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 Everett True

Song of the day – 347: Hole

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Another in the series for my friend Vincent Vanoli (see illustration above).

Hole. Right. No stories there then. “Did she ask you twice?” No stories at all.

I could be wrong, but this song was supposed to be partly inspired by an incident that occurred at the Camden Underworld, 1991 – Hole’s first show in London. The hype machine was in full effect. The crowd was psyched. Folk showed up wearing homemade T-shirts quoting pop stars slagging me off. Thurston Moore had promised to “rip my head off” next time he saw me. Courtney was as lascivious and roundly entertaining as ever. Towards the end of the set, she jumped into the crowd – and to her immense surprise and disgust, she found several male members of the audience attempting to finger her, inside her knickers. None of us really knew what was going on, but it was obvious something was wrong. Her clothes were being ripped. I recall my friends Alison Wonderland and Delia (Mambo Taxi, The Nuns, Suburban Mousewife) – tiny, determined – kicking at the ankles of the brutish males in front of them, trying to bring them down. Courtney retreated to the back of the stage, and crouched there calling my real name out, over and over again. “Jerry. Jerry. Jerry.” I didn’t know what had transpired.

After the show, she hid underneath a table in the dressing-room and refused to come out until I appeared, immediately barricading us in the bathroom. We remained there for 30 minutes, as rumours gestated, blossomed and finally spread their wings and flew out into the dank Camden night air. She gave me a ring. I wore it until it broke a few months later – it was plastic, a crackerjack ring. The lyrics, “Every time that I sell myself to you/I feel a little bit cheaper than I need to/I will tear the petals off of you/Rose-red, I will make you tell the truth”, she once told me were written directly about our own personal relationship as press/artist – that Courtney! She was such a kidder.

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