Courtney Michelle LoveAlthough some sources give Love's birth name as “Love Michelle Harrison,” her listing on the California Birth Index from the Center for Health Statistics gives a birth name of “Courtney Michelle Harrison." Between adoptions from several stepfathers, she has also gone by the names “Courtney Michelle Rodriguez” and “Courtney Michelle Menely.” The name change to “Courtney Michelle Love” happened in early 1990s, in the beginning of her musical career and after the end of her first marriage (of which the legal records still feature the name “Courtney Michelle Menely”). According to the same statistics list above, the birth status of Courtney's 1992 born daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, already include “Love” as the mother's maiden surname. (born Courtney Michelle Harrison on July 9, 1964) is an American rock musician and actress. Love is known as lead singer and lyricist for the alternative rock band Hole and for her two-year marriage to Nirvana singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain.

Family background

Love's mother Linda Carroll was adopted by an Italian-American couple at birth, retaining no contact with her birth father or her birth mother, who she discovered was the children's writer Paula Fox. Carroll's autobiography Her Mother's Daughter, in 2006, told of her relationship with both adoptive mother and elder daughter.

Conflicting news began to appear in August 2003 regarding Love's family tree, some remarking that Love's mother had taken DNA tests that proved that Carroll's father was Marlon Brando. The reports implied this disclosure would appear in Carroll's memoir. Later that month, Carroll's publisher, Doubleday, told the New York Daily News, “There was nothing in Linda Carroll's book proposal about Marlon Brando, nor will there be anything in the book about him. I've spoken to her and she has told me that there is no truth to the suggestion that she is related to Marlon Brando.”

Early life

Courtney Michelle Harrison was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Linda Carroll, a therapist, and Hank Harrison, a publisher. Her ancestry includes Irish and Jewish parentage. Love's family broke up soon after her birth. During a child custody case following her parents' divorce, her mother and one of her friends presented letters implying her father had given the child, then three years old, LSD.[http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,289728,00.html Courtney Love: The Real Story Book Review | Entertainment Weekly ] Harrison denies this allegation and has passed polygraph tests; however, these allegations led to full custody being awarded to Love's mother.

Love spent a troubled childhood with her mother, who married and divorced three times, and settled in hippie communes in Oregon. Before arriving in New Zealand, Love had been left in the United States with Shirley, a friend of her mother's, a therapist, while her mother, the new husband and her half-sisters settled in New Zealand without her. Shortly after reuniting with her family in New Zealand, Love was sent to the boarding school in Nelson.