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On July 4, 1995 Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna attended the opening date of that summer season’s Lollapalooza pageant at The Gorge in Washington state, as a visitor of Kim Gordon, bassist/vocalist for Sonic Youth, who have been headlining the fifth annual staging of the ‘different music pageant’ on a invoice which additionally featured Gap, Cypress Hill, Pavement, Sinéad O’Connor, Beck, The Jesus Lizard and extra. The earlier 12 months, Hanna had guested in Sonic Youth’s video for Bull In The Heather, and had remained mates with Gordon and her then-husband and bandmate Thurston Moore.
When Bikini Kill’s vocalist popped in to Sonic Youth’s dressing room to thank Gordon for the backstage passes she’d organized, Gordon took her apart and warned her that she must be on her guard round Gap’s Courtney Love, who Gordon feared would possibly hunt down a confrontation with Hanna. Gordon had produced Gap’s first album, Fairly On The Inside, and had been good mates with Love’s late husband Kurt Cobain, however had grown cautious of Love. In her memoir Lady In A Band, she described Gap’s chief as “manipulative” and wrote, “understanding she may activate me at any second, I all the time stored her at arm’s size.”
Though Hanna and Love had by no means met, the 2 musicians additionally had a historical past, of types. 5 years earlier, on the finish of a drunken day/night time out with Nirvana’s frontman, Hanna had written the phrases ‘Kurt smells like Teen Spirit‘ on his bed room wall, inadvertently inspiring the title of what would turn into one of the crucial iconic rock songs of the last decade. She was additionally an enormous fan of Gap’s debut single, Retard Lady, and Love had as soon as provided to assist Bikini Kill safe a serious label report deal, however that relationship soured after the riot grrrl band politely declined the supply, stating that it was their intention to stay with impartial report labels.
“After that she made it clear within the press that she hated our band,” Hanna recollects in her memoir Insurgent Lady, “so I wasn’t precisely excited to run into her.”
Sadly for Hanna, as she stood in conjunction with the primary stage watching Sonic Youth, Courtney Love approached her, and never in a pleasant method.
“She was flanked by two massive dudes, and she or he appeared WASTED,” the singer wrote in her memoir. “My instincts advised me to not make eye contact together with her. Courtney obtained in my face and began hissing like a cat and reaching out like she was going to claw me… She held her lit cigarette as much as my face and traced my options with it, like she was going to place it out on my face.”
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