Courtney Love: the hole truth - rock singer - Interview

Interview, March, 1994 by Pamela Des Barres

This spring, that bright idea has dawned on fashions designers: in the collections, we've noticed an emergence of solar yellows, reds, and oranges that are positively warming. Since fashion often reflects the social climate, these hues we're seeing suggest a glowing optimism. After all, spring is nearly here, the haze of the '80s meltdown seems to be finally burning off, and while we're hardly out of the dark, we're beginning to see some daylight. It may all be relative, but even so, it's comforting to know that like Einstein, others are thinking brilliantly.

She reminds me of Janis, Jimi, or Jim because she shouts her mind, doesn't hold back, holds her own reins, and makes sure everybody knows about it - Iggy Pop in a shredded antique wedding dress, a female Lou Reed who screams like Exene. I can't think of a woman in music who has ever been as candid or spontaneous, as unshakable or brazen, as this founding member of the band Hole and former member of Faith No More and Sugar Babydoll. Live Through This, to be released by DGC Records next month, marks Hole's and Love's ascension from uncontrollable indie underdogs to major-league players in alternative rock. If there's anything that her records, performances, and outspoken opinions have shown, it's that this Love never has to say she's sorry.

I spoke to her and the members of Hole in Seattle, where Love lives with her husband, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, and their exquisite baby daughter, Frances. While the two new members of her band - bassist Kristen Pfaff and drummer Patty Schemel - and I waited for Love to finish her nap and join us for the interview, Eric Erlandson, the guitarist who has been with Hole since the beginning but who rarely speaks during interviews, and said only a few words during this one, went out to get us all some wine; a new kitty sat purring on the table; Frances toddled around grinning, and Kurt called the pizza man.

PAMELA DES BARRES: You are still sort of pioneers in the hard rock world. I know you were both in a number of bands before joining Hole, but what was it like for you to get started as female musicians?

KRISTEN PFAFF: It wasn't very much like sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll at all for me in the beginning. It was really intense work, just so that people would eventually accept me as a serious bass player. Because I realized right away that since I was a woman, I'd have to be better at what I did to be treated as an equal. Like I'd have to take the music further. So I've worked my ass off.

PDB: I just interviewed Joan Jett, and she told me that her parents taught her that she could do anything a man could do.

PATTY SCHEMEL: Yeah, I kind of had that support from my parents, too.

KP: Me, too. And I think it was the same for Courtney. We didn't grow up learning to be limited.

PS: I never felt like I had anything to prove. It was the general impulse to make music that drove me. I started playing drums when I was eleven and started playing in punk rock bands when I was like fifteen.

PDB: Your record [Live Through This] is about to come out. Everyone is expecting it to be really big.

PS: I'm afraid to think like that.

KP: Courtney's kind of like that, too. We don't want to

PS: Jinx it. [laughs]

PDB: To whoever is reading this, I'm talking to the girls while Courtney is taking a nap. We're expecting her down anytime soon.

KP: Oh, here she comes.

COURTNEY LOVE: Kurt! Kurt!

KURT COBAIN: [from the other room] What?

CL: Give me some of that pizza!

PDB: Hi, Courtney.

CL: Hi, Pamela. You want a piece?

PDB: No thanks. [Pizza is handed out] So you've decided to settle down in Seattle. Do you like it here?

CL: It's Probably my favorite place that I've ever lived. It's been really nice to me.

PDB: Have you lived in a lot of different places?

CL: Yeah, I've lived all over the world. To me, towns are like boyfriends. I have sick relationships with some of them. Like New York is sort of your junkie Eurotrash guy that you know is not very good for you but you keep going back. San Francisco is kind of like the wanna-be junkie Eurotrash guy - a skater with dreadlocks, sort of scummy, that totally lives off you. Minneapolis is like Dave Pirner [of Soul Asylum], basically. A cute guy who would dump his girlfriend of thirteen years for Winona Ryder the minute he gets famous.

PDB: [laughs]

CL: It's not fair to rag on Dave, though. When me and Kat [B]jelland of Babes In Toyland] moved to Minneapolis, we were like, "All right, we're going to a different town, starting a new band, and one of us is going to land Dave Pirner."

PDB: I used to talk like that.

CL: I know.

PDB: I actually had a list.

CL: [laughs] Yeah, me, too. Mark Arm, the guy in Mudhoney, said I should write a book called I'm in the Band.

PDB: You should.

CL: [laughs] Well, in your time things were probably a lot different than they are now. Which is why, in some ways, I'm really excited to do this interview with you. In other ways, I don't want to identify myself with you, even though I totally do identify with so much of your life. But you know, it's that word