|
A HOLE STORY There’s more to COURTNEY LOVE than being rock’s most famous widow. And we don’t just mean the acting either. Or the modelling. No, we’re talking about her band HOLE and their first album for four years. It’s rather good, apparently... "FUCK ALICE NUTTER! DID FUCKING MADONNA BUY THE FIRST CHUMBAWAMBA FUCKING SEVEN-INCH! I DON’T FUCKING THINK SO! I fucking did. Punk rock Marxism is a male rite of fucking passage. That’s all it is. It’s nothing to do with females. We have no place in it, we never did. Alice Nutter prefers Madonna over me anyway, because Madonna ‘never tried to be authentic’." She pauses, gathers her thoughts. "My point is, Alanis Morissette killed the notion of the female musician. Alanis softened the public up, because they couldn’t deal raw anger. I’m too raised in squats and tepees so I don’t really know the mainstream I think the public is more intelligent than it really is. Alanis killed our rivals - Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill and L7 and 7 Year Bitch and Babes In Toyland - if their a) own lack of talent or b) lack of ambition to be in the Top 40 didn’t kill them first. What happened was, 25 Million Records Sold Globally comes along and it’s a phenomenon and the next thing you get is Natalie Imbruglia unable to name a single member of The Who. Does it matter? No, I guess not, Natalie! Now you have people trolling the underground for Unrest songs and Unwound songs to turn a Neighbours star into a fucking pop star! It’s formula. So you get an all-female American Lilith tour where they can all play guitar... adequately." She spits the word out like it’s a curse. "I’m not saying I can play it more than adequately, but at least I can play it like Will Sergeant..." She pauses again, gathers steam. "So, apart from Luscious Jackson - and they’re not even Top Ten - the whole notion of female manifesto was destroyed by somebody produced by a journeyman like Glen Ballard. Yet I promised Madonna I wouldn’t slag Alanis any more and I won’t. [Alanis is on Madonna’s label, Maverick]. All I am saying is that in one cultural moment, she took our rivals out. They’re all gone. They were talented, there were Thom Yorkes, Steve Albinis and Neil Youngs among them. And if they don’t succumb to the scene pressure of males, they apparently succumb to either a) drugs or b) fucking anorexia or c) being tamed - à la Liz Phair. I hope she comes back. I never even used to like Liz Phair, and now I’m praying for the day she fucking comes back..." The phone rings. "Will you get that? Because I’m on a rant..." Welcome back, Courtney. ABOUT 12 months ago, your reporter gor a call at home around seven in the morning. Stung by a throwaway claim in a review of another band that she didn’t listen to music anymore, Courtney called VOX up to play a couple of new Hole songs down the line. They sounded intriguing, like US Riot Grrrl meets Cheap Trick meets ‘70s soft rock. New Wave, in an American way. "This is a really good song that you’ll actually really love," she commented before the second number, "because if you don’t, you’re fucking stupid." One year and £1.25m on, the songs sound more than intriguing. Polished and buffed countless times by engineers across America (and in the UK), they have a Californian sheen to them - the nearest America has come to producing a heir to Fleetwood Mac or The Cars, certainly this decade. ‘Celebrity Skin’ (the working title for Hole’s third album, four years on from ‘Live Through This’) is going to shock alot of people by it’s sophistication. In places, it has a surprising lightness and dexterity of touch - as typified by songs like ‘Heaven Tonight’ (formerly ‘The Pony Song’, written for Courtney’s five-year-old child Frances Bean Cobain) which lifts the line "I could be happy" from Altered Images’ early-‘80s pop smash; and the surefire summer hit, the Fanclub-esque ‘Boys On The Radio’ (dedicated to Evan Dando, Brian Wilson and Jeff Buckley - "anyone who’s drowned"). ‘Malibu’, meanwhile, is stunning - the shimmering radio harmonies of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks resonating down through the years. Likewise, ‘Playing Your Song’, ‘Hit So Hard’ and ‘Petals’, three songs which variously recall both the epic grandeur of Echo & The Bunnymen and the plangent guitar work of Johnny Marr. The first is a song written either about Nirvana, grunge, Bush’s Gavin Rossdale or Riot Grrrls, depending on how you read the lyrics ("And oh, they bought and sold it all, it’s gone/They’ve taken it, they built a mall/And now they’re playing your song"), while the second is a masochistic love song seemingly extolling the benefits of being beaten up by your boyfriend, in the style of dark ‘60s girl groups like The Shangri-La’s ("He hit so hard/I saw stars/He hit so hard/I saw God"). Elsewhere, an even more troubled personality comes through, most passionately on the tortured, acoustic-led ‘Northern Star’, a song written in the studio in a matter of minutes by Courtney and her guitarist Eric Erlandson, and the only number obviously written for Seattle and Courtney’s dead husband Kurt Cobain. "I want you and blessed are the broken/ And I beg you/No loneliness, no misery, is worth you/Oh tear his heart out, cold as ice, it’s mine," wails Courtney over drums rolling ominously like distant thunder. The Tormented ‘Reasons To Be Beautiful’, meanwhile, starts with the lines, "Love hangs herself/With the bedsheets of her cell/Threw myself on fires for you" then plumbs even greater depths of self-loathing. It becomes more confusing after that. Both ‘Playing Your Song’ and - more obviously - ‘Awful’ ("They royalty rate all the Girls like you/And sell it out to the Girls like you/To incorporate little Girls like you") seem to be nothing more than cheap pot-shots at Courtney’s former enemies, the Riot Grrrls of Olympia, WA. The sepulchral, slow-building ‘Skinned’ (formerly ‘ Dying’), with its whispered, breathy vocals, could’ve been lifted straight from an old Smashing Pumpkin album, as could the almost Iron Maiden-like ‘Use Once And Destroy’, with its rampant metal guitar riff. Which isn’t such a surprise, considering that Pumpkins’ main man Billy Corgan was involved at the demo stage of a couple of these songs, back in LA. Overall, however, the feeling is that of the band looking forward, moving on from a grim past and the rain-filled streets of Seattle. Obsessive Nirvana fans hoping to find insights about Kurt Cobain are going to be disappointed. ‘Celebrity Skin’ is much more about the sun and trash and glamour of Courtney’s favourite adopted city, LA. And it’s in no was as specifically female-oriented as either ‘Live Through This’ or ‘Pretty On The Inside’ (Hole’s 1991 debut). "For a record about Los Angeles, there sure is alot of rain on it," Courtney laughs. "Secretly, it’s a record about different geographies. I’ve always had relationships with different towns, like lovers. LA has always recieved and sheltered me; I’ve always been able to disappear into it and I’ve always fitted into it. It has a soul, but it’s a strange soul." "This album is really light," states Eric. "People are going to read stuff in songs like ‘Northern Star’, but none of the songs are about one person. People were telling us: ‘You have all this brewing up inside you, you have to let it out’, like it was our duty. Fuck that. You get caught up in that and you’re stuck. People are expecting it to scrape the skin off their teeth. Fuck that too. There’s a Beatles influence there. I never used to like The Beatles, or the Stonesm but it’s there. We made it lighter because we were into lighter things. Simple as that. And obviously the Fleetwood Mac connection helped. I never really liked that band either, but seeing them in rehearsal in a tiny little room was incredible - the way they were so into their music, even now." The last documented recording of Hole was a version of the Mac’s ‘Gold Dust Woman’ for The Crow II soundtrack. That was back in ’96. Since then, nothing. Well, obviously Courtney went off and found herself a couple of famous boyfriends and hung out with some famous designers and made herself a film star (The People Vs Larry Flynt), but on the musical front there’s apparently been no movement at all. Which is why it’s such a surprise and pleasure to hear their new album so nearly completed. "You know what I hate?" Courtney shouts suddenly. "Irony. Fuck irony. Fuck all that post-modern ironic shit! It’s cheap and easy! What about embracing pop as a lush and wonderful thing, as the greatest escapist fantasy - other than maybe a Spielberg movie - there ever was? Something that can transport you out of your car and back into yor first fuck? "After years of loving pop, I’ve finally written the ultimate pop song!" she continues. She’s talking about ‘Heaven Tonight’, the ‘happy’ song written for her daughter, which is supposed to mirror the sound of horses galloping across the fields. "If you can rise above the bullshit, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot cynicism of my generation and write a song which is such a triumph of pop as that.. every time I hear that song I fall in love with it again. The fucking Primitives can kiss my ass! This is my homage to British pop. That song makes me fucking happy, it makes my child leap around the room because she still thinks it’s about her. It’s still truth, but a different kind - it’s not ‘Live At The fucking Witch Trials’ [The Fall]. It’s not ‘She’s Lost fucking Control’ [Joy Division]." (Courtney actually refers to another Joy Division song - ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ - in the final few lines of ‘Malibu’.) "I fucking hate irony," she says, regaining her thread, almost snarling now. "I’m the queen of it, I invented it and I renounce it. It has its place, but if you can’t embrace your daily life properly with an enthusiasm that’s unfettered, like a child, then fuck you. This album is about innocence and enthusiasm and communing with nature and straight up love. "Pop is hard to create - especially when you’re us, when you’ve gone through the darkest of the dark - and I just want so much to evoke the idea of a fucking sunny day sometimes." She’s quieter now, almost sad. "It’s tough to play the shadow, it’s tough - but to be able to play the light which bends the shadow that’s my story." HOLD ON. Isthis Courtney Love or Madonna speaking? There have always been parallels between the two artists: both have the supremely disarming ability to mix innocence and guile in equal amounts, both are media manipulators. Both have the ability to mimic the successful aspects of other people’s behaviour- and sometimes even surpass their original role models (in Courtney’s case the mouthiness and arrogance of Liverpool’s Julian Cope and Ian McCulloch, the media savvy of Bill Drummond, the songwriting craft of Kurt Cobain, the street cred of Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hannah, the self-serving disregard of Billy Corgan, the free-thinking hipness of Michael Stipe, the pute Hollywood glamour of Drew Barrymore, perhaps the only time that Courtney slipped up in her choice of friends was when Amanda de Cadenet proved to be more of a social vampire than a help). Courtney has had an admiration for - and rivalry with - Madonna which extends back over the past five years, back to when Ms Ciccone called Ms Love up in ’91 and asked her if she wanted to sign to her label Maverick. Is it just coincidence that Courtney’s quotes above appear to mirror those of Madonna talking about her latest album ‘Ray Of Light’? Is it just coincidence that Courtney continually drops her name in interviews? Beacause, if Courtney has one true rival left in the field of music, it’s her "elder sister mentor" Madonna. Maybe they both talk like this because they’ve both been through motherhood. That, coupled with a stringent re-evaluation of the past, coupled with redemption and forgiveness, has allowed both artists - for the first time - to reinvent themselves for the new age of Aquarius. One could argue that Courtney is the Madonna of the underground milieu - the way she has moved through the Liverpool scene of the late ‘70s (hence her referances even now to Michael Mooney and the Bunnymen’s Will Sergeant), on to flirtation with the cult movies via Alex Cox in the ‘80s (Straight To Hell, Sid And Nancy), on to Portland, Minneapolis and LA (where she briefly formed a band with L7’s Jennifer Finch and Babes In Toyland’s Kat Bjelland), then up to Seattle and infamy and now into the mainstream. IT’S LATE. Too late. This London hotel stinks of the ‘80s and ‘80s opulence, carelessly handled expense accounts, minimalist interior decoration, New York City and the cast of Friends. The three of us have drunk far more tequila and vodka and beer than we’re capable of handling. Designer dresses and shoes are strewn around Courtney’s suite. In one corner, there’s a television permanently tuned into MTV and - given pride of place - a juicer surrounded by fresh vegetables and fruit. Courtney moves over to the last item, next to a tray bearing £400 worth of alcohol and switches it on... "Juicing, Britain!" she shouts over the noise of the machine. "I know you’re not interested in your health, but I bet if Louise Wener juiced she’d actually make a good song instead of just giving good interviews. When you juice, you get stoned right away. This is something Woody Harrelson [her co-star in Larry Flynt] taught me. I never thought Woody Harrelson would change my life, but he did. "Do it one gulp," she says to her suspicious guitarist. "It’s not supposed to taste good, sweetheart." Health kick over (briefly), Courtney returns to her rant " All I’m saying is that I hope that with this new album we can inspire ambitious and talented females who can compose songs and learn the craft of songwriting for real to fucking find their way into the charts. Because when you’re fucking 14 and you’re Louise Woodward and you put on a guitar and play it through an amp LOUD, you will feel - I promise you - a realese unlike any other. Except maybe playing soccer." VOX met the Spice Girls the other day... "THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS! WHAT HAS THAT GOT TO DO WITH THIS? They’re not rock, they don’t understand rock. Fine. Love ‘em, love ‘em, ooh baby." Courtney makes fake kissing noises. "I forced them on my daughter because it’s good for a FIVE YEAR OLD’s self-esteem. It has nothing to do with me or my generation." Isn’t that the best time to affect someone, though, when you’re five? Weren’t you just talking about how proud you are of ‘Heaven Tonight’? "That’s why I took Frances to see their movie," she accedes. "She was going to a Spanish ballet the other day and she gor overdressed and asked if she could wear her little heels. The confidence the clothes gave her kinda freaked me out because it was a little over-sophisticated. But still, her love for Posh Spice kinda gives her something. It gave her an Amazonian thing that I want her to have... "How much do you think they’re worth? About £8m each? Is that all? I’m worth more than that." She stops, suddenly grabs your reporter and yells "LOOK! LOOK AT THIS FACE! Do you think I’ve had plastic sugery since last time I saw you? For real?" No, Courtney. For real. - - - - - - - - - - - - - |