Frances Bean Cobain lands summer job with Stella McCartney

Vox Magazine

Date: June 1998, Issue 92

Country: UK

Pix:

Hole A Love story

There's more to COURTNEY LOVE than being rock's most famous widow

And we don't just mean the acting either. Or the modelling. No, we're talking

about her band HOLE and their first album for four years.

It's rather good apparently...

"FUCK ALICE NUTTER! DID FUCKING MADONNA BUY THE FIRST CHUMBAWAMBA FUCKING SEVEN-INCH! I DON'T FUCKING THINK SO! I fucking did. Punk rock Marxism is a male rite of fucking passage. That's all it is. It's nothing to do with females. We have no place in it, we never did. Alice Nutter can maybe contend me on this, but you know Alice Nutter prefers Madonna over me anyway, because Madonna 'never tried to be authentic'."

She pauses, gathers her thoughts.

"My point is, Alanis Morissette killed the notion of the female musician. Alanis softened the public up, because they couldn't deal with raw anger. I'm too raised in squats and teepees so I don't really know the mainstream...I think the public is more intelligent than it really is. Alanis killed our rivals- Sleater-Kinney and Bikini Kill and L7 and 7 Year Bitch and Babes In Toyland- if their a) own lack of talent or b) lack of ambition to be in the Top 40 didn't kill them first. What happened was, 25 Million Records Sold Globally comes along and it's a phenomenon and the next thing you get is Natalie Imbruglia unable to name a single member of The Who. Does it matter? No, I guess not, Natalie! Now you have people trolling the underground for Unrest songs and Unwound songs to turn a Neighbours star into a fucking pop star! It's formula. So you get an all-female American Lilith tour where they call all play guitar...adequately."

She spits the word out like it's a curse.

"I'm not saying I can play it more than adequately, but at least I can play it like Will Sergeant..."

COURTNEY ON EX-BOYFRIENDS

"Gavin Rossdale is a sweet boy - and he's also the only boy in America who still flirts with me! Don't fucking laugh at me! He's like the most wonderfully sweet ponce of them all."

You just like him because he's English...

"Well, yeah. I want to find Michael fucking Mooney from Spiritualized. Now that he's in Spiritualized and I'm me, I want to go: 'DUDE! DID I OR DID I NOT LOSE MY VIRGINITY TO YOU?

RIGHT NOW, RIGHT HERE BETWEEN YOU AND ME...'

[realises what she's saying] except that there's a tape recorder. Make him fucking confess!

"He was sweet. Maybe he's embarrassed - he shouldn't be, now I'm a Versace model. And those are free Gucci shoes, thank you."

She pauses again, gathers steam.

"So, apart from Luscious Jackson-and they're not even Top Ten- the whole notion of the female manifesto was destroyed by somebody produced by a journeyman like Glen Ballard. Yet I promised Madonna I wouldn't slag Alanis any more and I won't. All I am saying is that in one cultural moment, she took our rivals out. They're all gone. They were talented, there were Thom Yorkes, Steve Albinis and Neil Youngs among them. ANd if they don't succumb to the scene pressure of males, they apparently succumb to either a) drugs or b) fucking anorexia or c)being tamed a la Liz Phair. I hope she comes back. I never even used to like Liz Phair, and now I'm praying for the day she fucking comes back..."

The phone rings.

"Will you get that? Because I'm on a rant..."

Welcome back, Courtney.

About 12 months ago, your reporter got a call at home around seven in the morning. Stung b a throwaway claim in a review of another band that she didn't listen to music any more, Courtney called VOX up to play a couple of new Hole songs down the line.

They sounded intriguing, like US Riot Grrrl meets Cheap Trick meets '70's soft rock. New Wave, in an American way.

"This is a really good song that you'll actually really love," she commented before the second number," because if you don't, you're fucking stupid."

One year and £1.25m on, the songs sound more than intriguing. Polished and buffed countless times by engineers across America, they have a Californian sheen to them- the nearest America has come to producing a heir to Fleetwood Mac or The Cars, certainly this decade. 'Celebrity Skin' is going to shock a lot of people by its sophistication.

In places, it has a surprising lightness and dexterity of touch- as typified by songs like 'Heaven Tonight' (formerly "The Pony Song', written for Courtney's 5 year old child Frances Bean Cobain) which lifts the line "I could be happy" from Alerted Images' early-80's pop smash; and the surefire summer hit, the Fanclub-esque 'Boys On the Radio'. 'Malibu', meanwhile, is stunning -the shimmering radio harmonies of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks resonating down through the years.

Likewise, 'Playing Your Song', 'Hit So Hard' and 'Petals', three songs which variously recall both the epic grandeur of Echo & The Bunnymen and the plangent guitar work of Johnny Marr. The first is a song written either about Nirvana, grunge, Bush's Gavin Rossdale or Riot Grrrls, depending on how you read the lyrics ("And oh, the bought and sold it all, it's gone/They've taken it, they built a mall/And now they're playing your song"), while the second is a masochistic love song seemingly extolling the benefits of being beaten up by your boyfriend, in the style of dark '60s girl groups like The Shangri-La's ("He hit so hard/I saw stars/He hit so hard/I saw God").

Elsewhere,an even more troubled personality comes through, most passionately on the tortured, acoustic-led 'Northern Star', a song written in the studio in a matter of minutes by Courtney and her guitarist eric, and they only number obviously written for Seattle and COurtney's dead husband Kurt Cobain. "I want you and blessed are the broken/ And I beg you/ No loneliness, no misery, is worth you/ Oh tear his heart out, cold as ice, it's mine," wails Courtney over drums rolling ominously list distant thunder. The tormented 'Reasons to be Beautiful', meanwhile, starts with the lines, "Love hangs herself/With bedsheets of her cell/ Threw myself on fires for you" the plumbs even greater depths of self-loathing.

It becomes more confusing after that.

Both 'Playing Your Song.,' and -more obviously- 'Awful' ("They royalty rate all the Girls like you/ And sell it out to the Girls like you/ To incorporate little Girls like you") seem to be nothing more than cheap pot-shots at Courtney's former enemies, the Riot Grrrls of Olympia, WA. THe sepulchral, slow-building 'Skinned' (formerly 'Dying'), with its whispered, breathy vocals, could've been lifted straight from an old SMashing Pumpkins album, as could the almost Iron Maiden-like 'Use Once and Destroy', with its rampant metal guitar riff. Which isn't such a surprise, considering that Pumpkins' main man Billy Corgan was involved at the demo stage of a couple of these songs, back in LA.

Overall, however, the feeling is that of a band looking forward., moving on from a grim past and the rain-filled streets of Seattle. Obsessive Nirvana fans hoping to find insights about Kurt Cobain are going to be disappointed. 'Celebrity Skin' is much more about the sun and trash and glamour of Courtney's favorite adopted city, LA. And it's in no way as specifically female-orientated as either 'Live Through This' or 'Pretty on the Inside' (Hole's 1991 debut).

"For a record about Los Angeles, there sure is a lot of rain on it," Courntey laughs. "Secretly, it's a record about different geographies. I've always had relationships with different towns, like lovers.

COURTNEY ON KENICKIE

"They're a big bunch of sex, that band Kenickie. They're a big, raw-boned bunch of fucking sex - all three of them and the boy. I hope they get good. I hope we're a good example to them, I hope this record's huge and then the big labels will start sniffing around and the those big fucking raw-boned sexy Newcastle girls will be huge and have Number Ones and there will be an Amazon planet the way I want it."

LA has always received and sheltered me; I've always been able to disappear into it. It has a soul, but it's a strange soul.:

"This album's really light," states Eric. "People are going to read stuff into songs like 'Northern Star', but none of the songs are about one person. People were telling us: 'You have all this brewing up inside you, you have to let it out,' like it was our duty. Fuck that. You get caught up in that you're stuck. People are expecting it to scrape the skin off their teeth. Fuck that too. There's a Beatles influence there. I never used to like the Beatles, or the Stones, but it's there. We made it lighter because we were into lighter things. Simple as that. And obviously the Fleetwood Mac connection helped. I never liked that band either, but seeing them in rehearsal in a tiny little room was incredible- the way they were so into their music- even now."

The last documented recording of Hole was a version of the Mac's 'Gold Dust Woman' for The Crow 2

soundtrack., That was back in '96. Since then...nothing. Well obviously, Courtney went off and found famous designers and made herself a film star, but on the musical front there's apparently been no movement at all. Which is why it's such a surprise and pleasure to hear their new album so nearly completed.

"You know what I hate?" Courtney shouts suddenly. "Irony. Fuck irony. Fuck all that post-modern ironic shit! It's cheap and easy! What about embracing pop as a lush and wonderful thing, as the greatest escapist fantasy- other than maybe a Spielberg movie- there ever was? SOmething that can transport you out of your car and back into your first fuck?

"After years of loving pop, I've finally written the ultimate pop song!" she continues. She's talking about 'Heaven Tonight' the 'happy' song written for her daughter, which is supposed to mirror the sound of horses galloping across the fields.

"If you can rise above the bullshit, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot cynicism of my generation and write a song which is such a triumph of pop as that...every time I hear that song I fall in love with it again. The fucking Primitives can kiss my ass! This is my homage to British pop. That song makes me fucking happy, it makes my child leap around the room because she thinks its about her. It's still the truth, but of a different kind- it's not 'Live at the fucking Witch Trials' [The Fall]. It's not 'She's Lost fucking Control' [Joy Division]."

(Courtney actually refers to another Joy Division song- 'Love Will Tear Us apart'-in the final few lines of Malibu.)

"I fucking hate irony," she says, regaining her thread, almost snarling now. "I'm the queen of it, I invented it and I renounce it. It has its place, but if you can't embrace your daily life properly with an enthusiasm that's unfettered, like a child, then fuck you. This album is about innocence and enthusiasm and communing with nature and straight up love.

"Pop music is hard to create- especially when you're us, when you've gone through the darkest of the dark-and I just want so much to evoke the idea of a fucking sunny day sometimes."

She's quieter now, almost sad.

"It's tough to play the shadow, it's tough- but to be able to play the light which bends the shadow... that's my story."

HOLD ON. Is this Courtney Love or Madonna speaking?

There have always been parallels between the two artists: both have the supremely disarming ability to mix innocence and guile in equal amounts, both are media manipulators. Both have the ability to mimic the successful aspects of other people's behavior- and sometimes even surpass their original role models.

Courtney has had an admiration for- and rivalry with - Madonna which extends back over the past five years, back to when Ms Ciccone called Ms Love up in '91 and asked her if she wanted to sign to her label Maverick. Is it just coincidence that Courtney's quote above appear to mirror those of Madonna talking about her latest album? Is it just coincidence that Courtney continually drops her name in interviews? Because, if Courtney has one true rival left in the field of music, it's her "elder sister mentor" Madonna.

Maybe they both talk like this because they've both been through motherhood. That, coupled with a stringent reevaluation of the past, coupled with redemption and forgiveness, has allowed both artists -for the first time- to reinvent themselves for the new ago of Aquarius.

One could argue that Courtney is the Madonna of the underground milieu -way she has moved through the Liverpool scene of the late '70s on to flirtation with cult movies via Alex Cox in the '80s, on to Portland, Minneapolis and LA, then up to Seattle and infamy...and now into the mainstream.

IT'S LATE. Too late. This London hotel stinks of the '80s and '80s opulence, carelessly handled expense accounts, minimalist interior decoration, New York City and the cast of Friends. The three of us have drunk far more tequila and vodka and beer than we're capable of handling. Designer dresses and shoes are strewn around Courtney's suite. In one corner, there's a television permanently tuned into MTV and -given pride of place- a juicer surrounded by fresh vegetables and fruit.

Courtney moves over to the last item, next to a tray bearing £400 worth of alcohol, and switches it on...

"Juicing, Britain!" she shouts over the noise of the machine. "I know you're not interested in your health, but I bet if Louise Wener juiced she'd actually make a good song instead of just giving good interviews. When you juice, you get stoned right away. This is something Woody Harrelson [her co-star in...Larry Flynt] taught me. I never thought Woody Harrelson would change my life, but he did.

"Do it in one gulp," she says to her suspicious guitarist. "It's not supposed to taste good, sweetheart."

Health kick over(briefly), Courtney returns to her rant...

"...All I'm saying is that I hope that with the new album we can inspire ambitious and talented females who can compose songs and learn the craft of songwriting for real to fucking find their way into the charts. Because when you're fucking 14 and you're Louise Woodward and you put on a guitar and play it through an amp LOUD, you will feel -I promise you- a release unlike any other. Except maybe playing soccer."

VOX met the Spice Girls the other day...

"THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS! WHAT HAS THAT GOT TO DO WITH THIS? They're not rock, they don't understand rock. Fine. Love 'em, love 'em, ooh baby." Courtney makes fake kissing noises. "I forced them on my daughter because it's good for a FIVE YEAR OLD's self-esteem. It has nothing to do with me or my generation."

Isn't that the best time to affect someone, though, when they're five? Weren't you just talking about how proud you are of 'Heaven Tonight'?

"That's why I took Frances to see their movie," she accedes. "She was going to a Spanish ballet the other day and she got overdressed and asked if she could wear her little heels. The confidence the clothes gave her kinda freaked me out because it was a little oversophisticated. But still, her love for Posh Spice kinda gives her something. It gave her an Amazonian thing that I want her to have...

"How much do you think they're worth? About £8m each? Is that all? I'm worth more than that."

She stops, suddenly grabs your reporter and yells...

"LOOK! LOOK AT THIS FACE! Do you think I've had plastic surgery since last time I saw you? For real?"

No, Courtney. For real.

BEFORE WE go any further, perhaps we should listen to Eric's description of what's happened to Hole since the release of 'Live Through This'. It's almost the last time he'll intrude upon this interview, so bear with him...

Did you feel intimidated making this record?

"No. I felt more like I was hanging upside down suspended by a very thin thread round my big toe from a very tall pole and having to swing myself back the right way up. I'm amazed it didn't fall apart. In fact, it did fall apart. We got off tour after Reading, went to live in a house in New Orleans, set the house on fire, got punched out by Green Day's bodyguards at some show, then Courtney started her movie, then tried again to write in Memphis, then we started writing seriously again once Courtney got done with her movie, record 'Gold Dust Woman' in LA, wrote a bunch of new songs, started rehearsing with everybody, did a little bit with that Corgan guy and finished up writing in April a year ago. I've been working in the studio ever since. It's crazy- especially since our last album was done in less than five weeks."

How much have you spent on it so far?

"Remember that big controversy with My Bloody Valentine five years ago, where they spent a quarter of a million pounds? I'd have to say we've spent four, five times that much. You know what it is? Like Kevin Shields says, it all goes on mini-cabs taking you back and forth to the studio in the middle of the night. THe other stuff doesn't cost that much."

That's what happens when you start taking taxis from New Orleans to LA. Was there ever a time when you thought it wasn't going to appear?

"It isn't out yet," he laughs. "Don't count on it. I never doubted it would come out, but I'm surprised it's even got this far."

At the time of writing, it looks as if the album's projected release date of June 2 will be going back by one, possibly two months.

The atmosphere is subdued, quietened -Courtney never was much of a drinker and is still recovering from the night before. She passes her time uninterestedly watching TV (Prisoner: Cell Block H) and chatting to the VOX make-up artist, who is preparing her for a 5am photo shoot. Meanwhile, she takes the opportunity to put clear a couple of points from the previous evening...

"Why am I alive right now?" she muses. "Because I had a child. So, for me -even in my darkest hours -to leave, to pass on to the other side, would have been ruthless. Obviously I used to think about it. That was the first thing -'I will be an empty vessel devoid of life and love and spirit and spark, but I will be here physically in her presence and I will love this child'. And you build from there. Other values started to come to me. Like 'What can I contribute to society?' 'What are my responsibilities?' Then you get this super-ego voice, this elder sister mentor person, Madonna on the phone, saying you've got a responsibility with your lyrics and you start hearing a voice go: "You can't sing', which never happened to me before. So my challenge there was to stare that voice down and tell it to shut the fuck up and leave me alone.

"I'm getting to be sober, sober in thought and deed -not all the time, but to a certain degree -to become a responsible member of society. When teenage children are telling you that they've done self-destructive acts because of you, you really have to sit down and think: 'OK, what am I giving here? ANd how can I give what it is I have to give without it being fake?'

"You know, you go from your starter kit when you're in pop, and you're a writer, and you're dark, you go from your Leonard Cohen/Baudelaire/Rimbaud starter kit and if you can end up inspired by Yeats and Rilke, then you're gong in the right direction. What Rilke did -write tragic, epic, gorgeous love poems to the spirit of God -is so much tougher than to write sexy morphine/opium poems to the cats. The hate spark dies much quicker than the love spark, and the love spark is much harder to achieve. If you're gonna keep your inspiration going, you've got to have some light. That's what this album is trying to do. It's not that it isn't cynical in parts, but it's like 'Build a new one man! Build a new one'."

SO WHAT'S Courtney Love really like?

In person? A lot healthier, fitter, more muscular and happier than VOX remembers from meeting her last. Annoyingly, inspiring, arrogant, funny, witty, gracious, paranoid, sometimes rambling, often incisive, a control freak... she's been burned badly by the media as a result of her own candour several times in the past (most notoriously, the Vanity Fair article written while she was pregnant which almost resulted in her baby being taken away) and is determined not to let it happen again. She's been through several shades of hell and back since 1994. Not only is she the widow of possibly the most famous suicide victim this century, she's also been close to several other celebrated fuck-ups since (Scott Weiland, Even Dando, Jeff Buckley), but her own strength of character has giver her the ability to continue.

VOX remembers a conversation with Courtney, held about six months after the death of her husband where she repeatedly avowed her determination "not to let the assholes get the satisfaction of seeing me kill myself". On top of this, she's always had an uncanny knack of finding herself in the right place at the right time...

When Princess Diana died, Courtney was on the phone to Madonna. "And guess who heard the news first?" she asks triumphantly. "She did, of course! Then we thought we should petition. We though we should go to Washington and do the anti-paparazzi petition thing. She was like: 'Will you take action if I take action?' I was like: 'Sure, fuck all those assholes'."

When Versace died, Courtney was on a plane over to Rome where she was supposed to lead a Versace fashion shoot on the steps of a cathedral in front of a parade of 20 models...

"And then I get there and I'm looking at all the flowers laid out in my room and all his dresses and the fax personally welcoming me to Rome, when the phone rings..."

DO YOU sometimes feel like your life is run by ghosts?

"Yeah. Well, I feel that it's run by myths. If I don't keep my head about me and I don't perform daily spiritual rituals -and I mean this in all sincerity and not in a doozy way -for instance, drugs are a ritual, as are self-destructive acts and acts of self-love...I perform my rituals, which is chanting [Courtney is a Buddhist] and I also do a lot of yoga and I juice and tonight I'm drinking a fuck of a lot of tequila...

"You know what's great about people knowing that you could punch them out because you've done it before? You never have to, because everyone's terrified that you might do it again" Courtney is referring to incidents involving people such as Kathleen Hanna and fellow Olympia underground icon, Dub Narcotic's Calvin Johnson. Oh, and the odd English journalist of two. "You have security through people knowing that you've lived real hard.

"My solution and my advice to all the British kids, all the scenesters who are going through their Seattle 1991 game right now, is to change your fucking social life! Seriously. Have a child, change your social life. THe first thing I did was to deny my ridiculous dependency on substances. And you know what? When you're motivated it's not hard, it's fucking easy! Now, I just don't hang out. The second thing I did was to remove God from my life because I didn't buy it any more. The atrocities were to heavy and the sings committed against my karma were too large, so I got into my Darwinism -that this is Survival Of The Fittest and there is no gender politic...

"I'm pretty depressive, but my depressions are more panic attacks. I had this whole deconstruction period when I dealt with all my problems where I went into an isolated society and chain-smoked for a month. When I left that place, I had real spiritual problems because I started seeing everything in Darwinian, nihilistic terms, which I'd never seen before, because at the core I've always had a real innocence and optimism...

"It was through Jungian ideas and the Jungian archetypes that I started to realise that -even if Jung was a bit of a fascist and a sexist -the sentence isn't 'God is dead' but 'God is dead, comma, because man is alive'. And then I started to see a divinity in things through archetype and symbolism and my own participation in cultural myth..."

You say it's easy to sort out your dependencies when you're ready. Buy you've always seemed to be one of the very few people who could really cope with drugs. Use them, not let them use you.

"Yeah, but I got ensnared into my own archetype, so at a certain point I became a slave. Who I hung out with very, very much influenced me because I'm such a girl about stuff a lot of the time. I thought Nick Cave and Johnny Thunders and Keith Richards were so fucking cool. Whatever. Change your lifestyle. It doesn't mean you have to get on a stump and staring whining about other people's experience. Part of growing up and being disaffected and being youthful and being tortured is having a drug experience.

"But I've never spoken out about this because that's what people like Steven Tyler [Aerosmith's frontman] do when they give public service announcements like: "Oh, don't do drugs kids, even though I did them for 40 years and had a fucking great time.' That's fucking absurd."

ONE PERSON who hardly ever gets mentioned in a Courtney Love- sorry, Hole (remember the old Blondie campaign: "Blondie is a band, not a person"? That's how Hole are being marketed now) -interview, is her guitarist Eric Erlandons. Yet without him, the band wouldn't exsist.

He was the one who 'discovered' Courtney, back in 1989 when he was a shy record company worker. He was the one who dated her and lent her the money for her nose job and gave her support though all the various incarnations of Hole. He's hte one who discovered the body of ex-Hole bassit (and former lover) Kristen Pfaff when she OD-ed in her bath in Seattle, a few short months after Kurt's death. Self-effacing, gangly, almost painfully sweet, no one who meets him can quite believe he's so nice. He's also a very talented musician.

If 'Celebrity Skin' does amouth to anything, it'll be down to Eric's determination that the band should not split up after all they've suffered. He's the glue which binds it goether.

"He's also something of a hit with the ladies -as evinced by his role as Most Envied Man In The World -Official, having dated Drew Barrymore for three years (between 1994 and 1996) -but you wouldn't know it to talk to him...

What kind of girls do you like, Eric?

"Don't make me answer for you," Courtney interrupts her guitarist before he's even had a change to draw breath, "because you know I'm better for a soundbite. Come on. Well, Eric goes out with me for two years and Drew for three -so what's he looking for? Someone he can fix, but post-Drew he wants them under 20. So he has this wonderful woman who's in lvoe with him, totally gorgeous, but instead he goes for 20-year-old strippers who aren't me and aren't Drew. THERE'S ONLY ONE ME AND THERE'S ONLY ONE DREW BARRYMORE AND THAT'S IT! Deal with it. You don't want that any more. You need a woman who's as smart as you, who's as brilliant and deep and wonderful and spiritual as you, and jsut bcause she might be 30, I don't see that's a problem. You need to find a woman, She can bikini-wax, I'm not saying a woman with pubic hair down to her knees, I'm saying feminine beautiful woman who can take you on your level. You pander, you go down into the gutter...

"You're too old to hang out with Marilyn Manson and Billy and pick up those fucking supermodels," Courtney snaps at him.

"Who's getting supermodels?" counters Eric, clearly confused.

"Eric," his singer states firmly. "I'm not naming names and you know I'm not. Did you make out with Amber Valetta, is that what we're saying? If I can make out with supermodels then you certainly can. Remember how anti-model I used to be?" No.

"There was a point when I was really anti-model. And then one day...I'm not gay, as you know..."

OK. IT'S time to hand the rest of this article over to Courtney.

Ready?

"I like men. I don't really like boys or boysih men and it's pathetic that -apart from having to suffer from my own archetype -other people who have been associated with me have had to be emasculated when in fact they were the butchest fools around. That was the real tragedy. They had to become enfeebled, emasculated, mother-fixated children in order for it to be comprehended, rather than people who could actually throw you up against the wall, fuck your brains out and slap you around once in a fucking while and go out hunting. I like men. I don't hate men. I just wish I didn't hve to work with them. I'd like to fuck them, have their children, marry them, have many more children. I love my femininity, I don't want to be a man, but I need the world to be populated with more technicians and artisans and craftspeople of my own gender...

"One fo the reason I loved working with Milos Forman [director of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and ... Larry Flynt]- and I count ... Larry Flynt as an album, because I was in a band, I was in a band with Woody Harrelson, Edward Norton and Milos -was because I'd never been in a band with boys before so it made me love men in a way I never had. Those men treated me with such incredible generosity...

"I have a feeling that Sinead O'Connor would probably make an amazing actress, even to Streep -like proportions if she's a good mimic, because she's psychically protected by that lens. My mother said that about me, too. When I'm protected by that layer of film and by another character, my art can actually come out. It's that thing Dylan said about withholding. On this record I consciusly am not tell you everything. I'm not getting into some fo the stuff people want me to exploit, I'm not going to cheapen that, because what I give is already much, much better than the guy across the street...

"So you can choose to life your life that way or you can be Judy Garland and die in front of a thousand clowns. Fuck that! We've seen that. What does that yield? Fuck it, it's ridiculous. I don't need the money, I don't need the fucking attention. OK, sometimes I'm vain and I dress up like fucking Pamela Anderson and get on the cover of US magazine with my tits out and it's stupid and I probably won't ever do it again, but I had to learn..."

She sighs heavily.

"When you're vain and you're female, it can lead you into a lot of stupid situations. You've seen me onstage. You saw me onstage, four months after...it was cathartic for me. In some ways I wished someone had just locked me up in my house instead of being so eager to exploit me, and being so crazed that I allowed it. On the other hand, it really worked out a lot of my problems...

"There's a Yeats poem called 'Ode To A Crazy Girl' and it talks about the girl with the scarred knees. My knees, each of them, have had 28 stitches. It's ridiculous. I look round at these other actresses and most of them come from these pampered upper-middle-class homes which have never encountered darkness. A lot of them are just ponces and they get stuck playing the girlfriend role and then they're disposable. The Joan Crawford tradition of coming from dirt is a great thing -but I want to take care of myself now and I want my daughter to be..." She almost whispers the final three words.

"Proud of me."

ERIC ON EX-GIRLFRIENDS

"I didn't have many girlfriends before Courtney - two or three that lasted a couple of months at most. I was in my mid-when I started this band with Courtney and I was just so innocent - but you go out with somebody like Courtney, you're not so innocent afterwards! Then I didn't have any relationships for a while, because I was kind of damaged.

"The I made the same mistake again with Kristen [Pfaff, erstwhilte Hole bassist, now deceased] - and she was another intense person - and then, you know, Drew. Maybe Courtney's right. I have this radar so whenever I enter a room I go straight to the most fucked-up person there and I'm attracted to them and they're attracted to me, 'cos they know I'm the guy who can mend them. I find the most crazy fucked-up people...God, they're not crazy and fucked-up, sorry girls! Courtney didn't have the level of fame she does now, so it didn't seem unusual. Drew, yeah. When we met, she was throwing up over my shoes - it seemed so natural!

"There was a weird thing that happened where these two girls stole Drew's bag out of my car outside a show in Seattle, and it had $15,000 and her diary in it and she was crying. I vaguely remembered seeing these tow girls in the car next to ours as we parked. Anyway, I was so in love with her - I had the blinders on - I told her I was going to find it by the morning, and I was so intense about it that I went walking up the street and talking to people, saying: 'Do you know this girl who looks something like this?' Within tow hours I was inside their house and I was like: 'Where's the bag?' and she freaked out and gave it to me, and I was like 'Where's the money?' and she took me into the kitchen and there was the $15,000 in a jar on the kitchen table. That's how magical it was, you could make things happen like that. I learned a lot from that relationship."

Eric pauses, having finished his tale.

"No. I don't think I'm a starfucker."

COURTNEY ON PJ HARVEY

"The one rock star that makes me know I'm shit is Polly Harvey. She makes me know that I'm this big. I'm nothing next to the purity which she experiences. Jung says that people with eating disorders have dreams which are very much about being in glass coffins. I don't know if Polly studied Jung, but on '4 Track Demos', she sings "In my glass coffin/I'm waiting..."

"I haven't been through the anorexic experience which is unfortunate because I'd like to know what it's like to be detached and totally obsessive with controlling your own body. But it's also fine because it's an addiction and it destroys you."