Courtney Love: The Real Story
By Poppy Brite
It was one of the great rock romances of the 20th Century: Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. Surrounded by chaos, hype and scandal, hounded by the press, their story mesmerised a generation.
Cobain fronted Nirvana, the band who took Seattle grunge rock global and came to define the 90s. Courtney was a leading figure in the riot grrrl movement with her band Hole. Together they were rock royalty.
But when Cobain, a long-term drug user, committed suicide in 1994 his millions of fans worldwide looked for someone to blame – and pointed the finger at his wife.
Though many thousands of words have been written about her, Courtney Love had not had her story told. She made contact with Poppy Brite, a successful novelist residing in New Orleans, and although this biography is not officially authorized, it was written with access to court records and some of Love’s journals. Poppy Brite brings her story telling skills to the nightmarish tale of Love’s upbringing, shuttled between her drug dealing father and flaky mother, sent to New Zealand at one point and unsurprisingly winding up in a reform school back in the US. At sixteen she ran to Taiwan and Japan to work as a stripper, and then to the UK, where she hung out with nascent stars of the British Indie scene in Liverpool.
Courtney Love has been surrounded by conspiracy theories and castigated by millions for not doing more to prevent Cobain’s death. In this riveting account, Brite illustrates that in fact she was a victim of the deep-rooted misogyny in the media and the music industry, like so many others in the pre #metoo era. But Love, a born survivor, went on to become a successful actress and an award-winning musician. In 2020 NME magazine named her one of the most influential performers in alternative culture of the last 30 years. Singer, actress and fashion icon, Courtney Love is one of the most fascinating, controversial and iconic women of our time – and this is her inside story.
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