Born #OTD 1964: Courtney Love

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.

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On This Day, 1987: Appetite for Destruction is unleashed on an unsuspecting world

#OTD 1987: Want to feel old? This thing is turning 35 - As ubiquitous an album as there ever has been in my lifetime. I am not at all in the mood to listen to Guns N’ Roses these days - in more of a Bach and Mozart mood - but they were a juggernaut. Even now - with Slash and Duff having reunited with Axl Rose some years back - they are one of the bigger touring acts in the world, their back catalog continues to sell in big numbers, and their music is seemingly everywhere. While the ‘90s produced many huge rock acts - and not so much since then - there simply has not been a band that was quite as big as Guns N’ Roses were in the late ‘80s and into the early ‘90s. Purely in terms of popularity, U2 and Metallica about equaled them, and Pearl Jam came very close for a couple of years, but nobody was bigger (of course, I’m talking specifically about bands that were contemporaries of Guns N’ Roses, not including earlier acts that even now remain huge, i.e. the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, etc. But even on that count, GNR compares very favorably to anybody at all.) It could be argued that, for all intents and purposes, GNR were the last of the seriously decadent, over-the-top rock and roll bands before the genre was watered down and rap/hip-hop largely replaced it as the music of rebellious youth. And they played the part of decadent rock gods all too well; all of that crap is well-documented in countless forums, I’m not going to present any history of Guns N’ Roses here. The fact that all of the relevant players are still alive is just a wonder. So, no actual review - I’ve already spent enough time just coming up with this paragraph, and I’m busy - but you all know it and love it: it’s Appetite for Destruction, the most important rock and roll album of the 1980s.

GRADE: A+

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