A Shirt On Sunday: Courtney Love –12/05/14 – Shepherds Bush Empire

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Courtney Love is probably the most hated wife in rock’n’roll, even more so than Yoko Ono. Marrying Kurt Cobain derailed any music career plan she may have had and led to the complaint that she was riding on his success. Except that the first Hole material was recorded and released before they were an item and she was already a force to be reckoned with.

Courtney is the daughter of a one-time Grateful Dead’s road managers and is not on the back sleeve photo of ‘Aoxomoxoa’ (a very fine album, if hard to ask for at the counter), despite a long-held legend that she is one of the children shown (although which child it is tends to change with the telling).

The First Hole album, ‘Pretty on the Inside’ is a distorted slash of teen agst, while the second, ‘Live Through This’ was more melodic, less distorted at more disturbing and brought the band international recognition. It was the third, ‘Celebrity Skin’, recorded after Cobain’s death, which had the hit singles and finally featured the west-coast Fleetwood Mac vibe that Love had been threatening when she formed the band. It’s either a triumphant summit or the fall off the edge of an artistic cliff, or even a Smashing Pumpkins offshoot, depending on your perspective. I happen to love it. Either way it’s better than what followed. Love got totally messed up in the aftermath of the album and stopped making music for a while, surfacing mainly in the gossip pages for a decade.

In 2004 there was an abysmal solo album released. The single was okay but the rest was baffling cocaine-induced rubbish.

Then, weirdly, in 2007, a gig was announced at the Bush Hall, a tiny ballroom in Shepherds Bush. Natasha and I went along. The backing band comprised of an obscure folk-punk band called ‘Two Gallants’ and a couple of other session musos, and took place on Love’s birthday. It was a chaotic affair with most of the songs being brand new and destined for an album three more years in the making, and more that have never seen the light of day. The crowd was visibly under-whelmed; we’d all anticipated a Hole greatest hits set, so the new material fell on deaf ears. My memory of Courtney herself is vague. She seemed to be relatively straight but still loud and rude.

The 2010 album, ‘Nobody’s Daughter’ was released as ‘Hole’ record, despite none of the rest of the band being on it. Treated as a Courtney Love solo album, it’s very good - more acoustic than Hole, and thus hated by most of the fans.

Which brings us to the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 2014. There were rumours of a Hole reunion that never happened, but we got the gig we’d been hoping for seven years earlier. Courtney was on top form - talking to the crowd playing up a storm and having a lot of fun. There were costume changes - black lacy things or white lacy things, like a punk Stevie Nicks.

I’m not sure who was in the band but they did their job of keeping things tight so that Love could unravel them. We got a bunch of songs from ‘Pretty On The Inside’ and 'Celebrity Skin', but nothing from before that and little from the recent album. And still (thankfully) nothing from the solo album. And we got ‘Gold Dust Woman’ - performed not as a victim but as challenge to battle!

Looking at the video, I was reminded that the mic stand kept falling down through the night. She went through two o or three of them, just trashing them when they misbehaved.

There’s been no music in the intervening decade, but unless there really is a Hole reunion, I think it’s best that Courtney Love keep away from the stage and leave us with the memory of this tour.

Videos

As ever stolen from the web, so sources are on the pages.

Gold Dust Woman

Horrible sound, but a killer performance!

And the recording made in the 90s by Hole:

Skinny Little Bitch

A highlight from the last album

Malibu

From Celebrity Skin

Asking for It

From Pretty On The Inside

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