Hole

As a new era of alternative rock bands arose, Courtney Love's insatiable lust for fame drove Hole to become the queens of the early 1990s grunge movement. After first discovering Patti Smith while in a juvenile detention centre, Love fled to Britain at 16 to hang out with Julian Cope and Ian McCulloch, before spending years as a stripper in Portland auditioning for bands such as Faith No More and Babes in Toyland and talking her way into the hit movie Sid and Nancy. Filtering the strains of punk and new wave with a tough, disenfranchised, feminist stance, Love formed Hole in Los Angeles in 1989 and soon shot to fame as the girlfriend (and later wife) of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. Debut Pretty On The Inside (1991) received a warm reaction from the UK music press and was named album of the year by Village Voice, leading to an eight-album deal with major label Geffen. The suicide of Cobain and the death of bassist Kristen Pfaff overshadowed the release of second album Live Through This (1994) yet, despite Love's fragile state, the band's reputation continued to grow. They had further success with the glossy, pop-friendly Celebrity Skin (1998), which reached Number 9 in the US charts, but Love's attention turned to Hollywood and the band split in 2002. After a largely overlooked solo album, Love recruited a new Hole line-up including Larrikin Love's Micko Larkin and returned in 2010 with Nobody's Daughter.