The second fax was less kind. “One dumb drunk night. No calls. No letters. I don’t remember her face, her name, nothing. I’m not trying to sound sexist, but the word ‘groupie’ pops up. And guess what? She moved to my town and tries to befriend all my friends. It’s such a violation. This is why I wrote ‘Rape Me,’ Mark David Chapman…Fuck off! Fuck off! Fuck off! Goddamn violation/sodomy.” Oddly, Cobain’s name was spelled differently (Cohbaine) in the signoff, though the handwriting was the same as that from the bottom of the previous fax. A Nirvana representative confirmed the next day that Cobain and Love had sent the faxes.
Actually, Lord had moved to Olympia, Washington, (not Seattle, which is an hour away), last month, more than a year after the alleged affair broke up. And the move likely happened for musical reasons: in the same Phoenix interview, she enthused about the Olympia scene and said she was getting sick of Boston. She’s also hooked up with a Seattle label, which will be releasing her new single next month.
“They fuck with everybody,” Lord told us from Olympia last week. “Everybody out here has received some horrendous answering-machine messages from Courtney; they’re saving them on tape.” Lord claimed she has received “messages from Courtney saying things like ‘I’m gonna cut your head off and shove it up your ass.’ Then they go off on Slim [Lord’s current boyfriend] and trash him. You have to wonder how seriously we should take these people, because they’re considered a joke in this town.” Lord’s take on the whole Cobain affair is that history is history. “He got caught in a fuckin’ lie, and she probably made him think he has to do things like this to prove he loves her.”
This isn’t the only controversy Cobain’s been involved with recently. Earlier this year he sent an “open letter” to various magazines directing abuse at a Newsweek writer who had reported that Nirvana’s label Geffen hadn’t been pleased with Steve Albini’s production of their forthcoming album. (Reportedly the album has been remixed twice after Albini turned in his version.) And it was recently reported that Cobain had been arrested at home after a physical fight with Love over her objection to the presence of guns in the house. Cobain’s second fax to the Phoenix signs off with the cryptic note, “I’ve got three guns now, okay?”
If nothing else, the Phoenix faxes put a different slant on the feminist consciousness that Cobain has expressed in recent interviews and in the liner notes to Nirvana’s recent Incesticide. They also raise the question of whether a popular and successful couple like Cobain and Love wouldn’t have better things to do with their time (heard much about Love’s band Hole lately?). Meanwhile, is it mere coincidence that the Seattle label that’s releasing Lord’s forthcoming single is known as Kill Rock Stars?
