“Somebody’s getting fired!”

                                                        “Who’s managing this band!”

I’m waiting with the crew of HBO’s Reverb to conduct an interview with Hole when we hear the yelling. They “hired” me to sit off camera and feed the questions to the band, though in the end I’ll be edited out. MTV’s House of Style usurped all the time before the gig, so we get Courtney Love and the gang sweaty and crazied up from playing SDSU’s Open Air Amphitheater.

When I finally got into the dressing room, after an hour walking around the secure perimeter, I found the lights and camera set up in a bathroom and the director and assistant producer writing questions like “How was the tour?” “What’s it like to be a celebrity?” “What is your favorite boy group --Backstreet Boys or ‘N Synch?” and “Is Hole living La Vida Loca?” on 5 x 7 cards. There is also a question, about Brian Wilson’s influence. HBO has produced a Brian Wilson Reverb and is looking for celebrity sound bites. Frau Direktor strikes me as incompetent, or maybe over-competent to anal. She says herself that we have too much time. We dry run through the questions with her pretending to be Hole. She doesn’t think I’m peppy enough. Also she doesn’t appreciate the inevitable joke questions like “Who’s going to write the songs on your next album?” And “Did you really kill Kurt?” Eventually I get tired of listening to her vapid directions to the camera operator, sound engineer and the assistant producer so I go to watch the gig.

The rain is coming down into the Amphitheater but the Hole fans don’t seem to care. Courtney Love has already told them to forget about the assigned seating and press toward the front of the stage. “I want 50 kids up here on stage too,” she says. The crowd seems reluctant in the face of the burly security team guarding the front barricade. The rest of the band keeps playing while Courtney pulls teenage girls and cute boys out of the crowd. “I want some fat girls up here too,” Love says. “Cause I’m a fat girl.” She tugs another girl up on stage. Meanwhile the Elite security team is going crazy either dragging kids out stage left or situating them in front of the drum riser so they won’t be tripped over. A kid bounces up and down on his knees and three security guards drag him off like a sack of cement. One security guy says to another, “I wish we could hit them, but they’re just kids.” Love knocks the mic stand down and a stage hand runs to set it right, for the seventh time.

Part of Love’s “conceptual celebrity art” on this tour has been giving away a guitar to a kid from the audience. Love says the tradition started at a show in Australia when a girl asked for the guitar and she gave it to her. Since then she’s given away many of the signature Fender guitar she designed with a thinner neck to enable young girls (or boys) to play it. She said that she donated guitars to shelters and juvenile halls, especially “ones that she’s been in.”

Love is wearing tight sequined panties, a red tutu and a skin tight top which continuously slips off exposing the range from nipple to full tit. “Why are there so many white people here?” she asks the crowd. “If you’re not white get up here on stage.” A guy with dreadlocks rises on his buddies’ shoulders as they try to toss him onto the stage. The Elite security force pushes him back. One lucky girl gets close enough for Courtney to pull her up. “What’s it like to be black in San Diego?” Love asks. “It sucks,” the girl replies. And then Love plants a great big kiss right on her lips. The audience makes an aroused noise like “Ooooo.”

I’m standing backstage left, on bass player Melissa Auf Der Maur’s side. There’s a song (probably “Northern Star”) where Courtney sings accompanied only by guitar player Eric Erlandson, so Melissa watches standing next to me. At just the right moment somebody from the crowd yells “Jimmy Jazz!” I look into the blur of faces but can’t pick out the caller, so I wave like I’m in a parade. “Who are you? People know you here?” Melissa says in my ear. “Uh, Nobody,” I say. “I write books. I’m supposed to interview you later for HBO.” She nods and before going back on stage hands me her Heineken. At the end of the show Auf Der Maur tosses hundreds of guitar picks to the crowd. Each one has her autograph and a Canadian maple leaf. Later two young girls look up to her and say, “You are so beautiful.”

“I want a 100 kids up here,” Love says during the encore. The security force brace themselves for another onslaught of beautiful chaos. After the last song Courtney unstraps her guitar and hands it to the girl she had kissed. “The kiss took me by surprise,” Kristina Bennett told me after the show. “At first I thought Courtney just wanted me to hold the guitar. Then they said I could keep it.” Kristina took the guitar out of the case while her Elite security escort stepped back into the shadows. Love wrote the name of the city on the back of each guitar, so that if she sees one at the Hardrock Cafe, she would know that she gave it to the wrong person that night. Love has a hyper-active sense of justice exemplified when a rude kid on the stage ripped the costume angel wings off of her back trying to steal a souvenir. Love lunged into the fanatic mob and snatched the wings back (albeit in pieces.) It looked like she might have got hit in the process. “People keep asking me if I’m going to sell the guitar,” Kristina said. “But a true fan would never do that.”

When I get back to the dressing room I find the Reverb crew wound up even tighter. The director says, “Maybe I better ask the questions.” She wants to fire me. “I can do it,” I say trying to reassure. So we run through the questions again. Somebody brought a tub full of beer, juice, water… One of the crew offers me a beer and now the director thinks she’s my mom, “No!” she says curtly. “No beer.” Somebody makes a face behind her back. HBO has set up for the interview in the only available bathroom and various security guards or people from Love’s entourage come in to piss daunted by the lights and camera.

When Courtney Love walks into the bathroom studio, the first thing she does is move the light back and the camera over. Remember the Reverb crew has had four hours to set this stuff up. Love directs the director to hold the monitor while her make-up artist works on her face. It doesn’t need much work, but she’s sweaty and dirty from playing. Auf Der Maur and Maloney sit on the couch with her and Erlandson takes the chair, setting himself apart.

Auf Der Maur and Love do most of the talking. Erlandson is the quiet one. They make fun of several of the questions. Love notices some glitter in her health food shake and we start talking about the glitter which shot out of a cannon at the show, and Courtney says that when she “pulls out her tampon there’s glitter,” but then retracts it definitively. “Wait. Don’t use that. I’m a computer hacker and I’ll get into Viacomm stock and fuck you guys up.” She changes the statement to something like “I sweat glitter.” At the 18 minute mark one of Love’s entourage says “Two more questions.” I ask the director which ones, thankful that we’re not even close to the “La Vida Loca” question. “Ask the Brian Wilson question,” she directs. I ask it and Courtney turns to the director and says, “Wait. Are you trying to use us in a Brian Wilson documentary without asking? That’s bull shit…” Eventually she’s yelling, “I’ve been fucked in the ass too many times!” She verbally stomps the director who is backpedaling and trying to kiss up. I’m laughing, but the director is almost going to cry.

You might argue that Courtney over-reacted, but she was right. In an essay  called “My Jewish Nose” Lisa Jervis wrote about Courtney: “It’s undeniable that her new nose comes on a Versace-shilling, largely silent persona, in stark contrast to her old messy, outspoken self.” Rather than meek, and far from silent I would say that Courtney defends herself to perceived injustices better than anyone I’ve ever witnessed. The director was planning to use the Brian Wilson question for the other program. Eventually Hole admits that they are influenced by The Beach Boys complex Pet Sounds album along with Zeppelin and Motown. They even sang a little bit “Wouldn’t it be nice, if we were older…” Love even said that she’s trying to get more into hip-hop, thanks to the new drummer Samantha Maloney. In the end Hole marched back over to their dressing room. Love doesn’t seem to acknowledge my existence. I give Melissa, Eric and Samantha a copy of my seminal punk novel The Sub. Hole has one more show in the states and from there off to Europe. Warner music group services sent me a check for $100.

         Back to the Deck        Fire the Cannon

Note: Part of the Hole story ran in the San Diego Reader.