When Courtney Love Was Faith No More’s Singer Before Getting Fired

when-courtney-love-was-faith-no-mores-singer-before-getting-fired
Faith No More photo via YouTube. Courtney Love by Andrea Fleming via Wikipedia
Published on:

After years removed from her glory years, the public seems to not know what to do with Courtney Love. She may have had a decent amount of hits and some amazing songs with the band Hole, but there’s a good chance she will always be known as the wife of Kurt Cobain and having some of the craziest outbursts to come out of the rock scene.

Before Hole and before her famous husband, there was a good chance Courtney could have been right at the center of metal history in Faith No More

Before the band had Mike Patton and his gigantic vocal range, Courtney Love actually convinced the rest of the band to give her a shot on vocals after letting go of their original vocalist.

The rest of the band initially welcomed the idea, with Billy Gould saying “We really wanted to be aggressive, make ambient music that was totally aggressive. This girl Courtney came along, and she saw us play and made the huge pitch about knowing what we wanted and being able to do it.”

Even keyboardist Roddy Bottum had some kind words to say about her, saying “We were switching around singers a whole lot at that point, but she was really good. She did a lot of screaming stuff, and we had a lot of slow melody stuff too.

When she sang with us, she was punk rock: now she says she’s always been punk rock, which is not true at all. After she left our band she was totally into—I mean, with a sense of humor, but really hardcore pop sorta stuff. We all were at that point. I mean, we used to do a cover version of Van Halen’s ‘Jump’.”

That’s just half of the story though. As Billy set things straight years later, Courtney was becoming far too controlling in the group, saying “It got to this point where things were just too much. Courtney’s not the sort of person you could just be an equal with in bands – she’s got to lead and tell people what’s what. She was the dictator, and in our band, things were democratic.”

If you look back on the original video footage that we have of Courtney performing though, she’s still the same Courtney that everyone knows, getting confrontational with the crowd and even dressing in a nightgown for some of the shows.

This lineup was never meant to last, but there was still a chance that we could gotten a Faith No More version of something like “Celebrity Skin.”

Watch some wild footage of Courtney Love performing with Faith No More below: