Olaf's Greatest Hits: The Explosive Courtney Love Interview

“Oh and I don’t CAAARE what I ... HAAAVE to defend ... I will NEVVV-ER go hungry ... go hungry ...’ Fuck! I just broke another damn string. Gimme a minute. Sorry – I’ll get it right.”

Courtney Michelle Harrison – better known as Courtney Love – is on the phone, and I have a serious pain in the head. The most notorious widow in rock ‘n’ roll is sitting on an unmade bed in her LA home, playing me a rough acoustic version of a new song she’s written called ‘Never Go Hungry Again’. Or trying to play it. Several aborted takes in, she keeps either forgetting the lyrics or breaking guitar strings.

She sounds stoned out of her gourd. She’s possibly naked, or that’s the impression I get from shards of the rambling conversation we’ve been engaged in for what – a couple of brief “pee breaks” included – must be almost two hours now. I’m sitting in my office, thousands of miles away in Galway, head-numbed from my mobile, so there’s no way of really knowing what state of dress or undress she’s in.

Conversationally, she’s a rambling ADHD surrealist – a little like a more entertaining version of Grandpa Simpson. When not telling you what she’s doing at that exact moment (“I’m just going into the bedroom – ugh!”), she hops, skips and segues from topic to topic, story to story, scandalously, libellously, liberally namedropping a veritable A-Z of celebrities. Most of those she references are on first name basis (Ed, Bono, Kate, Billy and, of course, Kurt), but some are surnamed (Gibson, Downey, McGuinness, Spielberg, Geffen).

“Gibson gave me a really fuckin’ hard time over that – so did Larry, actually – but I remember this one time with Kurt, we were talking to Navarro and fuckin’ Flea, and they were saying that Madonna had told them that ...”

Like a spoken word Vanity Fair-National Enquirer combo, Love could namedrop as an Olympic sport. BP Fallon put it best when he told me, “Courtney does more rabbit than the Easter Bunny.” He meant it as a compliment.

Of course, I brought this earache on myself. We’ve spoken at length over the phone on a couple of occasions recently, but I’m still not entirely sure she even knows who I am (“Olaf? What kinda fuckin’ name is that?”).

Last month I interviewed Hustler publisher Larry Flynt at his office in LA. We hit it off, and Flynt asked if there was anything he could do for me. Hoping to secure an interview, I asked him to give me Courtney’s private number (she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of his late wife, Althea, in Milos Forman’s 1996 biopic The People vs. Larry Flynt). When I rang her, she wasn’t very happy. “What the fuck is Larry doing giving journalists my number?” she asked. But then she talked until my phone battery died. This time she rang me, at 10am Irish time on a Sunday morning. I haven’t been in bed long...

As she attempts to restring her guitar (“hang on a second, I’m almost there ... FUCK! ... I’ll get it ... I’ll get it”), I realise that my ear is burning, my brain is melting, and my head is spinning. It’s the longest phone call I’ve ever had and it’s hurting me: I have to go. I hang up, switch the phone off and go back to bed where I belong. A lengthy text comes the following day. Her black Am-Ex card has been refused in some hotel somewhere and Frances Bean, her daughter with Kurt Cobain, is pissed off. As sorry as I feel for her, there’s not all that much I can do about it.

A couple of weeks later, having spotted some worrying paparazzi shots of her looking tired and emotional outside a Malibu restaurant, I try to call her again.

The phone is disconnected. Somehow, I’m not all that surprised.

Eighteen months later. Hole are about to kick off a short UK tour to support Nobody’s Daughter, their first album in more than a decade (‘Never Go Hungry Again’ has made it as the bonus track) in the Glasgow O2. I’m standing backstage with two other journalists in the hallway outside Love’s dressing room, waiting for her to return from the soundcheck. We’ve been allocated just twenty minutes each and, although things are running worryingly late, I’ve opted to go last. If I go first or second, there’ll be a media rival at the door the moment my time is up. If I go third, our previous telephonic history might mean she’ll give me some extra time.

Her management have issued some guidelines – questions about Cobain, drug use, her estranged 17-year-old daughter Frances Bean (who reportedly recently tried to “divorce” her), her arrests and their legal ramifications are all strictly verboten. Still, the surprisingly good new album aside, there’s plenty more to ask Love about. She hit the tabloid headlines last week when she told American shock-jock Howard Stern live on air that she was sleeping with Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale, while he was engaged to his now-wife Gwen Stefani. Since then, her ex-boyfriend Billy Corgan (who co-wrote some of the tracks on the new album) has attacked her on Twitter – variously accusing her of being a drug addict, a has-been, a plagiarist, and of having “no honour.” In addition, he accused her of abandoning her daughter – though the content of the ‘tweet’ probably says more about him than it does about Courtney: “Only u could abandon such a beautiful, incredible child who is smarter than u, cooler than u, and better than u. Oops, did I say too much?”

Eventually the time arrives. When I enter the dressing room, Courtney’s sitting cross-legged on a white couch. Wearing an expensive-looking beige Chloe jacket, sombre black top and trousers, and clear designer glasses, the peroxide blonde looks more like a slightly frayed PR girl than a grungy rock ‘n’ roller. She immediately stands up, as if to leave, and informs me that she doesn’t want to talk. “You know, I’m really tired and I’ve just done a whole bunch of interviews,” she says. “And I’ve got a fuckin’ show to play tonight.”

“Courtney, it’s me – Olaf from Hot Press,” I say. “We’ve spoken a few times on the phone. Larry Flynt gave me your number – remember?”

The blank look on her face indicates that she may or may not have the foggiest what I’m talking about. Even so, she walks back to the couch and lays down on it, curling up like a cat. Are we doing an interview or not?

Best to proceed as though we are. So how’s it going, Courtney? “I’m alright,” she sighs, laying her head in her hands and closing her eyes. “I’ve got Joni Mitchell playing in my pocket.”

This much is true. Her iPhone is emitting an irritatingly tinny version of ‘Clouds’ as we speak (as it will throughout most of the next hour). It’s interrupted by an electronic bleep as a text message comes in. She reads it and shakes her head sadly: “I have a moody man in my life.”

Billy? Gavin?

“God no!” she laughs. “A moody man. A proper man. He’s a man’s man. Little bit of a jet-setter. Like some of the people he hangs with are absolutely wack.”

She reaches over and touches my arm with a heavily bejewelled hand. “We were at this party in Paris the other night. It’s sorta the same crew that Bono and Sting and Trudy and other people hang with – and I hang with – but then there’s extra sort of Eurotrash crew that hangs with us. They’re desolate and they ... huddle together. They’re like these insanely rich Rothschild-type people who do lots and lots and lots of drugs to huddle away from the rest of the world. And it’s almost like it fascinates him – and we’re arguing about it. You know, I just think it’s ridiculous. It’s ... ridiculous.”

Indeed. It must be a bit off-putting for you receiving nasty text messages just before a big show.

“No, it’s fucking off-putting for him to text me going, ‘I need a break’. You’re in fucking Istanbul – you’re getting a break. Fool!” She won’t reveal who this foolish new boyfriend is. “You wouldn’t know him. He’s a businessman, not a celebrity – well, I guess he’s a celebrity in what he does. He’s a lot older than me – he’s, like, 50.”

Well, you’re 45, aren’t you?

“Five years older than me. But I mean the Village Voice has called me ‘The Queen of Generation X’. And I’m a boomer by one year – ‘64. So I think we’ve a generational issue.”

Will you go over to see him in Istanbul after this tour?

“I’m not travelling over to see him,” she snaps. “I’m playing, like, Brixton. I’ve a job.”

Speaking of which, let’s talk about the new album. Was there a time where you doubted Nobody’s Daughter would ever get released?

“Yeah, lots of times.”

Are you happy right now?

Another text comes in. “We’ll see if I’m fuckin’ happy now!”

Oh, cheer up, Courtney!

“I’ll be alright,” she sighs, smiling wearily.

She reads the text: “He’s written, ’xoxoxoxo always!’ What the fuck! How do you respond to that? Quick – tell me a smartass way to reply to ‘x-fucking-o’.”

Although I’m not supposed to mention drugs, for some reason, hillbilly heroin comes to mind. “Well, Oxycontin has o and x in it ...”

“Oxycontin. Oh yeah, that’s good. Ha! Let’s send that… fucker!”

A full minute passes in silence as she taps out a message, pausing only to gratefully accept a Benson & Hedges (which I light for her). “Sorry about this,” she says. “Ask me something.”

Sure. Back in the early ‘80s, when she was based in Dublin, Courtney remembers briefly working for Hot Press as a photographer. Can she recall the shoots she did?

“I did three shoots,” she says, “of Toyah Wilcox, The Pretenders and U2. Oh, and also The Teardrop Explodes at McGonagles. And then Julian Cope gave me the keys to his apartment and I ran away to meet some Vietnamese people for Christmas. Because they brought Grateful Dead records for my father. It was a squat on Stephen’s Green – it’s worth about €20million now.”

Not anymore!

“Really?”

I quickly abandon my explanation of the Irish property bubble when she yawns.

Will Hole be playing Ireland?

“Yeah, I’d love to.”

What’s going on with Billy?

She looks up and pulls a face: “I don’t know. What is going on with Billy? He’s a fool. That [Tweet] was a bit below the belt.”

Maybe he’s pissed off about what you recently told the NME about his sexual prowess?

“I said he was good in bed, didn’t I?” she protests. “I don’t think that’s below the belt. Below the belt is bringing my child into it.”

Have you spoken to Gavin recently?

“Rossdale? No. It was very interesting what your tabloids made it into. Me and Gavin dated for eight months. And there was some overlap between when I dated Edward (Norton) and he dated Gwen – but never when they were engaged. So we were like sorta fuck buddies. He was playing the field. He was seeing Gwen, he was seeing me. It was common knowledge. So it was a bit of an overlap back in the ‘90s. No big deal. I would never sleep with a ... Actually I did once sleep with a married man, that was a terrible thing. As advertised – disastrous! And Gavin was lovely.

“And so Stern was asking me who was the best kisser in rock ‘n’ roll? I told them if you put me on Stern… Like, he is my friend. You know, I don’t have a big inner-censor on Stern. It’s almost impossible to go on there and not, you know, say something. So I wasn’t trying to court controversy. Stern asked me ‘who is the best kisser in rock ‘n’ roll?’ And I was hard pressed to think of one, and then I remembered this one night that Gavin made roast chicken and it was really, really good, and then we snogged and he was really good at it. And he’d improved vastly from the last time we snogged. And so I thought, ‘well… Gavin’. But certainly not when they were engaged or anything. In fact, Gwen forbade him to see me, and Edward Norton forbade me to see him. So that was that. But we dated straight-up for eight months.”

Are many of the new songs inspired by these sexual shenanigans?

“By Gavin and Billy?” she says, incredulously. “Nothing!”

But you worked with Billy on the album?

“Yes. He wrote the tail of ‘Pacific Coast Highway’, which is quite good. And he wrote the skeleton of ‘Samantha’ – but I wrote the ‘people like you fuck people like me’ part. Linda (Perry, the songwriter and producer) wrote the bridge, but he contributed for 66-and-three-quarters clicks – I know that because he counted. Of course he did! But I dunno. I dunno if talking about someone’s sexual prowess allows somebody to go off their spiritual programming, you know, and go below the belt and talk about my child in a creepy manner.

“He’s always wanted to be a part of some Kurt and me soap opera that he’s not a part of,” she continues. “You know, (Smashing Pumpkins 1994 album) Pisces Iscariot. But I mean I really don’t wanna do rock stars fighting. I did do something (on Twitter) and then I deleted it immediately. I know Frances doesn’t like him talking about her and she certainly doesn’t like him. He made her cry one time – like deliberately. And I think he’s creepily obsessed with her. He just needs to leave the kid alone. That’s all she wants right now. Leave her the fuck alone!”

Suddenly seeming upset, she rises off the couch and strides across the room. For a moment I think she’s walking out, but she swiftly returns and plonks herself down again. Maybe time to change the subject. Is it weird to be back in the limelight again as a musician rather than a tabloid celebrity?

“No, it feels good. Other than film, this is what I like to do. Like, I don’t know why I’m so famous and have people talking about what I do every fucking day, or every week, for like twelve fucking years when I’ve not done anything of merit. Actually, I got a letter from McGuinness and Bono – to my manager at the time – and it said, ‘Elvis, Sinatra and Courtney’. And then McGuinness always seems to be so disappointed in me. But I did just get a big huge agent so maybe he’ll stop giving me that beleaguered look.”

Between various arrests, scandals, legal problems and stints in rehab, it took you a long time to get yourself together. There are people who say that you’re your own worst enemy…

“Sure,” she nods. “What I’m hoping what I’ll be able to do is what Downey was able to do – despite the difference in sexes. My agent seems to think so. And I’m very, very athletic. Nobody’s as athletic as Downey is now though. If you watch the fight scene in Sherlock Holmes – Jesus fucking Christ!!! He’s doing this thing called ‘wang chung’. It’s like ‘everyone wang chung tonight’. Endorphins are free, you know. So I chant every day. Today I took a little run but… ”

Another message comes in on her phone. She reads it and laughs, shaking her head. “I really do think I’m gonna take a vacation from this man. Hold on a second.” She starts to text a reply. “It’s weird going out – not going out but having a relationship or whatever you wanna call it – with a businessman. Because they’re not… they’re not creative.”

It was recently reported that you had some kind of thing going on with (Venezuelan president) Hugo Chavez. What’s the story there?

“Chavez? Yeah, he wanted me to go to Caracas about a month ago for the Playboy interview, and get on a plane at 8am. I think he thought I was a hooker. And Oliver (Stone) put me right in the line of fire. Where he knew Chavez would see me and I think Chavez would think I was a hooker or something. But then he went on Larry King and said, ‘Oh, I kissed a girl in a rock band last night. I love America’. And then he started sending me flowers. I don’t really know anything about him. I know he’s been the President thirteen times in a row which doesn’t bode well for democracy, but hey.”

Actually, he was only elected in 1998.

“No, thirteen times, I was told,” she insists. “Thirteen presidencies.” She laughs: “Oh, what the fuck do I know? I read the Post not the Times.”

A text comes in on my own phone. She’s still typing away on hers so I take the time to read it. It’s a news alert: the Iceland volcano has just erupted again and UK airspace may be closed down by the ash cloud.

“You’re fuckin’ kidding me?” she says, when I pass on the news. “The fuckin’ volcano! How many days will we be stuck? Oh, you’re kidding? How long will it take? Oh fuck, I’ve gotta tell somebody about this.” She starts poking at her phone again. “We can keep talking. I’m pretty good at multi-tasking.”

You’re producing a Kurt biopic at the moment. Are you heavily involved?

“Sure – I’m a producer.”

Who’s going to play Kurt, and who’s going to play you?

“I think (James) McAvoy for Kurt, and we’ll see what Scarlett says about the script.”

Are you still living in LA?

“No, I moved back to New York a year ago. I live in basically a pied-a-terre that’s good for clothes and guitars and things.”

Were you sad when Malcolm McLaren died?

“Yeah. I’m a little jet-setty myself. I’m not punk for life. But then McLaren was a little jet-setty by the time he died. We all give in.”

She puts the iPhone down, gets up off the couch and kicks open a suitcase on the floor. “I’d better get some clothes sorted for the show.”

Courtney removes her jacket and throws it onto the back of a chair. “This is Chloe,” she explains to me. “I just raided Selfridge’s last night. I got off the plane and went straight to Selfridge’s.”

You seem to have adopted a new look. More sober.

“Yeah, I was into a different kinda clothes – my kook. I was into taking Victorian and Edwardian clothes and kinda up-cycling them. And then I spent a lot of money and time on seamstresses and things like that. And then I just lost it because, you know what, I wasn’t gonna get laid that way.”

Surely it’s not difficult for you to get laid?

“It’s not difficult for me to get laid, but like it’s a rarefied strata,” she explains. “Some women aged 45 have like a pool. I have sort of like an espresso cup. Like, I know everyone in it. And because I’m very, very, very, very particular about who I’ll go out with, and who I’ll be with, it makes it hard because I’m just extremely… particular.”

You hinted at a lesbian fling with an English supermodel in a recent interview…

“Oh, it was Kate Moss,” she says, waving a hand. “She doesn’t care.”

Lucky you!

“I know, right!” she laughs, rifling through her case. “It’s a great story for the grandchildren so… yeah. But there’s another English supermodel that I had this… there was this indie director and he was doing a lot of drugs at the time. Kate wasn’t doing a lot of drugs. It was just a thing that happened in Milan in the ‘90s. It happened and it was fun and whatever. And she talks about it and so I hope she doesn’t get mad that I outed her about it. But she was like ‘Oh, remember Milan? Remember Milan?’ And I think Gavin was there and Nellee Hooper was there and it was like … you know. I feel like such a kiss and tell. But anyway, this one I’m not gonna name names. So this indie director became quite big, and then another English supermodel, and it was a really sordid nightmare, a horrible scene – and that was the end of me and the indie director. But he invited this one English supermodel over and she was just a fucking… oh god, she was just a vituperative… ugh! Kate’s great, though! Kate’s a good friend of mine. I almost bought Kate’s house.”

Really?

“Yeah, I almost bought Kate’s house in St. John’s Wood. But then… I don’t like St. John’s Wood. And also, this is before the Frances thing, but unless Frances was really into living miniature style… (Moss’s daughter) Lila had grown, but her room and the nanny’s room were so tiny up on the third floor. And plus I don’t like St. John’s Wood. I’d love to live in Marylebone – that’d be nice. Costs a lot of money, though.”

Speaking of money, you’ve been more or less broke a few times in recent years. What happened to all of those Nirvana royalties? She runs a hand through her hair and pulls a face: “Oh, it’s a long story. I was saying to this person, ‘You know what, I lost a billion dollars but I’m letting it go. How many times have you lost a billion dollars? Like… just shut up. Shut up! Lost a billion dollars… it’s gone… let it go!!’ And I found a quote somewhere from Donald Trump where he said something like you’ve gotta lose a billion to make a billion. So anyway, a billion dollars takes, like, 23 years to grow.”

How do you figure a billion?

“The London Times valued Kurt’s estate at £900million, and then my estate’s worth another £26million. So it’s not really a lot, but it’s money. Actually we did this thing in Las Vegas the other night where you show up at a club for money. It was the first time I’d ever done that and… I must show you a picture, it’s fucking ridiculous. There was like $10,000 worth of alcohol. It wasn’t even sick money – it was recession money. It was like fifty grand. It wasn’t like Paris Hilton crazy money – it was fifty fucking grand! So it paid for my clothes in Selfridge’s last night, put it that way. But it’s good because I’m living on my own money and… Let me just show you this. There was this kid who’s drawing these crazy cartoons of me.”

She retrieves the iPhone, sits back on the couch, and starts scrolling through some pictures. Unfortunately, I’m unable to see them. She seems utterly oblivious to the fact.

“That’s me at the Chateau… oh god, this is us playing at the Fred Durst crowd the other day, we had to catch a plane so we played at like noon. It was 20,000 but it was 20,000 fuckers in baseball hats – in Pizza Hut Park, I might add – next thing will be fucking Chuck E Cheese Stadium! – and these are the shoes I bought in Vegas, they were like three grand – and they only make them in Milan. And then this is me smoking – post coital… this is the Boom Boom Room in New York… this is me on Letterman… this is me driving a boat in Malibu… here’s me tits akimbo at the Chateau.”

Eh? I immediately get out of my seat and squeeze in beside her on the couch.

“This is this great video director… like video fine art… I thought Bono would get him – and then Kanye got him… and then they fuckin’ played Kanye just to piss me off that night. This is me wearing a man’s bespoke shirt – I do like a man’s shirt. I got this Birkin bag from a girl who was the mistress of a very famous painter, so she got it on her back. Frances has two Birkins… this is Florence (Welch) – she fucking kicked my ass. This is me and Al Gore’s daughter… me and Navarro… Stipe… this is me drunk on Rose in my room… I just started drinking it recently. Here’s another of those cartoons…. ”

This celebrity slideshow goes on for several minutes. She comes across a photo of Frances. Although the album title refers to herself, she reportedly lost custody of her only daughter last December. Would you like to have another child, Courtney?

“Sure, I’d like to have another child,” she smiles. “Absolutely. I’d like a boy. Oh, this is me on the back of a Grateful Dead record.”

Courtney’s father Hank Harrison briefly managed the Dead back in the day. She shows me a photograph of her three-year-old self, presumably taken backstage at some San Francisco festival, on the back cover of their third album Aoxomoxoa. Have you spoken to your dad recently?

“God no!” she snorts, haughtily. “Oh, here’s me getting tattooed. I just got my midlife crisis ones – I got one that says ‘Let It Bleed’ (shows me her upper arm) – I don’t like the song, I just like the title. Oh, here’s me with Gaga at the Brits.”

What do you think of Lady Gaga?

“I think if she wants to do it, God bless. I had to introduce her at the Brits. It’s like she wakes up every morning and says, ‘Alright boys, do me – and make it cost the most!’ God bless, I don’t want 25,000 purple pearls encrusted on me. That’s what my kook was for and then I got real simple – rockin’ navy, rockin’ cream, rockin’ secretarial. One thing I found with the kook is you don’t get laid so much.”

She puts the phone down and stands up again. Unembarrassed, she pulls her top off, walks to the mirror, and starts putting on make-up. She’s onstage in less than an hour and I’m already well over my allotted time.

Would you like me to leave, Courtney?

“No, no. It’s cool. Keep talking.”

The ass has really fallen out of the music industry in the last few years…

“Yeah, I know,” she says, plastering her face in foundation. “That’s why we’re doing things like going to fuckin’ (Vegas nightclub) Tao for fucking fifty grand. It’s not even stupid money. Ten years ago it would’ve been a hundred and fifty grand, you know – whoop, whoop! But I mean four people sitting there drinking Pellegrino – that’s just fucking sad, bitch! But don’t tell me I can’t do grace under pressure because me and Micko (Larkin, Hole guitarist) got up and did ‘Pacific Coast Highway’ and we’d all these people going ‘Zoo-ey-zoo-ey’, and then I got really fucking perverse and did Cohen. No, we’re not doing ‘Hallelujah’, thank fucking god! Enough with that song. I don’t even think Leonard does ‘Hallelujah’ very well. And to be honest – and I’m very, very much a Leonard Cohen-ologist – I thought that Jeff Buckley’s… I mean, Jeff Buckley and me went to see Hamlet one night… ”

A hilariously colourful two-minute stream of consciousness rant follows, taking in Kurt Cobain’s In Utero notebooks, her mother’s Shakespeare collection, and something about Leonard Cohen’s poetry…

“… anyway it makes a good story but it’s just not true. So anyway, me and Jeff Buckley went to see Hamlet and the whole way back he was complaining... he was really grumpy because I got a better seat or something like that, I dunno… but anyway Melissa (Auf der Maur of Hole) wanted to date him after that – because I just spent, like, a night with him – and Melissa wanted to date him, I was like, ‘go ahead, he’s a grump!’ So when I heard ‘Hallelujah’… and the first time I really heard ‘Hallelujah’, (art photographer David) LaChapelle had me in the studio holding this Kurt imitator in my arms and I could do nothing and I couldn’t even leave and David was going ‘La Pietà! La Pietà!’ and I’m going, ‘David, this is not La Pietà – this is a fucking Kurt imitator!’ and if you go onto his last MySpace, which is like 2006 or something, he says…”

Eventually her phone beeps again and she stops to read a text. By the time she’s replied, she’s lost her thread. “Do you ever get nervous before shows?” I ask.

“No, because I usually run late and so don’t have time to get nervous,” she explains, pouting her lips to apply vibrantly red lipstick. “You know, this is Glasgow and, to me, Brixton more than New York or LA decides if you’re gonna play Wembley – which decides if you’re gonna play the Garden. And I’m very English that way. I don’t look at, like, Terminal Five as deciding if you’re gonna play the Garden. Now, Billy Joe (Armstrong) offered it, if I wanted to play Wembley, but I’d have to play under Joan Jett and he sort of did it as an afterthought because me and Billy Joe became great friends – again! Because we’d always been pals, but we became really good friends one night me and Bono and him hung out.

They ended up doing a single together after that night.

“And then I went to see him in Madison Square Garden and he did like three-and-a-half hours and then he lit up a cigarette and it was like – astonishing. And I wanna get to that point. So I did my Courtney run today but I totally forgot to do my chants. And I’m staying in this really weird hotel – it’s the one PJ Harvey stays in – and it’s like The Shining. It’s not like Claridge’s or somewhere, it’s like this really weird hotel. It’s like cheese and pickle sandwiches, you know. So anyway me and…”

A couple of minutes of non-stop verbals later, Courtney Love kicks open another suitcase. “I have, like, nineteen bodybags of this shit,” she laughs. “This is just one of them.”

She removes some brand new underwear, still tagged. “I wonder should I wear this… or this?” I tell her I prefer the sheer black panties. “Good choice,” she says.

Rifling through some dresses, she starts talking about her recently abandoned kook look again. “I realised that I just didn’t want to be that anymore – and I also wanted to get fucked. It’s not just that, I wanna act again and part of acting is looking reasonably, you know, together. So it makes me work harder to not have the kook.”

Courtney made her film debut way back in 1986 with a small role in Alex Cox’s Sid & Nancy. She’s made a few movies since, but her acting career basically stalled after her Golden Globe nomination for The People vs. Larry Flynt in 1996. She tells me she bitterly regrets turning down roles in Girl Interrupted and The Matrix. She blames the latter decision on one of her exes. “It was nine months in this remote part of Australia and I remember Norton telling me, ‘Oh don’t do it, Val Kilmer’s in it!’ Like, Val Kilmer wasn’t even in it! I mean, was that a reason not to do it? A lot of people were like, ‘what happened with the film thing?’ I was like, ‘what happened with the fucking film thing is I had a boyfriend in Edward Norton who wanted to fucking tame me, as many men have tried to do, as many men still do try and do, and… ’ You know, ‘let’s chain the rock star!’ Oh my god, Mrs. Norton – she used to be Courtney Love. That’s really what was going on in that relationship. And a lot of people were saying, ‘Oh, he saved you, he saved you!’ No, he didn’t save me – he wanted me to be his waspy wife.”

She indicates the six tattooed flowers adorning her breasts and upper arms. “The thing is, as much as I love Edward, each of these represent somebody that I love very much. I have six people in my life that I love very much – except I keep flip-flopping on five. And then six is maddening.”

Cobain isn’t represented by a flower. She still has the famous ‘K’ tattoo just above her belly button.

“The thing about the K is that it’s half-faded and that’s because Edward didn’t like to look at it when we had sex so I went to get it taken off. And then I was like ‘fuck that!’ So I keep it so it’s like half-off/half-on so I remind myself that I almost took it off. You know what I mean?” I do indeed. Has the whole Kurt thing become a bit of a millstone around your neck at this point?

“Well, it has and that’s one of the reasons that I thought about selling all his publishing which no-one’s ever done. And Howard Stern was like, ‘no, no, no’. At the same time, it’s extraordinarily expensive publishing and I doubt anyone could meet my price. You know, Bono tried to buy it from me first time round.”

Did he really?

“Oh yeah – for about two cents. Don’t take the pink Cadillac, Courts! Now, I do love Bono, and I love the boys – I love all of them. I love Edge’s brother, Dick – he’s so smart, do you know him? Such a guy. Oh my god! That night we did the Gavin Friday [50th birthday party at Carnegie Hall] thing? And Bono was always telling me for years and years and years that I should meet Gavin. And I was always afraid to, because Gavin, to be honest, really intimidated me more than any of them. And then when we played with them, of course ... I suggested Magazine’s ‘The Light Pours Out Of Me’ as opposed to an old Virgin Prunes song – and it was fuckin’ brilliant.

“And the night before, me and Micko had played with Slash and friends in Vegas, and the next night straight to Carnegie Hall with Lydia Lunch and Lou Reed and, you know, a lot of brilliant songs. And each member of U2 was billed with their own names – so Larry’s Larry, and Adam’s Adam, and, you know, shit like that. And Micko plays with Slash and then plays with Edge – so he’s playing through giant Marshalls and then he’s playing through Edge’s little stuff and he’s playing for girls with big titties ...”

Speaking of Micko, he’s just entered the dressing room. A pale, skinny, big-haired Irishman in a long grey trenchcoat (his family are originally from Wexford), he speaks in a slightly stuttery London accent. “Em, Courts, we’re on fairly soon,” he tells her. “Maybe we should start thinking about, you know, putting a set list together.”

Courtney has other concerns. “Hey, Olaf says the volcano has erupted again and we might not be able to get home,” she tells him. “I’ve gotta go pee.”

She disappears into the adjoining bathroom. I chat with Micko for a few moments (he’s obviously wondering what I’m still doing there). He’s unbothered about the volcanic ash cloud. “I’m actually planning on staying in England for a while. That place in New York is killing me. It’s just not right for either of us. It isn’t even the fact that it’s small, it’s just not nice. The furniture is small – it’s kind of weird.” Oh, do you live together?

“Yeah, we live together in this place off Union Square.”

I’d imagine she’s an interesting housemate ...

“Yeah. She’s like my best friend. She’s awesome.”

Courtney comes back in. She tells me I can stay if I want (“fuck, I don’t care”), but I feel it’s bad manners to hang around a band’s dressing room just before a show. Before I leave, though, she wants to make it clear that she absolutely loves Bono.

“I actually started this craze called ‘The Bono Talk’ and so if you go back quite a few years on the internet it’ll say in quotes ‘The Bono Talk’ – and if you look it up, it’s like ‘The 10 Commandments of Bono’. And he’s absolutely on point – ‘thou shalt be afraid of TV’; ‘thou shalt not be a dickhead’; ‘thou shalt not go for the pink Cadillac’. But the tragedy is, despite contributing this to the nomenclature, I’ve never actually had the Bono Talk – I’ve only watched the Bono Talk.”

She mentions that Hole are – or maybe were - in consideration to support the next leg of the U2 tour. “I’d love to do that,” she says. “It would be an absolute fuckin’ dream to support U2. I would love that. But I’m sure you get this bollocking from someone you’ll never see again the first day – [adopts crazed voice] ‘You’re not more important than the band, godammit!!!’ And then you never see them again.”

It’s time to take my leave. “Give us a kiss, Courtney!” She obligingly smooches me goodbye, smudging red lipstick on my mouth.

Final question, Courtney ... do you have a motto in life?

She barely pauses before replying: “It’s the standard one – if it doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger. Sorry to be a bore!”

Courtney Love is a lot of things – smart, mouthy, controversial, talented, crazy – but she’s most definitely not a bore. The Hole show, incidentally, is truly spectacular. Glasgow loves Love. And as she explains from the stage, she loves Glasgow.

“This is one of two cities in the world where I’ve stage-dived – and nobody’s tried to feel my tits, rip my dress, or finger me!”

The Hole story has yet to be written ... but there’s plenty to be getting on with for now.

May 2010