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| KITH AND SKIN Celebrity Square: by Everett True. Melody Maker September 12 1998 She�s still angry, still got the �fire in her belly�, still craving world domination for HOLE. We load up the tequila and discover that a successful acting career and motherhood has failed to mellow the fury of Courtney Love Hey, everyone, Courtney�s in the house. �I love that line, �When I am king you will be first against the wall/With your opinions which are of no consequence at all�. That�s a beautiful line, the way he delivers it. You don�t get on with them? Did you give them shit because they were Welsh?� Radiohead aren�t Welsh. �Oh,� the singer replies quietly, momentarily stunned. �They�re not?� They�re from Oxford. �Oh,� she says, shocked. �I�ve been defending their physicality because I thought they were Welsh. I was speaking to this guy called Chris Monger who�s directing the Dylan Thomas film�� Ms Love takes a sip from her health drink and momentarily turns her back to MTV flickering on the screen in the corner of her hotel room. Around us, Gucci dresses lie strewn on the floor like so much confetti. Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson suppresses a snicker. ��but he can�t find anyone ugly enough to play Dylan Thomas.� HEY, everyone, Courtney�s in the house. Let�s see what motivates her in 1998. �I�m drinking, but I don�t know what�s driving me,� she jokes. �Does that sound familiar?� No. I want to know. Why have you made another album? �Because the fire is in my belly,� she sighs. We�re at London�s Metropolitan Hotel by Hyde Park. Decoration is minimal, American and tasteless. Black is the predominant color. �If the fire wasn�t in my belly,� she continues, swaying as she takes a large sip of tequila, �I wouldn�t do it. And the fire is in my belly largely, and I can always be trusted to come up with a quality product.� What puts the fire there? �I don�t know why I have something to say,� Courtney replies, sounding defensive. �I just do. If I told you the real reason why the fire is still there-even double from when you first met me- it would be something which is none of the public�s business. I feel like I�m working for more than myself. I feel like I have debts and my mythic and shadow issues to make up for�I can�t explain it. I have a whole gender to deal with. I can�t answer that f***ing question. Play the songs. Play the f***ing songs.� Eric stumbles over to the tape-player and flicks a switch. Suddenly the whole room seems to explode into bright sunshine and we�re cruising down the freeway to Santa Monica beach in California, while Hole�s summer-smash hit �Malibu� blasts from our speakers. Astonishing. Courtney�s voice is so rounded off and smoothed over, I can barely recognize it. The seventies FM radio/Fleetwood Mac revival starts here. HEY, everyone, Courtney�s in the house. And there�s a whole new record to deal with. It�s been a long time since her last one, 1994�s prophetically titled �Live Through This�. �Celebrity Skin�- Hole�s third album-took four years and a rumored �1.5 million to make. First, there was all the shit to deal with in the wake of her husband�s death. No one who saw Hole around that time will ever forget what a traveling freak show the band turned into, Courtney very visibly exorcising her demons, going over the rails at Reading, climbing balconies to chase punters in Amsterdam. Then she hung out, disappeared, checked into rehab, made some fast and famous friends, became a film star (playing a blinder in �The People Versus Larry Flynt�, apparently), hung out some more, looked after her kid, talked to Madonna, met up with puffy faced Smashing Pumpkins slaphead Billy Corgan a couple of times and decided to make another album. And that's what she and Eric have been doing for the past 15 months...flying between New Orleans and LA and London and NYC, tracking down the right producers and musicians and string orchestras, until they eventually finished the album. So what's it like? Don't ask Courtney. She's drunk. "I WANT an Amazon planet..." Pardon? "An Amazon planet. Eric, you can be in it," she says, pointing at her lanky disheviled gutarist, who looks back at her warily. "We can progenate with you, we can procreate with you, we can put forth our seed." Eric looks suitably chuffed. Not. "You know what?" she asks no one in particular. �My quest was to not need males, to not succumb. It would be better if I�d been a lesbian and not attracted to such gorgeously wonderful, sensitive boys�and [she says, tapping me on my chest] I know not all of my boyfriends have been gorgeous to you. Whatever.� I think she�s referring to Billy Corgan and Bush�s Gavin Rossdale, and I don�t want to know who else. �But I was, and it�s unfortunate,� she continues. �I wish that I was gay because then I could advocate an Amazon planet. But I love you. I love men. I couldn�t live without you at all. I�d be bored to death. Alanis Morissette killed off the Amazon planet with her music and we have to come back�� Eric wanders across to the tape machine. The opening acoustic chords to �Northern Star� sound out, sparse and unnervingly at odds with our opulent surroundings. Suddenly the room feels dark, very bleak. It�s almost as if a terrible storm has sprung up against the windows, the wind howling its disgust at the arbitrary nature of life and death. Drums roll like distant thunder. A chill crosses my back. Courtney has already stated that �Celebrity Skin� is a record about different cities. And if �Malibu� is about LA, then �Northern Star� is clearly Seattle, circa 1994. Painfully so. WHAT�S your definition of success? �Asking God to answer you and getting an answer,� replies Courtney, more sober now. �Asking God for proof of his existence. It�s like that song Patti Smith was singing when she fell off the stage while asking God for proof-�Ain�t It Strange�. It�s a quest. You want to find out why these atrocities happen. And then you start to believe in Darwin- and you realize that it�s just the human species which creates love and God and art and spirit so they can survive. None of those things exist, it�s all Darwinian�� The mood in the room starts to feel even bleaker. �So then it becomes a little nihilistic, even though you want to live and feast and enjoy it, and enjoy every tastebud and sensuality and moment of your time�but I think success is God. Or perhaps for me, success is getting out of the f***ing shadow. I should never have been in that shadow.� Courtney pauses, marshals her thoughts. �I�m not in the shadow.� YOU embraced the shadow for a while. �No,� Courtney disagrees. �If I played into it, it was growing up in a subculture. I might as well have had Alice Nutter for a f***ing mother for all I knew about the f***ing mainstream, how Fleet Street thinks, how the mainstream Americans think. I didn�t know. I didn�t know-and that�s the truth!� She�s shouting now. �I was raised in a teepee, in a juvenile hall, and then in squats and punk rock. I didn�t know when to be afraid. Now I�m starting to learn and I don�t want to. Now I know that some sort of protocol is expected of women�� Courtney is almost certainly referring to the infamous Lynn Hershberg Vanity Fair piece here- the one which pictured her smoking while pregnant and almost resulted in her newborn baby being taken away. It was her first major brush with mainstream media, and she�s never gotten over it. Her recent refusal to deal with the UK press because of their favorable reaction to the Nick Broomfield �Kurt And Courtney� movie can be traced back to that very incident. �If I knew then what I know now, maybe I wouldn�t have talked about it,� she sighs. �I would�ve kept it very much to myself.� You seem a lot calmer now��Really?� asks Eric, astonished. Well, having hung out with you for about three hours��Yeah. Well, I�m a lot calmer because I�m a lot colder,� Courtney agrees. �Do you want to hear another song? I played �Boys On The Radio� for Kim Cobain [Kurt�s sister] and she said it sounded like Teenage Fanclub.� �Boys On The Radio� begins. Ohmygod, I don�t think you are going to recognize this new Hole at all. They sound all sleek and radio friendly, songs overflowing with harmonies and melodies, with virtually no visceral pain at all. The mood turns buoyant again. (Later, I hear the remainder and-though there are a couple of numbers which resonate with bitterness and hatred, and a couple which unhappily recall Smashing Pumpkins-overall, the sound is that of a band in love with Seventies American soft rock, the stadium filling guitars of Cheap Trick and Joan Jett resonating down through the years. Some people might have expected a new Hole record to�ve scraped the skin from their teeth. It�s not like that at all.) WHO are all the lyrics on the album about? �Who?� Courtney laughs loudly. She�s remembering how I once warned her never to give a direct answer to that question. �So many different people. You. Different people. Everything-from the relationship I�m in now, to the relationships I�ve been in, from mythic pop stars to mythic happenings I�ve been involved in. I can�t explain it and I haven�t analyzed it. The intelligent people who analyze records for a living, they can let me know.� You don�t go to a therapist? �I�ve been trying to, but I�m not very good at it.� �Dirty Blonde� starts up. Courtney sings along with its refrain of �I�ll gallop to you� at the top of her (considerable) voice, inches away from my face. She looks so happy, delighted. She explains that it�s a pop song written for Frances Bean, her five-year-old daughter, that the lyrics are absolutely ridiculous, but that it�s still the best song on the album. �This is the song I wrote after �Northern Star�, she yells over the music, �because I was so depressed. I wanted a happy song for Frances. This is for Frances-the guitars are like horses galloping across the bedroom. �I say �I love you�!� she exclaims. �I�ve never said �I love you� in a song before! This is my homage to British pop. The f***ing Primitives can kiss my ass!� Eric reaches for the vodka bottle. HEY, everyone. Courtney�s in the house. And we have time to ask her a couple of final questions before we take our leave. Is the secret of great art knowing what to leave out? �Maybe I�m learning that,� Courtney replies seriously. �When you come from a cathartic background, you have to keep telling yourself, �It�s not censorship, it�s exploitation! It feels like censorship at first��Gee, I want to say �F*** Vom!� in here�no, I don�t. Refusal is elegance. The more you say no, the better it is. The more your personal life isn�t on display, the more valuable it is.� It�s certainly taken Courtney a good few years and some hefty bruises to learn that lesson��When you�re writing lyrics and they�re the true stuff, a lot of it isn�t anyone�s business,� the singer adds. �I know that part of my tradition was as ?ber-confessional female writer, but you just have to look at it and go, �This is self-indulgent, but it�s also cheap and exploitative.� If I want to be self indulgent, I should probably just go and play the guitar.� Do you feel you have anything left to prove? �Over and over again. I probably always will. It�s my cross. If I didn�t, maybe I�d be free to do stuff that might be brilliant or awful. I don�t know. This new record proves it. I can�t prove it here. And if I haven�t proved it with my acting and on this record, then�.� Her voice trails off. �Celebrity Skin� is out now on Geffen |