Not so much carrying baggage as being weighed down by all manner of cultural, emotional and musical expectations, Courtney Love - aka "the most famous widow in the world" - has, through one venture or another, brought the term "celebrity psychosis" to another level of meaning. Even in the more recent past of a hyper-accelerated life, she has swiftly transformed her image from that of "kinderwhore" to Versace model. The ex-dominatrix of all things grunge is now enslavened to Hollywood film stardom and, where once she'd talk you under the table about anything and everything from drugs to Julian Cope to the Starbucks chain of coffee shops, now she's barely visible under layers of managers, agents, lawyers and shady-looking "personal assistants".
Calling the shots the way she always said she would, Ms Love would like it to be known that she will not under any circumstance - unless she instigates it herself - talk about her husband, his death, drug-taking, Trent Reznor, Billy Corgan, her film career (when talking about music), her music (when talking about film) and she will especially not broker any questions about Nick Broomfield, documentaries in general or any second-hand information about her that has been fed into the public arena. Christ on a bike, you'd get more for your money from Diana Ross and Madonna combined. Although she ironically alludes to Stevie Nicks as her "role model", there is always the danger that she will morph into another one of her heroes, the Seattle actress Frances Farmer - after who she named her baby . Born in 1965 (a claim disputed by many) she had a fairly torrid upbringing: she was raised in a dysfunctional hippy commune, her father was connected with The Grateful Dead and her mother was a hippy therapist. Her early memories are of "guys in stripy pants in a circle around me and my mother telling me to act like spring".
After spending time in reform school - for shoplifting a Kiss T-shirt - she hung around with the prototype riot grrl band, L7, in San Francisco before becoming a stripper in Los Angeles. Originally a proponent of new wave pop, she ditched that genre when she formed Hole - in favour of the nascent hard-core grunge sound (a hybrid of punk and the better parts of metal). Picked up by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, Hole's debut album Pretty On The Inside (1991) was a patchy if worthy effort that established the band on the "alterno-rock" scene, but it wasn't until her high-profile relationship with Kurt Cobain (she courted him in 1992 by punching him in the stomach - he punched her back) that she hit the front covers. 1994 was an annus horriblis, as Queen Liz would have it: after she admitted her heroin-addicted past to an interviewer from Vanity Fair magazine, the authorities took her newborn baby away from her for a time: and if that wasn't enough to contend with, on at least one occasion she had to bring her husband back to her life after drug overdoses. Eerily, Cobain died in the very week that Hole released their second and most critically acclaimed album, the potent Live Through This, which includes her finest moments on Doll Parts and Miss World. Although it was voted album of the year in 1994 by Rolling Stone and Spin, there was no promotion or tour for the album, not least because of Cobain's death but also because the band's bass player, Kristen Pfaff, was found dead just two months after Cobain, from an heroin overdose. Such was the musical strength of Live Through This (a prophetic title if ever there was one) that the industry whispered that the songs had been written by Cobain and not by his wife.
Which is the same situation Courtney Love finds herself in with the release of the new Hole album, Celebrity Skin. Although Billy Corgan, from The Smashing Pumpkins, is credited for all the songwriting work he did on the album, the same voices are suggesting he lent more than a helping hand. All of which is to do the mercurial and unpredictable Love a massive disservice - the woman is a genuinely talented musician and songwriter, regardless of the baggage around her. Celebrity Skin is a prime cut of American guitar rock, from the same lineage as Husker Du and The Pixies. Although it's predominantly a blast-first approach, the occasional ballad and use of acoustic guitar and strings lend a more diverse feel than the previous two albums. It's also, and very strangely, a Los Angeles album in that Love has made the city her muse for her lyrics in the same way that Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, The Beach Boys and Jane's Addiction did in the past. In short, it's a Hotel California for the post-grunge era.
Celebrity Skin by Hole is out now on the Geffen label.
