You can call Courtney Love a lot of things, but "shrinking violet" definitely ain't one of them.

The singer and sometime actress is still stewing over having her set abruptly cut short last weekend.

And now she's going on the offensive against the person she holds responsible: Jane's Addiction's spaced-out frontman Perry Farrell.

Farrell booked Love for a one-off opening gig Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl. Love unveiled her new band Bastard and ran through a couple of Hole songs before showcasing some punk-tinged new ones.

But in the middle of her set, she got word from Bowl management that her time allotment needed to be trimmed from the scheduled hour to 35 minutes. (Because the venue is located in a residential neighborhood, acts are held to a strict timeline.)

Trouble is, Love never likes to be told what to do. "Perry just told us we have only two songs left before we have to get off. F--- you, Perry Farrell, we're going to play four!" Love yelled to an indifferent crowd before launching into a new song.

Once the song ended, Hollywood Bowl management hit the lights and cued the house deejay, while a shocked and infuriated Love reportedly stayed on stage strumming her guitar and rambling into a microphone. She was carried off the stage (without a fight) by a roadie just before Farrell & Co. made their entrance.

Love's rep, Tas Steiner, says the singer, who's currently embroiled in a nasty lawsuit against Universal Music Group to get out of her record deal, has been shopping around a four-song demo to new labels and just wanted a chance to perform them for an industry-heavy crowd.

In fact, Steiner tells Reuters that Love was so anxious to show off her material, "she ended up taking an acoustic guitar with her band into a restroom off stage and singing a few songs for a major label president."

Instead of letting bygones be bygones, Love was quoted in Wednesday's New York Daily News as claiming Farrell sabotaged her. "Perry really screwed me," said the outspoken 37-year-old singer. "But I don't want to give him the pleasure of a feud."

Jane's Addiction's publicist, Shazila Mohammed, denied the group had anything to do with cutting her set short. "Perry had nothing to do with that. It was due to the noise ordinances set by [L.A.'s Department of] Parks and Recreation. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do, they'll pull the plug on you." Mohammed says Love went on nearly 20 minutes late and had played over her time limit.

She also pointed out that Farrell, who personally selected Love to open, had to scrap two of his own songs and scrap his encore to accommodate the curfew.

Of course, Farrell isn't the only object of Love's ire. Just one day after her disastrous Hollywood Bowl show (which a Los Angeles Times reviewer called a "waste of an opportunity to prove herself still viable as a rocker"), Love and her band headed up the coast to Ventura for a headlining gig. This time, Courtney directed her venom at a host of other musicians, including Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst.

"I'm going to f---ing kick him out of your ass!" she announced to a less-than-capacity crowd, according to RollingStone.com. "I'm so f---ing sick of him playing golf with all the f---ing [record] executives. We're going to show him what '60s punk rock is."

Love then took a few jabs at such favorite adversaries as Marilyn Manson, Trent Reznor and even Nirvana drummer-turned-Foo Fighter Dave Grohl before launching into new tunes like "Twenty Years in the Dakota," "All the Drugs in the World," "Drag," But Julian I'm a Little Older Than You" and "Left in the Dark."

And while she managed to finish the set without being yanked off stage, it wasn't exactly a triumphant concert: A majority of the crowd reportedly left the show long before she did.
 
 
 

Josh Grossberg
E Online, October 31, 2001