Education: Courtney Love

Courtney Michelle Love is an American singer-songwriter, musician, actress and artist. Love initially gained notoriety in the Los Angeles indie rock scene as vocalist and rhythm guitarist of alternative rock band Hole, which she formed in 1989, later receiving international critical and commercial acclaim for their albums "Live Through This" and "Celebrity Skin". Love also had a solo career as a musician and an ittermittent acting career in which she received a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of Althea Flynt in "The People vs. Larry Flynt".

Love grew up primarily in Oregon, diagnosed as mildly autistic and the daughter of a pyschotherapist mother and a writer and ex-Grateful Dead manager father. Her earliest credit to rock and roll was an appearance in a group photo on the back cover of the Grateful Dead's "Aoxomoxoa" album in 1969. The child of a home that soon became broken, Love was arrested at age 14 for shoplifting and sent to a juvenile hall followed by several years in and out of foster homes before becoming legally emancipated at age 16. She moved to Portland, Oregon and supported herself by working illegally as a stripper, a DJ, and various odd jobs while taking classes at Portland State University studying English literature.


In 1981, Love was granted a small trust fund through her adoptive grandparents, which she used to travel to England and Ireland where she studied theology for two semesters at Trinity College.

Love said that she "didn't have a lot of social skills", and what little she did have she learned while frequenting gay clubs with friends. Frequent relocation didn't help matters as she traveled and lived everywhere from San Francisco to Japan to Alaska. But it was in San Francisco that she sent in an audition tape for the role of Nancy Spungen in the biopic "Sid & Nancy". She caught the attention of director Alex Cox, who wrote a small role for her in the film that would become her acting debut.

She initially began several music projects in the 1980s, in bands like Sugar Babydoll, Faith No More, Pagan Babies, and Babes In Toyland. It wasn't until 1989 that she would teach herself to play guitar and relocate to Los Angeles where she placed an ad in a local music zine, "I want to start a band. My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac". And so, Hole was born.

Hole played their first show in November 1989. 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 "Pretty on the Inside". It gained following in the United Kingdom and received positive critical acclaim. During this time she briefly dated Billy Corgan (of the Smashing Pumpkins) before her most celebrated relationship with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.

The two officially began dating in 1991, and were married just a year later in Hawaii. She wore a vintage dress once owned by actress France Farmer. Cobain wore green pajamas. Six months later she gave birth to the couple's only child, daughter France Bean Cobain. And in 1994, her husband of three years committed suicide in their Seattle home.

Just four days after Cobain's death Hole released the album "Live Through This", an immense commercial and critical success that received rave reviews from major music periodicals and has been certified platinum. Declared to be one of the best albums of all time by "Rolling Stone" magazine. However, her fraught emotional state given her husband's death were evident in live performances in the following years and labeled "notorious" in the media. She often altered hurtful song lyrics toward herself, dedicating songs to Cobain, provoking fans, throwing guitars into the audience, and breaking into screaming fits onstage. She has struggled with substance abuse problems for a great deal of her life, experimenting with various opiates in her early adult years and tried cocaine at age 19. After Cobain's death, she began using heroin regularly.

This trademark erratic behavoir kept everyone guessing, and translated into music when Hole released "Celebrity Skin" in 1997 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 garnered their first and only No. 1 hit single with the title track "Celebrity Skin". After touring for the album finished, two band members left, minor releases followed, and the official announcement of their breakup was announced in 2002.

Love went onto form a new "punk rock femme supergroup", Bastard, and later released a solo album, "America's Sweetheart". Though her solo effort was dubbed a "jaw-dropping act of artistic will", she publicly expressed her regret over the record several times calling it "a crap record" and later appearing on MTV's TRL where she said, "I cannot exist as a solo artist. It's a joke."

She began work on a second solo album, "How Dirty Girls Get Clean" that never made an official release. However, songs from the planned album found their way onto "Nobody's Daughter". "Nobody's Daughter" was reported to be the reuniting of Hole, but due to legal matters with a former guitarist a reuion was not contractually allowed. So, it became Love's second solo record as opposed to a "Hole" record and received mixed reviews despite her dedication. A dedication as extreme as five years of celibacy, "I needed to put all of my energy into this record. Like, all of it, and (sex and love) can be really distracting."

Courtney Love fascinates me. For me, the greatest forms of artistic expression are either deeply personal or deeply rooted in rebellion. Love's song lyrics are predominantly told from a female's point of view and noted for being highly aggressive, critical toward cultural definitions of women, with common themes and references such as body image, rape, suicide, conformity, prostitution, and death. Her main focus is the lyrics: "For me, I was just about lyrics and performance. I didn't really care about hooks or finess." There is an introspective raw power that is delivered in the manner in which it is felt. A pretty/ugly dynamic that keeps you on your toes. Her vocals have been described as "lung-busting" and "a corrosive, lunatic wail". A style icon, her thrift shop babydoll dresses and face adorned with smeared makeup have been described as "a debauched rag doll" and dubbed "kinderwhore".

She is a unique outlet of emotion and power, completely true to herself and whatever she is feeling at the moment and an honest display of her reaction to those feelings. It's pure rock and roll, and it's the stuff that legends are made of.