Courtney Love castrated NZ sheep

BY CHRIS SCHULZ

Courtney Love is not changing her name. She is not going to commit suicide anytime soon. And she is fed up with the "ridiculous" gossip being spread by British music magazine NME.

But one rumour is true: Love - the 45-year-old widow of grunge legend Kurt Cobain - has confirmed she is coming back to New Zealand to perform with her reformed band Hole next year.

And she'd like to castrate some sheep while she's here.

"I think we're doing Big Day Out," Love, who attended boarding school in Nelson as a teenager, told Stuff.co.nz.

"I remember the smell of New Zealand and the sounds of Tui birds. It's not the most exciting place in the world ... but it's really beautiful."

Love said her favourite memory was spending a week on a sheep farm during her school holidays.

"I loved castrating sheep. It was fun. I did 1000 in a day. It was lambing season. You went out and grabbed the rams and took this pair of pliers and put it on their penises and, 'Boom!' They don't even feel it."

Love would probably like to castrate the NME journalist who claimed the singer was changing her name to "Courtney Michelle" and had considered committing suicide as recently as two weeks ago.

For the record, 'Michelle' is her middle name, and she is not dropping the 'Love' part. She doesn't want to kill herself. And the quotes were part of a drunken rant that should never have been published.

"How retarded is that? After I took my first drink of Rose we were off the record and I should have shut up right there. I had two glasses of Rose and I was gone. I'm a real lightweight," Love said.

"I'm not changing my name, unless it's to 'Big Baby Jesus'. NME's always gotta do something stupid and sensational. (That journalist) was not a well behaved young man."

Love knows something about bad behaviour. It's been 16 years since Cobain's death, and 12 since the last Hole record, but she can still be relied upon to fill pages in tabloid newspapers and gossip magazines.

There have been court dates, drug issues, stints in rehab, battles over Cobain's estate, Twitter rants and lawsuits with old band mates. Most recently, Love lost custody of her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.

While those topics are off the record for today's interview, Love said there was no shortage of material for Nobody's Daughter, the new Hole record that was five years in the making with a completely new band.

It is released in New Zealand on Monday.

"I had, like, 42 songs. I write poetry all the time, I write in my journal all the time. With rock 'n' roll people tend to think of it as vulgar, but at the same time I think I'm a very well-read individual and I'm fortunate enough to have had a good early education."

Love seems to be back to her snarling best on grunty single Skinny Little Bitch, while Samantha contains an expletive-laden hook she considers to be the best she's ever written.

While the new songs - co-written by Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan and hitmaker Linda Perry - seem intensely personal, Love won't be drawn on who or what they're about.  

"It's for you guys to figure out. I honestly wait for the reviews and read those. Sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong," she said.

Channelling the angst and aggression Hole is known for - especially on 1994's Live Through This and 1998's Celebrity Skin - was now harder for Love. This week's Rolling Stone review suggested she was losing her voice.

"Everyone ages," she said. "I was watching this show today on women over 40 and I was getting really depressed. I was like ... but I'm 22!"

But Love said this version of Hole - which includes guitarist Micko Larkin, bassist Shawn Dailey and drummer Stu Fisher - would stick around for a while.

"I thought this might be the end of it, as a woman who desires a life. But now that we're working I find it very compelling and exciting."

* Hole's Nobody's Daughter is released on Monday. Watch a live performance of Samantha below.

- © Fairfax NZ News