Courtney Love was in London yesterday to be featured at the Women In Creativity series. Frances Bean came to support her. Which is… well…it’s wonderful, isn’t it wonderful? As you know, Courtney and Frances Bean have had their estrangement(s) but they worked together on Montage Of Heck and, presumably, since then have worked to repair their relationship.
Last year she was interviewed by Rolling Stone ahead of the release of the documentary – did you read the article? Many times through the piece she would call him “Kurt”. Like that’s the separation she has to make in public, for her own self-preservation, or because, maybe, since he died when she was so young and most of her life has been a process of getting to know him without really ever being about to KNOW him, this is the only way she knows to refer to him. But there is this quote where he’s “my dad” that I found really interesting:
“My dad was exceptionally ambitious. But he had a lot thrown on him, exceeding his ambition. He wanted his band to be successful. But he didn't want to be the fucking voice of a generation.”
My dad was exceptionally ambitious. He wanted his band to be successful. YES. He did. He totally, totally did. But you know what characterised the early 90s? The idea that trying and wanting – to be successful – and being ambitious was not only not cool but beneath the artist. We can see now that it was just another generational affectation, not unlike the way the Instagram generation conflates over-sharing with truly feeling. In the mythology that’s been created around Kurt and his legacy though, are we supposed to widely acknowledge that he craved? Glory, fame, money too. Because I feel like that’s been discouraged. That we are always only supposed to remember him as being “above” the seek. But, um, he was the frontman of his band!?
Anyway, good timing for these photos of Courtney because yesterday I received an email from a reader, MN, who sent me to an old Gawker link about alleged emails Courtney was sending a few years ago – one in particular featured Courtney writing to some guy she was having an affair with, revealing to him that she banged Bradley Cooper, the “up and comer”, because she wanted to mindf-ck Renee Zellweger, who he was seeing at the time…
Did we not talk about this much because it’s Courtney and, well, Courtney is not the most reliable source sometimes?
