CHECKING INTO HOTEL CALIFORNIA Fame, fortune, stardom, sex, drugs and death. Courtney Love has survived it all. Now she's back with her band Hole and a new album, Celebrity Skin, that is one of the year's best. An exclusive "Addicted To Noise" interview. Courtney Love bursts into the room like the Roadrunner on speed. She is at once handing out gifts -- large candles made by her "witches" -- to Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson and Hole bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur, acknowledging a journalist -- me -- and going on enthusiastically to Geffen Records publicist Jim Merlis about a controversial item of some sort that recently appeared in a New York paper. "I'm in rock mode so I can cuss now," she says of a choice four-letter word that just appeared in print. Indeed, Courtney Love, movie star and Versace model, is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Courtney Love, punk-rock grrrl, is back, ready to kick ass. More than four years after the 1994 release of Hole's breakthrough masterpiece, Live Through This, the group's third full-length album, Celebrity Skin (out Sept. 8), is complete. It will surprise, confound and ultimately seduce those who give it half a chance. It is simply one of the best albums that will be released this year, a brilliant work that sets brutally honest lyrics to breathtakingly gorgeous melodies and arrangements. Love, who wrote all the lyrics, addresses death (of late husband Kurt Cobain, one assumes, though she doesn't say), the music business ("They sold you out," she sings), her own movie star makeover ("Oh make me over/I'm all I wanna be") and lots, lots more over the course of the album's 12 songs. "I want to be as perverse as I'd like to be, and therefore subversive, while making you hum along with it," she smiles. "And then you realize what you sang... I got the words 'punk,' 'royalty rate,' a Standells reference and '16' -- which is one of my favorite words -- in one song that's really a great pop song." Celebrity Skin is, Love agrees, Hole's Hotel California (referring to the 1976 hit album by the Eagles), a classic Southern California rock album that references everything from X's Los Angeles (the cover art is a black and white photo of the group in front of a burning palm tree) to the Byrds' "So You Want To Be A Rock 'N' Roll Star" and the Doors' "L.A. Woman." Here, now, Love is in full effect. It feels as though she's bouncing off the walls, as if the energy is dripping off her like the water from her still-wet hair (she was up all night at a video shoot for the album's title track) as she takes over the room, a small studio used to record radio interviews. Within moments of her arrival she has someone fetching an ashtray while someone else finds her a Diet Coke. Her bandmates seem comfortable with Love dominating the proceedings. (Present are guitarist Melissa Auf Der Maur and bassist Eric Erlandson. Absent are drummer Patty Schemel, who's taking a leave to work on "some personal issues," according to Merlis, and Samantha Maloney, who's temporarily filling in for Schemel.) Love settles into a chair, positions herself cross-legged on it as she lights a Dunhill cigarette. Love is casually dressed in thin-wale beige corduroy pants, running shoes and olive green pullover shirt. But the lo-fi look can't cover up her star power. Love: Can I just say something? On the record, I'd just like to say something before we start. ATN: Sure. Love: Last night I witnessed the most amazing thing I think I've ever seen. We're shooting our video... I saw Melissa's close-up. [looks over at Auf Der Maur] You've transcended the video genre! That was amazing. I just wanted to say that on the fucking record. Melissa Auf Der Maur: Thanks. Eric Erlandson: Which one? Love: You weren't there. She's been waiting four years for this goddamned close-up. It was amazing! It was so evil and wicked and weird and sexy and genius. I don't know where you get your instinct. I wish you had done it first because you were throwing down on me so hard. You're such a Beatle! You just knew right where the light was. And we were doing syncopated dancing. And I went [quoting from the song "Celebrity Skin"] "hooker, waitress, model, actress." I decided I wanted to be the 'model, actress' since I wrote the fucking words. Anyway, it really was amazing, Melissa. I was screaming. OK, that's all. I just wanted to say that on the record. ATN: Anyway, what I was going to say was I listened to the album. It was played for me. I listened to it a number of times. I think it's one of the most powerful albums I've heard this year. And I wanted to see how the three of you feel about it. If I were you, I would be very proud. Erlandson: I think we're all very proud of it. Auf Der Maur: So proud. Erlandson: Yeah. You can't really make an album like that and not be proud of it. Love: I think the genesis is definitely us. The germ of it. But it's out of my hands. There's things in it now that I regret. There's a couple of noises that I Iet people get with and didn't really do that Milos Forman thing and be a visionary director. It was incredibly collaborative at a certain point, definitely the vision was ours. It's in the hands of destiny. It really is. I'm proud of it. But I almost feel like I don't have much to do with it anymore. I have a lot of personal feelings about it that I wouldn't share publicly, but I feel like it sort of came from another place and was given to us, really. Erlandson: A gift. Love: A gift. ATN: It took a lot of guts to make that album. What I mean by that is soundwise, it's definitely a departure from the last album. You must have known that making such a dramatic change in the sound would open you up to possible criticism from various people. But then I assume you don't care about that. Love: No, we do not care one bit about that. Auf Der Maur: And also, remember, because the process was so long, I don't think there was even a moment where we took that next step and said, "Ooh. We just made a ..." Love: [adopting exaggerated tone] "Ooh, I wonder what people will think..." Auf Der Maur: It took four years. It seemed very natural to me. Even looking [from the] outside, I would have thought that it seemed like a natural evolution, if you watched the evolution of this band. Love: Yeah. If you discounted us or if you looked at us as... or you looked at me in particular -- and you skipped these two -- as a vulgarian. Sometimes I would see lyrics translated into German and they would take it and they'd make it look like sort-of low-end Lydia Lunch, when in fact, there was a lot -- even back in the first two records -- a lot of craft and a lot of detail, lots and lots of detail. And I think that that's a really American and Western trait as well. God is in the details. And I don't mean micromanaging everything to death. I mean the ability to allow things to flow and things to be free. And to let Korean radio stay on there and all the great flaws that are on Led Zeppelin 4 records and all the Albini aesthetic of 'Let it breathe here and there.' But then 'Don-Henley' it out here. Whatever. I think that we've always been basically rock critics to a certain degree, which can be self-defeating when you're a musician. And I've seen it happen to people my generation. We're so musically isolated... and the stuff I like in my head and I reference in my head and we all reference in our heads, that I think if you low-balled us as sort of like 'Courtney's screaming.' [Then] you know what I mean? You won't notice what Eric's doing or you won't notice what she was doing or what Patty was doing, contributing. And you weren't noticing my references. Probably 'cause my persona stuff just really took over in a weird, loud way. Do you know what I mean? And the persona stuff was supposed to do that? I always wanted it to? I'm doing this movie about Andy Kaufman and I'm playing this woman who I talked to. And she told me that when Andy Kaufman went through his wrestling phase, he thought that people understood it was a joke. Or it was a thing, it was a thing he was engaged in but it had another level to it. And I told her, well, that was on TV, of course people are gonna be stupid. But I think it happened to me too. This seems blunt and vulgar and stupid, but really there are so many references and there's so much nuance and there's so much id and superego within this. Does that make sense? ATN: Yeah. Love: I know I'm rambling but... ATN: No, I'm not trying to say that the previous album wasn't a good album. Love: Oh, it was a great album. ATN: It was an awesome album. Just that this album is bigger, it's more pop and... Love: We've always been pop, we just couldn't get there. We didn't know how. I was just listening for the first time -- I don't really listen to us a lot -- but I listened to that Christof record and it had "Twenty Years in the Dakota" on it. And that song could have been -- had I known what I know now -- genius. You know what I mean? As it is, I think it's hysterically funny and has good hooks in it, but it's not a hooky hit pop song. But it could have been had I known how to place things. I needed to learn. I didn't know how to learn. He needed to go and play every single Beatles song till he knew them backwards, so he understood that structure and why "Strawberry Fields" only has two chords, but then the melody changes like that. It's really Grunge 101, Punk 101, you learn this thing, you know what I mean? And Sonic Youth 101, we learned this one thing, that's what we learned. I don't have musical training. So we had to push ourselves really hard to get to the place where we could go, put in that Hollies part, put in that Saints part. Whatever. Erlandson: The last record, a lot of people said things about Courtney screaming. That was melodic screaming. And that's why it worked. It still had that pop thing. And this record is more pop singing, without the screaming. But it's still us, it's still her singing... Love: It's also revenge for me getting kicked out of bands for liking R.E.M. years ago. Erlandson: But I think the direction of this record was very conscious too. We made the record we wanted to make and we went in the direction we wanted to go. Love: It was hard. Erlandson: It's not like a drastic departure from the last record. I think it's like an evolution. Love: We always planned it. Erlandson: Yeah, and that makes sense. If it's an evolution, it makes sense. If it's a departure and all of a sudden we're a techno band or whatever, that's when I think people go 'Whoa.' All we did was become bigger, better at what we do. Love: Organically. Erlandson: Organically. And just opened up. We just spread our whatever. [laughs] Love: Somebody at the company said "What are you gonna wear?" "I don't know." "You wanna take a marketing meeting about that? We'll sit down and talk about it." What! I don't know what I'm gonna wear. I'm gonna wear what I feel like, I guess. ATN: What about the guitar sound. Obviously a lot went into that. Is that one of the things that you've been working on for these years? Love: Listen to him -- for years -- for three albums now. He's amazing. Sometimes he gets usurped by my shit, which is a tragedy to the American rock culture. Erlandson: A lot of this album is me trying to squeeze in every second when there's not some singing, trying to do something. But there's not a lot of room on these songs. They're very vocally oriented and that's what we wanted. So as a guitar player, I'm playing very simple stuff. It's all about the sound. ATN: But when you listen to it, it just hits you so... Auf Der Maur: It's also the production thing. Love: The sonic stuff that he did is amazing. Erlandson: That's the details. That's all the details. Our last record was made in five weeks. This record's made in a year. I had time to actually sit down and go 'OK'... Love: And be as anal as you wanted to be. Erlandson: And it worked. Love: And then I'm the anal editor. I'd come by. I think Melissa's the anal editor too. We come by when the males are going off and trying to find a solar tuner and stuff and tell them to stop and let it breathe. Which is good. It's a good balance. Erlandson: There's good teamwork on this album. Love: It's not always the most friendly teamwork. Erlandson: Teamwork is never friendly. Love: I woke up with my bullhorn, not a boyfriend, this morning. For my video, I had a bullhorn. I'm not putting down the director, because she was really good. But literally, it was my directorial debut last night. I just had to get a bullhorn. Auf Der Maur: You doing the choreography with the girls was amazing... Love: How was that? All this stuff I learned in the last two years about film -- I actually learned. I didn't know that I learned it. About shots, crane shots, dolly shots, about editing, about lighting stuff, framing. [laughs] I was impressed with myself. Erlandson: What we need is someone like that, in charge of that, to look out for us and tell the director. We need, like, a middle person. Love: Producer. Erlandson: Producer. Love: She had a producer problem. Big producer problem. It's not her fault. She just, like, has no leadership skills and tells you you look good when you don't. Civilization sort of broke down at 8 o'clock this morning. There was no civilization at 8 o'clock this morning. And the director, at one point, she said, "You look really good." I said, "Shut up, I wanna hear what my posse says." I got really rude. It was bad. That was why. ATN: Do you feel you've really expressed a lot of feelings about some kind of major things that have happened to you in the lyrics on this album? Love: It's a place that I'm not reactive about, so I don't care what people think. There's that line. There's also the line of restraint, exploitation and subtext. And also coding, encoding. What do you wanna restrain? What do you wanna hold back? What do you wanna say? And when I found myself striking lines because they were too much, I really was a little bit torn. Am I censoring? Am I censoring or am I exploiting? I'm not going to exploit. So this isn't censoring. And then I read an incredible quote from Bob Dylan, who I love and is an important part of stuff I listened to as a child. And he said -- it was arrogant but that works for me -- he said: "I'm not gonna tell you everything." It was to a rock critic. It was to a journalist. He said, "I'm not gonna tell you everything. But what I do choose to tell you is better than the guy across the street." I am not going to tell you everything because I am not going to be Judy Garland and die in front of a thousand clowns. [she claps] This is all I can say. It's like there's stuff that's none of anyone's business. But there's stuff I need to express, so how do I do that freely? And I found it, I think, without compromising my own integrity about what goes on. And you know, I started reading a lot of Rilke, a lot of really elevated, spiritual Rilke, rather than your Rock 101 poetry: Rimbaud, Baudelaire. I started really reading a lot of Rilke because it's so elevated and he doesn't tell you everything but yet he's... It's just so 'not pornography.' It's not morphine poems about the cat. Auf Der Maur: It's also universal. More than specific to the one individual's... Love: Yeah, that's right. That's right. The one thing I've done for years, though, is basically just walk around with my big Leonard Cohen book. I think I listen to Leonard Cohen probably every day. It's my religion. I do that more than I chant. I listen to Leonard Cohen pretty much every day of my life. I just do it. Then I'll hear something like Polly Harvey and I'll go, "I failed." But then that's not what I was trying to do on this, you know. ATN: What were you trying to do? Love: I wasn't trying to do anything except make a great, great, great record that people would like. I feel like an architect more than anything else. It's like we make art for lots and lots of reasons, but ultimately, I think we make art to prove to our grandchildren that our genes were worth having, you know. So we make monuments, we erect monuments. If I'm an architect and we're architects and we built this building, this building has to be as much of a personal vision as it is... also the doors have all got to work and it's got to be accessible, the rooms have got to be airy and light. It can't just be like a fucked-up building just to make a statement. It has to be a functional but insane building. And it's that sort of "Fountainhead" thing... So I was trying to erect something completely original, derivative, true, false... you know, I don't know, I'm conflicted. What was I consciously trying to do? Write good lyrics. What was I not trying to do? Tell you everything there is to tell you, without... It's none of anyone's business. Erlandson: It's a lot of editing. Love: And there's so much more to my feelings and emotional life than this stuff that people are going to project or do project onto me. So it's just sticking with what's in my heart. ATN: The cover is reminiscent of X's first album, Los Angeles (which featured a black and white photo of a burning "X"). I assume that's intentional. Love: No, actually we weren't even gonna use that picture. But, yeah, I like it. It's that Los Angeles thing. It came out that way. It's just a Polaroid. We spent all this money on that shoot and we ended up using a Polaroid that cost nothing. It's got the nice 'Beavis and Butthead' fire. Yeah, it is that Los Angeles thing, and then it sort of expounds on the theory of the X/Los Angeles thing and goes further and further along. ATN: What is burning behind you? Is it one of those ...? Love: It's a palm tree. Erlandson: It's a palm tree, yeah. Auf Der Maur: [pointing to other artwork that's included in the CD booklet] And that's the Malibu fires. Love: And that's the Malibu fires. But then there's water. There's water. This is the gates to Modesto. [the back cover] Of all the water that's stolen from Owens Valley that's dried up. The sort of Chinatown water that we stole to make this big garden, which if we stopped pumping fake water into it would shrivel up. Then there's just an old Department of Water and Power [building]. I haven't intellectualized it completely, but I'm working on it. ATN: Was that first X album ... all of you, did you relate to that album? Did you listen to it much? Erlandson: Even if we didn't get into it musically, the tradition of an L.A. record -- the impact of that... Love: Yes and no. It was impactful. We didn't consciously try and copy the X cover. ATN: It just happened. Love: It just happened. Erlandson: We were consciously making -- somehow consciously making -- maybe we were just making, we knew we were making an L.A. record, a classic L.A. record that fits in before X, '70s... Love: The Doors. Don Henley. Buckingham, Nicks... Erlandson: Up through the punk thing. Love: The Descendents. Erlandson: Gun Club. Love: Channel 3. Erlandson: We knew we were doing that, and so then it's nice to look back now and see the connections. And actually have the cover... ATN: Just echoes ... Erlandson: Yeah. Even the cover. Love: It wasn't supposed to, but it does. It's cool. Erlandson: Yeah, and you know, that X record probably didn't really reach as many people as, like, what we're hoping. ATN: No it didn't. It certainly didn't. Love: Damn, that cover moved me when I first saw it. And the title of the record. It moved me. I saw it in a magazine and just... oh, I caught my breath, it was crazy. Auf Der Maur: Is there always an out-to-lunch foreigner involved in these projects? 'Cause none of that means anything to me. I'm learning about it as I go... I'm from a northeast community... Love: People come here from all over to make L.A. records. Auf Der Maur: Yeah, but I never in my life would have made an L.A. record if I hadn't hooked up with you. So I'm learning about it as it's going. Erlandson: L.A.'s inhabited by people who aren't from here. ATN: Came from somewhere else. Love: But you're an L.A. lady... Erlandson: They come here and they learn to get into the thing. They learn about it. ATN: They come with what they think it is, bring their own thing to it. Erlandson: Yeah, there's probably a lot of people that were in classic L.A. bands that never were from here and that got into the vibe. Auf Der Maur: They just soak it up in another way, less consciously or whatever, but I'm bringing the north... Love: But you bring in Quebec, you bring in Leonard, you bring in that great French-Canadian thing, which is epic in itself. Erlandson: That's the good thing about this record -- it has the North in it. Love: It has a lot of North. Erlandson: It's nice. It's an L.A. record without being too Jimmy Buffett or something, I don't know, too L.A. Love: Too Chocolate Watchband. ATN: Do you think that Celebrity Skin is Hole's Hotel California? Love: Yes, that's the point. Hotel California on fire. That's it. This is what it is. This is Hotel California on fire. We were gonna call the picture that. Auf Der Maur: Reconstructing it. Love: Good call. ATN: Let's start with the song "Celebrity Skin." What inspired that? What was going on when it was written? Love: It was about 7 or 8 at night and we didn't turn on the lights. We were at S.I.R. studio in Hollywood on Sunset. And it was... Erlandson: We were sitting around ... we wanted to write a trashy L.A. rock song. Love: No, it was me, you and Billy Corgan. It was during our 12 days with Billy Corgan. And Melissa wasn't there that day for her Billy lesson, which she's probably happy she skipped. Erlandson: And we always wanted to call a song "Celebrity Skin" because of this band from like, 1989, when we were... Love: It had been a wasteland for me, though, for years. I'd been writing pages and pages of a poem called "Celebrity Skin." Because it was so evocative. Erlandson: Kind of an 'ode to that era' kind of thing. Love: That's the title. From there on it's mine. It was really dusky out. It was summer. We had just finished writing something, "Hit So Hard." And Billy said, "What do you wanna write about now?" Or Eric said, "What do you wanna write about now?" And I said, "I wanna write about Los Angeles." And they both said, "You always wanna write about Los Angeles!" I'm like, "Let's just write it really quick, really quick." So, totally unrelated to anything that I might ever compose, these two wrote a riff that went [sings], which no self-respecting female would ever write. It's so cheesy. And I was like, "Melissa, it has to be the first single." She was like "Ewww." I'm like, "I know, but as soon as we get to the bridge, it's really good!" It's good. Boys like it. People think it's great. It's a burlesque. Did you ever see "Cabaret"? It's like the first song Joel Grey sings. "Welcome!" And I didn't think it was good. I was gonna cut it. As a matter of fact, I was gonna put cuss words in it so it'd never get on the radio. We were done and Billy's like, "That's one of those -- the kids, Manson ..." He made the sign of the devil. I'm like, "No, man." Then it grew on me, 'cause I love, love, love the bridge. It's genius. And the lyrics took about all of 10 minutes to write. It just was there. It acquired a certain profundity as it grew. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes, it takes five years to write a 20-minute song. Erlandson: Somewhere along the line, I kind of thought it should go into sort of a Bowie, glam, modern... Love: That's when you first played it, what I hated about it. I'm like, "This sounds like Mott the Hoople." It should be a keyboard. Yuck. And I just kept going only 'cause you guys wanted to. And I thought it was retarded. But also the irreverence of the process of it. And the same thing happened with "Awful" -- where I started spewing really obnoxious lyrics without thinking about it. ATN: Tell me a little bit about the "Celebrity Skin" lyrics. Is it kind of a joke? Love: No, it's not. It's a little tongue-in-cheek. Someone said, "Is it about you?" I don't know. It's sort of, but not really -- it's not really about me. I was doing the choreography because we had dancers, which we'll probably never use. But you probably have friends that are strippers. Just pretend you hate your job and just don't even try. That's what this song is about, the fact that you're being exploited by me right now for no money. I don't even know what it's about. You know, it's your job to figure out what it's about, 'cause I don't know. I don't know. It's burlesque is what it is. And that's why I have mixed feelings about it because it's the only song that's burlesque in a highway-to-hell sort of way. Erlandson: It opens the door to the album. Come in. It's short, it's over. This is like the poppy, trashy... Love: [sings] "Ooh Cabaret ooh Cabaret..." Erlandson: And then, bam, the album happens. Auf Der Maur: And then it grows. ATN: The whole idea of "Celebrity Skin"... there's all these people, there's all these "stars" that are in L.A. and they all have this celebrity skin. But inside, everyone's a person inside. And how they're presented or how the media presents them... all that stuff. Love: Yeah. There's so much you can read into it. Within the song, though, it's sort of about a girl, isn't it? I love writing about girls. It's sort of about a girl who, I don't know, I don't know... And there is one personal kind of part in it, which is silly. In the glam part, the line "There's only us left now." Which is where I was at a club in New York and [Jon] Spencer was playing, Blues Explosion were playing. I looked around and I saw all our peers from when we started. So many of them were back at their day job or doing the German circuit or bitter. A lot of the reasons that they were bitter was maybe because they'd been overtaken by irony, they'd been conflicted about selling out and what that means. They were talented, talented, talented composers who never lived up to their own vision. They wouldn't go Albini and just go all the way with that. They fence-sat. They signed with major labels, yet they didn't write hits. You make up your mind. Go be Ani DiFranco. Go be Albini. Go be Ian MacKaye. Or don't. If you're gonna make the commitment, you have to make the commitment. And if you're narcissistic enough to feel like your world-view is worth imposing, your building is worth erecting and being the tallest building, you've got to understand that people have got to like that building too. I see this with filmmakers too -- 'Oh, I don't want to put the obvious scene in.' I'm not saying low-ball yourself, but don't shoot yourself right in the foot so you have to go back and be a bartender. So, I looked at a couple of people that had survived with me and prospered and not become anorexic, alcoholic, drug-addicted, dead, everything. And I thought, there's only us left now. And I was thinking of a couple of people in particular. So I put that line in. It's a long explanation for one little line. ATN: Obviously, people are gonna look at the lyrics on this album and they're gonna interpret them as being about you, about you writing about Kurt and you writing about yourself and all of that. Love: Yeah, but I wrote so much about my boyfriend. I wrote so much about boys and love and what I felt at the time. As far as the other thing goes, if it's gonna fix you to think that, you can apply that. And there is some of that. But you know what? There's a whole lot of not that. This is not [Neil Young's] "Sleeps With Angels." OK? That boy got a lot of songs written about him. What I have to say about that, I say to my shrink, basically. And what I have to say about that creatively, you're gonna read in whatever you like. And that's OK. That's what art is supposed to be. You can go ahead and do that. It's so subconscious, I don't know what's functioning on what level. I got given this. I got given this ability to use words well. And that is my gift that I got and I got given it on this record. And I got directed and I got help from mystical sources and literal sources. You can do whatever you want, project whatever you want. But I'm not telling. ATN: You end that song with the line: "You want a part of me/well, I'm not selling cheap/no, I'm not selling cheap." Who's that directed to? Love: Well, for our first thought -- "You want a part of me/well, now I'm selling cheap" -- but then I changed my mind. I don't know. When I was singing it, I was singing it over a playback. It's just defiant. It's the truth. I don't know why I thought of it in the converse because it's the truth. I don't want to do anything for money. And I won't do anything for just plain vanity, except once in a while when I like to pose on the cover of Us and try and look like Pamela Anderson. [laughs] But that's just me when I'm bored, being vain. I won't do art for money or vanity, ever. So, I'm not gonna sell cheap. ATN: In some of the songs, you describe Hollywood and showbiz as -- Love: Did you just say "showbiz," Michael? ATN: Yeah. Love: All right. The business of show. ATN: You describe Hollywood and showbiz as robbing girls' souls, feeding on innocence, cynicism, selling out and being sold out. Has that been your experience or has that been what you've seen -- observed -- of the biz? Love: Well, I have a lot of conflicts about it myself. I talk a big game about other people's conflicts about selling out, but I'm not a pampered, upper-middle class girl. I come here from a really tough, hard tradition. I enter the mainstream at a specific point that most people haven't. The old tough broads did. Joan Crawford did. That's why I like a good diva. I like a good Demi Moore. I like a good sleepover with a Demi Moore because they're divas that come from trailer parks. Not that I really come from a trailer park, but I think it's good to understand where you come from, no matter how much it's damaged you or damaged your feelings about art. I'm probably protected to some degree by my 'weird-Marxist-punk-having-to-live-through-that- scene-of-junkies-and-hustlers-and-Tim-Yohannans-and-punkers' upbringing. Because it guides me. I don't wanna go back there and I won't, but there were people with a lot of integrity and a lot of soul and a lot of 'I'm not giving in.' That was just their informed knowledge, that's their tradition, that's what gets handed down. But when you're a girl coming up through punk-rock or a subcultural scene, you get all this received wisdom that's really meant for males. It's truly, I believe, a male rite of passage. The whole Ian MacKaye, Steve Albini kind of conundrum is a male rite of passage. It's almost like "I'll achieve my manhood by being in a band and not selling out." There's not a lot of room for a kind of fluid ambition. Because of people like Madonna or whatever, I personally get put in the shadow of 'Oh, she's rapacious, she's ruthless in her ambition," which is true on the level of, like, I want to erect the best building. But goddamn if I'm gonna build it cheaply. ATN: What's wrong with being ambitious? Love: Not a damn thing. It's American. ATN: And it seems like any songwriter, for example, wants their stuff to be heard. They don't want to play it for a living room. They want the world to hear their stuff. Next Page - - - - - - - - - - - - -