Courtney Love, Courtney Michelle Harrison, is an American rock musician and an alternative rock figure.
Love spent much of her childhood living in communes with her mother after her parents divorced when she was five. At the age of nineteen, she met Kat Bjelland at a nightclub in Portland where Love had worked as a stripper. Together, they formed the band Sugar Baby Doll and developed a signature style of baby doll dresses, ripped stockings, and smeared makeup.
Love’s time with Sugar Baby didn’t last long, but it helped her start her own band, Hole, in 1989, with Eric Erlandson after he replied to an ad she placed looking for musicians.
After their debut album, Pretty on the Inside, the band and Love started gaining more attention in the music industry. Soon Love began to meet and befriend more influential musicians, one of them was her future husband, Cobain, from the band Nirvana.
Not long after, Love and Cobain got married. This was her second marriage, having been wed to James Moreland in 1989. This marriage helped her with her own music career, as many major record labels suddenly began to notice her work. But after giving birth to their first and only child, their life started getting more complicated.
Love and Cobain had problems with addiction even during her pregnancy. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Love said that she used drugs while unknowingly being pregnant with her daughter. The couple lost custody, but the investigation was eventually dismissed, and the baby was returned to them.
Love and Cobain struggled with parenting and drug addiction. As a result Cobain ended his life on April 5, 1994. Shortly after his body was found, Love read Cobain’s note to fans at a memorial service in Seattle. Love lost Cobain just before Hole’s album Live Through This release. Not long after, Hole’s bassist Kristen Pfaff died of an overdose.
Hole was officially disbanded in 2002, two years after she released America’s Sweetheart. At that time, Love struggled with drugs and lost custody of her daughter in 2003 and again in 2005, and was sentenced to mandatory drug rehabilitation in one of four criminal cases against her.
In 2010 she went back to music and released her second solo album, Nobody’s Daughter after reforming her band Hole.
Love had several side projects and collaborations. She wrote the book Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love, which was published in 2006. She also collaborated with Tokyopop founder Stuart Levy and illustrators Ai Yazawa and Misaho Kujiradou on a manga series called Princess Ai. In 2016, Love released a collection called Love, Courtney in a collaboration with Sophia Amoruso of the Nasty Gal clothing line.
Lately, Love announced that for now Hole won’t be touring, and that she’ll perform new music rather than reviving the band’s 90s music. “Now sober and set to release new music for the first time in over a decade, Courtney is ready to reveal her story, unfiltered and unapologetic.” Reads the logline of the latest documentary Antiheroine, which features Courtney Love’s life.
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