Courtney Love recently wowed the crowds at Rock City with a gig that rolled back the years! Nottingham Post’s David Belbin was there to see it.
Nineteen years ago, Hole played Nottingham, touring album Live Through This, released the week of Kurt Cobain’s suicide. It remains a stone cold classic. 1995’s show ended abruptly, with a power cut during the introduction to show closer Rock Star. Courtney was too rock ‘n’ roll to come back on when power was eventually restored, so she owes us.
Arriving on stage to Ravel’s Bolero, draped in a lace scarf, she opens with a snippet of Pretty On The Inside then goes straight into stonking new single, Wedding Day.
Her all male band are tight and raucous, making talk of a Hole reunion superfluous.
“Mummy’s feeling ropey” she says, but a riotous Miss World suggests otherwise.
The surprisingly small, mostly female crowd is young and incredibly enthusiastic, knowing all the words to songs like Plump and (Time for a Hit) Malibu.
Courtney waves her underarm ‘Let It Bleed’ tattoo at us, tries to persuade us to get drunk and vapes: “aren’t you jealous that I’m getting nicotine and you’re not? If it kills me, it kills me.”
Just when you think the show can’t get any better, she goes into Rock Star and hits another gear.
We’re treated to a B side she’d refused to play earlier in the set, 20 Years In The Dakota, about John and Yoko, with inserts from the Beatles’ Hey Jude. It’s fantastic.
Courtney mounts the monitors for Letter To God and rips through Skinny Little Bitch before a superb Asking For It and equally good Violet from Live Through This.
Boy, can this woman scream. The crowd are mostly much too young to have been here in ’95, but see an artist who’s in just as good form. You can’t take your eyes off her.
She swears like a trooper, shows off her bust, smiles a lot, makes cracks about all her designer labels and Kurt’s estate looking after her expenses.
“I’m fifty next month. Hold on, Mommy needs a drink.”
Celebrity Skin is a storming show closer.
Courtney hands out red roses at the start of the encore, drapes her lace scarf round herself like Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac’s Gold Dust Woman was played earlier), then sings a heartfelt Dying.
A politically incorrect curveball quietens the crowd: He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss), a cult classic Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote for Phil Spector.
Doll Parts brings the 85 minute show to an end. Magnificent.
Review by David Belbin. Here’s the original article on www.nottinghampost.com
