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Love Kills:
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The Assassination
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K.rt Co1ain
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Arkives Press
San Francisco
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International Copyright
Love Kills!"
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harrison, Hank
Luv Kills: The Assassination of Kurt Cobain
1st Edition
09PQ6S43V1
Includes bibliography, footnotes and index
ISBN : Hardcover: 0-01PS01-VP-P
Trade Paper: 0-01PS01-VQ-W
1. Cobain, Kurt, V. Biography-Music, 3. Rock-and-roll,
4. Social History, S. Anthropology, 6. Biography: Historical
I. Harrison, Hank II. Title
LCZ: 9x-xxxxx
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I
t was not been possible in all cases to trace the copyright sources of photographs
used in this book. The publishers would be glad to hear from any unacknowledged
copyright holders.
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Catriona Watson, Eve Meyer Suicide Prevention\ Sasha Shulgin San Francisco Poison
and Antidote Control\ Elaine Darvas\ Manchester, Dave MCElhatton KPIW-TV\ Abigail
Johnston Book Design\ Eckhardt and Persis Gerdes Chicago\ Phil Sprang, University
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Robin Barbur, Brandy Miller, Brez Jennings\ Gerri Ganter Phil Lesh\ Dr. Marilyn
Buckley\ Dave Menely\ Dave Verge and all the folks in Nelson, New beland\ Dan
Mcleod and Yolanda Sapien and the H$*%7!( S/%(!7+/ staff in Vancouver\ Matti and
Jo Lansoo on the Sunshine Coast\ Mac Perry S(.:*#?$% S#.\ Fred Easton, Bob Hunter,
Walrus Okenbaugh and all the folks on the rst whale Greenpeace, Tim Perlich-"*%*./*
N*O\ Maude Elizabeth Johnson\ Dr. Lloyd Saxton\ Buzz Osborne\ SlimMoon\ Tad
Doyle\ Jason the snake man from NoFx\ Kate Hannah, Kat Bjelland\ the late, Steve
O’Leary, Donnegal\ Jack Roberts, Sligo\ Henrietta Knight, London\ Mary Lou Lord,
Boston\ Carol Joyce, Hollywood\ Ron Turner and '(-/ H(-<\ Karen Lybarger and Peter
Albin\ Melissa Rossi\ Tom Grant\ Tom Constanten, Survivor Keyboards\ Alan HandlemanRock Jock\ Geraldo Rivera\ Joanna Malloy N$O T*%; 4(!68 N$O-\ John Blosser\
N(/!*.(6 G.U#!%$%\ Martin Brennan\Dublin, Dan Aeyelts\ Amsterdam\ the late, Dianna
Van den Berg, Den Hague. Chris and Barbara and Alex Warnock Adobe Systems\
Herman Shapiro, Yale, San Jose State: Logic\ Dan Rossett, Rudy Webbe\ Anata Riddle\
Joffra Boschart, the late John Michell, Jerry Garcia, Bob Hunter, Alan Triste, Karen
Melquist-High, Roger High, Dan Poynter, Randy Flemming, Charles Winton, Mike
Winton, Bill Hearst, and all the people at PGW, Randy Beek\ Montalvo Center\ Nancy
Jeffers-Cummings\ the Nelson Algren Archives\ the William S. Burroughs
Archives.
Thanks also to the hundreds of sel"ess friends and strangers who helped in many
ways. Each of you are acknowledged in my heart.
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BOOK ONE
The Legacy
A LETTER 4 BODDAH
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K
urt Cobain was a political firebrand, he used his music to lead millions of
young people into direct action, and, he was uncompromising in that pursuit.
He wasn’t 100g sure about his actions, but he had a vision. He rejected wealth
and power. He made chumps out of people who don’t like being embarrassed by kids
from the sticks. He did not trust big shots. For this he was assassinated. It’s a complex
story.
Potheads and junkies don’t usually hang around together. That’s why Cobain’s music
was so hard for me to grasp at rst… but Kurt wasn’t always on smack when he wrote
his songs or played his music, so I listened, and nally I heard it. The kid was a savant,
like Mozart. Even Kurt didn’t know how smart he was. He felt smart, but in our acidic
culture it takes timeilonger than thirty years, to “come out.” He wrote music for
twelve year olds prancing around in new Land Rovers and Honda’s, they listened,
they danced and moshed and got stoned, but only a few heard the deeper mantra.
About two months before Kurt died I discovered that Linda Carroll, nee Lou Linda
Risi (Courtney Love’s mother and my ex-wife) was going to write a book for Doubleday
and that she found her biological mother, who turned out to be Paula Fox, in Brooklyn.
Great grandma Fox is, by the way, the highly decorated Pulitzer prize winner and
author of a dozen best sellers. When Kurt and Courtney got married, and especially when Frances was born, I thought, “Oh boy, my son-in-law is a savant too, now
we have a whole family of Druids.”
It was delusional, but so what? It was a hopeful vision. That was my state of mind
when Kurt died. Then reality struck, then silence...
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I have been around mock stars and rock stars, most of my adult life. I had no choice.
My college chums all became rock stars, and my kid felt it was her destiny to join
the clan. So, when Cobain came along, I had tools with which to judge him fairly.
By his attitude, just by observing him in the media, I could tell Kurt valued money
about as much as he valued a*.*<*68 tokens. It was a game to him, a boring game
at that. To Kurt, money was the chump change of lifeiyou need it to do good things,
but it has an ugly side. People equate it with power and fame, but both things "ow
from the same rusty pipe.
Big shots worship money, to them its GOD. If Kurt where here, if I knew his current
address, I would tell him so be careful when he shows disdain for the other religions.
Kicking money to the curb is OK, as long as you live in a cave.
That’s where Cobain went off the trackihe not only disdained money, he found it
prolix. Kurt wrote poetry and music and made videos about the corruption of power
and fame. Like a post industrialist painter, the muralists of the WPA, he joined a
union that had no love for moguls. But he signed a contract with moguls who were
mongrels on a bone, all of them poised to eat him alive. Cobain projected images that
continue to grab people, and in this society, if you do that, you get a big target painted on your back.
In the warrior world of America, you have to beat the shit out of your opponent
and scribble at the same time. It isn’t good enough to get published, you have to
cripple the other guy. If you cannot do that, you cannot get ahead. America doesn’t
want pansy poets\ they want Sunday Punchers like Norman Mailer and Kerouac,
tough machismo boys who can write things down in blood, other people’s blood,
Truman Capote notwithstanding. Kurt Cobain was a true warrior poet until he saw
a deeper truth. He realized Hollywood was just stupido That’s when somebody decided
he needed a short course in killing. He was assassinated, plain and simple. Whoever
killed him got away with it, but they made mistakes, ghoulish errors left behind like
crumbs in the Hansel and Gretle story.
Cobain’s so called, “suicide note” was not a good-bye-cruel-world letter. It was a
note to his fans saying he needed to go into hiding, that a succubus was stalking him.
This letter was addressed to an imaginary friend from childhood, an eln dreamworld gure named Boddah.
From the beginning, slushing through clubs in Tacoma, Cobain didn’t care much
about anythingia classic beat existentialist. But as he grew into his fame suit, he
realized he could do good things, and again that’s where the con"ict came in.
In Kurt Cobain, Hollywood created a monster, a Golem who turned on his makers.
He was amassing a huge following of nay sayers and independents like himself. Hell,
even me. So, from a strictly reactionary perspective, Kurt had to be neutralized, just
like the Kennedy’s, Martin Luther King and John Lennon. Kurt Cobainithe greatest rock star of his generationihad to be assassinated. The sooner the better.
;
d
REBUS SATANICA
E
verything you need to solve the mystery of Kurt’s death is contained in this
book. The book itself may seem a little disjointed at times, but there are good
reasons for the jagged edges. Some of it is speculative, but it represents decades
of research.
Presenting the material in this form is the only way I could solve my moral dilemma,
to wit: how can I write a book about my own daughter and son-in-law and still
remain objective? Fortunately, more than two millennia ago, Hippocrates solved
the problem for me when he wrote an oath taken by all physicians, “First do no
harm.”
This work is my way of apologizing to anyone who was hurt by Kurt’s tragic death.
This book is also dedicated to my granddaughter who I hope will understand that
in everything I do I try to attain the greatest good. So, however odious it sounds, I
pray you fully comprehend this book as one written by a grieving parent.
Now we have to ask, “What is Parental Alienation Syndrome?” PAS, usually applied to custody hearings, is dened as a case where one parent brainwashes the
child until the child is estranged from the targeted parent.
Courtney would never allow me to meet Kurt or any of his friends, and especially my only grandchild. In spite of that handicap, I was determined to write a book
about that scene. It was a natural for me. I had already written books on The HaightAshbury milieu and the Grateful Dead and spent many years back in time tracing
the relationship between the medieval troubadours and the Grail mystery. I know
Courtney read the 2(#65%*. (.5 /+$ H%(!6 because she read a paragraph from it on
television in V006, ten years after it came out. Unfortunately she read it with a
schmarmy sneer, and a sarcastic tone, but she seemed to be trying to tell me something via the media. In spite of that duplicity Courtney spread the idea that a biography could not be valid unless the writer hung out with the subject of the biography.
What a laugh. If that were true Robert Graves could have never written I 26(#5!#-,
one of Courtney’s favorite books. I wanted to think she actually cared, but she couldn’t
bring herself to say anything good about me or my career as a writer and publisher.
Maybe she was con"icted about that too.
I began this book in 1991. It is an extension of a family Blog. I started that journal when I discovered, again through the media, that I was a grandfather. Nobody
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bothered to call or write, I wasn’t invited to
the wedding or the baptism, (if there was
one) but I was inured to being ignored and
marginalized, I just felt great that a baby was
on deck, and that maybe, someday, I would
get to see her. Twenty years later I discovered I wasn’t the only grandparent left out
in the cold. Kurt’s grandfather, Leland Cobain,
who would be the baby’s only great grandfather was also ignored.
After Kurt died the book took on a darker
tone. It became a eulogy for Kurt and grew
even beyond the characters or myself, as if
the book was writing itself.
On the deepest level this book is about the
lives and deaths of a number of people closely associated with Kurt Cobain, one of the
greatest troubadours in modern times. His
violent and mysterious death robbed us of
his future leadership, but his torrential soul
lives in the radio and in all the little riffs
played by his imitators.
This book is also about the war between
punks and beatniks. As a social historian I
have long been fascinated by the continuity
between bohemian generations. I have observed and studied ancient tribal societies,
especially the Celts. I have observed motorcycle clubs, rock groups, communes, pot farmers and extended families as they passed down
rituals, symbols, and belief systems.
Now, all of this experience comes to play
on this probative study of Kurt and Courtney.
Even though Kurt died, his values (and mine)
lived on in the music and in the continued
work of everyone touched by Kurt’s dreamlike charm and wit.
The tragic denouement of Nirvana, and
the life and death of Kurt Cobain, injected a
vital serumiderived from the old bohemian
values, c. 19SPiinto the !. 5Q -!:6$ V0th
century, an era diseased by prejudice.
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Kurt Cobain became a cultural icon, a man-boy who helped anneal his untouchable
generation into a functional subculture with goals and integrity. While Cobain was
alive most reactionaries hoped he would fail. When he died they rejoiced.
Kurt was, to paraphrase the sixties comedian Mort Sahl, “Offensive to everyone,”
except, of course, those who saw him as a guy who found a way out of a world with
no exit, a guy who beat Sartre at his own game, not by suicide, I repeat Kurt did not
kill himself, but by sheer rebelliousness. Conservatives saw him as a frightening Pied
Piper leading the nice little kids to hell. When he died, a lot of straights and even some
Deadheads said, “good riddance. Worse yet, liberals and yuppies saw him as a force
to be destroyed at all costs.
Nirvana rose up even as communism fell, and it was just a matter of time until somebody like Cobain came along to ll the gap. Kurt’s music was political, but Kurt had
an impish and misleading look about him. He made people smile, until he frightened
them with his music.
The religious establishment grew more and more aware of Kurt’s charisma until they
realized he wasn’t portraying Jesus, as God. He said his prayers, but he knew God
was bigger than the sage from Nazaerth. Nirvana fans were going wild over symbols,
words and music that mom and dad just plain did not understand.
I have studied this case carefully for close to twenty years. There is no doubt in my
mind that Kurt was murdered, but I prefer to call it an Assassination. Whoever killed
him threw Kurt’s life and the entire music industry, open to public scrutiny. In nearly
every case of rock star death, the facts are kept under cover. This book has been suppressed until now because it explores the dark side of the recording Industry, an industry that enjoys more media control than the government itself. When Jimi Hendrix
and Janice Joplin died their lives became murky pools, doors shut, spin doctors had a
eld day.
Cobain’s life was already stamped on the internet when he died, allowing his legend
to form a lucid window through which to observe the lives of those around him, his
bosses, his band mates and his wife.
Kurt Cobain was a warning signal. When he died the only people who were happy
were the people he confused and offended.
>
DISGUISE DELIMIT
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M
y attorney, the late Dennis Natali, calls me at 11:00 AM. It’s his birthday.
“I guess you heard.”
“Heard what”?
“Kurt was found dead in his greenhouse, they say he shot himself with a
shotgun.”
“Kurt who?”
“You know, Courtney’s old man.”
“What? “Oh man that’s bad.” I began to tremble uncontrollably. A man I never met,
my disaffected son-in-law, was dead at VQ. I knew he had been ghting with Courtney
lately. I knew something was off-the-wall the minute I heard the report... something
darker, more sinister. I wanted to puke.
“Are you sure it was Kurt?”
“Yeah dude, they mentioned Courtney on the radio.”
“Where did it happen?”
“In a house on Lake Washington in Seattle.”
“Yeah that’s the house. Wowo”
“How do you feel?” I could hear the sadness in Denny’s voice. He didn’t like
Nirvana’s music, but he understood.
“I don’t know.” I answered. I’m angry, scared, lonely, sick and worried all at the
same time.”
“Why are you so worried?”
“I’m worried about Frances?”
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“Well they said nobody can nd Courtney or the baby.”
“You mean they’re missing?”
“Yeah.”
A big nger came down from a dark cloud and pressed my panic button. A shudder
of shock ripped through me. My typical male conditioning wouldn’t let me cry out in
anguish, so I sti"ed it, at least until I could nd a pillow to scream into. I answered,
“Kurt said he didn’t have a gun in one of his songs.”
“He must have bought one.” Dennis spoke under his breath, cynical the way Italian
coke lawyers get after living a life of gambling and ugly court cases.
“Courtney told me she made him get rid of his guns.”
“Yeah, well, everybody in the Northwest keeps an old blunderbuss in the closet.
Besides maybe she gured he was going to shoot her.” Peels of inappropriate laughter
rang out on both sides of the phone.
Sadly, and just to add to the paranoia, my old friend , my lawyer and my best highschool chum Dennis, would be dead, shot down on the streets of San Francisco, ve
years later.
The other line rings. “Thanks Denny.” The other phone rang again. It was Triona.
“You heard, no doubt?”
“Yeah just now. Denny called me. What do you think?”
“Oh she nally did it eh?”
“Yeah I guess so. She always said she was going to kill herself a rock star.”
“I wonder what she meant by that, the radio said it was a suicide”
“Man I’m not so sure, he was missing and she was in jail last week, she just got out
for holding a blank prescription pad.”
“OK, we’ll talk when I get home, see ya later,”
“Yeah OK.”
A migraine "ared up later that night, muf"ed like an empty freight train rattling in
the distance. There would be no boyhood tucking-in this night. The pillow screaming
worked about as well as the Valium. I guess I would not be so upset if Courtney had
married a software engineer, but unfortunately, my son-in-law was one of the most important poets in the country. I gured Courtney would be all about worshiping him,
but I guess not. I tried baben. I prayed. I dozed off.
I was overreacting, but the next dawn came and the panic laced depression was still
"oating around. I found myself in mourning for a son I never met. Oh, I saw him smashing his guitar on stage a couple of times, but I never had the guts to go back stage and
meet him. I gured that would come in the fullness of time. Fat chance.
I’ve been in mourning and writing most of my life. In the beatnik world people drop
like "ies. It was a rare month when someone of my acquaintance didn’t die. A goodly
chunk of my writing is about those who are about to die. The sadness part of it would
normally pass over in a week or so, but the entire world was mourning for the death of
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a future king and the sorrow was hanging around almost as heavy as when John
Lennon was gunned down. Cobain became, in a few year’s time, the 5$ 0(:/* president of the new wave. This gave him more power than any elected gure. All he had
to do to get reelected was write a new song every month or so.
On New Year’s Eve 1993, during a particularly soulful rendition of c$-#- 4*$-.Q/
L(./ a$ C*% A S#.3$(), I heard him utter the words, “It’s nice to have power,” from
his stage in Oakland. The only problem was the show wasn’t coming from Oakland.
It wasn’t even New Year’s Eve. Mtv taped the show about a month earlier in a warehouse in Seattle and broadcast it as if it was some kind of authentic New Year’s eve
gig. But, for the purposes of argument, Kurt was almost dead by January rst. In spite
of its weakness, I picked up something raw and surrealistic from that show. Kurt’s
stage comment about power held true. But he only had power when he was on stage.
Off stage he was as castrated as Bob Barker’s dog. Male feminist to the last, his utterance came after he called for the ejection of a tit grabber from the mosh pit. I didn’t
know what he meant at the time. I gured he was just toying with his new found sense
of leadership.
Cobain’s power was existential. How could anyone see that he was playing with the
power over life and death itself. But it was just that playing like a kid who toys with
matches. He derived power from cheating death and transcending time. He wasn’t
suicidalo He was in a state of ascension a temporary state, to be sure.
Kurt seemed to sense that his power was different than the Kennedy’s or Janice
Joplin’s or John Belushi’s. He understood that his music was enticing.
Jim Morrison’s charisma came from his animal sensuality, his Elvis quotient, but
Kurt’s power came from his entelechy and his “beggar boy,” humility. When he lived
he was Albert Camus, who didn’t attend his mother’ funeral out of choice. As soon
as he died everybody knew he was more than a rock star. His fans, caught in the whirlpool of his death, had no choice, but to grieve. Cobain wasn’t just a simple rock star,
he was a visionary.
Like the voyeur in Jean Cocteau’s V6**5 *0 ( IJ/, I was able to peer into Kurt’s
funeral through the agency of stealth. Something seemed shy in Seattle. I knew the
inner secrets of the Cobain caseiI call it a “case” because in my mind it is still
unresolvediwere guarded by a gauntlet of family members\ ex-spouses, in-laws\
groupies\ gophers and various other players, each with a private agenda, and yet I
knew I had to write about Kurt, for no other reason than to sooth my own guilt. It
wasn’t easy. Breaking through those barriers, forming alliances, and even purposefully
alienating people to entice them out of their moldy corners. I put on my journalistic
clown suit and joined the parade.
On May Day, 1994 I decided that being completely out of touch was bugging me
as much as Kurt dying. Old pot heads like me, pride themselves in being hip to the
scene, but it was patently obvious that I was out of it, when it came to Kurt and
Courtney, their milieu and their music. This condition was soon remedied.
A number of on-line services feature Nirvana discussion groups and folders. The
A
H(.; H(%%!-*.
last time I checked various fans were reading through Kurt’s innovations with his
Jagstrat guitar and a few denizens of the electronic ocean were trading en tablatures
to “Heart-Shaped Box,” a song I knew must have been in"uenced by Courtney since
she collected old heart-shaped candy boxes and doll parts when she was a wee lass.
But now Kurt was dead. The seeping emotions on various Internet news groups went
from pink and gold to green and umber. At least I wasn’t alone. Kurt’s death darkened
the world.
The S(. c*-$ a$%:#%8hN$O- ran the articles raw, but one tidbit, stood out:
“Ofcial sources report that the Cobain incident in Rome was not a suicide
attempt.”
I thought that was weird because Courtney told everybody Kurt was suicidal. A few
days later a revised (and inverted) version ticked across the tapes, an ofcial, well
scrubbed, version, saying the incident in Rome, “was” a suicide attempt. I needed to
known more. I asked myself. “Who was rewriting these press releases?” I even wondered who was writing the suicide notes that nobody ever saw. Months later I discovered just who was spinning what? Janet Billig, had been working for Courtney ever
since Babes in Toyland played CBGBs, back in the Chelsea days was pretty much
boiler plating everything Courtney said.
When I heard about Courtney getting busted in the hospital I gured she was trying
to detox somewhere the day Kurt died, I knew the rumors on the internet were more
or less under her control, but doubts and odd smells were leaking out and I had no way
of contacting her directly. Weeks later I put VpV together and realized Courtney’s idea
of a detox is to rent a suite in a swank hotel and take prescription drugs instead of
street drugs. You can’t detox in a hotel, not even the Peninsula Spa, and you can’t
detox, by taking more dope. You have to be in a supervised, drug free, setting. A wet
detox may get the shit out of your brain, but it will never get it out of your soul.
I knew she was in a big-time career mode. I saw her band “Hole” in San Francisco
at Slim’s Club in November 1993, right around the time I. F/$%* came out. Hole was
terric (the opposite of sucks) not third-stream jazz, not Bartok, more brat-rox you
know, but she seemed healthy in late 1993. Then rumors started following her again
after the March 1994 Rome incident. Excesses of booze and pills were common in the
reports. She was dating at least two other guys.
She told the media two years later she was afraid of me, but, if she was so afraid,
why did she invite me back to Slim’s club the next day? Why did she get in a car with
me, alone, on a rainy night, and go to the Cafe Trieste for coffee? Ten witnesses including the writer Kim Burrafato and the mad physicist Jack Sarfatti saw us there enjoying a hazelnut cappuccino.
She told her friends I was making sour faces when she played at the rehearsal. She
even told Joel Selvin, San Francisco’s ofcial character assassin, that I was cruising
around the club trying to interview the headliner, Fugazzi or Evan Dando, “the bigger
rock star,” but that isn’t what happened at all. In fact. My daughter was screwing Dando,
:B
'*?$ K!66-
at the time and the baby, unbeknownst to me, was hiding out in the tour bus. I didn’t
even know who the qbigger’ star was. I was looking at posters and absorbing the vibes,
trying to feel what her scene was like. This just grs to demonstrate how distorted
Courtney’s perceptions were in those days. I wasn’t cruising, stalking or hustling. I
was just plain overwhelmed. She was utterly beautiful, she looked good in her new
Prada kicks. I was happy for her. She also told her press pals she had admonished me
in a private session. That was an understatement. She humiliated me in front of her
whole band, just to show how powerful she was and what a dork I was.
I couldn’t gure it out at the time. If I was such a weeny why was she afraid of me?
Anyway, in private she told me she was having trouble with Kurt and didn’t want anybody close to her scene to hear it. She did not say Kurt was suicidal, but I got the impression something was clinically wrong, something above and beyond the drug
problem.
Now I realize the only time Courtney couldn’t keep an eye on me was when she was
on stage, that’s why she was worried when I didn’t stay for the rehearsal and why she
dressed me down in front of her entire extended family. I gured her spies would report
back to her, but spies weren’t enough, Courtney had to exercise microanalytic control
on every level. The concept of delegation of authority and distribution of power was
anathema to her.
I’d seen enough. My street hip radar, told me Courtney was manipulating the whole
scene and her Is was in high gear. Courtney’s rock group was her life support system,
an experimental lab where she could try out all the power games she observed in and
out of her various childhood families. I call it a compulsion to power. Abe Maslow
called it “deciency motivation.” The lust for power and control over others drs not
rise from natural charismatic and organic circumstances. It comes from the fear of
failure and rejection. You nd it often in abandoned children who fear even more rejection. . No truly charismatic leader seeks power. It simply lands in his or her lap.
You can’t seek -$60h(:/#(6!e(/!*., it just happens.
I gave Courtney a big hug in the parking lot and adjusted her back as I often did
when she came to visit me down in Menlo Park. You cross the arms over the head and
drape the body up until the spine aligns itself. It’s a common, and harmless, chiropractic move, tantamount to a hug and I’ve been doing it for decades for hundreds of people
with no ill effects, but that was the last time I saw her.
I realized then and from rides we took together on my Bonneville, that Courtney inherited her mother’s loose spine and probably the same central nervous system. I also
realized that she inherited my eidetic memory and probably my parasympathetic system.
Other body parts came later as I watched her on stage. Talk about your freakazoids,
no wonder she feared me, she was afraid of herself. She didn’t want me to know what
was going on in her head. She was afraid she was going to get fat, like me and all of
her great aunts on both sides. I told her Balzac was fat but that didn’t deal with the
problem.
::
LOVE KILLS
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London, 199V
I
always knew Courtney was go ing to do something big. I
wasn’t sure if it was maybe pull off the biggest bank job in history or be the next
Jean Harlow, but I knew it was going to be big. Her mother tried to keep her
down, because she reminded everyone of me, but Courtney was unbeatable. When
I saw S!5 (.5 N(.:8 (originally titled Love Kills) and S/%(!7+/ /* H$66, two films she
did with director Alex Cox in the mid-19P0s, I was convinced she was on her way.
She wasn’t Meryl Streep, but I figured she’d grow into it.
Almost two decades later I discovered that she was continuing the hate Hank scenario her mother had implanted. In 4!%/8 V6*.5$, her fanciful V006 journal, she wrote
that she wanted my granddaughter to undergo plastic surgery because she looked too
much like me. Now man that’s sick. Francis actually looks like my sister Kathy.
Back in September of 1993, Courtney’s was too loud for the tinnitus in my warped
left cochlea so I stayed outside to listen. Courtney took that as a rejection, but I was
impressed. Hole’s sound was good, very simple, ergo commercial, integrated and
almost healthy. Eric Erlandson (lead) Patty Schemel (drums) had a good rapport and
Kristen Pfaff, on bass was hipper than I expected. Stage presence? Sure that was
Courtney, but musically the deal was Pfaff, Schemel and Erlandson, anybody who
thought Courtney was the musician in that group was just plain deaf. She had a roadie
send in several guitars, each tuned for whatever key, because Courtney never made
an attempt to actually master picking or chord technique. It’s a common practice, but
I was a little disappointed.
I could hear the beat of Patty’s barefoot drumming echoing down the alley as I
walked through the drizzle. South of Market featured a few loud screamers that night.
No apparent trafc fatalities A Mexican hurricane off Cabo San Lucas softened the
wind. One year later I learned that my proud exit was mistaken for an act of rejection.
Courtney’s fans worshipped her and any sense of rejection would bring up old
:;
'*?$ K!66-
2*#%/.$8 (/ H%(.5)(-Q H*#-$ c(.#(%8 Y\__
alienations. That night, at the gig, I watched high school girls, wondering if they should
go gay, throw plastic green shamrocks and goddess amulets up to the stage, but I felt
sorry for my kid. She was a control freak. No randomness could be tolerated no spiritual
surprises and therefore no miracles except the miracle that she got to be a rock star in
the rst place. Her music was passionate, wild, full of life, like a fresh pond in a rain
forest, but it was derivative and, like Jerry Garcia and Lou Reed, her drug trip was
setting a bad example for her amulet tossing followers. What was going to happen to
my granddaughter?
Courtney’s dark side ran to the surface when she lived with me in Ireland, in 19P1
and again in Menlo Park, south of San Francisco, in the early 19P0s... a dark side, sort
of like the song from G55!$ (.5 /+$ 2%#!-$%-, a side that was denitely not there when
she was a baby. It was as if she had been brainwashed by multiple Svengali’s, not just
her mother. No wonder people thought she got into some acid when she was little. She
acted like a brain damaged ex-fashion model.
:<
H(.; H(%%!-*.
Shortly after Kurt died I tried to contact Courtney through her network of lemmings.
Jennifer Finch, of LQ, managed her own folder on America On-Line, so I tried her rst.
Unfortunately Jennifer was as hostile as a retired executioner for the State of Texas.
Robin Barbur, Courtney’s 19P0 Liverpool road companion and singer in Sugar
Babylon, vanished into the hairdressing salons of Portland. I couldn’t nd Brandy
Miller, Courtney’s BGF from reform school, either. Ultimately I wanted to stay in
touch with Kat Bjelland, the founder of Babes in Toyland, because she was a positive
in"uence, but Kat was, both strung out and having a ght with Courtney. Plus, her
number wasn’t listed in Seattle or Minneapolis. Oh sure. You could see Kat comforting Courtney on TV at Kurt’s memorial service and they went to Arizona together
with Billy Corgan, to recuperate at the Canyon spa, but the two women fought so often,
their relationship can only be likened to oil meets water.
Finally I placed calls to Kat’s father’s berry farm and to her aunt in Oregon, all numbers I gleaned from old phone bills. I also left messages at Courtney’s Mom’s clinic
in Eugene and with Frank Rodriguez (Courtney’s rst stepfather) in Portland. I wanted
to talk to my daughter. My mother wanted to see her great granddaughter. I hated the
television images I was seeing. I didn’t like Michael De Witt’s vibes. This really was
a(6!:$ !. I6#.5$%6(.5.
At rst I feared for Courtney and the baby. A year after Kurt died I feared for my
own life. All of the elements for a real Elizabethan melodrama were now on stage. The
poisoned vials lay bare on the table. The family feuds were documented in Act I. Now
the star-crossed lovers, a living Tarot card, entered stage right. Abelard and Heloise
would be punished for any public displays of affection. Abelard would lose his balls,
Heloise would die in a convent.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1993 C AFE TRIESTE
We stayed there for two hours on Vallejo and Grant. For the rst time in her life
Courtney hacked away on a Macintosh PowerBook to reach AOL That’s how I found
out Jennifer Finch had a folder. Yes folks blame me.
My goal was to just hang out, but if I could wangle a peek at the cherubic grand
daughter, I would be elated. Call it a grandpa instinct or a quest for baby approval. If
you have a granddaughter, and you are allowed to actually hold her in your arms, you
are immediately elevated to non-molester status. That’s when I started wondering why
Charlie Manson got to see his grandchildren and I didn’t?
Courtney was on edge, very furtive. She was hiding something, but she was amazingly
diplomatic. We hadn’t seen each other for ve or six years and she knew that seeing
that baby would signal a thaw in our relationship. She didn’t want that. She wanted,
more than anything, to thrive on the alienation. I guess the last thing she wanted was
a shrink or a writer or someone with similar DNA to be taking notes and since I was
all three, there would be no peek at the baby.
In early December, when they were just getting ready to move into the new house,
I sent letters. Courtney assured me she would always respond to a letter from Grandma
:=
'*?$ K!66-
2*#%/.$8 !. +$% !%-/ 2*))#.!*. 0%*:;= := Y\_\
Edith, my mother, Bean’s great grandmother, but we received no return phone call,
no card, and the fax and phone numbers were disconnected, maybe bogus to begin
with. I gave her the benet of the Tao and assumed something was radically wrong\
either that or she "ipped us off as she had done so many times before. It didn’t take
long to realize that both scenarios were true.
On Winter Solstice 1993 I put a heart-shaped See’s candy box together and sent it
up to Seattle with a letter from Grandma Edith, pictures of Ireland and a video of
various family houses and backyards. I don’t know for sure why I did this, I just thought
it would be the right thing to do, call it wishful thinking. Putting that package together
reminded me of the days before the Grateful Dead, even before Courtney was born,
:>
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2*#%/.$8 /**; ( 6*.7 -*(;
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when Phil Lesh, Robert M. Petersen, Tom “TC” Constanten\ Mike Walker and myself
habitually sent little gift boxes to each other, like chain letters. Ironically, we called
them N!%?(.( I(:;(7$-=
The visit to Courtney at Slim’s club in late 1993 turned out to be important. Beneath
the facade I could see the old violence. We spent the aforementioned afternoon at the
Cafe Trieste, drank some of the best coffee in the city, drove around town in the rain
and discussed her undying lust for Evan Dando. It was as if Kurt didn’t even exist,
except as Mr. Poupon in a far away hotel. She worried about her upcoming recording
session in Atlanta. Everything seemed natural, but back at the club around S:30 PM,
I saw the darker face. She was simply trotting me around to make sure her security
staff got a good look at me, including people from the Bill Graham organization.
She didn’t like me much, or trust me, yet she was insanely jealous of any one I
spoke to. She tried to control Brandy in 19Q9, and Robin in Dublin, in 19P1, but I was
too stupid, too unhip to pick up on the actdc vibes and it all went over my head until
Brandy wrote me a letter about how Courtney hit on her in juvie.
Predictably she hit on my escort that night backstage at Slim’s club, but it didn’t go
well for Courtney. The svelte and well dressed woman, a big fan of the Clash, was
the only female farrier in Santa Clara county and a died-in-the-wool hetero, not at
all butch. The next day, when I came up to meet Courtney at the Trieste I brought
along my secretary, Sarah Owen, who, after our reunion via C(:$3**; in V011,
reminded me that Courtney hit on her too.
:C
KRISTEN TAKES THE STAGE
I
thought Courtney’s music was going to be more punk than funk, but I was wrong.
All of the people I met in and around the HOLE gig were clean and well spoken.
Around dusk, on what I call a damned productive day, I ran into the late Kristen
Pfaff in the green room. Kristen’s playing impressed me no end. She had developed
a sound of her own. I also spoke to a very nice, clean-cut gent named Ian MacKaye
from Fugazi. He too seemed very polite and well educated.
During one of Courtney’s sound checks Kristen told me how worried she was. She
feared Courtney was going in and out of various personalities. Kristen used the words,
“fugue state amnesia,” and “dissociative” to describe Courtney’s personality changes. We laughed at the similarity between the psychiatric phrase and the use of the
word “fugue” in music.
“Maybe Bach was a Freudian precursor,” I said. But Kristen topped me.
“No.” She said, “Freud was a Bachite.”
“Oh, you know about Bacchus eh?” We both smiled. I could tell she was testing me.
She gured I wasn’t such a bad guy after all. I also knew she was right about
Courtney.
Over the years I saw Courtney progress through various dissociative states, almost
as if she had been brainwashed. Seemed to be stretching herself to impress too many
different types of parents, too many fathers, from too many classes of society and too
many shrinks and mercurial mothers and mother surrogates and sisters and foster sibs.
Drunk is black, stoned is red, straight is white and the transitions are gray. Possessed
I’d call it, downright black magical.
Two years after my visit to Slim’s club another disenfranchised friend of Courtney’s
told me Frances was in the bus the night of my visit, but Courtney had her stashed so
I couldn’t see the baby. She told her employees she was afraid I was going to kidnap
my own granddaughter. On their way to Portland they stayed in a motel in the oddly
named town of Weed, in Northern California. Sadly, this town is less than ten miles
from my moms place. My mother knew the motel manager, who not only saw Frances
Bean but played with her in the ofce. They could have easily stopped by the family
home, however mind blowing that would have been, but Courtney just didn’t give a
damn. I can see how she might still hate me, but why take it out on my mom?
:?
H(.; H(%%!-*.
In late April, 1994, I got my answer. Three weeks after Kurt died, the grieving widow,
called to chew me out. I asked her to let my mother see the baby. Courtney’s reply was,
“Hey man, what did those people ever do for me?” Click.
Kristen was born on May V6, 196Q in Buffalo, New York. She attended Buffalo
Academy of the Sacred Heart and traveled to France and England before attending
Boston College. In her rst year she won a music scholarship and transferred to the
University of Minnesota where she studied classical piano and taught herself to play
bass while living in Dinky Town in the Twin Cities. That’s where she hooked up with
guitarist and singer Joachim Breuer of the original, “Bastards.” Janitor Joe, was nally
formed with Matt Entsminger on drums. They released their debut album, V!7 a$/(6
V!%5- to rave reviews in early 199V after a few singles released on the OWO label. The
Minneapolis sound like Seattle’s Grunge noise, dealt with sonorous riffs played against
a perpetually groaning drum and bass line.
Kat Bjelland, told Courtney to look out for the bass player in Janitor Joe. In a matter
of weeks, Eric Erlandson heard Kristen play in L.A. and offered her a job with HOLE.
That’s one reason why pundits began to say, “There ain’t no HOLE without Eric.”
Kristen, at rst, thought better of joining HOLE, Courtney’s music was a one note
samba and Kristen would have to play a bass line behind both Eric and Courtney, not
much limelight. But, the money was too good to pass up, a "at u10,000 per month plus
expenses, regardless of gigs played, with all control retained by Courtney and Eric.
But was Kristen motivated only by money? And where was Courtney getting the
money? Several people told me Kristen was persuaded to join HOLE after a phone
call from Kurt, which if true, stands as another example of Courtney’s getting Kurt to
do things for her. On the other hand Kurt understood Kristen musically and was
reportedly thinking of working with her on future solo projects, a thought which, if
put into action, would predictably force the narcissist in Courtney to violence.
When HOLE recorded '!?$ "+%*#7+ "+!- for Geffen, Kristen’s skills were highly
lauded. But, Courtney couldn’t deal with Kristen and Kurt as platonic friends, especially
after Kristen moved to Seattle. It didn’t take Kristen long to see her name on Courtney’s
juvenile hate list. Plus she knew Courtney was clinically ill. A roadie for NoFW, the
guy with the snakes, told me Pfaff loved to play with Patty and Eric, but just couldn’t
deal with Courtney. This diagnosis ts with my experience at Slim’s club. I sensed an
aura of genius surrounding Kristen, and her good looks were way obvious. The con"ict
must have irked Courtney no-end. She needed a genius bass player, but she hated that
she needed a good looking genius bass player.
:@
TORTUGA VERDE
"+$%$ !- .* <*O$% 6!;$ )8 <%$//8 <*O$%=
"+$%$ !- .* <*O$% 6!;$ )8 #768i #768i #768=
Courtney Love
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T
ry to remember what happens when divorced parents take their
grudges with them. When one parent tells a kid the estranged parent is evil,
sick, or unloving, the kid loses about S0g of their self-esteem, especially when
the “told to” information is a lie. This happens mainly because the kid has no way
of checking. What they did was worse. They told her I was dead. They didn’t count
on me getting famous.
Raising normal kids with two well adjusted parents can be a mine eld, so imagine
how tough it is for kids with no parents or feuding parents. Divorced kids live in such
a confusing world that the negative is almost always valanced above the positive. The
bad rapping parent’s facial gestures, tone of voice and attitude, convey far more than
the validity of the information. Parents with an unforgiving agenda usually try to
sell their viewpoint with emphatic body language, but it’s a brain washing technique.
It intimidates the kids and takes them out of the decision making process. Pretty soon
he or she is trying to please everybody and a massive core neurosis forms.
Brain washing, bribery and child manipulation should be illegal. They carry with
them many deleterious effects not counted on by the so called, “behavior modication
experts.” In addition to the downright dishonest nature of the contract, the child
eventually realizes he or she can control the whole deal by holding out a little longer,
whining, and being disruptive. The parents are the lobbyists requesting certain actions
and the kid is the Senator waiting for another campaign donation. This automatically
puts 5$% ;!.5$r on top and nobody wins.
Pretty soon your kid meets other kids with a common bond. When the kids get old
enough to go shopping they discover an even wider array of tools to use against
adults. By the age of 1V most kids know that the real re-lance they can use to get
their way is the self-destructive scenario, viz.: “If you don’t buy me a car I’ll kill
myself.” Which translates to: “If you don’t do what I say I’ll devalue myself in public.”
This also translates to: “I need to be right more than I need to be real.”
:A
H(.; H(%%!-*.
Luckily Courtney was strong willed to begin with and managed to retain a good
chunk of her self-esteem, even though she was kicked around in foster homes and got
brainwashed by at least ve shrinks. But in spite of the help she got along the way, it
was more than inevitable that my kid would probably self-destruct, mainly because
she was miserable and I was made the scapegoat.
Courtney got in to snorting, smoking and injecting white powder drugs about 19P3
and I got really scared. I never stopped loving her, but I moved on. Everything between
us was out of focus for nine years.
At Christmas of 1993. Courtney didn’t call me to set up that promised visit. My mom,
then P4 and doing poorly, was noticeably disappointed. Something was radically wrong.
Was Courtney paying me back for all of the bs her mother told? Later I realized Kurt
was in similar, approach-avoidance con"ict. Here’s one reason why a dysfunctional
family keeps on being dysfunctional.. These DNA linked patterns repeat themselves
through generations.
Most of the time between November of 1993 and January 1994, I gured whatever
hassles my son-in-law was experiencing with Courtney had nothing to do with me. I
forgot, temporarily, that in 19P4 Courtney hated me enough to kill me. When Kurt
died I realized Courtney was still on the hate train. When Courtney saw me on the
Geraldo show, in May of 1994, she continued bad rapping me in public. It was almost
like she was blaming me for Kurt’s death. At no time did she have anything nice to
say about me. But I sensed some bad logic in the deal. Her violent attacks suggested
she had something to do with Kurt’s demise. It was if she was confessing. It was as if,
in her mind, the part of her personality that badgered Kurt and eventually killed him,
came from me.
By January 199S I realized, from her escalating comments, that she knew I suspected something. I just held on like my beloved bulldogs. Nothing she could say or do
could hurt me more than realizing my daughter killed one of the most important poets
of the twentieth century. That’s when I realized she was seriously on the warpath. I
had to be destroyed, silenced or compromised. Instead of calling a truce she just
ploughed ahead with her character assassination. I wasn’t sure I had all the puzzle
parts, but as it turns out, I did, right there in my family album. The very chronicle I
was writing, before Kurt died, was all I needed to understand what happened. It took
me awhile, but eventually I saw the light. Kurt didn’t kill himself, he wasn’t murdered.
He was assassinated. He was a dangerous bad boy, rejecting wealth and accumulating
political power like a reborn Spartacus, and he was costing several, easily angered,
people tons of money.
Every chance she got Courtney made my transgressions the issue, but the real issue
was her fear that I would continue my investigation into the death of the son-in-law I
never met. What did she have to fear? She tried to make it look like I was prying, that
I was ripping-off Kurt’s good name, she even spread the absurd “Party Line” that a
writer needs to know a personality face-to-face in order to write a biography. But
behind all that bluff and bluster I could see a little girl standing in meadow waving a
;B
'*?$ K!66-
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red "ag at a bull. She may have thought she was able to handle what she was about to
experience, but I knew she couldn’t. She spent so much time putting me down that
she forget to check out what I had stashed under my bushel basket.
She and I shared at least one gift... a photographic memory. She never talks about
her photographic memory because it’s her biggest secret. If you know how an eidetic
mind works, you will understand how, and even why, she did what she did.
Her constant barrage of put downs didn’t phase me much. Her rst salvo only dented
the fuselage. I knew she was a wannabe eld marshal, like her mother, but she didn’t
have the experience or the education. My one fear at that time, was that Courtney
would eventually wise up and hire some really big guns, who would eventually kill
Triona and I, but that didn’t occur either. Several people, including Courtney’s hired
shamus,Tom Grant, told me to stay in the limelight for self-protection.
Since the day Kurt died my research met with a feel good ground swell of popular
support from Nirvana fans. I also got a lot of ugly e-mails and dirty looks from old
friends, mostly Deadheads, people I assumed would be supportive. It turned out these
old, once rebellious-now rich, “ hipsters” believed the media hype and Courtney’s
spin doctors and assumed I was basking in re"ected glory. My relatives dumped me
completely. They saw Courtney as a big star, and we all know, big stars can do no
wrong, Right?
Several old friends, who I thought were super hip, turned out to be really stupid.
They argued that, even if my daughter did kill her husband, I should be supportive.
What? I couldn’t believe it. Parents commonly turn against their kids when they have
committed heinous crimes. Even Tom Grant, who originally advised me to stay in the
spotlight, turned on me.
I realized I had been retired for too log.
Writing the present book was my way of
climbing out of the initial shock of Kurt’s
death and its implications. I felt alive again.
This renewed clarity of mind gave me the
sense to see that Courtney was screaming
and protesting too much, too often. Had she
come to me with the baby and explained
everything with the proper respect, I might
have been de"ected, but her off-the-wall attacks gave her away.
Courtney was setting the ground rules.
At last we would have our knock down drag
out fight, she, defending her mother’s
brainwashing techniques and me, defending
some vague ben thing. I could sense a note
of violent desperation in her voice and in
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her appearances on America On-line. She was using her control over her on-line fans
to spread disinformation. Obviously she had an eye-to-eye agreement with AOL,
because, less than one year after Kurt died, Courtney could get anybody tossed off
AOL by accusing them of violating the TOS (Terms of Service ). Free speech be
damned. Two days after it began, the Courtney folder was one of the most lucrative
“draws” for AOL in a time when customers were defecting to Hotmail and Yahoo like
rats. Moreover, being a draw on AOL was especially ego lifting for Courtney, anything
she could achieve that was normally reserved for her non-dropped out college going
peers was a plus.
I knew that if she was going to do battle with me she was going to need expert help.
I think she spent VS0K trying to box me in. I did the same thing to her, as a tough love
protocol, and it didn’t cost me anything, except a near nervous breakdown. Instead of
talking to me she decided to arm wrestle. Of course I won every round, it was like
child’s play, but Courtney’s fans saw it as me bullying her... Hao Courtney bullied Kurt
to death.You can blame that one on me too.
I’m convinced that life in juvie and hard drugs stole Courtney’s basic feelings of
humanity. In 19PS she led a continuous stream of junk addicted Riot Grrrls around to
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my ofce and just set them all up in my house, like it was a crash pad. Over several
months her pals were stealing books and mementos, jewelry and even kitchen pots
and pans, but one example of pilfering stands out. I kept a wooden monkey head on
my mantel, a souvenir given to me by Harry Harlow at the University of Wisconsin,
you know the re"ector eyes and the black peg noseithe head of a “Terry Cloth Mother”
and I looked at that thing every day to remind me to apply Harlow’s theory to every
day life. The head seemed creepy to some people, but it was given to me by Harlow
himself when I visited the lab in 1966. When that went missing I got real pissed off.
Whoever took it knew what it was and what it meant to me. It was taken to in"ict pain,
since it had no intrinsic value at a pawn shop, and it wasn’t cute enough to be a doll
part. Or, conversely, maybe it was the ultimate, “Doll Part.”
The Green Tortoise, aka G6 "*%/#7( S$%5$, an alternative bus line which ran between
Seattle, Portland and City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, became a vending booth
for Courtney and her pals, especially Elizabeth Peyton, who we will discuss in detail
later. They would get on bus with pills and pop off the other end with pockets full of
cash. The loose bus sub-culture allowed her to hone her skills at dope dealing. She
sold Percodans, tranqs, speed, diet caps like Black Beauties and other triplicate narcotics.
These pills were acquired by conning local doctors and paid for through the illegal
use of her half-sister’s health insurance card. When the bill caught up to her family in
Portland, Courtney conveniently blamed me for the charges. To this day Courtney’s
Oregon siblings think I ran up a bill at the clinic in Palo Alto. Now where in the hell
did I get the card? Oh I get it. Courtney told her sister, and her step-father that I robbed
her for it. What was she doing with it in the rst place? Oh I know, she changed her
name to Jamie. When I went to the clinic to have a polyp removed from my nose, a
certain admissions ofcer distinctly remembered the incident and told me frankly they
were going to bust her if she ever showed up again. Predictably this period ended in
a violent confrontation followed by written apologies sobs and hurt feelings all
around.
So much for Tough Love. I hadn’t given up on her yet. It took another year to realize
she was trying to kill me, get me busted, screw up my old lady or mess us up in a
myriad of other ways. She was understudying Richard Nixon and had a hit list, but I
had no idea I was at the top of the list until decades later.
;=
KICKING THE GONG
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ourtney had a pal named Joe Cole who had a band that played occasionally in
Palo Alto, so when she came down to see him she would conveniently drop
in on us. After late 19P4 or so, she also dropped in on her mentor Francie
Marsun. Turns our Francie just moved to Sillycone Valley from Saint Francis Woods,
in the city, to be closer to her rich SvM customers, which made it easy for Courtney
and her pals, Elizabeth Peyton and Jennifer Finch to avoid the seedier side of the city
when scoring skag. The southern proximity also made it easier for Courtney to crash
for a night or two at Francie’s and pick up tips on how to destroy people.
Remember also that Courtney dedicated Hole’s second record, '!?$ "+%*#7+ "+!-i
to Joe Cole who was murdered about an hour after talking to Courtney at a concert.
I thought that was weird, you would think her record might be dedicated to her recently dead husband. The Joe Cole dedication is also ominous because, like Kristen
Pfaff and Kurt, Joe died under suspicious circumstancesievents indirectly related
to Hole and Courtney Love. Did anybody ever look into the death of Joe Cole? The
poor bastard was shot, presumably by gang bangers, in front of his West LA house
where he lived with Henry Rollins.
On one hot August afternoon in 19P4, Courtney showed up on our doorstep unannounced.
I was on my way home from my Lockheed gig and Triona had to deal with it alone,
no cell phones in those days. Courtney said she had been visiting friends, but this time
she was more than skagged out. This time she was into designer smack, “Fatal Beauty,
laced with Fentyril, which I knew to be a death trip. As soon as she arrived she started
screaming and throwing books around the house. Eventually Triona had to subdue
her just to get her calm enough to take ve Valiums. I got home just in time to break
up the fraca. We did not hit her, but we did have to hold her down. The next day she
demanded I kick Jr Hickman, sort of a foster kid, out of the attic, “You have to kick
him out, blood is thicker than water isn’t it?” Followed by, “I’m moving in”o
“No.” I said, “Your blood is dirtier than water.” I told her for the last time that, no
matter how bad I was, I wasn’t into heroin... and, “Let she who is without skag stone
the rst crow.” I told her that heroin and craque were political drugs forced into our
society by government black-ops. It is designed to break down the rebels and the
;>
H(.; H(%%!-*.
artisan classes, the black armies, the Hells Angels and anything anti-puritanical,
meaning anybody who believes in the literal interpretation of the Constitution.
I suggested she go into rehab, but she spit in my face, slept for ten hours then called
the cops to tell them I had a gram of weed in my desk. The Menlo Park cops didn’t
arrive. Even in those days the 5$ )!.!)!- .*. :#%(/ 6$d rule applied. At the time, I
didn’t know much about her activities in Portland or Mt. View, but whatever was
going on was very dangerous.
I also knew she was writing letters to somebody named Rozz. Eventually her letters
to Rozz came back unopened marked:
#$%"*%"34&2"*//6.22
I hesitated to show her the letters at all, but when she did nally drop by sober, on
one of her semi monthly 3 day recovery stops, I decided to bring up the topic. After
waiting for her mood-bag to cleanse itself on Granny Smith apples, I opened the
drawer and showed her the returned letters and one from Rozz directly from Portland.
When she nally got around to reading it her face went ashen. Another rejection.
More abandonment. Rozz turned out to be some kind of Bongwater rock star. Later
I read the letter, it was a Dear Jill. I think the dumping was more toward the fact that
she was a teeny-bopper at the time and Rozz, unlike your normal fucked-up rock
star, was more bent toward women his own age, but I never really got to the bottom
of that and I never met him. I was pissed that he hurt my kid, but my fatherly empathy
wasn’t enough to cheer her up.
After that Courtney Michelle Harrison evaporated and Courtney LovetHate emerged.
Pyromania was her name and re was her game. She had no respect for my 11Q year
old sueen Anne Victorian and threatened to burn it down twice. She would achieve
this almost by accident by placing dozens of votive candles a little too close to the
antique lace curtains. Then she could say, “What me? Why no ofcer it was my mean
old daddy and his goat lady wife, what did it.” The only thing she burned was a red
princess phone, but the house could have gone up if Joe Hickman, now sleeping on
the couch in the den, hadn’t smelled something upstairs.
The "ames came shooting out of her after that. Years, no decades, later, I found
out she took off for Portland and destroyed Rozz’ padiwith, a wicca straw broom
of all thingsithen lit his apartment on re, then about the same week or so she
headed fro New York and burned out an abandoned warehouse. I think this experience rally messed her up, not because she lit fres, but because she got away with it.
She also partially burned down a victorian on Lyons street in San Francisco where
she worked as a sex-line telephone girl, but I can’t prove it. After that she went to hell
in a beautiful pea green boat. She started acting out her latent, “man hate” revenge
scenarios, not just toward Rozz, but toward me and anybody else with balls and of
course that’s about the time she realized heroin is an appetite suppressant. All of this
is revealed in two books, V*.7O(/$% by Michael Hornburg and 2*#%/.$8 '*?$9 K#$$.
*0 N*!-$ by Melissa Rossiimore about Melissa later.
Speaking of telephones, on one of her many 19P3 orbits she proudly showed me a
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long list of credit card numbers she “extracted” at her new job in San Francisco, on
Lyon Street. To brag, I guess, like one sociopath to another, she showed me a copy of
a credit card master matrix, a top secret ATvT document which she said she swiped
from a telephone installtion dude.
During the last year in Menlo Park, 19P4 and part of 19PS, Courtney again went
berserk on drugs and the hate she felt for me came out with even more ferocity. She
was regressing in plain view. Whereas she used to be 1S and acted like she was V4,
now she was just passed 1P acting like 10. She even refers to her regressive behavior
in a note she left behind. (See Rear Matters) The signs were there. Hell you could read
a government pamphlet and see the signs. I knew she was into smack. The marks on
her arms and bare feet showed me all I needed to know. She didn’t have big red scabby
tracks, but I knew she was shooting up.
Ironically, and like a lot of junkies (Burroughs for example) she was writing terric
poetry which I read over lunch on the Stanford campus while I was attending the famed
Publishers Conference on a grant from Applied Materials. Oh yes she tracked me
down, even there. It was like she was trying to send me a message, “Hey, I can nd
;?
H(.; H(%%!-*.
you no matter where you go.”
“You can’t reject me.” and “I
need to know where you are
so I can feel superior to you.”
Finally, “I need to know where
you are so I can hurt you and
pay you back.”
For Courtney, revenge against
perceived enemies was a form
of hide and seek. I could tell
her habit was getting worse.
We were looking at properties
on Skyline and in Los Altos
Hills. When she sensed we
were going to move she
managed to appropriate more
books, computers, answering
machines and hi- equipment.
She had no idea that all the
really great stuff, the Grateful
Dead archival tapes and the
Bronze Age pottery, the
Picasso, the bent leg Katchina
and the Druid Torc, were all in safe storage. For me, her stalking game got to be too
stressful. I realized, Courtney wanted to hurt me. She threatened to kill me and my
partner on several occasions. Once she said she was going to poison the food in the
refrigerator. On another occasion she said she had given my tooth brush to an HIVp
friend and that I would surely die the next time I brushed my teeth. I spoke to a friend
of mine who was the head of psychiatry at Stanford and he said she sounded incurably
psychotic and sociopathic, what is now known as a, “Bordeline” personality.” That’s
when we realized we had to move quietly.
D86&)0"$7":A@>
I was still trying to track down my lost son, the child born two years before Courtney
and given up for adoption, but I couldn’t nd his mother
and the archdioces still kept all of their records on a Rolodex.
The embassy she used to work for said she took a job in
Guatemala and then moved to Cuba, but that was my only
clue. Jeff Culbertson, a veteran of Dead cover bands, Graceful
Duck, Jerry’s Kids, and Legions of Phil, was living in the
attic. This time Courtney didn’t ask. She just evicted Jeff
while we were at work. Jeff slept in the garage for two
nights before I discovered what happened.
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In the Spring of 19PS Triona and I bought two Morgan horses
and moved to our rst ranch in Los Altos Hills. I heard that
Courtney was living in “The Vats” in San Francisco, an abandoned
brewery loaded with ends and homeless souls known as “Vat
Rats.” I hated the idea of my genius daughter hanging down on
ropes to sniff stale beer fumes. I told her I could get her into
Project Artaud, (an art collective in the outer Mission District)
but she said they were all a bunch of Pot Head’s with the munchies.
In spite of her dowry and her dope deals she was always broke,
and, because she was already a junkie she knew pot would make
her fat, she added all pot heads to her shit list and beyond that she added anyone
who was overweight, even fashionably over weight. Here then I saw the budding of
another facet of the narciistic personality... -*)(/!: 58-)*%<+!( syndrome.
Triona said she would go back to Scotland if I didn’t block Courtney’s rapacious
interruptions. We moved and changed all names and links except one answering
service hooked to an P00 number. I sent her the number to her last known address
in Topanga Canyon. If Courtney was serious she would be a threat to life and limb.
If she was just messing around, her constant begging for Heroin money made her a
dangerous pain in the ass. I accepted my failure and moved on with my life, wiping
the sweat from my brow as we evaporated.
Two years went by. When she nally called me on her birthday, in July of 19P6,
she was in “the City,” crashing at a friends "at out on California Street near the
Jewish Community center. The place belonged to a rock musician she was dating,
but he was on the road. I got the impression the place belonged to Rozz, but I can’t
be sure. She told me she danced in a Dire Straits video and made a movie called
-"B%,I+99&. She said she was attending Narcanon meetings and asked me to bring
her some food. I consented only after a NA counsellor conrmed her attendance. I
took David Eyes, an old friend and an executive at Apple, with me just to document
the event because, frankly I was nervous. I took 3 bags of groceries up to the city
and gave her an Irish sherman’s sweater. I also told her what the designs meant,
“The designs on the sweaters were used to identify the bodies when they washed
up on the beach.” She understood the simile. It meant I hoped I wouldn’t have to
use it to identify her body. Later in 4!%/8 V6*.5$, her V006 confessional, referred to
it as a Versace, paralleling the sweater Kurt was wearing when he died. In exchange,
she gave me a video of '*?$ K!66-, an art lm she had just nished with Alex Cox.
She played the role of Gretchen, a cat loving street child who rode around with
Nancy and Sid and made droll comments. '*?$ K!66-, was later released as S!5 (.5
N(.:8=
In case you are terminally unhip, S!5 (.5 N(.:8 is a lm documenting the life
and times of Sid Vicious, founding member of the Sex Pistols, and his adoring moll
Nancy Spungeon. This polychrome !6) .*!% feature seemed to be a step-down for
;A
H(.; H(%%!-*.
Alex Cox, the director who gave us R$<* a(., but Courtney’s light came through
as Velma, Nancy’s junkie pal, and I knew she was on her way to movie land, up and
down at the same time.
Although casting Courtney was a brilliant idea, I wondered why Cox would risk
his career on such a stupid topic. Who cares about heroin burnouts and hotel pyromaniacs?
Why sanctify the lives of pea-brained punks who kill time between g-shots by ripping
off radiator caps? Contrary to my values, the lm was an immediate cult hit, especially
in Alphabet City. When Dylan said, “Everybody must get stoned.” I guess he meant
punks too. Like Ken Anger’s C!%$O*%;- and Ginsburg’s I#66 a8 4(!-8, S!5 (.5
N(.:8 came out to announce the coming of the next lethal drug wave. Did Cox
actually believe squares would go to see it? I should have remembered G6 "*<*, Jerry
Garcia’s favorite movie. On the sound track, America, the band, gave us the veiled
heroin lyric:
EFGH."I..)"%46$504"%4."/.2.6%"$)"("4$62.",&%4")$")(1.9J
These "icks essentially ripped-off German Expressionism "avored by Genet and
Jean Cocteau, a lineage which included Todd Browning’s C%$(;-. Courtney’s lm
fantasies (which included watching, “Pretty In Pink” on my Betamax about 30 times,
eventually led to her inclusion in a pretty good docudrama called, “The Day That
Punk Broke.”
Sadly Courtney’s "ick picks were stylized clones disguised as important late V0th
century lm making. S!5 (.5 N(.:8 also led the way for V(-;$/3(66 4!(%!$- and
"%(!. S<*//!.7 two mid-nineties heroin pukeoramas billed as anti-heroin docudramas. But I could see that all of these little lms turned-out to be subliminal advertisements for skag. I guess Cox had good marketing advice after all. Then again,
maybe Cox was a junkie himself. Who could have guessed junkies would pay hard
stolen currency to watch their lives "ash-by. Like my guru Nelson Algren said in
a(. L!/+ /+$ H*65$. A%), “Never trust a junkie.” The only time you can trust a
junkie, is when they are completely stoned or dead.
Courtney knew I hated the heroin life-style and the sleaze factor that went with it,
that was true, even before AIDS. She gured if I really loved her I would just go
along with the heroin, testing me to the point of breaking. She actually believed there
was such a thing as unconditional love and there may be, but its doesn’t apply to
junkies. Once you do smack you give up your rights, pretty much forever.
In Courtney’s mind, in order to prove I loved her, I had to accept her needle trip,
and her foul mouth without qualication. Forget that. I loved her, but I didn’t make
her that way. I didn’t toss her into juvie like a used beer bottle. Her mother knew
where I was. She knew my mother and sister would take her in. There was no reason
to expose her to a long string of foster homes and a concentration camp for bad kids.
If anybody wants to know what screwed Courtney up, that’s it. They didn’t want to
admit they were wrong. I may have done a worse job, but I doubt it and now we’ll
never know.
The inability to set down roots is common with street kids, as if the child is caught
<B
'*?$ K!66-
in a perpetual state of mirasmus, rocking back and forth in the crib, biting ngernails,
cutting skin and wasting away with anorexia. The abandoned child lives in abject fear
of more rejection, but a tendril of active hostility accompanies abandonment and that
root can grow, sometimes into homicidal rage. It didn’t matter if we actually abandoned
Courtney or not, she thought we did. We were honestly and truly frightened she would
burn down our house. It donned on me again that she hated me. That’s what she meant
at Kurt’s memorial service, when she said, “Tough Love doesn’t worko”
One thing was obvious. The young people of the world went into mourning for Kurt
in a way I have not seen since the assassinations of the Kennedy’s and Martin Luther
King. It was as if Kurt had to be killed. That’s the rst time the word, “Assassination,”
popped into my head in regards to this case. It took me two decades to gure it out.
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Millions of people are depressed today fans, parents, rockers and even the few junkies who can still shed a tear or lift their heads. Sorrow. But who knows the real story.
Godo What about Kurt’s family? I’ll never get to meet them now.
Matt LeBeau left three CDs on my door this morning: the Raincoats, the Vaselines,
and a remastered version of Nirvana’s V6$(:+. I listened to them ten times and I still
haven’t got a musicological clue except the drummers always play both sticks at the
same time with the fat ends and tend to be bare footed, and it’s loud.
Grunge-Punk puts new meaning to the phrase, “I hear you man.” But some thing
about Bleach makes it stand out from the others. The reference to hydrochloric acid
meant, “the stuff you clean your needles with.” Even so, the music cut into my nerves
on a precise frequency, the frequency that produces goose bumps.
The music made me feel like I was peeking in on Kurt’s rst gig at GESCCO Hall
and his days before Nirvana, when Kurt and Krist played as Pen Cap Chew.
J"5)#(9,K#$)8
Dave McElhatton, from KPIW, the CBS afliate in San Francisco, called me on April
1V. “Hank, the nation is stunned by Kurt’s death. Would you like to say something on
the air?”
“Yes, I want to offer a bounty on heroin dealers.”
Drooling dog rain. Slippery streets. Wet enough to get soaked if you were, like me,
dumb enough to ride a motorcycle in it. Talk about your latent suicides. I broke out the
recently polished Norton Commando. I was scheduled to go on a ride with Mean
Marshall’s krew in Berkeley, but that would have to wait. I rode slow to the city, up
101. It felt good to hear the deep thwarp of the twin Amal’s feeding the polished
venturi’s, they loved the rain. I did wear a helmet. I wasn’t completely suicidal.
During the interview Dave asked me: “Have you cried yet?”
The truth is, I hadn’t really cried because I was too angry. Another brilliant soul, the
son-in-law I never got to meet, was sacriced to Morphius. I started looking for my
lost boy again. I found Peter and 4 grandchildren though C(:$3**;, 19 years after Kurt
died. Life is full of miracles, but that night I had no chance.”
<:
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STRANGE FRUITS Z1
As defense I’m neutered and spayed,
what the hell am I trying to say?
Kurt Cobain
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urt’s paradoxical value system, and his uncanny giftedness have
long been a topic for speculation. How could anyone create music as seemingly
inane as Touret’s and yet leave the audience gasping with profound revelations
over 2*)$ A- T*# A%$ ? The facile answer is to say, “Hey, it’s showbiz, folks,” but that
would betray the magical motivations for the music. Billy Corgan’s brother had Touret’s,
maybe there is some connection there, was Kurt mocking Corgan’s DNA? Before I
offer my suggestions we need to look at the background of Grunge as it emerged from
punk and heavy metal circa 19PP.
Skinhead punk is fascistic and sadistic, the perfect background music for the next
holocaust. Nazicore lyrics, when they can be understood at all, tend to be homophobic,
xenophobic, laden with subconscious sexism, and are often downright racist. The lyrics
emerging from Grunge, although often self-"agellating and guilt-driven, possess a
refreshingly antifascist tone and are always radical and socially enlightened. Kurt’s
lyrics were, in addition, always grounded in reality. Just dig deep enough and there’s
a link to everyday life.
Grunge, as an ethical and antimaterialist statement, did not die with Cobain. Grunge
was not a short-lived fad. As long as we have fascism we will need an antidote and
Grunge is, trust me on this, the perfect antidote. It’s now called Alternative music but
Grunge was more than music.
Whereas early punk seethed with garbled lyrics and spiteful noise re"ective of the
class struggle in England, Grunge as played by Screaming Trees and Nirvana, Kate
Hannah, Tad, the Melvins and a handful of others, tended to be conciliatory or, in the
case of Cobain’s “Rape Me,” invitational. Early punk was nihilistic. When Sid Vicious
screamed “fuck youo” He meant it and nothing more. He wasn’t really looking for a
ght. But when Cobain chortled, “Rape Me”o he was throwing down a gauntlet. Deant
Grunge was saying, “Come on, heap it all on me, you can’t beat me down.” And “I
reject your quest for wealth.”
Contrasted to Ghandi’s passivism, Cobain’s Grunge statement, in stage presence,
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video, lyric, sound and offstage life-style, was very proactive and in-your- face. I repeat
Kurt was not violent. He broke up his guitar on stage, but that wasn’t new. Jimi Hendrix
lit his on re, Pete Townsend bashed at every gig and Willy Nelson managed to strum
several holes in his. We have absorbed violence and brutal sexuality on television to
the breaking point. By now everybody’s been "ipped the phallic digit on the freeway,
at least once. “Fuck You” no longer means “Let’s ght.” But the taunting strategy used
in Grunge comes from an active sense of superiority, an inner belief that the speaker
really is invulnerable because he or she wields the sword of true compassion and
cannot, therefore be easily ignored or defeated. Like Saint Michael, Saint George, or
King Arthur, and nally as in the Tarot, this sword controls the power of judicial
decisions.
Whereas Punk-Nazi and Britpunk can be dened as a bar room brawl waiting to
happen, Grunge possesses a certain promise of salvation, a lure designed to pull in
the enemy prior to devouring him on a global, dining table. This is not the same as
Courtney’s need for revenge. Cobain said it best when he included the phrase “meat
eating orchids” in his lyrics and when he grew fascinated with botany. The casual
listener may think Kurt was toying with the imagery, but I believe he was able to
penetrate to the depths of the biological contract in nature. In his Venus Fly Trap
paradigm, the beautiful plant ends up absorbing the prey before returning to a state of
serenity.
There is, I suppose, a higher strategy in the Grunge “Rape Me” ideal. It’s more effective than hard edge, but it is also a kind of triple think and it too can easily lead to
violence. Nazicore punk blurts out hate and throws it back at the wind. It is futility
and from futility grows angst, which is, I gather, the desired end result. But when it
comes to musical miracles the Nazi punk substrate doesn’t work. The minute you jump
on the 3j.5 O(7$., you limit yourself for life.
Grunge has more out-reach than punk. It is an egalitarian approach inviting in rather
than excluding the disenfranchised and it offers a far more positive process leading to
survival in the alternative world. Kurt did survive, (his actions and ideas survive him)
and he was well on the road to greater glory when somebody killed him. If he was suicidal it would mean that Grunge was an ineffective strategy, but if he was murdered,
it would mean that, in future considerations, Grunge can be a powerful weapon. I
choose to think Kurt died because his self-styled philosophy did catch on. I do not believe that Grunge, as a personal statement, is, per force, suicidal or negative and I doubt
Kurt would ever let that many people down. I think a lot of people in power want us
to believe he killed himself so that we will take less notice of his ideas, but I assure
you Cobain was a threat and will remain so, even into the V1st century.
Both punk and Grunge derive from proto-bohemian antecedents. Punk, as played
by the Sex Pistols, is nothing more than stylized anarchy and, as such, can be traced
to the Visigoths and the Mongol hordes. Grunge is a little newer, but it too has historical roots. Cobain’s tattered fashion statement was two hundred years old when Iggy
Pop and the Velvet Underground hit the stage. Kurt may have improved it, but he didn’t
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invent the torn pant leg and the tattered "ag. How did he do it? What was his magic
secret? Well I won’t hold you in suspense, I think Kurt used masochism as a sales tool.
Outside of Asia and the holocaust the masochistic political statement can be traced
back to the Christian martyrs, to the Jewsih Masada sacrice, and to the Albigensian
crusade, but more recently, in Paris, during the Reign of Terror, two whacky dissident
groups vied for political attention. The I.:%*8(36$- (punk form) were basically highcamp hair fags who, as their name implies, pranced around posing as aristocracy in
exaggerated costumes and powdered wigs made with human hair retrieved from the
heads of the guillotined. The more sedate dissidents (Grunge form) scurried around
the streets, sometimes in proximity to the wig freaks, in a macabre life-style lampoon
dressed like, and identied with, the poverty stricken victims of the remant medieval
economy. The demonstrators looked so authentic, that most observers could not discern between the demonstrators and the real pushcart folk. These Grunge-like mummers called themselves 2+$?$(#d ( 6( ?!:/!)$, meaning champions of the stricken
classes. Sound familiar?
The I.:%*8(36$- would have been comfortable in CBGB’s or Manic Panic in Soho,
New York in the early 19Q0s, and they may have understood the red Mohawk punks
of London. Conversely 6$- :+$?$(#d, would have looked ne in Kurt’s entourage.
Here, I am convinced, history really drs repeat itself.
The “Rape Me” alternative is frighteningly effective. It seems to come from a dream
like vision, softened by drugs, that you can confront authority head on and win. It’s
an old Trotskyite doctrine and it works in farm communities. Chavez and Ghandi used
it to great effect. It seems to be working in the eld of saving pets and fuzzy furry
creatures, mainly because you have instant poster boys and instant confrontation for
television, but it hasn’t worked well in urban macropolitics. It hasn’t done much for
environmental or overpopulation concerns, and, it hasn’t saved the Rain Forests… yet.
Cobain was aware of the deciencies in his self-sacricing philosophy, and he was
taking steps to x the problem. He was going to divorce his crypto-yuppie wife and
dropout for awhile. His last lyrics and his private diaries suppressed by his widow, but
leaked to the Internet tell us he was on the right path.
Punk was a teenybopper thing, a kind of wanker aesthetic. The original punk movement
was anarchy set to music. The punk of the 19Q0s consisted of anti-intellectual balderdash
emanating from the sloth of British proletariat racism. Most of the bands spewed forth
humorless drivel with no socially redeeming content, not even nihilism, and its loud,
cacophonous sounds had no healing power. That brand of punk, died or dwindled to
deathly levels in the mid-19P0s, leaving a vacuum in its wake. Kurt was, about that
time, looking for just such a vortex.
The tendency to anarchy was still alive in the schools and on the streets. Now, when
you have anarchistic movements lasting more than a few days you get institution
masochism, here is where Cobain jumped on board. The hook, for him was the Captain
Marvel bit. The cripple newspaper boy could say a magic word and Shaazzzaaaam...
a "ying crusader with supernatural powers appears ready to ght for justice and the
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alternative way. By 1991 the Grunge movement was an event waiting for a leader. Kurt
just naturally stepped in and wrote music to march by. In the late 19P0s Grunge, driven
by the a new Seattle-Portland nexus, began to reactivate punk sensibilities by cancelling
racism and sexism and by blending overt rebellion with the beat generation hagiography.
This new beat-core sound came of age with Nirvana and literally shook the foundation
of the music industry.
Although Kurt played down fake introspectiveness, he worked his ass off physically
and emotionally. He was a strong man and, although I never got a chance to meet him,
I was damned proud of him. Sadly, like most workaholics, he seemed disengaged much
of the time. This made it easier for people to believe he was suicidal. In his aggressive
mode Kurt was a )$.:+\ in his passive mode he was a waif and a lot of his fans saw
themselves that way. But the waif was a pajama-clad prt, the imaginary sylph, re"ecting
on the muses in his very own forest pond. His genius fed both personalities. After the
success of N$?$%)!.5, and especially after the baby was born, Kurt seemed to grow
out of the waish cocoon Every time he ventured onto a stage he became more like
Che Guevara and less like Barry Manilow.
By late 1993, long after I. F/$%* hit the airwaves, Kurt began to see his music, and
his mission, in a new light. Every concert was a workshop. What was once a band on
the run began to take on the shape of the theater of the world, "+$ H6*3$ A::*%5!.7 /*
2*3(!.. A Shakespearian construct embodying the dimensions of the universe with
the actors as planets and stars.
Something was going wrong with the demographics too. What was once a club full
of cronies and fellow slackers, became an auditorium full of well fed crossover people.
The audience wasn’t there to mosh anymore. Many thrill seekers just came to Nirvana
gigs to see the freak show and to observe, rst hand, the full grown child-man with
the rock star wife and the beautiful baby who stood at the center of the rock and roll
cosmos. Kurt needed the crowd to be on his side, but after N$?$%)!.5 came out he got
the wrong feedback from his audiences. More and more, the supercial demands of
this new audience struck a discordant note in his creative process. The audiences were
big, but on the wrong page. He didn’t want to be worshipped, Courtney did.
After the European tour of 199V Kurt could no longer please the old cronies or the
bubble-gummers, his only hope was to please himself and his muse. He was headed
back to the original Nirvana concept, but also forward to a new, mystical direction,
one not completely understood. I think it came with exposure to the cathedrals which
he visited on tour.
Mystical things happen when you visit places like Chartres or Vezeley. The sunlight
streaming through the stained glass windows can etch its way into, even the most hardened soul. Kurt’s bubblepunk days were over. Already he was making celestial sounds.
In my opinion, Kurt was off to a higher spiritual level, a plane upon which he could,
like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and other troubadours, explore the true mysteries of music
and poetry.
Courtney, threatened by losing control to Steve Albini, Kristen Pfaff and Krist
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Novoselic, escalated her castle coup. When I. F/$%* came out, Geffen’s bottom line
executives, each interacting with Danny Goldberg, began sending disapproving signals
in the form of slouchy body language. Kurt’s move toward mysticism was a no-no at
least it didn’t mean much to the Geffen staff and it meant even less to Courtney. The
only God Courtney ever worshipped was IN GOD WE TRUST. That’s sadly ironic
too because Kurt was memorialized on several global stamps within V years of his
assassination.
Toward the end of 1993, just as they were moving into the big house, Kurt blew a
fuse. The Carnation house was empty and probably lost in space, Billy Corgan kept
calling Courtney. The baby was in need of security. Kurt needed strong and sel"ess
people around him, but all he had were some old pals, who once were wonderfully
kind and gentle people, but who had now become slaves to Courtney’s white powder
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strategy. Later we will see that even Kurt’s mother might have been strung out.
He could no longer trust Courtney. He saw the true face... the masque, behind the
mask. The thought that he might have to raise his daughter in a warlike environment
made the kid from Aberdeen, weaker. He realized, of a sudden, that he was little more
than a bondage slave to his wife’s whims, especially now that her career was about
to take off.
That’s when I realized why she didn’t want me back stage. It wasn’t because I might
disabuse Kurt of something, it was because I might see Francie Warsun backstage
and realize what was going on. Trust me, If I had known Courtney was still in very
close contact with Francie, Kurt would be alive today. I would have kidnapped him
if necessary, but dumb old me, I just didn’t put it all together until it was too late. I
hate to immortalize Francie in this way, but you have to understand this link to understand what happened.
So now we see a glum picture. Cobain, on the edge of eternity, sitting on an old upholstered chair in his cave-cabin in Carnation, dragging on cigarettes and butting
them out in a bent tuna can, pondering what to do next.
Meanwhile his old lady is 5*%)$ ( /%*!- with his lawyer and his manager
somewhere in -(9(9(#6,
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Opposite Page: The Grunge manifesto, a handout at the International Pop
Underground Convention one year before Nirvana’s Nevermind hit the charts at F G0
with a bullet. Nirvana was on tour in Europe when IPOP popped eyes in Olympia,
but the ve day event, which almost took over the town, had Kurt’s full support as
well a s that of the local record labels and radio stations. Because it was an equal
opportunity art riot, Bikini Kill and Babes in Toyland were big attractions as were the
Melvin’s. Courtney, always with an eye to self-adoration, drew the limelight to herself
as often possible, embarrassing Kurt in the process. Her quest for IPOP stardom took
a violent turn when she offended Shelli Novoselic and engaged in a st-ght (the rst
of many) with Kathleen Hanna.
Unbeknownst to most of the participants Courtney was preparing to declare herself
the undisputed queen of rock & roll with or without an election. But not everybody
was ready to vote. Her disruptive antics made enemies and it was obvious to Hanna
and Novoselic that she was not “into” the political nature of the gig. Most of the
participants viewed Courtney as a closet reactionary (a lackey of the corporate ogre).
Although she espoused the writings of the feminist radical Susan Faludi, she distanced
herself from the Riot Grrrls and often inamed them by personal attacks.
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INHUMANE BONDAGE
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W. Somerset Maugham
O0 H#)(. V*.5(7$
O
n a typical evening at home, the Cobains would read books
and magazines strewn on the new Serta Perfect King, while the television
softly flickered in an adjacent room. To these two broadcast addicted kids,
the symbolic TV provided pink and white noise, sort of the role the fireplace played
in another era.
In an easy chair Kurt poured over Tony Morrison’s V$6*?$5, stopping to pen the
words “Umbilical Noose,” in the margin. After checking on the baby he would return
to his library to nish unpacking boxes once stashed at his dad’s house. He picked up
W. Somerset Maugham’s O0 H#)(. V*.5(7$, for the umpteenth time. According to
a reliable source Kurt rented the Betty Davis-Paul Henried lm version and the Kim
Novack-Lawrence Harvey "ck when Courtney was away. He must have sensed that
the love-sick relationship described by Maugham held lessons for him. He knew he
was in trouble as soon as they moved into the big house on Lake Washington Drive.
He did not feel at home there. I wonder if they watched those lms together?
While Kurt mused, Courtney sprawled on the bed alternating between saphic prtry
and the powerful, but dyky, intoxication of Camille Paglia. Although both she and
Kurt shared eclectic tastes, Courtney read almost nothing but feminist literature, a
course of literary pursuit which stranded her somewhere between Nabokov’s '*6!/(
and Sylvia Plath’s V$66 c(%= This all started a decade earlier when she read and fought
with Kat Bjelland, over George Plimpton’s early book (with Jean Stein) on Edie
Sedgwick, the tragic debutante Warhola who died for no cause whatever, a true Riot
Grrrl. This whole ugly and addicted scene was later supported in 1990 by I6$(-$ K!66
a$i "+$ F.:$.-*%$5 H!-/*%8 *0 I#.;. Courtney also wondered why Sylvia Plath killed
herself when she could have blocked out her pain by killing her beekeeping father.
The household was rarely peaceful. Kurt being hopelessly in love forced him into
the psychic dependency, described by Somerset Maugham almost two centuries earlier.
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Briann (Kurt’s half-sister), Kurt and Tracey
Mirandur - Christmas 19PP, Olympia,
Washington
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Kurt’s relationship with Tracy Melandur was never based on dominance or psychic
tension. Tracy loved Kurt with the heart of a hometown girl. He had the same feeling
later with Mary Lou Lord and again with Kristen Pfaff. They were real women.
Courtney was a freak of many genders. Her mentor, Francie Warsun, helped her realize
she could control men by humiliating them, by putting them down and calling them
every bad name in the book. This worked on Cobain’s masochistic streak. But, beyond
humiliation, Courtney added a level of tension that could only be played out in a ght
to the death, featuring hypodermic syringes at V0 paces. She knew she would win. She
had done this several times before, with me, with each of her step-fathers, with her
shrink, with James Moreland, the list is long and they were all practice sessions for
the big nale, the great bank robbery.
Kurt and Courtney had nothing in common politically. They were both terribly con"icted. Courtney migrated toward her mother’s opportunistic stance, I.e., liberal until
the pain starts then dress up and pass for conservative. Kurt was far further to the left,
at least on the surface. He was in"uenced by Krist Novoselic’s Trotskyite leanings and
Frank bappa’s radicalism, but he was also blown away by Bill Burroughs’ dotty conservative junkie syndrome and his own Greek tragedy :#) Noh drama all circling
around the rejection of wealth. This last philosophy was anathema to Courtney.
Throughout their relationship Kurt’s bluepoint pens and yellow legal pads, his fame
and his soul were diverted from constructive uses and, instead, put to work as sounding
boards to carry out Courtney’s vendettas. Her own band acted as a pulpit, to be sure,
but preaching to her “fox core” was very much like preaching to the choir. She needed
to project her venomous rants to a much larger audience and she planned to do it by
co-opting Nirvana’s big fan base. All she had to do was control Kurt then leapfrog
with her own band. Unfortunately the plan was a bit thin. Possibly even delusional.
Not only was Nirvana’s audience “big” it was full of men, unconverted chauvinists,
and blue collar dudes who remained unannointed by the snake oil in the advanced Riot
Grrrl medicine kit. For Courtney, casting her occasionally profound insights into the
global cauldron took on a kind of missionary zeal. Her anti-father ire, ranged from a
“take your daughter to work” obligation to a full "edged castration campaign depending upon her “postpartum” hormone imbalance on any given day.
When she married Kurt her almost demented hatred for men manifested itself in an
old and surere concept, the “Trophy Baby.” Everybody knows about the pimp with
the Norwegian airline stewardess on his arm, but how many people can actually use
their own kids as props for their fake act? Courtney dragged the baby on stage every
chance she got. Kurt opposed this stunt, but could not stop it.
A feigned avoidance of the paparazzi was also part of the act. Both before and after
Kurt died, Courtney habitually exposed the wee princess to the cameras, at every possible venue, not so much to inspire other Riot Grrrls to settle down and have babies,
but to use the child as a power tool, a symbol of procreative overkill, an icon with
which to gain a foothold up the rock and roll mountain, the gold mountain, maybe even
to snub her nose at Madonna.
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When Courtney married Kurt she was right in insisting that the media style her as
a rock star, not as a Yoko Ono clone. Yoko, like Courtney, milked sympathy from the
crowd, by using Sean Lennon as child power, but Courtney always denied she was
anything like Yoko. She even insisted on a pre-nup to prove her purity and devotion.
When Courtney was 1S she wanted to be famous, it didn’t matter for what. The more
she burned down Portland\ L.A., Frisco, Liverpool and New York, the more people
remembered her. After she met Kurt she did not quietly sit-back and rule from a distance like Yoko. Heck no... Courtney was right up in front and Cobain got pushed into
the background wherever they went. Even in restaurants, Courtney tried to upstage
Kurt. It really pissed her off when fans asked for his autograph while ignoring her.
Around that time, when they were off the road, Kurt would quietly sneak up to
Vancouver B.C. to take tune-up lessons from Lance Reegan Diehl an old friend and
guitar master living Eagle Harbor. This was, of course before Lance moved to South
Korea and started a blues guitar revolution there. Kurt always came home from these
overnights with a smile on his face and Courtney just “knew” he had a girlfriend
stashed somewhere. Kurt insisted it was just a guitar lesson, coupled with working on
songs and chords over a few beers out in Horseshoe Bay, but Courtney wouldn’t buy
it. She had no idea, at the time, that Lance was helping Kurt formulate the Jagstang
as well as giving him the kind of top level encouragement he needed, both to get ahead
and also to swim against Courtney’s tirades. Again she increased her vigilance level,
insisting that the next time he went for a “lesson” he would need to be escorted by
Cali or one of her secondary controllees. She claimed Kurt was putting himself in
jeopardy by crossing the border unguardedias if Canada was Mexico.
Collaborating on songs with Kurt was all part of Courtney’s master planand she
didn’t want anybody with brains like Lance Diehl butting in. How else was she going
to learn Kurt’s entablature and grunge riffs? Back in 19P4 she told me she wanted to
marry a rock star and write music. She worked with Rozz Rezabek on songs, she
worked with James Moreland and later Billy Corgan on songs and she worked with
all of the “chicks” in Babes in Toyland and LQ on songs, she had a mind like a sponge...
so, when her rst CD came out I wasn’t surprised. She also told us, in a darker mood,
that she wanted to kill herself a rock-star and retire early. She even wrote letters and
poetry about it.? We thought she was kidding.
Only after Kurt died, did I realize how vivid all of this teeny-popper crap really was.
The most surprising thing was how completely smitten Kurt had become. He couldn’t
see my daughter sidling in for a :*#< 5 /$/$. When H$(%/ S+(<$5 V*d came out I realized Courtney was in all the way. She had been collecting heart shaped boxes since
she was six. Writing for Nirvana’s audience in a surreptitious manner added to the
thrill for Courtney, she rationalized all of her moves by saying that woman couldn’t
catch a break any other way, of this she was sure. Her insight into the sexism of the
rock world, came long before she read about the so called, L(% A7(!.-/ L*)$..
Courtney’s takeover strategy started in 19P4 with Riot Grrrrl fanzines. She knew
about Kurt as early as 19PQ when Janet Billig, Babes in Toyland, publicist at Caroline
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records, mentioned that Nirvana were crashing at her apartment. The idea that they
rst met in Portland is very shifty. The song, 4%(!. T*# is Kurt’s read of something
Courtney told him during their honeymoon… “ I will drain you.” At least she gave him
ample warning… qwith this needle I thee wed?’
There can be no doubt nurse
Courtney had an in"uence
on Kurt’s body, mind, heart
and music. As if H$(%/ S+(<$5
V*d wasn’t proof enough, the
lyrics to several other songs
gave me the shakes. C%(.:$C(%)$% L!66 H(?$ H$% R$?$.7$
*. S$(//6$, took on the raiment
of a battle cry. The song title was not derived from Kurt’s lyrics… not exactly. It was
a declaration of war, Courtney’s war. She watched the Frances Farmer story at my
house obsessivly and made me buy the tape to have on le when she came around to
visit, that and G%(-$%+$(5 and I%$//8 !. I!.; and a few other teenage angst type movies.
All of which she seemed to be using to brainwash herself. From 19P4 onward, ve years
before she claims she rst met Cobain, Courtney had a jones about Frances Farmer.
How do I know? She wrote about the C%(.:$- C(%)$% S/*%8 when she lived with us in
19P4. She rented the video on my
Mastercharge, she watched it over
and over again and took copious notes
saying she was writing a song for
her band, Sugar Babylon. She wanted
to know if a lobotomy could really
work? I answerd in the afrmative.
Obviously she identied with the
martyrdom of the ill fated movie
star.
In case you didn’t know, Frances
Farmer, the 19S0s movie star, was
forced to undergo a lobotomy in Seattle
after a long and illegal incarceration.
Likewise Courtney was forced into
a rebirthing ritual in Portland, so she
had some real understanding of
Farmer’s plight and the ersatz psy"%$./ R$e.*% O!$65!.7
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chiatric practices of the Northwest. She told me her mother had her Rolfed, run through
an Orgone box, walked over hot coals and Janoffed to the point of virtual insanity.
As soon as she had a chance, Courtney would show up in Seattle to take revenge for
herself, for Frances Farmer and for all of the Riot Grrrls harmed by the stupidity of
the older generation. She even named my granddaughter Frances.
The point should be obvious to anyone familiar with the facts. By January of 1994,
just before Kurt was to embark on a big European tour, his last tour, Courtney’s violent
asteroid continued to cut a path through the Grunge rmament, leaving a trial as
destructive as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Once she excoriated Kurt, once
she broke up Nirvana by remote control, and once she pretty much turned thirty million
people against her, she went back to extracting revenge on Rozz and me and anybody
in her rear view mirror.
As a father Kurt was sort of a benevolent dictator, angry with his dad for taking a
government job and beatic toward his fans for accepting his musical gifts, but he
loved his kid. His personality was perfectly passive-aggressive, the type Courtney
loved to manipulate. He was able to live with paradox and contradiction. He fought
against censorship in his music and yet he censored a number of writers, poster art>;
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ists and photographers at Courtney’s behest. But the bondage fantasy (and his love for
the woman who helped him carry it out) also put him into a number of dangerous con"icts.
Kurt hated fag bashers, bootleggers, pedophiles, rapists and wife beaters, but he
wasn’t so sure how to deal with the mutant man-haters in the women’s movement.
When Courtney went hog wild over Susan Faludi’s book: V(:;6(-+, Kurt went along
with the program, but like Kat Bjelland, he held deep reservations. Most of Faludi’s
ideas are expressed elsewhere in women’s literature (see: '$-3!(. N(/!*., R#38 C%#!/
c#.76$, O#% V*5!$- O#%-$6?$-) and are generalizable to non-gender specic repression
(something anyone who produces writing, music or art of any kind can understand).
But while he held disdain for the Bad Guys, he also found himself in the role of the
battered husband, especially after Courtney hit him a couple of times. Courtney, like
her mentor Frances “Francie” Warsun, seems to have used the women’s movement as
an excuse to beat the crap out of men, Warsun’s husband Spike, who I lived with for
several months, was way beaten down.
Kurt’s wife was fast becoming a Dickensian harridan who envied anybody who looks
happy. Nothing Kurt did could make her happy. You might think being the most famous
woman in the rock scene would be enough, or maybe being married to the most charismatic pop star in the world or having a cute, healthy baby and wads of money would
be enough, but not my Courtney.
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As a husband Kurt was moral, a god-fearing, prayer-saying man. Cheating was
immoral in his eyes. The sexuality wasn’t immoral, but the cheating was. The dissonance
here is frightening. Faludi enjoined the war against women with immoral conduct as
a weapon. She championed using strings of pathological behaviors as pay back and she
justied suppressing men as reparation for thousands of years of male gender suppression,
which by the way is an overblown myth. Turns out, anthropologists are unclear about
role distribution in Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon populations. Certainly the Celts were
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matrilineal as are the Eskimos. So, like a lot of stuff in Faludi’s book, the facts don’t
mesh. Once we peek beneath the chrome petticoat we see that Faludi made a lot of
this stuff up. In fact, one can argue in cosmological terms, that the entire universe
follows a heterosexual paradigm. As it turns out, Superbowl Sunday is not the highest
incidence day for wife beating. That horric statistic is reserved for Friday nights on
three day weekends. By the same logic, I could argue that Mother’s day holds the
domestic abuse record when it falls on a Friday. Add to this the full moon and, well
you get the picture. Oddly, and perhaps not by accident, this sounds like the same
con"ict Courtney had with Kat Bjelland. When I rst met Kat she was a died-in-thewool heterosexual. She loved men. She loved being supportive, wifely, and sisterly
even to the point of marrying Stuart Grey, a typical Aussie chauvinist “Bruce,” who
preferred his “Sheilas” passive. The couple lived out in Carnation at the old property
once owned by the famed, Wilson sisters of the big time fox core band known as
Heart, while they were in the studio in Seattle doing recordings as a new band known,
brie"y, as CRUNT, a synthesis, which went almost nowhere.
This musical period was laced with some pretty heavy heroin abuse and Kat began
to turn away from Minneapolis and various Babes in Toyland projects. Turns out
Grey, who paraded about as S/# S<(-) in the stage world, was a non-runner and the
two broke up about as quick as a spin-the-bottle game. The con"icted marriage and
her devotion to Babes in Toyland tore her apart. Not only did she dissolve Babes but
also, I believe, the strain started her on a downhill slide, aided by Courtney’s vast
hand grenade of bullshit. She’s ne now, but she went trough a reported psychotic
break in V00Q.
During the Nun Whores and Sugar Babylon days (19P4-19P6) Kat loved hanging
around with Courtney, but then Courtney went over the edge, sang badly, tried to
dominate the rap and probably stole gate money from a Butthole Surfers gig in
Minneapolis. Eventually Kat had to kick her out of her life. Now, in band terms, getting
“kicked out” means being ostracized too. The other women in Babes just couldn’t
feel comfortable with Courtney’s anger trip. Kat was a screamer, but she wasn’t really
screaming for the devil, It was just show biz for her. Throughout it all, to the best of
my knowledge, Kat remained straight throughout those years and dated several, more
suppotive men. Lucky guys, some say.
Conversly, Courtney made a big point of her bisexuality. The widely reported war
between Kat and Courtney over who invented the “Baby Doll” look was really a war
over what the Baby Doll look was going to represent. Was it going to be enigmatic or
straight-on? Was it bisexual. Was it going to be look-but-don’t-touch, just a frilly frock,
or a paradoxical come-and-get-it symbol? In Courtney’s mind it was also a war over
bragging and bitching rights, especially after Emma Khang cloned the “look” and
made a fortune on it.
The ongoing schmatt spritz covered over the fact that Kurt was being cuckolded.
He felt like he was “faking it.” It was almost as if he was being enveloped by, what
he now saw as, his “marital mistake.” Very few fans could see this from the outside.
>=
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Courtney kept a tight control on rumors and gosspi and leaks to the media.. Her spin
doctors were making it look like Kurt was suicidal, but Courtney was driving that
agenda almost as an instinct, the instinct of the Black Widow, the urge to propagate
the species by laying eggs on her mates chest, then, the little darlings would have something to feed on when mama was away.
Around Christmas of 1993 Courtney didn’t care much about Kurt’s feelings. Her
"owchart was nearing a major action point. As soon as she realized she had a good
record in the can she grew remote cold and unloving. Kurt grew lonelier by the minute.
His normal winter depression grew darker. He probably did contemplate suicide, who
wouldn’t, I know I did, right about that same time, but I’m convinced every time he
considered taking his own life, the baby’s face popped up and he went back to his
music. Like all great creative geniuses, he realized that his art was the raft upon which
he could "oat over turbulent seas. He was also certain that he didn’t want to be “in
bondage” any longer.
The dreamy sub-dom switch game started to wind-down when Courtney showed
her true colors and started cheating. At home Courtney’s erotic “play periods” became
experiments in sexual Darwinism and Kurt became the Guinea Pig.
FAST FORWARD: JOURNAL ENTRY P, JUNE 1996
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Kurt was in a healthy state of mind when he nally formulated a divorce plan. He
was sick of being Courtney’s whipping boy. After they were married, every time
Courtney needed to reach out and hurt someone, she could just slap Kurt over the head
with her latest lesbian affair or her latest boy-toy or her latest humiliation rap, and Kurt
would be forced to dismiss it or be accused of homophobia or some other “premise
wrong to the Grunge thing.”
Kurt would then sulk or go on the road and hang out and Courtney would feel harddone-by and get self-indulgent. This led to more orgies and more dalliances and sleepovers and more zipless fucks on airplanes. Kurt hated his own addiction, he knew it
was bad for Frances, but he was caught up in his responsibilities to the band and the
music. Even if he dissolved the band he would still be ensnared in Courtney’s net,
Courtney’s black moods, (which he plainly documents in (Heart Shaped Box) and her
poorly thought out attacks on enemies, perceived and real. He also hated her sexual
addiction. But where Kurt was a simple heroin and nicotine addict, Courtney was a
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strung out on her own cerebellum, strung out on everything addicting. She was even
strung out on hatred. She hated food and fat people, not realizing that a lot of overweight
people are genetically predisposed and she hated models, because, models can keep
their gures without much metabolic turmoil. She also hated hatred and had some
sense of guilt over hating everything. She hated smoking, and then had her lips made
into huge rolls of bee-stings.
As soon as she discovered sex, Courtney realized she could use it as a magic wand.
From the days at the beer vats in 19QQ to her “Teardrop Explodes LSD,” days, with
Julan Cope and Adam Ant at the Manx hotel in Liverpool in 19PV, she wallowed in
excess that would put Caligula to shame. These bizarre “scenes,” long a staple on the
Hollywood freak circuit, continued as long as Courtney could be the center of attention.
In her mind she was just making covert deals in bedrooms worldwide, but Kurt wanted
her to stop all of that, being old fashioned, he saw it as cheating. Kurt gured cheating
is cheating whether you’re gay or straight, but he also knew that what she was doing
would eventually put the baby in a toxic situation and he had to take action.
Kurt’s own sexuality has been called into question, but he didn’t like Courtney’s
rebrand version of lesbianism. His idea of gay feminism was more aligned to Camille
Paglia’s Dyonisianism than to Susan Faludi’s pecker envy.
>?
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In spite of Kurt’s grumpiness Courtney bought dozens of copies of Faludi’s rst book
and handed them out to her friends with proselytizing zeal. Kat, for one, being an
embedded straight woman, thumbed through Faludi’s %(./!:#- 0(3%!:(/!*.$- as a
courtesy, but Kurt, the captive, was forced to read it. After the Faludi ordealithe book
is an ordeal for anyone possessed of a knowledge of symbolic logiciKurt told Krist
he had trouble understanding it. And he wasn’t alone. Kat hated it and told Courtney
in so many words. The work is muddled. Even left wing women from the late sixties
didn’t understand it. V(:;6(-+ holds the record for the most factual errors of any Pulitzer
winning book since the prize was rst awarded. To Courtney it mattered little that the
whole argument would be recanted in 1999 when the same author came out with an
equally enigmatic book in support of men. Just in time for 9t11. Ironically Courtney
never made a comment about the pro-male book. I guess when you write two opposing
books you cover all the bases. Wow what a marketing ployo
After reading V(:;6(-+, from cover to cover, ten times, Courtney had an answer for
at least half of her troubles. From that point on, all fathers (plural)\ old boyfriends\ tricks\
johns\ Japanese tourists\ Korean customs agents\ rapists\ Dutch airplane pilots\ musicians
and heterosexual record company executives, posed no threat at all. Apparently homosexual
record company executives and trans gender rock stars were easy prey even before she
read V(:;6(-+=
Courtney’s quest for unqualied love ended as soon as she absorbed Faludi’s nutty
thesis. She could now blame ME, her biological father, all over again, because one, I’m
a man, and two, I happen to be an intellectual and I don’t believe in unqualied love
unless it is the love that “god” (small g) grants us, in which case we should be beseeching
to god to nd it, and not human beings of a fallible nature. Turns out, Courtney envied
anyone in control of their own destiny\ anyone with money who wouldn’t give her any,
and anyone, in general, who wouldn’t fall for her act. In addition to being male, Kurt
was rapidly growing into all three categories.
Faludi’s book did Courtney no good service. When it’s errorsiboth in logic and in
factiwere nally exposed, anyone who publicly championed Faludi’s a$.hV(5i L*)$.
H**5, hypothesis was left holding the bag. A week after the book went into quality
paperback a woman, who later underbid the grand prize by a record amount, came up
on the stage of the I%!:$ !- R!7+/ (always a bellwether for ideological inltration)
wearing a red sweatshirt that read:
“I neutered my dog
and my husband too.”
>@
HOMAGE TO A FRUIT FLY
O
ver the years Courtney was drawn to gender bent relationships. To her,
mixing genders was a fun little game. Anyone who has gone through gender
reassignment will tell you that it isn’t easy, fun or painless. Still, Courtney
romanticized the sexual aspect because she felt it all boiling up inside of her. It was
as if she was straight, bisexual, gay, male and female all at once. It was as if each of
those personalities, the cast of characters Kristen Pfaff warned me about, had a different form of craziness, as if Courtney was just one big happy orgasm ready to explode in any crowd she happened to be visiting.
In Portland, and on the road, Courtney’s early traumas’ turned her into one of the
worst kinds of hookers, a dwclassw type known, in the old chauvinist dialect, as a “Fag
Hag” or a “Fruit Fly.” This in itself isn’t so bad. Gay men need women friends too.
But Courtney took it further than friendship. She found she could lead these certain
types of men into and out of anything. From Francie Warsun, who had a fake jail cell
in her basement to Jeff Mann’s mom who just plain hated people, she learned how to
use drug dependency, dominance and violence as a modality to control men. After
she turned 1P she learned to live life as a voyeur, not really participating, but rather
standing back and pretending to be in control. Faludi’s book dissolved her anxiety
about her own narcissism. “What a catharsiso” She exclaimed after reading it. “I’m a
Fag Hag and damned proud of ito” She would shout for all to hear. Men like Julian
Cope, founder of Teardrop Explodes, her big Liverpool "ing, and the poor bastards
she beat up at her shows, understand what I mean.
V(:;6(-+ helped Courtney step out of the closet, at least half way, but there was a
price to pay. Instead of raising her consciousness this reshuf"ed tome provided Courtney
with yet another excuse for not seeking psychotherapy. She gured she no longer
needed a shrink at the precise moment when a good shrink would have done her the
most good. When, you may ask, is a good time to start looking for an empathic shrink?
Right about the time you see yourself blaming everybody else for your problems…
right about the time your old man kills himself, or did he? If he was assassinated the
last thing the assassin would want to do was see a shrink.
This V(:;6(-+ thing ended in late 1994, long after Kurt died. That’s when all mention of Cobain as a good-guy became taboo. Now, if she loved the guy why did she
try to make him look so bad?
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Courtney couldn’t understand why the Nirvana fans didn’t roll over, like a bridge
loan in a mortgage deal. Apparently the, “male chauvinist pigs,” were after her.
This delusion was, it bears repeating, traceable to me and all the rock stars like Rozz,
who put her down. In her “skag” fogged delirium, between the euphoria and the vomiting and the exegetic pain of the colonics, Courtney took aim on her dreams. Before
Kurt died, her failure to dance with the critics in spite of the millions spent on hype,
was, in her mind, traceable to a male bias against girl bands. After Kurt died she spent
millions, most of it from Kurt’s royalties, on publicity campaigns, all to no avail. Many
observers think that Courtney could not see through her own “hype.” But its worse
than that, she is in control of her own hype. Most smart people know that PR is a game
based on delusions and fantasies, what is known as Samsara in Buddhism, a con-racket
designed to extract Vanderbilt money out of stars who need ego gratication more than
truth. That’s why Courtney mentioned her parents as idiots in every press release. She
never realized that true fame only comes from excellence, hard work and compassion,
otherwise its just an easily scratched veneer.
The public relations scam sets the star up as a Brand Name, like soap or cigarettes.
The public tries the product. If they like it they come back and try it again. If they
don’t like it, no matter what any PR agency does to keep the “account,” the public isn’t
going to buy it. Just ask the guy who put the little orange drops inside the soda pop
know as Orbitz. The public saw through it and nobody wanted to spend good money
on an edible lava lamp. Courtney went the same route. No matter how good she was,
her negative fender dents couldn’t hold enough bondo.
To sooth her hurt feelings, and dwindling bank accounts, Courtney went on about
the girl rocker business in general. “Look what happened to Lunachicks, Babes in
Toyland and Bikini Kill.” She would say. “Men caused their downfall.” Then she would
toss a dart at David Geffen and the big tycoon producers. In an Interview in R*66!.7
S/*.$ she said, “Men boycotted fox core CDs.” and “Men refused to go out to see fox
core bands.” But more importantly she focused in on Lesbian bands, calling them fox
core. LQ made it by being as gross as possible, "inging tampons into the crowd in
Bristol, England and bashing men, so why not make that part of Hole’s act? I never
could understand how she could call LQ, “Foxcore,” but that’s my point, nothing really
makes sense when Courtney blabs to the press, it just sounds hip. “Yes, that’s it? Male
bashing that will be the new stage sport.” By early 199S Courtney was kicking men
in the groin as regularly as her lawyers would permit. In V004 she was still up to her
old tricks. In New York, after the David Letterman titty show, she tossed a microphone
stand into the audience and made “SHURE” it hit a dude on the head.
She drew blood. It wasn’t an accident.
Courtney’s housekeeper from Oregon (who would only talk to me if she remained
nameless) saw a different picture. For her, Courtney violence wasn’t an act. Not only
did she smash her female contemporaries, she battered all of her husbands and boyfriends
and frightened the crap out of her employees, just like Francie Marsun. By the way,
Francie once pulled a gun on me and Triona because we yelled at her beloved offspring.
CB
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This violent transference was part of a sick obsession. Courtney sought out dominatrix
types because they reinforced her inner-status. They gave her tips and above all,
permission to be violent. Constantly giving love and then threatening to withdraw it,
that’s the Courtney way. Constantly stripping off the epithelium that protects your guts
from bleeding ulcers, puncturing the duramatter that protects your brain from strokes
and weakening the myocardium that keeps your heart alive,
“She keeps it pumping straight to my heart.”
NOW WE KNOW EWACTLY WHAT HE MEANT
It helps, theatrically speaking and for the dehumanization process, if the target is
drunk and addicted or displays a homely characteristic: a pot belly, a wart, taped up
glasses, zits, big feet or some other anomaly. The fact that she also acted like a drunken
bully much of the time (both before and after Kurt died) was rarely mentioned in court
or in the press, and anybody who would deign to criticize her overt hostility would be
harshly condemned by her PR team. After all, what are "ack writers for, if not to cover
up aberrant behavior.
The only time Courtney’s deformed persona (the witch x slut girl) was observable,
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for a clinically viable length of time, came
when she appeared in October 199S on
Court TV in Florida. There, while on trial
for male bashing, Courtney displayed her
typical dysfunctional body language, spritzing
the District Attorney, deriding the opposing
counsel, mugging for the cameras and
"irting with the female and, presumably
AC?DC judge.
I guess we should pause here to thank
the rst amendment and the founding fathers
for Court TV and its mandate to archive
all trials for future reference. I doubt Courtney’s attorneys could do much to quash the
playback of certain excerpts from that most telling episode. The fact that Courtney
was acquitted under order from the bench less than two minutes after the jury began
deliberations, tells a tale. A directed verdict is almost unprecedented in cases of this
type and yet, Courtney got one.
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Courtney’s drug addiction phase, at least the childhood part of it, ended abruptly on
June Vnd 1996 in a padded room in the hospice of the Carron Foundation in Wernersville,
Pennsylvania. There she lost 1P more pounds and came to grips with the real face of
death, both Kurt’s and her own. There, in the throes of a cold turkey cure, she saw the
venomous snakes she left behind in Portland, the arson scars she burnt into the hearts
of every man who ever loved her. How did she come to be in that particular hospital
at that particular time? In the early part of 1996 she was forced to put down drugs altogether in order to prove her insurability for the lm the I$*<6$ S$%-#- '(%%8 C68./.
She also made a sober promise to Milos Forman, the director. But when the movie
wrapped Courtney went back to her traditional needlepoint junk routine.
During the lming in Tennessee and afterwards, she had a serious dalliance with
Edward Norton, her extraordinarily talented co-star. It was Norton who saw her dying
inside and insisted she go into rehab at the Carron Hospital, a place she turned down
in her forced rehab in May of V004. Her band agreed. If she didn’t go they threatened
to breakup, and even her staunch henchman, Eric Erlandson, a bugle boy who, heretofore would have suffered any pain, told any lie or paid any price to serve her, turned
against her. Yes even Eric Erlandson, the then paramour of Drew Barrymore, grew
sick of Courtney’s whimsical sociopathy. The band did nally break up in V000 and Eric retained 1tV the rights.
By January 1996, the delays were also growing painful
to Geffen studio execs. Courtney was taking too much time
away from her musical duties. Her modeling career\ her
Grail like quest for the Golden Globe and Oscar nominations to say nothing of her real estate activities and materC;
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nal duties, held her focus elsewhere. Luckily she was able recruit a new bass player.
Melissa Auf du Mar took over Hole’s bass duties after the death of Kristen Pfaff,
but, like all musicians, she wanted to play music not ddle fuck waiting around for the
Goddess. In Montreal and New York Courtney’s band continued to mutiny. Would
Eric take HOLE on the road without Courtney? Eric was recruiting a new singer. The
only thing that thwarted the mutiny, was the unhappy fact that Melissa’s father, the
famed Montreal raconteur, Nick Auf Du Mar, was dying of cancer.
By July of 1999 Melissa nally jumped ship to play with Corgan’s Smashing Pumpkins,
another irony not wasted on Nirvana fans, since Billy himself had a few Heroin deaths
in his entourage and had to re a few people. Moreover, Billy and Courtney were an
on-again, off-again item from the rst day Courtney ran down Kurt at the Metro in
Chicago. '
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On the nal night of the lecture tour at the Rialto theater, Nick Auf du Mar, teetering
in a terminally besotted state, jumped up on the stage and grabbed the microphone
out of my hand. He babbled incoherently for a few moments, only long enough to make
a complete disgrace of himself, and was then booed off and turfed. An untting end
for such a wonderful personality. Nick looked pallid and weary. I had no idea he had
terminal cancer at that time. I gured Nick and I would sit down over beers and discuss
our daughters, but instead Nick wanted to ght.
After the show the head of intelligence for the RCMP, in Montreal, took me out for
a cup of coffee. I thought it was a put on at rst, but the pipe and Aquascutum trench
coat assured me he was the real deal, the chess player. That single discussion made
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the whole trip worthwhile, because the man in the trenchcoat and the tweed jacket
admitted to me that “they” had always seen some merit in the murder theory. He said,
“At rst we thought you were nuts, but now I see you are on the right track, my
sympathies go out to you.” The royal “we” wasn’t wasted on me, I got the reference
and all that it implied. The chess player apologized for Nick’s behavior, told me the
Mounties were watching the entire tour as it was very volatile, we discussed my
immigration status brie"y, shook hands and parted amicably. I’ll always remember
that meeting. It inspired me to continue my investigations. I remember seeing tall guys
in plainclothes watching everywhere we went. You can always tell the RCMP, they
don’t need to hide, they want you to know they are there. They don’t interfere, they
just watch you. In Windsor one guy was hawking me in the lobby of the hotel. I just
told him I was going next door to do my laundry and nodded to him when I came back
in. He smiled knowingly. I was hip to Canadian stuff. I lived in Canada for two years
in the mid-19Q0s. When I got back to the ranch in Elk Grove, the news was full of an
even more frightening story... my high school pal and attorney, Dennis Natali was
gunned down in the streets of San Francisco, by a Vietnamese gang...more violent
caca to deal with.
In mid-February 199Q Tom Grant, Courtney’s 1994 private detective, went on
F.-*6?$5 a8-/$%!$- to insist that Kurt was murdered. Grant has stated many times he
can prove Courtney hired somebody to kill her husband, but Courtney was hardly
mentioned in the F.-*6?$5 a8-/$%!$- segment. Her attorneys, in part for self-preservation
and in part to run-up more hours on the Cobain tab, threatened to sue anybody who
made any public allegations.
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his is a book about Kurt. But his short life and untimely death
can not be understood unless we understand his wife, who happens also to be
my daughter. In spite of the calumny that surrounds our relationship I still
cherish the memory of the wonderful child I once knew. In spite of her brilliantly
crafted “urban self-myth” Courtney did not have a rough childhood until she was
castoff by her mother. When she was with me she had it made simply because everyone
in my family doted on her. It doesn’t take a big shrink to gure out that “only” children
(at least theoretically) get more direct parental attention than kids in multiple sibling
families. Okay, so we spoiled her.
At this point all you need to know is that Courtney was hidden away from me after
196P and most people, when they see the entire case laid out fair and square, and
listen to the tapes, nd it tragic. The truth is I was never a bum. I always had a nice
place to live, two cars and at least one motorcycle up and running. I’ve always worked
and had money and I could have provided for her. I’ve always thought of myself as a
rich beatnik, a “minor” member of a royal San Francisco caste. I wanted Courtney
back, at least to visit, but no soap. I found out later, for reasons we will soon discuss,
that her mother told her I was dead. This was a cruel strategy since everyone in my
family was happy just to be around her.
When she was a toddler I let her run around San Francisco State University campus
free as a bird (with me watching of course). Sometimes we would walk to classes with
her riding on my shoulders, but she was always close at hand and never in trouble.
When she rst spoke, she formed whole sentences and when she took her rst steps,
at six months, she ran around the room laughing. When she stared at you, you could
see a cosmos connected to the optic nerve. It was like seeing the everyday world
through the Hubble telescope.
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To say that she was a “good” baby would be an understatement. Courtney was serene.
She would often just sit in her room and play with dust motes in the sunbeams. Linda
feared this might be a sign of retardation because Courtney arrived as a large ten
month baby. This could be the root for the song, R$/(%5 H!%6 . I tried to assure my wife
that a fat baby is a healthy baby, but her anorexic step-parents thought differently. In
truth, I knew Courtney was gifted almost from the rst days, and as a bonus she didn’t
cry or fuss like other kids.
Courtney started to act badly in 19Q1 around the time her mother ran off with her
third husband (she’s had at least ve) to New bealand. After a short stint with relatives, Courtney went to New bealand, did poorly there, acted up in class, got the square
kids drunk, by her own admission, and shuttled back and forth to California and
Oregon to live with Frank Rodriguez, her second father, and an assortment of her
mothers friends. She spent some months on a huge fruit ranch in Delano, California
with her god mother Del Nan Winblad-DeMarco. By the way, DeMarco was one of
the biggest anti-Chavez ranchers in the Central Valley.
Courtney got bored and started to act up. She didn’t care much about the grape
boycott which went on for ve years. The hot fertile elds of Fresno, didn’t do much
for her adventuresome spirit, so Del Nan shuttled her back to Oregon where she was
placed in foster care supervised by Linda’s, then current lover, Richard Pharr, the guy
who, according to Courtney, broke up Linda’s second marriage. She told me Dr. Pharr
molested her, but I doubt this because she once told me Frank Rodriguez molested
her. I knew that was bull poop because she told everybody what they wanted to hear.
She thought I wanted to hear bad things about Frank. I didn’t. I have always known
Frank to be an honest and responsible school teacher and a good father, the only thing
he ever stole was the used PDRs from the hospital trash, and you can hardly call that
stealing.
On the other hand, giving a 1V year old girl large doses of truth serum, yTuinol: a
powerful hypnotic sedativez may be to blame for a lot of later bad behavior. Maybe
Courtney should blame it on Pharr instead of me. I didn’t give her any form of dope.
I have no doubt she was put through some kind of “New Age” brainwashing, but I
also know, like a good father, that Frank or Dave Menely did not engage in any misconduct. Pharr I wonder about, but Frank and Dave were just vexed by my kid. I understood her, but only barely and from a distance. People didn’t understand her because
there was no precedent for her giftedness in those days. She had a high Is and a photographic memoryo
I’d like to be clear here. None of Courtney’s accusations check out. I did not give
her LSD. See the Polygraph results in the rear matter. Frank did not molest her and
Dave Menely did everything he could for her. We all loved her. I know Dave Menely
did a passable fair job, because Dave Verge and others in New bealand gave me the
full report. Likewise Kurt and her other boyfriends did not beat her and, well, you get
the picture. I mention the men in her life here only to point out how (and when)
Courtney began her pattern of deceitful anti-parental, anti-male, anti-spousal manipulations,
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burning multiple candles at both ends. I’m not sure about Pharr. He needs to be checked
out, but he’s a hard guy to track down. And then there is the mysterious Judy Carrol,
also known as Mrs. Stan Chasen, the woman whose name Linda Carroll adopted after
she got sick of changing her own.
Doctor Pharr tried to brainwash my kid. He gave her Tuinol, Seconal and other
hypnotic downers. Moreover, he used marginal Janofan rebirthing techniques on her,
techniques designed to “Reparent” her. This process was all the rage for some time in
the early 19Q0s, but proved to be a “"aky” therapeutic modality. I believe this is what
broke her spirit and created, in her, a self-destructive and even homicidal personality.
Under Pharr’s aegis Courtney moved in and out of personalities as quickly as she
moved in and out of foster homes and juvenile detention centers all over Oregon and
Northern California. In one case, I managed to track down, she lived for a while in a
Sacramento suburb, very dingy and dross, and again felt totally abandoned. That’s
where she lost her goldsh and almost had a nervous breakdown.
Around this time she was told I was dead, she was poor and the family money was
gone. In fact, it was hidden away in trust funds and real estate and formed the basis
for Linda’s Oregon real estate empire. There was a lot of money left. Decades later
Courtney did the same thing to her daughter.
I repeat, she was told I was dead, in fact I was very much alive and looking for her.
Linda was passing herself off as a Psychologist, when in fact she never did get a PhD,
but she had a burgeoning shrink tank in Portland and well, the self- deception became
part of everyday life. Linda adopted a boy, then sent him back, then brought him back
home again. In V004 Courtney says the kid was at Law school at NYU, so who knows
what karma lurks in the heart of an adopted heiress. Linda taught Courtney how to be
an heiress and I showed her where to get the bread.
If Lou Linda and the Risi mob, wanted to use me as a scapegoat, they should have
let me raise my kid. I might have messed up, instead, now they only have themselves
to blame. I didn’t see Courtney from 196P to 19Q9, so how can I be the scapegoat? Oh
yeah, I forgot, DNA. It’s all my fault. Its like Neitzche said, “We all killed God,” thus,
by the same logic, I killed Kurt. I can not take credit for her spectacular talents, but
again, I will let the record, and the gene pool, speak for itself .
Throughout the 19Q0s I traveled a great deal. I thought about Courtney and prayed
for her everyday. I sensed I was linked to her, in a spiritual sense almost like the
Corsican brothers and I’m pretty sure I felt her anguish from a distance, but at no time
did anyone in Linda’s world think about getting Courtney and me back together, even
though my mother was raising children and had room for her. Moreover my sister
Kathy, was a probation ofcer in Oakland and could have easily adopted her. Instead
Linda threw my kid to the wolves.
Why?
Courtney’s early childhood holds the answer.
Aside from a faint background hostility toward Courtney’s mom for abandoning her
to foster care when my family was readily available, I carry no long term grudges.
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Any abrasive differences between her mother and I arise from con"icts in basic values
stemming back to our respective families. In those days the older generation, (what I
often refer to as the “Model -T” culture) thought they could predict the future. But, as
Alvin Tof"er warned us, in his landmark book, C#/#%$ S+*:;, they had no clue about
the impact of technology. Those of us who took an alternative course and embraced
high-tech, are now better off. The ludites who clung to the traditional ways seem to
be suffering.
I reiterate, the real con"ict in Courtney’s life (and Kurt’s) comes from a great deal
of dissonance and con"icting family values. I came from a huge Irish family on my
dads side, some Protestant, some Catholic, and a huge family of eccentric geniuses
Methodists and Pennsylvania Socialists on my mom’s side. All Celts.
My dad was an Olympic gymnast and Alto Sax player with a masters degree from
Pitt. He taught Jr. high in the Oakland ghetto (9Pth Avenue) and ran the swimming
pool at the swankest country club in the Bay Area in the summer. This cultural paradox helped me gain a rm grasp on a wide array of social behaviors.
My mother was a dress and costume designer specializing in hats and wedding dresses. She worked for Edith Head in Hollywood, Hattie Carnegie in Pittsburgh, as well
as Sax Fifth Avenue and Goldman’s in the Bay Area. She often took me with her on
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the train from San Jose to Los Angeles when she delivered her designs to the studios
down there. Sailors whistled at her everywhere we went. Her costumes can be seen
in the 2*#%/ c$-/$%, starring Danny Kaye and in a number of Linda Darnell movies,
especially the big hats. The similarities between my mom and Jeff Mann’s mother
are amazing.
To say, as some have suggested, that I am a woman hater, is preposterous. Women
raised me and in my adult life women tutored me. Professor Audrey Baum at SF State
taught me scientic method and experimental design. Phyllis Diebenkorn, the wife
of the famous painter Richard Diebenkorn, was my shrink for about a year after
Linda and I broke up. Later Elizabeth Leader and Dame Frances Yates in London
taught me about the vision quest in literature and archaeology. In Den Hague I lived
with (platonically) Diana Van Den Berg, one of the greatest symbolic painters in
Europe. Just Google any of them.
As a child, I hung with girls on the playground. I preferred jacks and hopscotch to
dodge ball and soccer. The girls games were far more mentally stimulating. My dad
thought I was queer, but it turns out he was queer. Strange eh? I won a spelling bee
because the girls taunted me to enter. I was always fascinated by anything difcult
and geometric. Jacks and hopscotch are both. I regret never having progressed past
vezys.
Although I was born in Monterey, California, the folks swept me away to Pennsylvania
every chance they got. We went by train, plane and car.
As a kid I was extraordinarily smart and athletic. At age P I broke the local Boy
Scout backstroke record and I was still a Cub Scout. In 1949 my dad trotted me back
to ancestral home in Pittsburgh, just me and him, and we "ew on a TWA Conny. I
guess he wanted to make a man out of me and show me off. More ego tripping. He
was very proud of his little p3$% a$.:+, almost as if I was the product of some
'!$3$.-3*%. project lurking in the back of his head, something he dreamt about since
he won a Silver medal in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
In Pittsburgh, for as far back as I can remember, and I have very early vivid
memories, I was heavily in"uenced by my cousins who were also my baby-sitters
and nannys. The DeLancy sisters were going through their jitterbug and bobby-sox
phase at the time. They introduced me to dancing and “ethnic music.” At every
possible opportunity Dolores, Aileen, and Dolly would dance with me and my only
male cousin Harry George. The contest was to see who would teach us the latest Cab
Calloway or Lionel Hampton tune rst. H$8hV(hV(hR$hV*< was a big hit in 194S.
This was, as best as I can recall, my rst exposure to “hipness.”
Whereas my dad’s family could be described as, Pig-in-the-parlour, my mother’s
family, the Cooke’s, were far more lace curtain. They hailed from just above the High
Steps. East Liberty was a nice neighborhood in those days, Grandpa John Dog (aka
Henry D). owned a grocery store on Point View street during the depression. Unfortunately,
he gave everything away on credit until the store bellied up. He joined the railroad
union and wound up piloting steam engines on the Penn Line. My dad denitely
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married up and the contrasts were almost bizarre. The Cooke’s were a very egalitarian
group, but, like a wolf pack, the whole thing ran on the matriarchal system with a male
gurehead at the top. Everybody had talent. Aunt Laura sang soprano solos and
whistled in church, Aunt Marcia played the piano and Uncle Paul taught himself the
machinists trade before he joined the Merchant Marine.
Both families spoiled me because I was the only grandchild on either side. I had
more fun playing in the rain spouts with the dross Brushton crowd, but the East Liberty
bunch were more serious, tighter knit and, because of a Pennsylvania Dutch substrate,
cooked better food. In fact they had competitions about the Shoo-"y pie, Panhaus, and
Af"e Kukin and everything had to be presented in cast iron and copper. They were
Celts, from Shropshire and Alscace-Lorraine and it was drilled in my head that they
all came in to America in the 1Qth century via Havre de Grace and Wrightsville,
Pennsylvania, before Ellis Island was established as a transfer center, and connected
to the Susquehanna River where they assimilated into the areas around Hershey.
My mom’s brother, Paul Cooke, developed the talking baby doll for Matell, and
named it, Chatty-Cathy, after my sister Cathy. He taught me a lot about wit and wisdom.
My mother’s brother-in-law, Chuck Tagg, was a butcher by day and an absolute down
gangsta at night. He used to go around the house saying “All reet hep cats, where’s da
action?” and, “Howz ya doin’ Jackson.” All terms he learned as a white negro in his
butcher shop up on Wiley Ave. Oh yeah, Chuck went through the Battle of the Bulge,
and froze one of his toes off. I remembered him vividly when I rst heard Lord Buckley’s
rap comedy records.
From the fth grade on I spent two weeks every year at summer school on the
University of California campus in a gifted enrichment program. I was taken on tours
of the cyclotron and the Bancroft libraries and got an eyeful of what college life would
be like in academia. I was stunned. The downside was that I had problems with the
other kids in my regular school because I was very bored. I was reading way beyond
my age level and was subjected to at least ve Is tests between the ages of eight and
sixteen. I consistently tested 1VQ (Mensa reject) and I have never been in love with a
dumb woman, so when Lou Linda came along I fell in love with her looks, her brain
and her bizarre sense of humor. I still carried a torch for Lisa who moved to Cuba
speaking six languages "uently, but Linda was truly a fun person, and she was, after
all, Courtney’s mom.
Courtney’s mother’s educational background was the direct opposite of mine. I grew
up in a suburban public school system. She was schooled by urban parochial teachers
and nuns. Both of us were campus big shots. Bear in mind however that Linda’s adoptive
parents were not educated past high school. Her biological father was an opthalmic
surgeon, and her mother won a Pulitzer, but we did not know that when we met and
neither bio-parent had direct in"uence on her. So, when Courtney was a wee thing, I
was the intellectual and my family was far more educated than Linda’s. We had ten
times less bread, but I wasn’t exactly, “Marrying-up either.”
With these paradoxical family styles in mind, try to realize how painful it might be
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to lose your only child to a courtroom bamboozle and a "aky psychiatric scam. When
Courtney was born I thought I was going to be her father for the rest of my life. I
thought I would have lots of kids. I wanted kids. It never dawned on me that some rich,
small, fragmented and uneducated San Francisco family, (with an entirely different
set of values) would be able to kidnap my child and darken my life forever.
The same value schism struck Kurt and Courtney. Some of Courtney’s problems,
and as a result, some of Kurt’s nightmares, were formed by a classic con"ict in family
values. His roots in Aberdeen made him a natural to reject wealth and a perfect choice
as a proletariat leader. His grandfather, Leland Cobain was still the shot caller for the
Cobain clan in V01V, and he was speaking out about Kurt’s mysterious death.
Courtney’s roots, as a fallen heiress and beatnik princess, made her the perfect leader
for the Riot Grrrls, although she rejected that role, because she was far more into coveting wealth, than the other Riot Grrrls. But Kurt took on too much when he took on
Courtney. She wasn’t simply a fallen heiress, she was a fallen angel. She was the product of the intense value clash between a beatnik Buddhist mystic raised in the burbs
(me) and a lapsed Roman Catholic raised in the city (Linda), a wannabe hippy, by her
own admission.
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was in graduate school in psychology at San Francisco State and working as a
night counselor at juvenile hall when Linda and I filed for, what was supposed
to be, an amicable divorce. Linda was not yet in college. She was only contemplating
classes at the University of San Francisco, a Catholic University in the center of town.
As part of the program I was working with concepts of crisis intervention and was
beginning to rescue people from bad acid trips as well as hanging out with a bunch
of starving rock musicians who turned out to be the Grateful Dead.
Who knew?
Anyway, as everybody know knows, the rock scene in the city changed things radically. And I was in the freaking middle of it. After three years of social work, a stint
with several rock bands (a form of social work in itself) and a few graduate school
courses, I decided I wanted to be a writer. I more or less, “dropped out” after that,
but Courtney remained the light of my life. At no time was she exposed to drugs.
I wasn’t surprised when Courtney started acting like a genius as a baby and I
stood resolved to make sure she came out with zero scars. In this I failed, but I did
manage to enrich her childhood sufficiently to give her the courage and motivation
to face the problems she might encounter as a gifted adult.
Unfortunately, Linda didn’t understand Courtney’s giftedness or mine. She didn’t
understand her own gifts either, she didn’t even know who her real mother was,
turns out  years later, she discovered that her biological mother was none other
than Paula Fox, a Pulitzer prize winner and supremely gifted woman, so, at the
time how could she understand Courtney? The baby was speaking in sentences
and reading road signs while still in diapers. It’s a common story in my family, but
Linda, (adopted by decidedly ungifted parents) thought I was giving Courtney too
much attention . The adoptive grandparents took a Spanish Inquisitional approach
to child rearing. By the way the main onslaught of the Inquisition was conducted
by Dominicans.
In spite of disdain from the opposition I tried to enrich Courtney’s learning curve
as much as possible. Almost before she could walk my dad and I (both certified
Red Cross Water Safety Instructors) gave her swimming lessons, like the baby’s
depicted on the cover of Nirvana’s album Incesticide. She took to water like a dolphin. Not only was she smart, she was athletic, a potential Olympic medalist like
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her grandfather. My dad ran a similar program for underprivileged families in
Oakland and knew exactly what he was doing. He was so amazed at Courtney’s
natural coordination. He used the phrase “Athletically Gifted” to describe her.
In addition to the swimming lessons everyone in my family began conversing
with her on a peer to peer basis. In every case I emphasized the symbolism of creative freedom. I tried, as often as realistically possible, to let her know she was special and that creative freedom is a privilege. Linda didn’t like it, but at least she agreed
not to speak excessive baby talk to the kid once she moved out of infancy. Stressing
vowels and speaking in instinctive emotional style is good for tots, but adding extra
emphasis to start the brainwashing programs can have undesirable long term effects.
Courtney’s processing ability was growing at a remarkable and organic rate and I
didn’t want to interfere with her natural trajectory.
To repeat, Linda and her family didn’t believe in Courtney’s giftedness. Her friends
gured I was just fawning over the kid like a proud papa. In spite of the Risi’s persistence
in the goo-goo dialect, and their obnoxious dependencies on tobacco and booze, I
spoke to Courtney above the average mental standards for her age and made sure she
got good food, I*68 ?! S*6 (liquid baby vitamins) and everything else. I never smoked
or drank, so it was a con"ict from the beginning.
Was she smart? Oh yeah. On one occasion, while in the car, three year old Courtney
pointed to one of the gauges on the dashboard (Mercedes 190 SL) and said, “clock?”
Looking up at me as she pointed as if to ask the question? “Is this a clock?” I pointed
to the real clock, but I could see from her facial expression that she already knew the
difference between a time clock and a gauge. “No, it’s a tachometer.” I answered.
“Oh.” She sat in silence looking at it the needle zoom around and listening to the
exhaust pulse. I could see her correlating the needle with the exhaust thwarp, thinking about the variables.
“Tach?” She asked. I was amazed she had already abbreviated the word. This could
have been a coincidence so I answered her in more detail. “Yes, it measures the motor’s speed.”
She grew excited and seemed worried. “Show me, show me.”
“She threw out a rudimentary pun in the form of a question, “Tach Tock?”
“I laughed. Yes. A shudder ran down my back. It was science ction. The feeling
was more than just love for me own kid. I felt like Mozart was sitting in the bucket
seat next to me. Little Girl Tate was here with us. She was obviously a diamond in the
rough.
A sense of abandonment and emptiness came over me. “Oh Oh.” I thought to myself.
“If this kid is qthat’ gifted what are we going to do?”
She dgeted on her seat until I stopped the car. I had to carry her out to the front of
the car, pop the bonnet, and explain everything about the motor. She nally said,
“Vrooom, Vrooom,” and laughed.
I pointed to the radiator and said, “Hot, hot.”
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She said, “Unhunh.” Nodding that she already understood. She then grew tired of
the lecture tour and dismissed the whole deal in a matter of seconds. “Go, Go. Let’s
go.” She got ito
I was working as a cab driver then. A Jungian student and friend named Joe Morasco,
one of Linda’s friends who wound up in New York at New School, helped me get the
job. I had the whole town memorized so Courtney and I called out street signs as we
drove. I knew San Francisco would be her town.
A few weeks later she wanted a kitten so we drove over to Portrero Hill to the S.P.C.A.
Her favorite tune, in those days, was, L+(/Q- N$O I#--8:(/g by Tom Jones. When we
got the kitten home I asked her what she wanted to call it? “I want to call it What’s
New?” She said with a grin and a shake of her head.
“How do you spell that I asked?” I handed her a crayon and a writing tablet urging
her to draw out the kitten’s name. She thought for a while, took a few trial scribbles
and then returned the tablet to me with the kitten’s name scrawled across the page in
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purple and orange letters, “Wike dis.” She grinned and looked up at me for
approval.
I almost fell down at what I saw on the paper. Courtney had written, “Watznu” in
clearly legible letters. Coincidence? I doubt it. She was spelling phonetically, and punning, at age three.
One day Courtney purposefully put her nger in the le cabinet at my ofce and
began to close the drawer by backing into it. I caught her and hugged her, but that’s
when I started to worry. How could a three year old kid be self-destructive? Easy.
Even at three, kids blame themselves for their parent’s mistakes. Courtney knew we
were divorcing. She knew I didn’t live in the house anymore. She knew I lived with
someone else. Her worldly pain became obvious to me. The "aws in the Emerald were
already beginning to show. That’s when I realized it takes a virtual army of supportive people to take a gifted kid unscathed into adulthood. Color me guilty.
What did we do wrong? Everything and nothing. I picked her up every time she
cried, no matter what, and pretty soon she stopped crying. Linda and her very old
fashioned (non-Spock) parents didn’t believe in this. Linda insisted I let her alone when
she cried. The Jesuit doctrine on child rearing is severe. “Isolation, that’s the only way
to raise a child. Let them cry themselves to sleep.” When she went to visit the Risi’s
she cried herself to sleep, thus forming an immediate con"ict. Could this be the basis
for two personalities?
I said, “FORGET ITo It doesn’t work. Isolation does not prepare a child for the urban
crisis they will inherit from us.” The fundamental value schism was right there on the
table. It disturbed everyone in Linda’s family and peer group that I found ways to treat
Courtney as an equal, asking her opinion and giving her choices at a very early age. I
wanted to be a facilitator, not a dictator.
We read books together too. Moreover we “wrote” books together. Until recently I
harbored a dream that Courtney and I would someday again write books together.
Some people are afraid of books, many people read and collect books, but in my mom’s
family making them is tradition a hobby, like working a crossword puzzle or stamp
collecting. Books, books, books. Everywhere books the most sacred relics in the house,
beside the Jasper Ware Wedgewood.
Courtney’s bipolar cycle grew obvious early-on. Serenity was often followed by a
seemingly motiveless temper tantrum, but I noticed that, unlike most children who
throw tantrums, Courtney was crafting these episodes to gain control of the adult
world. The Victorians would have called her a, “willful child.”
The rst temper tantrum she ever threw “at” me took place just before Christmas
in 196P in front of Gump’s window. In those days viewing, or rather “gawking at,”
Gump’s holiday display tended to raise your spirits and wipe away the blues. Gump’s
display, when it was owned by the Gump family, was like F.A.O. Schwartz’ window,
in New York, but Gump’s might feature a giant Buddha surrounded by elves or the
Golden Gate bridge with fully operating mechanical toy cars and scale model ships
with doll people on deck, and everything moved in ne animation. It was always real
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San Francisco stuff, not just toys. The resulting effect was awe inspiring and the
panorama stretched around the store, not just in one window, but down Post street
and around the corner. To achieve this gestalt the entire Gump’s staff devoted themselves
to the installation, leaving hardly any time for customers. I thought Courtney would
enjoy it. I looked forward to seeing her eyes light up. Instead she over-enjoyed it.
When the store closed she didn’t want to leave. Finally I bribed her and we managed
to get out without a trauma. I had no idea she was overstimulated. It was freezing
nippy outside and I gured Linda would worry.
Getting her outside was one thing, but prying her away from the window display
was something else. She hadn’t seen that yet. Another session of freezing and explaining
how each elf worked took another hour and the fog laced wind forced me to drag her
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away in tears. She taught me. It’s almost as if gifted kids will tell you how they want
you to teach them. They get bratty if you don’t do things a certain way, because their
brains are structured already.
Children like Courtney are not born /(36( %(-(. When she didn’t understand something
she would just stop me and ask me about it...no silly questions like, “What makes the
clouds?” either. Linda, following the lead of her church, used a didactic strategy. I
remember clearly explaining things to Courtney and feeling that my words were being
absorbed into a ne Aegean sponge, but those days were numbered. The family priest
did not want me loading that sponge with pagan symbolism.
The night we returned from Gump’s she was still cranky. Kids are like horses. You
do not want to ride them hard and put them up wet, but our time together was too short.
We bonded a little more. I loved her too much that’s all. Wait a minuteo How can you
love your kid too much?
When Courtney was two I developed techniques to bring people down from bad
LSD trips. I was the rst person in the world to develop a rescue system for this particular drug and psychedelic overdoses in general. I was never opposed to certain qualied people taking it and thought it did much more good than harm, but in large doses,
taken in awful settings it proved to be dangerous and I stated publicly that it should
never be given to kids. This visionary attitude landed me on the front page of the N$O
T*%; "!)$- (.5 .$//$5 (. (%/!:6$ !. N$O-O$$;. It didn’t dawn on me that most people
thought of LSD as a hell world drug, nobody thought you could be rescued from it. All
trips were bad trips, yet I still got funding and went ahead with the rescue project.
In weeks I became the worlds rst psychedelic ambulance driver. The story was so
hot cover versions appeared in the N$O- 2(66hV#66$/. the S(. C%(.:!-:* 2+%*.!:6$ and
the Gd()!.$% every day. I lectured constantly and appeared on national television and
radio. The project carried a pilot grant sponsored by Al Dale, a radical Methodist minister and Alinskyite from Chicago and John Jones, another radical minister who did a
stint as a chaplain at San suentin. After that, and after seeing me walking Courtney
around the Haight-Ashbury on my shoulders (on the way to the museum with my brothers) Linda’s family resolved to take the baby away.
I was only able to see Courtney on weekends, but we still had fun together. I had a
great girlfriend then. Gerri Ganter and I raised champion Samoyed’s after I left Linda
and Courtney fell in love with the sire Basho, a gentle white giant with black and bisque
points. Basho slept at the foot of her bed when she stayed over at 1460 Masonic and
one of us always watched over her. At no time was she unguarded or left alone in the
house and at no time did she get the night willies. We had a nice house, a huge Maybeck,
mock Tudor. About the only time I was allowed to see Courtney was when Linda
needed a baby sitter. This made the schedule hard to keep, but if I ever once said no,
I knew what would happen. I repeat Gerri Ganter loved Courtney, even when she was
a handful. Its hard for a girl fresh out of graduate school to love a step-daughter, but
Gerri did.
When Jack Risi, Linda’s adoptive father fell dead on the street on the way to his
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ofce, things took a turn for the worse. As soon as Linda remarried, Linda’s second
husband, Frank Rodriguez, took over and Courtney grew alienated from me. At rst
I had no idea why. It was only years later that I learned they were brain-washing her.
According to the priests and nuns who snuck in to investigate Courtney at family
gatherings, perhaps her future exorcisers, Courtney, exposed to my Buddhism, was
becoming a “wild and pagan” child, exactly what she turned out to be anyway. It was
all my fault, they said, another no-no in all that is austere and pious. I guess they
reasoned Buddha was a manifestation of the devil.
Linda had a coterie of maids in waiting. At the end of the chain stood Dell Nan
Winblad, and Linda’s boon companion the late, Judy Carroll. To assure constant
attention the second rungers would vie to see who could tell the most salacious tales.
All of these girls were trained by nuns and Jesuits so you can imagine the mind-set.
Kathy Casey was probably the most compliant. In the less intelligent parts of Kathy’s
head I had given the kid acid, what other explanation could there be? It was magic and
Linda didn’t believe in magic. She took LSD several times herself, but was hardly
moved at all.
Perhaps the idea that I gave Courtney LSD was suggested by someone in her second
husband’s clan after he took the reins. Which is weird because I know he took acid
and smoked a lot of reefer himself. Sadly, no one will ever know the true story unless
the case comes down to taking lie detector testsicount me in. See the Polygraph
Results in Rear Matters.
I always knew Jack Risi, Courtney’s geriatric (adoptive) grandfather, was manipulating
events from behind the scenes. He liked doing that, he was, after all, Sicilian, but
whatever they were doing they didn’t want me to know about it. I was showing off the
baby to my extended family, in Pittsburgh, the cousins who taught me how to dance
the jitterbug, but, to the Risi’s I had kidnapped, their treasure. At the time I had no
idea they had already been using the baby for a hedge fund worth millions. I fought
hard but lost.
Linda divorced Frank, married Dave Menely and ran away to New bealand, placing
Courtney in several foster homes in the process, at least one in California. But throughout
all of that she continued to keep me from seeing my kid. Now I know why. She was
too embarrassed and the money was still in Courtney’s name, big money.
Frank, in turn, remarried taking Courtney’s two half-sisters, to live in Portland. Less
than two years later, about 19Q0, when she was seven or eight, Courtney had her rst
“crazy spell.” I learned about this from my sister Kathy and my mom, who remained
in touch, at least until Linda vanished. The word was, Courtney was going through
behavior modication therapy. My sister thought it would be alright, but I freaked.
This really pissed me off because I hated Behaviorism. You can’t imagine how this
news depressed me. Me, a dyed-in-the-wool ben, Rogerian, Jungian. Not only was my
kid gone, she was gone to the Watsonian enemy. Worse, this mind manipulation shit
didn’t work. It was supposed to save her, instead it tore her up.
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Linda now admits Courtney was given mind-altering drugs in Portland as part of
a therapy known as “Reparenting,” when she was ten years old. Accusing me of
giving Courtney drugs worked to throw off suspicions of child abuse for a while, but
the story didn’t end there.
I was outraged that Linda would let Courtney go crazy rather than send her back
to my family. The pain, at that point, almost broke me body and soul. I knew the kid
was suffering too. I was shut out and shutting down. I started dressing sloppy where
I used to polish my shoes and shave everyday. I began an emotional decline which
took me through decades of depression and blocked me from any form of compassion or romance. I didn’t learn how bad things were until I saw Courtney again in
19Q9 when she was fourteen. Her mom and Frank tossed her away,then when that
didn’t work they did a, “Hail Mary” and hoped I would score a TD. It might have
worked. I was hoping to be Courtney’s white knight, I was the last adult with legal
clout, but that didn’t last long, she turned 1P and took off.
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LIMPING BACK TO PARADISE
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he ride west from New York was bumpy due to fried shocks. Courtney got a
salmonella infection and we had to stop for a week in Madison to get her fixed.
She was in the hospital three days and we had to go to Catholic charities to
get a motel and pay the hospital tab. A year later I ran into the social worker on the
beach in San Francisco, how was that possible?
On the way back from Madison we blew an axle in Rapid City, and luckily found
a replacement, the rest of the trip was almost silent. The only winner in all of his was
the car owner in Milpitas. He was overjoyed to see his orange and red clunker pulling
in, now he could sign-up for the destruction derby the next week. The new Buick
would have been better, more fun, but Jack’s Jesuit paranoia forced us to crawl back
in a traumavagen. We were it’s last paying passengers.
The minute we hit San Francisco our troubles trebled. Linda couldn’t cook for beans
so she combined her angst and odd eating habits with her rebellion against me and
her parents. We acquired a wonderful Australian collie from the pound and named
him Kirby because he ate like a vacuum cleaner, except he ate whole hams. Meanwhile
Jack and Luella increased their efforts to break us up.
About a month after we got Kirby we started talking about an amicable divorce.
We fought a lot and I could see myself duplicating my mom and dad’s scenario. It
seemed obvious that we had to do something for the baby’s sake. My only stipulation was that I would always be able to see Courtney no matter what. That was the
fulcrum of the whole deal. Linda assured me there would be no problem.
Jack Risi didn’t want us to get a divorce at rst. He was a good catholic, so he helped
me nd a job at juvenile hall. That lasted for six months, but it was a dreary gig, especially the orphanage. When you nish your shift the kids grab on to your leg and
beg you to take them home. I realized I was the only man in history to have a key to
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the same cell he was in eight years earlier, but that dubious distinction didn’t help
much. I was also the rst legally sanctioned person to ever bring anybody down from
a bad LSD trip on the telephone. Big deal eh? Linda wasn’t impressed.
During my juvenile hall months, especially when I worked the night shift, Linda
was alone much of the time. She didn’t like it. I encouraged her to start college on
the assumption that her big brain needed some stimulation. As it happens she received more stimulation than we bargained for. She developed a platonic crush on
Father Shallert a Jesuit instructor in sociology at the University of San Francisco.
This guy was good looking, in fact he did some movies. Linda was smitten, and she
was irked, because I wasn’t jealous. But Shallert was such a really nice guy (for a
priest) and he got Linda motivated to attend college, that I gured the whole thing
was good for all concerned.
The peace zone gave us time to concentrate on Courtney and school. I thought:
“Hey things are taking a turn for the better.” Boy was I wrong. Like any queen-bee
Linda had a number of ladies in waiting at her side at all times. Two of them thought
I was the best thing that ever happened to Linda, and two of them thought I was the
most obnoxious asshole in the world. I was guilty of a number of complex heresies
including, High Anglicanism, Neo-Platonism, ben Buddhism and an obscure Irish
virus known to heresy buffs as Semi-Pelagianism, but who’s counting?
Kathy Casey, Linda’s acolyte in residence, accused me of stealing Linda’s soul, but
she had a twisted bond with Linda, a high school dependency. When Linda failed to
marry the ideal man, Kathy’s loneliness issues popped up. She had the whole sack
of woe on her back, alcohol in the family and the usual Irish folderol surrounding
virginity, pregnancy and marriage.
Kathy came back to haunt me at Courtney’s 19Q0 adoption trial. Casey’s derogatory
letter offered for the record, but not under oath, went into the court transcript. She
felt I would harm my child because I brought her home in an agitated condition. This
was true, we played hard, but also Courtney never freaked out when I came to pick
her up, only when I brought her back. What does that tell you?
If you would like to see the letters in support of my case feel free. I have included
them in Appendix B with my comments. Just remember that at no time did Kathy,
Linda or any other witness say, as has been reported, “ He gave Courtney LSD.”
That was a pure gment of Linda’s Oregonoid imagination. All anyone ever said
was, “ I fear he might harm her,” and even that was ridiculous,
In my eyes, Del Nan Winblad stood as the highest of Linda’s friend’s. I think she
too was Jewish. She had a wisdom that sprang from a beloved, childlike soul. She
was not a mystic by any means, but she always smiled and supported the institution
of marriage, for better or for worse, a perfect choice to be Courtney’s god-mother.
In Del Nan’s letter to the court she claims I hit on her. Now really, I wasn’t as bad as
Bill Clinton and even the president had the wisdom to avoid hitting on his wife’s best
friend. She "attered herself.
Karen Randall, who did not testify on Linda’s behalf, was my inside buddy. I liked
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her very much, the relationship was one of mutual sympathy. Karen and I saw eye
to eye on a number of political issues and we became close friends and condantes.
She was not an arch Catholic. She was open minded and wanted, more than anything, to be a stylish beatnik. Our double dates were always great fun.
Karen loved to tell high school tales about Linda’s days as the awkward class clown,
(nearly exposing herself during the graduation ceremony by stepping on her slip
beneath her gown, and later jumping into the pool wearing her mothers full length
mink coat during the graduation bash.
Like Courtney 30 years hence, Linda grew churlish and jealous of my rapport with
Karen. Karen stayed at our house to stand vigil while Linda was in labor because
Linda took up camp in the hospital for almost four days prior to having the baby and
three days postpartum. The length of stay may have had something to do with the
fact that Courtney took ten months to pop out and weighed nearly 10 lbs.
From that sprang the invalid supposition that “Randall” and I were having wild sex
while Linda labored with the baby, but even that’s not as bad as the comment that I
was on acid while Linda was in the hospital. These bizarre accusations were woven
out of whole-cloth by Ian Halperin of the writing team Halperin and Wallace, because, he claims, his editor needed more color in the book. They wrote two books
on Cobain, but they made some really dumb comments.
The late, Judy Carroll (no relation to Courtney’s lawyer) was the worst Hank hater
of the lot. She’s the one that started the rumor that I was going to give (or gave)
Courtney LSD. Judy spent every visit to our house tied to Linda, unless Andy Paoli,
John Alioto or Stan Chasen, one of my best pals from college, and a close double for
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Cary Grant, dropped in. It was natural that Judy and Stan should meet, but I didn’t
gure they’d fall in love. Judy was kind of frumpy, a Sisters-of-Mercy convent girl,
and nowhere near North Beach hip. Stan was super-hip and Jewish. Who knew?
Ms. Carroll held some kind of power over Lou Linda, a power to manipulate drawn
from the sketch book of the great Inquisitor Torquemada. She thought she was doing
Gods work. Linda marrying down and to a non-catholic was the worst thing Judy
could imagine, except maybe dating a Jew. I gured she was working for the Legions
of Mary (not the rock band) and O<#- 4$!. She and Linda even had the baby baptized
secretly, as if the presence of a pagan like me would somehow sully the purication
rites. I tried to explain that Episcopalians also baptize, but that wasn’t a rational
argument. Later I discovered Judy was working to have our marriage annulled all
along. Somehow, they got Linda revirginized.
Needless to say I was shocked to hear that Judy and Stan were married a few months
after Linda and I divorced. Sadly Judy and Stan got into an accident shortly after
their wedding (the VW Bug was no match for the embankment). Stan emerged
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emotionally scarred but physically unscathed, but Judy was DOA. Linda mourned over
Judy for years after she died in a horrendous auto accident. Eventually, through several
name changes, Linda took Judy’s last name.
The Linda Vrs. Hank divorce was no picnic. The domestic relations judge discounted
the anti-Hank letters as pure character assassination and felt they were irrelevant to
the issues before the court. He also said he hated to see Linda and Frank coaching
Courtney and hated to see the child brought into court to decide which parent she loved
the most. This did a great deal of damage to everyone. A<%$- trial, the judge, a closet
Deadhead, assured me that he read and appreciated the letters supplied by my attorney
upholding my claim to ght the adoption. He also told me that he felt there was something
strange going on and some peculiar legal issues to be dealt with by a higher court. G.
:()$%( he told me he was going to nd for the Plaintiff, but urged me to appeal.
A friend in Portland did some research and wrote back, people wrote letters in those
days, to tell me that Frank and Linda must have lied under oath in San Francisco when
they said they could provide a decent and intact family setting for Courtney. Turns out
they led for divorce several months before the trial...their statement of security for
Courtney was a "at out lie under oath. It was all about keeping the inheritance intact
so as to avoid paying taxes. There is no statute of limitations on perjury,
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MANHATTAN TRANSFERENCE
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ooking back on it one could call our trip to and from New
York a “hair-brained scheme.” We asserted our rights to raise our baby. We
grabbed her up, got a car from a drive-away service, joined CORE (Congress
On Racial Equality and SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and we
set out to register voters in the south, but we didn’t register a single voter in the long
run. We didn’t stay long enough, but we got more than an eyeful. We drove a beige
Nash Rambler with New York plates en route to sueens. Our license plates displayed
the dreaded Orange and Blue of the Yankee carpetbaggers, and, south of the Mason Dixon line, we were hog meat. We didn’t know the degree of peril we were facing. I
assure you, I would not have gone anywhere near the south with my kid in those days
if I knew how dangerous it was, but we figured we were safe as a family. We figured
the war between North and South was just some kind of fictional barleycorn. We were
from California, not New York. We figured people would know we were cool, besides,
we didn’t have Yankee accents. It didn’t dawn on me, until years later, that our California
accents probably triggered an even worse enmity in Southerners. We were just plain
wearing the wrong colors in enemy territory.
The CORE and SNCC buttons didn’t help.
Once we got into Mississippi It didn’t take long to gure we should maybe be heading back up North. Near Jackson we were held up for a “routine check” at a tollbooth.
The porcine toll taker said, “Whaaaat e u all doin’ in theses paaht’s?”
“None of your damned businesso” Linda shouted.
This didn’t help. Sounds like something Courtney would do eh? The toll taker puffed
up like a beet on steroids and started reaching for a pick handle, the local weapon of
choice when a shotgun is not available. I jammed the far too lugubrious Rambler into
a power slide and peeled the hell out, but not before almost losing my left arm. I wasn’t
fast enough and neither was the car. This here slimy gent reached out and grabbed my
wrist as I tossed the coins at him. I didn’t want to be chased down for nonpayment.
The sweat on his grubby paw saved my life and his grip faded as we sped away.
L
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Martin Luther King Day
January 1Qth, V011
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Bottom line… The South was still segregated. That’s the summer I saw my first
“Colored” water fountain. Linda figured the sign, etched in stone, meant orange
and green water would come out of it, but I knew the truth. Slavery was still alive
in Mississippi and Alabama. She was aghast when I explained what “Colored”
meant. My stomach turned. We soldiered on.
We decided to make it to New Orleans then turn up toward Valdosta through
Coffee Pot and Two Egg and Savannah. We loved Savannah, who doesn’t? It
reminded us of San Francisco, more than N.O. but Savannah was a bit run down
in those days and the hotels were too expensive. We slept in the car that night and
drove north the next morning. Courtney sloept hrough it all in the basinette. We
made it to Washington D.C. for a day then flipped up to New York, because I knew
I could drive cab in the Big Apple, I had done it before back in . Besides we
had to get the car to Queens ASAP.
' By the time we got back east, via New Orleans, the gig fell through, so I took to
driving cab. People seem astonished when I tell them I drove cab in Manhatten, but
if you learn to drive in San Francisco you can drive anywhere. +%'N%-%'[K*$',"')'
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“The trip wasn’t a total bust. We still got to see all of the museums and haunts and
Courtney stayed healthy, everybody loved her wherever we went and we picked up
fares in heavy trafc. Linda chatted to the fares about the baby as I drove, I cut the
prices in half, and the people always tipped large. I was, after all, a real smooth driver.
Gas for this rig was only Q cents per gallon in those days.
By the time we were ready to pack it in I had accumulated about uS00.00 in small
bills. I sold the muskets too, one was fabulously collectable and we spent one night at
the Algonquian before deciding to move down to the East Village to see Dylan and
some club action. Even then the action was all between Avenue A and B near Saint
Mark’s Square. The epicenter of which was a hot little jazz club known as the Five
Spot. This club happened to be physically linked to a bathhouse, the baths were
notoriously gay lunatic asylums, but the club was clean, and the crowd was hip.
Our last night in Manhattan was spent at the Valencia Hotel, now known as Saint
Mark’s Hotel and our room was on the mezzanine "oor just above the Five Spot.
Around midnight we heard Charlie Mingus playing “Around Midnight” directly beneath
our room. I put my ear to a pillow
on the "oor and drifted off listening
to the strains of “Good-bye Porkpie
Hat” (not a juke box, the real deal)
through the "oorboards.
There was another irony to staying
at the St Marks. Five years after
we stayed there with Courtney in
a basinette, St. Mark’s Place, became
a punk rock mecca. The hotel was
completly renovated to house new
stars with new money while the
boutiques between Avenue A and
B along 3rd Ave. supplied the likes
of The Ramones and Debbie Harry
of Blondie . In V00S stores like
Trash and Vaudeville supplied My
Chemical Romance with the jackets
they wore on the Warped Tour.
But things weren’t that clean or
commercial two years after President
Kenedy was shot. St. Mark’s Place
was as funky as New York could
get. We had to get back to San
Francisco.
I didn’t enjoy being the left-kicker
in the love triangle, but Linda
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cheered up a lot and life was bearable at home as long as I went to mass with her once
in awhile. We always made sure we would go over to Jack’s church on Geary and
Laurel Heights too, just to make sure the Risi’s saw us. It wasn’t hypocrisy, just a matter
of keeping peace in the family. I could never get them to visit Grace Cathedral or the
bendo in Japan town with me, but I wasn’t trying very hard. Eventually we had to
seperate, which led to a divorce. I asked for visitation rights but eventually that just
zzled out and Linda took off to Oregon with Frank Rodriguez.
At that point my lawyer sold me out and told me I should perhaps try to kidnap the
baby. He called it the, “Lindburgh Route.” I didn’t take that option, it would have led
to madness. I took the defeat in a tearful stride. I went down to Tassajara for a ben retreat, which helped a lot, hung out on Partington Ridge in Big Sur and got better. Then
I moved to Aptos, in the big trees near Santa Cruz all the while dreaming of Europe.
The Warlock’s era was over, The Grateful Dead were just starting to roll into the big
time. The future was calling.
A:
WYTCHES FROM SALEM
Remember always, wyt is thee rst part of an wytch.
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ourtney became a throw away child at the age of ten. A disposable unit. A
single use razor blade. Her mother was stymied by her behavior, but, as stated
earlier, instead of sending her back to me, my mom or my sister, Linda just
dumped her on the system like a bag of detritus in a land fill, and kept the trust funds
secret. Courtney had no self-esteem, and in the first weeks of living with me, it became
clear I was not prepared to help her. Honestly I was too screwed up myself.
As mentioned earlier, Linda and her clique were schooled by the Geese of God so,
Courtney had Dominican Catholicism (founders of the Inquisition) jammed down her
throat. She didn’t see any place to soothe her lost self-esteem. Naturally she was attracted
to various aspects of the occult, the feminist power of Wicca, and drugs, everything
but marijuana. She didn’t know about H$%)$/!: a(7!(, or good deeds, but she knew
how to hate and be hated. The juvenile hall in Salem, Oregon (odd coincidence in town
names) and the nuns in her deep background, taught her more violence, more self"agellation and how to play the role of the martyr better than any Nintendo game. The
abstract tears of the ?!%7$ .*!%, made no sense to her.
She did however nd a churchithe grand cathedral of rock and rollia catechism
tailor-made for the alienated and disenfranchised kids in the streets. Her mother was
a lapsed, but charismatic Catholic who believed in all of the good stuff and saw nothing
paradoxical about divorcing and remarrying or adopting or rejecting children, as the
number of bedrooms allowed. She saw no theological paradox between the Pauline
catechism and re walking. Linda knew the oracles of I-Ching, Kabbalah and Tarot,
but had no deep appreciation of them as excellent replacements for Ink Blots.
Juvie reveled another aspect of Courtney’s personality, the Irish Warrior Gene started
rearing its ugly head. I knew Courtney was smart, now she was showing signs of true
brilliance. As mentioned earlier, Courtney was raised in a bookish world. Her mother,
cultivated an amazing library loaded with psych books, the poems of e.e. cummings
and the novels of Carson McCullers. Linda also owned dozens of books on criminology,
forensics and crime scene detection. All of which Courtney memorized. This is extremely
important revelation if you want to understand the Cobain case as an assassination.
My library featured the complete works of C.G. Jung, and books on astroarchaeology
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and the megaliths of Western Europe. I was also
researching Shakespearian theories of the nonStradfordian type, and ben sutras. As for art,
unlike her motheriwho preferred arts and craftsi
I papered my walls with real Picasso’s, Dali’s,
and the works of the Dutch Symbolist school. I
collected the Santa Cruz dadaists like Futzie
Nutzle and Henry Humble, and often had the
artists themselves visiting the house. In addition,
after 19PV, I inherited Jerry Garcia originals and
the art of the Haight-Ashbury arists, Wes Wilson,
Rick Grifn, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso and
Mouse. I also displayed posters of Klimpt and
Mucha and owned signed prints from the cartoon
pop of Roy Liechtenstein. The soft “white writing”
of Mark Toby was always hanging in the foyer
next to a real Frank Llyod Wright sketch.
Courtney never crawled around on bare "oors,
and she knew the difference between a Sarouk
and a Bokarah at infancy. More importantly she
knew the feel of silk and cashmere against her
skin and she knew the sounds of the nest music
played on the nest analog stereos which she
heard through Lowther speakers, even in her embryonic stage.
Needless to say the trailer trash, who ran the program at Hillcrest borstal, were not
happy to see the likes of Courtney or her dad, darkening their doorstep and when a rich
beatnik, like me, showed up in a "ashy car, they really freaked out. But they were also
happy to see the back of her when I bailed her out.
Courtney, the willful child, was now, what we might call, a “shit disturber.” By the
time I found her in Hillcrest she had the whole place organized. She was erudite and
classy (relative to that scene) and had recruited fellow inmates as servants to do her
laundry. But she was not spiritually enlightened. She knew the streets, but little else.
Even in her bruised state of mind, her childhood memories came forward. She was fast
becoming and overcompensating dilettante who lorded her social standing over those
less fortunate. In other words, she had no concept of .*36$- *36!7$ and her tantrums
were so hysterical her friends routinely let her win at S:%(336$. If I had raised her that
wouldn’t have happened.
When she got out-of-line the wardens of Salem’s largest school used belt-down barespringed cots for time-outs. I know because the head-counsellor, a pecker-pole named
Bill Cline, took me on a tour one sunny Saturday and showed me those time-out cells
with great enthusiasm, even going so far as to tout this kind of treatment as the latest
in modern penology. I guess I failed to exhibit an appropriate state of glee. I asked him
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if he had ever seen the torture chambers in the castle at Ghent, but it went right over
his head. I knew he wasn’t happy with me because he invited me to church the next
morning, several times. I told him I was Jewish, and that was the end for him. I lied of
course, may my Jewish friends forgive me, but it worked. The Nazi gave up on my
conversion like a hot spud. I thought this odd. Here’s a man, an authority gure, who
not only smokes like a chimney, but allows the inmates, even 1V year olds, to smoke.
As long as they went to some fundamentalist church their souls would be saved?
WRONG?
Not my kid. I could see he was running’ a pimp string, and Bill Cline had no way
to control it except to allow cigarettes and make-up for good behavior. In Hillcrest cigarettes were equal to love. Wherever she is, Courtney is still addicted to Nicotine.
Around noon I begged for a break from Cline’s ponticating on how well the kids
waxed the halls. My salvation came in the form of a charming woman named Bibi
Rubio. Ms. Rubio was specically concerned with Courtney. “Are you Courtney’s
father?’ She asked.
“Why ? What did I do now?” I queried with a paranoid stare.
She laughed, “No don’t worry.”
She then asked another question. “Are you the same Hank Harrison who wrote those
books on the Grateful Dead?”
“Hmmm well er ahh, yes.”
I could tell from the glint in her eye, and the tie-dye, macrame earrings, that she was
a Deadhead, an Oregon Deadhead, the most rabid kind.
That brief conversation gave me an insider on the ward. When Rubio was on station
Courtney could call me, as long as it was collect. We spoke twice a week.
Finally I wangled a vacation pass for her. Courtney came to stay with me for a visit
and then she stayed a while longer, until she wiggled free and got grown up and, out
of trouble. Of course, demanding that her mother give her the bread was part of the
process. Like the Warhol debutante Edie Sedgwick, as soon as she got the cash she
started getting into trouble again. Nobody could have stopped her anyway.
Rescuing Courtney wasn’t the whole story. That prison was full of kids, most of them
worth rescuing. Sadly, very few emerge unscathed, and none of them had parents who
could arrive in a private plane and send them dozens of red roses.
The exact same world that formed Tonya Harding formed Courtney Love the difference is early childhood enrichment. Maybe it was the rain or the lack of sunlight. There
are several good reasons why they call Portland, “Bongwater.”
Courtney sensed I was hurting inside and she cruelly, instinctively, refused to listen.
She was determined to make me pay. She wanted to punish me for abandoning her.
She did not know, until I told her, that I did not abandon her, that I loved her and that
she was ripped away from me in a bog Irish court battle. I doubted she would ever
believe me. My rst lesson in teen parenting was a quick and painful one. If you think
you are going to get some good vibes out of a broken child forget it. Courtney refused
A>
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to review the tapes and court
documents I had compiled over
the years, evidence that would,
I thought, help us heal the
woundsitapes and photographs
and letters that might explain
why I did not rescue her. I still
have the tapes, now on CD, and
some of the letters are included
with this text, if anybody
cares.
Two days after she moved in
with me she used the clothes I
bought her at Macy’s to dress
up like Edie Sedgwick, cigarette in one hand, wine in the
2*#%/.$8 N V%(.58i S(#-(6!*i Y\Z\
other. We reminisced about old
times. I tried to probe her
memory, to see if she recalled any fragments of the days when she and I were allowed
to be happy. She seemed to remember little sparks, shards of stories, snippets of photographs. I even wrote a children’s book for her, the 4%$() I6(:$.
Courtney vaguely remembered the day we were out in a row boat on Stow Lake, in
Golden Gate Park, when she was three. It was the “Summer of Love.” She wore a sailor
suit, one of those hats with the swallow tail ribbons in back. The gulls were gliding on
updrafts around the dory as I rowed. She pointed to the sky excitedly and screamed,
“Bird daddy, give me bird,” so I reached up and grabbed one by the legs and gave it to
her. Nobody believes the story, but it’s true. My ben training taught me to be very
quick. Courtney got very excited because she wanted to keep the sea gull, but she also
realized something deeper, she sensed she was quick too, very athletic like my Olympian
father. I tried to take the bird away from her but she wouldn’t let go. I said, “It has to
be free to "y honey.” Courtney wasn’t having any of it. It was hers. She began to pout.
The gull, who had been serene up to that point, began to "ap madly. The magic act
was about to end in a bloody tussle with a wild scavenger, big sucker too. Finally I had
to let it go. I asked her to make a wish, then blow on the bird and make it "y away. She
did and the bird obliged, but she was sad after that. That event was the story of our life
together…serene then savage, athletic, animalistic, and nally dreamlike and sad. She
didn’t want to go back to Linda’s house and I guess she threw a major tantrum when
she got home. Courtney told Linda I caught a bird, Linda gured I was nuts and began
to distance her from me, even more than before the divorce. Linda’s maids in waiting
assumed I gave the kid acid. It was all over after that. The reality got pounded into dust
by narrow minded nags who could not believe a father could catch a seagull barehanded,
but I did.
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As stated earlier, I didn’t see Courtney for many years after her mother married for
the third time and moved to New bealand. Then all of sudden in 19QQ, after a long
commute from Sausalito to Lockheed in Mountain View, Frank, the second husband,
calls me, wants to know my mailing address because Courtney wants to write to me,
and a week later the rst letter arrives. How stupid of me. At rst I thought Hillcrest
was a private school. Then slowly, after days of wondering, it dawns on me… “It’s a
juvenile home. Why was she in an institution?” I sent her roses. At the time I had no
inkling that Frank was dumping her on me because his second old lady had it up to
the gills with Courtney’s bullshit. I remember Frank’s comment, “She’s just like you
Hank.” It took me years to realize he meant it as a put-down.
In spite of the tears and maudlin nature of the rst hours, the rst visit went reasonably
well and a new era opened. I have it all on tape. Throughout the summer of 19Q9 I
worked with the authorities to regain custody. Ironically I became the last legal guardian
of Courtney Michelle Rodriguez Menely, nee Harrison. I got my kid back, sort of by
default. My heart soared at the chance to be her dad again, to be anybody’s dadiI had
already given a son up for adoption two years before I met Linda and I was feeling
pretty bad about it.
It turns out Courtney didn’t think of her last view of Hillcrest as a rescue, nor did
she think of me as her White Knight. To her it was a jail break. It was an all Girl’s
school at the time and boys had only begun to be admitted about two years earlier.
Now the girls have their own facility in Albany, Oregon.
Courtney, more than anything in life, wanted to be a rock star, but she carried a lot
of baggage. Courtney was ten when she entered the system and sixteen when me and
Ms. Rubio busted her out. In that shadowy /!)$ she mastered the world of lost innocence and was well on her way to being a dark savant. The queen of Nowhereland.
From that point on she knew she was going to marry a rock star and reek havoc on the
world that hurt her.
AA
PEACEABLE KINGDOM
Well I’m sittin’ over here on Parchman’s track,
got a twelve gauge shotgun at my back.
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omething was wrong at my daughters house in Seattle. I knew
it from the jagged way the news reports were coming down on Saturday after
Kurt’s body was located. I also sensed something was radically wrong with
the investigation. There was no true flow rate, no consistency in reporting. It was as
if somebody was trying to manage the local Seattle news from Hollywood or New
York. That turned out to be exactly what was happening. I knew it was possible
because I’ve done it myself.
I grew even more concerned after being interviewed on-line by one Seattle newspaper team two nights after the story broke. Some of the questions they were asking
could have only risen from some very strange premises. Why was Dylan Carlson on
the hot seat? Who was this Dylan dude? Why did Courtney "ip out in her hotel room
in Beverly Hills?, People were still asking these questions in V001, so she started
raving on-line. I am pretty sure this was done to blow a lot of smoke. It worked.
Then came the silence. News of Kurt’s demise set like cement as the week wore
on. It was a suicide. Or was it? How could anyone, at the peak of their career, go
down so fast? People usually kill themselves for depressing reasons, business failure, they have cancer, their spouse died, a child died, or they are psychotic, but Kurt
had no such symptoms. Junkies rarely kill themselves except by accident and they
never shoot themselves with guns. Something was radically wrong.
The Pulitzer prize winners on the S$(//6$h"!)$- staff moved on to covering the ins
and outs of Microsoft billionaire, Paul Allen’s purchase of the Portland Trailblazers.
Cobain’s assassination, was old news two weeks after he died, but thousands of people
remained curious.
I visited Seattle many times in the 19Q0s on my way to and from Canada, but now
I only knew one or two people there. Furthermore the journalists who asked me those
heated questions were now as tight lipped as Pismo clams. They wouldn’t even return
my phone calls. That’s a sure sign Courtney has turned on the charm.
S
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There was nothing left to do but hop a plane. So, less than two weeks after Kurt died,
I "ew to Seattle for a two-day reconnaissance trip. When I booked in I had no idea I
would be returning to do the Geraldo Rivera show in early May.
On Alaska Airlines "ight 3P out of San Jose, I spotted a well-dressed dude in a
window seat reading the A5?*:(/$, the premiere gay magazine, with Kurt Cobain on
the cover dressed in his Doctor Denton’s. Kurt wasn’t gay, but he stuck up for gay
rights.
My friend Matt McCauley, a full blooded Cawachin artist and photographer who
worked in the American Indian Movement (AIM) met me at the airport with my refurbished 19QP Mercedes. I gave Matt the car a year earlier in Palo Alto, before he
moved to Seattle, and I was amazed it still ran. Matt was an ex-alcoholic, now working as a substance abuse counsellor.
“Very grand for an injun.” I teased him about the car.
“Hah, what you know, white eye?” He self-satirized. “Injun inherit whitey’s headaches.”
“Ah yes.” I replied. “But whitey inherit Hitler’s headaches.” We both laughed so hard
we almost got lost. It took us about two hours to get from the airport to Lake Washington
because we had to stop and ask directions ve times.
The drive along Lake Washington is one of the most beautiful any city could have.
It’s like Minneapolis, but the hills jut up directly from the lake so almost everybody
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“owns” a view and everybody owns a telescope to scope out their neighbors sailing on
the lake or maybe taking-off in their seaplanes.
The afternoon sun swept across the water as we pulled up to the Leschi Market. Matt
wanted a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. I wanted the coconut, vanilla-bean
chip. Matt won. I could hear Courtney and her girlfriends snickering as they referred
to me as Mr. Mucosa and Toxic Dad when they lived upstairs at my house in Menlo
Park. But that was then and this was exactly ten years later and we were no longer in
my domain. The Lakeside homes slid by as the diesel strained occasionally to pull the
hills overlooking the lake. The ofcial greeting sign on the pole across the street from
the Leschi market under the Egyptian eyeball symbol proclaimed:
34&2"&2"("/650R76..").&04I$64$$/"
' C*'N%')00-,)J3%&'$3%'3,K*%'N%'",$#J%&'$3)$'$3%')bQ-)P%'2-%%"3,K*%'N3%-%'XK-$'
&#%&'N)*'IK#.$'&#-%J$.1(,"'$,0',Q')"')cK#Q%-',"')'=",..L'IK$'$3%'$%..K-#J'JK--%"$'#*'$N#*$b
%&:'<A3%'P)#"'3,K*%'3)*'-%).'I)&'O#I%*L>'D)$$'N3#*0%-%&:
“Yeah, I can feel it in my gut, bad Feng Shui, the earth energy looks good, but the
property rolls up against a steep bank and plugs into a billy goat lot.”
“What white eye think?” Matt feigned his Tonto dialect.
“Hunh, yeah, hey be serious.” I whispered. We were now standing on the apron of
the lawn to the little park next to the house. Mourners were lighting candles literally
everywhere. “See there.” I pointed to the slope of the hill. “The lake stimulates the
good vibe, but traps the Yang force creating a sense of stale richness.”
Three brick chimneys jut above the mansard style dormers, indicating that the upstairs
rooms have replaces too, and yet, even on the coldest nights in January and February,
the neighbors, not the least of which is Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbuck’siever
saw smoke coming out of those chimneys.
Courtney adored the house because it afforded all around privacy, situated, as it is,
immediately adjacent to Viretta Park, named after an early Seattle pioneer. This is a
miniature wooded grove at the base of the same steep slope that buttresses the house.
The park features a single bench in the middle of a small patch of lawn. Kurt sat on
that bench almost everyday. Fans are starting to take splinters from it as souvenirs. If
you sit on the bench you can see straight across the lake, the same view Kurt saw on
his last day as he guarded his property, shotgun on his lap, waiting for a chance to
escape.
Courtney liked the house because it afforded instant status, the kind of status Kurt
didn’t care about. As it turns out the house was originally built by the Bagley-Wright
family for two generations prior to World War II. Their S$(//6$ L$$;68 is one of the
oldest papers in the Northwest and the prestigious theater group that bears their name,
continues as a Seattle landmark in the arts.
The people across the street at 149 were building a new retaining wall when Kurt
died. The Schultz family, whose property was also contiguous with Viretta Park, had
:B<
H(.; H(%%!-*.
R$:*.-/%#:/$5 7(%(7$ (/ '(;$-!5$ H*#-$ (- *0 [bb>= "+$ :*./%(:/*% O(2(6! 4$L!//Q- 0(/+$%=
recently built a driveway ostensibly without a proper survey. This driveway touched
the micro park on its way to the back of the Schultz mansion. A group of irate neighbors
threatened to sue the city. Schultz dened the driveway as an easement\ the neighbors
called it an encroachment.
From the moment they moved in the Cobain’s were unwittingly stuck into a big, fat
:B=
'*?$ K!66-
S!$O 0%*) S$%$//( I(%; 6$-- /+(. [b 0$$/ 0%*) O+$%$ K#%/Q- 3*58 O(0*#.5= "+$ AhC%()$ !- 7*.$ .*Oi 3#/ .*/$ /+$ -#%?$!66(.:$ :()$%(-=
property dispute over Schultz’s driveway, which was described in the a(5%*.( A5?$%/!-$%
as the “Lakeside tar baby.” The local paper implied that the widow Love-Cobain was
leaning toward the encroachment side of the argument, since she already had a driveway and didn’t much care for Starbuck’s Morning Medley anyway.
They had been moving in since December, but ofcially, Courtney and Kurt, (?$:
%$/!.#$, moved in on January 14, 1994. Bill Baillargeon, the next door neighbor down
the hill, made an effort to meet the Cobain’s and fell immediately in love with Frances.
Baillargeon described Kurt and Courtney as “exemplary neighbors,” but obviously
they were putting their best hoof forward. Baillargeon’s description con"icts with reports from other neighbors who thought the frequent sight of naked women in the
upper windows, police cars in the driveway and a steady stream of visitors, limos and
taxis depreciated the neighborhood considerably.
The cedar shake house, which was described erroneously in the British rock media
as qgranite,’ had a few shingles missing. You could see that the occupants hadn’t sold
out to New York Fabrics. The windows, at least when Kurt lived there, were covered
only with sheetsiclean, pink percale tted queens, but bed sheets none the less. This
beguiling little “touch” brought out the "avor of the true shabbiness both Courtney
and Kurt were accustomed to as pre-teens. I guess the neighbors weren’t aware that
Grunge music was the driving force behind “shabby deco,” the latest craze in recycled
design. More importantly, on a psychic level, Courtney now had penis parity with her
:B>
H(.; H(%%!-*.
mother, her house was bigger. I repeat, Baillargeon may have accepted Kurt and
Courtney, but other neighbors were not so accommodating. Many grew suspicious
when Kurt failed to show up for a neighborhood welcoming party in his honor during
the “Ides” of March, I guess they didn’t hear about Kurt’s coma in Rome. Courtney
was in control by then. All the way.
After Kurt died most of the neighbors, once happy to have a celebrity on the block,
found the spooky fan parade intolerable. In one case a certain Dachshund’s daily visit
to the shrubs had to be rerouted. In another, more drastic, case a neighbor just plain
pulled up stakes and moved.
Yet another neighbor was suspicious from the beginning saying, “It was almost as if
no one lived there.” He might be right. By April Fools Day 1994, Kurt was a ghost of
himself and the ghost may still be there. Unlike Elvis, who is reportedly still alive, and
Jim Morrison, who has appeared to a number of acid heads at Pwre le Chaise cemetary
in Paris, Kurt’s “spook” was sighted in a trench coat, like the one he wore on grafti
runs in Olympia, wandering sadly (and some say drunkenly) about the park looking
for his gravestone. Okay, maybe you have to be stoned to see him, but drugs and booze
are usually the driving force behind supernatural rock star stories in the rst place.
Many people have reported seeing Kurt’s spectre glowing along the hedgerow, waiting
for release, like the Canterville Ghost. When he nds his tomb he will probably go
there. If Pwre le Chaise won’t have him perhaps I could suggest Newgrange in Ireland.
At least at Newgrange we could truly say he was wanted for a sunbeam.
!"#$%'/,K-$"%1')I)"&,"%&'$3%'*3)II1'*3#cK%'&%J,-')"&'I%2)"'0KP0#"2'#$'K0:'?1'$3%'
$#P%'$3%'?)-I)-)''+).$%-*'J-%N')--#O%&L'#"']%J%PI%-',Q'7ddeL'$3%'0.)J%'.,,=%&'.#=%')'
Q%)$K-%'#"'A%:+!/$:/#%(6 4!7$-/.
Two years later Courtney’s actdc pals at H(%<$%Q- V(e((% called her, “The most stylish
woman in America.” But no amount of spackle or /%#)< 6Q *!6$ was going to revive the
limping Chi in that house. The site was screwed up, not the decor. In July of 1996 she
announced plans to have the greenhouse and the notorious planting room, torn down,
probably as a birthday present to herself. She claimed it was razed because Kurt’s fans
came around and caused trouble, but the fans showed up anyway. After the A-frame
disappeared she promptly put the place on the auction block. It didn’t sell right away,
even with the renovations. She told the "!)$- the renovations were needed to gain yard
space, and the porch entrance and planter boxes were necessary to get rid of termites,
but the local union steward said all the builder did was tear down the A-frame walls
and lay out a "at, tar covered, roof. I knew that wasn’t true because you could see the
painters at work outside on the main house, the new shingles were done and the
scaffolding went both inside and out. As I hung up, my source quipped that the real
reason the job was done was to get rid of Kurt’s ghost, but it didn’t work.
:BC
TELLTALE HEART
M
att takes his leave to walk down to the lake shore. He says he’ll see me back
at the car. He’s going to guard the ice cream.
I did not see the ghost, but rows of votive candles "ickered near the small
bench in the park. A dozen mourners sat on the grass around the bench. Older folks
were conspicuously absent. Shavings of red cedar taken from the tree closest to the
garage were scattered on the lawn. Someone spelled out Kurt’s name in lotus petals.
A diminutive woman in a granny dress and Rastafarian cap in the colors of the Jamaican
"ag, knelt to place a sprig of heather at the site. A witch burned a special incense and
dozens of people milled about the cul-de-sac down near the lake.
Slightly up the hill, someone impaled three Celtic crosses, made of twigs and string,
into the turf. One of the crosses was composed of a horizontal twig and a vertical ballpoint pen (like the note Kurt left) as if to punctuate the fact that Kurt would write no
more. A postcard with the words:
Grunge is Deado
stuck out of the tree bark and someone tacked a picture of Kurt to the bottom of the
tree. Kurt’s mother Wendy O’Conner, wore a black “Grunge is Dead” t-shirt as she
went out for groceries. A magazine page with Kurt smirking dreamily out from the
folds was twisted around a small stick. Courtney claimed she spread a few of his ashes
at the base of this tree, but they “Blew.”
A hand written note stuck in the tree bark, read simply:
&'(#%)*)+,ll)."#)/,ll)012$l3
a2)l".5)a2)*)ha7$)$a(2)#")h$a()1"'()0'2,89
:$2#),.)p$a8$<
:"=$(#
Matt held a brief conversation with one of Kurt’s neighbors while I walked around
the park. The neighbor looked disgustedly at the circling tour buses near his house.
“They’re like moths playing in a light beam, aren’t they?” Matt asked, smiling.
The scholarly man pulled his Pringle cashmere tight to his skin as he spoke, “They
may look like moths, but they hang around like vultures.”
:B?
H(.; H(%%!-*.
Sheela na Gig
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I couldn’t avoid hearing a member of a feminist group shouting as she waved incense
around like a Fourth of July sparkler, “Grunge isn’t dead. Babes in Toyland started it
and Babes Liveso” I guess she was making a reference to “Bird Liveso” the headline
that appeared when Charlie Parker died, I could help but feel a gut check at that point.
Could these young people really be that hip? Did our old revolution really do that much
good? I was impressed and feeling a bit old and out of it too.
I noticed two kids placing a bunch of sage under a tree close to the solarium. More
votive candles "icker on the sidewalk ve meters down the road.
I walked into the woods above the house to rest my bones and drink in the lake
breezes mixed with incense red by the mourners.
On the way back to the car I spoke to a man in a straw boater who was walking in
wavy circles holding an outstretched willow rod.
I was right. The place was sitting on the dome of a giant aquifer. “Normally, this
would be terric…” the white haired gent spoke with a strong West Country accent,
one of the more pleasant of the British rural argots. He spoke as he walked, “…but
unfortunately, the house traps the upward current. The negative energy comes to a
jagged point right here.” The dowsing rod pointed directly to where Kurt’s body was
found. I said, “If there’s a ghost its stuck here.”
:B@
'*?$ K!66-
“Yes, I know.” The wise man nodded.
“Who are you?” I asked, as if I were the caterpillar smoking the hookah in A6!:$ !.
L*.5$%6(.5=
He handed me his business card without saying a word.
His name was Christopher Rudman, his address was:
Fishponds
Saint Michael’s Close,
Glastonbury, England.
When I looked up he was gone.
The card also gave his occupation as “Geomancer.”
I laid down on the park lawn and let the chaos "ow over me. I had a kind of daydream
about Glastonbury. How the tower on the Tor is really a giant sundial and how it sends
a shadow down the side as it intersects with the path of the labyrinth. How many
pilgrims have trod up that 600 ft Tor over the past S000 years? How many Druids and
Christians? How many people know the secret of the place? How many know the
view from the Tor shows the signs of the zodiac when the land "oods.
I wanted to show Courtney how it all worked. I wanted to take her there and, in my
daydream I thought of taking Francis there too. It is one of the great spiritual centers
of the ancient world, but now, all I could feel was the sadness of the Nirvana fans
milling about in the park.
I could see the lake fog moving in, a precursor of rain in the morning. The Nirvana
fans began drifting away with the sunlight. The little park, next to the house and less
than S0 feet from where Kurt died, would always be a shrine, a place of pilgrimage
for the son I never met.
{
I returned to the car to nd Matt asleep at the wheel. The 2+$%%8 H(%:!( was now
an empty cylinder, evidence of an attack of blind munchies. To make matters worse
we were fresh out of Sour Diesel, mainly because Matt ate the roach.
I sensed that we should probably do something constructive like maybe drive out to
Carnation to check out the house that never got lived in, but we would have been lost
in ten minutes. The D.J. on the radio suggested we go to the Crocodile Club. Matt, as
usual, took pictures with his old, but trusty Nikon as we drove into town. The fading
light bathed the pushed Tri-x, and then, all of sudden, there it was: the Crocodile Club.
Inside, Matt assured me, we would soon discover the true meaning of “Grunge.”
:BA
CROCODILE TEARS
HRFNHG !- /+$ .*!-$ 8*#% 7(%(7$ 5**% )(;$-=
K#%/ 2*3(!.
S
eattle is one of the most beautiful cities in America and it handles the balance
of old and new remarkably well. The new part is Microsoft, the old part is
Boeing, the really old part is Klondike Gold Rush. Seattle, like all of the coastal
cities from Vancouver to San Franciscoiwith the exception of San Diegoialso
features a legendary bohemian underground, a Barbary Coast, derivative of the goldrush,
a dark past which has followed the town’s progress from the nineteenth century onward.
The western expansion poured people in from the East and the Pacicside brought
Asia with each new tide. The two ingredients that fuel this melting pot have always
been massive amounts of caffeine and boozeion the surfaceiwith opium just beneath.
More recently WTC and Heroin came in, big time.
Here, amidst the ruins of Kurt’s Grunge world, lies an ancient intellectual thread,
an echo of the brass tack pianos of the Ragtime era and Jack London’s treks to the
Yukon. To trace Seattle’s spirit as it swam though this cultural stew, you have to visit
the Crocodile Bar and Grill
When Nirvana played there it was grungadylic, but since alternative music made it
big the Crocodile has been gentried, even immortalized. Where it once served beer
and jug wine it now also serves a wide range of cocktails, from Mimosas to Toxic
Marys. When I rst visited the “Croc,” it was pristine in its funkyness and I apologize
to all who appreciate it in its upcaste raiment.
:%&(;'(,--.<(2"424$#*6(2%!6<
A be-bop wino, must have painted the prm that spreads across the scofet over the
window and extends across the ceiling:
T   
I   
     
      …
::B
'*?$ K!66-
I guess this is Grunge? It looks like nostalgic “beat generation” poetry to me, but
heck I’m out of it. The Calder thingee overhead looks like it came from Dracula’s spare
room, a greasy and downsized version of something from the old Haight-Ashbury
scene. This '( V*+s)$ head space is crisscrossed by a cheesecloth spider web ensnaring artistic symbols. A Royal upright typewriter bolted to the cornice balances against
a painter’s palette and paint brushes. A broken guitar, smashed by Cobain himself,
sticks out above the counter area. A bent tennis racket rounds out the arachnoid assemblage, although I can not understand what a tennis racket, bent or otherwise, is
doing in this drama unless you consider tennis an art form.
The Crocodile presents a scene that square folks will never grasp. It is Grunge. Here
white supremacist skinhead intellectuals (if that isn’t an oxymoron) can converse easily
with white supremacist skinhead anti-intellectuals while they wait for their junk man
to arrive with their daily slam paper or crank balloon. They read an old copy of the
R*:;$/ (now defunct) while they wait. Jitters break out on a few foreheads. Charles
Cross, a one time editor of the R*:;$/, made millions in V00V and all he had to do was
kiss Courtney’s pinky ring. His book on Nirvana made Kurt look like a dumb ass and
was accelerated up the lists because it argued for the suicide theory. For some reason,
Courtney wanted it that way.
Beyond the musty tollbooth curtain lies an entire cosmos, a -(.:/#) -(.!/(%!#), a
little black room with a stage lined with red naugahyde. A old bar scene studded with
brass tacks, there to remind us of the archeology of its former incarnations.
There’s nothing grungier than a Seattle nightclub in the daytime, but this is a diurnal habitat for underground swarmers and it must be viewed as a Lilliputian stage upon
which all souls are actors and all actors eventually exit stage left.
“There it is.” I say to myself, “The stage upon which Kurt played a secret show for
the University of Washington on the night of October V9, 199V after playing that same
afternoon in Bellingham for a scholarship fund for Western Washington
University. “It’s also the stage upon
which Dave Grohl almost had a
nervous breakdown after Kurt
died.”
I seat myself outside the entrance
to the inner room, as if I was an
outside sentinel at a Masonic Lodge.
Strings of lost car keys dangle above
my head. These homeless metallic
icons are tacked to the entrance
gate as if to warn all who enter that
they would soon be oblivious to
things like keys and cars and nding
one’s way home.
I am sitting next to the portals
:::
H(.; H(%%!-*.
of Dante’s Inferno reading the warning, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” So
many lost keys over the years, so many forgotten doors. Jean Cocteau walks by and
nods knowingly. My cholesterol special arrives on a chipped oval plate spuds and eggs
and Canadian bacon stacked two deep. I wonder who or what “Megan Vegan” is?
The “Love You” special is posted, but I can’t read the handwriting. I guess the guy
who wrote the sign was snifng fumes from the marker pen.
A redheaded waitress wobbles by on platform shrs. Maybe she is Megan Vegan.
Her mood is blase. She looks voluptuous, like one of the R. Crumm bAP comix pinups
from the late 1960s, but the stamp on her hand betrays a preference for the Afghan
Whigs.
The catsup won’t come out of the bottle? My waitress hates meat and she hates me
for ordering meat, and yet she is forced to serve me. She needs the gig. This must contribute mightily to her angst.
Portland boys with patched jeans are sitting against the window across from me.
They are visiting Seattle to attend the Mariner’s double header. The cook wears red
high top Converse tennis shrs and the kitchen is crammed in a corner, not really separated from the restaurant. The grease extractor system is clogged and will probably
spontaneously ignite, any minute.
Seattle is a great town, but you wouldn’t know it by the "oor. The crusty cement
tiles are washed everyday with a wax based disinfectant, painted every other year, but
never sandblasted. Verdigris drapes lter what passes for daylight in Seattle. A number
of C!:#- V$.k()!.! and even a few succulents thrive. A lot of people in Seattle have
winter sadness syndrome all year long, which explains how Starbucks made it big.
The storefront windows open on diagonally parked cars backed in and pointing out
cowboy style, ready to roll. Parking backwards on a diagonal is illegal in San Francisco,
but it’s mandatory here. Nobody wants to talk to out-of-towners.
The transom decals are falling off, but you can still read the address:
5566'(B/EZ]'f'?`CZ/;CF]
A;B'(H9Z'CA'A;B'BZAFCZ/B'AE'A;B'(DC``'/`!?'FBC](G
g5:66'A!B(]C@
8'?CZ](G'g5:66'/EhBF
FB]'?BCZ('CZ]'?!FZA'FH/B
A+E']E``CF(
UHZA('EV'ZH9;A+CA/;
g5:66'/EhBF'/;CF9B
::;
'*?$ K!66-
London based roadies and worn-out gofer slaves
ooze in to pick up the morning ham and eggs for
whatever group played the Moore Theater last
night, maybe the Smiths from Manchester featuring Morrisey. The rock stars themselves are
too sick to schlepp for themselves..
{
No matter what color it’s painted, the Croc drifts
in a time warp cleaned-up and commemorated
since Kurt died. It served well in the mid-19P0s
when the old rich Bring folks of WWII were displaced by the )#:+* )(- .#$?* %!:* software
magnates out in Redmond. One corporate softball team is euphemistically called the Redmond
Retainers.
Seattle is a city on a city in a city which spins
around the one and only Space Needle. The monorail swooshes on, quietly connecting the Pike
Street sh market, a legendary wharf world, with
downtown skyscrapers erected by gold and timber legends. This city, at the end of the
Lewis and Clark expedition, plays out in subtle tones over pan-Asian opium commerce.
Seattle thus becomes the last example of De Toqueville’s “Manifest Destiny.”
Yuppies in the high tech trade now outnumber the Bring families 100 to 1. But the
staid minority is proud and hidebound. Refugees from the Bay Area are often met
with a “No Californian’s need apply” attitude. This resentment probably grs back to
the Civil War when Washington’s pre statehood territory fought for the Confederacy.
Kurt Cobain was assassinated, and we can now see why. With or without coffee or
heroin, Kurt’s incitements to riot will return to haunt every dweeb who ever bought a
Pentium chip. Kurt’s politicized values were blazing re starters, the essence of his
message won’t fade as long as poverty exists.
The Crocodile Cafe will always hold to its seedy roots, but people will remember
the music and the good times rocking for anarchy. Kurt and his cohorts grew up absurd,
just as the Paul Goodman predicted they would more than thirty years ago, but Nirvana,
as a political movement, had meaning. Grunge was easier to create in Seattle than
anywhere else, because everywhere else had a deep rooted old bohemian underground
and Seattle only had a Gold Rush and Prohibition tunnels.
The next morning I planned to make a quick ride out over the western hills, about
VV miles, to Carnation, where Kurt and Courtney built a house on a twelve acre wooded
parcel. At the time I could not have known that the house in Carnation was Kurt’s
poetic dream house, his last sanctuary, his broken heart pad.
::<
SMACK ATTACK
H'&,"S$'N)"$'V-)"J%*'$,'2-,N'K0'$3#"=#"2
3%-'P,P')"&'&)&'N%-%'[K"=#%*:
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O
n the "ight home I vowed to keep coming back to Seattle
until I got to the bottom of the Cobain mystery. Anybody who knows me knows
I can be a persistent pain in the ass. I wanted to get to know my granddaughter,
but that could wait, there was some damned ugly business to take care of first. Turns
out, the answers weren’t only to be found in Seattle.
That night I dreamt Kurt was alive in the Wisconsin Dells, living on cheese and
having babies with all of the women Courtney hated. The next day the following blurb
appeared in the Bay Guardian reprinted from the Village Voice:
Beat poet William S. Burroughs, author of N(;$5 '#.:+, teams up with Kurt
Cobain in this spoken word|instrumental piece. Cobain provides the eerie guitar
careening around and off of Burroughs’ voice as the old adding machine poet
recites this tale of a junkie priest in search of the “immaculate x.”
O=%,P)+%&$,O=%8,!(99%6,L+7<
P)"65*%6,:8,O+7,I%))
#$%.!
P.66"(-2$"86$/5'./"V(3$- !. "*86(.5"7$6"3,&)R3$)."
()/"/&2'$H.6./"T.0(/.(%4"&)"("0(6(0.9
Contrary to popular (Internet) belief Burroughs and Cobain did not meet in the studio.
Kurt recorded his guitar parts at the Laundry Room in Seattle and Burroughs recorded the spoken word tracks in New York, but the collaboration was, without doubt, historical.
Kurt’s fascination with Burroughs represents a large insight into his state of mind in
the nal year of his life. When he died an unframed watercolor sketch from Burroughs,
complete with bullet holes, hung on Kurt’s dining room wall, almost like a diploma.
But the relationship may not have been based purely on poetry. Kurt had a weakness
for opiates and Burroughs, the patron saint of all addicts, gave young poets like Kurt,
tacit permission to stay strung out.
::=
'*?$ K!66-
V#%%*#7+- (!)- (. *65 5*#36$ 3(%%$66 -+*/7#. (/ <6(:(%5- !. nc#-/
O.$ C!dio /+$ +$%*!.h!-h7**5h0*%h8*# ?!5$* +$ )(5$ O!/+ a!.!-/%8=
I had to do a great deal of soul searching in the weeks that followed. Mostly I
concentrated on the heroin question. How did it become so popular? Junkies are passive
with violent exceptions. Only a blind, illiterate, deaf mute with no arms or legs could
possibly be ignorant of the dangers of IV drug use. Anyone who self-medicates, shares
needles, or thinks they’re a pharmacological genius, especially with little more than
an eighth grade education, is toying with evil.
Many people die of overdoses while using heroin. It is not safe. Many more die of
related side effects like hepatitis, alcoholism, septicemia and brain damage. Any junkie
will tell you shooting smack will kill you if you stay with it long enough. Oh yeah. I
skipped over maybe getting AIDS? If you don’t OD or get wiped out by anything on
the above list, you can easily be beaten to death, stabbed or shot by turning down the
wrong alley in the wrong neighborhood.
Contrary to popular belief smoking heroin is very addicting. The ritual isn’t like pot
or opium ceremonies, it’s a freak show. You pour some powder on a piece of aluminum foil, heat it over a candle until it starts to smoke then suck the smoke up with a
soda straw, but this can get you dissipated quickly because the aluminum hydroxide
gases coming off the foil can kill you as fast as the dope.
Some people deny opiates have an appetite-suppressive effect, but I’ve never seen
a fat junky. Weight maintenance is one of the reasons many women get into opiates
::>
H(.; H(%%!-*.
in the rst place. They also usually take laxatives and emetics. Being constipated, a
well known side-effect of taking opiates.
Kurt, golden arm and all, was the hope of dysfunctional kids everywhere. He was
bigger than life and obviously bigger than Courtney, but. Kurt’s death cut a lot of young
people off from their feelings of humanity, just as the deaths of the Kennedy’s and
Martin Luther King, cut off many people in my generation.
I felt bad for Kurt’s family. I worried about Frances. I even felt bad for Courtney’s
mom and Frank. I guess I was in my mid-life crisis. The "uctuations were ephemeral, but still real. How many relatives did Kurt have in Washington? Christ, hundreds
probably. I identied with Leland “Lee” Cobain who was, torn away from his great
grandchild. He never even had a visit with the baby when Kurt was aliveo
Something really creepy was going down. Courtney reacted with anger instead of
compassion. Eye witnesses say her grief seemed fake. Courtney’s mom made no comment to the press, but the media came after me because I’m well known in alternative
publishing circles and have written several books. I was, even then, especially well
known on the Internet making me even more accessible. About one week after Kurt
died I received the following E-mail. This may be one source of the “Kurt had AIDS”
rumor.
From: Naval Ring, Subject: Courtney is Dead
Q%(),O"H+*,Q(6/,!"5)$#%8,+&,6%(6,"),($,9%(&$,A+99,:%,&""#@,R#8"#%,A=",=(#;&,"5$,
A+$=,=%)"+#,+&,"+)$+#;,A+$=,6%($=@,0,=(B%,:%%#,$",D()$+%&,A+$=,=%),(#6,0,(&&5)%,8"5,
&=%,6"%&#S$,*()%,(:"5$,=8;+%#%,"),"B%)6"&%&@,T=%,7(8,=(B%,R0QT@,O=($,7%(#&,$=%,
:(:8,+#=%)+$%6,R0QT,(#6,0S7,&5)%,I5)$,=(6,R0QT@
P@T@,U"5,:%$$%),:58,(,#%A,6()>,&5+$,:%*(5&%,8"5S)%,;"+#;,$",#%%6,+$,&""#@
NR.
In my sleep-deprived state I saw my recurrent vision of Courtney in a body bag and
the baby winding up at Courtney’s mom’s house singing H#(./(.()$%(\ while learning how to re-walk and levitate with the rest of the Maharishi sect.
I took the advice of some very enlightened people. My attorney and high school pal
Dennis Natali, who was shot down on the street in an unrelated incident in 199Q, a man
who knew Courtney from Childhood, encouraged me to write this book. My old high
school pal Pinky Horcajo consulted with Gary Arlington the comic book genius, and
everybody said, ”self-publish. What else can you do?”
In late 19Q9 I sprung Courtney out of Juvenile Hall in Salem, and she came to live
with me on the houseboat wharf at Kappas Marina in Sausalito. By Christmas she was
running around San Francisco on her own (twenty trips to see the R*:;8 H*%%*% S+*O).
We had a few “Tough Love” ghts and through that process she found out I wasn’t a
pushover. Incidentally, the gist of tough love is simple:
“If you can’t respect me fear me, but you are my kid and I am not going to let you
hurt yourself.”
By Christmas 19Q9 she was commuting back and forth from my houseboat in Sausalito
::C
'*?$ K!66-
or my <!$5 ( /$%%$ in San Francisco to her stepfather’s house in Portland, using friends
and the Green Tortoise druggie bus as her main x-urban transport. She also made a
slight side trip to Japan where she danced in clubs, lost her passport and had to be
rescued, but by that time I was on my way to Ireland and I was getting sick of the
tough love gig. More about this later.
That was the Winter of 19Q9. At that point I think she led for “emancipation” in
Oregon, but failed to tell me about that. She also rearranged a deal with her mom and
got a whole bunch of money from her estate. After that I hardly saw her. She never
thanked me for telling her she had money.
Courtney genuinely hated me two months after she got out of juvvie. She saw I was
vulnerable. She needed a scapegoat, so she began blaming me for all of her problems.
Writing several books did not impress her. I think she took her anger from her mother
who, in spite of extensive training in psychotherapy, had not yet learned simple forgiveness, a key principle in Judaism\ Christianity\ Buddhism and psychoanalysis.
Every time Linda looked at Courtney she was reminded of me. Courtney conrmed
this in a R*66!.7 S/*.$ interview. Courtney carried the Hank hatred through to the
next generation and even wrote about it in her journal only now she seemed to be
taking it out on Frances, who continues the tradition as we speak.
Courtney and Frank stood me up for Christmas and New Years 19Q9 and it hurt.
Since I had been through this wringer twice before, I decided to put some distance
between us. I had some savings, some stocks, a few cars to sell, some money from
my dads’s estate and I had just nished a book which was selling like gang busters.
If Courtney was going to burn me out she would have to commute to Europe.
It saw that I could not reverse whatever brainwashing she suffered, so I just made
my peace with her, praying that her genetic survival instincts would kick in. I wrote
her a letter telling her where I was going, but that was about it. No nastiness. No recriminations, just motion. The breeze of me splitting again sent the big message. But
the scar tissue was very thick for both of us. It’s maddening to loose your kid twice
in one lifetime or even three times.
Courtney did not like my life-style. I was too authentically bohemian and she was
too phoney to appreciate it. She didn’t like my friends and she knew I didn’t have as
much money as her mother. She also knew I wasn’t debauched (I was going through
a decade of celibacy, which must have confused her no end) and my penchant for
classic motorcycles, horses, rare art and French Bulldogs must have frightened her.
Since she couldn’t manipulate me, and since I had very little power to in"uence her
destiny, she tended to avoid me, except as a last resort. In one such case she actually
did "y to Ireland after leaving her last foster home, but that’s a separate story. I came
to expect that she might pop up unannounced and crash at my house at any time, anyplace. I introduced her to Europe and that was about all I could do in that era.
I returned from Ireland in May of 19PV. Courtney went on to Liverpool and returned
to the states around Thanksgiving that year, but I only saw her when she was in dire
distress. I rarely saw her when she was in good shape. One of those bad scenes found
::?
H(.; H(%%!-*.
her living at %4."V(%2 again, blowing her money on drugs and strange clothing. From
19PV to 19P6 she stayed with us in various states of penury and consciousness.
During one of her visits in 19P6, she told me she was on her way to LA to start a
rock and roll band. I worried about heroin and the maggots in the music business.
When she mentioned Geffen’s name I nearly puked. But, Courtney was a warrior and
if anybody could survive the LA scene she could.
That year she attended concerts at Mahbuay Gardens, hung out with the Dead
Kennedy’s and Black Flag and usually had me chauffeur her around looking for her
“South of Market” friends, including Joe Mama, and the daughter of a prominent San
Francisco cookie maker. All of them were into “downers” obtainable from loose quacks
on Pill Hill. By 19PQ she was gone again.
Triona and I made it into a few cool stock swindles through insider tips, I.e., Genentech
and the Microsoft IPOs, and moved to Lost Altos where the big Silicon Valley nabobs
hangout. I called it Dry Tortuga, because that’s where the old Barbary Pirates used to
hide. Dozens of computer deals are transacted at the Los Altos Starbuck’s.
In 19PP I went back to Ireland for a month of archaeology. One of the great things
about Ireland, especially if your Irish, is that nobody ever forgets anything. I was away
from Dublin for eight years and when I went back it was as if I had never left. In front
of Bewley’s on Grafton Street, I got the word that Courtney was just there and that she
got into a punch-up in a concert line while she was pregnant with Joe Strummer’s
drummer’s child, this was later modied to the drummer in the Pouges. This may have
been a mix up, but its believable because her cat ght list, ever since her days in borstal
at Hillcrest, is long and legendary.
{
When I got back to California I heard about her from friends and peripheral family
members who spied on her, in Oregon, Minneapolis and LA. From this nexus I heard
she was off drugs, hated weed because it made her fat, and was, calling herself Courtney
Love in Hollywood. When she was in Portland she tagged herself the “Aerosol Kid.”
When the cops closed in it was Courtney Menely, but she must have been serious about
a name change, because I have several books and documents wherein she signed her
name Courtney Michelle. These last names were designed to get her IDs and cabaret
permits to allow her to dance in adult clubs. But I suspected she was hufng fumes
too. Aerosol Kid, now that’s a real giveaway tag. I also knew her drug dependency
was real and that any rehabs would be short-lived. That prophecy remained true in
V00S when, at the age of 40 she was still going back and forth to court mandated
rehabs. The warrior gene gets stoned.
In my recurring nightmares I saw Courtney being taken away in a body bag. I grieved
for the impending death of my delightful and wondrous child. From 19PS to 1991 I
went through bouts of colitis, much like Kurt must have done, and every nightmare
was rounded out by apnea and gasping sweats. I knew she would never again be the
sweet child who patted me on the back and gave me hugs as I carried her around
campus.
::@
'*?$ K!66-
A great many fans pinned their hopes on Kurt. He was a new beatic visionary,
leading his people to a higher plateau. But millions of old rockers, deadheads and
yuppie hipsters, stuck in the early 19P0s, didn’t see it that way. These burnouts had
only scorn for Kurt as a prt. Deadheads, on the internet, constantly said, “Good, I’m
glad the bastard shot
himself.”
Until our two day meeting
in November of 1993 I hadn’t
heard directly from Courtney
for ve years. I thought about
her everyday and I worried
about her, and I told her she
was welcome at my house
anytime after she kicked
heroin, but she never showed
up, mainly because she was
always jonesing. Once in a
blue moon she would call
my mom near Sacramento,
but Courtney wanted nothing to do with that blue collar
scene, at least not until she
found out her uncle Jeff was
a cop in Modesto.
{
Like Lee Cobain, I wanted
to see Frances someday. I
read about her in the papers
and saw her on television
during the 199V Mtv awards.
I worried about her during
the running custody battle
between Courtney and Kurt’s
mother.
When Kurt died I fell to
the ground with mixed
emotions. I was strongly
tempted to "y up to Seattle
and just drop in on Courtney,
and then she went on TV and said some things that made me sit-up and take notice.
Instead of a grief stricken widow, she seemed typically glib and manipulative. When
she left for Minneapolis in 19PQ she was still occasionally sweet and caring. There was
::A
H(.; H(%%!-*.
2*#%/.$8 O!/+ S(./( (/
H#)<-i S(. C%(.:!-:* Y\_]
a snake in there somewhere, but the lighter side of nice was the predominate vibe. Now
she comes into the public eye as the dark widow Cobain, and the dark part had clearly
taken control. That’s when I started to realize she had something to do with Kurt’s
assassination.
Something else was bugging Kurt’s distraught fans in the year after he died. Even
the most radical fans couldn’t understand why Courtney went on without mellowing
out. Where was all that anger coming from? Many Nirvana fans reasoned that, “If
Courtney was so broken up over Kurt’s death why didn’t she cancel her tour?” I realize that’s a sophomoric question, but a lot of sophomores were asking.
It would be equally sophomoric to blame Courtney’s fugue states on drugs. Courtney
can be unbelievably rational and reasonable even in a drugged state. I gured she just
got caught-up in her own act and used it as stage dressing. Although I suspected foulplay shortly after Kurt died I didn’t think Courtney was involved at rst, at least not
directly. But then old voices came drifting in. I gured, as have so many others, that
Kurt was “offed” by people in the industry to get his royalty money. Janice and Jimi
Hendrix immediately came to mind. Suicide was never an option for Kurt in my opinion.
He toyed with death in his lyrics, but he was never genuinely suicidal. Then I remembered
Courtney telling Triona and I that she was going to kill herself a rockstar someday.
:;B
'*?$ K!66-
I knew Courtney was hanging with a particularly gross crowd, which she called her
“Big Scene.” Courtney’s so called “big scene,” as in her on-line comment, “Hank you
stayed away all these years because you thought my scene was too big,” remains
colloquial. In truth I was sick of Big Scenes. Then there was the recollection of Frances
“Francie” Warsun the, meanest woman I ever met, a woman I stupidly introduced to
Courtney when I came back from sabbatical in 19P1. More about Francie later.
I knew Courtney would never "y off the stage yelling “Bird daddy, catch the bird,”
although her legendary forays into mosh pit diving are astonishingly similar to the
“Bird” game we used to play, but her big scene turned out to be her old cronies from
Bongwater City, aka Portland and some very dark freaks she met along the way, freaks
who would shoot an eight ball of meth, give billionaires champagne enemas for fun
and prot and bake a turkey all in a days work.
By the time Courtney formed her own band, I had copyrights on six books, brought
V000 people down from bad acid trips, wrote ve science documentaries and was writing for Lockheed with a top security clearance. Courtney was wrong about me being
intimidated by her “BIG” scene. The Hollywood big scene that denes Courtney’s
loop, is disgusting and vile. That scene is run by delusional people who think they control the world. They believe their own hype. They believe that money is the only form
of score keeping. About V0g of them are junkies and I have never wanted to make it
that big or that bad.
In truth I nd Courtney’s big scene repulsive. I am a stoic. A mystic, but Courtney
put me down so often that I started to wonder about her motives. If I was so unimportant, so much the small player, why did she include me in every interview? That’s when
my thinking began to change as to how Kurt died. Something about protesting too
much me thinkso
Most Hole fans came from a narrow marketing bandwidth consisting of like minded
father haters, asexual careerists, tom-boys stuck in boy mode, gay girls enroute to a
distasteful motherhood, girl romantics raised on pulp bodice-beaters, young beer
drinking men who wanted to look up Courtney’s dress at shows, the white guys rejected
by Madonna, and a bizarre clutch of Hollywood smack hags. The straight male nds
only a subservient role in that gestalt. None of this would have mattered had her career
gelled nicely, if her music had crossed over or made it after Kurt died, but it didn’t.
Although Hole’s second album went gold it did not hover high on the charts, especially
the certied V!663*(%5 charts. This is paradoxical and suspect in view of the disproportionate
post-Cobain publicity budget allocated to Hole. Compare this to Nirvana’s S0 million
(plus) sales and, well, you get the picture.
JOURNAL ENTRY: A PRIL 9, 1993
Last night I attended the Bosnia Rape Victims benet in spite of warnings
that Courtney had a hit man out to kill me. Once inside the Cow Palace I just
lost my self in the crowd. Nobody beat me up or kicked me out. The Bill
Graham rent-a-cops did not bust me. I paid for a nor meal ticket and walked
:;:
H(.; H(%%!-*.
through the main door just like S,000 other folks. I wore no disguise and I
wasn’t paranoid, even though Courtney told Kurt all kinds of wrong and
exaggerated crap about me and my family.
As I waited for the opening acts to begin I sensed I was being used as a test
engine for Jr Camel’s latest invention. R*66!.7 S/*.$ makes millions on
advertising cigarettes, so the punks buy tobacco. How could any body be so
stupid as to get into using a slave product? I looked around. Every body was
smoking. What’s hip about that? These TV children must be the most easily
conditioned market on record. My nausea gave way to a sad thought. “Every
one of these people is going to have to kick this habit someday and it won’t be
easy even with a Nicoderm patch or the gum.”
K#6,"4,K#$)8
The baby doll "ag went up in the summer of 19Q9. While still at Hillcrest detention
center, she talked me into buying her Donna Summer’s V(5 H!%6-. That should have
been a clue for me. Decades later the counselor told me they had to take the record
away from her because the dancing parties got too wild.
Courtney knew the rock-and-roll public voted with their credit cards and she was
determined to be part of the new hip thing, whatever that might be, whatever she could
turn it into. The music she began to play in my attic, was the end product of a decade
of synthesis and street smarts. a*k* magazine, a name derived from the famed a*k*
N(?!7(/*% of Minneapolis, called it “Good music gone bad.” Other mags called it “Baby
Bitch,” but whatever style it was, it was not original. Courtney always wanted to style
herself as a bad girl, like Sharon Stone or Barbara Stanwyck, somebody dangerous on
stage and off.
FLASH BACK
TO
1986
It took at least a year to nd the right location in Los Altos. I taught school and worked
as a technical writer for most of that year and went to Ireland to do some more megalithic eld research with Jack Roberts in West Cork for about three months. Before I
left I remember Courtney telling me she was moving to Minneapolis with Kat to promote rock concerts featuring the Butthole Surfers. I phoned her in Minneapolis around
Thanksgiving and she said she was doing ne and told me all about S/%(!7+/ /* H$66,
the lm she made in Spain with Alex Cox and the Pogues. She also told me she had a
crush on the drummeri and that she had to have another abortion because the guy was
married. This supports the rumor that she had a cat ght with somebody other than
Martin Brennan’s old girlfriend, Cecily on Grafton Street.
She also told me she had a new boyfriend in Minneapolis who she liked to cook for.
I thought this was weird, were did she learn to cook? I sent her some recipes anyway.
She said she was living in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, but I had no idea where she really
was. She also told me she was getting married, but it was just a message left on my
voice mail. For a long time I thought this guy she married was the guy in Saint Cloud.
:;;
'*?$ K!66-
O)+"#(,V($&"#,(#6,&$56%#$,N+)(#6(,T$)+D%,($,,(,9"*(9,&*=""9+#;,&="A@
It was only after Kurt died and the Internet got hot that I learned that she was hanging
with a group named Leaving Trains and that she was married to the lead singer James
Moreland, for about a nanosecond.
I was going to send her a huge Christmas package that year including blankets,
sweaters and an Irish accordion. But, she wasn’t even in the Twin Cities at that time,
too much snow not enough heroin. I had no idea Babes in Toyland had kicked her out.
Turns out she was in New York and had me send the package to Caroline Records,
:;<
H(.; H(%%!-*.
business ofce, an offshoot of Virgin and EMI, g J. Billig, using their UPS account.
She called me to say she got the package and that she was headed back to Minneapolis
in a private jet, but that was a lie, she went to LA instead. The private jet part was true,
Courtney liked her comforts.
Her misadventures in Portland during that hiatus are well documented in a little book
titled V*.7O(/$% and Courtney is named in the book, it’s written as ction, but her
name is ction anyway. Wow, what a legend builder eh? By the way, Caroline also produced Primus, Tangerine Dream and, oddly enough Smashing Pumpkins. Billig, later
to become Courtney’s publicity hack, was working for Caroline at the time.
Two months later Courtney was back in Los Angeles and jonesing. I know because
she left, yet another series of violent messages on my voice mail. This was in the era
just prior to the big e-mail revolution, and cel phones were also not available at that
time. So land-line phones were still the hot items. This time I decided to track her
down by calling some old Minneapolis numbers I had stashed under my blotter. I guess
she and Kat had one of their volcanic ghts sometime that winter because when I called
Minneapolis I got the distinct impression Courtney was in trouble. The woman I spoke
to felt sorry for her. She asked me not to use her name. She too was afraid of Courtney’s
violent temper. I think she said her name was Barbero or something like that.
Triona and I moved the stray animals we adopted, to Los Altos on March V0, 19PP.
Once settled, I put my time and effort into building my publishing business while
Triona set up her rst equestrian center. In the process she was elected president of the
Los Altos Hills Horseman’s association for six years. We even rode in the damned pet
parade parade, clippity-clopping behind the Los Trancos Woods whacky Band (Deadheads),
so that the barefooted marchers wouldn’t have to step in horse poop. It was fun, but
for my kid, hip meant puking on your Capizzios. Horses, were soooooo lameo
Of course we wanted Courtney to come and ride with us, but, until Bean came along,
she thought owning horses was clodish, like the time we rode on the merry- go-round
in Liverpool and she thought she was too hip to ride. I guess it depends on your denition
of hippness. Neal and Kerouac and the old Beats told me hippness wasn’t negotiable.
Lord Buckley, whose daughter Laurie is one the hippest people I ever met, told me
how her dad used to evaluate people based on a secret cool behavior score. Well, as it
turns out, my own daughter is a reverse disappointment because she just plain "unked
Lord Buckley’s test. We knew she would "y off the handle and do something ugly to
get attention, she could never just get on a horse and try to ride, that might demand
some skill. Oh well, maybe we’ll see Frances riding her own horses someday.
In 19PP I sent Courtney a letter including my phone number, but not my street address
to 19VS Colfax Avenue, Courtney’s last known address in Minneapolis. I also sent
Kat’s student loan bill from the University of Oregon. For some reason she used my
address. Although nobody told me I gured the University bought the rst instruments
for V(3$- !. "*86(.5, or maybe Courtneyiafter she ran out of money and got into the
skag trade.
:;=
'*?$ K!66-
After the earthquake of
19P9 a mystery voice left
a message on my answering machine to tell me that
Courtney was now living
in Hollywood and forming her own band. Courtney
herself called me several
times begging for money,
but she was still jonesing
for opiates and coke.
(See Letters in Rear
Matters ).
In V00S she mentions her
unquenchable cravings in
her confessional scrapbook.
I had no choice. I had to
play tough. You can’t offer
unconditional love to heroin
addicts or alcoholics. As
expected she vowed to kill
me, for the fourth or fth
time. She was dead serious
too. She frequently
threatened to kill people
and went so far as to burn
things down to prove it. Ref. Portland Police records, Melissa Rossi’s book, and my
own experience, plus the place on Lyons street in San Francisco, where she did sex
calls, again via contacts with Francie Warsun. The building burned partially while
Courtney was working there, but nobody ever pinned it on her. Couple that with the
re threat at my Menlo Park Victorian in 19P3 and Rozz Rezabecks apartment thrashing
in Portland and...well you get the picture. Courtney, couldn’t accept “YESo” for an
answer. She was out of control. Even after she married Kurt her demure facade was
just another ploy to convince the public she was a poor little rich girl, sort of Shirley
Temple, without the cherry.
:;>
R AT FA}CE, GOAT LADY v THE STALKER
nI 5*.Q/ %$(668 )!-- H*5i
3#/ I -#%$ )!-- S(./(=o
2*#%/.$8 '*?$
H#/6$--
W
hen my book the 2(#65%*. (.5 /+$ H%(!6 came out in 199V I had enough
free time to look through ten year old phone bills to try to get a line on
Courtney. I called a few numbers and low n’ behold, someone in Minneapolis
picked up the phone. The woman gave her name as Ruth, but I suspect it was Laurie
Barbero of Babes in Toyland or someone living at Laurie’s house. Whoever it was
seemed to respect me and had Courtney’s best interests at heart. But, the voice on the
other end of the phone also seemed frightened, like they were sure something awful
was going to happen to Courtney and soon. The voice on the phone told me that if
Courtney found out she was talking to me she would seek revenge. She then provided
Courtney’s number in Hollywired. The voice told me Courtney was staying with Eric
Erlandson in West Hollywood on Cherokee Street. I called the number and spoke to
Eric. I sent her a copy of the book, but never heard back. Next thing I read in the papers
she’s beating girls up and maybe trying to kill somebody. I was not close to the scene
and had no idea what was really going on except for that suspicion about the needle
and the damage done.
Courtney only loved those who worshipped her. She only stroked
the followers who accepted her myth. Like an unwise corporate executive Courtney
was building a marching force of T( )$.:+$.. It’s the girl version of the Emperor’s
Invisible Culottes superimposed over the Pied Piper of Hemline.
I suspect Kurt fell for the, “Fried Ice Cream,” at rst, but toward the end, in January
of 1994, he grew resolute. Evan Dando’s picture still hung in Courtney’s psychic locker
and Billy Corgan continued calling the house after Kurt warned him repeatedly to fuck
off. What would you do? Kurt knew what freedom was and he liked it. He wasn’t
always dependant on women. So what psychic last supper did Kurt attend?
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' Shortly after Kurt died Courtney used her America On-Line folder to attack Mary
Lou and a host of other enemies perceived and real. Anyone with opposing views was
“expelled” from the folder including me. This was done by impressing upon the AOL
staff that the person had no right to free speech or was in violation of the Terms of the
contract. Turns out AOL was taking orders from somebody Courtney was balling at
Mtv so Courtney got her way, yet again.
For redress, mobs of spurned fans turned to the Nirvana and Cobain chat folders and
to more distant Internet and WEB nodes, such as Alt Music.com, bringing with them
a "ood of ill tidings for Courtney. Ill tidings which have never ebbed.
Kurt told friends he liked Mary Lou because she was supportive and Courtney wasn’t.
In real time the Cobain-Lord affair consisted of Mary Lou dragging Kurt into the
Boston subway system to experience the life of the busker. Kurt loved the acoustics.
The thought of making a living in music without being recognized turned him on. He
loved it so much he used to take his tinniest Martin, an OM-1P model, and go down
a(%8 '*# '*%5
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into the subways of the cities he was visiting. The Paris Metro, Direction Basilique,
and the Montparnasse station with the bust of Balzac in the middle were especially
satisfying. The art nouveau ambience didn’t hurt either. He was already getting famous
enough to harbor dreams of anonymity, something all rock stars should practice. The
more famous you become the more invisible you should be. The lyrics of the old
Kingston Trio classic, “MTA” seem appropriate:
OH HGQ'' NGSGR RG"FRN
NO HGQ'' NGSGR RG"FRN
AN4 HIS CA"G IS S"I'' FN'GARNG4=
HG LI'' RI4G CORGSGR
lNGA"H "HG S"RGG"S OC VOS"ONi
HGQS "HG aAN LHO NGSGR RG"FRNG4=
Courtney must have been deeply alienated from Kurt after she visited him during
the I. F/$%* sessions, because shortly thereafter he told friends he wanted to marry
Mary Lou Lord and live the life of a street musician. And he meant it. Kurt was an
incurable romantic when it came to women and music. Remember all Kurt really
wanted was a pad in the woods and an old lady to "ip "apjacks for, but Mary Lou’s
gypsy values were not what Courtney had in mind for her hubby.
Courtney didn’t care what position Kurt took as long it was hers. In contradiction,
Lord was changing Kurt into a kind of “Feminist Communist” continuing the work
Kate Hannah began in Olympia.
Mary Lou was added to Courtney’s “GET” list, ever since that night in Chicago.
right up there with Kate Hannah, who, by the way, was dubbed, “Rat Face, “ in
Courtney’s blood book. Naturally, Courtney hit the roof when Mary Lou suddenly
moved to Seattle. Rumor has it that a woman answering Mary Lou’s description
confronted Courtney in a convenience store. Courtney made it look like the confrontation
was done to get publicity for “The Stalker.” But, in reality, Courtney enjoyed being in
the limelight and anything that could create another newsworthy incident was okay
by her.
That’s around the same time an avid fan ran a Porsche up her driveway and tossed
her the keys saying he loved her. She pursued a restraining order against the guy, but
she loved the publicity. It made her look like a bigger star.
Long before she met Kurt, Courtney was obsessed with making it as a star. In her
dope tweaker brain, she was being stalked, by people who were out to get her, out to
impede her progress. This is ironic. She could stalk you, but you just try and stalk her
and see what happens.
Labels like “The Stalker,” representing avatars of the shadow people, swirled around
in Courtney’s “geeze-I-hope-they-don’t-come-back-to-haunt-me” world. This too ts
a pattern begun in childhood, a fear of abandonment traceable to the dastardly removal of a child from a loving parent something now being recognized as Alienated Parent
Syndrome or APS. Courtney’s defensive reaction to threats against goal achievement
:<B
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strivings, proves, once and for all, that there’s usually some truth to paranoia. If it happens you weren’t paranoid.
To cloud the issue, and perhaps to explain her behavior as a classic Freudian reaction formation, Courtney was doing some stalking of her own. Her harassing phone
calls and toy-boy chase downs are legendary and well documented. She told people I
was a stalker\ that fans were stalking her and that people were following her everywhere she went. This was partially true. She wanted stardom and she got it, but she
didn’t like the prison part, she’d already been there.
Some of her fears were well founded. The guy with the Porsche thought she was a
reincarnate vision of Dido or Circe. The Porsche was, in his jail-bound mind, a votive
offering to the queen of the Vestal Virgins.
Satchel Page, the legendary baseball pitcher once said, “Don’t look back cause what
you’re looking’ for may be gaining on ya.” Who knows who has a knee-breaker contract
out on Courtney for what reasons? An on-again, off again, addict herself, Courtney
has given many underworld gures a reason to stalk her. Her double spy identity was
blown when Kurt died. She’s a snitch, perfectly positioned to report all manner of
business deals. She sucks up to cops and crooks with equal comfort and she blackmails
anybody she gets any dirt on. Remember, when trying to gure out how Kurt died,
little crumbs will appear along the path. This is one of them.
To say that Courtney was a fast study is an understatement. She picked up bits of
conversation and understood deals like an investment banker. She will hear a phrase
at breakfast and have it incorporated into her vocabulary (or a song) by dinner. I am
not exaggerating. I have seen her do this. I can do this and her mother can do this. It
is a genetic thing. Anyone who knows me or Linda or knew us when we were together knows it’s true. But Courtney has it led down to a ne hounds-tooth weave. Her
beyond high Is and mental agility allowed her to look dumb while actually plotting
ruthless actions.
Kate Hannah became Courtney’s next opponent, and the most threatening of the enemies because Hannah and Bikini Kill had a large fan base with many friends in the
Emerald City and she had some justication to worry. Kate was a tough bird. Courtney
well knew Kurt was running around with Kate, but Courtney was jealous for other
reasons. Hannah’s band, Bikini Kill, was, in Courtney’s opinion, no damned good and
didn’t deserve to exist. In fact Bikini Kill was very good and way ahead of its time.
The two women had a slug-fest in 1991 in Olympia, when Courtney was new to the
scene and Kurt was in Europe for the rst time and neither one forgot it.
That re never fell below the smoldering stage because Courtney and Kate were
constantly putting each other down in 199V and 1993, before the Internet was able to
document each and every exchange. Still, the on-line folders and news groups have
enough nostalgia buffs to document events in retrospect and the Kate versus Courtney
feud took on legendary proportions. Hannah’s pals did little to quash the embers. A
satirical Riot Grrrl group sprang up calling itself, “Courtney Love” just to spit on
Courtney’s style and then claimed that Courtney derived her name from theirs, but the
:<;
'*?$ K!66-
mystery runs deeper than mere name calling.
Courtney was sensitive to any accusations of
style stealing because, in fact, she ripped off
much of her stage style from Kat and, as we
shall soon see, from her rst husband, James
Moreland who often worked in drag.
Although the peer girl rejection hurt her it
didn’t slow her down. Courtney wasn’t just a
threat to the well established Seattle Grunge
life-style, Courtney was a threat to Seattle. A
threat as big as Courtney’s “lip” can not be
simply “Buttoned.” Her fans said, “Oh Courtney
must be right because she’s so articulate.” But
Hole fans had a depth perception problem.
They never learned that truth is in the content,
not the style.
Courtney’s strategy was to humiliate her
enemies. She dehumanized Hannah when she
called her “Rat Face.” This led to bloody punches
on the Lollapalooza tour and a slap-on-the-wrist probation for stalking. It is important
to point out that the court held Hannah blameless. Courtney dubbed me, Mr. Mucous,
Toxic Dad and Fat Daddy, and named my partner, “Goat Lady, all designed to make
us feel humiliated. To make a positive statement in all of this dehumanization, I coined
the term, BioDad which was picked up and used by Dr. Laura Schlesinger, the radio
shrink. Ironically, in 199Q, the term made its way into the 2()3%!57$ 4!:/!*.(%8 *0
A)$%!:(. S6(.7 and they paid me for it.
:<<
PAY HER NO NEVERMIND
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Kurt Cobain to a fan
L
et’s go back to the summer of 199V. Kurt honestly had no idea
N$?$%)!.5 was going to go platinum. Outside of the tour Geffen et al, didn’t
promote it very much. But Courtney, ever the trend watcher, knew it was going
to drop with a bullet. Her actions prove her prescience.
As the tour hit Boston, the Nirvana crowds grew bigger. Nobody was counting on
an SRO tour, and nobody was calling Kurt a “sellout,” not yet anyway. Krist and Dave
were having the time of their lives. Fans mobbed them to get an autograph or just feel
their steam. But whereas Krist and Dave took all of this in stride, Kurt began to see
himself in a huge game of tag and he was “It.”
He liked seeing himself on fast rotation on Mtv. He liked the idea that Beavis and
Butt-Head gave the video full marks. In one of her notes left behind in Ireland, Courtney
said she, “was in love with fame.” Kurt wasn’t . It was as if his dream of being an
anonymous busker with Mary Lou Lord, was turning to ashes.
Courtney saw Kurt’s vulnerability and timed her strike perfectly. She tried to make
it look romantic, but Courtney was in predator mode. She struck the :*#< 5$ 7%(:$
in Chicago where she conveniently happened to be hanging out at Billy Corgan’s
father’s pad. She had every move choreographed and rationalized. Above all she
convinced herself she was in love. Once she got hold of Kurt she would shield him
from the onslaught of the ckle masses and protect him from the likes of Rat Face
and the Stalker. She would even launch a slander campaign against all of Kurt’s old
girlfriends.
Unfortunately, that night, the night Courtney found out Kurt was taking Mary Lou
on stage for a duet, she found her way into the club blocked by a stone faced doorman
who looked a little like Mike Tyson.
She had to think fast. As a last resort she threw the old standby tantrum. I’ve already
explained how she used the temper tantrum strategy to get her way at Gump’s at the
tender age of three, so why should she quit at the ripe old age of twenty-seven? She
made such a fuss that Kurt had to go down front to let her in, but it was worth it. That
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night she and Kurt went to the hotel and wrote their names in the book of bedroom
legends. Mary Lou and Rat Face, Corgan and Kurt’s band mates were all left behind
in a blaze of wild sensuality
My inside source, a nanny who says she felt sorry for the baby, told me that Courtney
gave V!668 I#)<;!., her term of endearment for Billy Corgan, one last shot at paradise
before going after Kurt, but Billy wisely chose to hang with his band, his famous
musician father, and his childhood sweetheart. Corgan’s buddies say he dumped
Courtney and that she told him, in parting, that Kurt was a better “catch” because
Nirvana’s record was going Platinum and Smashing Pumpkin’s only had gold
potential.
Two weeks after Corgan was kicked to the "oor, Nirvana fans gasped in horror when
Kurt told the press, “Courtney is the best fuck I ever had.” Apparently the feeling wasn’t
mutual. Less than two years later, Courtney would tell Kurt, “Corgan is the best fuck
I ever had.” Some experts think this comment and similar sobriquets, might have forced
:<>
H(.; H(%%!-*.
Kurt to start divorce proceedings. Kurt felt justied. Billy was constantly on the phone
to Seattle. Earlier he was with the baby in London during Nirvana’s I. F/$%* tour, and
after she saw Kurt in Rome she hooked up with Billy on the phone almost every day,
even when he was on tour in Spain. By summer of 1994 Billy was again, “helping”
Courtney in the studio. Two weeks after Kurt died he went to a spa in Arizona to hang
out with Courtney and Kat, and later that year he and Courtney had an intense affair
when both of their bands played Lollapalooza. Predictably, a V006 British documentary
showed Courtney and Corgan in the studio and living together in the Hollywood Hills.
Without doubt, Billy was on board Courtney’s train for the long haul. After Kurt died,
everybody knows they were together on and off and in and out of the studio for almost
two decades.
Like Yoko Ono, Courtney reasoned she was doing Kurt, a favor by managing his
career the way she did. I’m sure there were soft moments and the deep early love
between them cannot be denied, but Courtney was more ambitious than an elephant
stampede in a drought year. Anything or anybody who might steer Kurt away from
making megabucks was a threat, both to Courtney’s career and to the largess of their
(her) entourage. Between Europe 1991 and the rst days of I. F/$%* in late 1993i
Kurt’s longing for the busker lifestyle with Mary Lou Lord "ashed back on him.
Courtney sensed his dream of independence was deep seeded. So, within weeks of
getting pregnant, Courtney took measures to make sure Kurt was watched constantly.
They would live in hotels until they could move into a nice big permanent house in
Seattle. To do this she enlisted the help of limo and truck drivers, baby sitters, private
detectives, hotel clerks, roadies, answering service ladies, doormen, pilots and "unky
fans, even Kurt’s family and friends. Courtney knew that almost anyone could be
pressed into service by the simple enticement of money, the promise of fame, plus
some Percodan or a few bags of skag.
The reason Courtney made it big was simple, she bedazzled her bosses, slept with
her managers, out groupied the worst groupies, and out psychopathed all the other
psychopaths. Her intensity, driven by her morbid fear of men, appealed to a rainbow
coalition of power hustlers. Gay women and men who think like women, were especially
turned on. This included Barbara Walters and several top newscasters who could get
the word out with a positive spin, no matter what she did. But a bad wave was on its
way. Tom Grant, the Hollywood detective she hired to locate Kurt on Easter Sunday,
1994, began uploading his own web site and this guy had guts and integrity. He wasn’t
bedazzled by her burlesque mannerisms.
:<C
JEFF MANW
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M
y daughter hated me from the age of seven on, mainly because her mother
told her I abandoned her. When that didn’t work she told her I was dead. As
we shall see later, Courtney was adopted out from under me by deceit and
illegal courtroom maneuvers, tantamount to perjury. Furthermore my attorney, took
a bribe, a fact I discovered only after he died during the writing of this book.
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"%O%-'2)O%'K0'3,0%',Q')'-%K"#,":'?K$'P1'3,0%*'&#&"S$'P)$$%-:'(3%'Q%.$')I)"&,"%&')"&'
3%-'%)-.1'J3#.&3,,&'0%-*,").#$1'Q,-P%&')-,K"&'$3)$'*J)-:'Z,$',".1'&#&'*3%'!'"&'P%'
$3-%)$%"#"2L'3%-')"M#%$1'3)&'2%"%-).#R%&'$,')"1'P).%'N#$3')"1')P,K"$',Q'*$#..',0%-)$#O%'
$%*$,*$%-,"%:'
As time went on she grew attached to Frank Rodriguez (Linda’s second husband)
and, when that deal broke up, she grew attached to Dave Menely (Linda’s third husband). After Dave, and a calamitous sojourn in New bealand, Courtney set her hat on
school-yard boys and then nally fantasy lovers, mainly rock stars. When she grew
old enough to venture out to see real rock stars, she developed a passive-aggressive
xation similar to stalking, a syndrome in which the stalker experiences self-love to
the point of narcissism only in the presence of the target beloved.
In Portland she threw herself at anybody with a guitar. This trait became a permanent
part of her personality. It starts out as self-hatred and evolves into a vacillation between
guilt and revenge. In Courtney’s case it became the engine that drove her entire creative
soul. Every heterosexual relationship she fell into, from the time she rst developed a
puppy crush on a boy in the sixth grade, a kid who accidentally killed her gold sh in
Sacramento, when she was fostered out, was driven by a disturbing pattern of pursuit,
followed by a process leading to rejection, a kind of romantic hunter-prey life-style.
Unfortunately she was never happy with acceptance. She wanted rejection, because,
only rejection could release the pure hatred she learned at her mother’s side.
Courtney did have a couple of really nice boyfriends and a husband before she met
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Kurt, but like a second skin, she poisoned everything. As she grew older she would
learn to dominate men. To do this she needed mentors, other than her mother.
Like Kurt, Jeff Mann was not a wimp. Yet, as strong and ethical as Jeff was he could
do nothing to quell the hormone re raging in Courtney’s blood. I saw this pattern
forming in its nascent stages in 19Q9 and observed it again in all of its dysfunctional
glory when she was ordering Evan Dando around and schmoozing with his mom, in
1993. Courtney never really dropped Evan, the pair were dating within weeks of Kurt’s
death. In the mid-19P0s She made all the same moves with Jeff’s mom, and all of that
was preparatory to co-opting Kurt’s mother and sister.
As the rst and last of her many fathers, I was privileged to meet a few of these men.
I was also privileged to hear her tell stories to her girlfriends across the diner table
and on the phone and while riding in the car, her rap often re"ected the various techniques she used to gain control of her boyfriends.
In a legal letter drawn up in may of 1996, the author, Melissa Rossi was admonished
for not including the “fact” that Courtney lived with Jeff Mann in Topanga from 19P319PS in a monogamous heterosexual relationship. When Rossi read me the letter over
the phone I was amazed how close to the legal edge Courtney lives, or perhaps she
forgot what really happened. She was heterosexual with Jeff but she was hanging out
with Jeff’s mother, a well known movie artisan.
By bringing up Jeff Mann in a legal letter, fully admissible in any court of law, she
let’s herself open to a courtroom discussion of the wild nights she spent at Sam
Peckinpah’s old ranch. Was it really a heterosexual relationship, or was Jeff being
cuckolded, used as a beard for some unscheduled activities. Courtney says she was
faithful to Jeff for two years, but was she? No wonder Jeff got pissed off. How would
:<@
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you like it if your mom was double-dipping your girlfriend? This stuff just doesn’t
happen in the burbs. I got the impression the whole scene at Peckinpah’s was like the
O-/$%)(. L$$;$.5, ione big power game. I also got the impression that Jeff’s mom,
like Francie Warsun, acted as Courtney’s mentor. She called me one night and screamed
into the phone “Get out of her life you fat pig, she’s mine nowo” I wasn’t fat then.
Jeff was very tall, a Celtic Manx-Norman by bloodline. I wondered if I would ever
see a grandchild that looked like this guy. We had dinner on two occasions and the
vibes felt warm. He had a gentle eye and he loved Courtney for the good “lady” he
thought she was. That word “lady” isn’t used much anymore, but it has a special meaning to us old knights. “Lady” means someone you respect to the utmost, a woman your
heart grs out to.”
I wonder if Jeff knew Courtney carried a torch for Rozz Rezabek the whole “monogamous” time they were together? One of Courtney’s alienated friends told me in an email.
n"+$ -*6$ %$(-*. 2*#%/.$8 O(- :*))#/!.7 3$/O$$. a(6!3# (.5 I*%/6(.5
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This sounds about right. I knew Courtney was traveling back and forth between
Portland and San Francisco, and I assumed she was still stalking her rst rock star
lover to pay him back for rejecting her, but why Portland? As it turns out, Portland
gave Courtney an instant fame x. She was a nobody everywhere else, but when she
came back to Portland she was a Mall-Kid star. To nd out what happened to her in
New York and Portland during this period read the book, V*.7O(/$%=
Turns out Jeff made it pretty big in the movies. It was hard to nd a picture of him
as an older gent. He was well raised, (strange if you ever met his mother) elusive, even
hermetic, very alpha and way too much man for Courtney. Last I heard he was a big
time set designer and model visionary for Industrial Light and Magic. His rst "ick
was, K(6!!0*%.!(. Then he did set designs for Bruckheimer’s cult lm, H*.$ !. S!d/8
S$:*.5-, a "ick which spawned, C(-/ (.5 C#%!*#- and at least 10 other car grinders.
A Superbowl commercial followed. It was so good, so dynamic, that Jeff was immediately
hired for SO*%5!-+ with John TravoltaiJeff designed the big helicopter picking up
the bus sequence. After that he designed the transformers for the "%(.-0*%)$% series
and was called in for all sorts of lms and projects, working with everybody in
Hollywood, from S+*O/!)$, to Schwartzenegger. I remember watching G%(-$%+$(5
on Betamax, in our den in the old house on Laurel Street in Menlo Park with Jeff and
Courtney. Good on ya Jeff. It was an honor to know you.
:<A
FALLING JAMES IN LOVE
W
hile we’re on the topic of old boy friends, let’s take a closer look at Courtney’s
first husband “Falling” James Moreland, the cross dressing heterosexual
rock star and founder of the pioneering alternative band known as Leaving
Trains. Moreland, who got his moniker from falling down drunk on stage as part of
his act, is a sincere and dedicated musician with real talent and some rather stylish
frocks.
James got on board the Love boat just about the time she came back from Minneapolis.
That’s about the time I lost track of her and about the time she got kicked out of Babes
in Toyland for trying to run the whole scene. It’s also about the time some Butthole
Surfer gig money went mysteriously southward. Make it late 19PQ. She was mostly
over Rezabek by that time, although Melissa Rossi claims she held a grudge against
Rezabek for at least ten years.
Nor was she swooning over Jeff Mann. She did remain in touch with Bernadette
Mann up in Topanga, but that was because Bernadette could always x her up with a
party scene. No. This time Courtney was smarting from peer group rejection the kind
of thing that happened in Portland when she was too young to make the club scene and
too old to be a teenybopper. This time she needed more than a trick suit and a handful of phone numbers to bail her out. Courtney needed to be in a band. She fed off the
band fantasy. All of her hostility for Rezabek (her ideal image of a rock star) got channeled into an. “I’ll show him” attitude. She knew she could make it in the movies, but
rock star fame was, at least in her warped sense of values, more powerful than movie
star fame.
In the mean time she needed to tread water. That’s were James Moreland comes in.
According to James, Courtney took his soul and stepped on it and then proceeded to
steal his patented stage personae. Courtney’s “patented” pose, you know the leg up on
the monitor with no underpants, is a direct, derivative of Moreland’s act, but Moreland
did it for comedy. Frankly, nobody wanted to ogle his balls. Courtney’s milky under
parts, (# :*.?$%-$, were far more attractive. In a glib comment, she told James, “There
is only room at the top for one blonde female rock star and I’m it.” He took this to mean
she was on her way to knock off Madonna.
James also relates that during the years he lived with Courtney she acted on that “Get
'*?$ K!66-
Madonna” premise as if it were her guiding light, as if it was based on an axis of
absolute truth, even going so far as to fantasize about how she could have Madonna
assassinated. This must have made things pretty tense ve years later when Madonna’s
record company found itself bidding against David Geffen for Courtney’s contract.
Courtney’s entire career in Los Angeles circa 19P6 took on the appearance of her
own bipolar personality. One minute she saw herself spinning endlessly with Toto on
an Oz like whirlwind of parties and dope, the next she would nd herself in a downward sucking vortex. Anytime she received any negative publicity she went nuts and,
due to her own inability to sail through crisis without warfare, she often fell on her
own land mines. According to Moreland she couldn’t accept constructive criticism.
Anyone, even remotely, negative to her delusional system became “the enemy.”
A little research proved shocking. Courtney did more than dump Moreland. She
dumped his baby too. That’s right folks. Courtney found herself pregnant with Moreland’s
child in 19PP, but just kept on shooting heroin, Methedone, via the clinic oral route,
:=:
H(.; H(%%!-*.
c()$- a*%$6(.5 N
2*#%/.$8
I+*/*3**/+ I!:
:= Y\`]
drinking and above all, nicotine. According to Moreland, he begged her to keep the
baby and stop indulging in abusive stuff, but, as the rst trimester barrier approached
Courtney just called a cab and, without a whisper to James, had another abortion. After
that James knew he wanted out of the marriage and took steps to kick Courtney out of
his life. She was never ofcially in his band in the rst place, but thinking of herself
as a member of a band, however dim, served as a kind of security blanket. She wasn’t
rejected or abandoned if she was in a gang setting.
In her correction letter to Melissa Rossi, Courtney does not mention the havoc she
caused Leaving Trains, but her life with James was chaotic and their breakup bitter, violent and well documented. Although he was at least a foot taller than her, she physically slapped him around as the whim moved her and verbally berated him in public
everyday. I know how that feels. She threatened to have him killed, maimed or beaten
and James felt she meant it. Like Kurt, Moreland became her whipping boy.
According to Moreland and members of his band, she turned into a PMS cranker,
chasing the bag and jaw-jacking all day long. Other sources conrm this. I thought she
was suicidal, but she was just plain mean her anger was never directed inwardly.
According to Moreland and some people from other bands, she stayed strung out on
heroin and did more speed and drank more Vodka than any three people around. When
she did send me letters they made no sense at all. (See examples). This is when I saw
her in the body bag. Her whole existence in that 19PQ period was out of control. Her
capacity for drug-abuse almost outdistanced her capacity to abuse others, especially
those she claimed to love.
Why did Moreland take this abuse? In a 1996 recorded telephone interview,, Moreland
begged me to believe him, as if he was the only man who ever had a credibility problem
after knowing Courtney. I assured him I would approach the topic as objectively as I
could. James understood that I was laboring under restraints. During the hour long chat
:=;
'*?$ K!66-
James told me he took the abuse because he genuinely loved
Courtney a familiar refrain. But eventually even an old trooper
like Moreland couldn’t take the emotional pain. He begged
Courtney to go into rehab, but each time he brought up the
topic she threatened to have him killed or knee-capped. At
rst James thought she was only exaggerating, blufng, but
as the relationship grew frayed he got the distinct impression
she was capable of extreme violence, almost as if she had
another personality. Eventually some guy did come and beat
him up, saying nothing, and, to this day James thinks the thug
may have been sent by Courtney. Pay attention to this. There’s
a pattern here.
Courtney conveniently failed to hear James begging for a
divorce until she got ready to marry Kurt, then, she blithely
petitioned for a divorce which Moreland gladly granted. This
glibness is a signature trait of all high functioning sociopaths,
and Courtney used any justication to expedite her goals. As part of the U#!5 <%*
U#* for signing the divorce papers, she told James she would give him a career
boost once she got established in the mainstream, but this never happened. The
truth is Courtney often made promises she had no intention of keeping. Once she
married the king of Grunge, Courtney was beholden to no one. However, after
James told her he was talking to me, almost as if talking to me carried a death
sentence and he was defying the edict, he grew mysteriously silent, she must have
got him a gig somewhere, but it doesn’t matter, I have the tape.
Ignoring a promise is only one part of the picture. Courtney often used jack boot
tactics to grind her victims down. To make sure James kept his mouth shut, she
put the word out to every club and promoter she knew. Even before she married
Kurt she was wielding power in Nirvana’s name and she still carried a grudge
against Moreland. One of the people I interviewed overheard her tell a club owner
in Hollywood, “If you ever hire Leaving Trains qwe’ (meaning Nirvana and Hole)
will never work for you again.” She even put Moreland’s name on a list of security
risks, right up there with me and Don Cobain. Although Moreland was the only
one in drag.
Courtney liked her men in drag and even managed to get Cobain to drag up
every once in awhile. Courtney likes to "aunt
her trophies, like shrunken heads on a bushman’s
belt or skulls on a cossacks saddle. Most of her
paranoia came out verbally, so it wasn’t appended as a rider to a written contract, but the club
owners and promoters got the message. Moreland
had a black ball in the box, Don was to be tossed
out and I was to be shot on sight.
Moreland’s earliest vinyls are hard to nd, but
:=<
H(.; H(%%!-*.
they are worth a deeper listen because Moreland, like Kurt, managed to blend poetry
and music. Obviously this synthesis attracted Courtney, it was part of the pattern.
Courtney subconsciously sought men who could teach her how to make the transmutation,
how to synthesize the right brain and the left brain to make the kind of music she needed
to make, the kind of sound that would blend with her lyrics. She just never learned how
to say thank you. Courtney wanted to be a rock goddess. Not just “Flavor of the Month.”
She wanted everybody to adore her, like I adored her when she was four. To make this
happen she developed a knack for charming her way into rehearsal halls and studio
sessions with various bands. She used the groupie image to catapult herself into an onstage presence. But instead of just standing in the background and singing lls and dowahs, at least until she learned to sing, she tried to take over. She also told her friends
and the press that she was writing most of the songs for Leaving Trains and James
Moreland, but that’s absurd because she couldn’t play a note in those days, she may
have contributed some poetry, but not the music <$% -$. James denies Courtney’s claims
and his copyrights prove him right.
Courtney was sick of living in Lulu Belle’s closet. Cherokee Street, gave her a place
to collect her mail, but most nights she spent at 3VQ6 DeWitt Drive, on the Hollywood,
Los Angeles border. Eric Erlandson posed as her platonic pal and guitar maestro, at
least until she moved out of Moreland’s apartment in West Hollywood and took an
apartment with Kurt.
Shortly after nesting in with Cobain she began acting like she had friends in high
places. She continued to harbor a deep hatred for me, threatening, in writing and on
the phone, to have me disappeared or killed. Of course threats like these only occurred
when I sensed she was strung out and refused to send her money. She also told me, and
this was later conrmed by Moreland, that various underworld characters were beholden
to her, like she was holding markers, maybe even blackmailing somebody really big.
Moreland hints that some of these markers were owed to her from Gianni Versace as
early as 19PS. One way she made money and gained power and favors was by brokering
young gay blades to older “Andy” types like Gianni, who couldn’t be seen trawling in
public. This is not uncommon, but rumors still persist that Versace met Andrew Cunanan
through Courtney at a party in San Francisco. Everybody knows Courtney hung out
with Donnatella Versace, but few people know she received a lot of Versace’s fashions
for who knows what all favors.
Simple survival was never enough. Wrecking marriages and other peoples careers
was all part of the fun. Do we see a pattern here?
D+&8"*4.(/"%$"L()5(6K":AA;
Courtney gets pregnant and Kurt has a gig on S(/#%5(8 N!7+/ '!?$ so they take
everybody, including Joe Mama and at least one other dope gofer, probably Elizabeth
Peyton, to New York. Elizabeth bides her time dabbling oils at the Chelsea Hotel.
Courtney sets herself up at the Pierre. She has several magazine interviews. At last
she’s a hot item. She always felt superior to Kurt. Now maybe the big magazines were
willing to recognize her fame.
:==
'*?$ K!66-
The backstage scene at Nirvana’s rst S(/#%5(8 N!7+/ '!?$ gig was little more than
a cell meeting for Courtney’s East Coast apparatchicks. Culled from Mtv and every
crevice in New York’s middle earth, Courtney’s handmaidens, and not a few furniture
slaves, were on board for the next big rocket ride. Add to this the vast network of aging
Riot Grrrls, who individually had no chance of living a descent life and you get the
picture, Kurt had about three buddies hanging around, that was it. Collectively, this
slithering amalgam shared a single brain with Courtney at the :*%<#- :*66*-#)= In
slightly more than two years Courtney managed to undermine, usurp, block, reprogram
or override every circuit in Nirvana’s mainframe. If you did not have the )!)-(+!3$Qimprimatur, you were shunned, shamed and shunted away.
:=>
I
VANITY PRESS
n September 199V S(.!/8 C(!% magazine ran an article by Lynn
Hirschberg that would prove to be a milestone in the Cobain legend. Many of the
ills connected to the Cobain death mystery are traceable to this journalistic event.
What was once hidden was now laid bare. On the surface the article was supposed to
be about Kurt, but, !./$% 0*6!(, it took on the appearance of an aggressive blast against
my daughter. I was angry, but I knew some of Hirschberg’s comments were based on
solid research.
By 1993 Kurt had no one to turn to. Not even his own mother... no posse, no bodyguards, no reliable pals, nobody to give him a sense of self. Even his band mates, were
pissed at him for taking so much shit from his old lady. He was an ensemble of one.
One photograph depicted Courtney posing naked and “preggy,” like an alternative
Demi Moore, replete with bulging belly-button. At rst I was kind of proud. I gave
up all hope of prudishness when I went nudist at the beach in Big Sur decades ago,
but the text made scabrous comments about her pro"igate drug abuse and injection
xation, a ritual I was at a loss to help her with as far back as 19P0. I hadn’t read
V(-;$/3(66 4!(%!$- at that point.
To me heroin was never :+!:. Only the lowest scum bags in the subculture used the
stuff. Pretty square eh? OK call me an Elitist Pig, but really, was Karl Marx an opiate
addict? Is opium, itself, the opiate of the people? Apparently these white and highly
manicured powders represented the blood of the new religion, not communist, not
even left wing, not revolutionist, but radical and highly conformist, perhaps closer to
fascism than we previously thought. After all Goth, Punk and Heavy Metal have a
Nazi core. She subscribed to the party line. She smoked, dropped and shot, the “mans”
prescription. She took the drugs the man wanted her to take. How could she be my
child from that point on? Everyone who put me down for ragging on her, just didn’t
get it your life style is your party "ag. If you afliate with the right wing you use their
drugs, their tobacco, their heroin, and above all their booze, craque and prescription
pills. Me, I drink Cabernet Sauvignon, Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee, Irish Tea and
smoke a little hash. Like Porky Pig says, “A bad dee abadee... That’s All Folks”
The S(.!/8 C(!% article implied she was dragging Kurt down while poisoning her
unborn fetus by exposure to the toxic waste she was known to have shot-up in New
York during the rst two weeks of January, 199V. I then realized I was not alone.
:=C
'*?$ K!66-
c#6!(. 2*<$ O!/+ -#.5!(6 -/*.$i A?$3#%8 a$7(6!/+!: 2!%:6$i G.76(.5
While I sat on my duff, Courtney’s mother, took action. Linda, went after the baby,
even before it was born. If she had asked me I would have agreed. To this day Courtney
thinks Los Angeles County was after her, but her bio-mom called in the county dogs,
all the way from Oregon, least we forget Courtney’s half-sister Jammie is a probation
ofcer in Portland.
Courtney went mad as a sow in a peach orchard the day after the article came out.
She threatened to kill Hirschberg and Tina Brown, the editor. When one of Courtney’s
more rational friends asked why she was so “reactive,” Courtney replied, “Because
they betrayed me.” To me this implies they had a “verbal” deal and Courtney trusted
them to say wonderful things about her. Courtney’s response was over the top. She
blew-up like a whore not paid. Every phone call she made after the article came out
cost her money, but her venomous spew drew unnatural attention to the issue. Had she
let it alone, the whole thing would have died out by Kwanza. I was only worried about
the fact that Courtney smoked at least one pack of S!%7!.!( S6!)-, always in the babies
face. Why worry about the heroin abuse when the smoke is just as bad?
Meanwhile her enemies, even then she had a string of enemies, Julian Cope (to name
one) plotted all manner of retribution against her. Cope took out an ad in several
Rockzines vowing to have her killed in exemplary fashion. I was happy she was making
it, proud to be a grandfather, (still thinking I would get to see the baby someday) and
yet blown-away, by the heroin and the freaky fracas. I was also worried about my
granddaughter, whose gender and name were announced long before her birth. Would
Frances Bean come out looking like a Martian or would she resemble Kurt?
:=?
H(.; H(%%!-*.
People close to the source told me Kurt grew sullen. He wanted to let the magazine
article fade, but Courtney wanted blood, she wouldn’t stop until she saw "agons of
bile spilled across a biblical landscape, for her it had become another slaughter of the
innocents. She was delusional, and xated, not for hours, not even days, but for years,
but never got her revenge, or even an apology. Besides Tina Brown had moved on to
an even more august station in the media demi monde. The Geffen Company wanted
to know how this was going to effect Kurt’s touring schedule and, although she was
advised to play down the article and let it die out, Courtney decided to sue, causing
even more negative publicity. It took years before I understood all of the repercussions
and, to this day, rumors stemming from the article are part of the LovetCobain legend.
When it comes to the health of Frances, well, let’s just say Courtney dodged another
bullet, this one shot from her own gun.
I did eventually put in a call to Lynn Hirschberg hoping to talk to her on a journalistic
level, hoping to objectify myself so that I might dig deeper into what was really going
on. When the S(.!/8 C(!% article appeared I was writing two unrelated non-ction
books and a novel, editing a book on a free-lance assignment and knocking out about
two magazine articles a month. I was happy about the baby and Courtney’s success. I
was happy to stay in the back ground, clinging to the hope that Kurt, Courtney and
the baby would someday just drive up in front yard and drop in for a cup of tea. How
stupid?
The grandpa alarm went off. I began to obsess on what might be going on. My work
shifted from writing books on medieval history and Irish Archaeology to pacing the
"oor at night. Obviously Courtney hadn’t changed at all. Her dark side was as dark as
ever. Then it hit me. Courtney wasn’t reacting to what was in the article, she was
reacting to what wasn’t in the article… no mention was made of her other addictions:
the sex addiction, the nicotine, the booze, the inappropriate acting-out and the pills
the pills Rozz Rezabek so dearly loved. The only clue in the whole article was the
absent air brushed cigarette. Was CL so
strung out on nicotine that she couldn’t
even go through one photo shoot without
 ring up a cofn nail? The question
answered itself in late 199Q, when her
ofcial quasi-autobiography came out
showing the ever present Virginia Slim
hanging from her lips on the beach after
their wedding. She was born addicted.
Her mom smoked and both her adoptive
grandparents blew smoke in her face
daily when she was a baby. Sadly, she
learned to associate love with Luella
Risi’s, cognac laced, Camel breath, her
adoptive grandmother, the one who thought
:=@
'*?$ K!66-
I was the devil because I was a Buddhist. Sure it was going to hard for Courtney to
stop, but because she wasted no compassion on those who had various af"ictions,
(overweight people for example) why should we (the public) forgive her? If she was
so tough why couldn’t she get a Nicatrol* patch or chew some Nicorette Gum * like
about fty million other people every year?
In an FS magazine interview published in October of 199Q, she was challenged to
stop smoking by the interviewer and her reply was typically "ippant, “Oh I will stop,
as soon as the baby learns to read.” This comment frightened me even more than the
rst S(.!/8 C(!% piece. My granddaughter was ve when that interview was recorded…
why hadn’t Frances learned to read yet? Courtney began to read at the age of two. Her
mother read from three on. I was reading at the age of two, and Courtney’s biological
grandmother was an award wining author, but more importantly, what possible correlation
could there be between learning to read and kicking the tobacco habit? Did we use
the pacier too often? Oh I get it, Francis could read, it was just Courtney practicing
her savant like double-think.
Smoking cigarettes was always a hot-button issue between Courtney and I because
it was an unresolved issue in my marriage to her mother. Every time Courtney came
to stay with me, as an adult, even for a short visit, we would discuss the possibility of
her dumping the fag diet, but she would just light up another smoke and threaten to
burn down the house. As time went on I discovered that her real reason for smoking
was because smoking had an appetite suppressant effect and she was secretly paranoid about gaining weight, plus she liked to play with re.
Here we see how the various neurotic traits are intertwined. I have been overweight
since I developed the familial hypothyroid condition in 196P and I guess, Courtney
also perceived her mother as overweight. In other words Courtney gured the only
way she could stay skinny and beat her adipose destiny was to smoke two packs of
Kools a day and do as many appetite suppresant drugs as possible. Besides, R*66!.7
S/*.$ always advertised Joe Camel and the Kool Penguin doing cute stuff. That made
it OK. Right?
S)*;$hG.5$%-, the commercial nicotine intervention club, found no signicant
correlation between permanent weight gain and the cessation of the nicotine habit.
But, Courtney was so afraid of growing overweight that she had liposuction on several
occasions and conded to pals and Internet e-mailers that she will probably always
need drugs and colonics to stay skinny.
Courtney’s obesophobia became an all pervasive element in her personality at an
early age. Her mother claims she quit smoking a few years after we divorced and
refused to buy Courtney cigarettes when she was in Juvenile detention, but according
to Courtney, Linda was still smoking in 19QP and closet smoked through at least one
other pregnancy.
As previously stated Linda and her New Age extended family in Oregon, got Courtney
strung out on all manner of nostrums and quack cures. Nobody knew about secondhand
:=A
H(.; H(%%!-*.
smoke in 1964 but, since my parents gave me asthma through much the same process,
I gured smoking was bad for any child. Thirty years later the medical community
proved me right, but why couldn’t common sense prevail for Courtney as a baby? I
was the bad guy remember? Who was going to listen to me? In my opinion her untreated
teenage nicotine and booze habits were the gateway drugs that screwed Courtney up,
she never liked weed anyway, it made her fat.
Now we see why the 199V S(.!/8 C(!% article was such a time-bomb. Courtney and
her media advisors demanded that evidence of her dwclassw cigarette habit be air brushed
out. This was done, but I guess they didn’t have a good Photoshop* artist because
when the magazine came out I could clearly see the middle and index ngers of
Courtney’s right hand posed as if she were holding a cigarette. Moreover, if you look
close, the smoke can still be seen wafting through the shot.
The Hirschberg article was the rst and the last to ever depict my daughter as the
bum she had become. The news leaks, after the article appeared, showed she was a
controlling micro manager bent on power and revenge. She threatened death and, when
she wasn’t taken seriously, she brought Kurt’s rock star status to bear. This status, she
already knew, would soon be her own to wield as she wished. Courtney wasn’t just
angry because the article criticized her, she was angry because she lost control.
Ms. Hirschberg claimed Courtney was on heroin when she was pregnant with Frances
and the "are up that followed focused on heroin abuse. In my opinion this was an
unfortunate focus, shocking, but difcult to prove. Courtney later admitted it, but
modied her confession by claiming she quit opiates as soon as the rabbit died. This
may have been true. But did she quit booze and cigarettes? At the risk of sounding
repetitious, the cigarettes and whisky thingees were the real problems. Nicotine and
alcohol symptoms don’t always show up in the neonate. Sometimes fetal alcohol effects
don’t show up until the child has problems in school or in learning to read.
When the article appeared Courtney called Lynn a liar and immediately set the New
York print world on the defensive. This worked. They were so busy covering their
asses they forgot to counter attack with the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome bomb and the
nicotine addicted baby syndrome. In case you’re completely ignorant, the government
warning posted on every bottle of booze says:
CA88"(E,.5) #") #h$) F'(5$".) G$.$(al9) +"0$.) 2h"'lE) ."#) E(,./) al8"h"l,8)
=$7$(a5$2)E'(,.5)p($5.a.81)=$8a'2$)"3)#h$)(,2/)"3)=,(#h)E$3$8#2<H
To make sure the mainstream “inkies” would never again mention Courtney’s 0(#d
<(- she went off the deep end with letters and phone calls from lawyers, and even from
Kurt himself signing his name to Faxs and letters without his knowledge in many
cases. S(.!/8 C(!% would be sued for slander and libel unless some adjustments were
made immediately, some reparations, some gestures of future productivity.
Yes, you dumb ass New York establishmentarians, my daughter, a woman completely
uneducated, not a graduate of the seven sisters networkiI’m not even sure she got her
GEDifaked you out. The whole heroin focus was actually a “smoke screen,” a
:>B
'*?$ K!66-
misdirection, legerdemain, prestidigitation, a mere stage trick designed to "oat public
attention away from her old man and on to herself. The real problems… cigarettes and
booze, the two most common fetal impact factors known to modern science, were
ignored.
Courtney’s will to control everything was clearly manifest at an early age. By the
time she was ten, her mother had no idea what to do with her. After we were reunited,
when she was fourteen, Courtney often went to bed screaming into her pillows. At
rst I thought it was something I did or said, but when I confronted her she told me
her mother put her through some kind of whacky Jannoff “Reparenting” regime. I was
dumbfounded. Around that same time (19Q9) I started to realize why Courtney wanted
to be a rock star at any cost. She was trying to rebuild a shattered personality.
Ever since Courtney bought her rst glam shot in Andy Warhol’s I./$%?!$O magazine
(that would be February 19PQ. Vol. WVII. No. V) she believed she could buy her way
to stardom. Her early success led to the assumption that the public, addled by a shortretention span, is gullible and that everybody can be fooled all of the time no matter
what she said , even if she blatantly contradicted herself. This wisdom contra-Abe
Lincoln, was reinforced by the numerous friends and acquaintances who bought into
the same cynical philosophy. I couldn’t gure this out at rst. I assumed Courtney and
her pals were also of the Generation W persuasion, but a little arithmetic proved me
wrong. Courtney was born, like myself, between marketing segments. She was not a
true Generation W member.
Courtney may have been right a full decade earlier, before Vance Packard, Marshal
McLuhan and Ralph Nader hipped everybody to the rip-off. Maybe you could fool
everybody in the 19Q0s , but the baby boomers and especially the Generation W readers
grew more and more sophisticated as they realized they were being poisoned by bad
food, and lied to by television producers. By the mid 1990s Courtney could no longer
fool all of the people all of the time. Thank heavens for the Internet.
Courtney’s dreams of continuing as a movie star panned out, but her soul was
evaporating. Her two roles with Alex Cox. Nancy’s best friend Gretchen in S!5 (.5
N(.:8 and a gun moll named Velma in S/%(!7+/ /* H$66i didn’t catapult her into the
mainstream right away. Only after she bought her way on to Hollywood’s center stage
with Cobain’s money and a huge wad of hype did she land the role of Althea Flynt,
but look closely. Even then she had to sign up for a probationary contract. Althea Flynt
was little more than Velma and Gretchen, and all three of these roles are little more
than masques in her rotating list of players.
In other words, pretty-pretty Courtney played her ugly-ugly self in most of her early
movies, but who was the real talent behind her mask of sanity ? All of my friends said
I should be proud, my family in typical yokel fashion were blown away, but I saw the
scene behind the scene, and it O$%$.Q/ <#%//8.
When I saw her all strung out she was anything but hip and I wasn’t very proud. I
told her she might die from doing opiates and booze and being mean to people, but
she persisted in her hollow understanding of human emotions even after drugs and
booze almost killed her several times. Even when her publicity hacks weren’t doing
:>:
H(.; H(%%!-*.
so well by her, even when people weren’t buying her act, even when her rst husband
James Moreland kicked her out of his band and her best friend, Kat Bjelland kicked
her out of V(3$- !. "*86(.5, she continued to believe that she could catch a rich rock
star, build a fake media image for herself and perk up her resume with quaint stories.
Courtney gured she could pick her friends and indoctrinate people. She gured she
could buy souls, like Terry Southern’s a(7!: 2+%!-/!(. bought souls. Look, for example,
at the dialog under the picture in Andy Warhol’s Interview for February 19PQ. It clearly
represents Courtney as a liar. I told her, many years prior to that single page vanity
piece, that at no time should she represent me as an ex-manager of the Grateful Dead,
at no time did I road manage the Grateful Dead. I was an advisor and consultant, but
because it held water in her Hollywood bucket she used the Dead connection
anyway.
Her mother did not start her own yogurt company, although she knew, and rumor
has it, once loaned money to, Nancy Hamren, of Nancy’s Yogurt of the Springeld
Creamery and acid test fame. Color me tie-dye.
Courtney was never part of a true commune. Her mother never had an affair with
Bob Dylan... there is a lot of that kind of delusional stuff "oating around, Linda was
not an heir to the Bausch and Lobe estate (Jack Risi had some stock in his portfolio)
and Courtney never appeared in a picture on the back of a Grateful Dead album, even
though her "ack people placed a mention to that effect in A%:+($*6*78 a(7(e!.$ in
V010. Imagine my surprise, as a subscriber, when I opened the pages of my usually
sedate semi-monthly read (to track the latest dig in Harrapa) only to nd a whole article
dedicated to Olempali and the Grateful Dead’s nudist days on Miwok tribal ground in
Marin County. Oh will the mockery ever cease?
Just to set the record straight, Courtney is not
on any Grateful Dead album cover. I managed
the Warlocks for about six months and the only
direct connection I ever had with the Grateful
Dead was in an advisory capacity, and as Phil
Lesh’s roommate. I was also close friends with
Tom Constanten and Ron “PigPen” McKernan
and room mates, for a while at SQ Harrington
Street with Bobby Petersen and Jerry’s brother,
Tiff Garcia. That said, for twenty-years, from
19S9-19P0 the Grateful Dead, were my principle
family circle, but Courtney never came around.
I was in Minneapolis working for Honeywell
in 1969 and Courtney was in New bealand
when the picture was taken, but the delusions
escalated.
On the phone from Topanga, Courtney told
me she did a walk-on in the t-/$%)(.. L$$;$.5
:>;
'*?$ K!66-
Courtney in
Portland
19Q9
and that she was going to have a speaking part in the Richard Pryor remake of V%$O-/$%Qa!66!*.-. Jeff’s mother did the costumes for the t-/$%)(.. L$$;$.5 so I believed her,
but I didn’t see the "ick until years later. She never did a corn "ake commercial either.
Her mother did not have an affair with Marlon Brando, another delusional leak, fed to
her favorite conduit, Everett True, in the London press in V003, and, I repeat, I never
fed her drugs. (See polygraph results in Rear Matters)
Later, when she realized she couldn’t get far with “beatnik” parents, even rich beatnik
parents, she changed it all around and made me look like a loser and her mother like
a heroic shrink albeit obese. She gave her mother a mysterious PhD, and failed to
mention her mother’s other husbands. She also omitted my books and my publishing
career, but the public didn’t care either way. Linda was well on her way to helping
hundreds, if not thousands of people through her highly effective counselling practice
and my books sold too many copies in the 19Q0s to turn back history. Too many people
knew, exactly who we were.
Unfortunately, Linda’s heroism as a shrink had some dross on it, especially in radical
circles, mainly because she put one of the Weather Underground radicals in jail for ve
years by urging her to plead guilty when, in fact, the Boston D.A’s ofce went on record
as saying they didn’t really want to try Linda’s client and were considering probation.
By pleading guilty, the court was forced to set the sentence at ve years p. Naturally
the woman had a breakdown in prison and the rest of her life was ruined.
Here however we may be catching of glimpse of the source of Courtney’s compulsive
:><
H(.; H(%%!-*.
'8..
H!%-:+3$%7
need to confess. Born into a form of failed Catholicism, Courtney has confessed, piece
meal to all of her crimes, one must simply assemble the jig saw puzzle, scattered over
hundreds of interviews and articles, to see the whole picture.
When Courtney married Kurt everybody thought she was a gold-digger including
myself, but I wished her the best because at least, I assumed, she was going to settle
down a bit. After awhile a few journalists, and most of the music buying public, accepted
her as a talented performer, but she couldn’t shake the groupie image. Kurt’s fans knew
that no matter what she did she could never transcend Kurt’s amazing trajectory.
If Kurt had lived and Courtney had been forced to live on her prenuptial agreement,
she would have remained a struggling rock chanteuse, maybe even a minor movie star,
but playing up Cobain as a suicide got her the sympathy she needed. After Courtney
married Kurt and had his career under control, she was able to convince people like
David Geffen (and later Milos Foreman) that she was bankable. This contract gave her
the helium she needed and in early 199V she had everything, a baby on the way, a
contract, money, and a foxy husband, everything that is, until she ran up against Lynn
Hirschberg. After the Hirschberg article Courtney’s balloon began to "utter to earth.
:>=
'*?$ K!66-
Hirschberg, known as a guerilla journalist, would run into an interview with a preconceived
agenda, ask a bunch of fast questions and leave the interviewee breathless. I’m not
here to debate the ethics of that technique, Scientologists use it all the time, but in this
case tabloid journalism had been elevated to the heights of S(.!/8 C(!%.
At rst Courtney was "attered that S(.!/8 C(!% wanted to interview her. Nirvana
was just hitting the charts and Kurt was in New York appearing on S(/#%5(8 N!7+/
'!?$ for the rst time.
All of the other interviews she did were easy-picking’s, although the S(--8 interviewer
in early 199V revealed some vital "aws, but there was something different about the
Hirschberg interview. Courtney was stiff and defensive as Hirschberg ran through her
lists of questions and, at the end of it, Courtney had a feeling she’d been had. Maybe
it was the pregnancy hormones casting doubts, but Courtney was only comfortable
with suck-ups. Hirschberg did not like Courtney and she was coming from a place
hardly anybody knew about. Apparently, and this was before the Internet was a big
deal, Hirschberg got the message that Courtney was seen shooting up in the back of
a cab (limo, whatever) and that she was, in the opinion of many, dragging the nations
newest wonder boy down, maybe even trying to kill him. In that context Lynn was a
visionary.
B[ K!.7- Y]9>Zr [ K!.7- Y_ 9]h\D= === 4!-/%$-- (.5 <(!.- +(?$ 6(!5 +*65 *. +$%i
6!;$ ( O*)(. !. :+!653!%/+=
The sequence of events that rippled through Courtney’s various families turned
hectic as soon as the S(.!/8 C(!% article came out. Her mother swung into action
immediately, placing calls to Condw Naste and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s
ofce. I called the hospital where Kurt was supposed to detoxify, and found out Courtney
was in that same hospital with the baby. This I found very odd. I next called the hospital
legal department who told me Courtney was threatening to sue and that they could
make no comment… that was enough for the time being. What was she going to sue
the hospital about? Turns out the hospital inadvertently leaked something about Courtney
being in a Methadone program and Hirschberg found out about that too.
Kurt had no clue how much impact the article would have until it hit like a bombshell. Neither did I. Hell I don’t even read glam mags. My nose is always stuck in computer mags and archaeological texts. I wasn’t on Courtney’s mailing list anymore so I
didn’t even know I had a grandchild on the way until my attorney called me the day
after the article came out and said, “Hey man you’d better catch a copy. Your daugh-
ters pregnant and strung out on heroin, it’s on the radio.”
I assume Courtney’s mother went through a similar experience although she probably
knew Courtney was pregnant much earlier.
According to inside reports Kurt was nonchalant about the article at rst, but got
worked up at Courtney’s urging. He saw the cop cars coming with red lights "ashing
to take his family away. This image found its way into a song… a truth he had been
avoiding.
:>>
H(.; H(%%!-*.
Courtney often bragged about doing skag and Kurt knew just how much Stoli she
could down and how many packs of cofn-nails she went through in a day. I guess
Lynn Hirschberg gured she’d teach Courtney a lesson, but all the article did was
assure Kurt would receive another series of mental beatings. Around the time the article
came out Courtney escalated her forgery campaigns to include signing Kurt’s name
on legal documents without any ofcial power-of-attorney. In many cases Kurt didn’t
even know the notes were sent or the contracts were signed.
Kurt’s friends, like Shelli Novoselic, issued proclamations and the media saw cracks
in the great Grunge fortress. Kurt nally began to see Courtney’s brand of aggression
as domestic violence, aimed at him. This was paradoxical. Why would Courtney want
to kill the golden goose? The answer is another crumb of cake. Follow the money, you’ll
see Kurt was not producing enough. He was pacing himself and Courtney wanted full
production, she wanted to gather all of the money that was possible at all times. I’m
sure that Hirschberg hatchet job started a headrst toboggan run down a very slippery
slope, Kurt was already dead he just didn’t know it yet.
Looking at things in the rear view mirror, the S(.!/8 C(!% punch-out, really two separate bouts, reveals another subtext to Courtney’s violent outbursts. The rst bout struck
Courtney hard when she posed pregnant and had a cigarette airbrushed out. What was
Courtney thinking? Why did she agree to this interview in the rst place? I thought
she knew everything about the “media nexus.” The second bout came when the electronic media wanted their own pound of "esh.
As journalism goes the Hirschberg piece was a diamond in the rough. The article
also served to cleave the jewel that no other magazine could touch. The Love-Cobain
marriage was "awed and Lynn Hirschberg knew it. Hirschberg was hinting that the
queen of the Riot Grrrls could not measure up in the chickee-pooh department and
that some terrible thing was going to happen.
Although Kurt was upset by the article he was far more exhausted by Courtney’s
psychotic freak-outs and the amount of priestly husbanding he had to do. After all, he
was the star and he needed someone to watch-over him too. But, if you read the article carefully you’ll see that Hirschberg was trying to send a message directly to Kurt.
Like the article was written for the public on one level and personally to Cobain on another. It was as if Ms. Hirscheberg used every once of wit and wisdom she had to send
up a smoke signal to a talented man whom she thought was being used and manipulated. Hirschberg seems to have gured Courtney was a talented whore who was now
overstepping the traditional groupie contract. In other words, it seemed obvious that
Courtney was moving rapidly into the Yoko Ono zone. Lynn didn’t have a crush on
Cobain, but she did respect him, call it the “Bubby” instinct. After talking to her on
the phone for V0 minutes I got the impression she had taken Kurt to her journalistic
bosom.
Unfortunately, Kurt was a mensch rst and a dweeb second. Men are really dumb
when it comes to criticism of the women they love. I gured Kurt ought to wake up
fast. That was also, I believe, the message Hirschberg intended to convey. Kurt did
:>C
'*?$ K!66-
eventually, wake up, but a bit too late to
save himself. The scenario became, “A
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to
the Gallows.” Hirschberg eventually got
Kurt’s attention like hitting a mule with
the proverbial baseball bat, two years too
late. But, when the article rst appeared
he didn’t get the point. Courtney got it,
but it took Kurt two whole years. You can
be sure Courtney read the code between
the lines like a solid gold copy editor.
For the ensuing two years Courtney’s
blow up reaction blinded him to Hirschberg’s
subtleties. The truth is Courtney did smoke
and drink while she was pregnant and
she did use heroin and methadone and
who knows what else. Oh sure, she says
K%!-/ (.5 S+$66!
she stopped (the heroin) as soon as she
N*?*-$6!:= H(<<8 +$%$i
found out she was pregnant, but when was that?
4!?*%:$5 !. [bb\=
Believe me I "ipped out when I read the article because
I realized it could have easily been true. I may have been an estranged
father, but there was my grandchild in full view of God and country and there was
Joe Camel’s ghost between Courtney’s empty ngers. I knew. I just knew.
If Kurt didn’t get the message immediately he certainly should have received some
clue from his, band mates, his dwindling circle of pals and from Courtney’s subsequent
behavior. She probably gured if she screamed loud enough Kurt wouldn’t see the
truth written on the page and, although I hate to admit it, Kurt may have been “that”
stupid. Courtney’s wild mouth had nally blown a typhoon back on Kurt and the
baby.
Okay, so why did Courtney consent to do the Hirschberg interview in the rst place?
She was supposed to be media savvy to the qnth degree, so why couldn’t she see the
sandbag falling? I believe she was on a larger-than-life ego-trip and was blinded to
any criticism. She only did the rst S(.!/8 C(!% article because she gured she was a
bigger star than Kurt and the cover story would be a step-up for her career, especially
after being rejected from Babes in Toyland back in 19PQ, Faith No More, and Leaving
Trains in 19PP. Courtney claims Tina Brown, promised her a cover. She wanted to be
the Grunge equivalent of Demi Moore, but Geena Davis took precedence that month
and Courtney felt betrayed. Even if the article had been laudatory Courtney would
have felt hard-done because she didn’t make the cover. That’s pathological
narcissism.
Courtney always wanted to be in and on the magazines. She drooled over S*7#$ and
H(%<$%Q- V(e((% in Portland and she spent a fortune on every fashion mag in the news
rack when she lived with me in Menlo Park in 19P4. In Ireland, her basement "at was
:>?
H(.; H(%%!-*.
festooned with pages torn out of the various European fashion mags and she knew the
editorial style of each and every one.
In England Courtney always bought the fashion magazines and rock rags, especially
NaG and H*/ I%$--. She gured if she read enough of them she could fathom their
mysteries. A decade later her dreams of being featured on the cover of one or all of
them led her into the S(.!/8 C(!% trap. Hirschberg displayed an obvious editorial bias
in her earlier celebrity articles, but Courtney ignored those warning signs. Courtney
gured she had already made it big in show biz and that she was somehow invulnerable
to journalistic pain. Hirschberg and Brown, although they did nothing malicious, had
another version for Courtney’s consideration like maybe a little taste of reality.
I talked to Lynn Hirschberg on the phone shortly after the article came out. She spoke
frankly about her experience with Courtney. In her mind Courtney came down just to
the left of Lizzy Borden. Hirschberg, a graduate of Columbia’s highly respected, school
of journalism, claimed Courtney wasn’t just glib, she was a full blown psychopath. To
prove her arrogant disregard for all things mortal and, I suspect, to assert her secret
hatred for fashion models Courtney, (according to Hirschberg) walked off the interview
location with a pair of uS00.00 shrs and a one-of-a-kind Halston dress worth thousands,
a frock and shr set destined for an evening photo shoot for G66$. So what else is new?
You should have seen her walking out of my pad with my Macintosh SE-30 in her big
canvas tote bag.
From my brief chat with Hirschberg, I got the impression her article was originally
intended to focus on Kurt, but Courtney stole the limelight with the frock and shrs.
I’ve seen her hog the stage enough, even as a ve year old, to note a recurrent pattern.
Scene stealing and upstaging runs in both sides of my family and her mother never
heard the word “stage-fright” until she saw it acted out on I Love Lucy.
Hirschberg was sincere and professional towards me, but I hung-up the phone that
day with the distinct impression she wanted to say more. I sensed she was not free to
say much. Even that brief call might have been construed as illegal a few weeks later
when the gag order fell on the whole deal. As a telephone shrink, from days gone by,
I could tell Courtney’s nemesis was frightened and under pressure. She needed to get
a load off her chest, but sadly, I was not the appropriate unloadee. The next thing I
heard about Lynn Hirschberg came when I read about Courtney stalking, and threatening to kill her at an after Oscar bash.
For whatever reasons, both inside the article itself and at home, the rst S(.!/8 C(!%
affair left Kurt bitter and limping into middle age twenty-ve years too soon. In my
opinion the Hirschberg article marked the denouement of the S(--8 cover marriage, a
union which everyone hoped would heal all wounds in Grunge land.
Kurt had a brief six months to enjoy his success before the ink bomb blew up in his
face. One of Kurt’s old pals in Olympia claims Kurt was gaining control of his temper
after N$?$%)!.5 hit the charts, because he had sympathy for the people Courtney was
harassing. Kate Hannah, of Bikini Kill, for example, but after the September, 199V
S(.!/8 C(!% article he started "ipping-out all over again, like he had done in Olympia
:>@
'*?$ K!66-
K(/ Vk$66(.5 *. S/(7$
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H(.; H(%%!-*.
K(/ (.5 a!:+$66$ '$*. (/ /+$ V$(?$% 26#3i *.
a!:+$66$Q- <*%:+ !. L!-:*.-!. : Y\`_ (0/$% 2*#%/.$8
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and Aberdeen. Hirschberg’s plan to warn Kurt worked, but it also backred because
Courtney used the incident to tighten her control over the Cobain empire. By his
birthday in 1993 Kurt seemed to be a I$/%*#:+;( answering only to his puppet
master
The Hirschberg article did a lot of collateral damage. Kurt headed a platinum trio
and everybody liked him for the shy and honest man he was. He could be a freak
sometimes, but his worst freak-outs were always driven by a "are-up in his domestic
scene, implosions, so silent that many of his friends didn’t know about them. No one
wanted to demonize him, but he began making death threats in Courtney’s behalf, just,
I guess, to prove his devotion. This carried over to Brit Collins and Victoria Clarke,
two women planning a tell-all book about Kurt and Courtney in London. Add to this
the fact that Courtney often sent faxs on her own signing Kurt’s name to them without
his knowledge. This is an important observation. Remember it.
Many observers feel Kurt began to erode after the S(.!/8 C(!% article hit home. Here’s
a guy with the biggest record in the country and he can’t be happy because his wife
needs to extract revenge against a magazine which, when all the facts are in, was telling
the truth. Why didn’t she drop it? Wasn’t Kurt’s N$?$%)!.5 sufcient revenge? Wasn’t
:CB
'*?$ K!66-
her million dollar contract with Geffen enough solace? Or was their a more sinister
dynamic at work? Was Courtney envious of Kurt?
The S(.!/8 C(!% blast injected a new resolve into Courtney’s vital "uids. She forged
Kurt’s name to dozens of death threats and sent them out as faxes. She would never
again trust any media worker who was not in her employ. In the early days most writers
with a trained eye, could see through her. Later, especially after Kurt died, the
transparency moved toward opacity. The perceptive journalists were frozen-out and
insider hacks were hired to paste-down “exclusive” press releases. Hirschberg sent
Courtney on a snipe hunt and Courtney held the bag, but she would never lose another
media battle, at least not until Francis nally stood up to her in V010.
Her anger at S(.!/8 C(!% helped her build a belly of steam sufcient to launch her
second album, which turned out to be pretty damned amazing, if not for the music
than at least for the leadership skills she exhibited. My dad was like that. When he
was sober he was a solid and natural leader and, yes folks, he too had his own dance
band, he played sax. That’s how he met my mom.
Once Courtney’s clutch of drone writers were elevated to the queen hive, they were
given assignments. The rst of Courtney’s campaigns was to tar and feather anyone
who wrote anything in opposition. The sycophants at America On-Line management,
knew she attracted customers, so the HOLE folder was going to stay open no matter
what constitutional guarantees she violated. This gave Courtney an extraordinary
ability to overstep the denition of protected speech. She directly suppressed comments
while she "amed her enemies. Lynn Hirschberg and Tina Brown became hobgoblins.
Anyone, myself included, who would dare lift a pen to criticize Hole, the postmortem
Cobain story, or anything not relating to Courtney’s version of the world, stood warned...
excommunication would be the minimum sentence, death by a thousand cuts would
be somewhere in the middle, and for the real blasphemers i a public "ogging followed
by a long hang in the park until the crows had their ll.
:C:
MELISSA ROSSI
H$.!#- T(O.-i "(6$./ SO$(/-f
?5$E+%,.5$E9%
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urt was trying to avoid stress, write songs, develop a new guitar and play with
his kid, but Courtney was fuming, making, “I’ll chop your head off” phone
calls to Lynn Hirschberg in New York and (for other reasons) sending scare
bombs to Mary Lou Lord in Olympia.
To salve the proud "esh raised by the beating she got from the New York press,
Courtney approached Melissa Rossi, an upcoming writer, then living in Seattle, with
credentials at G-U#!%$ and the N$O T*%;$%.
Courtney originally ran into Melissa in Portland around 19P4, between Green Tortoise
commutes. The two women met, informally when Courtney was frittering away her
inheritance money as a mall rat in the H(66$%!( scene. Beyond a nodding familiarity,
Melissa steered clear of Courtney because she thought Courtney was, “over the edge,”
but she kept track of her antics through the grapevine and the Grrrl zines in the days
before e-mail and twitter.
Luckily, for journalism, nine years later, when it came time to present a book proposal,
Courtney waxed nostalgic about the H(66$%!( days. Melissa was working at a hip
restaurant in Seattle at the time and the two became a lot more chummy, to the point
where Melissa was enlisted for occasional baby-sitting chores. Her street cred gave
Rossi $./%$ to Courtney’s inner hotel scene, and she got an eyeful.
Melissa showed Courtney a by-line piece she did for N$O-O$$; !. Y\\Y. In that
landmark article Rossi alerted her young audience to the coronation of the king and
queen of grunge, describing Kurt and Courtney as an up and coming power couple.
Courtney likes to be described as omnipotent, so she remembered the article. At rst
Rossi agreed to work up another article for an unnamed magazine, but Courtney
immediately suggested a book.
In 1991, Melissa had Courtney’s tacit permission to write an unauthorized biography.
Courtney denied this, but never sued. K#$$. *0 N*!-$ came out two years after Kurt
died and, predictably, Courtney condemned the book, stating she didn’t even remember
Melissa, and going so far as to pull strings at Simon v Schuster to block the book, or
at least pull it out of circulation. This didn’t work because the book was already out
K
:C;
'*?$ K!66-
to reviewers. Again she felt betrayed
by New York journalism. She did
manage to get Melissa’s book reduced
to a mass market paperback, with really
cheap covers and bad paper, but it
came out anyway at least until it went
out of print. Still , some very important
people read it.
Melissa told me Courtney wanted
to erase Portland from her legend
beginning about three days after she
met
Kurt. She fed Melissa a lot of bogus
N%9+&&(,W"&&+
info, but Melissa double checked all
the facts and came up with dates and
events not appealing to the greatest of all shabby diva’s. For example, the Rossi book
documents the time Courtney was kidnapped by Portland skin heads, dragged out of
town, beaten up and kicked to the side of the road. I checked on the incident and it all
came about when Courtney slapped somebodies old lady. Another act of violence.
After she married Kurt, even though she claims she rst met him in Portland, she
kept her manic days posing as a gratti tagger in Portland, on the down-low. She didn’t
want anybody rattling skeletons that far back. Who knows what she did disguised as
Courtney Menely or even Courtney Harrison. I make it around 19P1, but others say
she was dancing topless under age in Portland clubs as early as 19P0 between trips to
Alaska and Japan.
Rossi’s book bore Courtney no malice, but, even this simpatico riot sister was
threatened by VP pages of corrections in a legal letter, before K#$$. *0 N*!-$, hit the
books stores. The legal advisors at Simon v Schuster’s Pocket Books had to face strong
pressure from Viacom (Simon v Schuster’s mother company) and also from Mtv, a
sister company also owned by Viacom. This pressure obviously came from high up in
Hollywood, probably Courtney calling in markers from her ACtDC buddies.
The Mtv executive staff, who Courtney was playing like a cello, suggested SvS
dump the book project in its infancy. Luckily for Rossi there were still enough old
hands on-board to ignore that kind of pressure and the book came out anyway. However,
and I say this as pure speculation, the book may have been downsized considerably
due to Courtney’s legal threats because, in my opinion, it could have been a hard back
best seller.
Rossi’s book was deeply researched and I believe, Courtney’s story was fairly told.
Even so it contained a lot of stuff Courtney didn’t want anybody to know, most
specically her tendency to violence and pyromania, her narcissism and her revenge
lust. Oh did I mention the violent streak?
K#$$. *0 N*!-$ was the rst book on Courtney to come out authorized or otherwise.
Courtney said she wanted the book suppressed because she was negotiating with an:C<
H(.; H(%%!-*.
other writer to do an “authorized” biography, but as we shall soon see, that project
turned out to be a complete travestyia shameful book, entirely self-serving and devoid
of insight.
Rossi’s “Most Unauthorized Biography,” would prove to be a thorn in Courtney’s
side. Meanwhile, especially after 9-1-1, Melissa turned out to be an ethical journalist
with a great sociopolitical mind-set, and she made a living at it. I even had a conversation
with her father, a retired pawn broker, living in Florida.
Pocket Books staffers, bowing to pressure, used the worst newsprint they could nd.
Unfortunately, mass market paperbacks rarely make it into libraries. Books are sensitive
objects, susceptible to climate and moisture. For reasons only hinted at, namely to
placate a raging Courtney, Melissa’s book may not survive the rough and tumble of a
used book store. The book, in spite of its excellent literary quality, never had a chance
to hit the big time. It didn’t even appear on supermarket racks. I guess Courtney’s
really dark and mean side came to play even at the production stage. But, the book
does have a Library of Congress number and it should be re released someday.
If you are still skeptical just buy any one of Melissa’s “L+(/ G?$%8 A)$%!:(. S+*#65
K.*O,” booksia series for travelers with political savvyiand you will see the depth
of her ability to penetrate an issue. These books were decades ahead of their time and
presaged the, “Occupy Wall Street Demonstrations.”
Courtney seemed satised that she had relegated Melissa to a paperback although
it does seem peculiar that Simon v Schuster brought out Courtney’s autophagabus by
Poppy b. Bright two years later.
Courtney was low on energy in January of 1996.
She had just gone through rehab at the Caron
Foundation in Wernersville, Pennsylvania at the
urging of Edward Norton. The Caron stint was not
effective, even though she nearly died. By April
Courtney was back on dope and Norton moved on.
By the summer of 1996 she seemed to be retooling
her bad girl image and didn’t need reminders that
about half of Nirvana’s 1V million fans hated her.
Everybody said she was cured now, that her toxic
hate would subside, but I knew it wouldn’t.
I was also hearing more about the assassination
plot from my sources on the Internet, not all of
them stupid or paranoid. In addition, Courtney still
had Kurt’s money to blow and she wasn’t acting
like a grieving widow. Tom Grant was sending
faxes out and my quest to write the present book
took on new energy.
About the time Courtney entered the Caron
:C=
'*?$ K!66-
foundation, I was approached by the previously
mentioned Ian Halperin and Max Wallace,
two Montreal based journalists who came highly
recommended by Dan Mcleod founder of the
H$*%7!( S/%(!7+/, a great alternative newspaper
inspired by the V$%;$6$8 V(%3. As time went
on I appeared on several shows with Halperin
and Wallace.
Also during 1996 I was contacted by Nick
Broomeld who was interested in doing a full
length BBC documentary on the Cobain case.
I had to think long and hard. I was never paid
for any appearances and I did these gigs only
after I was convinced Courtney had something
to do with Kurt’s demise. Nothing I could say
or do was going to make a difference, my
writing career was shot and I knew I was never
going to meet my granddaughter. Might as
well “freak freely,” to use a phrase from the
Acid Test days.
Behind the scenes Ms. Love was still planting
land mines. Although the Rossi book came out
to excellent reviews, Courtney threatened to write a book review of her own in S<!.
magazine, inferring that she also enjoyed :(%/$ 36(.:+$ at S<!.. Estranged Guccioni
father-son relationships notwithstanding, one wonders if S<!. would be so journalistically
inept as to allow Courtney to pen a rebuttal of her own and call it objective. Or did
she mean she would write one and pay somebody at S<!. to type it in verbatim? Now
that really is vanity press. One wonders how S<!.Q- ghost writers would cover their
tracks.
On balance Rossi wrote an even handed book and she did her research. She was the
rst author to paint me in a true light, which irked Courtney and her mother no end.
I think they were down on the book because they had always vilied me. Any chance
that I might have been a nice guy all along, made them real squirmy.
In spite of hard attempts at suppression, K#$$. *0 N*!-$, brought out some deeper
truths. For example Rossi went to Hillcrest detention center in Salem, to see what
grotesqueries Courtney had to go through as a juvenile. She also dug up long buried
insiders in Portland and spent three years beating the pavement and the electronic
frontier, before her book came out. Compare this to Charles Cross’s best seller, which
reads like it was copied from several taped parrot sessions with Courtney and a cursory
trip to Aberdeen. When asked the name of his fact checker, Cross said he didn’t know.
Luckily, Courtney’s hatchet jobs did not hurt Rossi’s sales, but Melissa eventually grew
worried.
:C>
H(.; H(%%!-*.
On April 9, 1996 Melissa appeared on the Geraldo Rivera show to announce that she
had fears Courtney was going to pop out of a doorway and punch her out like she did
Kathleen Hanna and Mary Lou Lord. On the phone, citing the case of James Moreland,
I told her Courtney would rather hire somebody to do the job, which, didn’t do much
to soothe Melissa’s fears.
In retrospect, Rossi had nothing to worry about. Courtney loved the publicity, but
she had to make a gesture to appease her fans. Months after Melissa’s book came out
the Simon v Schuster received the VP page letter from the enigmatic Rosemary Carroll
containing more than one hundred -#77$-/!*.- detailing just what Melissa might do
to correct the book to avoid a lawsuit. Rosemary’s letter included denials that Courtney
was attacked and kidnapped by skinheads in Portland (double checked) denials that
Linda, by her own admission in an interview in Chinatown dumped Courtney on the
system at age eight out of fear, and the fact that she was\ like me, too hot to handle.
(Triple checked). This dunning legal demand also included denials that Courtney’s
second father, Frank Rodriguez an elementary teacher in Portland was once a “Sanitation
Engineer.” (Double checked). I know both he and his brothers worked for the Sunset
Scavenger Company and formed a small club band called the San Andreas Fault Finders.
No mention was made of how they lied in court about the dates of their divorce in
Oregon and nobody ever mentioned the times when Courtney was living in Carmichael
near Sacramento, just prior to moving to New bealand. Polygraphs at forty paces
anyone? The kid whose gold sh she killed at school grew up, tracked me down and
told me about it.
To their credit the lawyers at Simon v Schuster shrugged and said, “Well yes, maybe
we’ll make some changes, if we get a chance to do a reprint.” One editor told me,
“Courtney had a chance to do this book as an authorized biography and she turned it
down, so what does she expect?”
One of the corrections took a direct jab at me. The minute I read it I was taken by
the incompetence of its author. The comments about me were worded in an incriminating fashion without much thought to courtroom logic, in general the item reads:
L$ %$-$./ /+$ 0(:/ /+(/ R*--! !- (//$)</!.7 /* %$-/*%$ -*)$ ?$-/!7$ *0 :%$5!3!6!/8 /*
H(%%!-*..
The use of the word qrestore’ is interesting. Restore means, “to give back.” This
means that somebody purposefully tried to take something away in the rst place. The
opposite is true, they gave me credibility with the fans who loved Kurtithe fans who,
like myself, suspected something dire was afoot. Could this hint at an organized slander
campaign to protect people more powerful than Courtney?
:CC
SMALL APOLOGIES
A<%$- )*! 6$ 5$6#7$
Andrew Cunanan
Versace assassin, in his high school year book.
!BCDE(1CFG(HI(*CHJ(,--K
N
irvana’s, I. F/$%* was just released and the man who put it together should
have been celebrating. Instead he was miserably enmeshed in the Courtney
vrs. S(.!/8 C(!% standoff, a law suit that pranged every raw nerve in the industry
for a full three years, and long after Kurt died. Finally Sy Newhouse blinked. Courtney
grew in ugly power the next day. She alone, by her persistence, forced the mogul behind
S(.!/8 C(!% to cave.
The legal circumstances leading up to the second S(.!/8 C(!% article (and cover) and
the contents of the piece itself (for example the nasty and completely untrue shots at
me) may never be known, but the timing and self-aggrandizing nature of the piece indicates that Courtney (and her handlers) had control of the project. The only way this
could have happened is if Condw Naste came to a compromise about the 199V Hirschberg
piece, with a gag order as part of the deal.
In a sense that second article was the most expensive piece of public relations hype
ever “purchased” from any magazine, because, according to hints made by Courtney
in various interviews and on Hole’s web page, the Cobains paid more than uVS0,000
in legal fees to bring S(.!/8 C(!% to the bargaining table and another quarter million
to get their child back from Courtney’s half-sister. It has yet to be estimated how much
it will cost to get Kurt back.
All the public saw was a 5$/$./$ amongst dilettantes. Suddenly everything was
peachy-keen between Courtney and S(.!/8 C(!%. Over a forty-eight month period,
Lynn Hirschberg’s original article (the one that got bumped from the cover slot and
accused Courtney of shooting smack while she was pregnant) mysteriously morphed
itself into a full cover poetic little ditty about Courtney’s angelic travails, written by
one of her street chums (who, incidentally, used the term: “Grand Guiginol” as a verb.
It’s a proper noun). The payoff "uff job was accompanied by diaphanous and cherubic
angel poses straight out of a Mercedes-Benz commercial. No mention was made of
cash or fees, the article speaks for itself.
:C?
H(.; H(%%!-*.
S+(.$ a:H*O(. *0 /+$ I*7#$- O!/+ +!- V$-/ H!%6i V%!/ 2*66!.-= 2*66!.(.5 S!:/*%!( 26(%; O%*/$ ( -:(/+!.7 $d<*-$ *0 2*#%/.$8 !. Y\\Y 3#/ /+$
<#36!-+$% :+!:;$.$5 *#/ (.5 *.68 ( +(.50#6 *0 <$*<6$ +(?$ -$$. /+$
)(.#-:%!</= F.5*#3/$568 2*66!.- ;.$O /+$ !..$% -$:%$/- (3*#/ 2*#%/.$8Q7%*#<!$*!5 $-:(<(5$- O!/+ *.$ *0 /+$ I*7#$-i .*/ S+(.$= 2*#%/.$8 7*/
<%$7.(./= "+$ 7#8 O(- )(%%!$5 (.5 -+$ +(5 (. (3*%/!*.i 3#/ .*/ 3$0*%$
-+$ <#/ $?$%83*58 !. 4#36!.i /+%*#7+ ( -$%!$- *0 -:%$()!.7 5#-/h#<-=
The entire New bork media world heard the klaxon, Courtney would use blackmail,
veiled threats, Kurt’s money and her own to kick media butt until she got her way. She
sold the publishing rights to her song catalog to EMI in late 1994 for a cool million,
and used most of it to pay off her attorneys. But in winning this hollow victory Courtney
used up a lot of markers, favors that go beyond a cash value. Her band members and
friends begged her to use the victory over Condw Naste as a demarcation point. It would
be a perfect spot to shift the nastiness out of her early career and maybe put some
“empathy” in. After all that’s what Kurt requested in his nal encyclical.
By Christmas of 1993 Kurt found himself imprisoned by everything from his contract to his marriage vows and bullets from the original S(.!/8 C(!% article continued
:C@
'*?$ K!66-
to ricochet throughout his life. He
was willing to forgive and forget, but
Courtney wanted blood. Courtney
wanted to eat S(.!/8 C(!% alive. He
got depressed every winter, but this
year his spirits were up because he
had his daughter to look after. Things
were going well, except for Courtney’s
sexual wanderings and her continual need to bitch at people. Kurt couldn’t
understand why she needed to bitch
all of the time. They had it made.
Why not relax and enjoy life? Why
not just sit back and watch the baby
grow?
The public seemed to think the original "are up was dead. In reality
Courtney never let up on Condw Naste,
even for a second. No matter what
else she had to do, even after Kurt
died\ through probate courts and hassles about her own band and touring schedules with and without Lollapalooza, still
the law suit against S(.!/8 C(!% relentlessly pressed on. She wanted money, an apology and a cover article. What people don’t realize is how much damage it did to Kurt.
But what was the payoff? Courtney claims all kinds of stuff needed to be corrected
before she would settle any defamation and slander suit, but Condw Naste knew it was
about money and image. Plain and simple, the best way to get Courtney off your back
is to give her a cover of something. Eventually, with a big New York gag order hanging over all proceedings, Courtney got her cover shot and winking apology from S(.!/8
C(!%. But she made many enemies in the process. Lynn Hirschberg went on to write
numerous articles and Tina Brown (seemingly unscathed) moved up to win Golden
Globes and overhaul the N$O T*%;$%i downsizing the staid old staff by half.
But, apologies and a new dress weren’t enough. I guess Courtney remained abrasive
to Lynn Hirschberg, since she accosted her with an academy award statue (not hers)
at the S(.!/8 C(!% party after the 199S show, but hey, that’s to be expected.
It is ironic that Brit Collins and Victoria Clark, the two women who were writing a
book for Hyperion at the time of the S(.!/8 C(!% article, were paid off in the six gures
(Sterling) to make their exposw go away. Now what, might have been so terrible in
their book that Kurt would be forced to pay money, out of his own pocket? Was it
something Courtney did in England or maybe Ireland? Maybe we should ask Julian
Cope, but that couldn’t work either because apparently Julian took a bribe after which
he and Courtney became very buddy-buddy.
In an even greater irony, people started treating me with a modicum of respect going
:CA
H(.; H(%%!-*.
so far as to describe me, correctly, as a writer and publisher. This is 1996, around the
time Tom Grant set up his web site. Grant plays an important role in this whole case,
but for now let just explain that Grant was the private detective Courtney hired to
locate Kurt and the missing credit cards.
When H!7+ "!)$- ran their cover piece on the lingering Cobain mystery (April 1996)
a handful of rock journalists, who use .*) 5$ <6#)$- when writing anything critical
about Courtney, grew less skeptical and more “open-minded” about how Kurt might
have died. At that point Courtney changed her publicity agency and chipped in a cool
million up front to keep herself hot in print. This led to a 199Q debacle around the
Academy Awards presentations.
Courtney was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work in "+$ I$*<6$ S%-= '(%%8
C68./. She didn’t win, but the week before the academy awards nominations were announced, Tom Grant appeared on F.-*6?$5 a8-/$%!$- stating that the Cobain case
should be reopened. Courtney was snubbed by the academy for a best supporting actress award. It turns out Courtney was miffed because she wanted to be nominated
for Best Actress. There was nothing sagacious, untrue or libelous in the original
Hirschberg piece or in Rossi’s book. As I told Lynn Hirschberg on the phone, a long
time before Kurt died, “Courtney won’t be ignored.”
You gotta develop a thick skin when you’re a parent of a rock star. When Jerry Garcia
died in the Fall of 199S, Courtney wished me dead instead of him before 30,000
Lollapalooza fans. A few weeks later, as soon as she won her boy bashing case in
Florida, she resumed assaulting men in her audience. Bashing people is Courtney’s
weak point and bashing Kurt was her biggest folly. If O.J.’s spousal abuse can lead to
murder why then not also a woman bashing her husband? Is the gender war so biased
that logic only works when men bash women?
Courtney refused to, or perhaps could not, soften her bad-girl image. Her team of
paid character assassins turned slightly more timid, but Courtney lived for the adrenaline rush. There is far too much reportage here. Everybody has their favorite weird
Courtney story, the night she jumped-up on stage with Madonna at the Mtv awards,
or the times she got kicked off the plane… there were at least 1V of those, the worst
one took place when she was traveling on United with the baby, the time she wanted
to move one of her friends into rst class from coach. Her tantrum was so bad that
day, they had to call the air marshalls to calm her down at gun point. That one didn’t
make the press, but my daughter-in-law happened to be a hostess on that "ight.
:?B
POPPY SEED DULL
"+$ 6(58 5*/+ <%*/$-/ /** )#:+i )$/+!.;-=
L(79%$,000<,++<,1XY
!*%/L(!4"M%"$(34(7456:16"(,--9
C
ourtney hired an autobiographer to balance the damage done by the Rossi
book. The resultant pseudobiography, 2OFR"NGT 'OSG9 /+$ R$(6 S/*%8i
by Poppy b. Brite, was published by Simon v Schuster in September of 199Q,
one year after the Rossi book came out. Simon v Schuster is the mother company
of Pocket Books and is a subordinate to Viacom which also owned Mtv at the time.
Viacom was so damned big, one wonders if it isn’t monopolistic, and guess what?
Courtney owned, a lot of stock.
Simon v Schuster, founded by Carly’s grandfather, had a tentative deal in the works
even before Melissa Rossi’s book came out. This more enterprising project, destined
for the hardback fast-track, was to have Courtney’s full cooperation. Again one
wonders if the book might have also had a healthy injection of money from Courtney’s
publicity fund, but that would be vanity press.
At the same time in London, Nick Broomeld, the decorated documentary producer, decided to look deeper into the Cobain suicide reports. Although Broomeld fell
short of accusing Courtney of murder, his 199Q lm became, yet another breakthrough in the Cobain saga. She put me down in the movie too, but that slam was
nothing compared to the book she was about to release.
Like all tightly controlled books, the Poppy book reeks of censorship. It also whiffs
of pathological narcissism and downright lies. Poppies other books are well written
, but her usual narrative "ow is missing in this one. Maybe she had trouble transitioning
from ction to non-ction, but I doubt it. This book is jerky, written in an uneven
hand, like it was dictated through a speech synthesizer by a drunk with DTs. The
K#$$. *0 N*!-$ mass-market paperback, was far more realistic and way more nittygritty.
In addition Poppy’s book wasn’t fact checked very well. As mentioned earlier,
Courtney hated Rossi’s book, not because it was badly written, but because it was
executed without her “script control.” Paradoxically, Melissa admired the old Corkster,
from afar, as far back as 19P0, but Courtney still hated it. Remember also that it was
:?:
H(.; H(%%!-*.
this same Melissa Rossi who researched the landmark 199V article for N$O-O$$; that
announced the signing of Hole to the million dollar Geffen contract, you know the
one where Geffen outbid Madonna.
Rossi made two other mistakes, the same mistakes Lynn Hirschberg made.
First, Melissa was a woman and she could do something Courtney couldn’t do, she
could write. Secondly, also like Hirschberg, Melissa was bent on objectivity. Schooled
in journalistic ethics, Rossi knew no other way. Ethics made no sense to Courtney, a
balanced approach was out of the question. My little girl wanted propaganda and halftruth, not objectivity. She wanted school-yard revenge. Long standing ethical considerations, such as the shibboleth against printing statements made off the record, meant
nothing to her.
Let me give you a few hundred examples. The rst two paragraphs of the R$(6 S/*%8i
are so ctionalized, you’d think they were written by a carnival barker. The rst thing
that strikes your eye is the sparse page design. One wonders how so many factual
errors could be stuffed into such a thin book? But we soon nd an answer for the
paucity. The author has no clue as to a time line, a sorry chronological state that carries
throughout the book. Autumn in San Francisco is known as I.5!(. S#))$%, always
is, always will be. The S$(-*. *0 /+$ L!/:+ is a Donovan tune, a homily to the death
of the "ower power revolution not a Bob Dylan tune.
We also catch a glimpse of Courtney’s uncontrolled hatred for me. I am the rst
person mentioned in the book and she wastes no time getting to the blood letting. The
party where I met Courtney’s mother took place in April or May 1963 not Autumn of
1964. There’s a crooked year and half right there. The paragraph also implies I was a
party crasher when in fact the party was given by one of my close friends. My smile
got me in everywhere. But I can’t resist telling you that this entire load of crap was
downloaded from my web site from a rough draft I set up in 199S to tar baby (that’s
a verb) just such an attack. Hey, it worked. Poppy and her beard fell for it hook-line
and powder puff. If you read the rst of this book you’ll remember that party had
nothing to do with Dizzy Gillespie. It had everything to do with Wilfred Satti, the
famed poster pioneer and party thrower of that era.
The narrator, whoever it is, adds to her musical ignorance with a frightening Generation
W concept of San Francisco in the sixties, She links me to the Warlocks (proto-Grateful
Dead) two years too early. She says Phil Lesh played bass with the Warlocks in 1964
when in fact the Warlocks weren’t formed until May 196S and that was in Palo Alto
not San Francisco. Between 1963-1964 Phil Lesh was working for the post ofce,
composing symphonies and taking classes from Luciano Berio at Mills College in
Oakland.
Courtney couldn’t resist the temptation to gut shoot her mother too. Brite, echoing
Courtney’s ghastly voice to the fullest, tries to strike out at Linda by saying she
celebrated Courtney’s birth:
“with a coven of freaks who stewed the placenta and ate it with onions.”
:?;
'*?$ K!66-
This is pure schizophrenic hallucination, typically grotesque disrespectful and
humorless. Ho hum. Must we go on? Our divorce took place in 196P not 19Q0. The
adoption hearing began in 19Q0 and went on through appeals until 19Q1, when I ran
out of money and when my, now deceased, attorney sold me out. Poppy also implies
that I dragged Linda back to my dingy apartment. That’s just plain not true. Linda was
living on Palm near California with Del Nan Winblad. She did not visit my apartment
at 191 Frederick and Ashbury, on Twin Peaks overlooking the whole Haight and the
park for at least ve weeks of dating almost every day. Furthermore I have never lived
in a dingy dwelling. How would Courtney know anyway, unless Linda told her? My
places were always clean and comfortable.
However, Brite does hit one true note. On page V1 she says:
L%),Z-+#6(S&[,"A#,(6"D$+B%,4($=%),A(&,(#,(:5&+B%,6)5#>,(#6,-+#6(,*"#&+6%)%6,
=%)&%94,(#,"5$*(&$<,(,D%)&"#,A+$=,#",4(7+98,($,(99@
Linda elaborates on this in her own autobiography, wherein she tells us that she was
sexually molested by her adoptive father, Jack Risi. I had no idea about that until her
book came out, but now I am wondering what that old fart did to my kid when I wasn’t
around?
I don’t have pages enough to go on, but I must. Courtney’s name was never Love
Michelle Harrison. She was born Courtney Michelle Harrison. 10 Pounds 3 Ounces.
Ten month gestation. However, it bears repeating that Frank Rodriguez was not originally from Portland. He was the son of a respectable Daly City garbage man, and he
worked for Sunset Scavenger Company. He became a schoolteacher in Portland about
the time Courtney was eight, after Linda put him through school and bought him and
his second wife a house. That’s about the time Courtney had a nervous breakdown
from all the Primal Scream counselling.
There follows, between pages V1 and 43, a long litany of ofcial papers . Some of
these show clearly that Frank and Linda and Dave Menely unintentionally hurt my kid
by sweeping her under the carpet. These reports are interspersed with interpretive romance, coupled with propaganda blasts which accuse me of giving Courtney dope and
having an affair with someone named Geneva. The only girlfriend I had during that
time was a wonderful woman name Gerry Ganter, who was, like the rest of us, sucked
into the deal by lies.
In the Poppy b. book, every time something awful is said about Frank or Linda or
Dave Menely it is followed by a neatly worded anecdote making me look ve times as
villainous, accusing me (again) of giving Courtney drugs. At no time did I “give” her
drugs. I never abused tobacco, speed or booze and I would never be so foolish as to
carry acid or mushrooms around with me. Moreover I have been opposed to giving
drugs to kids for any purpose and have publicly stated that LSD works better for older
people. (See polygraph section)
I did smoke pot. Courtney hated pot because it made her fat, but no matter because
I never had more than two three joints around anyway. I didn’t do coke until 19PV and
she wasn’t around then. This is the gods honest truth. I went on a coke jones in 19P6,
:?<
H(.; H(%%!-*.
but I worked everyday and Courtney
wasn’t around much then either. I
realized how screwed up it was and
I quit. I just stopped sucking up the
"akes one day. ben training, strong
will, whatever, but I have never free
based or done craque or shot-up
anything. I’ll take a polygraph on that
too. In 19Q9, when Courtney rst visited
my houseboat in Sausalito I had one
old Peyote button on an altar with
three Pomo baskets, but she obliviously
didn’t know what that was.
The LSD story involving Robin
Barbur is likewise bogus. I did not
slip these girls a baggy of LSD microdots
at a concert in San Francisco. Poppy
b. can’t remember the name of Janice
Joplin’s backup group, but she can
remember what Courtney told her
about me giving her dope. Well it was
Big Brother and the Holding Company
and Peter Albin, the bass player, was
a friend of mine. His brother, Rodney,
was one of my best friends and I knew
Janice well. Ironically this same “baggy
does turn up a few pages later in Liverpool, which means they must have smuggled it
to England, which means they were committing a class A International felony. More
than likely they can’t remember what really happened so they made it up. I think
Courtney got the microdots in Ireland from Martin Brennan who was busted with the
identical stuff, two weeks after Courtney split with, the late Steve O’Leary, a CIA guy
from Minnesota, who died of a burst spleen in October of V00Q.
(See Steve’s account in Rear Matters)
On page 3S Courtney gets Poppy b. to quote a report about my rst visit with her
when she was incarcerated in Hill crest in Salem Oregon, one of Newt Gingrich’s orphanage schools, probably May of 19QP, (again the whole chronology is off by a year)
and I have all of the conversations on tape.
Courtney stole some herbal tea from my hotel room during an off-site lunch hour,
which consisted of me tooling her around Salem in my Rover TC-V000.
An herbalist in Corvallis, gave me the tea for my asthma, and it worked . This product
is still available in stores as a sleep remedy. I hated the taste of it, but Courtney found
it and put it to harmful use. I had no idea she was trying to sabotage me at that time.
:?=
'*?$ K!66-
But, sure enough, she took a pinch or two back to her group home, put it in a zip-loc,
scored some TOPS tobacco papers and tried to smoke it. At rst the ofcials called it
pot, but if it had been “real marijuana” they would have busted me on the spot. The
nurse was not called because neither Courtney or Brandy appeared disoriented. If it
had been real potifor example the Jamaica Blue Mountain I was, in fact, smoking
during that eraithey would have been so looped we would have all been busted and
I would not have been allowed to continue the two day visit. When I showed up on
Sunday I was questioned about the substance. I told the counsellors frankly what it
was. They chem tested it. It was not marijuana and had no THC in it. I never did smoke
pot with my daughter. I repeat she hated the stuff even though Dave Menely, her second
stepfather, was a massive pot head and Frank Rodriguez and his brothers smoked pot
back in 1966. Who knew?
I repeat, the Poppy b. book is full of distortions, especially when it comes to drugs
and sex, or anything good I did. I was the true bohemian and they were all wannabes.
Nobody mentions that my three books, to that date, were bringing in about u40,000
per year (adjusted for in"ation) and that I was lecturing on the rubber chicken circuit
for good bread as well as consulting with Honeywell and Lockheed to design documentation for defense electronics.
Courtney’s recollection of an affair with “Geneva” is also completely deformed. I
did meet a very charming woman named Brandy Miller. She showed me a real drivers licence and a real social security card with her own name on it. Brandy drove my
cars and acted like she was V6. She told me she was desperately avoiding Oregon and
wanted to stay with me. It broke my heart to have to send her home on a train, but
Courtney said if I "ew her home or spent anymore money on her (money she thought
was rightfully hers) she would never speak to me again. I was still enthralled by my
own kid at that time so I dutifully obeyed. Sorry Brandy. You were soooo cool.
Also nobody mentions that I was working as a technical writer for IMSAI corporation across the bay in 19QP and 19Q9 and that I was commuting to work with Mitch
Waite, the founder of the Waite Group publishing empire. It was a long commute, but
it was worth it. IMSAI was developing the hottest microcomputers going at the time.
Neat little P bit computers with 64K of RAM like the VDP 40 running on CPtm. My
ofce was next to Seymour Rubinstein, one of the developers of Word Star, and I got
to see the rst true microbased wordprocessor under development by a weird genius
named Rob Barnaby. My dream of becoming a radical alternative publisher was about
to be realized. Courtney had no clue about my work or my vision, even though my
place was strewn with computers and Dutch surrealist art and, above all, books.
I spent Christmas alone in tears that year. Courtney stood me up and went to Frank’s
mother’s house in Daly City instead. I "ew to Ireland a month later. I was fed up with
Courtney. I did not invite her to come to Ireland. She begged
Reagan was president. I knew he would try to outspend the Russians on the Star
Wars initiative. I cried again as I "ew out of Kennedy, thinking I might never come
back. But the sadness didn’t last long. Ireland, and the people I met there, lled my
:?>
H(.; H(%%!-*.
C!6)(;$%
N!:; V%**)!$65
soul. A year later I was a changed man, just turning 40. Everybody on the street in
Ireland, any town, not just Dublin, is a street poet. Ireland has one of the highest <$%
:(<!/( literacy rates in the world. Everybody reads and writes and speaks multiple
languages, and above all everybody plays music. Many of the country folk cling to
some old pagan ways, even though they profess to being Roman Catholic on the
surface. As they say in most pubs, referring to a glass of porter, “The foam is the
church, but the beer is the old religion.”
For the rst time in my life my photographic memory didn’t freak anybody out. Lots
of people have qem in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Brittany. In late 19P0 I decided to
move to the Irish countryside semi-permanently. One more joyous year went by. I was
an ex-patriot and almost forgot about being homesick. I explored the mounds everyday with Martin Brennan and Jack Roberts (Google them) two of the greatest men I
ever ran into. I stoked the great replace and had friends over for nettle tea and scones.
I wasn’t thinking about Courtney. I hoped she was OK.
:?C
THE GIRL IN THE ANIME MASK
C()$ !- k#-/ ( <(!./ k*3
Dashiell Hammett
N
ow we know how Courtney, at the peak of her power, (circa 199S) and with a
great deal of help from secret admirers, especially closet saphists in high places,
got her way with the magazine and book industry. She also snubbed her nose
at the courts in Washington State and Florida. But, instead of cooling it after her
victories, she grew even more arrogant, narcissistic and maladjusted. She stalked Trent
Reznor in New Orleans, because he wouldn’t go out with her more than once. Rejection
was always a big problem for Courtney and rejection by rock stars caused the ultimate
pain. Rozz Rezabeck, Julian Cope, James Moreland, Kurt Cobainithey are all really
the same guy, psychoanalytically speaking. Instead of soft pedaling her act, one by
one, she managed to alienate almost everybody she knew, but she also sent signals to
every predator in Hollywood that she could be manipulated, if, and only if, you kissed
her ass. A lot of people jumped on it.
Every predator in show-biz knew Courtney was screwed up in several ways. She
wanted her mother to love her and she always hated me, she made no secret of that.
This is the stench on the meat that attracts carrion feeders. All anyone had to do was
agree with her on hating her parents and she could be taken down for big money, but
there was an even deeper sexuality driving the violence. If you were gay or ACtDC,
and you reenforced Courtney’s parental rejection syndrome, you could get more than
money, you could get control.
I remember in 19Q9 Brandy Miller told me, and wrote a letter to back it up, that the
worst fit Courtney ever tossed was triggered by Brandy’s rejection of Courtney’s sexual
advances. Turns out Brandy looked into herself and just decided she wasn’t a lesbian
or even a switch-hitter. Strange as it may sound, some people really are straight.
Courtney had no use for her after that and Brandy’s peachy clean complexion became
baby fat.
In terms of sex and violence, from juvie to back stage grope rooms, Courtney was
always an equal opportunist. Anytime she went on tour, she punched out an average
of two concert goers every month, that’s a lot of sticuffs, and she had a mean left
hook. Why wasn’t she getting arrested?
:??
H(.; H(%%!-*.
Once I tried to explain the dearth of arrests I noted an odd statistic, most of these
violent outbursts went unreported , but I still couldn’t explain the paucity of data.
Normally if a wanna-be starlet crashes a party and starts beating up or embarrassing
a big celebrity hostiit makes International news, but I was hearing a little here, a
little there, a tantrum with a shin-kick on a plane coming in to London, a Saint Vitus
dance in a club while another girl act is on stage, or slapping a customs agent, or maybe
just tossing a bottle at a bar maid for bringing the wrong drink. When you add them
all up you see this pattern forming. How did she get away with it?
Partly she had the press so bored by her antics it wasn’t news anymore, but she was
also able to pick and choose her victims like a magician picks an easily hypnotized
audience member to come up on stage as part of the act. In the nal analysis a lot of
violence was covered up by the fact that’s some of the victims LIKED IT?
This is not the stuff that makes a father proud. Courtney’s violence wasn’t contained
to entertainment or bistros, she threatened "ight attendants and rock journalists of all
genders with equal vigor. At rst I thought Halcyon and booze were driving the violence. Halcyon, a pill Courtney urged me to nd for herior drive her to a doctors
who wouldiwas notorious for causing violent outbursts, but I knew this was only a
partial explanation, Halcyon, the prison tested tranq, (the manufacturer fudged the
test results) may unleash your suppressed violence by suppressing REM sleep, but
you have to be violent to start with. Violence has always been around my family so I
know what she was going through, although, ironically she and I never had much more
than screaming match with absolutely no violence. I never hit her... ever. Courtney
knew I loved her and vaguely remembered the good times.
Carolle Joyce one of the best photographers on the planet, and Henrietta Knight of
the '*.5*. H6*3$, tell the story of Courtney in New Orleans in 199S. It turns out
Courtney was #.!.?!/$5 to a book launch party for Ann Rice. She crashed the party
anyway and when she was politely discouraged she tossed a really ugly booze-speed
accelerated hissy-t which quickly transmogried into an uncontrollable "oorshow
with fully exposed crotch dancing, much to the delight of Ann’s VIP guests.
Courtney loved Ann Rice and she couldn’t understand why Ann didn’t want to be
upstaged in front of her publishers and distributors. She always thought of herself as
a writer, but she wouldn’t admit this because she feels she might have to give me some
credit for turning her on to her own abilities as a toddler. I didn’t mind at rst, especially
when I read some of her unbelievably precocious lyrics and tracked some of her
interview commentary to conversations we had at home. But when I heard about the
Ann Rice freak-show I saw her Achilles heel, she couldn’t write prose and ction, you
pretty much have to go to school for that. Bear in mind. I did now know, when she
was a teenager and younger, that she was possessed of a Pulitzer prizewinning
grandmother. Ooops.
Anyway the escalation of violence in this well documented incident took on a new
(for Courtney) almost psychotic level of intensity. I sensed Courtney was in the throes
of a post-homicidal delirium. I suspected then that her escalation of violence after
:?@
'*?$ K!66-
c*+. S!6?( :**%5!.(/!.7 /+$ )$5!( 3(:; -/(7$ 0*% H*65 a*#./(!.
Kurt’s death was driven by fear. True she often displayed the typical glibness that denes all sociopaths, but she was also narcissistic and very defensive about her body
image. Anybody who threatened her A.!)$ mask was marked for revenge.
I felt this directly when she started attacking my career and costing me those little
bread and butter (between books) gigs all writers live on. She spent hundreds of hours
calling publishers, hiring detectives and petitioning her AOL cronies to get me on a
blacklist. I have a great deal of proof of this so it isn’t just paranoia, I even have nished galleys and marked up magazine pages, that never saw the light of day because
Courtney made a phone call and threatened to sue. In most cases the articles weren’t
even about her or Kurt, just tekie stuff and I knew it wasn’t going to end there.
I always worried about her going nuts, not bipolar, but some new kind of warrior
Gene nuttiness, fashioned, like a Versace dress, just for her or maybe like the Frances
Farmer organza schmatt she wore at her wedding, but I never thought she would try
to kill off my research or my animal rescue efforts.
Nobody knows what she was on that night, or why she wasn’t invited, but eventually
she went berserk. When the "!)$- I!:(8#.$ came down on her the next day she blamed
it on road fatigue. Nobody bought that story. Carol Joyce, who looks like a fashion
model herself, was there with the Fleet Street Diva, Henrietta Knight, to take pictures
and report on Ann Rice. In the midst of the fraca the duo captured Courtney in some
pretty ugly poses. Later, after the party, one of Courtney’s pseudo-voodoo pals, arranged
Carol’s hair brushes and makeup in a circle on her bed at the Holiday Inn. That didn’t
:?A
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work either. The pictures made H(%5 2*<8 three days later and Henrietta’s copy went
worldwide the next week.
Courtney, undaunted by the darkening clues of failure glimmering up from the fan
base, kept on seeking negative attention. Her frustrations, her over driven strivings and
her angst caused her a great deal of pain, but she was suffering by her own hand.
In Florida she punched-out multiple males after diving into the mosh pit. The men,
one a Canadian I met at Macallister University near Toronto, led charges. After a
week of sitting around the courtroom vamping for Court TV and generally disrespecting the judicial process, she won a miraculous acquittal, almost like she knew the outcome before the jury had a chance to debate. Now if anybody else had done what she
did they would have been on the chain gang the next day, but Courtney walked chain
free. How, you may ask was this magic trick achieved? Again like all magic, it’s a
matter of misdirection. As soon as the defense team sensed one or two of the jurors
were going to vote her guilty, a motion was made and the feminist judge, in an almost
unprecedented move, directed the jury to nd the defendant not guilty. No explanation
was given. The dismissed jurors seemed confused as they walked out of the court room.
They barely nished their coffee, when they were called back.
Another ironic twist pops in at this point because the Florida case, an Amsterdam
case, and a similar case in Palo Alto, (where she actually asked the guy up on the stage
and then kicked him in the balls) took place while she was serving a three year probation
for clocking Kathleen Hannah in Washington State. The Florida jury never heard about
Rat Face and Kate Hannah. Courtney got off without having to tell the sentencing
judge about her alpha bashing escapades. A poll of the jury after the case, the whole
thing aired on Court TV, showed several jurors were prepared to nd her guilty and.
Courtney, hit the booze and the enemies list ever harder. The next year she aimed
her venom at Europe. In the Fall of 199S the normally tolerant Dutch freaks didn’t
enjoy Courtney’s male bashing antics either. She poured beer on a guy, and kicked him
in the groin (by this time groin assault were part of her act) and ran out in the street
after a woman who screamed at her about Kurt’s death from the balcony. She also refused to continue the Paradiso gig resulting in the rst premature closure of that famed
club in twenty years. One Dutch fan exclaimed, “I saw her eyes. They were wild. If
she could have lit someone on re she would have.” Daan Aeyelts, the manager of the
Vondel Park, said, “It wasn’t a goth act. It wasn’t like Marilyn Manson or Ozzie Osborne,
it wasn’t fake, she had a screw loose.
:@B
MADAM I’M ADAM
W
hen we came back from Ireland in September of 19PV, Triona Watson and
I rented a basement flat from the aforementioned, Francie Warsun and her
husband Spike in Saint Francis Woods. This was a temporary pad, designed
to last us until we could find a house down the Peninsula. I got a job as Senior Editor
of the famed 4*:/*% 4*33Q- S*0/O(%$ c*#%.(6 and was writing for technical publications
in Menlo Park near Stanford. The commute was a killer, but temporary.
One ray of light shone through that fall. Theodore Sturgeon wrote a rave review of
one of my books (The Dead Vol II), but the joy didn’t last long. It didn’t take Courtney
long to track me down. She was impressed, not by my review in H#-/6$%, but by the
opulent decor Francie had rigged up in the house. It was like a clean and really neat
New Orleans whore house built on a mock Tudor frame.
In late 19PV, I stupidly introduced her to Francie and the two genetic warriors got
along famously. I could see the wheels grinding in Courtney’s head. We stayed there
until the week after Thanksgiving, Spike burned the turkey, but Courtney hung around
and started turning tricks for Francie, who was, by the way, a twice convicted bondage madam with some high-line clientele. Just think of the names of one of the largest computer companies ever founded in Silicon Valley (not Apple) and you will have
one clue.
Eventually Courtney came under Francie’s tutelage and started reading the books
she had around the house many of them were really weird. In England, she got hold
of 4*.Q/ H$/ a(5 H$/ G?$., by two UK women, but Francie gave her the master of
all revenge books, H$/ G?$. by George Hayduke and from there her lust for vengeance
grew into full blast freakishness. After that, every dirty trick she ever dreamed about
came true. I should have sensed she would be coming after me, but I still held a small
degree of sympathy for her.
Stories of what went on at Francie’s place after we left in 19PV, still ricochet around
town. “Brownie,” the house boy and gofer, a petite black gay dude from Savannah,
very swish, became part of the decor, but not the decorum. In 1991 he began a life
sentence for pre-medicated murder. He pled guilty to stalking, and nally slashing his
lover to death. I tracked him down at Vacaville, he told me everything for a carton of
Pall Malls.
Francie got a boob job in 19P1 and a tummy tuck and went around "ashing everybody
:@:
H(.; H(%%!-*.
2*#%/.$8 <%*#568 -/%#/- +$% (.*%$d!(
for a month. She made an Pmm lm of her new boobs and we were all forced to sit
around and watch it repeatedly. I guess she taught Courtney that little trick too.
Something we all saw on the David Letterman show. The white carpeted staircase led
upstairs to Francie’s private ofce where, by diligent observation, I discovered that
Francie’s mysterious source of support was a gas well won by her father in a poker
game in Baton Rouge.
The whole house was frantic every day. When we moved I felt sorry for Spike, who
was a big time meth head by then. Still, he must have licked that habit because when
I saw him again in 199V he was managing a high-end stereo franchise on San Antonio
Road in Mountain View. Turns out he and Francie bought a house down in Silicon
Valley, I assume to be closer to Francie’s kinky customer base. Her trick book contained
some of the biggest names in electronics history, men of an older generation, billionaires
whose names you would recognize immediately, and all of them paid Francie handsomely
for her services. The, “Champagne Enema” was her -<$:!(6!/!$ 5# )(-*.=
:@;
'*?$ K!66-
Predictably Courtney made friends with Francie and her SvM pals. I warned her not
to be hanging’ out there on her own because the Warsun empire was built on crime
and pure Sacramento (also known as, “Ether Flats”) Crank. Francie later kicked Spike
out and sold her daughter, “Vanilla” to the Foley and Burke carnival. There was no
doubt in my mind that this woman was capable of teaching a class in homicide.
In 199Q Courtney’s girlfriend Elizabeth Peyton wrote a note to H!7+ "!)$- and said
I sold them crank from the San Francisco house, but I wasn’t even living there when
they went back to score and I hated crank anyway. More about this later. (See Polygraph
exam.)
Courtney learned a lot from Francie, especially the revenge thing. I respected (feared)
Francie, but I always gave her toadies, and her creepy colonic customers, a wide birth.
One of her best pals Tom-Tom, an ex-cop and college professor from a local university,
the guy who got me the room in the basement in the rst place, found out he was HIV
positive one day and shot himself on a nearby beach. Some people say Francie assisted
him, Kavorkian style.
Courtney’s Francie connection led to a phone sex gig and other quick bread schemes.
Now she was a full blown 7(.7-/(’ bitch. In late 19P3 Francie introduced her to yet
another Yakusa jerk, which led to yet another “dancing” stint in Japan. Why, I ask you,
if she was so burnt in 19P0, loosing her passport, having to "ee to Korea, why would
she go back and do it again? The answer is simple. She loved the money and the control
she had over the pencil-dick tourists on the Ginza. Courtney greatest euphoria came
from enthralling men and then dumping them. When she beat them, by running away,
she made herself superior, even to the really bad guys.
A decade later, the thanksgiving day after Kurt died, I saw Spike, who by the way
was also a programming genius, waiting for a bus on El Camino and gave him a ride.
He came over for the house for dinner, I mean the dude had no place to go, except back
into bondage. That’s’ when he dumped the whole trip on me. He told me who killed
Kurt... not by name but by location. Remember... there’s more information to be laid
out later on. Then I drove him back to Pally to his poxy little bedsit. As soon as I got
Spike’s piece of the puzzle, the mystery hanging over Kurt’s death made sense, I had
the inside track and it wasn’t from Tom Grant.
Spike reminded me that he and Francie started their married life together as a live
sex-on-stage act with the Mitchell Brother’s in the Tederloin. Aah yes, but those were
bygone days. A wonderful role model for the unformed Courtney.
There is a pattern here. Francie, and women like her, are keys to understanding the
real butch, queen mother underneath all those Versace silver frocks and Harlow wigs.
That’s why I didn’t believe the so called “Reinvention,” of 199Q and the “New Courtney”
of 199P or the girl-in-trouble of V004 or the Nicheren Buddhist at large in London and
Paris in late V00Q or any of her other perssonality repair scams. I saw the supercial
woman, not looking like her mom any more, wanting to change Bean’s nose so she
wouldn’t look like me. There was never any mention of mental renewal or introspection.
There was no idea of therapy, no sense of remorse and no apologies... confessions, like
:@<
H(.; H(%%!-*.
bread crumbs, can be
found strewn around
the media, but no Hail
Mary’s or acts of
contrition.
At age 19, Courtney
entered a “take no
prisoners mode.” Her
tutelage under Madam
Wa rsu n i ncluded
introductions to yet
another fully tattooed
Yakusa white slaver, a
sex phone millionaire
and a topless bar owner
or two. But the sickest
connection came when
Courtney met a very
scary mammy named
Vedalia, a large black
woman who ran a cat
house on Russian Hill.
This high end joint
catered to the tastes of
child molesters, and
pedophiles. A year later
it was exposed as one
frequented by several
police ofcials and city
council members, but
in 19P3 it was swinging
like a saloon door. Courtney must have learned how to charm cops in that place.
In spite of her weird night life, Courtney looked terric. She did a bike delivery gig
in the day time to get her body in shape for the big money. Between hot sex phone
gigs and dancing on bars, Courtney took another contract to Korea. Her rst trip, in
19P0, before I moved to Ireland, an episode she choose to fog over in her ghost written
autobiography, didn’t turn out well at all. In the self-published version Courtney sounds
untarnished and heroic. In my version she had someone at the embassy in Seoul call
me to vouch for her so she could get back stateside without a passport.
When she got back we were friends again for awhile. I gave her driving lessons on
the Great Highway while Robin and Kat laughed their asses off in the back seat. But
here again the chronology is zigzag. I repeat she met Francie Warsun after we came
:@=
'*?$ K!66-
back from Ireland in 19PV, but her rst gig to Japan, the gig that resulted in several
abortions, again by her own admission before witnesses, took place in 19Q9. When
she arrived in Ireland, after the rst (19P0) white slave escape gig, I asked her why
she didn’t call Frank Rodriguez when she needed rescuing. To this she replied, “Oh,
I didn’t want Frank to know.” That should have given me a clue. She showed me the
ugly side. Frank only saw the poor little rich girl and worried about her as he tied his
trout "ies. That was about the last time I felt sorry for her. I was not going to compete
with Frank. I didn’t screw her up, outside of donating the warrior gene, so why should
I go mad with guilt over it?
Beyond the mortal level Courtney posed more than one unfathomable mystery. She’s
the great genius gone completely off the tracks. I couldn’t gure out why she needed
to "irt with the danger mice again and again. Wasn’t one brush with the Yakusa enough?
According to Melissa Rossi she also did the bottle act at some really sleazy parlors in
North Beach and, ironically the thing that shamed her, the thing that sent her into
maybe changing into a good person, was the fact that two boys she knew from the
streets of Portland, saw her in the bottle window.
The Poppy Brite book relates that she headed back to Portland, in reality she holed
up at my garden pad in San Francisco. Naturally she made my life miserable once
again. That was late 19P0. I left for Ireland for good that November. After we moved
to Menlo Park, again in late 19PV, I followed her from cheap Polk Street dive to the
funky hotels on the California Street Cable Car line. I brought her money. We went
out for Dim Sum. Each time I saw her I begged her to come and live with us as we
managed to nd a really nice old Victorian with lots of room, but she always said.
“Not until you get rid of that bitch Triona, aka the Goat Lady. How can you stand her?”
I never had the guts to tell her that Triona was the only thing holing me up.
Courtney’ sense of adventure had to be darker, more edgy and thoroughly drenched
in the kind of madness that makes beatnik parents and Baptist bible thumpers shudder
at the same frequency. Her life-style, especially after she moved to Malibu and Topanga
in 19P4, blended everything into a cast of characters which, I noted, often drifted in
and out of each other. She lost a great deal of self-esteem in Japan and her family life
at Linda’s house stunk. I was frightened of her, and Frank Rodriguez refused to take
her back because she was too old for that kind of rescue and she couldn’t get along
with his second wife, who was pregnant yet again. What’s that tell ya? Courtney was
so outraged everyday and so harmful to everybody else, that she had to make up several
independent personalities. This psychic amalgam was so complicated it could not be
understood by mere mortals. When she was goal directed, however delusional the goal
might seem, she was marginally socialized and capable of coping with the stresses of
everyday life. But when she got angry she grew unfocused and was capable of extreme
violence. Kurt wrote about it in Heart Shaped-Box:
I O!-+ I :*#65 $(/ 8*#% :(.:$% O+$. 8*# /#%. 36(:;=
Courtney was rarely dissociative, and was 99g aware of her actions, but she did use
the various masks of sanity to her advantage. The normal character was used to
:@>
H(.; H(%%!-*.
convince people she was sane, when in fact she was shattered inside. The unfocused
aggressive lass was used to scare the shit out of people. The darker woman, the deformed
(.!)(-, the sinister -*%*% )8-/!:( was frankly all that was left of the real Courtney.
So you see why I tell people that Courtney in the '(%%8 C68./ lm, was the real Courtney
and the Versace version was a mask for the other, even darker, characters. I saw the
cracks. The sociopathic anger was holding it all together, but the booze, dope, anorexia
and avitaminosis began to crack the shell. Some of the personalities were becoming
dissociative after all. The more Courtney swam in her fugue states the more she lost
track of who she was. She also began to lose ground on one of her greatest talents. Her
photographic memory allowed her, usually, to remember exactly what lie she told to
whom and when, but after getting strung out she began to forget things.
She hated me and she hated all alpha males. I think she aimed a lot of the unfocused
dyky crap at me because her mother was too insulated and Frank is and always was
the nice guy. She built this multifaceted persona for herself and it’s rotary dial served
her well.
Around about the end of the 19P0s her grunge grrrl fantasy demons expected more
of her. She missed only one disguise, she needed a trophy husband and the trophy baby
to compete the (%- )(7.(. Now all she had to do was nd a suitable hubby. After a
long string of wankers, Jeff being the dening exception, she nally found a real man
in Kurt. There is no doubt in my mind they were in love, but both Kurt and Courtney
brought too much baggage. Kurt had his own daemons to ght and to make things
worse he was way the heck an Alpha dog. Normally she would hate that, but, in Kurt’s
case, she found a way in.
Using the prowess absorbed at her mother’s teet, (Brits read “soother” here) our little
Goddess co-opted Kurt, Kurt’s mother and sister, his agent, his lawyer, his father, his
old associates in the record industry, his drug dealers even Dylan Carlson, Kurt’s best
friend and founder of Earth, a drone band he put together with Slim Moon. When he
needed new helpers Courtney procured them. Joe Mama came in handy, a gofer arty
type loyal to Courtney from the Vats scene became her body attendant imported to
New York to support her whims while she co-starred in S!5 (.5 N(.:8. Remember
that name. Joe Mama comes into the story in a big way later on.
It pays to remind you that Courtney went through money like a roto-rooter. She told
everybody, “I’ve always had money.” I don’t know what to do without it.” She forgot
to remember that she didn’t have a nickel until I sprung her from Juvie. She also fails
to tell people that, in Ireland, I took her to a fortune teller in Ballymun, who told her
she would marry a king, and she did. If you want a glimpse of Ballymun see, I./* "+$
L$-/= A 199V Irish lm, starring Gabe Byrne and Ellen Barkin.
Long before visiting the, “Travelers,” Courtney knew she had a destiny to fulll.
When she was fteen she had an apocalyptic vision. It came in 19QP after I took her
to San Francisco to meet with her nancial counsellor at Wells Fargo. She came out
of the private session with her mouth agape and her eyes sparkling like stars. I knew,
with out being told, that the advisor went over all of her investments. When she nally
:@C
'*?$ K!66-
'$6(.5 2*3(!.i K#%/QH%(.50(/+$%i -$$. +$%$
7*!.7 *?$% K#%/Q:+!65+**5 <*%/%(!/-=
realized she was rich, really rich, she never looked back. But this sense of wealth wasn’t
based on a debit-credit accounting system. When she needed more money she simply
looked around for an appropriate source and drained it. If her body could provide wealth
then so be it. Her basic conceit, her overcompensatory defensiveness, which should
have been shed like a snakes skin, a self-hatred that should have been left in the bankers
cloak room, now tinted her eyes like a slow poison.
This same rapaciousness carried over into her business and domestic dealings. It soon
became embarrassingly clear just who was calling the shots in the Cobain household.
One example is well documented. Sometime between N$?$%)!.5 and I. F/$%*, she
talked Kurt into demanding at least a half million (each) back from Krist and Dave.
With this money she bought Wendy a fancy pad in Olympia, which she later allowed
to fall into foreclosure. Krist and Dave were livid. Shelli Novoselic now had no reason
to reconcile with Courtney. It was obvious why Courtney did not invite the Novoselic’s
to the wedding. The dark woman inside of Courtney was, in her ghostly way, sending
them a message, “You’re out. I’m in. Get fucked.”
Copying Francie Warsun to a “T” each member of Courtney’s “krew” was trained,
like a little doggie, to feed-back every snippet of news about Kurt and Nirvana. Everybody
else was exiled. Cali even admits his spy role in Everett Trues book. After Kurt died
she converted the backstage nods, winks and body language into non-disclosure
agreements. Dave and Krist, and a long list of side players, had to sign “no tell”
:@?
H(.; H(%%!-*.
documents to get the money owed to them by Kurt’s estate. The V*d$5 S$/ came out
later but it wasn’t an easy process.
Between the Vernal Equinox of 199V and Easter of 1994 Courtney managed to
extract, lter, veto or reject anyone of importance around Kurt. If you didn’t get along
with Courtney you were “out of the loop.” This included most of his old pals, especially
the ones who warned against heroin, my mother and sister, although my brother Jeff
once stood-in on security for a tour around Modesto, but all of Kurt’s cousins uncles
and aunts were <$%-*.( .*. 7%(/(. None of Kurt’s distant relatives were any use to
her. From her new perspective they were all yokels looking for a handout and bound
to be unaware of her mastery of the “Media Nexus.” In the saddest case, Leland Cobain,
a gentle old boy, and the salt of the earth, the patriarch of his clan and Frances Bean’s
great grandfather rarely if ever got to visit with his only great-grandchild until after
Francis was 1P.
Let’s travel back to the rst part of 1993. The S(.!/8 C(!% article was still doing it’s
job, but to present a good home for the probation ofceriwho just happened to be
Courtney’s half-sister, Jamie RodrigueziKurt decided to buy some land in the country.
It would be his ben retreat. He could go to a Leonard Cohen after world after all. Sadly,
even that dream grew dark. Once the house was built Courtney refused to move in. It
became an obvious pattern. Kurt and Courtney never did honestly work together
towards the same goals. She wanted a big house with the ruling elite, he wanted a shed
in the woods. For every move Kurt made, Courtney pulled a counter strategy. Ever
since I sprung her out of the clockwork orange in Salem, she ran her life like a Prussian
general. Courtney was at war and she took no prisoners.
:@@
LAST DAY INCARNATION
"+$ <%!:$ *0 0%$$5*) !- :*.-/(./ ?!7!6(./$-=
Gladstone Oddduck
I
n spite of the S(.!/8 C(!% trauma and the pending law suits, Kurt and Nirvana
toured constantly. The entire Fall of 199V was a blur. The band took nine months
off between the sell-out South American tour, which ended in Rio in late January
1993, and the first real American gig at the Phoenix fairgrounds, October 11.
That was about the time Courtney was on the west coast tour with Hole. That nine
months proved to be fruitful in a number of ways. Krist was elated to have some time
with his family. Dave used the downtime to add equipment to his sound studio. Kurt
improved the JagtStrat guitar design with factory reps, helped Courtney reorganize
her band, designed the house in Carnation, and spent a lot of time writing songs. Kurt
naturally spent most of his free time frolicking with his rug rat. He also did a number
of local shows in Seattle and the famous Bosnia benet which led to a vacation in San
Francisco. While there he took a deep life-style look at Courtney’s birthplace.
Even though the baby was caught in a Solomonic tug of war between Courtney and
her mother and between Kurt’s rights as a father and his ability to throw money at the
problem, the couple tried to have fun. Eventually they were clean enough to live in an
apartment next to Frances in Portland. They had to spend a sueen’s ransom (literally)
and pass numerous drug tests, but in the long run, the urine samples cleared up and
the baby came home with them.
The woodshed period of early 1993 and the rental of the house in Lake City was necessary so that Kurt could bond with Frances and from that bonding Kurt would derive
inspiration for I. F/$%*. Things weren’t all bad or mad that Christmas either. A semblance of family life began peeking out from hotel corridors and trips to Oregon and
Aberdeen. A house in the woods was the next rational step, at least in Kurt’s mind, a
country place made sense.
This outpouring of domestic bliss was strong enough to stimulate trigger the construction of the house in the trees. From about Easter on, right after the I. F/$%* sessions were complete in Minnesota, the Cobains hired builders and began construction
on the dream house, about twenty miles outside of Seattle. The small old cabin known
as “the Cave,” was sufcient shelter while the new house was being built. Unfortunately,
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and for reasons still unclear, things began to fall apart as soon as construction began.
Courtney’s anxiety about losing control began to percolate up. It was almost as if Kurt
had no luck. Once the place neared completion the vibes in and around the dream house
were so horric that Kurt never fully occupied the place. It was almost as if the house
project had a curse on it from the beginning, as if they were building a house full of
ghosts. The two houses and the value systems they represented were in dire con"ict.
Courtney listened to Doctor Laura with Rush Limbaugh zeal, as if she would vote
for any Repubvlican out there, if she voted at all. Kurt was a street person. The more
they tried to love each other the more the tragic Frankie and Johnny relationship
emerged.
T(K">O":AA="34."X(2%"U.750.
I nally got to meet Kurt or at least his ghost. Geraldo Rivera loaned me a rental car
and I went out to Carnation. Next to the replace I saw the blue bed roll he slept in the
week before hewent into rehab. How chilling. His ghost was just forming then. Ill bet
its a full blown spook by now. I took a picture through the French Door. The bedroll
was still there but no burned logs, just ciggy butts. The Jotul stove was still in its shipping crate on the back porch. At least we know he wasn’t sleeping with a woman that
night. I wondered, like so many other Nirvana fans, were Kurt hung out immediately
prior to his death? Like Elvis he was seen in ten places, and one of these places turned
out to be this tragically empty Carnation house. The new house. Seeing the sleeping
bag there told me a lot. The poor bastard got ripped off. He never had a chance to get
into his dream and he deserved it.
I couldn’t believe he would kill himself there. I have been suicidal. I know what it’s
like, but I talked myself out of it, with a little help. Futzie Nutzle, one of my artist
friends from Santa Cruz, said, “Hey man if you kill yourself I’ll never speak to you
again.” I knew what he meant. I was being self-indulgent and boring. Kurt just wouldn’t
kill himself in the middle of building a love nest. When you see the place you’ll immediately notice its tranquility. But there are other hot button items "oating around,
namely his Raleigh ten speed and those ghosts.
This is the house that Jack built. You have to know Carnation to know what really
happened there. There are some very strange daemons lurking in those hills.
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Carnation is a new town built on an old town, and like many rural towns in Washington
State, it’s a political incongruity. On the right hand it could easily contain a Ku Klux
Klan cell. On the left it’s perfect for a bunch of hippies. The town used to be called
Tolt, but that was just too Germanic for the upward mobile newcomers who moved in
with Bring money after WWII, there to enjoy the riverside ambiance and the trout
shing. Like many exurbia settlements, Carnation is heavily wooded and originally
inhabited by the sons and daughters of the Confederacy who put a marker on the
Canadian border in 1940 to commemorate their role in the civil war and to stake out
their territory in the Northwest having fought for the south as they did.
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Carnation experienced very little friction for many decades, the massage therapy
clinic sits directly across the road from the police station until a long stream of software
engineers began moving their families in around 19P3. These new hi-tech families
possessed buying and voting power and many began taking an interest in how the town
was managed. Jews and African Americans moved in too and the pleasant little apple
cart that once was Carnation began to wobble.
Kurt began planning the Carnation house in 199V. It would be a fresh start house
built next to an older cabin with a long ben-like bridge connecting the two houses. It
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would be clean and austere and yet loaded with antiques. Courtney would be in charge
of decor and with the help of the local builders it might become a meditation retreat.
Kat Bjelland could stay there when Courtney and Kurt were out of town and Lori
Barbero and Maureen Herman could hang out there when they were in town. “The
Babes” took their best publicity shots out there.
Above all the new house would be secure, a nest for Frances and her future playmates. The improved property, appraised at uS00.000 in 1994, is situated on twelve
wooded acres next to a rustic pond. The pond, stocked with coy, black carp and really
big frogs, is fed by an artesian spring. I did not see any lickable dope toads there, just
marine toads, but who knows?
The gravel road to the property was almost hidden. The only guidepost to the
Cobain entrance was a rough hewn plywood plaque that read:
2INHJOPIQCQR
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The new residence became a modest two-story home covered with clear T v G
white cedar and nished in a milky varnish giving the whole project an oxidized
look. Three dormers shielded the upstairs windows.
The entrance faces toward the morning sun and towers above an antique trellis left
behind by the prior owners, who are rumored to be the band members from Heart,
one of the rst successful chick core bands ever. On scale, the new house dwarfs the
older cabin, but Kurt wanted the old and the new to remain next to each other as a
reminder of his days of poverty and, in a Taoist sense, to symbolize Yin and Yang.
The old house was denitely Yang, but it stood in perfect harmony to nature, unlike
the haunted lake house. This may explain the lyric from the song “Breed”:
“We can plant a house
we can build a tree.”
qWe can have all three.’ She said.
By connecting to the old cabin they had a tree house and two real houses all in one.
Now the Cobain ghosts could mingle with the ghosts left behind by the Wilson Sisters
of Heart and Babes in Toyland and Crunt and a dozen other crash residents. I presume Kurt was eventually going to get around to renovating the smaller house as a
guest cottage, since when I was there, the plumbing was much to be desired. Aho
What a tale that plumbing could tell.
I visited the property in May of 1994, a bunch of door frames, along with remnants
of the interior trim and a few panes of window glass stood patiently in an outside
shed beyond the driveway. A new Candy Apple Raleigh, 5$%(!66$#%, stood ready in
the loft. That bike eventually sold for u100,000 at auction, it was Kurt’s bike.
From the woodshed the big house looks almost Frank Lloyd Wrightish. The fenestration is superb. A diamond-cut transom extends above the doorway to the back
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porch. The larger openings are double glazed and trimmed in hunter green. The walls
are plumb and precisely cut, sealing the house against the constant Northwestern rains,
but on sunny days sunlight arcs through the leaded crystals casting color spectra into
the house from almost every angle.
The hard-wood "oors are very plain and perfectly joined, no parquet or fancy carvings, no place for Harley-Davidson posters. The kitchen interior, although never furnished, features pricey marble counter tops.
The kitchen area opens to the main downstairs rooms to form a humanistic space.
Throughout the house the trim is jonquil against bleach bone white. A number of arches
and niches ll the room space downstairs and a blonde balustrade frames a magnicent stairway to the rooms above. Kurt told friends he wanted Courtney to spread her
heart shaped boxes and doll collections, address books, clothes and paper-backs in the
den, like her mother did. Frances could have a sunny play room upstairs all to herself
just like Courtney had when she was an only child before she moved to Oregon and
New bealand and became Cinderella, the little girl who had to share everything with
her continually extending family. There is a pattern here. When Linda was growing
up her mom had a spy maid and housekeeper named Mahdell who, after a few nips
from the family Courvasier decanter, came around to police the debris eld, in Linda’s
room. Kurt didn’t want maids coming out to Carnation. Years after Kurt died, Courtney
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told an editor at Simon and Schuster that she hated the Carnation house because she
couldn’t have a housekeeper, “Out There,” as if it were a sharecroppers shack, a dilapidated old hovel, instead the new house was designed to capture the light from all directions, all year round, with light spectra "oating off the walls at sunrise.
In spite of its beauty, Courtney glibly told me on the phone, that they were only going
to live there if an Ebola epidemic broke out. It was, to her, nothing more than an exercise in futility. I think the lose of its use hurt Kurt deeply. It is possible that Courtney
invented the whole red neck story just to implant the idea that Kurt might be shot someday. She told a lot of people they were threatened by the locals, “Out There.” She used
this red neck confrontation to set the stage for later events.
Mostly she wanted to make sure Kurt would hang closer to town. When he saw that
the deal might not go through, even as the house itself was nishing up, Kurt began
showing signs of despair. You still think about the lost opportunity to live in your very
own Walden Pond house, and yet you shouldn’t go near it for fear it could burn down
or maybe you could get shot by beke and the boys. Courtney may have been relieved
now that the woodsy house fantasy was edging closer to oblivion, but, from that point
on, Kurt’s emotional level grew fragile and, I think, abandoning that house was the
beginning of the end for the Cobain’s as a married couple.
Kurt’s escape route was now blocked from all sides. Shortly after the incident he
OD’d and his mom and Courtney had to nurse him into the cold tap, walk him, salt
him and shoot him up with a strange wonder drug, a little something Courtney happened to have laying around, just in case. Good old nurse Courtney. She was looking
to win the Saint Bernard award there for awhile. Of course, she was Kurt’s favorite
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enabler. She scored half his
dope for him in the rst place.
A lot of people think she was
just biding her time.
Everything should have been
peachy keen, but it wasn’t
N$?$%)!.5 was just breaching into the stratosphere as
the house came full circle. He
realized he was too big for
public life and the country
house was going to be a healthy
thing, but no such luck. He
looked forward to a hideout,
a kind of artisans croft in the
woods. He realized he was the
biggest star out of Seattle since
Jimi Hendrix and Bing Crosby.
That’s a lot of weight. Courtney
was the only person in the
Northwest who didn’t agree.
In October 1993 she told me
she was a bigger star and Kurt
was just a "ash in the pan. I
wondered if she actually wanted
me to believe that?
Kurt also worried about the
baby’s safety. Obviously Frances
would be happier in her own
safe house. Laboratory studies prove that a father chimpanzee willito the point of
ulcers and deathiinstinctively absorb all of the electric
shocks necessary to keep his
mate and offspring away from
harm. Now, in my mind, Kurt’s
abilities as a man and a father
were never in question. His
friends treated him like a normal
human, but his wife, the cement
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utives, began treating him like a rodent in a grain bin, a rock God with a rats tail. The
minute he started talking about leaving DGC to go indy, his ass was grass. Of course,
Courtney could not allow that to happen, her own future with DGC and Gold Mountain
depended on her insider control of Nirvana’s destiny.
Courtney’s had a contingency plan just in case Kurt hooked up with Mary Lou or
any number of imaginary dolls one thru n. The idea was to acquire as many houses
as possible, just like her mom. Houses are the rst thing divided as community property, but her plan had a few "aws in it. For one thing she underestimated her husbands
sense of ben Communism. She couldn’t grasp how someone as famous as Kurt would
want to chuck it all away for a cabin in the woods. Duho
The small arsenalirst conscated by the police from the Lake City rental house
on June 4, 1993i is indicative of Kurt’s paranoia level in the wake of the abandonment of the Carnation property. His private fortress with his touring bike dormant in
the shed, somehow went toxic. The arresting ofcers, the same guys who later believed
Courtney when she said Kurt was suicidal, made sure the gun stash was well documented. Less than a year later his body was found on the "oor of his little solarium
stoned to death, his jaw loaded with bird shot and gunpowder. How could such a happy
dude fall that far in less than a year? The answer is, “He couldn’t” not without help.
Let’s be clear on one point, Kurt did not like the house near Leschi. It was too ostentatious, and he told several people he was embarrassed by it, but Courtney convinced him to nd a caretaker for the house in the woods (who turned out to be Kat
Bjelland) and buy the big house as well, because, she said, two castles would be better
for Frances. Now there’s some fancy logic.
I’m trying to point-out that Courtney was capable of manipulating massive amounts
of data, marshal troops like a Grateful Dead road manager and write songs all at the
same time. In addition she could plan and visualize whole scenarios and nobody thought
she was doing anything sneaky at all. I used to be like that myself, its all coming from
having a photographic memory with nobody to tell you how to use it. They took her
away from me when she was three, so she had no chance to see the old memory in
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action. I got control of mine, it took 40 years my dad was a mean drunk, but not
Courtney, instead her mind began to deform and twist and, as it twisted, so twisted
the world around her. She hurt people without even trying. Kurt was not the only
victim. Kat, for example, spent time in a mental hospital in Minneapolis after a series
of arguments with Courtney. There was always something mentally unbalanced going
on and I worried about Francis Bean.
~~~
The new house was still unfurnished. Not even a chair to sit on, Just a ladder and
some touch-up paint supplies. When Tom Grant nally arrived, he saw why the Cobain
entourage made the move back to Seattle in January, 1994. The little old funky cabin,
known by insiders as, ”the Cave,” was a little too funky. Plus, nobody wanted to spend
time out there in the cold, rain and snow, especially without maids and gofers. Moreover,
the road gets muddy and the phone service was spotty.
Grant spoke to Courtney about Kurt’s post-mortem hand replica, the pop cans at the
house, and the ngerprints. Freepenney, a subscriber on the Kitty Radio.com forum,
reported that latex could duplicate ngerprints and nd powder residue and that such
evidence could prove Kurt did or did not re the shotgun. I am not sure if that’s true,
but its food for thought.
One thing is certain, Tom had his concerns about Eric showing up at the Carnation
place before he got there and he probably wondered why Kat and Courtney took so
many pee-pee and coffee breaks on the way. Were they stalling? He also wondered
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why both Kat and Courtney agreed they should take the slow road all the way south
bound on VV0, then cut over east to Highway V30 then go north bound again through
Carnation, when they could have cut over Tolt Hill road. (See maps) Grant suspected
that Eric had two missions to fulll, rst to get any bad shit or incriminating evidence
out of sight and secondly perhaps, to plant some of Kurt’s stuff in the house to make
it look like Kurt lived there on and off. Maybe that sleeping bag piled up next to the
replace in the main house and the cigarettes tossed in were planted. I still have pictures
of that. Then there’s the report, in Grant’s own words, that Courtney produced an
injection syringe and told him it was Kurt’s. All the more reason to think he was never
there after he went to rehab in L.A.. Why all the deception? Obviously Grant was
getting suspicious and Courtney was growing disproportionately paranoid.
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wenty days after his twenty-seventh birthday Kurt was, according to my
sources, as lonely as a Pit Bull in a pet parade. When he arrived in Seattle
from Rome his intestinal pain was under control but now he was attacked by
a worse terror, the pain of losing his child-the most intense emotional pain known
to the human race. After resisting the temptation to self-medicate, Kurt gave in and
opened his little Tom Moore cigar box. Everything inside was neat and tidy, and the
box was almost new. One of the homicide officers would describe it as “dirty, the
filthiest thing he had ever seen.” Bear this in mind. It is an important clue. I believe
he would have lived to a ripe old age if somebody had grabbed him off the plane
from Rome and put him in protective custody, because he was pretty much cleaned
out by the gastric lavage and the bed rest. Unfortunately, once he got back to Seattle,
all that bed rest got used up real quick. He could have gone to Switzerland or Den
Hague to take blood scrub treatments where they heat your blood to 10Q• F to kill
all the viruses. He could have stopped off in Amsterdam to score an Ibogaine
treatment, marketed in Europe as EndABUSE, but he was hardheaded. Kurt wasn’t
thinking “cure,” and he wasn’t thinking, “pay back.” He missed his child. No one is
even sure if Courtney let Kurt see the baby when they were in Rome only Cali and
maybe Jackie Ferry know for sure, and they ain’t talking. When the Seattle police
declared Kurt a suicide one month later, almost everybody believed it.
The lyrics from his song, “Aneurysm,” reveal Kurt’s opiate nostalgia and the
fascination he had for the heroin injection ritual. However, it should be noted again,
that he was into Brown Chiva, not China White and , in my humble opinion, when
his body was found, he was full of the far more potent (and lethal) stuff. To be specic
he had three times the lethal dose in his coagulating blood when the late Nik
Hartshorne, the acting medical examiner, caught the case. Remember also that at
least three coroners, including the chief medical examiner, looked at Kurt’s body,
but the verdict of suicide was released to the press before the nal report came down.
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I suspect Kurt was homesick for his house in Carnation, the house he never lived in,
but he was also junk sick. He was tough and wiry like a bull terrier, and yet he felt
beaten. He was sick of heroin, sick of Courtney’s philandering, sick of the lies and the
energy loss from the addiction. He was not really strung out, he took his legal medication
like a good trooper and he prayed, every night, for (and with) Frances. He wanted to
clean-up for her, for the future, but he told his part-time nanny, he could not detox
totally until he did something about Courtney. Courtney was constantly manipulating
the scene-offering him smack when he least needed it. She did that a lot for and to a
lot of people. Kristen’s brother Jason says Courtney put fresh needles in Kristen’s purse
when she was trying to quit and I know she planted needles in my house in Menlo
Park where the cops could nd them. They never did, but that was her level of dirty
tricks at the time. I never shot-up anything in my life, but it might have been tough to
explain if they had found the dope she planted. Luckily Triona found a suspicious
packet while cleaning one day and tossed it. He needed rest, but he was behind the getwell curve. Based on his writings, we know he had to get out of his marriage in order
to chase out his own demons, but Courtney was holding him in. He mentioned to a
few friends over at Tad Doyle’s house, that he might put himself into another rehab
center after the divorce. They approved.
At home, and in Europe, Kurt’s family and fans grew more alarmed. New information was not forthcoming. Somebody was altering the data after Kurt left Rome. One
of the Rome papers said, “There are many questions to ask in this case, but nobody to
provide answers.”
The indelity scandals and the Lollapalooza rejection issue remained unresolved.
Divorce seemed to be the only answer, but Courtney ordered any leaks about an
impending divorce hushed up. She had talent but Kurt was the wind in her sails. The
potential loss of revenue and prestige for her would be immense. Damage control was
the order of the day and Courtney knew that even more than heroin, playing the, “baby
card” would keep Kurt in line.
Kurt now worried about the baby-even more than when he traveled in silence between Trieste and Munich. He knew he would be branded a weakling or a mad hatter
by Courtney’s press corps, she did that to all of her enemies. Was Kurt now on her hit
list along with Rat Face, Goat Lady myself and several astonished journalists? Kurt
knew that children’s services in the State of Washington would never grant him sole
custody. Even joint custody was going to be a problem. He wanted his mom and sister
Kimberly to take the baby, but Courtney blocked that action too. According to Tom
Grant, Kurt’s mom was strung out on something provided by Courtney, and Kimberly
was too young. He had been down that path before. Ironically, after several court battles, they were awarded custody of Frances by the California courts for one year in
V010. When she turned 1P she "ew like a free bird, enrolled at Bard College in New
York, bought a house in West Hollywood and never looked back. History repeats itself
for sure.
When the S(.!/8 C(!% scandal broke, Courtney’s mother, Linda Carroll, a famous
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psychologist with a clinical practice and a full library of forensic and legal books at
her disposal, (and Courtney’s) sat in the wings ready to ll out a form known, in
Washington State as an, “Allegation of Child Abuse and Neglect,” her second in so
many years. In Washington, the mere suggestion of neglect from an authority like
Ms. Carroll, can get the child jerked out of a given household. In fact, if the marriage
had dissolved with both sides dirty, someone at the Child Protective Division of the
Washington State Department of Community Services might take a notion to isolate
Frances from both parents. It happened only a year earlier. Kurt new Courtney’s
mother was very active on the telephone, constantly calling in markers. He knew
Linda was instrumental in taking the baby away once before and he gured she would
do it again. Kurt claimed he spent more than uVS0,000 in legal fees to get Frances
back from Courtney’s half-sister, in Portland, but this next debacle would cost ten
times that much.
In the worst-case scenario, Kurt gured he might never see his kid again, especially
with his own mother and sister riding with Courtney and Linda. This would lead to
another really big clan feud over whose family would get custody of Frances Bean
in the likelihood both parents were deemed unt. Would the baby go with Courtney’s
mother or would she stay with her namesake family? Would she go out of state or
stay in Washington? The fact that I am VSg genetically linked to the child never
came up, but I knew what was going down because this is very similar to what
happened to me thirty years earlier in San Francisco and my sister, Kathy RevakHarrison was at the time, a major probation ofcer in Oakland.
The custody question might have been worked out in future negotiations, but Kurt
did not have the strongest position on the chessboard. Heroin, or a dependency on
anything, will always demote you in the eyes of the court. Courtney was strung out
on and off again, but she could clean up fast. The press still cannot gure out how
Courtney could look like a hag one day and Snow White the next, but its genetics.
suick recovery runs in my family. My dad was pronounced dead at Kaiser Hospital
after a liver reaction to Nyquil, but V0 minutes later, the nurse caught him coming
down the hall with his pants on and tubes dragging behind him. He pulled himself
out of bed and just drove home. He went to Vegas, spent ten grand and died a week
later. Does that sound like anybody we know?
Kurt was far more sensitive, hard to kill, but weak in the romance department. He
was stressed and raggedy, and sometimes, especially after Rome, he looked like death
warmed over. If cosmetics count then logic told him, he would loose the kid, especially
if it came down to a beauty pageant. He was one sick puppy, but he was not suicidal.
He was on the warpath.
One could argue that being on the warpath against Courtney “is” suicidal, but Kurt
had one or two cards up his sleeve. He had friends like Eddie Veered on his side and
he was still the king of grunge. He knew he could change his will to cut Courtney
out. Rosemary Carroll, his attorney of record, was supposed to be rewriting the will
when he died. This may someday prove to be the basis for a con"ict of interest law;B=
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suit, because Rosemary Carroll was also Courtney’s attorney of record, and she might
have delayed or told Courtney about the will change as a heads up. Either action would
be sufcient to get a lawyer disbarred in any normal situation, but entertainment lawyers have their own law books. Predictably, the “PR machine” said nothing about the
will change after he died.
In the original will everybody agreed that Frances would get everything. Like her
mother, Courtney knew how to live off the executor’s fees, but in Kurt’s “new” will
Courtney would not have been the executor, Kurt’s mom or a business manager would
be the new executor. If Kurt had prevailed Courtney would get u1.00 and her agreed
upon prenuptial payoff-rumored to be one million plus child support-nothing more.
Okay, so he’s back in Seattle, trying to put an end to his addiction and his marriage,
changing his will and trying to get straight again. He was literally on his knees praying and writing music with Pat Smear, maybe even thinking of starting a band like
Foo Fighters. However, his prayers are not being answered. Krist Novoselic, tried to
get him to quiet down, but Krist was angry at Courtney and pissed at Kurt for whimpering out. He just didn’t have the wear-with-all to grab his old buddy like a sack of
potatoes and drag him to a remote location. Both Krist and Dave knew Kurt had to
off-load the monkey and Courtney. In the nal analysis, Kurt was not as strong as
Nelson Algren’s ctional, C%(.;!$ a(:+!.$, the junkie drummer played by Frank
Sinatra in a(. L!/+ /+$ H*65$. A%). He told his friends he was going to le for divorce immediately after he got off the “horse,” but that statement was not time stamped.
In reality Kurt had no chance to get clean unless he was away from Courtney V4tQ.
In order to understand the lyric: “S+$ ;$$<- !/ <#)<!.7 -/%(!7+/ /* )8 +$(%/io you
need to know that Kurt was referring to his dependency on Courtney and his female
Canadian heroin dealer, who moved to Portland shortly after Kurt’s death. However,
Kurt was, as usual, also punning. Heroin, one of the worst poisons ever created, is
often labeled with a feminine pronoun, like a steamship or a WWII bomber such as
sueen Mary or Lady Luck. Likewise, junkies never tire of inventing feminine and innocuous names for heroin. On the streets heroin is often referred to as “Girl,” “Lady
White,” “China White” “Persia Brown” and “Mama.” But in “Aneurysm,” Kurt places
a medical label on it. This song, written at least two years before his collapse in Munich,
presages his mysterious death, explores every junkies fear of brain damage and disease from contaminated drugs, and underscores his fascination for all things medical.
When he stepped off the plane from Rome Kurt, felt betrayed by his old lady and
cuckolded by Billy Corgan. As soon as he walked in the door, Courtney was on his
case, barking and screaming in the morning and alternatively using her notorious cold
shoulder as a battering ram at night. Meanwhile Billy was leaving messages on the
answering machine almost every day. On the evening of March 1P, in a desperate effort
to win just one little argumentian impossible dream when Courtney is on the warpathiKurt (stupidly, in my opinion) locked himself in a room hoping to shut her out
of his life. This was a big mistake, you can’t reject Courtney. If you want to get a psycho
;B>
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narcissist violently enraged, just tell them that can’t come to the party. Ann Rice tried
this in New Orleans, and she got a face full of Courtney’s ugly ... ugly. A big storm
dumped everything but the moon that night. Instead of lighting a re and settling in
for a nice Egg Nog the Cobain’s ran around the house screaming at each other in
front of the baby. As usual Courtney threatened to call the cops. She would scream
into the phone about domestic violence or gun display or potential suicide. Kurt tried
to call her bluff, “Go ahead.” He said. “I’ll go to jail... somebody has to wear the pants
in the family.” But she wasn’t blufng. Courtney made yet another call to 911. The
911 computer was linked to a historical data base which revealed that domestic violence had been called in before from that same address.
Over the phone Courtney blithely announced that her husband was barricaded in
his room with three pistols, a rile and several boxes of ammo, “in the house.” This
same arsenal was taken away from him in June of 1993. Nobody was home that night
except Courtney, Kurt, the baby and, oh yes, that damned illusive male nanny, the
person who looks remarkably like Kurt when he peroxides his hair. When the police
arrived Courtney grew strangely calm, even maternal, as if she was the mature one
and Kurt was the child. This signalled the cops as to who was sick and who was
healthy in that household. Courtney was setting up a scenario. But Kurt was not evidently or obviously suicidal. He told the cops he just wanted peace and quiet and
that he was never suicidal. The police had to search the house from top to bottom,
to nd the guns They were not locked in with Kurt, but Courtney told the cops she
was afraid he was going to shoot himself. Courtney projected a helpful attitude. Kurt
sassed the ofcers. The “rock in the face of the cops” sticker on his Jagstang didn’t
help. Kurt did not mention suicide that night, but Courtney did.
My interpretation of the report led on March 1P, 1994 tells me that almost every
police ofcer on the Leschi-Madrona beat knew about the recurrent drama at the
Cobain house. It is important to remember that the incidents stretched from house
to house. The ghts that broke out in Lake City continued unabated into the cold
newness of the mansion overlooking the lake.
Kurt insisted he wasn’t suicidal and was only trying to get away from Courtney.
The cops thought he meant he was trying to get away from her “in the house,” like
a room to room brawl scene, but we now realize he meant the comment to be taken
globally as, “I’m trying to move out.” Or, “I’m trying to get her to move out...
forever.”
Everybody knew the Cobain’s were breaking up except the fans. Kurt told numerous friends he wanted a divorce and that he wanted out of the relationship. He told
anybody who would listen that he was leaving Seattle, maybe to make an indy record
with Steve Albini on the Minnesota-Iowa border or maybe to join Mary Lou Lord in
the studio. Maybe he would work on forming a new band or cut a single for Pachyderm.
Just to bug Courtney he told a few friends he was on his way back East to gig with
another woman, maybe Kristan Pfaff, but me thinks he should have kept his mouth
shut because there may well have been another woman. Courtney probably said,
“Okay, you leave and you’ll never see your child again.” That’s a common phrase in
;BC
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divorce hassles, child support not withstanding, but the words must have cleft Kurt’s
heart like a honed battle ax. Frances was his heart-his life. She said it before the tour
began, she said it on the phone from London, she said it in the Hotel in Rome, and
every time she said it she meant it. Kurt honestly feared he would never see Frances
again. Threatening to take a man’s child away-be it deserved or in Kurt’s case, undeservediare words that curdle every father’s blood. I shouldn’t say every father, because, as we all know, some people have no feelings and should never have kids, but
when a righteous father loses his child, he dies inside. It’s like a stroke. I know it happened to me.
Kurt slithered one more step down the ladder of life after that stormy ght on March
1P. Courtney, ever the enabler, did nothing to stash her husbands heroin and even made
sure he had enough to stay out of her hair. The cops took the 9mm Biretta and the
Ruger mini-14 assault ri"e away and conscated the ammo. In this case he was defenseless, the symbolic power of the guns was now neutralized.
Any husband confronted with a Harpy for a wife, especially one who drags the kid
into every argument, quickly grows depressed, Kurt was determined to make changes for Frances in spite of his darker moods, but the odds were stacked against him. In
most cases when a father gets angry over a custody issue, his adrenaline and testosterone tell him to strike out, a few low-class louts do just that, but most fathers harbor
a deeply ingrained respect for women and their kids, so they just stand there and take
the psychic beating like the macho men their mothers trained them to be. Kurt’s mother
dressed him like Pat Boone when he was a kid. What was she thinking? Okay, so the
kid did, in fact, make something of himself. Wasn’t that enough? No. Wendy, the mother
who could pass for Kurt’s older sister and his sister Kim who passed for his younger
sister both sided with Courtney. Kurt couldn’t win. His own mother switched camps.
The toads in his pond in Carnation had more self-esteem and yet he was still not suicidal. He wanted more kids, but he did not want Courtney to mother them. He nally
saw into the future and noted, probably too late, that she was going to be a bad in"uence on Frances and any future bloodstock.
;B?
POPPY SEED REDOUW
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his chapter wouldn’t be necessary if it weren’t for the fact that my sweet child
continually dreamt of penning her own ozography as soon as she found a more
compliant escritoire and soul bitch to ghost the gig. As of this writing she did
two more, a scrap book version and, in V01V or so, the so called, “definitive version.
I guess she was trying to get the story straight between, hallucinations, as if the reader
will eventually come around if she remembers what lie she told to whom.
Courtney can write, I taught her, but she had no patience for prose and no comprehension
of non-ction with footnotes except as it depicted her homemade self-legend. Writing
is dull and boring stuff and only magicians can make the act of writing as exciting
as music, painting or dance. Courtney saw no good in it. There were no stage antics,
no pyrotecktonix, no crotch shots from the James Moreland school of exposure, no
loud obnoxious blather, no stage attacks, and above all, no immediate applause and
feedback. Writing is like watching a water wheel go around, and the pay sucks.
Courtney needed more of everything. More bravos, vast approval, atta girls on all
corners. To get the job done she needed a real writer, one with a brain and a ne
wordish hand, a writer who studied hard and graduated with a 3.6 overall grade point
average. You say this is unabashed self-promotion, a contract designed to break down
ethical barriers? Why not? Courtney has redened ethics for the millennium. Her
lack of erudition (except those years she claims she spent slaving away at Trinity
College in Dublin, trying to clone Minny Driver) never slowed her down before. So
by late 1996, after a tentative nod from a godlike voice at the top of the Viacom ladder
(and a penciled in deal at SvS) the insatiable seed of my loins began a quest for the
lucky writer who would win her the Gran Prix de la hype.
The core of Courtney’s quest for parity with her more literate peers and parents,
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entailed an obtuse search for a ghost writer. For
this Courtney stalked Poppy b. Brite. Poppy was
"attered at rst and the deal went into action, but
another vaporous dimension began to steam up
the windows. The legal department at SvS wanted
to add clauses and riders to the deal, like maybe
they would have to consider how transparent the
whole scam was becoming. What about a lawsuit
from that wretch Hank Harrison? How could
they assure nondisclosure if Courtney was too
stoned to be trusted with shop secrets? In other
words, could Courtney really be part of a team
effort? The answer was, “No, not really.” Courtney
only liked a deal if it is vertically integrated with
her own cerebral spinal "uid.
Poppy b. Brite was targeted because Courtney
liked Poppy’s Pop Goth novels and everybody
knows ction translates easily to non-ction right?
WRONG. It’s the other way around. Poppy, however was, already, way too big to do
a ghost job. But that never occurred to my kid because Courtney wanted it to be an
“AUTOBIOGRAPHY” as if anybody would believe she could write a whole book on
her own.
I can just see her isolated in Kurt’s little paradise out in Carnation, no phone, just
her and the babyiheroically sharpening pencils and trying to install the latest version of I.h4$-!7. or a!:%*-*0/ L*%5 on her Mac. Sylvia Plath, Go Fisho I can just
imagine Courtney, the pyromaniac (read V*.7O(/$%) who couldn’t sit still in school,
sitting in the upstairs room of the new house listening to the frogs and typing V000
words a day while Cobain’s ghost zooms in and out the shuttered windows.
I repeat, I tried to nudge her towards writing many years ago, hoping writing would
calm her soul as it had done for me, but alas, Courtney took to the slow pace of expository writing like a white knuckle "yer.
All did not go well at rst. Poppy insisted her name appear on the cover and Courtney
would just have to settle for an, “as-told-to” book. If she wanted to write an autobiography she would have to actually grind it out herself.
Rather than compromise on this contract Courtney began lobbying anew, as usual
at the top, with people on the level of Danny Goldberg or with, let’s say, a studio executive or two, then down the list through the faux marble halls of Viacom nally to
SvS until strings got pulled. Viacom, you see, owned all of SvS at the time. In fact
Courtney pulled so many strings that winter you’d think she was buying a harp.
Courtney felt superior to the print media folks at her disposal. To her, magazines
were shills for the advertisers. Well at least she was right about that. They provided
an illusion of content when in fact they had all pretty much become tank cars for the
;BA
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perfume trade -- scratch-and-sniff muff divers on a eurotrash plane ride. In my daughters self -formulated weltanschauung, book publishers had fallen from grace. I told
her to avoid Marshall McLuhan. The “Book” as and art form, would never die. But
alas, somebody in her archdiocese must have been a McLuhan fan. Wrong again my
daughter. Wrong again. I can just hear her asking her sycophantic pals at Mtv the
rhetorical question, “Why buy-out a prestigious old publishing house like SvS if you
can’t slap it’s butt every once in-awhile?”
Maybe she was right in her callous way. Simon and Schuster’s trade division was
resting on its laurels. The division that pioneered such great projects as Buckminster
Fuller’s, S<(:$ S+!< G(%/+ and "+$ L(8 "+!.7- L*%;, had become a mere shell of
its former self. Like Fisher electronics, who sold out the name to a Taiwanese consortium, the SvS trade division was now cruising on its old reputation, hoping people
would think the old name still stood for something. If this leaked out, if the idea that
the editorial staff at SvS were just a bunch of stage door Johnnies and bean counters, SvS would be looking at an embarrassing, no-win situation.
To make matters worse, real-world marketing surveys revealed a soft market for
Mrs. Cobain’s literary wares. Books about her husband would do well, but books authored by her nibs were untrustworthy to an alert generation W. This may be because
Hole’s actual record sales weren’t quite as platinum as Geffen had told everybody
and tie-in book sales run about 10-1 compared to record sales. Courtney was supposed to have her third HOLE album out to link with the Poppy b. book, but that got
blown too. So, if HOLE sold 300,000 records (real world) then SvS could only expect
30,000 sales of the proposed book. Now had they done a bang up job on Rossi’s book,
the one with some harsh criticism of our star in it, they might have come up with
slightly higher gures, about 140,000 sales, but alas, I repeat, Pocket Books sent
Rossi out to pasture. So, there you are. For a big New York biography, 30,000 is edgy
at best. A gross of u600,000 may not even justify a paperback version. Courtney
must have called in a heart shaped box full of markers to get this book out the
door.
suality? suality you ask? The BritetLove collaboration was vanity press at its
worst. The laughably thin, but well published, monograph would have been seen as
a pot boiler in the golden Age of paper backs.
Then there’s the issue of nal edits and censorship. Poppy b. Brite’s book on
Courtney Love would be produced with Courtney’s blood dipped blue pencil poised
over the galleys like the sword of Damacles. Heads would roll. Simon v Schuster
consented to release the biography as a condensed version of Love’s on-line rants.
Brite’s role was, in the end, marginalized. Welcome to the club Poppyo
So here we nd SvS, one of the largest and most honorable of the old houses, kowtowing to an infantile (possibly schizoid) rock star trying to use them to recreate her
image after years of debauching in the punk scene. How could this happen one asks?
The answer is simple folks... the olde guard went out with (#65 6(.7 -8.$= SvS
became uvu especially after Viacom moved the accounting division to Michigan in
;:B
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Early 1996 and divested SvS more prestigious children’s and educational divisions in
January of 199P.
Tweedy author lunches at the Russian Tea Room were few and far between after that.
Glam tie-ins were the order of the day. Content was nice for the educated types and
children, but the movietrecord deals (like Courtney’s book) would stay with Viacom.
That’s probably all they wanted in the rst place -- just another whore house for the
corporate monolith.
In spite of pressure from above, initial sales fell short of expectations. Oh sure, all
known HOLE fanciers (at least those who could read) would buy a copy, but the price
of uV4.9S for a thin book, strained even Hole’s fanatical sales base. The Poppy b. book
was supposed to have been an authorized biography, and the REAL STORY (emphasis on STORY) but it came out calling itself “denitive,” even before the critics had a
chance to review it. One wonders what altercations took place to demote it from
“Ofcial” and “Authorized,” to “denitive?” This semantic gaff hook was also deployed in the V01V book.
Fallout from the many editorial tiffs were heard around the globe. Editors at I#36!-+$%QL$$;68, hinted (off the record) that something had gone amiss. Not only was it not the,
“Real Story,” it was a transparent, one dimensional and self-serving diatribeia mere
reshuf"e with so many factual mistakes a blind copy editor could nd them typed in
Braille with gloves on. This always happens when you allow uneducated rock stars,
with hidden agenda’s, to edit their own biographies.
Sadly, the Poppy Brite book shows signs of a sickness even more pathological than
can be explained by vanity press or script control. 2*#%/.$8 '*?$9 /+$ R$(6 S/*%8, was
a hard bound vendetta built over a vacuous subtext. Every line, on every page is suspect because every paragraph seems to be pointed at “pay back,” or trying to x the
historical record. Courtney makes sure that most of her mother’s husbands get run
over the rewalking coals. She say’s nothing of the current pal, “Ted” or why Linda
took her Best Girlfriend’s name, but me and Dave Menely (husband Z3: The New
bealand adventure) sure get blamed for smoking pot. Like somehow, in Courtney’s
distorted value system, junkies are at the top of the totem pole and pot heads are at the
bottom. My, my, how topsy-turvey it’s all become.
I’ll make it real clear for you. Junkies and crankers and craque heads are scum. They
are right there with gutter alkies and violent drunks. They always have been and they
always will be. Heroin, it’s derivatives, forms and substitutes no longer have medicinal value except as possible enslavement drugs. The same holds true for Craque, and
speed. You don’t get Hep B or HiVs p from smoking pot. Has that time come? Is opium
really the opiate of the people?
Can you see a kind of authoritarian trend here? Is not the worship of heroin, and the
political apparatus that provides it, a form of fascism? And is not fascism always intrinsically antiblack, anti-Jew and antiliberal? When Courtney called me an anti-Semite
on the Barbara Walters’ show she was really cloaking her own nascent fascism, her
fascination for the violence against men proposed by Susan Faludi in Courtney’s fa;::
H(.; H(%%!-*.
vorite book. Courtney’s music and her whole act (including blatant sexism and male
bashing) re"ect a form of near chaotic-anarchy.
Why doesn’t the Poppy Brite book mention the fact that heroin went radical shique
when Jim Carroll’s book, V(-;$/3(66 4!(%!$-, went best seller and when Carroll’s
diary hero got played in the movie by the Titanic’s Master DeCaprio? Why doesn’t
it mention that Courtney’s attorney is Jim Carroll’s ex-wife Rosemary Carroll (who
was described by Courtney’s rst husband, James Moreland as, “a notorious speed
freak around town?” This same Rosemary was Danny Goldberg’s signicant other
and both Danny and Rosemary where in Seattle for the famed intervention on March
VS, 1994, the same intervention that got Kurt out of town into rehab and away from
divorce attorneys in Seattle. Kurt was slowed down in his will change by Carroll
who seems to have a con"ict of interest in the Cobain case since she represented both
Kurt and Courtneyo What would have happened had he changed his will and led
his divorce?
Poppy must have sold out. Brite, who writes terric ction, should stick to that
idiom, because her nonction style rings of an iron deciency and, well you know,
the only way it was ever going to come out was if Courtney could reduce Brite to a
mere scrivener, sort of a female Bob Cratchet.
Courtney wanted a controlled deal. Brite wanted a warts and all presentation. I believe, and rumor has it, that this half-hearted book fell down in the planning stages
because Brite, in her brave way, was attempting to avoid jingoism and obloquy. The
result came out looking like lumpy vanilla ice cream melting on a sparkling sidewalk. As the print date approached, a skirmish took place with threats steaming out
of Courtney’s etherized delirium. The cat ght over how much venom could be
pumped into any one book, especially one this thin, screeched on for weeks.
In her introduction Brite describes the writing experience as:
“... a weird feeling having someone you are writing about lurking
over your shoulder.”
From the rst page Brite gives the reader the impression that Courtney stalked her
because she popped up with her unlisted phone number in the middle of the night.
That should have been the rst clue, but I guess the front money was good.
uuu
Now, how to tell you so I can stretch out the angst and yet keep you interested? I
know... I’ll tell you the truth rst then I’ll tell you what Courtney dictated to her
secretarial services at Simon v Schuster. At the risk of sounding repetitious it’s
important to note that the rst lines of the R$(6 S/*%8 claim that Courtney was born
Love Michelle Harrison on July 9 196S. I repeat this is totally untrue. Courtney was
born Courtney Michelle Harrison on July 9th 1964. I know I was there and so was
my mom and dad. Linda tried to erase all of the dates, but they forgot the adoption
papers, which clearly state the original birth date.
This lie is so blatant that I assume there must be a deeper, more clandestine reason
;:;
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for it. I doubt anyone would make such a blunder without having some darker purpose.
Years ago Courtney dropped the date rape accusation when she nally gured out I
dated her mother for at least a year before she got pregnant.
In yet another letter to the court Linda claims she married me because she felt sorry
for an impoverished street poet. Nobody mentions the fact that I was not homeless and
never have been. The book even contradicts itself by admitting I had an apartment.
Later on, in the triple spaced, wide margin, text of this hard-cover skald, we again
nd the comment that I gave Courtney LSD when she was a baby. In addition to being
ridiculous, we can only ask, “ how would she know?” LSD is tasteless orderless and
undetectable in blood serum within hours. We have only Courtney’s word for this. I
detest anyone who drugs anyone against their will and everybody who knows me
professionally knows this. Either Courtney made it up, or Linda and Frank and their
cronies fabricated the story for the adoption court or some new age psycholepsy scam.
When confronted with these inconsistencies, Courtney "icked it all off, shrugged her
shoulders and said, “Well I wouldn’t put it past him.” But here’s the bottom line, whoever
told her I gave her LSD didn’t care much about her because, if she wasn’t screwed up
from the acid she would sure as hell be screwed up from the telling of the tale. (Please
refer to the Polygraph Test Results included herein.)
Simon v Schuster and their Viacom masters, stepped in the proverbial dooh-dooh
when they published 2*#%/.$8 '*?$9 /+$ R$(6 S/*%8 because it came back to haunt
them almost immediately. Like the LSD dosing incident nobody who mattered believed
it. The book was error ridden, but they didn’t checko The public saw the "aws, but
apparently there is no longer anybody home in Rockefeller Plaza.
Insider gossip claims that Poppy refused to knowingly lie or distort the truth to
promote Courtney’s dreamworld. I was "attered to hear that at least one of the altercations
behind the scenes at Simon v Schuster had to do with the LSD dosing accusation.
Apparently Courtney insisted that her biographer march out that old, and horribly
untrue, story. Poppy herself didn’t believe it and no proof was ever offered. Nick
Broomeld showed me an early draft with the LSD acquisition heavily qualied, but
it reappeared in the nal draft in an unqualied mention, almost in passing. Courtney
must have won that battle too.
God knows why Courtney continued to beat that old LSD drum. Even John Blosser
of the N(/!*.(6 G.U#!%$%, one of the worst scandal mongers on staff, qualied the story
when it ran in 1996 and Henrietta Knight, researching for the Rupert Murdoch syndicate, could nd no evidence to disavow the two polygraph exams I took and passed.
Courtney even admitted she embellished the story to spice up a boring interview with
a San Francisco writer many years ago and it has become a kind of laughable hoax
ever since. Each time the story goes around it gets elongated like Pinocchio’s nose.
Throughout the years I believed Courtney’s mother told her I gave her LSD, because
Courtney cited her mother as the source. But after speaking with mutual friends, I
realized she said nothing of the kind and that Courtney was playing us both.
It makes sense, her delusions were always borderline. Courtney once told her mother
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she chose us through reincarnation because we were the only two (with the necessary
genes) who would leave her alone. I take that as a compliment. To be chosen by such
a great soul is well... I’m just not worthy.
This slanderous hardback mistake is so beneath Simon and Schuster’s normal level
of excellence, that one can only assume the book was checked by an old school meth
cooker. The book contains text of a nature designed to assassinate someone’s character.
The legal test for malice is easily proven. Another necessary proof for libel is “intent”
and boy intent is written all over this scribble. The book also clearly demonstrates the
writers knowledge of the malice. Me thinks someone is promoting a secret agenda
here. Is it designed to cover up for mom and Frank and the illegal trickery employed
at the adoption hearing. Why? Why else? Money. Big wads of money. Or is there an
even more sinister plan afoot. Could this book be a feint to throw the public off the
scent of Kurt’s killers?
Courtney was heir to a relatively large trust fund (say about u 1V million in today’s
anemic money) and Linda’s family thought I was after it. Linda had to remarry quickly and to a Catholic or the money would be reassigned to the church (old grandpa Risi
was senile by that time) so, in order to keep the money in Courtney’s name (there were
no new heirs yet, Linda had to nd some way to annul our marriage without my knowledge. Her virginity would then be reinstated in the eyes of the Dominicans, and she
could remarry a Catholic man and have the child adopted by a Roman Catholic stepfather. Frank Rodriguez t the bill.
Frank didn’t see any of this as skullduggery. He was blinded by the upward mobile
ladder he was approaching. He had no agenda beyond maybe being a good father
which he undoubtedly is. I think Frank looked at the whole deal as a life-style upgrade. All he had to do was rip out my soul and he’d be home free. I’m sure it’s the
only evil thing Frank ever did.
Turns out Linda and Frank were contemplating divorce when Frank swore on a stack
of Torahs that he could provide a wholesome and intact family for Courtney. As stated
earlier the Rodriguez vrs. Rodriguez divorce in Oregon was nal less than a year after
the adoption papers were led. Linda and Frank were, for all intents and purposes,
divorced when the adoption went through. I tried to get Courtney to listen to the tapes
and read the documents, but she refused. She claimed it was too traumatic, but she
had already made up her mind, I was the bad guy, and I was going to stay that way.
She wanted the public to believe she had a bad dad hidden in the dark branches of the
underworld somewhere and that all of her problems came from that relationship.
Although I will address this issue further in a later chapter it should be now stated
that the cause given for the Rodriguez divorce was an affair Linda was having with
Courtney’s shrink, one Dr. Pharr who disappeared shortly afterward. Apparently Frank
found Linda and Pharr in 5$6!:/* "(7%(./$ and demanded redress. Ahhho But what to
do about the money? It was all in Courtney’s name. A hush-hush settlement was in
order. The results and dates of Rodriguez vrs. Rodriguez are on public record. Could
Linda be virginized yet again in the eyes of the church? Was that even necessary?
;:=
'*?$ K!66-
Frank’s upgrade consisted of a university education and an elementary credential.
He also got the house in Portland and a full education for his two girls. My kid got
sent to a foster home and was experimented on by Dr. Pharr. Was this a fair shake?
Tough luck for me eh? I lost my only child and pretty much fell apart. Like Leonard
Cohen, I went to a ben monastery and gradually came out of it. But I did not give my
cherished little child drugs. Frankly I could not stand before you if I had. Check the
Polygraph results in the Rear Matters section.
Losing a child once hollows you out. Losing a child twice kills you. Only heroes
stand above the loss of a child. Cobain was a hero, but he wasn’t going to lose that
baby. That’s why I know he didn’t kill himself.
;:>