LOVE SENDS POSTCARDS FROM EDGE OF CHAOS;
John Peel finds the Reading festival offering Hole, Elastica, Pulp and the kitchen sink
 
 

READING, or at least the first day and night, was always going to be about Courtney Love and Hole. With the American's finger firmly, so gossip would have it, on the autodestruct button and in the wake of the hellish death of her husband, Kurt Cobain, and the suffocating fog of sex 'n' drugs rumours, any Hole appearance anywhere was destined to be unforgettable.

Courtney's first appearance backstage certainly caught the attention. Swaying wildly and with lipstick smeared on her face, hands and, I think, her back, as well as on the collar of her dress, the singer would have drawn whistles of astonishment in Bedlam. After a brief word with supporters at the foot of the stage, she reeled away, knocking over a wastebin, and disappeared. Minutes later she was onstage giving a performance which verged on the heroic.

Seeing off hecklers with abuse and Mae West-style suggestiveness - I especially liked a scornful "I hear you, baby, and I want you" - Love steered her band through a set which dared you to pity either her recent history or that of the band, which recently lost bassist Kristin Plaff to a drug overdose. The band teetered on the edge of chaos, generating a tension which I cannot remember having felt before from any stage. The chaos came later, it seems. Immediately afterwards.

Courtney Love sat cross-legged on the grass and signed autographs for children. Crouching beside her, I was reminded of that most unspeakable of air crash stories, the one of the fatally damaged plane hurtling over Japan while doomed passengers had time to scrawl farewell messages to their friends and families. Reports of Love's dramatic interventions while Sebadoh and then the Lemonheads were playing - I was broadcasting live from backstage at the time - would fuel supposition that Courtney is even now scribbling such notes to us.

Nothing later in the weekend came close to matching Hole's performance for drama but there were other highlights, of course.