| PART TWO OF 11th SEPTEMBER 2000 UPDATE The artwork on the back cover of Hole’s single ‘Beautiful Son’ included no less than 50 Prozac tablets and a handwritten list, which contained the drugs Thorazine, Dilaudid, barbs and Percodan. This, on the back cover of a single released in April 1993 from a woman who had already lost custody of her daughter once, due to her self publicised drug use. In Melissa Rossi’s book ‘Courtney Love: Queen of Noise’, (p 169) she mentioned the pills on the back cover of ‘Beautiful Son’. Poppy Z Brite, (p 132 of ‘Courtney Love: The Real Story’) merely mentioned that Leslie Hardy was the stand in bassist for that recording. When it was about to be released, the advert in the April 3rd edition of Melody Maker also included a few Prozac pills. The 7" purple vinyl edition was limited to an edition of 2000. According to Melissa Rossi this single was only released in Europe, so it is probably fairly rare to find a copy of it now. Then, on March 3rd 1994 Courtney talked about how she would mix dihydrocodeines with Rohypnol and champagne to Everett True. And she also talked about her drug use for a journalist at Select magazine: There is a box of Rohypnol on the big mahogany table in the middle of Courtney Love’s London Hotel room....“look, I know this is a controlled substance. I got it from my doctor. It’s like Valium. You know, fuck that Prozac stuff. I’m not a depressive, I tried it for like five or six days, and by the sixth day I started seeing tracers”.....Frances Bean is out in Hyde Park with her full time nanny, Kurt’s long time friend Cally. (Article by Andrew Harrison, who was, at that time, editor of Select magazine). “Cally” (Cali DeWitt/Michael DeWitt) was Courtney’s long time friend, not Kurt’s. Then, the next day, within hours of Courtney and Michael DeWitt joining him Kurt suffered an overdose of Rohypnol and champagne, substances he didn’t use. He nearly died. When he recovered he didn’t know what had happened, but he did know he wasn’t suicidal. One week later, the other side of the champagne and Rohypnol barrier, Courtney calls the Select office from Heathrow airport. She sounds exhausted, weary in mind as well as in body but relieved too. This is what she says: “It was just horrible. He had those pills, the ones I was popping right in front of you? He’s been in Slovenia or one of those gross places and I mean, he gets depressed and he never drinks...I woke up at six in the morning and I reached for him and he had blood coming out his nose. It was almost a John Bonham thing. I know it sounds glib but I really thought he was dead”. ....She turns from the phone and asks Cally to order her a Bloody Mary. ...There’s an airport bing-bong on the line and in the background Cally is calling her. Their flight is leaving soon. (Select magazine, May 1994.) Then exactly one month later, Kurt was dead, the method of his death was a massive overdose of heroin, which would have immediately incapacitated or killed him, and a gunshot wound to his head. Kurt didn’t pull the trigger because he was incapacitated. Now jump forward to August 1994. Everett True reviewed a Hole concert at J C Dobbs in Philadelphia. True wrote: Courtney Love is inside, readying herself to play onstage. (In my heartracked sleep, I hear Courtney walking up the stairs - loud, real loud-screaming my name, getting closer and closer. Someone is pounding on my hotel door. I wake in a cold sweat, expecting to find a dead body outside my room. Someone offers me a Roipnol (Rohypnol) and I freak. This is not a dream). So Courtney is about to play a live show and she looks good, real good. But she also looks wasted. Real wasted. ..... (And, in my darkest nightmare, it’s May and I’m travelling with Hole’s bassist Kristen Pfaff through Europe, talking about what makes life vital and music worthwhile, laughing even through all the pain and I have a premonition that I’ll never see her again. It’s a nightmare. I ignore it. I’m still clearly freaked out by that guy Cobain’s death). Courtney introduces her next song, 'Penny Royaltea’, the one she co-wrote with Kurt...(Melody Maker’s August 13th 1994 edition. This article has been reproduced in the book ‘The Nirvana Companion’ by John Rocco, published by Omnibus Press 1998). In Michael Azerrad’s ‘Come As You Are’ p 328 it was written that Kurt wrote Pennyroyal Tea when he was living in Olympia in 1990. It never mentioned that Courtney co-wrote the song. Also, ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ is on a bootleg recording from Oct 11th 1991, recorded at St Andrew’s Hall Detroit, which is before Kurt got together with Courtney. This is what we’ve come to then? The music press reprints a private suicide note from someone who was one of their own, under the dubious pretext of “investigative journalism” and nobody f***ing bats an eyelid. Scum. (Everett True commenting on Kristen Pfaff’s death and Kurt Cobain’s so called “suicide” note in the Sept 3rd 1994 edition of Melody Maker). I bump into a former nanny of Frances Beans’ who’s looking for someone from The Sun or Vox -doesn’t make much difference to him- to sell photos of Courtney... And: The ex nanny is also on hand, doubling as security. He recounts the events from a couple of nights previous.... And: Later, to celebrate the oncoming dawn, the ex-nanny and Courtney stood outside Justine and Damon’s flat, and roughly sang ‘Girls and Boys’...(Everett True’s account of the Reading Festival August 26th 1994. Melody Maker Sept 10th 1994). Then in December 1994 Grant began to speak publicly about his belief that Kurt was murdered. Rosemary Carroll, Courtney’s lawyer and friend (who had initially helped Grant to compile evidence) informed Grant that if he didn’t retract his claims, she would sue him. Grant ignored her and she backed down. But Courtney approached Rozz Rezabek, and talked about him writing a biography on her, and that if he did she wanted him to write nice things about her and talked about the possibility of “bank-rolling” the book. After some time, the book was written by Melissa Rossi who had been approached by Rozz Rezabek to collaborate on it. As we saw in the unnamed sources section, Rossi was clearly being given false information, she was directed by Courtney to follow up false leads. Although Rossi fell for that, she did manage to include some damaging information, as we have seen. Courtney didn’t like the book. So she obtained Poppy Brite’s unlisted number and called her, and a new book was produced. Kurt got involved with Courtney. Before he knew it Courtney was telling the world they used heroin all the time. Even if Kurt had wanted out of the relationship, Courtney was already pregnant. Kurt had wanted the stability of a family and was looking forward to being a father, so he married her. Almost from the minute they got involved, the relationship and Kurt’s life was plagued with drug stories/lies leaked to the press by unnamed sources. “I never went out of my way to say anything about my drug use. I didn’t want some 15-year-old kid who likes our band to think it’s cool to do heroin. I think people who glamorise drugs are fucking assholes and if there’s a hell, they’ll go there”. (Kurt, Melody Maker’s Aug 28 1993 edition). Cobain was relaxed as he leaned back on his sofa and watched (Beavis and Butt- head). He was pleasant, friendly, not quite animated but not nearly as passive as the rock press had portrayed him. On the couch with him was his baby, Frances, for whom Cobain had spent $240,000 in legal bills the previous year. The money had gone to ensure that the baby named after Frances Farmer wasn’t taken away from Kurt and Courtney in the wake of the Vanity Fair article that had portrayed their clan as living somewhere to the left of the Manson family. (‘Babes In Toyland, The Making And Selling Of A Rock And Roll Band’, by Neal Karlen p256). “All right” Cobain said softly, leaning forward and laughing as ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ came up for inspection by Beavis and Butt-head. “Let’s see what these guys think of us”....Cobain smiled as he watched himself flail away at his guitar...All right, he said when the video was over and it’s content hailed by the cartoon critics as if it were the Magna Carta. “They like us”. (‘Babes In Toyland, The Making And Selling Of A Rock And Roll Band’ by Neal Karlen p256). “It’s too bad, because I spent nearly almost all the money I made off Nevermind fighting for my child because of the insane rumours created by the media...” (Kurt, ‘Come As You Are’ p 342). Kurt spent all that money to get back custody of Frances, only for Courtney to tell Rossi that Kurt was “lost to drugs” just one month later. Kurt wouldn’t have known about this but he must have wondered about her motives when she chose the artwork for ‘Beautiful Son’ when it was released in April 1993. There was trouble between Kurt and Courtney, because in December 1993, Courtney turned up at The Rock Shop and offererd El Duce $50,000 to murder Kurt. Had Kurt not suffered from an overdose in Rome on March 4th 1994, he would probably have been pissed at Courtney’s comments on Rohypnol in the Select and Melody Maker magazines. Courtney was a threat by this time, she jeopardised the custody of Frances again, after all they had been through. Kurt wanted a divorce. He wanted custody of Frances: It wasn’t Kurt telling audiences that he used heroin all the time. It wasn’t Kurt continuously bringing up drugs in interviews. It wasn’t Kurt telling journalists that Courtney was lost to drugs. It wasn’t Kurt who used artwork glorifying drugs on the covers of his records. It wasn’t Kurt using Rohypnol in March 1994. It was Courtney. And Kurt wanted out of his marriage to her, and he wanted custody of Frances. Below is a police report regarding an incident between Kurt and Courtney after Kurt returned from Rome: Talking to Courtney Love is not a linear experience. She’s ferociously intelligent and has a forensic eye for detail, especially in the media. She can haul out any example of misquotation from her memory like a database, and she has a thing about fact-checking that would shame most colleges of journalism. (Select Magazine’s May 1994 edition). Like misquoting Medea, and completely out of context to boot. Courtney did an interview for the April 2000 edition of Mademoiselle: “... she’s twenty years old and she designs all of our websites and they’re brilliant, in that flowers-are-opening and stars-of-sprinkling-lollipops and little-midget-people-throwing- daisies-out-of-their-heads way. It’s all very fabulous and she does this great job”. Courtney Love, age 35. Do journalists go to college? Do they learn research methods/check facts? Is it a serious profession? Not if you work for the mainstream rock press. To be a journalist for a mainstream music magazine you have to be prepared to turn a blind eye to the truth with regards to Kurt’s murder. There is a reason for this: Journalists over reliance on unattributed sources can make them more vulnerable to hoaxes..Journalists should be particularly wary of hoaxes just before 1 April and in letters, e-mails and on the internet. (The Newspapers Handbook by Richard Keeble, p 53). Unattributed quotes are normally banned. Where they proliferate, for instance in the more pedestrian political reporting, they should be treated with caution...The Times should conform to the code of practice now common in America. An unattributed quote should be used only where confidentiality is clearly essential, not merely to add spice or colour to a story. Even then, the writer should know the source and be prepared to inform the Editor of it. Except in extreme cases, unattributed quotes should never be derogatory of individuals or named institutions. Such quotes are cowardly and should be read as such. (The Times English Style and Usage Guide; Times Books; London; 1992.) In January 1995 Grant made it clear that his prime suspects are Courtney Love and Michael DeWitt. Right from the start, the media failed to report that. Back to Frances Barnett In Defence MAIN |