Courtney Love has opened up about her long-standing irritation over being likened to the late Marianne Faithfull, explaining that both of them “hated” how often people drew comparisons between them.
In a recent conversation with The Times, Courtney said that while she and the Swinging Sixties figure Marianne, who passed away in January 2025 aged 78, respected each other, they never agreed with the idea that they were alike.
She portrayed Marianne as deeply intellectual, pointing out how she gravitated toward literature such as Dante’s Inferno, while Courtney quipped that her own tastes leaned more toward “a cheap thrill and a Beatles hook.”
She said: "Marianne was an intellectual and I am not.
"She read Dante’s Inferno and I like a cheap thrill and a Beatles hook. But I remember her saying, ‘They wanted me broken!’ I know from experience: she’s not wrong."
The two first met at what Courtney described as an "all-ages gay disco" in Portland, Oregon.
Kurt Cobain's widow recalled: "The two big albums were [David] Bowie’s Scary Monsters and Broken English.
"There was one song where she said the word ‘c***,’ which I thought was cool as f***."
Hole frontwoman Courtney, now 61, also spoke about encountering Marianne’s music early on and how it influenced her artistry, even as audiences continued to tie them together through their chaotic reputations and rock mythology.
She said: "I saw Marianne Faithfull sing Times Square in New York, 1988.
"I couldn’t concentrate because Sally Grossman, the woman on the cover of Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home, was sitting next to me, but anyway here’s this woman who comes back from being ‘ruined’ playing an incredible show with her co-writer Barry Reynolds, who she was clearly having an affair with. And well, it was incredible."
This is not the first occasion Courtney has spoken out against what she once called “ridiculous” comparisons.
While discussing how they became acquainted through their shared friend, the late Star Wars icon Carrie Fisher, during a joint interview with Marianne for the Los Angeles Times in 2021, she said: "We did a few things together, you, me and Carrie.
"Marianne and I are weirdly connected. [But] we can’t stand being compared to each other. It’s ridiculous."
