Courtney Love has shared details of Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant’s work on her upcoming solo album. Find more details below.
In recent months, Love has been building up hype for her second-ever solo album and long-awaited follow-up to 2004’s ‘America’s Sweetheart’.
Back in November, she first revealed that she had enlisted Sargent for the new album, but not the “rude” PJ Harvey and now, she’s shared further details of Sargent’s contributions to the record.
In a recent appearance on The Magnificent Others podcast with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, Love said: “I want to tell you one thing about leads [lead guitars]. Because Will Sergeant is on my record shredding. But it’s Will Sergeant shredding.”
Corgan then asks Love how many years it’s been since her last album, to which she responded “16”, before adding “Robert Smith took that long.”
Love then says that she met Sergeant in 1981, “which is crazy, dreams come true, man,” adding that the guitarist “does these incredible leads. I don’t think he’s ever played outside the Bunnymen, other than his solo stuff. Maybe I’m wrong.”
She also tells Corgan that Sargeant sent her Soundcloud links to “his scoring stuff,” which she says is “astonishing”.
In the same interview with Corgan, the pair shared their mutual frustrations with “gatekeeper” Kim Gordon, and Love asked Dave Grohl to “just say we’re cool” – and for his fan base of “straight white males” to stop “picking” on her. You can watch it in full below.
Back in March, Love said that the album – which has been in the works since 2009 – will also feature her ex-Hole bandmate Melissa Auf Der Maur. Once work on the album is done, Love says she’ll return to touring.
Though she’s emphasised that Hole will not be reuniting, she added that Auf Der Maur will be touring with Courtney in support of the album.
In 2021, she called her previous solo album one of her “life’s great shames”, alongside Steve Coogan and crack.
In other Courtney Love news, she recently auctioned her handwritten lyrics to Hole’s ‘Violet’ for charity, telling NME that the song is about “more than Billy Corgan”.
The song, long thought to have been written about him following their relationship in 1990, is also ” about sitting on the fire escape of his flat, sipping cheap wine and taking a Vicodin (oh, to be young!) while the Chicago sun sets, leaving behind a bejewelled amethyst sky,” she explained. The Smashing Pumpkins frontman later actually entered the auction himself, quipping, “I think it’s about a guy I know a little bit”.
Love picked up the Icon Award at the 2020 NME Awards. In her acceptance speech, she said: I woke up this morning and I have the honour of picking up this fuck you thing [waves NME award], which is fantastic in the capital of this fantastic country where I first picked up a New Musical Express in I don’t know, 1981 in fucking Liverpool where I read the other day I lost my virginity to Joy Division’s ‘Isolation’.
“I think that’s psychotic. I’m also 18 months sober today. I can’t believe that and that’s pretty wild. Thanks so much, I’m very honoured. Thanks a lot.”
Shortly after that win, she spoke to NME about the early stages of her latest solo album. “It’s early days and I’ve recorded several new songs whilst I’ve been in London,” she said. “I’ve also taken this time to enjoy rediscovering really good songwriters like Aimee Mann, who’s from LA but went to Juilliard and is a genius and overlooked. Frances [Bean, daughter] sends me playlists, which are fantastic and full of artists that I hadn’t come across before too.”
As for her upcoming memoir, Love has reportedly assured fans that it will arrive before Christmas this year, and will be distributed through HarperCollins. It’s a promising update, as Love last said in 2022 that the memoir The Girl With The Most Cake was complete, but at the time of writing has yet to be published.
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