Courtney Love

The Real Story

By Poppy Z. Brite

1997

First Published

3.65

Average Rating

253

Number of Pages

7H43M

Audio Length

Courtney Love. The girl with the most cake. The girl with the loudest mouth and the fiercest guitar. The girl of many talents—not least among them the power to shock. Not since Madonna declared that she was like a virgin has someone in the public spotlight so consistently challenged the notion of what it means to be female—and what it means to be well behaved. In Courtney The Real Story, Poppy Z. Brite tells the whole truth about the lead singer of the band Hole and uncovers more about this pop culture heroine than any music magazine could ever hope to. Replete with revealing details and photographs, information from Love's inner circle, and excerpts from Love's diaries and letters, this book has the intimacy of secrets told to a friend and delivers revelation after revelation. With equal parts compassion and black humor, Brite chronicles the turbulent lives of Love and introduces us to Love Michelle Harrison, the troubled girl who would be queen of postpunk rock, and her childhood spent shuttled from reform school to former stepfathers to family friends. As a precocious, flamboyant teenager, she hung around backstage after concerts, soaking up the star power she knew she had to possess one day, and then traveled to Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to work as a stripper. Brite also takes us to new-wave Liverpool and to that citadel of grunge, Seattle, to see Courtney come of age in the circus that became alternative music, dishing much along the way about some of the biggest stars of that show from past and present. Brite also sets the story straight about Love's life with Kurt Cobain; the allegations of her drug use that surrounded the birth of their daughter, Frances Bean; and the wreckage of Cobain's suicide. But what emerges out of all the drama is a woman determined not only to survive, but to succeed more than anyone ever expected. As seen from her stunning performance as the wife of the publisher of Hustler magazine in The People vs. Larry Flynt, and her transformation into a runway acolyte, she just may catapult herself out of the mosh pit and into the mainstream. Only Poppy Z. Brite, the acclaimed author of literary horror fiction, whom Publishers Weekly called "a singularly talented chronicler of her generation," could have written this outrageous, comic, and ultimately moving tale of ferocious femininity and fishnet stockings. Courtney The Real Story is a no-holds-barred biography that is as raw as a three-chord punk song—a work that is as uncompromising and as unforgettable as its subject.

Avg Rating

3.65

Number of Ratings

2,452

5 STARS

26%

4 STARS

30%

3 STARS

32%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Poppy Z. Brite

Author · 26 books

Poppy Z. Brite (born Melissa Ann Brite, now going by Billy Martin) is an American author born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Born a biological female, Brite has written and talked much about his gender dysphoria/gender identity issues. He self-identifies almost completely as a homosexual male rather than female, and as of 2011 has started taking testosterone injections. His male name is Billy Martin. He lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia prior to returning to New Orleans in 1993. He loves UNC basketball and is a sometime season ticket holder for the NBA, but he saves his greatest affection for his hometown football team, the New Orleans Saints. Brite and husband Chris DeBarr, a chef, run a de facto cat rescue and have, at any given time, between fifteen and twenty cats. Photos of the various felines are available on the "Cats" page of Brite's website. They have been known to have a few dogs and perhaps a snake as well in the menagerie. They are no longer together. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Brite at first opted to stay at home, but he eventually abandoned New Orleans and his cats and relocated 80 miles away to his mother's home in Mississippi. He used his blog to update his fans regarding the situation, including the unknown status of his house and many of his pets, and in October 2005 became one of the first 70,000 New Orleanians to begin repopulating the city. In the following months, Brite has been an outspoken and sometimes harsh critic of those who are leaving New Orleans for good. He was quoted in the New York Times and elsewhere as saying, in reference to those considering leaving, "If you’re ever lucky enough to belong somewhere, if a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don't desert it just because it can kill you. There are things more valuable than life."