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| Courtney Love, circa 1994. Photo: Jeff Thurnher/CORBIS |
By what machinations of fate has this most tempestuous woman, Courtney Love, reached the ripe age of threescore? Though she resides outside the public eye of late, and rock music is no longer a commercially viable genre, in the bygone days of the 1990s, she was ever-present, and she was a hot mess if ever there was one.
As a musician, one cannot laud her as a songbird of unparalleled voice nor a guitarist of prodigious skill. Indeed, the tasks of melody and intricate fretwork fell to the token male in the otherwise female band. Yet, for all her eccentricities (which likely persist to this day), she and her band, Hole, recorded two albums of undeniable merit: 1994’s ‘Live Through This’ and 1998’s ‘Celebrity Skin’. Both resonate with a power that defies the ravages of time, standing superior to the vast majority of the ‘alternative rock’ which dominated the airwaves and popular discourse during that halcyon decade.
Though she may have been, and perhaps remains, as mad as a hatter, the memory of Courtney Love stirs a yearning for a simpler time. An era before everything in music became fixated solely on the vapid offerings of the top forty, and everyone else was shut out of the conversation.
Copyright 2024, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 and @FloydEtcetera on X, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.
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