Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [146]
LORI BARBERO Later on, Courtney called me in Minneapolis. She’s like, “You need to meet me in Chicago because Nirvana’s playing,” and so I went to Chicago, and then I introduced them at the Metro. She was dating Billy, and she broke up with Billy that night.
COURTNEY LOVE I didn’t dump Billy to go out with Kurt. If anything, later on Billy dumped me because I had something with Trent Reznor, and that was past grunge. Dating Billy was rough. He loves me. I guess I love him, too. He’s a good guy. He saved my life a few times. You can’t ever forget that. We had this very romantic relationship, almost like girlfriends. We wrote letters to each other. We didn’t “do it” a lot, you know what I mean? I know that’s a bad visual, I’m sorry. We were like girlfriends. Girlfriends that loved each other very much.
DANNY GOLDBERG I first met Courtney in Chicago after Nevermind came out. The band did a tour of clubs to show they were still connected to their punk roots before they went on to play bigger places, and one such club was the Metro in Chicago. My wife, Rosemary Carroll, had already told me about Courtney because she had been Courtney’s lawyer for a while and had negotiated the Hole deal with Caroline. Rosemary told me she was really intense.
Lori Barbero from Babes in Toyland was there also, and I guess she wanted to see Dave Grohl. Courtney disingenuously told me she was just there to keep Lori company. But I noticed in the dressing room about 15 minutes later—this was after the show—that she was sitting on Kurt’s lap. I guess they had met sometime before. From that night on, they were always together.
CRAIG MONTGOMERY I remember that night Dave, who was rooming with Kurt, had to come over and sleep in my room. Because I’m sure Kurt and Courtney needed some privacy.
DANNY GOLDBERG There was this benefit coming up for Rock for Choice that Dave Grohl had wanted the band to do, and the band was happy to do it. There was Nirvana, I think Sister Double Happiness, L7, and Hole. Courtney thought she should go higher on the bill, which gave me the sense that this was somebody who was a strong-minded person.
JENNIFER FINCH I knew Kurt completely separate from Courtney when L7 were putting together Rock for Choice. We called Kurt directly, and when Courtney found out that Kurt was on that show she was just like rambling off every good excuse … When Courtney wanted to go out with him, I was verbally against it, although I introduced them because she just would not shut up. Because I come from a place where if you’re gonna do music, don’t date who you want to be.
Dave and I broke up after going to the first Lollapalooza together. Dave and I and Kurt went. We had two seating tickets and a third ticket in the back. It seemed at that moment that Dave had no problem with giving me that third ticket to go sit in the back.… I’m telling you, I’m psycho, okay? His intentions were of no harm whatsoever; he just felt like he needed to bond with Kurt—they had just been going through this recording process. So I went and sat in the back totally resentful. I hung out with my friends there for the rest of the evening and got a different ride home.
After that, we were just hanging out one day, and Dave was playing guitar and video games, and I was like, I don’t want to be with somebody who plays guitar, because I play guitar. It was jealousy, absolutely. He had his sights on what he is today the second he was in Nirvana. Central figure, songwriter. When he was the new guy in the band, the A&R people would come around and he’d slip them his demo. Songs that he wrote. I knew myself well enough that that would get in the way of any future planning. But I didn’t have the words to explain it to him. It was just out-of-control emotions, and probably someday I owe him an apology.
ERIC ERLANDSON I was actually relieved a little bit when Courtney