March 20, 2004
ROCK REVIEW | COURTNEY LOVE
Love Lives Through This, Rasping 'Take Care of Me'
By KELEFA SANNEH
The New York Times
During her decade-long reign of terror, Courtney Love has taught us at least one valuable lesson: how to appreciate her.
She has devoted herself wholeheartedly to the myth of rock 'n' roll and halfheartedly to the music, and if that sounds like an insult, then you haven't learned the lesson yet. She has turned her life into a continuing work of guerrilla theater, a nonstop orgy of neediness and swagger, drugs and cops, makeovers and misbehavior.
On Wednesday she engaged in a much-publicized day of theater: it started on "Late Night With David Letterman" when she stood on Mr. Letterman's desk and flashed him; it ended when she was arrested and charged with assault and reckless endangerment after striking a fan with her microphone stand, the police said, during a performance at the downtown nightclub Plaid.
So most of the fans and gawkers who spent two hours waiting for her to appear at Bowery Ballroom on Thursday night weren't really there to hear her sing. Which is just as well, because she didn't really sing.
`I'm sorry my voice is shot," she croaked soon after she appeared onstage, struggling to get the words out. "Jail will do that." Jail â?? or something â?? had sabotaged her guitar-playing, too, but no matter. She was brilliant, stumbling through a riveting, chaotic set full of pithy asides ("I want that thing that I kill people with," she said, meaning she wanted a microphone stand) and grand, desperate gestures.
Over and over she rasped, "Take care of me!," then surrendered to the crowd, letting herself be passed around like a life-size doll; eventually a pair of grim, dark-suited bodyguards waded in and extracted her. This is exactly the sort of exhilarating ritual that seems to sustain her, but she also leaves open the possibility that it's slowly destroying her. That's the sickening undercurrent of the Courtney Love show: maybe it's our fault, too.
Her new album, "America's Sweetheart" (Virgin), is an odd, appealing collision of precise hard-rock riffs and glassy-eyed screeds. Not surprisingly, these songs sound even better when they're half hidden in a haze of jail-induced hoarseness and who knows what else.
During an erratic version of "Sunset Strip" Ms. Love snarled, "Rock star, pop star, everybody dies/All tomorrow's parties, they have happened tonight." Near the end the noise subsided and she delivered the half-spoken bridge. "I got pills 'cause I'm blond," she mumbled. "I got pills 'cause everybody knows I'm a crack whore." She had wriggled out of her velvety dress and, after the song was done, asked an assistant for a T-shirt to cover her pink bra. A white tank top was procured, emblazoned with a three-word epithet.
Ms. Love performed with her all-female band, the Chelsea, which includes the ferocious drummer Samantha Maloney (formerly of Mötley Crüe), who seemed a bit frustrated by all the chaos onstage.
But while Ms. Love was in no condition to sing, she did keep control. When one Love-struck young woman in a black dress tried to embrace her, she grabbed the fan by the neck and hissed, "Sit!"
The last song of the night was "Celebrity Skin," an ambivalent ode to all things skin-deep. "Take care of me!," she cried one last time, saying she wanted to crowd-surf all the way back to the bar. She succeeded but just barely (some security guards helped convey her the last few feet), and when she made it back to the stage she looked triumphant.
"You guys should be really, really proud of yourselves," she said, sounding every bit like an actress thanking her supporting cast. Then she walked offstage, no doubt preparing for her next act.
