Jenny Trout asked her readers about things they like despite there being problematic aspects to them. After reading this text about Richey Edwards of The Manic Street Preachers I felt a need to write about one of my favourite problematic things: Courtney Love.Courtney Love is, for those who do not know, a musician and occasional actress whose band Hole was a part of both the Riot Grrl- and the Grunge-movements during the early nineties. Most people though recognise her primarily as the widow of Nirvana singer Curt Kobain.
Some basic facts about Courtney Love:
- Courtney Love was born in 1964 and had, as far as anyone can tell, a rather chaotic childhood and adolescence. In her twenties she was a part of several bands before forming Hole in 1989. Hole were moderately successful, releasing the album Pretty on the Inside in 1991 to favourable reviews and decent sales for an alternative band.
- In 1992 Courtney Love married Curt Kobain. They had a daughter six months later. Curt Kobain killed himself in April 1994.
- Hole's album Live Through This was released four days after Curt Kobain's body was found. In august the same year bassist Kristen Pfaff died from a heroin overdose. Live Through This was a very successful album and is seen as the Hole album.
- Hole's third album, Celebrity Skin, was released in 1998. This is one of My Necessary Albums. I love it fiercely. Sadly, it was also the last album Hole released for another thirteen years, despite being their both most critically and commercially successful record.
- In 2004 Courtney Love released a solo album called America's Sweetheart. After this album, her problems, whether mental, legal or chemical more or less kept her from releasing any music before Hole's 2010 "reunion" album Nobody's Daughter, which lacks any original or previous members apart from Courtney herself. To be honest I haven't listened to this album a lot.
I heard Hole for the first time when I was thirteen or fourteen. My uncle owned Live Through This and I remember lying on his living room floor being absolutely knocked out by Violet, the opening track. I recorded the album onto a cassette tape which lived in my walkman for something like six months.
I realise this is terribly trite and cliché, but I can't remember ever feeling like a "normal" or "good" girl. I've always been a bit too loud, a bit too sensitive, a bit too socially awkward to feel like I could fit in. Especially in primary school, when I could not for the life of me figure out how to be a "cute" girl, with girly giggles and charming shyness. I had no relatives in the village where I grew up, my parents did not hunt, didn't own a camping trailer or a leather sofa. I had been given books, art supplies and Lego to a larger extend than I had been given Barbie dolls or other typically girly things. I could read on a fourth or fifth grade level in first grade and I took pride in being clever and smart and imaginative. My dad was a minister and my mum never wore pink. All this coalesced somewhere in fifth or sixth grade, when I can remember getting actively pissed off at prettiness mattering so much and at the fact that I was told to be quiet more often than my equally verbose male peers. I'm not sure I had the words before seventh grade, but I see that anger as my feminist awakening.
Hitting puberty at twelve was such a visceral reminder that I was supposed to be a girl. I had boobs and I bled once a month. I did have girly interests (eh, mostly boys and makeup...), but I was also really angry all the time and Could Not Shut Up. Sometime during this conflict of expected and desired femininity and anger at being expected to adapt I heard Hole for the first time. Something clicked. It was ok to be angry. I could even be angry AND wear makeup, I could even communicate my anger through my look. At the same time I graduated from Seventeen/Cosmo-hybrid magazines to the awesome, awesome, awesome Swedish magazine Darling (RIP, my paper-big-sister). A magazine aimed at girls in their teens/early twenties which was very vocally feminist. I became angrier, but also felt strengthened. I dressed pretty aggressively sexy and wore heavy boots and too much makeup and I snarled at people who voiced their dislike. I was more or less surgically attached to my headphones. I developed pretty intense anxiety-issues and started cutting myself. I met my first boyfriend who was a sweetheart, but not exactly the sharpest knife in the box. He almost made me feel normal. But I was still angry and depressed and anxious. Celebrity Skin came out. I identified, loudly, as a feminist. A girl died at a Hole-concert in southern Sweden...
...and things became Really Fucking Complicated. Courtney Love's behaviour during that show was fairly irresponsible. People blamed her for the girl's death. I tried to defend my love for her music, but ended up just backing away from the subject.
There are some quite obviously problematic aspects to Courtney Love. She does not have a history of being kind to ex band-mates. She's been at best a semi-present mother. She was a leading figure in something that became a cult of drugs and semi-glorified depression. All these things I know.
I also know that Andrew Eldritch erased other members' contributions to Sisters of Mercy-albums. I know that Courtney's equally troubled husband, who commited suicide, leaving her and their daughter, is glorified as a tortured genius. The list of male rock stars being at best a name on a check for their kids is too long to go into here.
None of these behaviours should be excused. But I think Courtney Love has been unfairly judged because she is a woman, displaying negative behaviours usually associated with men.
I never stopped listening to Live Through This and Celebrity Skin. Those albums have been my company through more than half my life now. They've been the soundtrack to intense pride and joy as well to some pretty spectacular breakdowns. When I was a jazz-girl, when I was a metal-head, when I was a gothling those albums stayed with me. When I tried passing as "normal" they were my secret when I felt like I was losing myself. When my feminism wavered they helped me get pissed off and loud again.
I love Courtney Love.
