Rape Me

When the two remaining members of Nirvana attempted to cobble together a box set featuring some of the band's unreleased material, singer Kurt Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, sued, claiming they were simply interested in making a few "quick bucks" off of their former band. All those interested in the Nirvana legacy—record companies, former band members, "the worst of them"—were "feed[ing] on the dead man." A few years later, Love would release Cobain's dairies and journals as a coffee table book, over the protests of his former band mates. And now, the final indignity, again courtesy of Ms. Love: portions of Cobain's diaries are to be printed on a special run of hipster sneakers. According to this article in Ad Age, Love has signed off on Kurt Cobain-branded Converse All-Stars and Jack Purcells.

A 2002 piece from rock critic Jim DeRogatis on the battle over Nirvana's fortune.

Comments

[Cesar]

Wow, thats tacky.

[TallDave]

That woman is a jackal and always has been.

If you listen to Cobain's lyrics, it's pretty clear a good portion of them are bitching about her.

[Michael Moynihan]

I have it on good authority that Cobain, where ever he is, just committed suicide for the second time.

[Cesar]

Dave, thats right. Love was determined to be the Yoko Ono of grunge and shes succeeded.

[Jamie Kelly]

Courtney Love is a disgusting, narcissistic, egomaniacal snatch who would dig up Cobain's body and sell flecks of his brain tissue on eBay if she could get away with it.
I for one would like to tie her down and shit on her face.

[John]

She is much worse than Yoko. Yoko never whored out Lennon's notebooks. All Yoko ever did was totally dominate Lennon. But since Lennon was basically a weak and insecure person, someone was going to do that Yoko or no Yoko. I guess maybe turning over all of the home movies for use in Imagine was exploitive, but that is a good film and a think a decent historical record of who Lennon was post Beatles. Love sets a new standard for bitch wife of a rock star.

[Cesar]

All Yoko ever did was totally dominate Lennon. But since Lennon was basically a weak and insecure person, someone was going to do that Yoko or no Yoko.

I think you can say the same thing about Cobain. Everyone said he was rather shy and insecure.

[Elemenope]

A few years later, Love would release Cobain's dairies

Ewww. I hope not.

[Rob W.]

Semi-relevant Onion story:
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/stop_making_movies_about_my

[John]

"I think you can say the same thing about Cobain. Everyone said he was rather shy and insecure."

Totally. I still think Cobain was just going to retire from music and screw her and the bitch offed him.

[Episiarch]

Did anyone else see the documentary Kurt and Courtney? It starts out as a conspiracy investigation but morphs into an investigation of Love's heavy-handed management of Cobain's legacy and her willingness to silence people, after she tries to kill the documentary itself.

She comes off as a scumbag, of course, but the best part is the end where the director goes up on stage at an ACLU benefit for Love and starts asking questions, and is physically removed from the event. It was beautifully ironic in that it was the ACLU following Love's wishes and shutting him up.

Good stuff. Even though all documentaries are slanted, Love is clearly a total shithead.

[toshiro_mifune]

You guys forgot the Cobain Neca dolls, the Cobain signature guitar picks and Nirvana creeping into ads for Sony PS3 games.
She collects, IIRC 98% of the royalties from their music and somehow blew through all the money from Nevermind and Hole.

[John]

Epi,

I saw that movie and it is very compelling. I like the scene where they are talking to some aging punker chick who used to know them back in the day and she talks about how shy and quiet Kurt was and what a nice guy he seemed to be and then the narator asked her about Love and the woman immediately says "she was a shrew."

[ed]

This would be more interesting if we were talking about a good band.

[Episiarch]

Yeah, John, it's a very interesting film. I don't even give that much of a shit about Nirvana but watching Love go into thug mode when confronted was awesome stuff.

Of course, if you've seen the Comedy Central roast of Pamela Anderson, you can come to no other conclusion than Love is the biggest piece of scumbag trash currently walking the planet. And she was supposedly not on any drugs (just alcohol) at that time.

[Cesar]

I think its a possibility that she killed him because he was either going to retire from music or do a Pearl Jam and continue to make music but pull back from the spotlight dramatically--no music videos, no MTV performances, limited touring etc.

Either way she probably didn't like that. She probably didn't like the fact that he was a good songwriter while she was not.

She collects, IIRC 98% of the royalties from their music and somehow blew through all the money from Nevermind and Hole.

Easy to do with a heroin habit.

[Episiarch]

Look, the conspiracy theories are stupid. Love didn't need to stage a suicide. All she had to do was work him over emotionally enough to get him to commit suicide. It wouldn't have been that hard; the guy was unstable and very depressed to start with. She might have even done it just through her normal behavior.

Easy to do with a heroin habit.

Heroin ain't that expensive, dude.

[Cesar]

Well, Epi, didn't MC Hammer blow like $10 million in the space of a year? And he wasn't even addicted to drugs. Some rock stars are really, really bad with managing money.

[Brandybuck]

Even Kurt's living room wall has more brains that Courtney!

[Episiarch]

Cesar, I was just remarking that a drug habit won't make a multimillionaire poor. Stupidity will, you are correct.

[highnumber]

This is perfect.

[toshiro_mifune]

Easy to do with a heroin habit.

Even with several heroin habits it would be hard to go through all of Nirvana's cash.
Maybe a heroin & derivatives trading habit.
She just sold a 25% stake in the catalog for $50 mil . That's a lot of heroin.

[Cesar]

I wasn't talking about just the cost of the drug itself. But also the effects, i.e., when you're going through opiate withdraw you're not going to make very good financial decisions.

[ChrisO]

The funny thing is, if Cobain hadn't offed himself, he'd be just another obscure, washed-up musician like most of the rest of the grunge folks. The shelf life of that genre was pretty short.

[toshiro_mifune]

ChrisO - You're right I never hear Soundgarden, Pearl Jam or STP any more on the radio.

[Jim Bob]

I don't know about Crist Novoselic, but does she seriously think Dave Grohl could possibly need any money earned by the selling of Nirvana merchandise?

Kurt Cobain definitely would have gotten a hard-on at the thought of his private thoughts being worn on the stinking feet of nostalgic former Seattle-noids, though. Selling products was the passion that burned in him. Right, Miss Love?

I wonder how Francis Bean feels.

[ClubMedSux]

This would be more interesting if we were talking about a good band.

It's okay, ed. Maybe you'll get lucky and somebody will post a Puddle of Mudd story tomorrow.

[capelza]

ChrisO

Yeah, no one has ever heard of Foo Fighters or Audioslave...and the AIC regroup didn't cause a ruckus (big Jerry Cantrell fan, solo, too).

My kids have stolen all my old Soundgarden (am bitter)...

The shoes..blech. Courtney Love..nausea.

The knee-jerk about "Grunge" has always amused me, though. Someone peed in someoone's cornflakes. The hair band snobs still blame "Grunge" fro killing the 80's. Generally forgetting Warrant's "Cherry Pie"...

[Pinette]

Regarding the shoes, i find it tacky and i wouldn't by them, but i fully support her right to produce and make money off them. Same goes for his journal. Kurt doesn't give a shit, he's dead.

[hale]

It's the principle of it that galls me; Grohl and Novaselic were in the band. They have more claim to partial ownership of the name, the reputation and the material than anybody left alive. Love looks suspiciously as though she had a kid solely to claim familial right.

At least Yoko Ono had her own extensive body of work to support herself with.

[WalterBoswell]

"They are selling hippie wigs in woolworths"

[John]

The problem is that when you are a junkie you lose your judgement and whatever money you don't spend on your habbit people steal from you. John Phillips ended up living in a feces covered split level house broke after making millions off of the Mamas and the Pappas. He didn't spend millions of drugs. He spent millions supporting his deadbeat druggie friends and pissing it away on investment scams pitched to him by crooked snyophants. I would imagine there is a lot of that going on with Love.

Also, didn't Love move on to Billy Corigan in the 90s and band him and manipulate him just long enough to get him to write most of the music on one of the Hole records?

[Taktix?]

Well, Epi, didn't MC Hammer blow like $10 million in the space of a year? And he wasn't even addicted to drugs. Some rock stars are really, really bad with managing money.

I'm fairly certain Hammer lost his bling in a bad real estate deal, rather than pissing it all away. Not that it makes him any less stupid, but it doesn't exactly fit the "sex+drugs+rock n'roll=ruin" model...

[Dee]

Oh how I long to read about her over-dosing. Soemthing tells me she smells nothing like Teen Spirit.

[JW]

Holy fuck, these sneakers are a new low point of civilization. Celebrity Skin residuals drying up?

For all her many, many faults, she looked good in Larry Flynt tho'.

[T]

The knee-jerk about "Grunge" has always amused me, though. Someone peed in someoone's cornflakes. The hair band snobs still blame "Grunge" fro killing the 80's.

Actually, as a long term metal head, I was happier than a clam when Grunge drove metal off the media stage and it went back underground. Once everybody gave up the idea of selling a billion records and being on MTV, they went back to making music and not giving a fuck about how offensive or ugly they were.

[Dave W.]

Look, the conspiracy theories are stupid.

I think she had him killed. Then again, I think Elliot Smith was a homicide victim. And Daniel Smith for that matter.

[Episiarch]

Dave, did you youtube your Today interview?

[Travis]

I like Nirvana but everytime I hear a Hole song I know it's only because of her connection to Nirvana.

If I were married to that ugly, untalented whore I probably kill myself to.

[John]

T,

As a former Metal Head, Metal neeeded to die in the 80s and come back as something else. Some one on another thread a few days ago compared the current state of rap to the state of metal in the late 80s. I thought it was a pretty spot on comparison. Both of them became completely self indulgent and a parody of what they started out as.

[ChrisO]

ChrisO - You're right I never hear Soundgarden, Pearl Jam or STP any more on the radio.

Nirvana's sales were already on the downswing when those bands were on the way up. I contend that Soundgarden and STP are much more "classic" bands than Nirvana was, maybe in part because they had broader appeal. Even as a true metalhead, I liked Soundgarden and STP, while Nirvana sounded like three random idiots who stumbled into a room full of musical instruments.

The knee-jerk about "Grunge" has always amused me, though. Someone peed in someoone's cornflakes. The hair band snobs still blame "Grunge" fro killing the 80's.

Which is, of course, inaccurate. The music industry's knee-jerk overreaction to grunge partly "killed the '80s." There were plenty of fans out there who didn't like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and wanted metal, but the major labels weren't interested anymore. Wussy hair bands were totally played out, but there were plenty of real metal bands in the '90s like Nevermore, Forbidden, and Iced Earth who never really got a shot because the brainless A&R idiots were fixated on flannel shirts.

[Jamie Kelly]

For all her many, many faults, she looked good in Larry Flynt tho'.

If you like fucking heroin addicts with skinny legs and droopy tits.

[Dave W.]

Dave, did you youtube your Today interview?

No. I don't know if anybody even has a video of it. besides, phil might find it and start publicizing it more than I want.

I just answered one question, though -- not quite an interview.

[John]

ChrisO,

I saw Pearl Jam in concert a few years ago. After I got beyond what a pretensious ass Eddie Vedder is, I was really impressed. I found them to be in concert at least more of a classic 70s hard rock band in the mold of Crazy Horse or the Who. They finished the show with the best cover of Baba O'Reily I have ever heard.

[ChrisO]

I saw Pearl Jam in concert a few years ago. After I got beyond what a pretensious ass Eddie Vedder is, I was really impressed. I found them to be in concert at least more of a classic 70s hard rock band in the mold of Crazy Horse or the Who. They finished the show with the best cover of Baba O'Reily I have ever heard.

I think that's probably true. I really enjoyed the Ten album, but found that the ones after that were musically and vocally weak. Eddie Vedder went from a pleasing baritone, ala pre-hair metal David Coverdale, into shrieking tunelessly like he was passing a kidney stone.

But I've heard they're great in concert, and I'll be seeing them at Bonnaroo this year.

[scape]

I for one would like to tie her down and shit on her face.

I think that's how she paid the rent before she met Kurt.

[John]

"But I've heard they're great in concert, and I'll be seeing them at Bonnaroo this year."

Have fun. I actually went to Bonnaroo last year with my wife as a guest of microsoft. It was a blast. Got to see The Police. Pearl Jam has a great drummer and really good guitarists. If they are on, they are well worth seeing.

[capelza]

John...I've seen that PJ "Baba O'Reily" on youtube..it really was fantastic.

ChrisO:

"Which is, of course, inaccurate. The music industry's knee-jerk overreaction to grunge partly "killed the '80s." There were plenty of fans out there who didn't like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and wanted metal, but the major labels weren't interested anymore. Wussy hair bands were totally played out, but there were plenty of real metal bands in the '90s like Nevermore, Forbidden, and Iced Earth who never really got a shot because the brainless A&R idiots were fixated on flannel shirts."

A&R "idiots" weren't fixated on flannel shirts all that long, they moved very quickly onto the next "big thing"...and today you have all the pop/emo/whatever the hell they call it..oh and hiphop/rap. A&R goes for whatever the kids are listening to. And it ain't Iced Earth.

I quit watching MTV when they dropped the MTVX channel..

[Jamie Kelly]

But I've heard they're great in concert, and I'll be seeing them at Bonnaroo this year.

Confirmed. Pearl Jam has opened three national tours in Missoula, Mont., where I'm from (bass player Jeff Ament lives here). I've seen them in concert five times, and they blew me away every single time.
Pearl Jam is a band that just kicks ass, Eddie's love of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn notwithstanding.

[Warren]

One thing that I keep trying to convince people of is the irrelevancy of the number of zeros when you're discussing financial matters.

People who are good with money can save money when living on a few dollars a day. People who are bad with money can blow through millions in no time at all. It really isn't any harder to let ten million slip through your fingers than it is to let ten dollars.

I've always thought Love was a total skank, but it was cool because she embraced her skankhood. She named her band Hole for crying out loud. Like the way Madonna embraced being a slut. And yet I have nothing but contempt for Paris Hilton despite the fact that she owns being a stupid spoiled whore. I have no idea how or why I draw the line there. It's probably very hypocritical of me.

[bitchy geezer]

Soundgarden was a metal band, so of course metal fans liked them - once they heard them. I'd been foisting them on metalheads and classic-rock dudes with great success for years before they broke out. They were ready to be famous.

Pearl Jam was proto-Creed, made for the same idiots. There were millions waiting for them, too.

Nirvana was a fluke. They were a more melodic than average noise-rock band who never should have been famous. Seeing them open for Loop and Mudhoney at shitty bars made sense. Seeing them on MTV even once was weird. What happened after that was all marketing. That's why no popular bands since them have sounded like them. That's not a kind of music that many people genuinely like.

I can't blame the guy for hating his life. It was the wrong one.

[Taktix?]

John,

As a dedicated Pearl Jam fanatic, I will tell you their true talent is wasted on the radio, in videos, etc. They have always been at their best during live shows (think Eddie climbing on the rafters in the Evenflow video).

Eddie hated the pop-culture way their music was being taken. They had some of their popular songs from Ten remixed by Brendan O'Brien, who produced their later albums and much of Soundgarden's work.

Eddie even fired their drummer, David A., for doing an interview in Modern Drummer magazine (likely more a last straw than a core dispute, David A. was very pro-gun.
In fact, Glorified G, an pro-gun-control tune, was written the day David A. brought two newly-bought pistols to rehersal).

Don't get me wrong, I hate Eddie's politics, but they have been rocking for a long time.

[Warren]

And she was supposedly not on any drugs (just alcohol) at that time.

Say Episiarch, have you ever considered the benefits of owning your own bridge?

[Russ 2000]

I always looked at Nirvana as a slow, boring version of Husker Du.

[John]

TakTix,

Kicked the guy out for being pro-gun? Amazing but not surprising. After I saw them live, I bought a couple of the live CDS where they released the live CDs of every concert they did on the entire tour. I have never listened to a studio recording of them since.

[rana]

Didn't Eddie Vedder compose and perform the soundtrack for "Into the Wild"? boy that was depresing music. I like Pearl Jam, but Eddie as a solo artist sucks!

[Episiarch]

Say Episiarch, have you ever considered the benefits of owning your own bridge?

Note the word "supposedly" in my statement. It's there for a reason.

Pearl Jam sucks monkey balls. Sorry dudes, but true. They are so crazy overrated it's pathetic. I remember when their second album was coming out, and my cousins and friends were hyperventilating like teenage girls at an N'Sync concert. The record store opened at midnight to sell copies and they actually went, camped out for an hour or two, and then bought the album that night.

Within one week it was if Pearl Jam never existed for them. They were so embarrassed that they acted like it was the next Star Wars movie for such a mediocre band that they were ashamed to even talk about them.

I laughed and ripped them new ones.

[JW]

If you like fucking heroin addicts with skinny legs and droopy tits.

You say it as if there is something wrong with that.

Oh, and I'm with Epi on this. Never understood what was so great about Pearl Jam. They were the Police of grunge to me....zzzzzzz....

[Happy Jack]

Yeah, Kurt got stuck with Courtney, while Dave Grohl got to partner with Lemmy!

[Ashley]

(Saturday, 5 May 2007) Love plans to sell Cobain's belongings

That doesn't sounds like her. It seems so classless and desperate. Not whorey and grasping.

[Bingo]

Grunge sucks.

[Keely]

Kurt was said to be very private if she was really a good wife then she would never have sold the journals or give the Ok to make the shoes.

[Randolph Carter]

Dave W,
Elliot Smith a homicide? Not unless there's a conspiracy of silence that extends to his roommate of the time, who told me how super-depressed and suicidal he was when she knew him.

[sourpuss]

main gripe of the courtney haters: she got to play with kurt's dick, and they didn't

[Dave W.]

extends to his roommate of the time

I have to admit that the Elliot Smith one is harder to call.

[bill]

But wouldn't she have made money off the box set too? Stupid.

[Stevo Darkly]

Highnumber, thanks for your link to the Richard Cheese version of "Rape Me." The ending is especially great.

[Stevo Darkly]

Oops, my copy of your link is bad.

Those who haven't seen it already, try this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0wmYJ3yj0c

[Jonathan Hohensee]

A&R "idiots" weren't fixated on flannel shirts all that long, they moved very quickly onto the next "big thing"...and today you have all the pop/emo/whatever the hell they call it..oh and hiphop/rap. A&R goes for whatever the kids are listening to. And it ain't Iced Earth.
Haven't you heard? We are listening to Post-"Goo" Wop Rock now. Try to keep up, pops.

"Puts on PsiHelmet, gets into hover car and flys away.*

[kj]

I believe the second line is "rape me, again."

and so she is.

[The Wine Commonsewer]

All I can say is that Kurt shot the wrong Cobain.

I stole that from a friend of mine.

[Kolohe]

And yet I have nothing but contempt for Paris Hilton despite the fact that she owns being a stupid spoiled whore. I have no idea how or why I draw the line there.

Because she's Francisco d'Anconia but without any secret conspiracy. At least Madonna is self made, and Love, well, even marrying well takes some effort, at least according Jane Austen novels.

[ed]

Jane Austen novels

Has anyone ever finished one? I tried and failed three times. How do they turn out?
Are there zombies?

[JMG]

Speaking of the legal battle over the unreleased Nirvana material, I remember a great bit Dr. David Thorpe wrote for SomethingAwful.com:

Nirvana - With The Lights Out
After a prolonged legal battle over who has the right to exhume Kurt Cobain's corpse and make it dance for money, we have finally been blessed with a box set of rarities which documents Nirvana's peerless history of shitty outtakes. Let this be a lesson to all you aspiring musicians: don't die after you become really famous, or your subhuman harpy of a wife will publish everything you ever deemed unworthy of release in order to feed her addiction to pills and attention.

[Richard Cheese]

R ... A ... P ... me!

Rape-rape-rape! Rape-rape, rape-rape-rape! Rape-rape rape me!

[Bette Dillinger]

Well, several people said they saw the documentary "Kurt and Courtney".....but no one mentioned the interviews with Courtney's father. The apple does not fall far from the tree. He stated he "kicked her ass" for turning tricks in his house?!? And her father says it as if he is talking about the typical bratty behavior of a teen. Just one piece of evidence these two (Kurt and Courtney) didn't have any childhood or understanding of interaction with others.

Also, no one forced Kurt Cobain, who had a strong will when it came to certain things (like his drummers...lol), to marry Courtney. Sure, I would wonder what he found attractive about a woman who viewed Sid and Nancy as role models, but I wasn't there. The point is he got what he paid for in marrying Courtney (except, of course, I am not talking about his suicide). She was the lunatic to his passive hermit offstage.

I have a picture in my mind of a 41 year old Kurt Cobain, after a charity gig, signing off on these shoes. Courtney paged him 15 times in two hours saying that more money is needed for Frances' education......and other things. Kurt gloomily agrees just so Courtney will leave him alone.

[katie]

courtney didn't even sing her own songs. there have always been rumors about another singer brought in to make it listenable. courntye slags her in a spin article, but even she can't deny it.