Courtney Love Fired Memoir Ghostwriter for Being ‘Too Tell-All’
Courtney Love is writing a memoir, but the process is off to an awkward start. The singer-actress already fired her first ghostwriter for trying to make her divulge too many “sleazy” stories, she told Seth Meyers on Tuesday’s Late Night. “I’m on my second ghostwriter,” she said. “The first one was too tell-all.”
The Hole frontwoman, on-hand to promote her role in the Lifetime original movie Menendez: Blood Brothers, added that she has “a lot of secrets” that won’t make the book. But she’s fine with writing about stories other people leaked, including details that wound up on the Internet. “It is fun because my Wikipedia, a lot of things leaked,” she said. “If it’s on my Wikipedia, it’s fair game.” (When Meyers asked why she doesn’t just alter her own Wiki page, Love said she isn’t tech-savvy enough to pull it off.)
Ultimately, the grunge icon wants a “tasteful” memoir, highlighting the work of Patti Smith, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards as examples. “I want a co-writer,” she said. “I don’t want to write it myself, and I want somebody to make it funny and true.” And she knows the best source material: “I’m gonna print out my Wikipedia,” she said, grinning.
In 2011, Love signed a deal to write her autobiography, reportedly titled Girl With the Most Cake, with Rolling Stone contributor Anthony Bozza for Harper Colins’ William Morrow imprint. A series of planned release dates passed, including one the publisher confirmed to Rolling Stone for early 2014.
Described in an Amazon product description as “a riveting story, too crazy not to be true,” the book aimed to trace the singer’s battles with drug addiction; her “tragic romance” with Kurt Cobain; her relationships with Billy Corgan, Trent Reznor and Ed Norton; her “rocky relationship with her hippie parents” and her early days working as a stripper.
In 2014, Love told Paper that her relationship with Bozza was “just not working” and called the project a “total disaster” and “nightmare.” The following April, one year after submitting his still-unpublished, 123,375-word manuscript, the author sued Love for breach of contract and $200,000 in unpaid advance wages.
Love discussed the project with Rolling Stone in a June 2013 interview, calling the book a “combination” of Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Russell Brand’s My Booky Wook and “an old Tallulah Bankhead book where she is very fabulous.” Curiously, she also criticized Keith Richards’ 2010 title, Life: [It] was just so bloody long, I didn’t even finish it,” she said.