The influence that everyone seems to focus on in discussing Celebrity Skin is Joan Jett. But it's Auf der Maur who shrugs this one off.

"I don't think so. Not for me. I mean, she's cool as anything. But Blondie was my main thing on this album, and that's a lot more poppier than Joan Jett."

Love's take on Jett seems mainly political. "What Joan Jett went through a whole generation before me makes the shit that people throw at me look like nothing. [whining voice] 'She murdered Kurt. She did this, she did that. She stole my grandmother's ring and then she poisoned my kittykat. That bitch.' All that is nothing compared to what Joan Jett went through. People would tell her that she had a penis. They would throw shit at her in concert. They would try to shave her head. she oculd not get through an interview like this without getting asked if she was a slut. It was a war. So if Joan Jett fought a fucking war, imagine what Janis Joplin went through, when there was no precedent for white women in rock."

Love tells me she recently turned down an offer of eight million dollars to play Janis Joplin in one of the two upcoming films on the great Sixties singer. "And you know why?" she says. "I'm a snob about the music. The great tragedy of Janis Joplin, I think, is that she never had the right band at all. I don't think she had any real true peers. She was always in bands where some man was calling the shots. She had a two-octave voice. She could have done anything. She had incredible pipes. And she got stuck doing this one thing, and guys playing this one way."

But even in a world run by women - as Hole's definitely is - things still do go wrong. One sad byproduct of the Celebrity Skin sessions was the estrangement of Patty Schemel, Hole's drummer since 1991. Some of her tracks on Celebrity Skin ended up being replaced by a session drummer. After the project was completed, Schemel announced that she wouldn't be touring with Hole. "Patty put a lot of time into [Celebrity Skin] and put a lot of drum tracks down," says Auf der Maur. "Some were usable and some weren't, I guess, in the eyes of the producer. But Patty wrote all the drum parts. We did three months of pre-production with her, and some of those songs were years old. So she was the creative force behind the drums. That's for sure. She's a wonderful friend, but we've kind of gone in different directions."

Hole's new drummer is Samantha Malone. "She's everything a drummer should be," Auf der Maur enthuses. "Sports-oriented, young, fresh, healty, so eager, big muscles. She's from Queens, New York."

"Sam's a complete prodigy," Love adds. "I told her, 'I can't play guitar that well.' But the way I play is what can fuck with an audience. So watch my body.' If Samantha doesn't follow me, it's just going to sound like lame power pop shit. What I am is an incredibly sloppy rhythmatist. But within my weird sloppiness there's a real fift, a sort of sexiness. LIke when I was off doing a movie, the rest of them were rehearsing without me. I walked in and I was like, 'My god, this is perky power pop. You guys need to go out and get fucked!'"

Love seems to relish Samantha's bold ambition as much as her playing. "She's only 22 and she's like, 'I wanna play with Madonna and Michael Jackson.' So I introduced her to Madonna. I told her, 'Okay, that's easy. 'Cause if I have you in to play, then Madonna will want you. So, Sam, that door's open. You can walk out anytime. You'll come back. 'Cause it's cold out there!' They all come back. My stylist worked for Madonna, my manager..Back in a month."

Madonna is another one of Love's obsessions. She seems to harbor a sense of both admiration and rivalry when it comes to this otehr strong woman who can cross effortlessly from records to films and back again.

Love: I think I walk in Madonna's shadow, sometimes. People see that she's a blonde and I'm a blonde, and she's super-famous and I'm super-famous, and I feed the fuel that makes a person super-famous, for whatever retarded reason. 'Cause, believe me, I know it's stupid. It's not like I don't know. But you know what? Leave me out of the pop music thinking. Don't think about us like we're a pop band. Yes, this reord is pop. But it's rock, first and foremost.

GW: Well, pop's a nebulous term.

Love: Yeah. In the Cheap Trick/Beatles/Rolling Stones sense, it could be pop, but you know it ain't pop that you could...

GW: It ain't pop in the Michael Jackson sense.

Love: No, sir.

GW: Of course not.

Love:I know, I know. But because of my fame I get mixed in with that.

GW: Unlike Madonna, you really come from the rock scene.

Love: When I did that Rolling Stone cover shoot with Madonna and Tina Turner, they wouldn't let me play rock. They wouldn't let me play Exile on Main Street! I tried to keep it really tame. Tom Petty and Bowie. And they were like, "Where's the groove? We gotta go for the groove." And they put on disco. For me, it was like the whole "disco sucks," FM radio Eighties thing all over again. And I said to Madonna something like "You are so not rock." And she was like, "I'm from Pontiac, Michigan. Bob Seger's from Pontiac. I know rock. Don't tell me about rock." Not that she's not progressive. I liked some of the stuff that she was playing - Nellee Hooper or whatever. But I'm a rock chick.

"There's this weird anger and spooky, terrifying energy that rock music can unleash. Even playing the MTV Video Music Awards. I was crazy afterwards. I made out with someone in Marilyn Manson. It was like, "What are you doing that for?" I ate seven pieces of fried chicken. I went into the Beastie Boys' dressing room and told all their friends they were cynical cunts. All in less than 40 minutes. I was so crazy. And I wasn't drunk or anything. I twas just from doing one three-minute song.

Of all the unflattering things that have ever been said about Courtney Love, the one that seems to piss her off the most is the inference that she stole song ideas from Kurt Cobain, or that Cobain outright wrote her songs for her. This may even bother her more than the rumors that she murdered her husband.

"It really, really bugs me," she admits. "Because I would just never. I wouldn't stoop to it. I asked Howard Stern, 'Do you really believe that? Come on.' 'Cause I always think nobody really believes it. I was raised in, like, a teepee, in subcultures. I squatted. And I didn't know that mainstream America really thought like that, and that people really, really believe this shit. If you ever run across Dave Grohl and Kris Novoselic, you really need to ask them what Kurt wrote on Live Through This. 'Cause Kurt didn't write a note, and they know that. They should be throwing down. If I died tommorow, Patty and Melissa would know every note that I'd written. A musicologist would know. I fucking gave some lyrics to Nirvana. They didn't give me a note. Kurt had his thing and I had mine. We wrote one song together called 'Thinking of You,' but I'll probably never whip it out because I'd have to credit him with it. And then he wrote a kind of crappy song called 'Old Age,' which had no verses. I needed a B side at three in the morning once, so I used that. It had a nice structure, and then I made the structure much different. I could have made it a triumph if I had worked on it more."

GW: Tell me some lyrics you contributed to Nirvana.

Love: The title In Utero was mine. I couldn't use it myself. And just different things. Secret things. I don't need to take credit for them.

GW: What did you learn about guitar playing from Kurt?

Love: Contrary to popular belief, I didn't play a lot with him. Our stuff was pretty separate. He was more of a songwriting talent than a guitar talent, anyways. He could take two chords and really make a thing happen. He had no sense of the fourth wall, in melody. He knew how to phrase classically. Which my daughter can do - I think it's genetic. Because my daughter possesses everything from a contraito to a soprano. I don't have that. When she's not conscious of other people being around, she sings and makes up songs constantly.

If I have any regrets..[launches into "My Way"] "and I've had a few. But then again, too few to mention".. one of them is that, when I was first learning guitar craft, I didn't do what all the boys do. Like Kurt, Billy and possibly even Jeordie White [a.k.a. Twiggy Ramirez of Marilyn Manson]: Misfit boys go in their room, sit there for eight hours and get chops. I started to do that. But then I went on all these adventures. I have a propensity for adventures. And that took away any real hope of my ever being Nancy Wilson. I wish I'd stayed in my room a year or two more. But you know what? I didn't have a fuckin' room to stay in. I'm sorry. I don't think they would have let me have my guitar at my hostel.

GW: You began travelling.

Love: I didn't live anywhere. I didn't have a place to live.

GW: It's a suburbian thing; sitting in your room, practicing guitar.

Love: You gotta have a room, a basement.

GW: It's kind of a male, onanistic thing.

Love: Yeah. I got a picture of Kurt that's amazing; it's the ultimate boy picture. I'v eseen this picture of Billy, of Jeordie - just every guy in every band. You know, his hair's too long. He's obviously been smoking pot. The room's gross. There's flyers from, you know, really bad punk bands. Any flyer he could get. And he's got a fucking Flying V and wearing big headphones. And he made his own Rockman. He was a good engineer. That's one thing he was.

GW: Kurt or Billy?

Love: Kurt. Billy's a good engineer, too. They were both lefties as well. But you know, there's a picture of Eric like that too. Everyone's future is a foretold in their childhood pictures. There's a picture of Eric looking like Paul Stanley. And now he's wearing eyeliner and sucking in his cheeks and dressing like Paul Stanley. And he has a propensity for models, you know? If I was a guy, maybe I'd have a propensity for models too. Nah, I wouldn't. I could go out with really cute boys who are 18. But I don't.


Among all the other factors that contributed to Celebrity Skin's sharper pop focus is the fact that the record is also the product of a happier, healthier Courtney Love. She has reportedly given up on drugs and seems to have settled into a cozy, single mom kind of existence with her daughter, Frances Bean.

"I'm a good mom," she says. "I have this whole life. I go to soccer every Saturday. I have a great home. My daughter's really sheltered in a good way. She knows all the shit, but at the same time I protect her. She's normal. She's her own person. So I've got my thing. I'm mom, and then I'm dad/mom."

Althought Love says that she doesn't practice Buddhism as she once did, she still engages in Yoga practice every morning and has begun attending a Baptist church every Sunday. "Me and my friend go there," she says. "I was never into the Christ thing. But I go there on a Sunday night and scream and shout, and if I've had a bad day I get it all out and no one fucking looks at me. Ooooh, it's just great. So provocative. So fucked up.

"But I like being bad too. That's me. What can I do? I don't care. I came from shit. I came from nothing. I picked berries. I was a stripper - in bad bars. I'm happy and lucky to be doing what I'm doing now. Very lucky. I'll take the crap. I'll make it easier for the next one down the line. It wasn't as hard for me as it was for Chrissie Hynde and Joan Jett. And it wasn't as hard for them as it was for Janis Joplin. And it wasn't as hard for Janis Joplin as it was for Joan Crawford. When you're working class and you come from crap, man or woman, it's a hard road."