She Lived A Tragedy
Sometimes it looks as if Courtney Love made a name for herself based solely on her bad behavior. It’s easy to forget that she is a talented musician and award-winning actor. It’s just that she seems to go out of her way to do and say such outrageous things. But it’s time to take a walk in Love’s sometimes tragic shoes. There are more than a few reasons why she’s become the embodiment of a train wreck.
Manfred Werner - Tsui, Wikimedia Commons
1. She Was Named After A Character
Courtney Michelle Harrison was born at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco on July 9, 1964. Her parents, Linda Carroll and Hank Harrison, took the name Courtney from the 1967 novel Chocolates for Breakfast. It was a strange choice as the character has a dysfunctional upbringing, which leads to taboo behavior.
It was like a prediction for Love’s future.
2. She Went On A Trip
Love’s parents came from very different worlds. Mom’s plan was to be a psychotherapist, and Dad was the road manager for the Grateful Dead. In 1970, Carroll asked her husband for a divorce, and the reason was a shocker. She claimed that Harrison had given young Love a psychedelic drug. To back this accusation up, Carroll had one of her husband’s girlfriends testify that this was the truth.
Mom had to get Love away from her father.
Carroll, Linda/family archive, Wikimedia Commons, Modified
3. She Started Therapy
Likely in an effort to stay away from her husband, Carroll took Love and moved to Oregon, and started her psychology degree. She married school teacher Frank Rodríguez and sent Love to Montessori school. Love didn’t do well at the school and was soon in therapy. One doctor thought that Love might have autism.
But there was no time to deal with this.
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4. Her Home Life Wasn’t Stable
Despite her mother’s best efforts, Love’s home life didn’t ever seem stable…which may have had something to do with the aforementioned best efforts. When she was eight years old, Mom ditched husband number two and found number three. This was a sportswriter named David Menely. For some reason, the family left the US and moved to New Zealand. Love was now acting out at school and found herself expelled from Nelson College for Girls.
Love’s mom had had enough.
Pedro Szekely, Wikimedia Commons
5. Her Mother Gave Her Up
At the age of 10, Courtney Love was making the long trip back to Oregon. Her mother had had it and wanted someone else to raise her. Carroll’s second husband had adopted Love, so he took over as father, and other family friends pitched in to help. By the age of 14, Love was in a correctional facility. Security had caught her shoplifting.
Love could not seem to get a break.
Island Pictures, Wikimedia Commons
6. They Sent Her Home
Love spent the late 1970s in foster care. In 1980, she was finally free to lead her own life. The first thing she did was head off to Asia, where she found work as an exotic dancer in Japan. She began to carve out a life for herself until authorities took away her passport. She had to come home.
All she wanted to do was hide.
7. She Changed Her Name
Even though Courtney Love wasn't looking to reconnect with family, she returned to Portland anyway. But she did try to hide. She changed her last name to Love and found employment as a DJ at a gay club. What Love soon realized was that she didn’t have the social skills that others had. She turned to the drag queens at the club for guidance.
But being a DJ wasn’t what Love wanted. She wanted to sing.
rufusowliebat, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons, Modified
8. She Talked Her Way In
In the latter part of 1982, Love went to a Faith No More concert in San Francisco. She somehow convinced the band to hire her as a singer. Love did manage to record music with the band, but then they fired her. Their excuse was that they wanted “male energy”. Love took this firing hard and used it as an excuse to return to Asia.
Of course, trouble followed her there.
9. She Looked For Easy Money
In Hong Kong, Courtney Love worked as a taxi dancer, which involved getting paid to dance with customers at a club. One of these customers took a special interest in Love and wanted to take her back to the Philippines with him. He knew she needed some nice clothes and offered to buy her some. Love cleverly took the money and bought a ticket back to the States.
She had an idea for a new career.
Andrea Fleming, Wikimedia Commons
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10. She Got A Break
Once back in America, Love decided she wanted to be an actor. She studied film at the San Francisco Art Institute and then studied experimental theater, where her teacher was none other than Whoopi Goldberg. In 1985, director Alex Cox gave Love a small part in his biopic Sid and Nancy, about punk rock star Sid Vicious.
When the film wrapped, Love had a serious problem.
Library of Congress Life, Wikimedia Commons
11. She Got A Real Part
Sure, Courtney Love had made some money on Sid and Nancy, but not that much. She was now in New York City, so she went to Times Square to try and make some money. What she found was a job in a peep show. Luckily, Cox came back for more Love. He put her in as one of the leads in his Western parody Straight to Hell. This film, full of musicians, did poorly—but someone very influential saw it.
AWFFOficial, Wikimedia Commons
12. She Had Her 15 Minutes
Artist Andy Warhol happened to see Love’s film with Cox and saw something in Love. He introduced her to the world in his talk show called Fifteen Minutes, which aired on MTV. With the film and her appearance with Warhol, Love found herself with a little bit of fame.
But that was not what she wanted.
Screenshot from Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes, MTV (1985–1987), Modified
13. She Got Recognized
For some reason, Courtney Love shied away from any kind of fame. She got out of New York as fast as possible and started working as a dancer back in Oregon. Sadly, her fame followed her. When one of the patrons of the club recognized her, she knew she had to get further away from the public eye than Oregon.
She came up with the perfect solution.
thepaparazzigamer, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons, Modified
14. She Went As Far Away As Possible
Love must have figured that Alaska was as far away from her fame as she could get and still be in America. She moved to Anchorage and got a job as a dancer and lived in a trailer with a bunch of other dancers. She had abandoned all her possessions and just had the clothes on her back, and of course, some cute things to take off as a dancer.
Love was trying to get her life in order.
Quintin Soloviev, Wikimedia Commons
15. She Had A Hole Running Through Her
Love’s time in Alaska seemed to give her focus. She learned to play the guitar and then moved to LA. Her focus in LA was to start a band. She put an ad in a music zine and found Eric Erlandson on guitar, Lisa Roberts on bass, and drummer Caroline Rue. She called her band Hole because her mother had once told her that it was impossible to live "with a hole running through her".
With all this going on, Love still found time for…love.
A Horse With No Name, Wikimedia Commons
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16. Her First Marriage Was A Joke
While working on Hole, Courtney Love started dating her own guitarist, Eric Erlandson. But then she did something completely unexpected. She went to Las Vegas and married James Moreland from the band Leaving Trains. Moreland, who wore women’s clothes on stage, later came out as a trans woman. Love said they married as a joke.
Something that wasn't a joke was Hole’s first album.
17. Her First Album Rocked
In 1991, Hole was ready with their first album. This was Pretty on the Inside, and it became an indie music darling. Critics loved it, and Spin magazine put it on their top 20 albums of the year list. It looked like Love’s focus on music was paying off.
Now it was time for a tour.
Flickr user georgia, Wikimedia Commons
18. She Dating A Smashing Pumpkin
Love and Hole began a European tour with grunge superstars Mudhoney and then opened for the Smashing Pumpkins in the US. Somewhere along the way, Love started a relationship with Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan. But this was brief, as Love was about to meet a man who would come to dominate her life.
Graham Racher, Wikimedia Commons
19. There’s Some Confusion
No one seems to agree on how Love came to meet Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. Some place the meeting at the Satyricon nightclub. Others say it happened when Love accused Cobain of looking like Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum. Love herself says she met Cobain at a concert put on by the grunge band Dharma Bums.
What really matters is that they meet. And by 1992, they were a couple.
20. She Borrowed A Dress
On February 24, 1992, Love and Cobain went to the beach in Waikiki, Hawaii, and tied the knot. For the occasion, Cobain stuck to his grunge roots and wore plaid pajamas. Love had a used dress that had once belonged to Frances Farmer, who was an actor who infamously ended up in a mental institute.
These two only had a few months to enjoy the honeymoon period of their marriage.
21. She Started A Family
On August 18, 1992, Courtney Love gave birth to Frances Bean Cobain. Her first name came from Frances McKee of The Vaselines and her second name because Cobain thought she looked like a kidney bean on the sonogram. Love and Cobain chose actress Drew Barrymore and REM’s Michael Stipe as godparents. The little family moved from LA to Seattle, Washington, to start their new life.
Sadly, there would soon be trouble.
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22. She Didn’t Trust Her Gut
Thanks to Nirvana’s album Nevermind, the band and Kurt had become incredibly famous. It didn't take long for Vanity Fair to come knocking on his door for an interview. Love had always seemed adverse to being a celebrity, but her manager convinced her the cover story would be beneficial for her career. Love reluctantly agreed to the interview.
She should have listened to her instincts.
ceedub13, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
23. She Got Exposed
Lynn Hirschberg called her Vanity Fair article about Love and Cobain, “Strange Love”. As you can guess from the title, it wasn't exactly a flattering article. In fact, Hirschberg let out a startling allegation. It wasn't a huge surprise that Love and Cobain were opiate users. But Hirschberg shocked the public when he wrote that Love used opiates while pregnant with their daughter.
Love had been right; this article was something that could ruin her career.
24. They Took Her Away
As it turned out, a lot of people read Vanity Fair. Child services seemed to have read it, and they took Frances Bean away from her parents. Of course, Love was livid. She said that Hirschberg had misquoted her, and that she’d stopped using as soon as she knew she was pregnant.
It didn't matter what the truth was. Love’s reputation was going to suffer.
25. She Couldn’t Repair The Damage
Eventually, the court dismissed the case against Love and Cobain, and they regained custody of their baby girl. In Love’s opinion, the article caused damage that no one could repair. But the two had to carry on. She appeared with Cobain at a benefit on September 8, 1993. Sadly, this would be the only time they played together publicly.
26. She Lost Him
In 1994, Kurt Cobain was in rehab in Marina del Rey, California. On April 1, he received a visit from his baby daughter, and they had some quality play time together. Four days after this meeting, Cobain tragically took his own life. He was at home, and Courtney Love was now in rehab. Their marriage had lasted just over a year.
What would Love do now?
Frank Micelotta Archive, Getty Images
27. She Had To Carry On
Love took some of Cobain’s cremated remains to a monastery for blessing, and the rest she made into pottery. She’d already recorded an album, and she had to put aside her grief and focus on its release. The aptly titled Live Through This debuted just one week after she had lost Cobain.
And then another tragedy struck.
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28. She Lost Another
Courtney Love was getting ready to tour with Live Through This when Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff passed on to an overdose. Love was still dealing with the loss of Cobain, and now this was another hit. She quickly recruited a new bass player, Melissa Auf der Maur, and the tour was on. Of course, everyone wanted to know how Love would perform after her tragic losses.
Love was not about to disappoint.
29. She Was Frightening
MTV described Hole’s first performance after losing Cobain as “macabre, frightening, and inspirational". The Guardian noted that Love looked disheveled, but her performance was “chaotic” and “heroic”. The album went on to become platinum and took Love to a new level of fame. Barbara Walters included her on her 10 Most Fascinating People in 1995.
Love may have been fascinating, but she was struggling big time.
30. She Struggled On Tour
Love’s tour with Hole was fraught with difficulties. First of all, there was her on-stage antics. She ranted, she fought with audience members, and on occasion flashed them. Off-stage wasn't much better. On a flight in Australia, she argued so intensely with a flight attendant that authorities temporarily took her in.
But there was more.
Kara Murphy, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
31. She Doesn’t Remember
At Lollapalooza, Courtney Love ended up in an altercation with Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna. For some reason, Love punched her. For this infraction, Love got a punishment. She had to attend anger-management classes. The thing was, Love was using quite heavily at this time and claims to remember very little of any of the events during the tour.
Clearly, Love had to get her act together.
Sarah K Joyce, Wikimedia Commons
32. She Found A Great Role
Maybe it was the disastrous tour that did it. But Love decided to pivot away from music and toward acting. After appearing in minor roles in Feeling Minnesota and Basquiat, she got the chance to play a part she could really sink her teeth into. This was the role of Althea Flynt, wife of Larry Flynt. The movie was The People Vs Larry Flint, and the director was award-winner Milos Forman.
This film could take Love to the next level.
Screenshot from The People vs. Larry Flynt, Columbia Pictures (1996)
33. She Was A Risk
Forman was on board to have Love play the wife of the notorious magazine publisher Larry Flint, but he had a concern. Love had shown up at their first meeting under the influence. He still thought she was perfect for the role, but he wanted a guarantee that this wouldn't be a problem. The guarantee he wanted was drug testing.
But there was another obstacle.
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34. She Was Uninsurable
At this point in her unstable career, no insurance company agreed to cover Courtney Love. Well, of course, they would at an incredibly high price. To pay the outrageous fee, Love, Forman, co-star Woody Harrelson, and others pitched in to pick up the tab. Now they could finally start filming.
Love was going to have to fight hard to keep it together.
Screenshot from The People vs. Larry Flynt, Columbia Pictures (1996)
35. She Kicked the Habit
While filming The People vs. Larry Flynt, Love entered rehab and kicked the habit. She also proved herself by passing tests for illicit substances. Love would later say that Forman helped her with her addiction and even credits him with helping her get her career back on track. Now she was ready to reap the rewards.
Screenshot from The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Modified
36. She Got Awarded
Love’s performance in The People vs Larry Flint was a knockout. She received many award nominations for her acting and took home prizes at the New York Film Critics Awards and the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards. She cleaned up her act and even the way she looked. She appeared in photo spreads for Versace and Vogue Italia.
But Love would always have a problem keeping her behavior in check.
Screenshot from The People vs. Larry Flynt, Columbia Pictures (1996), Modified
37. She Made A Warning Call
After filming The People Vs Larry Flint, Courtney Love had a short relationship with co-star Ed Norton. When she met music exec James Barber, who had a wife and two kids, she left Norton in the dust. She called up Barber’s wife and warned her that she had the hots for her husband.
Barber‘s wife wasn’t about to take this sitting down.
Steve Jurvetson from Los Altos, USA, Wikimedia Commons
38. She Got Run Over
Around 2000, Love was dating Barber and was ready to appear in Ghosts of Mars by horror director John Carpenter. At the last minute, Love had to drop out of the film due to an injury. As it turned out, Barber’s angry ex-wife had run over Love’s foot with her car. Love would take her revenge.
But she’d take it on Barber, not his wife.
Nathan Hartley Maas, Wikimedia Commons
39. She Was In Trouble Again
In 2003, Courtney Love got in trouble at Heathrow Airport. She disrupted a flight, and Virgin Airlines told her she could fly with someone else. That same year, authorities charged her with breaking the windows at Barber's house. Soon after, Barber put it in writing—in court documents, of course—that his “social life with Courtney Love has ended.”
This bad behavior was bound to have repercussions.
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40. She Lost Her Again
It’s one thing to act like an out-of-control rock star. But when you have a child, things can often go amiss. Once again, because of her behavior, Love lost custody of her daughter. You see, when she broke Barber’s windows, she was also under the influence of narcotics. Love didn't get custody back for nearly two years.
If Love was trying to prove she was a good mother, she had a strange way of showing it.
41. She Had A Bad Night
In 2004, Courtney Love went on the David Letterman show to promote her album “America's Sweetheart”. Well, Love’s behavior was anything but sweet. It got off to a bad start when Love lifted up her top to flash Letterman. She then jumped up on his desk. Later that same night, she allegedly hit a fan with a microphone stand. Authorities took her in but released her in time for her show at the Bowery Ballroom.
2004 was not over yet. There was still time for more misbehavior.
Screenshot from Late Show with David Letterman, CBS (1993–2015), Modified
42. She Got Locked Up
July 9, 2004, was Love’s 40th birthday, but there was little to celebrate. She failed to appear in court, and authorities took her into custody. Because she was acting strangely, they locked her up in Bellevue Hospital. They thought she was a danger to herself, so they put her on a watch for 72 hours. After the time was up, they transferred her to rehab.
Love’s reputation had taken too many hits. But then someone stood up for her.
Jim.henderson, Wikimedia Commons
43. She Had A Hero
As public opinion was mounting against Love, someone needed to come to her defense. Help came in the form of comedian Margaret Cho. Cho’s thought was that feminists should be supporting Love instead of jumping on the bandwagon and constantly criticizing her.
These were great thoughts, but Love’s behavior wasn’t helping Cho’s crusade.
CaseyJNewell, Wikimedia Commons
44. She Was Disheveled
When Courtney Love took to the podium at a 2005 roast for Pamela Anderson, things went south. Love looked disheveled and as if she were under the influence. One review was more to the point: they said Love "acted as if she belonged in an institution". The fallout from that appearance landed Love in a 180-day rehab sentence. .
Next, Love would take to social media and get in even more trouble.
45. She Had To Pay Up Twice
In March 2009, Love was in trouble. She had posted some rather inflammatory statements about fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir. Before facing a judge, Love forked over $450,000. But this didn’t stop Love. She continued to post about Simorangkir and ended up paying an additional $350,000.
But sometimes, Love’s unruly comments had real meaning.
Kara Murphy, Wikimedia Commons
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46. She Drew The Line
In 2019, Joss Sackler wanted to fork over $100,00 just to have Love attend her fashion show in New York City. But Love knew the truth about Sackler. She’d gotten rich because she was an heiress to the Sackler family, who made their money selling the controversial opioid prescription med OxyContin. Love made it clear in the media that she was having nothing to do with Sackler.
And then Love’s own health took a hit.
aphrodite-in-nyc, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
47. She Had A Health Scare
In August 2020, Courtney Love was feeling tired, weak, and short of breath. When her doctors had a look, they came back with a diagnosis of acute anemia. She later said she suffered severe weight loss and almost lost her life. Love eventually recovered fully.
It’s a good thing she recovered, because Love still has a lot to give.
48. She Made A Great Impact
Sure, Courtney Love has made a few mistakes in her life, but she has also been an inspiration, especially to young women in the music industry. One quote seems to sum up her advice for female musicians: "I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming”. Love had always had a soft spot for helping young women.
She knew what could happen to vulnerable girls in the music industry.
Katjusa Cisar, Wikimedia Commons
49. She Wanted To Protect Them
Back in 1999, Love was on tour with Marilyn Manson and Korn. Love had an issue with the way both Manson and members of Korn treated young women. She recognized that many young women in the music industry struggled, and she believed some rock stars took advantage of that. She said it bothered her to see these young, sometimes damaged, women leaving in the morning. She ended up leaving the tour.
There was one more way that Love had protected women.
50. She Warned About A Predator
Way back in 2005, when Love was on the red carpet at the Pamela Anderson event, comedian Natasha Leggero asked her for advice to young women in Hollywood. Love’s reply was a harbinger of things to come. She said, "If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons [hotel], don't go.” This was before the #metoo movement, so that advice may well have protected a young Hollywood hopeful.
51. She Kept A Part Of Him With Her
Much of Love’s story has been intertwined with that of her husband, Kurt Cobain, and his tragic loss—including the public memorial, where Love bravely spoke in front of thousands of fans. Love read part of the note he’d left behind to the crowd, which contained heartbreaking words for the love of his life and his daughter. In the very last lines of the letter, Cobain wrote, "Please keep going Courtney. For Frances. For her life which will be so much happier without me. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU”.
Once Cobain was cremated, Love kept a macabre and unusual keepsake of him. She split up his ashes, dividing them between a traditional urn and a teddy bear.
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