Courtney Love
"I'm not a woman. I'm a force of nature." -Courtney Love
Courtney Michelle Harrison (more known as Courtney Love) was born on July 9, 1964, in San Francisco, California
Love was born with music in her blood for she was the first child of psychotherapist Linda Carroll and Hank Harrison, a publisher and road manager for the Grateful Dead.
Unfortunately the downside of being introduced to the music industry at a young age effect Courtney Love in a huge way. It is alleged that her father Hank dosed Courtney with LSD when she was a toddler. Harrison denied the claim, but full custody was awarded to her mother
Courtney Love was known to really struggle academically and socially at school. At age nine, a psychologist noted that she was showing signs of autism. Love attended multiple schools including the Nelson College for Girls in New Zealand but got kicked out for bad behavior.
Love also got into legal trouble at a young age for various crimes including shoplifting at the age of 14.
Sometime in late 1982, Courtney Love attended a Faith No More concert in San Francisco and auditioned as a singer. The group agreed and recorded material with Love as a vocalist, but she was eventually kicked out of the band.
At the end of 1988, Love taught herself to play guitar and relocated to Los Angeles, where she placed an ad in a local music magazine:
"I want to start a band. My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac."
Love recruited lead guitarist Eric Erlandson; Lisa Roberts, her neighbor, as bassist; and drummer Caroline Rue, whom she met at a Gwar concert.
"There is a hole that pierces right through me"
Courtney Love also associated the band’s name with an impactful conversation with her mother. Love explained that she could no longer live her life "with a hole running through her" and had to move out.
Hole played their first show in November 1989 at Raji's, a rock club in central Hollywood The band's recorded their debut single, "Retard Girl" in April 1990 through the Long Beach indie label Sympathy for the Record Industry.
When you think of 90s grunge, notable bands would include Nirvana (duh), Soundgarden, and Alice and Chains to name a few...but not Hole. So why is Courtney Love on this blog? Despite Hole, not translating well to future generations, they were a huge deal in the formation of “90s grunge”. Hole was very feminist driven and influenced a lot of female fans to fight gender norms and inequality that women faced in the 1990s.
Being one of the first bands to experiment with what we now know as “grunge” music, Hole's first studio album, Pretty on the Inside, hard-hitting and aggressive with disturbing, graphic lyrics. Hole’s album was described by Q magazine as "confrontational [and] genuinely uninhibited".
Shortly after completing the tour for Pretty on the Inside, Courtney Love married Nirvana’s lead vocalist Kurt Cobain on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii on February 24, 1992.
In my opinion, this is where Courtney and her career “peaked” if you will.
On September 8, 1993, Love and Cobain made their only public performance together at the Rock Against Rape benefit in Hollywood, performing two acoustic duets of "Pennyroyal Tea" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night".
For fun conspiracy theories about Cobain and Loves relationship, check out “The Unexplained Hour” podcast with Mark Peeters and myself. The podcast episode is in reference to “Soaked in Bleach” a documentary about Cobain’s death.
Courtney Love continues to live her life singing and acting while, as usual, finding herself in legal troubles.
Gwen Stefani
"Being in a band you can wear whatever you want — it's like an excuse for Halloween every day." -Gwen Stefani
Gwen Renée Stefani was born on October 3, 1969, in Fullerton, California. Her father, Dennis Stefani, worked as a Yamaha marketing executive and was very supportive of his kids’ dreams of pursuing music careers. Stefani's parents were fans of folk music and exposed her to music by artists like Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris.
Her brother Eric introduced invited Gwen to provide vocals for No Doubt, a ska band he was
forming.
Ska Music: a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the offbeat.
No Doubt released its self-titled debut album in 1992, but the ska-pop sound was no match to the grunge that dominated the early 90s. Eric was the keyboardist for No Doubt before leaving the band to pursue a career in animation on The Simpsons. Gwen really struggled not to have her brother in the band anymore but kept pushing for the success of the band in his honor.
No Doubt's third album, Tragic Kingdom (1995), took more than three years to make but it was definitely worth it.
Five singles were released from Tragic Kingdom, including "Don't Speak", The song was inspired by Gwen Stefani’s break up after a 7 relationship with bandmate Tony Kanal.
Stefani left college for one semester to tour for Tragic Kingdom but did not return when touring lasted two and a half years. The album was nominated for a Grammy and sold more than 16 million copies worldwide by 2004
Stefani rejected the aggressiveness of female grunge artists and cited Blondie singer Debbie Harry's combination of power and sex appeal as a major influence.
In late 2000, Rolling Stone magazine named her "The Queen of Confessional Pop"
The band's 2001 album, Rock Steady, explored more reggae and dancehall sounds while maintaining the band's new wave influences. Songs from the album "Hey Baby" and "Underneath It All" received Grammy Awards.
Gwen Stefani experimented with a solo career by appearing on recordings like “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” by Eve and "Saw Red" by Sublime.
On November 24, 2004, Stefani released her first solo album titled “Love, Angel, Music, Baby” (LAMB for short),
L.A.M.B. takes influence from a variety of music styles of the 1980s and early 1990s such as new wave, synthpop, and electro. Hit songs included: “Rich Girl” and “Hollaback Girl”
Gwen Stefani morphed together girly-girl and punk-edge in both her music and persona. She fought female stereotypes by being the female lead for an all-guys band and through No Doubt’s “Just a Girl”. She was also known for popularizing Harajuku culture from Japan to the United States during her L.A.M.B era.
Next week we're rolling into the 2000s! Any guesses on who the artist(s) will be?
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