b. Courtney Michelle Harrison, 9 July 1964, San Francisco, California, USA. The real life drama of this US rock artist and actress has regularly overshadowed her artistic output, while her status as the widow of Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and the mother of his child has also borne heavily on her public image.
Love is the daughter of Grateful Dead manager Hank Harrison and therapist Linda Carroll, and her childhood was unconventional as she spent time with her mother in communes and later attended a New Zealand boarding school. She ran away from her family to travel around the USA and Europe at the start of the 80s, and soon made a name for herself on the UK indie circuit as the girlfriend of Julian Cope of the Teardrop Explodes. She briefly sang with an early line-up of Faith No More before forming the all-female pop rock band Sugar Baby Doll with Kat Bjelland and Jennifer Finch (L7). She later claimed to have co-founded the more famous hardcore rock unit Babes In Toyland with Bjelland (the latter strongly denies this). During the mid-80s Love found more success as a bit-part actress on television and the big screen, notably appearing in two Alex Cox films, Sid And Nancy (1986) and Straight To Hell (1987).
In 1989 Love formed the band Hole. Over the course of three albums released during the 90s, Love and co-founder Eric Erlandson established Hole as one of the most interesting and forthright alternative rock bands of the decade, with 1994's Live Through This earning particular acclaim. Love also earned further acclaim for her acting work, including appearing opposite Woody Harrelson in The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), with Jim Carrey in the Andy Kaufman biopic Man On The Moon (1999), and in the ensemble piece 200 Cigarettes (1999). Despite the burgeoning of her artistic career Love was regularly disparaged by the music press for her involvement with Kurt Cobain, with many Nirvana fans bemoaning her alleged influence on the singer/guitarist. The couple married in February 1992 and later in the year Love gave birth to their daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. The revelation in Vanity Fair magazine that she used heroin in the early stages of her pregnancy further damaged Love's public image. Cobain committed suicide in April 1994, leaving Love to raise their daughter on her own. Unwittingly, her near-hysterical performance at a memorial for Cobain a few days later set the tone for her behaviour in the following years.
Love was a relentless self-publicist in the latter part of the 90s. Although she continued to enjoy serious reviews for her work with Hole and in her acting career, she became a regular in the pages of the tabloid media and a reliable source of "shock value" photographs for the paparazzi. This behaviour began to spiral out of control following the disintegration of Hole at the start of the new millennium, with Love regularly in and out of court on felony drug charges and, in March 2004, notoriously flashing her breasts on The Late Show With David Letterman. Her outspoken and often valid criticisms of the music industry during this period were often lost amidst the tabloid frenzy. Her experiences with Hole had led Love to accuse the major music labels of acting together as an illegal trust which forces artists to sign unfair contracts. Somehow she also managed to carry on performing and recording, releasing her solo debut America's Sweetheart in February 2004. The album was given muted critical and commercial receptions, with the influence of co-writers Linda Perry and Bernie Taupin giving the whole collection a distinctly sanitised feel, despite a healthy dose of profanities. The following September Love was sentenced to six months in lock down rehab.
