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Courtney Michelle Love (born July 9, 1964) is an American rock musician and Golden Globe-nominated actress, best-known as lead singer for the now-defunct alternative rock band Hole and for her two-year marriage to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Rolling Stone has called Love "the most controversial woman in the history of rock."
Early life
Courtney Love was born Courtney Michelle Harrison, on July 9, 1964, at 2:08 p.m., in San Francisco, California, where her parents first met and married. Her mother, Linda Carroll (née Risi), and father, Hank Harrison, had known each other only a few months when she became pregnant. Harrison worked in some capacity with The Grateful Dead, and the young family appears on the back cover of their 1969 album, Aoxomoxoa.
Love's biological family broke apart rapidly while she was still very young. During a child custody case following Love's parents' divorce, both her mother and one of her girlfriends presented letters to the court implying her father had given the child, then four years old, LSD. Harrison denies this allegation and has passed polygraph tests; however, these allegations led to full custody being awarded to Love's mother.
Love then spent a troubled childhood with her mother as she wandered through three husbands and as many hippie communes in Oregon, and various schools including a boarding school in Nelson, New Zealand. Before arriving in New Zealand, Love had been left in the United States with a therapist, while her mother, the new husband and her half-sisters went on ahead; when she was sent for, Love was sent to the boarding school in Nelson.
While in boarding school, Love wrote poetry, joined a Bay City Rollers fan club, and, at the age of 12 (once back in the U.S., ostensibly), applied to join the Mickey Mouse Club; she was rejected after reading a poem by Sylvia Plath at the audition.
By the time she was a teenager, Love was a veteran of reform schools, foster homes and juvenile halls. She had stolen a Kiss t-shirt from Woolworth's, and, when no family surfaced to claim responsibility, Love spent the next three years shuttling between foster families and detainment facilities. No placement was ever permanent. Love would later tell biographer Poppy Z. Brite that she was turned on to punk rock during this time by a social worker in the juvenile hall who gave her three records: The Pretenders, Squeeze, and Nevermind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.
At 15, Love emancipated herself from her family and travelled around the U.S., England and Republic of Ireland, living on a trust fund established for her by her mother's adoptive parents. During her time in England, Love met, befriended and moved in with musician Julian Cope in his Toxteth, Liverpool home, and became a regular face at rock shows.
Eventually, she would head back to the states, ending up in Portland, Oregon, still avidly pursuing music. Love's first rock musician boyfriend was Rozz Rezabek of the Portland band band Theatre of Sheep, who had an affair with her while she was still underage. Though the two wrote each other copious love letters, Love has said in many interviews that he did not take her virginity; she claims her first sexual encounter was a one-night stand with Michael Mooney, a sometimes-guitarist for Echo & the Bunnymen and later to Spiritualized. Mooney denies this ever happened.
In her late teens, Love came in and out of foster homes and state facilities. She worked sporadically in Japan, Taiwan, Guam, Los Angeles and Alaska as a stripper, a job she returned to at several points in her life before becoming famous. She later told Liz Evans of The Guardian that this job provided her with a great deal of creative inspiration.
“Writing songs has a lot to do with your sexuality…I danced for a while and just being around that made me aware of what people use. And if you grow up being blessed with a certain beauty or a certain intelligence that enhances your beauty, you can get into a better position in life. Stripping can be really powerful... it’s how I got a guitar. It’s how I had a band.”
Early musical career
Love began her professional music career with a brief stint as the lead singer of Faith No More, until she was kicked out of the band sometime around 1985. Keyboardist Roddy Bottum described the band at the time as "democratic", saying that Love's dominating personality did not fit in. The two artists have remained friends.
At age 22, Love moved back to Portland, then on to Los Angeles, California in 1987 with fellow musician Kat Bjelland, beginning a period in which Love would form bands with Bjelland only to be ousted by her from each. The pair first formed a band in L.A. with Jennifer Finch called Sugar Baby Doll (alternately Sugar Babylon). Love and Bjelland later formed a band called The Pagan Babies in San Francisco, with Diedre Schletter on drums and Janis Tanaka on bass. The band recorded a demo of four tracks, then ejected Love and renamed themselves Italian Whorenuns. Lastly, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bjelland started what ultimately would become her longest-running band, Babes in Toyland: Courtney briefly played bass, but was kicked out of this group as well.
Love had more early success as an actress, appearing as the best friend of Nancy Spungen in Alex Cox's Sid Vicious biopic Sid and Nancy in 1986, and in Cox's Straight to Hell in 1987, as well as some small roles on television episodes. Love has also appeared in the music video for The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated", dressed as a bride and being carried away by a man at the end of the song.
In 1989, Love taught herself to play guitar and set out to form her own band. To do so, she placed an ad in an issue of Flipside, to which Eric Erlandson replied. Love and Erlandson co-founded Hole and are the only two members to remain constant throughout the band's history. The group made their first gig in November 1989, after three months of rehearsal, and quickly started releasing singles on the Long Beach, California independent label Sympathy for the Record Industry. The band's debut album Pretty on the Inside was released in early 1991 on Caroline Records and was produced by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Don Fleming of the band Gumball. It sold well for an independent release and received ecstatic reviews in the influential British alternative music press.
Love and marriage
Love met Kurt Cobain at an L7/Butthole Surfers concert in 1989, and they eventually fell in love in October/November 1991. Love and Cobain were married on Waikiki Beach, Hawaii on February 14, 1992. On August 18 of that year, the couple's daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was born.
The public image of the new Love-Cobain family was tarnished by a 1992 article in Vanity Fair entitled "Strange Love," in which it was alleged that Love had continued using heroin in the early stages of pregnancy. As a result, Child Welfare Services briefly investigated the Cobains' fitness as parents, removing Frances Bean from their custody for a short period. Love claims to this day that she was misquoted, saying she told author Lynn Hirschberg that she'd stopped using the drug once she learned she was pregnant.
On April 5, 1994, a week before the release of Hole's breakthrough album Live Through This, Kurt Cobain died in his home in Seattle, Washington. The death was ruled a suicide by authorities, and Love read his suicide note to assembled, mourning fans at a memorial service in Seattle a few days after his body was found. Clearly crying, she interrupted the note frequently to express her anger and sorrow ("Kurt, the worst crime I can think of is for you to just continue being a rock star when you fucking hate it, just fucking stop"), even inciting the crowd to call him an "asshole" for leaving everyone behind. On the audio recording that day you can hear the crowd obey. Finally, Love implored Nirvana fans not to listen to Cobain's infamous final words, "It's better to burn out than fade away," a lyric cribbed from Neil Young's "My My, Hey Hey."
Present day (2005-2007)
On February 3, 2006, Love was released from house arrest and issued the following statement: "I would just like to thank the court for allowing me these ninety 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 let the community know I'm doing great... I've been really inspired and have remained inspired."
In June 2005, three months after being released from court-ordered drug rehabilitation, Love started recording her second solo LP, tentatively titled How Dirty Girls Get Clean. She began writing the new material during rehab. Song titles include "My Bedroom Walls", "Pacific Coast Highway", "Sunset Marquis", and an anti-cocaine rant named "Loser Dust", among others.1] Former 4 Non Blondes singer Linda Perry is producing the record. Long time friend Billy Corgan has also assisted Love in writing and recording some tracks. A documentary about the making of the record, entitled The Return of Courtney Love, was filmed, written and produced by Will Yapp and aired on British TV network More4 on September 27, which resulted in leaking of sound clips of some of the songs off of How Dirty Girls Get Clean. The first entire song to be available for downloading was "Never Go Hungry Again", recorded in a rough acoustic version during an interview for The Times in November.
Love has released a memoir/diary collection book, Dirty Blonde, in October 2006, and her sophomore album is slated for a summer 2007 release.
She currently lives in Hollywood with her daughter.
Film career
Her first film credit was a small role in the film Sid and Nancy. Love was persistent in her attempts to land the role of Nancy Spungen in the film, and at one point sent director Alex Cox a videotape in which she described her suitability for the part. (This video often turns up online, and has been featured on various VH1 "Before They Were Rock Stars" shows.)
Love received considerable acclaim for her role as Larry Flynt's wife, Althea, in Miloš Forman's 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt, opposite Woody Harrelson as Flynt. She received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama.
She was also praised for her supporting role in the 1998 Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, which starred Jim Carrey as Kaufman. Other notable film credits include Trapped, Basquiat, 200 Cigarettes, and Feeling Minnesota.
| Latest news about Courtney Love |
Perez Hilton: Courtney Love's Drug Induced Conspiracy TheoriesRecently, Courtney Love hightailed it out of her sweet digs in Malibu to live in the Big Apple. When asked about the cross-country move, Courtney insisted that her employees in California were double-crossing her and staging bogus ... Continue reading
Courtney Love Scared off of Plastic Surgery » Celebrity Plastic ...Kurt Cobain' widow Courtney Love has undergone her share of plastic surgery disasters since his death in 1994. But her days of going under the knife are over, thanks to a chance encounter with Jocelyn Wildenstein, aka Catwoman. ... Continue reading
Perez Hilton: Courtney Love Vows: No More Plastic Surgery!I don't believe that Courtney Love made the insensitive comments about Ms Wildenstein. Just do not believe that. Perez if you are going to trash someone …..why don't you take the credit for it instead of trying to slap in on Courtney. ... Continue reading
Courtney Love Tweets Herself Into a Legal Hole, Round 2 ...The former Hole lead singer and infamous widow of Kurt Cobain is digging herself deeper in that legal hole we wrote about. Courtney Love has been denied protection with California's Anti-SLAPP law by Judge Aurelio Munoz in Los Angeles ... Continue reading
Courtney Love Designing Clothing Line - StyleListCourtney Love at a Marc Jacobs fashion show. Photo: Getty Images Often criticized for her trashy questionable fashion choices, Courtney Love doe. Continue reading
Courtney Love's Paranoid Sounding Claims Backed Up By Other SourcesThe headline 'Courtney Love's Phones And Computers Bugged, Says Courtney Love' reads kind of like 'Giant Pterodactyl in Road Caused 10-Car Pileup, Asserts. Continue reading
Courtney Love Is Just Jealous Of Jocelyn Wildenstein's Beauty ...Courtney Love must be sick of ventriloquists randomly sticking their fists up her ass to get her to speak, because she has vowed that she will never put her parts under the knife again. Courtney told The Sun that she was scared straight ... Continue reading
Courtney Love's Phones And Computers Bugged, Says Courtney Love ...Love's relocated to NYC claiming people on her LA staff "enlisted off-duty, gun-wielding cops to stage bogus 'raids' on her Malibu home" in an attempt to pilfer Kurt Cobain's fortune. There's so much more.... Continue reading
Perez Hilton: Sorry New York, Courtney Love Is All YoursCOURTNEY Love is a GENIUS singer/songwriter and she has helped so many people with her words. She is one of the only musician to stand for something so powerful, and not just sing stupid songs about dancing in the clubs. ... Continue reading
Perez Hilton: Courtney Love Suffers Legal SetbackSince 2004, Hollywood's most hated website has been delivering the juiciest celebrity gossip. The blog is The go-to source for daily happenings in Hollywood. Written by the internet's most notorious gossip columnist, Perez Hilton (Mario ... Continue reading
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