And She's Not Even Pretty

If you are an ugly girl, you only have two choices in life. You can sit back and take whatever comes along, or you can aim high and devise a plan using a bag of attention getting tricks. Courtney Love chose the latter.

When Courtney was in a good mood, no one was more fun to be around than she was. She never got boring, even after 22 hours of straight talking. But she had a horrible side as well. “One minute she’d be cracking up the crowd she’d invited to her place, and the next she’d be insulting them and hissing at them to leave.”

When Courtney told everyone she was going to be in an all girl band, they all laughed at her. Girl bands were a rarity in the early 80’s. Courtney was determined to be rich and famous someday. She would write lists on how she would accomplish it. “1. Become friends with Micheal Stipe. (lead singer of the band REM).” Years later she did.

Courtney started to take a lot of pills while she lived in Portland. She would complain to doctors so she could get prescriptions to various drugs. She liked to take methamphetamines, which were an upper that caused extreme violence and insanity in people after prolonged usage. Courtney also used opiates and got addicted to heroin.

Many of the scenesters thought Courtney would just pretend to be a junkie and into punk music. She was truly a New Waver. Real punks would question her authenticity; she cared far too much about her perfume.

Courtney was offered $30 000 to strip in Taiwan for the summer of 1984, so she went. When Courtney returned to Portland she found that her love object, Rozz, had run away to San Francisco to get away from her. Courtney practically stalked him. She would break into his apartment and trash it. Courtney caused him to run away and break up his band. To this day he blames Courtney for all the things that went wrong in his life.

Courtney met a girl named Kat Bjelland in Portland. They became enemy/friends because they had so much in common. They both stripped for money, they both wanted to be famous, and they both wanted to be part of the Portland music scene. The both liked vintage clothes, and would later fight over who started the kinderwhore look.

Courtney and Kat both moved to San Francisco together. They both took jobs as coat check girls at a club. Courtney found it funny that she was only a coat check girl and not one of the performers on stage. “Why was I not allowed to play guitar? I just made myself think, ‘I will not covet what boys have. I’ll just create it myself.’”

Courtney and Kat soon met Jennifer Finch, a musician from L.A. The three became fast friends and went to see an all girl band by the name of Frightwig. They were inspired and decided to start a band of their own which they named Sugar Baby Doll. All three girls would later go own to form separate bands, and all three bands would be three of the most famous girl bands of the 1990’s. L7 (Jennifer Finch), Babes in Toyland (Kat Bjelland), and Hole (Courtney Love).

Courtney was always jealous of Kat, and her jealousy resulted in many of the fights they had with each other. “Kat was far better with men. They’d all fall in love with her, and she would break their hearts. She was like a sex symbol who always hung out with the coolest musicians, and I was fat and zitty and hanging out with the roadies. That power was something I wanted.” This jealousy would make Courtney steal jewellery, clothes, lyrics and guitar riffs from Kat in the future.

Sugar Baby Doll broke up after playing only three shows. Courtney wanted to play “melodic music in the new wave genre.” Kat and Jennifer wanted to play punk music. So they fought even more.

After Sugar Baby Doll broke up, Courtney went back to stripping. She gave up the thought of having a band and decided to just strip for the rest of her life. Courtney even went through a self-mutilation phase; she would cut herself while dancing and did it whenever she was “working through an emotional trauma.”

She stopped at nothing to prove she was hard core but most people could just never stand her brash personality, compulsive name-dropping and her bragging. There were few people who liked her, however, for her intelligence, wit, and her charm. A member of the band Faith No More liked her enough, and asked her to be the lead singer for his band. A local fanzine reviewed a Faith No More concerts and said the band sucked, but Courtney was going somewhere. The band got angry and decided to kick Courtney out.

Next, Courtney moved to L.A. and went back to stripping to the hundredth time. Now, she was determined to become an actress. She landed a small role in an Alex Cox movie called “Sid and Nancy” in 1986

Courtney, Kat Bjelland, and another friend named Lori Barbero started yet another band (despite the problems with the last one) and they called themselves “Babes in Toyland.” But when Alex Cox called Courtney to star in his upcoming film intitled “Straight To Hell,” Courtney left Babes in Toyland to start her own acting career. Unfortunately, the movie bombed, and Courtney had no choice but to go back to stripping.

The year was 1988 now, Courtney’s trust fund had dried up, she had no movie money left, her acting career was finished, she barely had any friends, and every band she tried to be part of either broke up or kicked her out. So she moved to Alaska to get a bigger paying stripping job. After months of living depressed in Alaska, Courtney’s motivation kicked back into full gear. “The clock was ticking and I was just like, Jesus Christ, I’ve got to kick some ass, you know, and I don’t want to be 25 and not have a band. I’d been trying to have a band since I was 16, and I still wasn’t successful.”

Courtney left Alaska, moved down to Vancouver, and than down to Seattle, and than back to Portland. She stayed in Portland for a few months, and than moved again to a town near Corvallis, Oregon and lived with a record storeowner. It was here that she finally learned how to play guitar. After another few months she got bored, and she moved again back to L.A. There was a new wave of girl punk bands on the rise. Courtney was determined to be part of it.