12399nme

WHEN COURTNEY MET MICHAEL

Despite her countless enemies, Courtney Love shares a special relationship with long-term pal Michael Stipe. Here, exclusively and for the first time, the two of them reveal what makes them tick.

Text: Steve Sutherland
Photography: Steve Gullick

NME 23 January 1999

�When I was like a leper, Michael used to call me. Michael used to take me places and, y�know, do stuff with me�That�s kinda huge. And he wasn�t doing it to be contrary. He was doing it because he kinda liked me. It was one of the more important things that helped me get out of my shitty rut that I was in because�y�know, my husband died and I was a drug addict and lots of horrible things�and I�d been�blub blub blub�misunderstood and punished by mainstream America. The fuckers! Hahaha!�

Courtney Love is sprawled across her sofa, laughing. Her head is resting on Michael Stipe�s shoulder. Her hair is straw and tangled. She�s wearing a hot red dress. The couple are illuminated by the glow from a massive fire of yuletide logs. The fireplace, Michael has just commented, is bigger than his whole damn apartment in New York.
He�s just turned up at chez Courtney, an hour late after a tiring day of REM interviews at Los Angles� Chateau Marmont hotel. It was Courtney�s idea to do the interview at her home, high in the Hollywood hills. Before NME arrives, she calls to make sure we won�t mind that it�s, �uh, a bit palatial�. And indeed it is, uh, a bit palatial. The kitchen is the size of a decent semi-detached but the house is so homey and Christmassy that she jokes we must be doing this for Hello! Magazine.
There�s Ruby the kitten, pawing at Christmas baubles. There�s Pearl the Labrador pup lolloping through the house. And there�s Courtney�s daughter, Frances Bean, carrying a Christmas lantern, complaining whenever her mum lights up a cigarette and going off with uncle Michael to make lemonade while Courtney pours herself a whiskey and water.
When NME arrives, Courtney is in her bedroom watching the English TV costume drama Upstairs Downstairs. She has the whole set on video. �So soothing� she says by way of explanation. �Better than drugs. I�ve watched every single episode except the first season which was in black and white. It�s soothing and wonderful and great. And the English class system from 1912 to 1924�so fascinating.�
She has the full set of I, Claudius too.
The furniture is antique, French. There is an original Francis Bacon on one wall and a mirror once owned by Ava Gardner on another. The dining room is adorned with a Chinese mural. This is a movie star home, old style.
Courtney explains that last night Hole played in Las Vegas at the Billboard Awards. Hole, Shania Twain, Garth Brooks�she felt out of place and sang flat on TV. She�s still mortified. An Edith Piaf CD is playing. She replaces it with Volume One of the Nuggets compilation and leafs through Julian Cope�s The Modern Antiquarian as we wait for Michael to get ready. �I�m so proud of Julian,� she says, which is quite something considering that Cope once famously took out an advert in the press which proclaimed, in reference to Courtney: �Free us from Nancy Spungen-fixated heroin A-holes who cling to our greatest rock groups and suck out their brains.�
Michael Stipe makes lemonade then disappears to a bedroom to do make-up. When he returns to the living room, he is wearing a very snug pink angora cardigan done up with tiny safety pins. He is wearing eyeliner and brushing his teeth.
�Is there somewhere I can spit?� he mumbles to Courtney, froth spilling down his chin. She directs him to a bathroom he already knows is there. It�s like some weird performance for our benefit.
When he returns Ruby leaps on him and he blanches. �I�m scared of cats,� he says, �but I�m trying to learn.�
Courtney and her daughter wrestle and skit about Mommie Dearest, the movie about Joan Crawford�s familial dysfunction starring a hatchet-faced Faye Dunaway, and then Courtney and Michael discuss make-up. She wants to know if he has any left over from the Velvet Goldmine shoot. Michael produced the movie. He says he has some great lip gloss she can have because his lips never chap.
They are due out for dinner soon so NME gets started. Courtney and Michael have some history. They go back a long way to the extent that, famously, in the bad old days Courtney once told an interviewer that, while her husband, Kurt Cobain, was still alive, she tried to get him off with Michael.

NME: It's said that stars often make friends with other stars because they're the only people they can trust, the only ones who are unlikely to be on the make.
MICHAEL STIPE: "Well, we're both equally conniving!"
COURTNEY LOVE: "Haha. We're not conniving. I think we both enjoy being famous and we're both good at it and have fun at it. We've never discussed this but did you know that in that really gross, sleazy documentary (Nick Broomfield's Kurt And Courtney) there's a thing where an ex-boyfriend of mine reads a list I made and number one on the list is make friends with you?! How genius is that?!"
MS: "I was honored and thrilled. I was in San Francisco when they had the premiere. I was gonna go just to fuck with them but I couldn't go for some reason so I haven't seen it myself."
CL: "I was thinking about it the other day and, well, why not? Who else was there to make friends with? Of course I put you on my list. Someone was telling me that there's some poetry in there too but that's fake. I would never write poetry that ridiculous. But I loved that meeting you was number one on my list."
NME: You've said in the past that you got kicked out of bands for liking REM.
CL: "It's true, I did. There was a time before I was in Hole when I was living in San Francisco and I had a real pop sensibility - I played the Peter Buck D chord with the pinky. And in the first band, which was called Sugar Babylon, with Kat Bjelland and Jennifer Finch, literally the verbatim was, 'You like REM too much. You wanna be REM too much' because I'd just be listening to 'Reckoning' all the time. And I was thrown out of Babes In Toyland and Faith No More for that literal exact reason.
"And it's still there. The other night I was onstage and I didn't know what to do so I just shape-shifted into a Michael pose..."
MS: "I can't believe that!"
CL: "I did! I did! And then I got up on the monitors just like you..."
MS: "No, see, I copped that from you... one leg on the monitor..."
CL: "You did? That's hackneyed. Maybe you advanced on my mine."
MS: "Yeah, I took yours and... put a dick on it."
CL: "I didn't know what to do without a guitar so I did some Jaggers and Michael doing Elvis - y'know, the Kaufman Michael Elvis surfer thing... Y'know, I have a place to go when I'm lost and that place is Michael. Michael's a really great role model."
MS: "That thing's a two-way street there because, in the same way, being a southern man and soft-spoken and ultimately shy, uh, to have experience in New York and know how to confront and attack when you need to was invaluable to me. Being friends with Courtney took the New York thing one step further. I can use that when I need it. I don't like to but I don't walk away from it as easily as she can. It's invaluable."
NME: When did you actually meet?
MS: "I Remember Hole came through Athens, Georgia and played around the time of their first record..."
CL: "Yeah, and we didn't get invited to Peter Buck's house, which was always the sign. However, Michael did come to our show."
MS: "I was eating in a restaurant and these three people came up to me and introduced themselves. We started talking and they said, 'We're playing the 40 Watt Club tonight, come down if you want to' and I didn't think twice about it because they were really friendly people..."
CL: "And we looked cool!"
MS: "Yeah, they looked cool, the whole band, which is hard to do in Athens because everybody there looks cool. It's hard to stand out and have a different look and they looked great. I proceeded then to get incredibly drunk... I don't know why, I don't know what was going on that night but I got really drunk and I stumbled down to the 40 Watt Club and there were about... I'm gonna do you a big favor here... there were about 15 people there in the whole place and it's cavernous, huge. It's Tuesday night, y'know, students were studying, nobody had ever heard of this band before. And I stood there and I was completely blown away. And I think I told someone... I didn't reach you that night, did I? You were on the phone in the backroom the whole time, chatting with Kurt."
CL: "So this is '91? This is the second time at the 40 Watt?"
MS: "Yeah. And I felt like I was watching The Cramps in '79. I had not seen a band like this in a long, long time. And then we were in Seattle making a record and Kris Novoselic and Shelley, his wife, threw a party and..."
CL: "...Me and Kurt came over."
MS: "You came really, really late and you had some flowers and his contact lenses were bothering him."
CL: "His contact lenses? Oh, I remember. He was trying to have brown eyes. He had this weird phase where he bought brown contact lenses because he didn't wanna be recognized, but they weren't working."
MS: "Anyway, that was the first time we really met although we didn't get to talk that much. We spent most of our time in the basement..."
CL: "...With the jukebox."
NME: What was it that attracted you to one another?
MS: "Well, there's a lot going on in this one because, if you're looking for it, you can see through all the interviews and all the surface crap. I think what she has to offer just as a pop icon to the public at large is so significant. It's so much more than... I mean, there's no comparison to what you usually get being a musician or an actor. No comparison."
CL: "Michael is really diplomatic. He knows how to navigate his way round things that are insincere or in his way and I've learned that from him. Because, y'know, my mouth is less specific now. I think about things a little more. He only yelled at me about one thing one time, which was pretty bad. But I did get a touch� on him."
NME: What was that all about?
CL: "I'm not saying. But I was mouthy and it wasn't serving me or anybody else and I didn't realize how much power my words had. I'm always gonna be a little mouthy because I think of new keys to reality every six days. Which is why I had the huge crush on Peter Buck in 1985, because I saw him talking in a bar and I'm like, 'I wanna go out with him cuz we could just talk'. Didn't work out."
MS: "You guys are on the same level when it comes to intelligence, though. There's a common ground there. She's incredibly articulate, well-read and very well-educated. I'm the exact opposite. I'm inarticulate, not well-educated, but there is something that we share that's rare. Really rare. And that is... well, one thing that we share is an incredible ambition and drive. And growing up in the '80s, those were things we'd think of as bad words. The drive and the ambition is coming from somewhere else." CL: "It sounds really grandiose so I don't even wanna say it publicly but sometimes if I didn't feel like I was in some sort of service in some way, it would be like a lot of people from last night, it would be just pop and no way do I wanna do that."
MS: "I've said this over and over again - I got it from Patti Smith: the proof is in the pudding. Everything has to serve the work. If the work is not there, if the work is nothing, if the work doesn't mean anything, then everything we do, every gesture means nothing."
CL: "And if you're sad because some records sell more than other ones (Courtney pats Michael on the knee, presumably a reference to the disappointing sales of REM's recent album, 'Up') you know that you never compromised anything and that is a great, great feeling."
MS: "I do feel like the work that we're doing is trans-genre. It cannot and will not be categorized because I feel like what we're doing is ultimately that good. That sounds really pompous to say but I really believe that."
CL: "Can I ask you, because I've had so much more fame than I have sales, I'm now entering this world where I have the sales to match and it's really hard. I have to work for it. It's not like you in the beginning and it's not like Bob Dylan and it's not like Eddie (Vedder) and it's not like Kurt. I have to go in this day and this time and just be a whore a little more. That's how I feel anyway, after last night.
"And I was wondering, I know you had a phase after 'Reckoning' where you got a lot bigger, and my friend Leanne - who, incidentally, also had number one on her list to work with Michael Stipe and she just did; she's a recording engineer - she went to this show in Long Beach where you were really mad because the audience was not your friend any more, it wasn't anybody you hang out with. And I just did a show in Danford, Connecticut where, for the first time in my life, they weren't 15-year-old girls, they were eight! And nine! And ten! And 11! And it wasn't that I didn't like them but they were these tiny little girls with their dads at the back and I didn't know how to embrace it. And I really want it. I wanna do it. But I wonder what your solution was or what you felt about the mainstream, the bracing cold water of it?" MS: "It did really suck because in a way we were like the jukebox band, the soundtrack to Reagan and all those people who were nothing like us, nothing that I agree with, nothing that I look like, nothing that I want to see. And I became a little bit of a contrarian purposefully: 'I'm gonna fuck with you! I'm gonna throw some shit at you that you really don't want!'"
CL: "Right. I understand that. But how do you do that in a positive way where you're embracing them and you're not being elitist? That's my point. Definitely the fuck-with-you element is there but my question for you is, what do you do? What do you think?"
MS: "I don't understand the question."
CL: "Alright. I know how to get clear and embrace the mainstream for a movie. I did that once and I did totally OK with it. There's rules and regulations. You're just selling the movie. It's basic. But in music, it's so much more complex and so much about what I have to say. I'm the director. It's my thing with my band. So I feel a little more me and I get mad at them and I don't wanna get mad at them. I don't wanna dislike these people. I wanna embrace them and I wanna feel happy about achieving something that I really want. And I wanna be used for the purpose that I'm here for. Do you understand?"
MS: "I do. I don't know if there's an easy answer to that."
CL: "Eddie Vedder must have asked you this and I know that it's one of the reasons that Kurt came to you. I mean, we all look to you for this."
MS: "I feel put on the spot because I don't really have an answer."
CL: "But you handled it with such grace. You're like the saint of it and..."
MS: "...You see, I don't think I did handle it that well. I was 24 and I took it way farther than I should have to prove that I am not your Dancing Happy Boy. But I still was, and I was fooling myself to think that I wasn't. But I did throw some pretty wild shit out there."
CL: "So do you make a pact or agreement between Dancing Happy Boy, which is part of who you are and they know that part of you and think it's great, and like, Fucked-up Aggro Boy?"
MS: "That's a tough question... I don't know..."
CL: "I think it's valuable to the people who read this particular publication because they have big complexes about what selling out is and I think there's a whole myth about selling out that has affected our generation to such an extent that we are almost repressed by it."
MS: "Well, I've got the tape in my head from ever since I was 23, which goes: 'We work by process of negation. We know everything we don't wanna do and what's left are our options.' And those paths, which were often the hardest paths, are the paths that we took. But that's what put us where we are... And a lot of luck..."
NME: You're both involved in film now, Courtney as an actress, Michael in production. Is it that rock music is too immature or inarticulate a medium to get across what you want to do or say or achieve?
MS: "Film's a great medium. But neither one of us has grown tired of music. I think in our hearts we will always be music fans and always want to make music that is considered great by others."
CL: "In the way that you can with popular music, with film you can change things, you can alter the skyline so much. You can change the culture..."
MS: "Not that that's a goal of either one of ours, but there it is..."
CL: "It is! I wanna alter the skyline. I'm interested in that and I admit it. This year, myself and a partner are going to start a production company as well, not so much for projects for me to act in, but more based on the model of what he's doing, what Drew Barrymore's doing, what Danny DeVito's doing. I mean, I wanna see coming-of-age films which are great. As an aesthete and hopefully an epicure in a good way, I wanna use my taste, which I've honed and honed, to affect that medium. I mean, these are shadows and light on a screen and yet in some ways they can be more effective and more refined than a great pop song.
"D'you know what I find really interesting? Film, off the bat, needs to be populist. But when I see these Sundance kids - and I've been meeting a lot of writers and directors, really young ones - they have the same punk conflict about selling out that we did, only it's ten times more ridiculous in the medium that they're in. They're like, y'know, 'I don't know if I want a distributor. It might make me impure.' It's like, 'Oh my God! GET OVER IT!' And I think they learned from our generation, from the punk rock thing, how to have this conflict in the first place."
MS: "And then how to get over it, which is something that you and I dealt with our way."
CL: "Well, the smart ones will get over it and they'll keep their integrity intact. Y'know, it's so intense to sit with somebody who could make a great movie that doesn't compromise and is populist so that people can see it."
MS: "People like that are changing things from the inside. You are not part of the machine, you haven't sold yourself out. You've made certain compromises that are acceptable to you, if only just, and in doing so you've widened your audience a great deal. And if, in doing that, what you've done has raised the stakes a little bit in terms of what the value is, what the quality is, then that's an achievement."
CL: "Unfortunately in acting you take your chances a little more. I mean, I did an ensemble piece called 200 Cigarettes that I have no idea if it's good or not. I hear mixed things about it. I have quality control over the music thing and, as a producer, I will have quality control over films but, as an actress, I'm not in charge of my craft (she pulls a sour face at the word 'craft'). Duh. Sorry. I take it seriously and it's profound because who you are and what you're bringing to the screen is a big thing but there's 12 other people in this movie, I didn't cut it and I didn't direct it and I didn't hire the set designer so everything but my performance is outta my control.
"When Michael puts his name on something, he can assure you that it is to the quality that he wants all the way to the end, but as an actress I can't. And I don't like it. People have been saying lately that I'm too precious because I turn stuff down a lot. I almost automatically turn down junkies cuz I did that costume drama thank you very much. But the stuff that I do take, I take because I think I have some kind of control over the quality and that my name won't be attached to trash.
"As a celebrity, my name gets attached to trash all the time but I do it on purpose. Look, I did a Versace campaign and I HAD FUN! But it wasn't creative output. Creative output is a different deal and I take it pretty seriously."
MS: "You've got nothing to apologies about. It's fine."
CL: "Thank you, pop."
NME: Would you two consider working together, either in music or film?
MS: "Absolutely. We've talked about it. You have to be really patient."

Michael says it�s time to go to dinner. Courtney says fine. Just a couple more questions while she puts on her shoes.

NME: So what are your favorite records recently?
CL: "Remy Zero. It's such a damn good record. It's on a major label. It's like 'OK Computer' but American and sexy. And I love the Nuggets box-set reissue. Garbage I liked too. And Massive Attack, 'Mezzanine'."
MS: "'Celebrity Skin', hands down. What else? Mogwai, the remix record."
NME: Film?
CL: "Velvet Goldmine I really did like a lot but Elizabeth is my favorite movie of the year. Absolutely. I went to see it in London. I saw it one night and then went to see it again the next day. And then I took Melissa so I saw it three times. The Virgin Queen..."
NME: You'll probably like Shakespeare In Love then.
CL: Probably, but I doubt as much as Elizabeth. I mean, I would die to see the Rose Theatre and the boat going across the river. Did you know that no plays were allowed in the City Of London so they'd be across the river?"
MS: "No way!"
CL: "Yeah, the Globe and the Rose and another one. And they put a flag up - white for comedy, red for tragedy and something else for history. It was intense. It was such a cool world."
MS: "I haven't seen Life Is Beautiful. I want to see that."
NME: If you could forgive or forget one thing over the past year, what would it be? CL: "I wish I could forgive myself for going flat last night in front of 20 million Americans but I think my voice was just acting up and having a conflict and saying: 'You don't wanna sell records to 20 million Americans!'"
MS: "I'd like to forgive 20 million Americans for going along with the whole media circus that involved our president and Monica Lewinsky. And I'd like to throttle, draw and quarter the Geraldos and Jerry Springers. I just can't any more make myself think that, if they hadn't been there, they would have been invented. That just doesn't seem to apply any more. We're moving a little too close to the Christians and the lions. It's pathetic and sexist and misogynist and hateful."
NME: Tell us something about Andy Kaufman. Courtney's in the forthcoming Milos Forman film about his life and you wrote the song that the film is named after, 'Man On The Moon'.
CL: "Weird karma, huh?"
NME: We don't know much about him in Britain other than the fact that he was a minor character in Taxi, a stand-up comedian and he died young.
CL: "Nobody knows about Andy Kaufman in America either."
MS: "I've always said I stole so much from Patti Smith and nobody's ever commented on it but maybe when the movie comes out, people will see that I have stolen even more from Andy Kaufman."
CL: "Remember the eyebrows? Remember when Michael did the green eyebrows and it was just Dada? Total Andy. There are lots of little Andy things that Michael did. And what's also weird is that 'Man On The Moon' was Kurt's absolute favorite song of REM's and I was more old-school REM, which I thought was interesting. I'm comfortable bringing it up, it doesn't bother me. I like that aspect of it, I like the cycle of karma of it. I like that it was Milos and it was random and it was like pretty much my two favorite men..."
(Milos Forman famously directed One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and, more recently, Courtney in The People Versus Larry Flynt).
NME: What's the film like?
CL: "It's a Milos Forman movie. It's the sweetness and the lack of bitterness that he has, it's insane. He's very much like Michael. And it's amazing because they're the two men that just see me for me and then give me myself back from the 20million or from the editors that took me away from myself when I was too inexperienced or didn't have enough character and became reactive and started to believe that that's who I was. They didn't even behave that way, d'you know what I mean? These two men, Milos and Michael, saw me and then gave me myself. I mean, ultimately I gave myself back to myself but... there it is."

Michael kisses Courtney.

MS: "You say such beautiful, nice things..."
CL: "You're welcome. It's true. Right, we're gonna go to dinner."