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Courtney Love always makes waves, so it should come as no surprise that she stirred up a tsunami during her appearance on the Howard Stern Show Thursday morning when she announced that Kurt Cobain, her late husband and Nirvana spiritual leader, hated Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl.
"I want to slam someone now," Love told Stern ten minutes into their radio conversation. "Dave Grohl slams me every time he's on your show, implying that Kurt wrote all my songs. I'm not going to slam him, but I've written a song about him: 'When the drummer tries to sing, everybody better hide/When the drummer tries to sing, let's all go inside.'"
Love warbled in her trademark ravaged contralto, and did exactly what she said she wasn't going to do, launching into a full-scale attack on the former Nirvana drummer. "At first he was sweet, lovely, funny, and then Dave turned into such a dick," she said. "I've shut up for five years about this, deciding to be Jackie O. about it, but he keeps writing songs about me," she said, referring to "Stacked Actors," a song on the Foo Fighters' recently released There Is Nothing Left to Lose album, and one which Grohl has admitted was inspired by Love.
Love revealed that she never had a relationship with the Foo Fighters frontman, but noted that for "one week he chased me around L.A. when I was going out with Billy [Corgan]." The genesis of their fallout seems to have been that Cobain and Love were heavy drug takers, and Grohl was more clean-cut. "We used to joke that people would think we would die from drugs, but we'd laugh and say Dave Grohl would probably die from bungee jumping." Love also said that, after Nirvana exploded, Grohl turned on her late husband. "He wouldn't talk to Kurt, he wouldn't deal with him, he wouldn't return his phone calls." Love said she was recently reminded of the rift between the two band members when she and her manager, Janet Billig, were xeroxing some of Cobain's personal papers and ran across his diary. "We read one of his diary entries where he wrote that he felt sad, depressed and betrayed by his drummer," Love said.
While Love has covered up the animosity since Cobain's death in 1994, it wasn't a secret in some circles. "She was not totally wrong about Dave and Kurt's relationship," one former Cobain associate explained. "I heard Kurt complain about him myself."
But this wasn't the only bombshell Love dropped during her hour-long chat with the shock jock. She said that she had no problem with Hole bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur joining the Smashing Pumpkins, calling it "the happiest divorce in the history of rock," explaining that Hole was a farm team for female musicians. "I'm a training camp for chicks, just like Ozzy. Melissa gave me a year of her life. [Drummer] Samantha [Maloney] will leave me next." Love also claimed that she felt no ill will toward her former paramour Billy Corgan. "I have no problem with him, but he thinks I'm a succubus and sucked his life-force up."
Finally, Love revealed that prior to appearing on the nationally syndicated radio show she had walked into Interscope Records "in the same building" and asked to be removed from the label. "I didn't like the merger," she said, referring to her former label Geffen being subsumed under the Universal Records umbrella. "They give us only one percent of our money."
But one insider pointed out, "Interscope has not been in that building for six months; I'd be interested in knowing who exactly she resigned to."
Interscope had no comment.
JAAN UHELSZKI
(December 9, 1999)