The problem Kim Gordon had with Courtney Love
There’s a widely followed rule among musicians: avoid getting too close to anyone in the business. Despite shared interests and apparent personal compatibility, for every friendship forged in the world of rock and roll, countless individuals have experienced heartbreak from those they believed were friends. While Kim Gordon maintained a composed demeanour when dealing with anyone on the business side of things, she understood the importance of maintaining distance when encountering Courtney Love.
By the time Love had started making a name for herself in the punk sphere, Gordon had already cemented herself as a living legend. Compared to the other bands coming out of the post-punk genre, Sonic Youth had taken all of the lessons from the first wave of punk and applied them to their music, from the disaffected vocals to Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo practically engaging in a battle with their guitars.
While the band’s first handful of albums had been a modest success on the indie scene, projects like Daydream Nation and Goo would become some of the biggest slices of alternative rock to come out of the late 1980s. As Gordon was singing lyrics to songs like ‘Kool Thing’, Love was already working her magic as well, getting her first songs together with Hole.
Gordon was always searching for new talent, though, and she ended up steering the group’s label in the right direction when they urged them to go after a little band called Nirvana. Since the Seattle label Sub Pop was going to go to the next level as a subsidiary, Nirvana signed with Geffen Records for Nevermind and turned the entire music world on its head.
As the band’s star began to rise, Cobain eventually got married to Love, working with her on her own material as well as becoming the father to Frances Bean Cobain. Before Love had started going out with Cobain, though, she had already struck up a relationship with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, whom Gordon would see on the touring circuit.
Gordon may have kept things cordial behind the scenes, but she was not about to become friendly with Love, either. When describing their first interactions in her memoir Girl in a Band, Gordon said that she had a few issues with Love, saying, “She was clearly so into punk rock. She was also ambitious and manipulative…you just never knew which direction she would go, but knowing that she could turn on me at any moment, I kept her at arm’s length.”
Once Love started going after Cobain, Gordon thought that it was a horrible idea, thinking that both of them together were a trainwreck waiting to happen. Although the couple eventually made the best out of their time in the spotlight, they quickly became a circus for the media, with many outlets making a whole story about Love allegedly using heroin when she was pregnant.
Gordon was not going to shut the door on her love for Nirvana on account of Love, though. After Cobain’s tragic death in 1994, Gordon would eventually work with the rest of the band on a few occasions, joining them onstage at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to deliver a monster performance of the song ‘Aneurysm’. Gordon could certainly tolerate Love, but she always made sure that she didn’t get sucked into her brand of darkness.
