Exploring the long-running feud between Kathleen Hanna and Courtney Love
Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna and Hole creative mastermind Courtney Love have their fair share of bad blood. Whilst they are both hailed as two of the most vital female rockers, a great deal separates them personally. Famously, Love is no stranger to a public war of words, and her spat with Hanna is one of her longest-running sagas, going right back to the mid-1990s.
It all started at Lollapalooza 1995, which featured Hole, Bikini Kill, Pavement, Beck, Cypress Hill, Sonic Youth and Sinead O’Connor on the lineup. However, it was immediately clear to all involved that it would be a bumpy ride.
From day one, things started terribly, with Love and Hanna butting heads. As Rock and Roll True Stories points out, the situation was exacerbated by Spin publishing tour diaries by some of the acts on the bill. The most damning of these came from Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, wherein he criticised Love directly for her actions in the altercation with Hanna. He said: “Everyone is disgusted and grossed out. Perry Ferrell is bummed. Everyone’s bummed.”
Moore then revealed that during a stop in Vancouver, Canada, the Hole frontwoman “yelled at the audience something about how she was wearing a cast on her arm cuz she punched some expletive in the face”.
The worst part was what followed. The Sonic Youth guitarist claimed that Love had “sucker-punched” Hanna, who had, in turn, filed criminal charges against her. Due to varying accounts, it has never been made clear what really happened. However, the account of Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson seems to be one of the more credible. He told the Washington Post in 2015: “That was only 14 months after Kurt’s death, and a year after [Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff’s] death. We were still in recovery mode. Courtney was obviously stirring up a lot of stuff and going through a lot of stuff emotionally, and mourning publicly in everybody’s face. They say after a suicide, it doesn’t really hit you till one to two years after, so there was still a lot of craziness coming out. I think that we weren’t in the best shape to be running around the country playing festivals.”
Erlandson continued: “We had bulk candy backstage. I go, ‘Courtney, there’s Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna. You should offer her some candy.’ She grabbed the candy and just threw it at her. Everybody was like, ‘Oh my God, she punched her in the face,’ but from what I saw, she threw the candy and kind of slapped her in the direction of her face. I don’t know if she actually hit her or what. It doesn’t matter; it was not cool. The whole tour started on that note”.
Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur then added: “Courtney did a fake cat hiss, like a joke. Like, ‘We’re at war’ kind of a thing, like ‘Sss!’. . . making a weird joke in passing. Next thing you know, there’s this explosion of arguing. Maybe a shove, I can’t remember. Kathleen Hanna screamed at the top of her lungs: ‘I challenge you to a feminist debate in any university in America!’ I was like, ‘What is this?’ It was hilarious.”
Of the debacle, Love wrote her personal account as part of her Spin diary, maintaining that Hanna provoked her. The Bikini Kill leader allegedly insulted her under her breath by mocking her parenting of her and Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean. Love wrote: “[Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill] was my husband’s worst enemy in the world, someone who would stop at nothing to aggravate us … It’s after our set-before Sonic Youth’s and I’m onstage talking to Beck when Eric comes up and says, ‘Kathleen’s behind you. You should give her some candy and freak her out.’ And there she was, sort of smirking at me. I dropped my sweater on the floor, and she sort of whispered under her breath, ‘Where’s the baby? In the closet with an IV?’ I just snapped. My hand was filled with Skittles and a couple of Tootsie Rolls. I just threw them up in the air and went, ‘BAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!’ And then she shoved me, and then I clocked her.”
Love continued: “This all happened within five seconds. These big bodyguards grab us, and we’re both being lifted up, and she’s screaming and screeching all sorts of things at me, and I was laughing at her, like, ‘Go feed the fucking homeless or something.’ I think I had a bag of tostadas as well, mixed in with the candy, so it was raining candy and tostadas everywhere. K.H. said that I attacked her and that I was on drugs and psychotic; you know, all the things that the hicks in Peoria would eat up. Then she went into Sonic Youth’s room and tattled and told them this totally exaggerated, insane story about how I had attacked her out of the blue and sucker-punched her, when in fact I had nine or ten witnesses to the contrary …”
Love then wrote afterwards: “K.H. suffered no damage. I barely got to hit her.”
Enraged by the incident, she would later refer to Hanna as “Ratface”. Aggravation aside, it was interesting that Love claimed that Hanna was her late husband’s “worst enemy in the world”, as it is well-known that she had a defining influence on Nirvana’s 1991 hit ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.
Even after the 1990s ended and the musical landscape changed, Love and Hanna were still enemies, or at least Love thought so. In another interview with Spin, ten years after that fabled altercation, Love was questioned about her thoughts on Hanna, who was now fronting Le Tigre. She said: “I still don’t like her. She still bugs me. Kathleen Hanna runs that ship in a way that’s far more Yoko than I’d ever be. I really liked Tobi Vail and Kathleen in the beginning, but then I just thought they were hypocrites.”
Then, 14 years later, Love had yet to move from her position. When the news broke that Bikini Kill were reuniting in 2019, she weighed in on the matter. She wrote under an excited Bust Magazine Instagram post: “Speak for yourself. Biggest hoax in history of rock and roll”.
When a user on the social media platform jokingly said that Love’s comments could “actually offend a person and they will implode,” she responded: “Yeah. It’s worse when I speak truth to rock male industrial complex. But at least I have the best view. Two of that band total amateurs. Hanna is a good hype man. But her persona is such a diy nonsense dilettante. A big idea they cannot convey, because they suck. That’s all! Back to Paris couture, because frocks don’t trigger me. Ce vai!”
