Hole’s debut LP Pretty On The Inside was hard work – and melody certainly took a beating on the album. In contrast, Live Through This (1994) was a shout-along sensation.
Many of the songs on the album were composed in the Courtney/Cobain cocoon – hence lines like “I don’t do the dishes, I throw them in the crib” – that led to charges that Kurt wrote the songs.
Courtney conceded in Q magazine that “Kurt’s vocals are on every track practically, but they’re buried. He just came to show me some harmonies, then it was, well, keep some of mine”.
Other audio fingerprints were left by Young Marble Giants‘ Stuart Moxham and Kat Bjelland from Babes In Toyland.
Mythology also weighs heavily on Live Through This. It is dedicated to Joe Cole, a friend killed on the way home from a Hole show in the company of Henry Rollins.
Its release fell between the deaths of Cobain and bassist Kristen Pfaff (pictured at left). And its lost final cut, Rock Star – replaced on the album but not the credits by a track called Olympia – sneers “How’d you like to be in Nirvana? I think you’d rather die.”
Love claimed that somewhere in the vicinity of $530 million was somehow stolen from the vast fortune she inherited from Kurt’s estate.
“I have never seen such greed and moral turpitude,” said Love’s lawyer Rhonda J Holmes. Things got so bad that in 2010, Love was forced to borrow $2.75 million from her daughter Frances’ own trust fund.
Courtney Love
Vocals, guitar
Eric Erlandson
Guitar
Jill Emery
Bass
Caroline Rue
Drums
Kristen M Pfaff
Bass
Patty Schemel
Drums
Melissa Auf Der Maur
Bass
Samantha Maloney
Drums
