Fashion Neurosis with Courtney Love

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1:10Hi, come in.

1:18Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Courtney Love. It's a pleasure to be here, Bella. Can you tell me what clothes you're wearing and why you chose these particular ones today? Yeah, I got a pile out, and I got things that are very me, in a recognizable way, because I've been wearing them for so long. I was doing my documentary yesterday, and they showed me all these old diaries that a friend had saved. And I was drawing very consistent. I was drawing clothes, and I was fourth at the same clothes that I was wearing. that it was very weird to see this evolution of my secret career as a, well, not even a fashion designer.

2:00I would have been a costume designer. But, like, for myself, I had drawn all these clothes, and so I was, like, four, and they're all the same shape and shit. So I got out a bunch of sort of Edwardian tunic dresses and slips and, like, more schooling things and a lace, like, high collar and Peter Pan collars, and I was like, maybe not. Like just sort of wear what I would wear, you know, that's not my uniform, but still is connected to my uniform. So what I used to call schooly. Yes, I love schooly. Which became like grunge, part of it did. Not the slip part, but the Peter Pan would call it. Because it reminded me of boarding a school in New Zealand.

2:43And then also yesterday for my documentary, they showed me all these pictures of my fake bands with girls over the years. that had names, but we couldn't play anything. But I definitely styled everybody. It was definitely nothing. I was like, it's 83 and I'm wearing this white slip. Jesus, I must have been born in that thing. I made a dress, and I've got a picture of you in a dress that I made. It was with a Peter Pan collar, pale blue with a band. And in fact, I made it for when Stephen Mizell did his Vogue shoot in 93. Was it Italian Vogue? No, British Vogue. He did one shoot, and Izzy Blow was styling it.

3:25With me? No, no, well, I made it for that. Oh, was it Baby Blue? And then it was Baby Blue. Oh, God, I love that dress. It was so, I love that picture. I wore that dress a lot, didn't I? I have a picture of you styled by... I think I lost, someone stole, people stole so much from me. Oh, you just looked, I was so excited to have that picture. Oh, my God, it was so nice to see Peter Pan colors on things. It's like I remember Mrs. Prada had a coat with a velvet. And I remember that baby blue dress of yours. It's like, oh, there's Peter Pan colors. Like I'm not like looking in the polyester. I'm actually looking at like nice fabrics with Peter Pan colors.

4:01I really loved a Peter Pan color and a locket. That was like my old thought. And you're almost a mythological figure in modern times. You founded your band Hole in 1989. then you married Kurt Cobain of Nirvana becoming someone that millions of people projected their fantasy becoming his plus one I wondered what your first memory is of being at the center of attention oh I remember me being at the center of attention when it switched over to like his being his plus one I was like yeah I'm leaving this party I don't like that so much that wasn't my goal And people do forget that Nevermind, the Nirvana album, it did come out in 91, but it really did not do damage.

4:52It didn't go until about February 92, at least in the States, when it famously knocked off Michael Jackson from the charts. So for about, of that relationship, pre that relationship courting, and then in that relationship, I would say like nine, ten months were like very equal footing. Only, you know, he had the phallus. He was a dude, so. And how about in your childhood, were you the center of attention? Oh, no, no, no. So that was a real, like a weird experience to be everyone. No, no, no, it wasn't. I left my family of origin because I was like the designated scapegoat. If you're the designated scapegoat, you've got two options and neither of them are very good, but one will kill you.

5:45And the one that will kill you is trying to comply. Yeah. Because you'll never win. And the one piece of fashion culture my mother contributed to, oh my God. I mean, people have tried to style it and some people love it, but Birkenstocks. I think she might have been one of the first people to order Birkenstocks in America and sell them. And I remember when Gwyneth started rejiggering them as an East Hampton vibe on Goop. I'm like, I'll try. And I bought them off Goop and they came in the Goop box and I wore them one day. I was like, ah! It was worse than the dark brown. I was like, goop! Anyway, yeah, no.

6:32I had exactly that. My teachers at school wore them, and so they were symbolic of something. Something bad. Just like dying of drabness, and I just can't. I think with my mother, to give her some hero's journey, though, she had the money. She inherited a lot. And she absolutely refused to cater to the male gaze. Like, that was her thing. and she ended up married five times to really hot men so except for my father who wasn't hot but like four really attractive men so you know give i'll give her that like that's good but she just happened to give birth to an incredibly glamour obsessed obsessed eldest child who i just really wanted to go to interlock and bella which is a um a drama art school in michigan it's a boarding school she had the money i don't know why she didn't like she just she wanted a lunatic daughter but i just bided my time i made a lot of trouble uh a lot of the my back when they call they found me at 18 and they were like okay you can get your records exposed i'm like no no no i need them i'm gonna be famous and i need them how did you end up in juvie juvie i made them arrest me i literally had to go back into this Woolworths and shoplift a shirt three times.

7:56They were just not arresting me. And that was so you could get out of the code. Oh, but I got a mugshot. They sent a mugshot. Mugshots are so amazing. And you still got it? Yeah. I'd never seen it. It's like my 12-year-old mugshot. And that shit's gold. And so I sent it to a friend of both of ours, and he goes, it's 1977. I'm 12. I'm sure that I am wearing a tube top. some origamian nike wearing person has like counselor kindly has put their like what you guys call tracks shell suit on me and this fashion conscious media person that we know who's hilarious because wait shell suit i was like fuck off i'm sure i was wearing like over my non-movies like a yellow tube toppers i mean like i love the way you remember this no i've just the that you didn't want.

8:49The British fashion person going, Shelton, I was like, oh my God, it's 77. No. Like it was a kindly counselor, I'm sure. But yeah, there was a great bunch of runaway songs about Juvie, glorifying Juvie. So I mean, I was barely 12 and lied. I said I was 13. And then that put a spanner into my age for life. Like, you know what I mean? Like there's records where I'm different ages, but I'm 60. I'm pretty positive of that. And do you remember the first time in your life you found a piece of clothing that made you feel different? Like how old were you? Like under 10 type of thing? No, no. I remember I had very wealthy grandparents.

9:32And my grandmother would buy me, and this affected how I dressed later, but my grandmother would buy me incredible clothes for the San Francisco, to go down to San Francisco for like the Nutcracker holidays. And they were very wealthy. and my mother would like throw out the bag from iMagnon as we were leaving the city for Oregon. And my grandmother, Luella, would also go to Paris. Every two years, I went to the Dior Museum. I don't remember her having any Dior, but I remember she had a thing about Hubert Givenchy in her dressing room. She had an 8x10 with him. I didn't really understand it at the time.

10:17She bitched like high key about Audrey Hepburn all the time, that her darling Hubert, like they were better friends, but Audrey was the movie star. And like whatever, there was this, I think she was more in love with Hubert and Givenchy than she was with my grandpa Jack. But then when she died, my mother in her rage at these adoptive, rich Italian San Franciscans, It's like, I remember they had these two beds. It sounds Trumpian, but it wasn't. It was very tasteful. But there were two little beds, Grandpa Jack and Grandpa Luella, and they were gold and white gilt. And you could see it was like 999 green in the penthouse.

10:57So you're looking at Coit Tower and the Golden Gate. It was incredible. I mean, God, it's probably where San Francisco Real Estate being what it is. I don't know. They were very wealthy. But she had all her couture. Grandma Luella was showing me the seams. And also, when I went to the Dior Museum, and I don't remember Dior, I remember Belmont, and I remember Givenchy. And I don't remember Grandpa Jack ever bitching about it. You know, that kind of trope of like the, oh, she's going to Paris. She also did not do late stage Chanel. She had been a flapper. Oh, really? Yeah, because you could also, I think Grandma Luella was a snob about it, because you could get Couture Chanel made in New York at Dan Duskins and in San Francisco.

11:39at um at iMagnon like you could get you you still see like Vincent Chanel when I do the Carrie Taylor auctions like yeah so that was my first sort of like thing and then when she died my mother gave it all to the children's hospital I'm like this could I've been chasing that couture ever since like they just all went away and then also my Nutcracker clothes which is basically if you look think about is my whole whole outfit New Zealand boarding school uniform and Nutcracker clothes and a slip. Like that's kind of it. My mother would just toss every year, just toss the eye magnet onto the I-5. Gosh.

12:16I know, back to the book and stuff. What a gesture. Not bad. It was like a clothing abuse for sure. But also Faye Dunaway taught me a lot about fittings. Like she did them old school. She was like Edith Head level, nipple to clavicle, where's the wrist? You're just standing there being quiet and observing you know bernardine and faye was like god what an education that's yeah incredible yeah so i had so when the whole started women's mary janes were not a thing but i knew the guy andre number one on sunset who by the way is still there to say make me two pairs of mary janes and he did it for almost nothing because he knew me so i you know they weren't it It wasn't just random.

13:03Although people were like, can Courtney give us our museum or 90s baby doll dresses? I'm like, they're all stolen. There were like six. I don't know. There was a few in rotation. And people would steal them. So they're gone. So how do you feel about being naked? Do you keep anything home when you're getting naked? No, no, no. I took to it really well. Because I think all those hippies, you know, that were naked. I remember being made to feel really ashamed. My mother built an Olympic swimming pool with that inheritance outside of Eugene. And the swimming teacher came, and he was wearing a Speedo, and I was wearing a bathing suit.

13:43And my little siblings, who were much more wee, and all the grownups were naked. And my mother yelled at me about, I was seven. And I did not want to not wear a swim. You're seven. I remember that that swimming teacher in his Speedo was a real ally. he was like, yeah, he sort of fought for me a little in my corner. But then when it came to a vocation that paid quickly and paid more than a restaurant, which I did try, I got fired, I just was like, okay, just be really, you don't have fake tits, you really can't afford to wax, but you just nail that pole. and so as I was learning guitar I also had calluses here from the pole because I was I wasn't the prettiest but I was the nastiest and the naked wasn't a problem I just kind of tapped into you know those two and I also was like I never ever want to look like that naked like I don't care what it takes like maybe it created a whole world of disordered eating in that moment But I was like, okay, the auxiliary hair, the flabbiness, it's humanity.

14:55And I can look at it now and be, as a 60-year-old, more frail about it and more forgiving. But as a young seven-year-old glam-ass athlete, I'm like, no. Never. That will never be. I will never look like that naked. There was a lot of weird shaminess around this idea of free being free, walking naked. I had similar. Did you have that too? Yeah. Just this awful, like, that you were supposed to feel at ease naked. And in fact, you felt incredibly exposed and uncomfortable and awkward. Yeah, just around adults, right? Adults who were supposed to be protecting you. When their phalluses are out or their breasts are out.

15:37Oh, just repulsed me. Very weird. But if I, you know, when I learned to commodify it, I mean, you know, at$6 ,000 a week in Japan was like heaven, you know, and I didn't have to do much, you know what I mean? So I just got into, you know, I wasn't doing any drugs yet. I just got into the music and the lights, and there were like a couple good current songs. There was Bette Davis' Eyes that I added to nonstop. It's a foreigner song, but it's called Jukebox Hero, and it's all about a guy, a kid named Johnny, and he gets a guitar and he becomes a rock star. It's like, you know, I just changed the gender.

16:16He had one guitar. And he was a jukebox hero. So if you like the music that you're on the pole to, like I was talking with my friend in Green Day, Billy Joe, we were talking about the Def Leppard records, which by the way is a really great way to clear out a British photo shoot. It's like put on Aerosmith or Def Leppard and people will be like, yeah, okay, she's done. More Aerosmith, but yeah. I love Aerosmith. But those guitar tones in those two Mount Lange records are amazing. But also the greatest stripper song I've ever come across is Pour Some Sugar On Me. I don't know that. How does that go?

16:57Bella, you could get up tonight at an amateur night. I don't know where they have them in England. Some place called Jiggles. Do you know what I mean? Like get up tonight, just pour some sugar on me, hit that pole like your life depends on it and it would rain pounds on you just rain i did a few pole lessons when um oh yeah no that started teaching it that's right yeah the whole thing learning the pole it's really hard work god it yeah yeah wrecks your body actually um it's really i mean it's it's yeah nothing in the costuming of stripping has changed since i was a stripper except for the clear heels that's the only new addition like these the colors the aesthetics are the same.

17:38The music's changed too. You could not do girls in like 89, 88, 89, 90 Los Angeles who were trying to do Betty Page, they make 50 cents. Wasn't going to happen. Tattoos, black hair, mm-mm. Men did not want to see that at any strip club because I worked at all of them. The alternative girls were not having a good time. Plop a blonde wig on honey and white pumps, but the white pumps are now clear heels. Yeah. And you invented this term kinderhorn. Do you think having such confidence in your intellect and your intelligence made you... You mean by making up the word? Yeah. But do you think that made you more provocative, like shocking people with your brain as well as your attractiveness?

18:23I don't think I'm a good intellectual. I do think I'm a thinker. And I definitely am attracted to Logodata files, like words, like things that they're like, like Nabokov was so good at like inventing a plumbacious ombre under her eyes. That's what Nabokov is. I mean, your memories. And the complete Jabberwocky.

18:49But I was very fortunate in two things. One was the Ashland, Oregon Shakespeare Festival is really the best one in America. I saw Piper Laurie. First time I saw Hamlet was this great stage actress who was in Carrie as the crazy mom. But she also was a really well-respected stage actress from, I believe, Adler. I think she was Adler or Strasburg. because she came up with those people. She was the first, my first handle was seeing her do it at the Shakespeare camp. And then by going to boarding school in New Zealand and getting third form, fourth form, fifth form Commonwealth education, I came back to Oregon expelled with this skill set fella of penmanship, Latin, little bit of French verbs and Shakespeare.

19:40So I've always, I really like classics, but I don't think I'm an intellect. I think people assume I'm well-read and I'm just not. But you have an amazing memory. I mean, you've quoted so many things since you arrived. I do burrow because I do read a lot of poetry. Poetry I love and I do read. And I do read Shakespeare for pleasure. Like I do. That I do. But War and Peace, I can't read it. Dostoevsky, I can't read it. and by the way I did read a lot of great things when I was younger I had less ADD but like I can't read those things anymore and you have to read them you can't audible them you have to experience Plato's Republic or Dante's Inferno which I did thankfully read early but then like I didn't you know what I mean I didn't but I always liked the classics if I didn't do what I did I'd probably be a costume designer which I'd never wanted a plan B.

20:40And when I got offered that job, I literally threw it at a friend because if you have a plan B, you're going to do the plan B. Yeah, so true. That's always a truth. That's such a good tip. Don't ever have a plan B. It's really the truth, though. If you have a plan B, you're going to do it. He would have been a brilliant librarian. I mean, the most exciting. Yeah, that would be amazing. Or to know Greek, you know, to know Greek. Well, talking of which, you said you named your band Hole after the Euripides play Medea where she says, It's kind of a troll. There's a hole that pierces my soul. And I played Medea in my school play.

21:15When you said that, and I always remember being fascinated and sort of obsessed by her hurt and jealousy. Yeah, yeah. And I wondered how you deal with jealousy. I don't really get it. I don't know if I'm being in denial here, but I have a friend, and I made friends with him when he was on the app in the art world, and he's done astonishingly well, and I could not be happier for him. I have another friend who I met on her come up, and now she's, like, bigger than I'll ever, ever be, and I'm really happy for her. But how about sexual jealousy? oh i'm a bit of a libertine like the person that i most i think do my romantic crap with is also a libertine so we really are more friends really with benefits sometimes kind of vibes um But I don't like talking.

22:23I don't mention who. I don't mention what. Because there is jealousy around that person. I will tell you the last one, though, I did have very intense jealousy. Somebody deemed somebody else more fit to date publicly than myself. Which, by the way, they're completely right. I have no idea, in this person's case, how to date them publicly. Our values, in terms of public presentation, cannot be more different. Yeah. But I did have to tolerate the public dating of somebody that I found full of guile and not witty. But also, then this person wearing Henry Higgins, that person, and I had to watch that situation, which is one of their MOs, doing their Henry Higgins thing.

23:27And seeing her stature grow. It was things that I don't want, I don't care about, I don't care. But you know what I did, Bella? So we're way back. 2012 was the last time I was really writhing with jealousy. and I wrote maybe the meanest letter of my entire life. It was so mean. Like, yeah. I was like, you're both from Jersey. By the way, not true. But whatever. It was just beyond mean and didn't speak to them for six months. And I went and made an art show about it. Wow. Which was really a lucky break. It was when I lived under David Bowie in the Lafayette apartment that he passed in. And I played music all day, all night.

24:12All day, all night. This is the best David Bowie story ever. I don't think you're going to get a better David Bowie story. It doesn't involve a personal interaction whatsoever. I've met him, whatever. This David Bowie story is so damn good. So I'm doing this art show. I'm playing crazy music all day, all night in this building on Lafayette and Houston. My neighbor, Teddy Wong, was so great to give me that apartment. The Bowies are upstairs. I never see him. He goes out Mulberry. I go out Lafayette. And it's Sunday and my friend Jane and her kid are over and we're making crepes and playing some like brunch music.

24:50It's a Sunday. And Bernard the Doorman calls and he's like, yeah, Mr. Rowey really doesn't like the noise, doesn't like the music. And I'm like, oh, it's too loud. Bernard's like, no, he would prefer that you change the music. No. And I was listening to Fleetwood Mac's rumors. That's the best story. That is just. I was like, is this really happening? This is so Bowie on brand. Like, fine if I want to change it to Throbbing Gristle and turn it to 12. But, like, no Fleetwood Mac. I bet you he didn't like my Def Leppard and my Cheap Trick neither. It was amazing. It's like the best Bowie moment ever.

25:33I know Kate Moss, our friend Kate Moss, as like the like when she was really down bowie calling her and like you're cool i did not have that experience but i did have him telling me to change my fleet with mac that's that's just amazing i know i love it it's a good story wow and i saw i saw some amazing pictures of kurt and mark lanagan dressed up in oh and their friend dylan yeah yeah and i wondered Did you style that? Yeah, I just put them in clothes. They look so charming. It's charming and it's really that in-between pre-intersectional feminist era where people our age were just like feminists and we didn't have to learn all the other extra stuff.

26:18And I guess whenever I toured with Lana Del Rey, which is, I mean, opening for someone half your age is crazy, but we were in Portland and hadn't seen my half-sister for a very long time and I met my four-year-old trans niece. I'm like, okay, it's my family. I didn't even think twice. How did we get there? Oh, yeah, because second wave feminism and then really going into third wave feminism and what we were talking about, almost like styling your boyfriend. Styling your boyfriend and like, yeah, exactly, and making them wear lipstick and dresses. I remember once in Rio, it was a really big Nirvana show.

26:56The few times I went just with Nirvana. There was no hole. I was just going and being a wife. It was a weird thing. I adored that guy. But anyway, we found some letters of his yesterday. He was so problematic. I was very happy. I was like, oh, my God, these are so problematic. We would send really rude faxes to each other, and some of them survived, mostly to shock the hotel people. But these were great problematic. He was just being hilarious. Between you and Kurt. Yeah, it was like his taxes. He would always drop big cocks on the front page. I see all these memes like, why are my expectations in men so high?

27:39It'll be a picture of Kurt at 27 because of this motherfucker. I'm like, yeah, you really didn't know him well. Me and JD who manages his estate, we were just trying to think of someone as good looking as him. Debbie Harry comes to mind. Joan Crawford? Debbie Harry. Like literally, forget Rock, because it's all the anybody. Like technically, I'm talking about like not a bad angle. And also did not know they were that beautiful. Kate? You know, like, I mean, who? Susie? Like who is that beautiful? It's very rare. And when they don't know because they grew up in poverty, like when Oscar Wilde's like beauty is its own aristocracy, It's so true, but unless you're in a lumber town where only if you're built like a longshoreman is anybody even, no one's looking for beauty because they've been on welfare for four generations.

28:35So he didn't know what he looked like. And I'm like, he's like, I think I'm kind of cute. And then I remember we were at the place right across from what became Rick Owens. It was Rick Owens' first client after Kurt died, but Rick was living in that storefront on Cahuenga and Hollywood. That was where we got our magazines, NME and Melody Maker and all the things, Select, whatever, that shit. But it was the cover of Rolling Stone and it was Nirvana. They were all in suits. Do you remember that cover at all? No, I didn't. They were very tidy. I think Kurt was trying to go for a Beatles thing and he didn't do it.

29:14But it was undeniable how just outrageously beautiful he was, which I had been telling him. And he didn't want to hear it. Anyway, he flew into a rage and he started picking at his face. He dyed his hair red. He started wearing weird glasses. He realized it was true. Because I kept saying to him, if I look like you, I would rule the world. Kate Moss is like that too. Actually, it was her doing this. And then I saw Cave doing this. And then I saw Daphne doing this. I was like, fucking an hour? That's all we have to talk about? fashion neuroses like but i will say when i saw cave doing i was like oh my god nick cave has affected impacted my aesthetics even though they aren't the same as his by any means like how men wear jewelry the pointiness of a boot on a man like his hollywood era that he never talks about because he had a whole hollywood era nick did where he like hung out with jeffrey lee pierce Lydia Lunge, Exceed and John from X.