Melody Maker
July 23rd, 1994



LOVE HANGOVER


LIVE!
COURTNEY LOVE
JC Dobbs, Philadelphia



LIFE gets you like that sometimes. 


I'm with Luscious Jackson, feeling real fine.  Maybe this job ain't so bad after all. The band's just had their first decent meal in weeks, courtesy of The Maker: they're on a rare day off from Lollapalooza's travelling freakshow.  We're cruising the main strip, checking out a sighting of Kim and Kelly Deal made six hours previously.  We wander into the local rock club - coincidentally the last small club I ever saw Nirvana play - and suddenly life hits a major hiccup.


Courtney Love is inside, readying herself to play onstage.  


(In my heat-racked sleep, I hear Courtney walking up the stairs - loud, real loud - screaming my name, getting closer and closer.  Someone is pounding on my hotel door.  I wake up in a cold sweat, expecting to find a dead body outside my room.  Someone offers me a Roipnol and I freak.  This is not a dream.)


So, Courtney is about to play a live show and she looks good.  Real good.  But she also looks wasted.  Real wasted.  Over at the back, Kim Deal is holding court; falling over, clutching a carton of cigarettes under her arm.  She sees me and smiles conspiratorially.  To one side, some Goats hang.  To another, Tibetan monks are shooting pinball.  Luscious Jackson looks a fraction bewildered.  A cool feminist poet buys Courtney a drink.  Billy Corgan is also in the vicinity.  Courtney tries to get him and me to make up: "But Everett, you'd like him.  You're both scapegoats, you're both my closest friends.  And he's so much like Kurt."


She forces us to touch hands.  We both run.  Literally. 


(And, in my sweat-drenched sleep, I'm floundering.  Famous rock stars queue up to make out with me and I'm helpless to resist.  Kim Deal screams at me for half an hour, is real, real mean to me, and tears flow down my face like blood. Someone calls my name and it's Thurston and Kim, holding court with their new-born baby outside CBGBs like visiting royalty.  Someone offers me another shot of champagne and I freak.  This has got to be a dream.  Hasn't it? Please?)


So, Billy's onstage now and he looks pretty darn near wasted too.  He's giving some long rambling speech about his dark side, his misogynist side, and I suspect that in his own fumbling way he's attempting irony and it' s mostly aimed in my direction.  Do I sound self-important?  I'm so f***in sorry.  It's the way I get treated, okay? Billy's telling the scummy audience about the time some girl-fan came up to his hotel room and asked him to sign her breasts and he refused (accepted?), he threw her half-naked out of the place.  And then he laughs self-consciously and asks us to make way for Courtney Love, widow to the stars. 


I blanch, and see if I can't get some industry scumbag to order me a double whiskey.  No dice.  No one knows who I am.  When did I start to suffer from such terrifyingly real visions?  And why? 


(And in my darkest nightmare, people who really should know better are asking me whether I think Kurt would still be alive if he hadn't met Courtney.  What, you mean if I hadn't introduced them that night back in LA?  F*** you.  Just f***ing f*** you.  But these are only nightmares, right?  Nothing to do with reality.)


And then Courtney is getting onstage, and she's giving a long preamble about... okay, about me and Billy Corgan, actually, and how we should make up and be friends, and also asking how many of the audience are Pisces like Kurt was and how she'll f*** them all afterwards, and we all laugh and clap and smile cos you can't help but admire Courtney - her strength, her humour, even through the darkest periods of her life.  Dont'cha all love a survivor?  Ain't they so f***ing cute?


(And in my nightmares, I see a totally wasted Courtney Love strap on a guitar in front of a crowd of disinterested people and I find myself unable to reach her, unable to help her.  Why is she up there? Why is she putting herself through this?  Does she want people to crucify her?  Love her?  Idolise her?  Respect her?  Maybe she just wants to prove to herself even someone who can make the front cover of People magazine can still be real, still have soul. It doesn't seem like her life can be very real right now.  Except for the pain.  Maybe the only place she has left to be real is the stage, but she doesn't even have a band left to lend her music the dignity and support it deserves.)


So, Courtney begins her three-song set with "Doll Parts" and it sounds like the first f***ing time she ever played that song to me - down a Cricklewood phoneline at 4 am, alone in the kitchen at a party.  Shambling, amateurish, absolutely painful to listen to, inward-turned, oblivious to what the outside world might care or think.  "I am/Doll parts/Doll face/Doll heart"... it's as fine an example of bitter self-mockery as I have ever wanted to come close to.  I can't f***ing bring myself to watch her.  I hide underneath plumes of cigarette smoke, silent tears creasing my face.  People clap and cheer, dutifully.  Wow!  It's just like being in some crazy movie!


(And in my darkest nightmare, it's May and I'm travelling with Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff through Europe, talking about what makes life vital and music worthwhile, laughing even through all the pain and I have a premonition that I'll never see her again.  It's a nightmare.  I ignore it.  I'm still clearly freaked out by that guy Cobain's death.)


Courtney introduces her next song, "Penny Royaltea", the one she co-wrote with Kurt, with a long preamble about how former Maker Reviews Editor Jim Arundel once called it the worst song Nirvana ever played and simultaneously Hole's finest moment.  The insult is implicit.  But actually, Courtney, this is kinda true - mainly cos your version was so much more vicious than Kurt's.  He treated the song almost as a throwaway; you completely tore it apart.  Hole never were Nirvana.  Period. Ever.  And why the f*** would people - especially you, Courtney - want to compare the two bands? Tonight, "Penny Royaltea" sounds truly appalling - painful to listen to on any number of levels, not least for what it represents and the vast emptiness which is left in Courtney's life, which she will never fill, even if she were allowed to.  It seems to last an eternity, what with all the false chords and false starts and Courtney's almost sobbing whisper of a scream dragging through painful evocations.  Why is it her throaty, powerful roar of a voice still sounds so chilling? 


(And through my pain, I see myself punching walls in Minneapolis, talking death with cool indie rock stars from Louisville, getting blasted on New York sidewalks, tears streaming down my face in planes going nowhere, listening to songs which can never hope to mirror the way I feel inside.  A refrain from a Hole song keeps spiralling crazily inside my head, "Live through this with me / And I swear that I will die for you".  I swear I don't even know what those words mean anymore.)


I have a tape recorder in my bag and, halfway through all this, it occurs to me I should switch it on.  But why bother? This is not real.  This is just some crazy f***ed up dream.  And you can't begin to capture on tape what isn't there.  


Courtney starts to leave, but decides one more will suffice: the single, "Miss World".  A friend from one of the bands playing later tonight stands by, to lend support and add vocals where previously Kristen would've done.  Her friend has her work cut out, that's for sure.  Courtney is almost incoherent by now, staring at the ceiling, not even caring which chords or which notes she hits.  "I am the girl, can't look you in the eye," she sings.  "I am the girl, so sick I cannot try."  For f***'s sake, Courtney.  Please.


(And in my dreams, I'm quoting lines from Blondie's "Atomic" to my best friend Courtney and telling her how her hair looks beautiful tonight.  You looked f***in great tonight, Courtney.  Really.)


Everett True