Courtney Love

All Music Guide:

Love her or loathe her, the opinionated, brutally straightforward, and seemingly always controversial Courtney Love is one of the most notable figures in alternative rock. Born on July 9, 1964 in San Francisco, CA, Love was raised in Oregon. As a teen, Love began listening to new wave and punk, musical styles that would influence her band Hole. After traveling to countries like Ireland, Japan, and England, Love moved to Los Angeles, CA. In 1986, Love appeared as Nancy Spungen's best friend in Sid and Nancy, director Alex Cox's film about Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his lover Spungen. Love was also cast in Cox's Straight to Hell. Neither picture brought Love the stardom that she craved. Love then relocated to Minneapolis, MN, and formed the all-female post-punk group Babes in Toyland with Kat Bjelland. Bjelland eventually tossed her out of the band. After working as a stripper in Alaska, Love returned to Los Angeles and started Hole in 1989 with Eric Erlandson (guitar), Jill Emery (bass), and Caroline Rue (drums). Hole released their debut album, Pretty on the Inside, in 1991.

A year later, Love married Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Rumors of drug use between the two began surfacing in the press, and a Vanity Press article revealed that Love was using heroin while she was pregnant with their daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. In April 1994, Kurt Cobain committed suicide; two months later, new Hole bassist Kristen M. Pfaff died from a heroin overdose. Although it was recorded before those personal tragedies, Hole's second album, the ironically titled Live Through This, captured the searing pain and violent anger of somebody undergoing a tragic loss. Rumors persisted that Cobain co-wrote a large portion of the album, a claim that Love vehemently denied despite claims to the contrary by many of Cobain's closest friends. No concrete evidence was ever released to back those claims, and she maintained a semi-professional relationship with his former bandmates by forming a partnership with them called Nirvana L.L.C. The organization would control all Nirvana-related releases and try to protect the interests of the three parties, but strife between Love and the rest of the band developed through nasty press comments made by both sides.

Meanwhile, Hole released Celebrity Skin in 1998, but the album came nowhere near the popularity of her previous effort. Despite the band's best promotional efforts (which Courtney dove headfirst into, as always), sales were discouraging enough for bandmembers to start dropping off, essentially dissolving the group while her acting career was taking off. In 1999, Love was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in the movie The People vs. Larry Flynt. She would stay relatively quiet for a few years, making a few film appearances and bragging up various projects with Louise Post and Kat Bjelland that never surfaced. But when former Nirvana members Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl announced a 45-song Nirvana retrospective that would include two never released tracks, Love immediately brought them to court in an attempt to wrestle away the rights to the material. Manager/boyfriend Paul Barber tried to become the peacekeeper in the situation, even showing up at the studio for the mixdown of one of the unreleased songs. But Love moved to dissolve Nirvana L.L.C. and managed to stop the release of the album until the matter could be brought to court. The box set was aborted and the three individuals began to hype the upcoming court hearings like a boxing match, inviting the press out and making sharp barbs at one another in interviews. She announced her intentions to spearhead a Nirvana "greatest-hits" album à la the Beatles' 1, and claimed that she had hundreds of home tapes to go through and a journal that she planned on publishing.

Love also began to speak out on musicians' rights, suing her record company and bringing to light unfair business practices on the part of the industry. She began making her interviews and speeches platforms for her newfound cause, and created quite a stir at the South by Southwest Music Conference in the spring of 2002 when she directly announced her intentions of starting a music industry revolution. All that was forthcoming, however (beside more eccentric publicity), was a solo album, 2004's America's Sweetheart, released on Virgin. The following year she began working on new songs, despite battling an alleged eating disorder and a stay in rehab after violating her probation by using drugs. Working with artists including producer Linda Perry, Billy Corgan, and guitarist Micko Larkin, formerly of Larrikin Love, the album Nobody's Daughter began to take shape over 2006 and 2007. In mid-2009, Love announced that Nobody's Daughter would in fact be a Hole album. She began promoting the album in earnest in early 2010, performing shows in Europe and the U.S. -- including gigs at SXSW and on The Late Show with David Letterman -- before its release.

Wikipedia:

Courtney Michelle Love (born Courtney Michelle Harrison; July 9, 1964) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, actress and artist. Love started out acting in Alex Cox's cult films Sid and Nancy (1986) and Straight to Hell (1987) before gaining notoriety in Los Angeles' indie rock scene as the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of alternative rock band Hole, which she formed in 1989. The band debuted with the caustic noise rock-influenced Pretty on the Inside (1991), and later received international critical and commercial acclaim for their following albums Live Through This (1994) and Celebrity Skin (1998).

In 1996, Love returned to acting and earned Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of Althea Flynt in Miloš Forman's The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996). Love had a brief solo career between 2003 and 2006 after the breakup of Hole, and then reformed the group with new members in 2010, a decade after the original band had broken up, and released Nobody's Daughter (2010).

Love, who grew up primarily in Oregon, is the daughter of psychotherapist Linda Carroll, and writer and ex-Grateful Dead manager Hank Harrison. Love was married to Kurt Cobain, frontman of the grunge band Nirvana, with whom she has a daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. Throughout her career, Love's wild stage antics and subversive feminist attitude have polarized audiences and critics, and she was referred to by Rolling Stone as "the most controversial woman in the history of rock."

Early life [edit]

Courtney Michelle Harrison was born in San Francisco, California to psychotherapist Linda Carroll and Hank Harrison, publisher and brief manager of the Grateful Dead; consequently Love was featured in a group photo on the back cover of the band's album Aoxomoxoa (1969). Love's parents divorced in 1969 and Harrison's custody was withdrawn after Carroll alleged that he had fed LSD to Love. Carroll moved the family to Marcola, Oregon, where they lived on a commune in what Love described as "a teepee". Love struggled in school and was diagnosed as mildly autistic. Through relationships with two other men, Carroll gave birth to Love's two half-sisters and adopted a son, and later two half-brothers; another male half-sibling of Love's had died in infancy of a heart defect when Love was 10.

In 1972, Carroll moved with her then-husband to New Zealand, and Love remained in Oregon with her former stepfather and numerous friends. At age 14, she was arrested for shoplifting a t-shirt and was sent to Hillcrest Youth Correctional Facility, a juvenile hall in Salem, Oregon. She spent the following several years in and out of foster homes before becoming legally emancipated at age 16. Love moved to Portland, Oregon and lived in the Northwest District, supporting herself by working illegally as a stripper, a DJ, and various odd jobs, and intermittently took classes at Portland State University studying English.

In 1981, Love was granted a small trust fund through her adoptive grandparents, which she used to travel to the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland; there, she was accepted into Trinity College due to high test scores, where she studied theology for two semesters. She also became acquainted with musician Julian Cope in Liverpool and moved into his house briefly before returning to the United States. Love has said that she "didn't have a lot of social skills", and that she learned them while frequenting gay clubs with friends.

Love continued to relocate frequently, spending time in Portland and San Francisco (where she briefly studied at San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Art Institute), and also took stint jobs illegally working at strip clubs in Japan and Taiwan. In 1985, Love sent in an audition tape for the role of Nancy Spungen in the biopic Sid & Nancy (1986), and caught the attention of director Alex Cox, who wrote a small role for her in the film. She was subsequently offered a lead part in his next film, a spaghetti Western titled Straight to Hell (1987), which starred an array of punk rock icons and other well known actors, although the film was poorly received. Love returned to Oregon, and then retreated to Anchorage, Alaska for several months where she returned to stripping to support herself.

Music career [edit]

1981–1988: Early projects [edit]

Love initially began several music projects in the 1980s, first forming Sugar Babydoll, and then having a brief stint as a singer in Faith No More; according to Roddy Bottum, the group wanted a "male energy", and Love was kicked out of the band, though she and Bottum maintained a friendship in the years after. Love later formed the Pagan Babies with friend Kat Bjelland, Jennifer Finch and Janis Tanaka in 1985, recording one 4-track demo before disbanding. Love briefly played bass in Bjelland's group Babes In Toyland in 1987 before being ejected from the band.

1989–2001: Hole [edit]

In 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 named the band Hole, bought her neighbor Lisa Roberts a bass guitar, and recruited drummer Caroline Rue.

Hole played their first show in November 1989 at Raji's after three months of rehearsal, and began making singles on the Long Beach, California, independent label Sympathy for the Record Industry. Their first single, titled "Retard Girl", was issued in early 1990. Disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer jokingly said that Love would often "stalk him" at a Denny's restaurant, insisting that he should give "Retard Girl" air time on his station, KROQ. One year later, the band debuted their second single, "Dicknail" through Sub Pop Records.

Influenced by the style of no wave and noise rock bands, Love convinced Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon to produce Hole's first studio album. The album, titled Pretty on the Inside, was released in August 1991 on Caroline Records, produced by Gordon and Gumball's Don Fleming. The album 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. Pretty on the Inside received generally positive critical acclaim, and was labelled one of the 20 best albums of the year by Spin Magazine. The band toured the United States and Europe in support of the record.

Hole recorded their second album, Live Through This, in late 1993 in Atlanta and released it in April 1994, just four days after Love's husband, Kurt Cobain, was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound in their home. The album featured a new lineup, with Kristen Pfaff on bass and Patty Schemel on drums. In June 1994, Pfaff died of a heroin overdose, and Love recruited bassist Melissa Auf der Maur for the band's upcoming tour. Throughout the months preceding the tour, Love was rarely seen in public, spending her time in her home or visiting the Namgyal Buddhist Monastery in New York.

Meanwhile, Live Through This was an immense commercial and critical success, receiving rave reviews from major music periodicals and going certified gold; the following year, it went platinum. In September 1994, the band embarked on a worldwide tour in support of the record, which became a media spectacle due to Love's fraught emotional state, leading her to provoking fans, throwing guitars into the audience, smashing equipment, and breaking into screaming fits onstage. BBC radio presenter John Peel wrote a periodical on the band's controversial performance at the 1994 Reading Festival, summarizing the tone of the tour:

Courtney's first appearance backstage certainly caught the attention. Swaying wildly and with lipstick smeared on her face, hands and, I think, her back, as well as on the collar of her dress, the singer would have drawn whistles of astonishment in Bedlam. After a brief word with supporters at the foot of the stage, she reeled away, knocking over a wastebin, and disappeared. Minutes later she was onstage giving a performance which 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.

In February 1995, Hole performed an acoustic set on MTV Unplugged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which ended in Love and Erlandson beating each other's acoustic guitars together, and Love dismantling the stage.

In 1997, the band released a compilation album, My Body, The Hand Grenade, which featured material from the band's earliest recordings in 1989 up until 1995, and, in September 1998, released their third studio album, Celebrity Skin, which featured a stark power pop sound as opposed to the group's earlier punk rock influences. 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 first and only No. 1 hit single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart with the 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. 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".

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 to pursue 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 on May 24, 2002, officially announced their breakup amid continuing litigation with Universal Music Group over their record contract.

2002–2009: Solo career and America's Sweetheart [edit]

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.

In 2002, Love began composing an album with Linda Perry; the record, America's Sweetheart, was 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 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", 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 with 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.

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.

2010-present: New Hole lineup and solo work [edit]

On 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 was the most added song on alternative rock radio in early March 2010. Hole performed on the Late Show with David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

In an interview with Love, she stated that she remained celibate for nearly five years in the process of working on the album: "I needed to put all of my energy into this record. Like, all of it, and [sex and love] can be really distracting", she said.

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 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. In the summer of 2011, the band played at several festivals in Russia, and toured in Australia and Brazil in early 2012.

In October 2012, Love told Rolling Stone that she was dropping the Hole moniker and returning to a solo career. She stated she had just recorded a single, titled "This Is War", which was produced by James Iha. She also saId she was looking to release the song in February 2013: "I'd put it out right now because it's a two-minute, 59-second song and it's sick, slamming, great". On December 29, 2012, Love performed an impromptu solo acoustic set at the Electric Room in New York City. In January 2013, Love announced her first official solo performance after her Nobody's Daughter tour with Hole, which was scheduled for January 21 at the Star Bar in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival.

In late 2012, Love contributed vocals to the track "Rio Grande", a duet with Michael Stipe, for Johnny Depp's sea chantey album Son of Rogue's Gallery (2013), which featured tracks by an array of rock musicians, including Tom Waits, Sting, Patti Smith, and Iggy Pop. In March 2013, it was confirmed that Love, along with Elton John, was also contributing guest vocals on Fall Out Boy's upcoming album, Save Rock and Roll (2013).

Acting career [edit]

Love worked with director Alex Cox on her first two films; she gained a small part in the Sid Vicious biopic Sid and Nancy (1986), and was then given the 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", in which she is dressed in vintage clothes and discussed "bag ladies". 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.

Other projects [edit]

In 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.

Although Love said she would "never write a book", she did publish a memoir in 2006 titled Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love. The memoir was 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.

Love has also expressed interest in fashion, having modeled for Versace and Givenchy, and has also frequented numerous fashion shows over the years. In October 2010, Love and Michael Mouris created an animated short film detailing Love's "kooky" fashion sense, titled The Dark Night of the Soul. Love also started a fashion blog in 2010, titled "What Courtney Wore Today".

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 feature various women in different emotional states, some accompanied by poems and song lyrics.

In April 2013, Love modeled for an upcoming Saint Laurent campaign featuring grunge-inspired pieces; the campaign also features photography of rockers Marilyn Manson, Kim Gordon, and Ariel Pink. Love also appeared in a commercial promoting NJOY electronic cigarettes, and revealed she was using them to help quit smoking after 36 years.

Influences and artistry [edit]

Love has mentioned an array of artists as being influences throughout her career, most often new wave and post-punk musicians. After being introduced to The Runaways, Love 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. She has also referenced Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, Sonic Youth, Swans, Big Black, The Germs, Virgin Prunes, and Joy Division as being influences on her music.

Love's varying genre interests were illustrated in a 1991 interview, 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." Over the course of Hole's career, the band experimented with several different styles, from punk to noise rock as well as more mellow alternative rock, power pop, and folk techniques.

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 [from Pretty on the Inside] 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.

Love's song lyrics are predominantly told from a female's point of view, and her earlier work, particularly on Hole's first two albums, was noted for being highly aggressive and critical toward cultural definitions of women. Common themes and references present in Love's lyrics from her early career included body image, rape, suicide, misogyny, conformity, elitism, pregnancy, prostitution, and death. According to Love, her main focus in the band from very early on was on lyrics: "For me, I was just about lyrics and performance. I didn't really care about hooks or finesse."

Her later work was more introspective in its lyrics as opposed to aggressive; Hole's Celebrity Skin and Love's solo album, America's Sweetheart, focused more on celebrity life, Hollywood, and drug addiction, while also carrying on past themes of vanity and body image, and 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 Love was in rehab in 2006.

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.

Vocals and performance [edit]

Love possesses a contralto vocal range. Her voice is often noted by critics for her unique 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.

Over the years Love gained considerable notoriety for her unpredictable live performances, distinguished by subversive, confrontational behavior and verbose interaction with the audience. In the mid-'90s, Love was known to stage dive frequently, wearing dresses and slips which would often be torn off of her by the crowd, and resulted in her losing teeth and sustaining other injuries.

Love's fraught state during Hole's 1994 and 1995 tours drew significant media attention from MTV and other music outlets due to her erratic behavior, which included throwing instruments and equipment, breaking into screaming fits, and provocation both to and from audiences. During sets, it was not unusual for Love to go on monologist rants between songs, or to bring fans onstage and give impromptu guitar lessons. 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 of those tours, Love said: "I was completely high on dope, I cannot remember much about it."

Love's aesthetic image, particularly in the 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". The style, widely popularized by Love, was dubbed the title "kinderwhore".

Personal life [edit]

Love has been a practicing Buddhist since 1989, and has studied and practiced both Tibetan and Nichiren Buddhism. She is a member of Sōka Gakkai, an international lay Buddhist organization. In 1999, Love stated that she was a Democrat, and has advocated for stricter gun control laws and gay rights. 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 various opiates in her early adult years, and tried cocaine at age 19. In 1992, Vanity Fair published an article by journalist Lynn Hirschberg which alluded that Love was addicted to heroin during her pregnancy. Love claimed she was misquoted, and asserted that she immediately quit using the drug during her first trimester after she discovered she was pregnant. Nonetheless, the publication of the article led to a lengthy battle with the Los Angeles County Court in which custody of newborn Frances was taken away from Love and Cobain and placed with Love's sister, Jamie, for several months.

After Cobain committed suicide in 1994, Love began using heroin again regularly, but quit using the drug in 1996 at the insistence of director Miloš Forman when she landed a starring 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.

Between 2004 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 various prescription drugs and cocaine. She made a public statement after her release, saying: "I would just like to thank the court for allowing me these 90 days ... [It] helped me deal with a very gnarly drug problem, which is behind me ... I've been really inspired and have remained inspired." Love claimed to have been sober as of 2007, and in May 2011, insisted her sobriety, saying: "That's not the way I live anymore. I try to work a good program. I don't do smack. I don't do crack anymore."

Relationships [edit]

When Love was 17, she began an on-and-off relationship with Rozz Rezabek of the band Theatre of Sheep after the two met at The Metropolis in Portland, Oregon, where Love occasionally worked as a DJ. The two bonded over barbiturate use and eventually stopped seeing one another. 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 relationship for over a year, though it was kept a secret. Love also briefly dated Billy Corgan in early 1991, but her most celebrated relationship was undoubtedly with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Although there are conflicting dates as to when they met (some sources state that they met in January 1989 at the Satyricon nightclub), Love stated that the two first encountered one another in January 1988 at a Dharma Bums show where she was doing a spoken word performance, and 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. 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 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 April 1994, Cobain committed suicide in their Seattle home.

In 1996, Love began a relationship with actor Edward Norton and were at one point engaged, but separated in 1999. Love was also romantically linked to British comedian Steve Coogan in the mid-2000s.

Filmography [edit]