Courtney topless: `I’m 50. It’s over’.
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Courtney Love waited until photographers had left before removing layers. Picture: Ellen Smith.
Source: News Corp Australia
SHE may have dodged a bottle in Adelaide, but only thing the Melbourne audience projected at Courtney Love on Saturday night was 90 minutes of serious adoration.
Love is and was always way too smart to be the victim or car crash many expected her to become.
Her first Melbourne show in 15 years was a brilliant Best of Courtney set that may have not sold out, but sometimes it’s quality not quantity.
It was also a chance for Love to reconnect with her patient Melbourne fans. One of the keys to her enduring popularity is that Love is a fan too. That’s obvious when she hands out roses at the end of the show, carefully making sure all the diehards she’d clocked during the show left with a flower touched by the hand of Love. Her laser-like precision also meant she knew exactly who to hand the setlist to as she exited the stage.
And in classic clued-in form she removed her white over-shirt the second the photographers left for something more revealing, then spent the night in her iconic one-foot-on-monitor pose or climbing speaker stacks.
Courtney Love in concert at Festival Hall. Picture: Ellen Smith.
Source: News Corp Australia
Love also asked for requests, something fans dream their favourite acts will do.
That provided one of the night’s many highlights when a request got lost in translation.
“Topless?,” Love said to one request. “I’m 50! It’s over!”
She then realised the fan was actually asking “Talk to us.”
And talk Love did. She told the crowd multiple times she preferred Melbourne to Sydney (”it’s just cooler”), and that she could move to Melbourne “I could get a house here and be a junkie. The junkie aunt you come visit. No, I don’t do that any more.”
Indeed Love, powered by nothing stronger than a crafty onstage cigarette, said at one point “I know heroin’s a big thing with you Australians. You need to knock that off, it’s so un-chic.”
Her train-of-thought interludes saw Love start telling a story about texting her 21 year old daughter before changing direction. She randomly sang “Oh no I said a dirty word” from Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit before launching into her own Skinny Little Bitch.
Being a fan, Love played the songs everyone wants to hear, the way they should be heard. She dusted off Hole’s cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Gold Dust Woman and introduced it by saying “This is me doing Stevie (Nicks), but she gave me permission.”
One day the woman will write a killer autobiography.
Love set up Letter to Gold from Hole’s 2010 album Nobody’s Daughter by saying “it’s a ballad, but not from the `90s, so deal with it.”
When an audience member guess it she says “you’re correct, my homosexual friend. The gays always get this song.” Later she played a new song with the disclaimer “it’s new and it’s good”. She was right.
While the last 12 months have been full of reissues of albums by Soundgarden and Nirvana, Hole’s 1994 game-changer Live Through This is yet to be given the corporate repackage. At least Love can see what impact songs like Violet, Doll Parts, Softer Softest, Jennifer’s Body and Miss World (she changes the lyrics to “I am the girl you know so sick I should have died”) still have 20 years on, even if her record company can’t.
Even the glossy (by her standards) Celebrity Skin contained some of Love’s finest material — with a gorgeous acoustic Northern Lights, the intense title track and arguably her best moment Malibu delivered on point, sitting nicely alongside vintage Hole (Olympia, Pretty on the Inside) and fresh Hole (Honey).
So there’s Courtney Love in 2015. No car crash, rather a tight, interactive show. Like Morrissey, she doesn’t need a classic band name to tour under. And like Morrissey she’s got such a strong personality and literate way with lyrics (and on stage banter) that it makes you pine for the days when rock stars weren’t boring and corporate. Also like Morrissey, a large percentage of the fans there worship her. And a respectful Love still knows how rare that is and doesn’t let her disciples down.
Courtney Love plays Wrest Point in Hobart on Monday August 18, Eatons Hill Hotel Brisbane on Wednesday, Panthers Newcastle on Friday August 22, UC Refectory Canberra Saturday August 23 and the Enmore Theatre in Sydney on Sunday August 24.
