American musician who reinvented herself several times, first as the vocalist and lead of her band “Hole,” second as the wife of the tortured superstar Kurt Cobain, and finally, through the transformation of gutter grunge into Versace model in a ten-page spread in Vanity Fair.
Courtney was born to classic hippie parents in the mid-sixties. Her dad traveled with the cult band “The Grateful Dead,” of which he wrote several books. Her mom was a free-spirited woman who did not giver her daughter the emotional attention she so much needed. Her parents went on to divorce a few years after Courtney was born. Courtney was a moody, hyper-active child who was prone to nightmares and tantrums. From the age of two, her mom took her to see psychologists. Courtney gained two half-sisters when her mother remarried and moved to New Zealand, leaving her behind in America. She was then shuffled from relative’s homes to foster homes until she turned 16 and won legal emancipation through the courts and lived on a small trust fund her grandparents had set up for her. As an adult, she and her dad are bitter enemies.
Courtney started her band in 1989 and they released a debut album two years later, “Pretty on the Inside.” Her first album with her band “Hole” in 1991 earned them the title of “most promising new group.” In the UK, she had achieved distinction as the first female musician to trash her guitar on stage. She gained further notoriety for her temper and provocative, outspoken and confrontational behavior.
She met Kurt Cobain in 1991 just as he was rising to fame with his band, Nirvana, putting out “Nevermind.”
On 24 February 1992, she married Cobain, the troubled singer/poet/songwriter/frontman. Several months later, on 18 August 1992, their daughter was born, Francis Bean Cobain. In a magazine article, Courtney was reported as saying she used heroin while pregnant. As a result, the Los Angeles Children’s Services began action to take their daughter away. It was a long and painful battle which the Cobain’s ultimately won in March 1993. The media called the union a bad career move because of the “groupie” label which is often attached to women who marry rock stars. They also attacked her and Cobain’s drug use and their tumultuous marriage.
The marriage may have been tormented, but it was also loving, and Love was devastated when Cobain killed himself on 5 April 1994. It was co-incidental with the release of Hole’s second album, “Live Through This.” She was further dismayed by the death of bass player Kristin Pfaff on 15 June 1994. Nonetheless, the album went platinum a year later, breaking the sales mark of a million copies and was named best album of the year by Rolling Stone and Spin magazines.
Through 1995, Love was the focus of attention, most of it critical. She was arrested twice and she offended many with her antics, offstage and on, as well as her outrageous postings on the internet. In 1996, she amazed her critics with the brilliant performance she carried off in “The People vs. Larry Flynt,” playing Flynt’s wife Althea. She wanted that part so badly that she went through a detox program, as the film exec’s would not sign her if she tested positive for drugs.
She not only became dry and clean, but appeared with her hair and skin washed, with style and makeup and couturier fashion, looking fabulous. The actor Edward Norton was seen by her side with growing frequency. A Yale graduate, reserved about his private life. Love commented, “Edward is so brilliant, so chivalrous. Both as an actor and a person, he’s pure class.” The side-liners laid wagers about whether Love could stand up to class.
In March 1988, the film “Kurt and Courtney” was released, a documentary suggesting that the death of Cobain was not a suicide. The film depicts Courtney as violent, manipulative, ruthless and ambitious. Her father, with whom she has been at war for years, seemed to take delight in promoting the film. He is also the author of the book “Who Killed Kurt Cobain?” Ed Norton compared the film to a witch-hunt, and the New Yorker magazine stated that Courtney was of more value as an icon of self-destruction than she was as a complex, evolving human being. Norton responded that this was “sexist, intellectually shallow and spiritually bankrupt. In the end, Courtney’s achievements will speak louder than any of her critics.”
Her first album in four years, “Celebrity Skin” was released on 8 August 1998 with catchy songs and a bright, new-wave sparkle. Her voice, usually toneless and flat, was higher and sweeter, testimony to the new Love, bathed and perfumed.
By 2000, Courtney was celebrating a new love, Geffen Records executive Jim Barber. In January 2001, she filed a $1.5-plus million lawsuit against Lesley Barber, his
ex-wife, claiming the woman ran over her foot in a Volvo — costing Love a $500,000 movie role in director John Carpenter’s upcoming “Ghosts of Mars.” She suffered a miscarriage in mid-May 2001.
On late 6 May 2001, Love was robbed of more than $100,000 in jewels, including her wedding ring from her late husband, Kurt Cobain, toys belonging to her daughter, Frances Bean, and a $30,000 ring that she received from Ed Norton, from her hotel suite in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she was shooting a movie.
In October 2003, after several incidents of erratic behavior, Love lost custody of the daughter she had with the rocker Kurt Cobain. On 2 October 2003, Love reported broke into a private home and subsequently ingested a large amount of Oxycontin, a powerful painkiller. She was taken by ambulance to have her stomach pumped. On 10 October, authorities took her 11-year-old daughter Frances into protective custody. Love called a friend threatening suicide and that evening, was checked into a private psychiatric hospital in Pasadena, California. The singer requested rehabilitative services instead but apparently did not complete the course of treatment. On 17 October 2003, she received a report from the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services that charged her with abandonment, and a judge gave temporary custody of her daughter to Wendy O’Connor, Kurt Cobain’s mother.
Continuing her downward spiral, on early 18 March 2004, Love was arrested for “reckless endangerment” after she threw a microphone into the audience of a New York nightclub and injured a patron. She had just appeared on the Dave Letterman show, where she repeatedly turned her back to the audience and flashed her breasts at the talk-show host. On 27 July 2004 in Los Angeles, she was sentenced to 18 months probation, including six months of rehab. The downward spiral seemed to continue; four days earlier, she surrendered to the Los Angeles Police Department on a separate charge of assault with a deadly weapon.
The troubled performer was sentenced to six months in a lockdown rehab facility on 16 September 2005 in Los Angeles after she violated parole by taking drugs two months earlier.
Link to Wikipedia biography