Courtney Love isn’t crazy. At least not the Courtney I’ve been talking to.
Since March, I’ve spent hours talking with her, both on the phone and face-to-face. Our talks have covered everything from how her new album, Nobody’s Daughter, came to be, to why her spelling and grammar is so bad when she posts messages to Twitter.
Our last conversation took place in her dressing room well after midnight last Saturday. Hole v2.0 had just played a pretty smokin’ set in front of 2,000 adoring fans. Courtney seemed pleased with how the evening went. But then she looked over at a sheaf of papers on the counter and sighed.
“This is what I do. I work on this stuff for 14 hours a day. Then I play a show.”
That “stuff” involves her mission to expose what she says is a massive fraud that’s been perpetrated upon her and the estate of Kurt Cobain. Few people apparently take her seriously. No one, that is, except Courtney’s Twitter Army who are helping to organize and codify pages and pages of evidence.
“I’ve been putting up documents, powers of attorney and legal papers that clearly show what’s happened. How could that be my signature on a document signed in L.A. when I was in New York at the time? How could money be moved in Frances Bean’s [her estranged daughter] name to Geneva and Zurich without me knowing about it?”
She slumps in her chair and starts taking off the night’s makeup. “I’m now doing FBI handwriting analysis to prove that those weren’t my signatures.” She goes on to explain how nine accountants and a bevy of lawyers all managed to divert money into unauthorized places like properties purchased on behalf of a variety of people allegedly named Cobain.
How much money? She quietly mentions a figure of $28 million. “It’s probably more. Some of the people involved make Bernie Madoff look warm and fuzzy. I just wasn’t good with money. And I had some serious problems at the time this was happening.”
She picks up one of the pink frosted cupcakes I brought and takes a bite. The day before was her 46th birthday.
“I’m not crazy, even though people think I am. I’m going to see this through.”
I’ve seen these documents. I believe her. I wish her well.
