Vanity Fair June 1995 Article, Page 2

It began early.

"I am conceived out of a really bad situation," Love claims, and proceeds to give a rather frightning portrait of her father, who at the time was a San Fransico hippie hanging around the Haight; indeed, the renowed district is, in addition to all its other connotations, a heartbreaking homphone for the very emotion she still feels for the man. Love's mother was already pregnant wit her when her parents married, but they divorced only a few months after her birth in 1965. Her father, Hank Harrison, was a Grateful Dead disciple. Her mother, Linda Caroll, is now a therapist living in Oregon whose latest claim to fame was talking radical fugitive Katherine Ann Power, who had been on the run for two decades, into fianlly turning herself in to the authorities in 1993.

A court rules that Courtney's father was nto to see her unsupervised until she was grown, according to her mother, who remarried several times. Courtney has twe teenage half-brothers and two half-sisters-a social worker and a law student-from those marriages, but her early childhood was one of aching loneliness. "I was pratically autistic my whole childhood," she sas now about thos eyears she spent at home before, shockingly enough, striking out on her own at the earliest of teenage years, supported by a small trust fund from her maternal grandmother.

"What Courtney has in her she came with," says Linda Carroll, who is speaking publicly about her daughter for the first time. "The reason that I'm a therapist is that I began taking her to therapists by the time she was two, and could really find so little help and empathy for both of us in the people I went to. She was in so much pain. And that manifested itself ever since she was a little girl in ways which I had no idea of any way to help her except to love her and hold her. When I started taking her to therapists, one of the awful things that happened was they began to pathologize her, which is what psychology has done with what they don't understand. I think that Courtney came with a tremedous sense of pain in her.... She's not any different than she was when she was two years old.....Yet there were times, even as a small child, she would be really, deeply touched by soemthing. And when that would happen, it was as though every part of her went soft for a little while-including her heart. Even then she was touched by oppression and pain. It was a part of her that I think was genuinely touched by Kurt. They were very alike. I don't know if this is true, because I didn't know Kurt when he was only two, but I suspect that Kurt was pretty different until he was about 9 or 10. I ddon't think Courtney was. I think she has carried this grief longer, and maybe that's why she's a survivor, because she came with it and she had to learn how to survive with it from the beginning....Strangely enough, she was an absolutely, unimaginable calm and happy baby. She hardly cried."

"How could you aloow your daughter to leave home at such a young age?" I ask. "What was it like for you?"

"It was horrendous. Unberable. Horrible. But Courtney is not containable. She was never containable....My deepest fear about her is that what always made her life so torturous-this kind of pschic pain-is what is making her famous, and that ultimately has got to be so wounding. Her fame is not about being beautiful and brilliant, which she is. It's about speaking in the voice of the anguish of the world."

"What is one of the clearest memories you have of her?"

"When she was in second grade in Eugene, Oregon, she was having a lot of nightmares. I had no idea what to do. I took her to a psychiatrist just to try to find some way to bring her some solace. The psychiatrist said part of the problem with her was that she needed to join Girl Scouts," Carroll recalls, laughing lightly now at such a thought. "She needed to be in normal kid activities. I dutifully went to a Brownies meeting with her....I could tell it was really hard for her to be in this room with all these kids. The person who was the Brownies leader suggested they habe an art show. She asked all the kids to draw something. The things that Courtney drew were always startling. She didn't draw sunsets and apples trees. She would draw sort of...wounded figures. I can still see her that day-her little face so intense with those crayons. At the end of that, the teacher told the troop that they were going to see what drawing they liked the most by holding them up one by one and everyone applauding. I knew that this would be terrible for her. When it got to hers, she just grabbed it and ran over to me, and we left. At that time, when a child was exhibiting the kind of pain Courtney was exhibiting-a lot of nightmares and a lot of crying and hating school and hating everything -the treatment was pretty much to try and make that child what they called'normalized' rather that saying, What kind of creature is this, and how can we make her be O.K. with who she is? That whole belief system was really awful for her."

It was so awful that Love fled as soon as she could. Her early life took her all over the globe. With her mother and stepfather, she moved to New Zealand, then back to America. By the time she was 12, she had landed in reform school because of stealing, and from then on, with her trust fund, she basically lived on her own by her increasingly well-honed wits in a number of American cities and foreign countries, including Japan, where as a 14-year-old she worked as a stripper; Ireland, where she hung around Trinity College; Liverpool, where she infiltared the rock scene; Taiwan, where she stripped again; Haollywood, where she stumbled her first attempts at screen stardom; New York, where she hung out in clubs and continued to rock; Minneapolis, where she rocked some more; Alaska, where she appeared in Alex Cox's unwatcheble film, Straight to Hell, after having already had a bit part in his acclaimed Sid and Nancy. If any place could be called home base, it was Portland, Oregon. "My Own Private Idaho is the story of my early adolescence," she says with perverse pride.

No matter how lonely or broke, Love has always maintained her survival instincts and steeled herself against the vagaries of life with an innate stoicism. It is a stoicism, in fact, that she has passed on to Frances Bean, who displays it in all her alrmind, lovely innocence. "Frances is an amzing little kid," says Rosemary Carroll (no relation to Love's mother), who is not only Love's lawyer but also the wife of Warner's Danny Goldberg. "She's so preternaturally aldut . My daughter, Katie, is about two years older than Frances. At Chrismastime, Danny and I took Katie and Frances to see A Christmas Carol. We came home, and the kids were playing, and they got in a fight, as kids do. My daughter tends to be a... well, 'brat' is one word that other people have used." Carroll says, laughing. "Anyway, she said, 'Frances, I hate you!' She threw down a doll and stormed out of the room. The normal reaction is for the kid who is left standing there to start crying, especially if your mom or you nanny isn't there. Frances did not bat an eye."

Love removes a key from the pocket of her terry-cloth robe. She slips it into the lock, takes a deep breath, and leads me into the greenhouse above the garage. Adjusting her towled turban, she sits on a multi-legged wooden stool with a plaque on it that reads, NOW YOU HAVE MANY LEGS TO STAND ON. The last of the sun filters through the skylights and laces her face. She is as silent as the orchids that surround us.

"This is where my husband dies," she finally says.

"Thought I know Kurt was in a lot of pain, I still think suicide is a mean and selfish act," I tell her.

"It's a fuck-you thing to do. I've felt it many times...There's nothing more embarrassing than telling everybody you're fine and then calling the suicide hot line and hacing the police kick down your door," she confesses,recalling the night she claims she made such a call and was horrified to find that it had been traced. "They've turned it into a whole new category: 'Rock Stars Most Likely to Die This Year.' I think I was No. 1 ...The American public really does have a death wish for me. They want me to die. I'm not going to die."

"I know you got a lot of grief for it, but I felt your anger was justified that day when you read his suicide note on the tape that was played for his mourners here in Seattle."

"I was raw," she says simply. "I had blood on my hands."

"Figuratively or literally?"

"Literally . I was out here for three days. Alone. I wouldn't let anybody come near me. They tried to drag me out, but I was, like, Fuck you! I found another gun and was screaming, 'Get out!' Then they left me alone." She will write me later, "I was n ot a heroin addict at that time, neither was Kurt, though he was abusing it in ways hitherto unseen ever by me. Mixing it, synergizing it, yet I've mixed it since he dies and never gotten wasted like that."

"How do you ever get over something like this, Courtney?" I ask her as the lat light fades from the greenhouse.

"Time. That's all there is. Time."

"I know there was the famous incident in Rome when he OD'd and was in a coma and you had to rush him to the hospital. But that wasn't the only time he'd done it. You saved him as many times as you could."

"There's no reason for somebody to die if there's someone else around," she says.

We sit in silence

She does not bat an eye.

'Do you think in some paradoxical way the reason you and Kurt conected so much was that he was the female version of you and you were the male version of him?" I ask Love on another occasiion.

"That's definetly true," she agrees. "I am definetly woman, and he was very much man, but the qualities were reversed at times, yes... My gynecologist tells me that I have too much testosterone, and he wants to put me on the Pill, because it will even out my estrogen. It's, like, Look, I'm all woman, but if I were on estrogen, I don't think I'd be me . I'd turn into this big femmy creature."

She is certainly this big femmy creature when she arrives at Vanity Fair's Oscar party at Mortons restaurant in Los Angeles with her good friend Amanda de Cadenet, the wife of Duran Duran's John Taylor, who will appear in Allison Ander's segment of the anthology film Four Rooms as the goddess that a coterie of witches-which includes Madonna-attempts to conjure. Wearing matching cream silk lingerie-like gowns and rhinestone tiaras, the two soak up more attention that th emovie stars mingling around them. "The way to get Best Dressed at the Oscars," Love tells me, "is always, always , always to wear Marilynwhite silk charmeuse. Period. That's it. I wante dto prove a poin: that grunge is not dead. You don't have to go out and get a fucking Vera Wang that looks like shit and spend three grand on it."

The media lined up behind velvet ropes go into a flashing frenzy when Love and de Cadenet step from their car, and later, when I introduce Love to Barbara Walters, the newwoman insits tha tthe two must have lunch the nest time Love is in Manhattan, to discuss doing an interview. "Barbara Walters knows wo I am?" an awed Love asks as we walk aways. "Shit! I must be famous."

"Courtney is very strong-wiled and not afraid," says d Cadenet, who met her at a party where Love was wioth Billy Corgan of Smshing Pumpkins, Love's favorite man in rock. "I tend to be a bit like that tooo, but that can work to your detriemtn, because people think you're just loud and obnoxious when it's just having a point of view... People are intimitaded by a woman who has an opinion. I hosted a show in England called The Word , and Kurt appeared on it. The first time I ever heard of her was when he said, 'Courtney Love is the best fuck in the world!' I thoguht, Hey, I thought I was. Who is this woman?...Rocksters spend a lot of time debating whether she's a junkie, or she's a bad mom, or did Kurt write her lat album. Gossip focuses on th enegative. But that fuels her. The more you hate her, or lsap her off, that inspires her. She takes all that stuff and puts itin her work. That's something reallty important that I like about her."

The two ladies are on their best behavior tonight. In fact, later, when I accompany Jessica Lange to the Pulp Fiction party at Chasen's to continue celebrating her Oscar win, we run into Love, who is holding to her breast a clutch of astonishing prtraits of Frances Bean just given to her by photographer Herb Ritts. I introduce the two of them, and Lange moves her Oscar over and spreads a few of the photos out on the table. Kneeling at the booth, Love asks Lange's advice not about acting but about motherhoood. As de Cabenet arrives to lead Love away to yet someone else who wats to meet her, Lange, who has just finished filming A Streetcar Named Desire for CBS, leans over to me and shispers, "My God, that was Blanche DuBois."

'How do you want me to introduce you?" the real-estate agent asks as we are driven in a gold Rolls-Royce toward the Garden District in New Orleans.

"Courtney Love Cobain," she says curtly, lighting a Camel. She is at her grouwn-up finest this afternoon, determined to find a house in only a few hours so that she can come down here after Lollapalooza and write her next album, which she plans to call Celebrity Skin . "Because I've touched so much of it," she tells me. She has her hair swept up on her head like a punk Ivana. A pink suit rides high on her white-stockinged thighs. Her amkeup is perfectly applied; still, retrieving a Chanel compact, she checks her lipstick yet again. "$1.8 milion is a martgage for me, honey," she says to the agent without moving he rlips as she reddens them even more. "$600,000 is cash."

As we pass masion after amnsion Love points out what she likes and doesn't like. Bob Dylan has a home down here. Peter Buck of R.E.M. has bought one in the French Quarter. Her buddy Brad Pitt has reportadly been looking at one of the city's most sought -after properties. Even Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, which Hole toured with last summer, has begun renovating a historic home. The fact that Reznor, who fueled a rock fued with Love when he called her a "maipulator and careerist" in print, is making the move hasn't dterred Love from trying to find her own house in the neighborhood.

"Yeah, I fucked Reznor, but it wasn't that great of an experience," she tells me later, after we've looked at a few houses. "I was slumming...Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex wrote about this thing called sexual valuation, meaning you are who you fuck. You cannot get back at a man that way, but a man can get back at a woman by sexually devaluating her." Bored with the subject, she turns her attention to more important matters. "I want witches and vampires! I need some demon possession!" she screams at the real-estate agent, in the front seat. "That last house you showed me was too damn clean!"

A rambling old mansion across from Anne Rice's house is closer to Love's taste, but it would require too much work. "I'm sorry I'm so picky," she sighs as we climb back into the Rolls, "but I had a subscription to Architectural Digest before I had one to Ms. magazine.... The one thing I didn't like about that other house was that the garden was way too pristine. I'm really good with gardens. I'd love to rip that garden out and make it a really decadent old-style New Orleans garden. Lots and lots of jasmine. Wild roses. Trellises....And then I've got some wonderful poppies and poppy bulbs..."

"We're losing our daylight," the agent tells her.

"That's when I like it here. I like it when it gets dark....I don't know, though do you tink this is a good place to raise a kid?" she lights another Camel and, sliding down on the backseat, sticks her pink pumps out the open window. "Do you know that Mississippi John Hurt song?" she asks me, then begins to growl off-key as the sun squats lower in the Louisianna sky. "Angles take him away, oh, Lord," she sings, her feet dangling in the breeze, smoke devishly lurking about her face. "Angels took him away..."

"Bean!" that voice calls out in all its ragged glory on yet another afternoon back in Seattle. "Beeeean!"

The detritus of Love's troubled life spills onto the floor from every corner of the bedroom she once shared with Cobain. Old magazine articles. Books. Cobain's guitars. Fiercely scribbles faxes. An array of CD's. Videos. Raded snapshots. Christmas decorations from last December still hang on the mantel. One of Cobain's Jesuses, this one a Technicolor postcard, is tied to the headboard of the bed, the divince eyes rolled heavenward. A tarnished silver tea service sits on the mussed, stained sheets next to a portable computer Love uses for her ingamous America Online conversations with her fans and detractors. (In April, the Hole forum was suspended-one of the rare times America Online has ever deleted a folder from one of its message boards-because of violations, including a threatening message that was sent in.) The bedroom dorr is even splintered from her kicking on it when Cobain locked himself in her during one of his suicidal depressions.

"Bean!"

Frances Bean, her nanny chasing after her, come running into Love's bedroom and into her mother's arms.

"If you were telling Frances Bean a story about her own life that began 'Once upon a time,' how would how would you finsih it?" I ask.

"Once upon a time," Love begins, watching Frances Bean inspect a heartshaped pillow with a needle and thread left in it, "you were the first of your generation. Ignore everything else that went on before you."

The child attemts to finosh sewing up the heart.

"Frances, be careful," Love warns, taking the pillow away. "Tht's a needle. It can hurt you."

Frances Bean pulls at another pillow, a half-moon shaped one behind her mother's neck on the back of the chair. "This was Daddy's," she tells her daughter. "You want to lay down on Daddy's pillow?" The child nods yes, takes the crescent of foam from her mtoher, and places it on Love's chest. She gently rests her head there.

"Who's that?" Love asks, stroking Frances Bean's hair and pointing to a ceramic angel on the bedside table.

"Daddy," the child responds, rubbing her face against the pillow. "Meow, " she moans, mimicking a cat. "Meow."

"That's what the kitty says. And what does a doggy say?" Love asks.

"Woof, woof, woof! !" Frances Bean barks.

"And what does Frances Bean say?" I ask.

The child lifts her head from her mother's pilowed chest, then raises her hands in the air like claws. Suddenly she begins to growl in a voice as terrifying grizzled as any angry, grunge-encrusted rocker's. "Arrrgggrrr! " she lets loose.

Love pretends to be scared and hides her face in her hands.

Frances Bean laughs at her mother's fright and growls again.

"Arrrgggrrr!"

Love hides her face.

"Arrrgggrrr!"

Surprising Frances Bean, Love ferociously begins to growl right back. "Arrrgggrrr!" she goes, mimicking her daughter's inherent Kurt-like-cry. "Arrrgggrrr!"

Frances Bean stops her laughter.

"Don't scream. Don't scream, Mommy."

Love stops her cry.

the child places her tiny hands on her mother's cheeks. "We be gentle."

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