Courtney love

Courtney Michelle Harrison was born in San Francisco, California to a family of Irish and Jewish descent. She regards herself as “a nice Jewish girl”. Love’s biological family broke up soon after her birth. During a child custody case following Love’s parents’ divorce, both her mother and one of her friends presented letters to the court implying her father had given the child, then three years old, LSD. Harrison denies this allegation and has passed polygraph tests; however, these allegations led to full custody being awarded to Love’s mother.

Love then spent a troubled childhood with her mother Linda Carroll, as she married and divorced three times, and temporarily settled in many hippie communes in Oregon, and various schools including Nelson College for Girls in New Zealand where she boarded. Before arriving in New Zealand, Love had been left in the United States with Shirley, a friend of her mother’s, who was a therapist, while her mother, the new husband and her half-sisters settled in New Zealand without her. Shortly after reuniting with her family in New Zealand, Love was sent to the boarding school in Nelson.

While in boarding school, Love wrote poetry, joined a Bay City Rollers fan club, and, at the age of 12 (once back in the U.S., ostensibly), applied to join the Mickey Mouse Club; she was rejected after reading a poem by Sylvia Plath at the audition.

At 16, Love emancipated herself from her family and traveled around the U.S., England and the Republic of Ireland, living on a trust fund established for her by her mother’s adoptive parents.During her time in England, Love met, befriended, and moved into the Toxteth, Liverpool, home of musician Julian Cope of The Teardrop Explodes, and became a regular face at rock shows. In his autobiography Head-On, Cope doesn’t use her name, but refers to her as “the adolescent”.

Eventually, she headed back to the United States, ending up in Portland, Oregon, still avidly pursuing music. Love supported herself by working as a stripper. Love’s first rock-musician boyfriend was Rozz Rezabek of the Portland band Theatre of Sheep, who had an affair with her while she was still underage. Though the two wrote each other copious love letters, Love has said in many interviews that he did not take her virginity; she claims her first sexual encounter was a one-night stand with Michael Mooney, a guitarist for Echo & the Bunnymen and later with Julian Cope and Spiritualized.