Courtney Love’s losses

Courtney Love hasn’t forgiven Kurt Cobain, said Nancy Jo Sales in Vanity Fair. “If he came back right now, I’d have to kill him for what he did to us,” Love says of her husband, who committed suicide in 1994. “I’d f---ing kill him. I’d f--- him, and then I’d kill him.” Love says the Nirvana front man’s death wasn’t a surprise. “He tried to kill himself three times.” And then there were the drugs. “He OD’d at least five times—I carried around Narcan,” she says, referring to a drug used to revive heroin users after an overdose.

Love’s relationship with her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, was also ruined by substance abuse. Frances was placed in protective custody at birth. “There were no drugs in my urine, no drugs in her urine when she was born,” Love insists. She bemoans her parenting failures, which led to Frances’s inability to read until she was 7. “It was my fault! I never read to her!” Frances, now 19, legally emancipated herself from her mother two years ago, a decision that still hurts and bewilders Love. “All I can feel is how much I love her,” she says. “I’d give anything to hear the sound of her heels walking down the hall past my bedroom.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up