Courtney Love used a new interview posted Wednesday to send a direct message to Dave Grohl: say they are “cool” and say it plainly. On The Magnificent Others With Billy Corgan, she told Grohl, “Grohl, come out with it and just say we’re cool,” adding, “Be man enough.”
Love pushed the point further, saying, “Man up, because you’re the uber man that has all the straight males,” and, “And we’re cool, but you won’t say it, because you’re afraid you’ll lose your audience.” She also said, “You’re afraid it’ll affect your relationship with literal Paul McCartney … Dave, it would really behoove me if the straight white males that are your base would stop picking on me.”
That appeal lands against a long and public history between the two. Love and Grohl clashed in court years after Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994 over the rights to Nirvana’s catalog, and Love later criticized the surviving members of Nirvana in 2014 for joining forces with Paul McCartney for a 12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy benefit concert. The same year, Love and Grohl hugged onstage at Nirvana’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction.
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She also drew a sharp line between their artistic output, saying, “I couldn’t write a song about Dave Grohl to save my life,” while adding, “He’s written, like, four songs about me, and they’re hits.” Billboard reached out to Grohl’s rep for comment. For now, Love has made her position unmistakable: whatever history lingers between them, she wants Grohl to say they are fine, and she wants him to say it himself.
