a performance; Love proves she is not a rock star pretending to act, but a true actress".
She won several other awards from various film critic associations for the performance.Other roles include: starring opposite Jim Carrey in the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon (1999); as Joan Vollmer in Beat (2000) alongside Kiefer Sutherland; and 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.Love has also appeared in a multitude of documentary films as herself, including 1991: The Year Punk Broke, Not Bad for a Girl, Mayor of the Sunset Strip, Bob and the Monster, and Hit So Hard, which documents Hole drummer Patty Schemel's time in the band with Love, Erlandson, Kristen Pfaff, and Melissa Auf der Maur.Other endeavorsIn 2004, Love collaborated with illustrators Misaho Kujiradou and Ai Yazawa to create a manga comic, Princess Ai.
The story is based in part on Love's life, and involves the main character's search for her place in the world; it was written by Stu Levy under the name D.J.
Milky, and released by his publishing company Tokyopop.In 2006, Love published a memoir titled Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love, consisting of diary entries, poems, letters, drawings, personal photos, and lyric compositions spanning from Love's childhood up until the year 2006, shortly after her release from a six-month rehab sentence.
The book was generally well reviewed by critics, and Love did book readings in promotion for it.In May 2012, Love debuted an art show at Fred Torres Collaborations in New York titled "And She's Not Even Pretty", which contained over forty drawings and paintings by Love composed in ink, colored pencil, pastels, and watercolors.
The works were of various women in different emotional states, some accompanied by poems and song lyrics.
She is also writing a memoir, Girl With the Most Cake.Public imageLove has consistently attracted media attention for her brash and outspoken nature, and for "subverting mainstream expectations of how a woman should look, act, and sound." She has also received considerable media scrutiny over her battles with drug addiction, most notably in 1992 when Vanity Fair published an article by journalist Lynn Hirschberg which alluded that Love was addicted to heroin during her pregnancy; this resulted in the custody of Love and Cobain's newborn daughter, Frances, being temporarily withdrawn in a Los Angeles County court and placed with Love's sister.
Love claimed she was misquoted in the piece, and asserted that she had immediately quit using the drug during her first trimester after she discovered she was pregnant.On the opening date of Lollapalooza in 1995, Love notoriously got into a physical fight backstage with Kathleen Hanna and punched her in the face.
In retrospect, Love said: "I was completely high on dope [during that time\]— I cannot remember much about it." She later admonished her behavior, saying: "I [saw\] pictures of how I looked.
It's disgusting.
I'm ashamed.
There's death and there's disease and there's misery and there's giving up your soul ...
The human spirit mixed with certain powders is not the person, it's [a\] demonic presence." Love's aesthetic image, particularly in the early 1990s, often consisted of "thrift shop" babydoll dresses, and her face adorned with smeared makeup; MTV reporter Kurt Loder described her as looking like "a debauched rag doll" onstage.
The style, widely popularized by Love, was later dubbed the title "kinderwhore".
Love later claimed to have been influenced by the fashion of Chrissy Amphlett of the Divinyls when assembling the look.
In the later 1990s, surrounding the release of Hole's Celebrity Skin and Love's budding film career, she embraced a more polished and glamorous look, becoming involved in high fashion and modeling for Versace advertisements in April 1998.As a result of Love's high-profile marriage to Kurt Cobain, comparisons have been made of her to Yoko Ono.
Shortly following their marriage, and particularly after Cobain's suicide, she was often negatively compared to John Lennon's widow Ono by Cobain's fans.
This media comparison was addressed by Love in 1992, prior to Cobain's death, in the song "20 Years in the Dakota", which she explicitly wrote about Ono.
Love again commented on the comparison in a 1993 interview with NME, which drew several parallels to her public image in relationship to Cobain's, saying:People hate her [Yoko Ono\], they really do.
Did you know that to 'Yoko someone' is a verb in America? It is something that boys say if they're hanging out with you too much and they're going to school or they have a band.
It's almost a myth that's used to suppress women.
Y'know, 'You're gonna Yoko me.
You're gonna destroy me.' And this woman put up with racial inequality from Fleet Street, she put up with being accused of breaking up the best band in the world [The Beatles\], she put up with people's idea that she castrated this man and then, worst of all, she had her best friend, her husband, the person she lived for, die in her arms in front of a fortress that she'd hidden herself in for twenty years.
And I just feel that the world media should apologize to her because she handled it with so much dignity.Personal lifeLove has been a practicing Buddhist since 1989, and has studied and practiced both Tibetan and Nichiren Buddhism.
She is a member of Soka Gakkai, an international lay Buddhist organization.
Love is a Democrat.
In 2000, she gave a speech at the Million Mom March to advocate stricter gun control laws in the United States, and has advocated for LGBT rights since the early 1990s.
Love is a self-identified feminist, and has been noted throughout her career for her subversive feminism and "self-conscious parody of female sex roles".Love has struggled with substance abuse problems for a great deal of her life.
She experimented with numerous opiates in her early adult years, and tried cocaine at age 19.
She became addicted to heroin in the early 1990s, but quit in 1996 at the insistence of director Miloš Forman when she landed a leading role in The People vs.
Larry Flynt.
Love was ordered to take multiple urine tests under the supervision of Columbia Pictures while filming the movie, and passed all of them.
On July 9, 2004, Love's 40th birthday, she attempted to commit suicide at her Manhattan apartment, and was taken to Bellevue Hospital, allegedly incoherent, and put on a 72-hour watch.
According to police, she was believed to be a potential "danger to herself", but was deemed mentally sound and released to a rehab facility two days later.
In 2005 and 2006, after making several public appearances clearly intoxicated (namely on the Late Show with David Letterman and the Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson) and suffering drug-related arrests and probation violations, Love was sentenced to six months in lock down rehab due to struggles with prescription drugs and cocaine.
She has stated she has been sober since 2007, and in May 2011, confirmed her sobriety.Family and relationshipsLove has publicly acknowledged her estrangement from her parents, Linda Carroll and Hank Harrison, as well as her maternal grandmother, Paula Fox, who gave up Love's mother Linda for adoption after having her out of wedlock.
According to Love, she has not been in contact with her father since age fifteen, and has "never forgiven" her mother over the way she was raised; she has, however, maintained relationships with her half-siblings.Love's most documented romantic relationship was with Kurt Cobain.
It is uncertain when they first met; according to Love, she first met Cobain at a Dharma Bums show in Portland where she was doing a spoken word performance, According to Michael Azerrad, the two met at the Satyricon nightclub in Portland in 1989, though Cobain biographer Charles Cross stated the date was actually February 12, 1990, and that Cobain playfully wrestled Love to the floor after she commented to him in passing that he looked like Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum.
Love's bandmate Eric Erlandson stated that both he and Love were formally introduced to Cobain in a parking lot after a Butthole Surfers concert at the Hollywood Palladium in 1991.
The two later became reacquainted through Jennifer Finch, one of Love's longtime friends and former bandmates.
Love and Cobain officially began dating in the fall of 1991 during Hole's Pretty on the Inside tours, 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, Frances Bean Cobain, was born.
In April 1994, Cobain committed suicide in their Seattle home while Love was in rehab in Los Angeles.
During their marriage, and after Cobain's death, Love became something of a hate-figure among some of Cobain's fans.
After his cremation, Love divided portions of Cobain's ashes, some of which she kept in a teddy bear and in an urn.
Another portion of his ashes was taken by Love to the Namgyal Buddhist Monastery in Ithaca, New York in 1994, where they were ceremonially blessed by Buddhist monks and mixed into clay which was made into memorial sculptures.Love was briefly married to James Moreland (vocalist of The Leaving Trains) in 1989 for several months, but has said that Moreland was a transvestite and that their marriage was "a joke", ending in an annulment filed by Love.
After forming Hole in 1989, Love and bandmate Eric Erlandson had a romantic relationship for over a year, and she also briefly dated Billy Corgan in 1991, with whom she has maintained a volatile friendship over the years.
Between 1996 and 1999, Love dated actor Edward Norton, and was also linked to comedian Steve Coogan in the early 2000s.Charitable workIn 1993, Love and husband Kurt Cobain performed an acoustic set together at the Rock Against Rape benefit in Los Angeles, California, which raised awareness and provided resources for victims of sexual abuse.
Love has also contributed to amfAR's AIDS research benefits and held live musical performances at their events.
In 2009, Love performed a benefit concert for the RED Campaign at Carnegie Hall alongside Laurie Anderson, Rufus Wainright, and Scarlett Johansson, with proceeds going to AIDS research.
In May 2011, she attended Mariska Hargitay's Joyful Heart Foundation event for victims of child abuse, rape, and domestic violence, donating six of husband Kurt Cobain's personal vinyl records for auction.Love has also worked with LGBT and LGBT youth charities; specifically with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, where she has taken part in performances at the center's "An Evening with Women", where she headlined the event's debut in 2007.
The proceeds of the event help provide food and shelter for homeless youth; services for seniors; legal assistance; domestic violence services; health and mental health services, and cultural arts programs.
Love participated with Linda Perry for the event again in 2012, relating her experiences as a nomadic teenager and having to live on the street:This really resonates with me, [because\] I was a kid from Oregon, and I came to Hollywood like a lot of people do, and you know, what happens is that we end up on the street...
and if you're gay, or lesbian, or transgendered— the more "outside" you are, the more screwed you are in a lot of ways.
I stripped.
Everybody knows that.
[...\] My point is that I survived it and thrived through it, but I only did it because I had great friends.
These kids from Iowa, they aren't so lucky.
Seven thousand kids in Los Angeles a year go out on the street, and forty percent of those kids are gay, lesbian, or transgendered.
They come out to their parents, and become homeless.
[The charity helps them\] get sent to the right foster care, they can get medical help, food, clothing...
and for whatever reason, I don't really know why, but gay men have a lot of foundations, I've played many of them— but the lesbian side of it doesn't have as much money and/or donors, so we're excited that this has grown to cover women and women's affairs.