Courtney Love has asked Dave Grohl to “just say we’re cool” – and for his fan base of “straight white males” to stop “picking” on her.
The Hole frontwoman recently appeared on The Magnificent Others podcast with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, where she spoke of her friendship with Grohl. Historically, Love and Grohl have had a rocky relationship, dating all the way back to when Love dated Grohl’s former Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain.
However, despite public perception, Love said that the pair are actually on amicable terms. “Come out with it and just say we’re cool,” Love said while referencing the Foo Fighters frontman. “Be man enough to man up, because you’re the Uberman. [You have] all the straight males and we’re cool, but you won’t say it because you’re afraid you’ll lose your audience. You’re afraid it’ll affect your relationship with literal Paul McCartney.”
Love went on to accuse Grohl of not having the same “talent” as McCartney, adding: “They both have the wife — haunting, dark shadow. They both have the cool guy dying — haunting, tragically haunted. So they’re buddies. Is that why?”
She went on to directly address Grohl, saying: “Dave, it would really behoove me if the straight white males that are your base will stop picking on me”. Love also clarified that it was “the millennials in particular” who were criticising Love.
“Your heart drops whenever somebody that you’re cool with, or maybe just remotely cool with disses you in the press,” she added.
Corgan backed up Love’s claims, saying: “I can confirm that I’ve spent time with you and Dave together, and Dave doesn’t have any issue with you. There’s the stuff that goes on behind the castle walls, and there’s stuff goes out front.”
Grohl and Love’s feud has spanned multiple years, with Grohl opening up about their relationship on the 2007 Foo Fighters song ‘Let It Die’. At the time, Grohl enigmatically explained that the song was “written about feeling helpless to someone else’s demise”.
He went on to note that the song was about Kurt Cobain’s death, adding: “There are a lot of people that I’ve been angry with in my life, but the one that’s most noted is Courtney. So it’s pretty obvious to me that those correlations are gonna pop up every now and again.”
In response, Love claimed that Cobain “loathed” the Nirvana drummer, alleging that Grohl had “hit on me so many times. He’s just a very very conflicted guy about me, which is why he continually writes songs about me to hear he ‘hates’ me more than ‘anyone else’”.
Grohl would later deny Love’s accusations that he tried seduce her and Cobain’s daughter, Frances, calling her claims “upsetting, offensive and absolutely untrue”. Frances herself would confirm that she had “never been approached” by Grohl in a romantic or sexual manner, adding that “Twitter should ban my mother”. Love would go on to publicly apologise to Frances on social media.
Though Love claimed the pair were “cool” in 2015, she would reignite their feud by hitting out at Grohl over an apparent Nirvana royalties agreement, alongside accusing Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor of “systemic” child abuse. Neither Grohl nor Reznor would publicly address Love’s claims, and she eventually deleted her post and apologised for making the comments.
In 2023, she would share texts she sent to Grohl as part of a call for more women to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.
In the same interview with Corgan, the pair shared their mutual frustrations with “gatekeeper” Kim Gordon.
Love claimed Gordon was “really horrible in the ’90s”, adding: “I remember in Holland I was hanging out with you and they were so mean.” Corgan replied with his own anecdote, telling Love: “I was a fan and I came in to pay my respects and I was treated so rudely by them.”
Gordon has spoken of her dislike for both Corgan and Love in the past, writing in her 2015 memoir Girl In A Band: “I have a low tolerance for manipulative, egomaniacal behavior, and usually have to remind myself that the person might be mentally ill.”
“Courtney asked us for advice about her ‘secret affair’ with Billy Corgan,” Gordon wrote later in the book. “I thought, ‘Ewwww,’ at even the mention of Billy Corgan, whom nobody liked because he was such a crybaby, and Smashing Pumpkins took themselves way too seriously and were in no way punk rock.”
In a separate interview with Hole bandmade Melissa Auf der Maur, Corgan also discussed Love’s contentious history with the media in the wake of Cobain’s suicide in April 1994 – with Love criticised for “breaking up” Nirvana and blamed as the source for his death.
“There seemed to be a need to pin the blame on somebody,” Corgan said, while Auf der Maur added: “Absolutely, and we lived in a patriarchal hellscape… What they did to Courtney, they burned her at the stake.”
Elsewhere, Courtney Love has teased a new tour with Auf der Maur. Though the 2020 NME Icon Award winner clarified it wasn’t going to be an official Hole reunion, Love did confirm they’d be “playing some shows, new songs” together. More details are expected to be announced shortly.