strong article about strong music

Your drummer is the most important person in your band:

Courtney Love: Kurt got me Patty. I wanted to fire Jill [Emery, Hole's original bassist] but I still liked Caroline [Rue, Hole's first drummer]. Kurt made this whole lecture to me about that fundamental fact in rock'n'roll that I really didn't know, which is that your drummer is the most important person in your band. Patty fit in perfectly.

I barely notice the drums in "Doll Parts":

But in "Celebrity Skin" the drummer really gives the song its urgency:

I liked the Live Through This album best :)  Saw her at the Gorge, in her undies ;)

She was kind of damaged at that point. Poor Courtney Love.

Btw, took me a moment to realize that "Celebrity Skin" wasn't on Live Through This:

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/6049836/hole-live-through-this-classic-track-by-track-review

All of Live Through This is on YouTube:

My favorite track is the first one, "Violet":

That's a great one too!

Just listened to the whole album. It was quite good.

Too bad that was her peak. She hasn't made anything anywhere as good since then.

Which brings up the question of how much she wrote of that album?  Many people said Curt Cobain wrote that album, I believe she admits he had some input, but claimed she was the main writer.  Later, she came out with the Celebrity Skin album, it was Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins that wrote that one.

"Songwriting allegations Following the album's release in the wake of Kurt Cobain's death, rumors began wildly circulating about the album's lyrical content and songwriting, with many people alleging that Cobain had written the album, not Courtney Love.[35] In response to the allegations, drummer Patty Schemel said: "There is that myth that Kurt wrote a lot of our songs— it's not true. Eric [Erlandson] and Courtney wrote Live Through This."[24] Cobain biographer Charles R. Cross conducted interviews with everyone associated with the record and found that all parties agreed that Love and Erlandson wrote the songs.[24]"

In an article published by The Guardian in 2011, Everett True contested:

Kurt sang backing vocals on two songs. He wrote one B-side for Hole ("Old Age"), uncredited. And that was it. It would be just as accurate – and misleading – to say that Courtney Love wrote most of Nirvana's third album, In Utero: you can certainly see her influence in Kurt's lyrics. Before the pair met, it was often guesswork as to his intentions. Afterwards, his lyrics were far more direct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Through_This

CELEBRITY SKIN

"The album was the band's first studio release to feature bassist Melissa Auf der Maur following the death of former bassist Kristen Pfaff in June 1994. Unlike the material on the band's previous albums, the songs on Celebrity Skin were composed by a number of musicians instead of solely frontwoman Courtney Love and lead guitarist Eric Erlandson. The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan contributed largely to the album's writing process and others, including Auf der Maur's former bandmate Jordon Zadorozny, contributed to its composition."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_Skin

It's actually quite common to have others write for you, in fact for a long period, I'd say a majority of artists recorded songs that others wrote, till we had a resurgence of independent music, and within that crowd, writing your own music is who you are, it's your street cred, the source of your angst, how can you perform someone else's angst?

Wow, at the very least they had huge influence on each other.

But what you're saying makes sense; Live Through This is more Nirvana; Celebrity Skin more Smashing.

Yep, that sums it up!

She needs a new muse!

Courtney Love compared herself to Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins:

Courtney Love: I didn't feel like I nailed that, but I nailed my own version of it. I feel fine about it. I have a pretty healthy self-esteem. Sometimes. I didn't think it was as good as Siamese Dream, I didn't think it was as good as Nevermind, but I thought it was fucking damn good.

Paul Q. Kolderie: We were up so close to it, we couldn't see what a great album it was. She wanted to make a record as good as Siamese Dream or Nevermind, and we were trying our hardest, but we didn't know how to do that. There is no secret formula. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn't. In this case, it did.

There is no secret formula.

Wikipedia gets things wrong:

Eric Erlandson: One thing: Wikipedia is so wrong. I just read the whole Live Through This Wikipedia thing, and it's so wrong.

Here's the producer's version of "Doll Parts":