Short Biography

[edit] Life and career

[edit] 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.[5]

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.”[6][7]


[edit] Early life
Courtney Michelle Harrison was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of Linda Carroll, a therapist, and Hank Harrison, a publisher.[8] Her ancestry includes Irish, Jewish, and Cuban parentage.[9][10][11][12] 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, LSD.[13] Harrison denies this allegation[14] 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.[15] 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.[13]

While in boarding school, Love wrote poetry, joined a Bay City Rollers fan club, and, at 12, applied to join the Mickey Mouse Club;[16] she was rejected after reading a poem by Sylvia Plath at the audition.[17] On the Howard Stern Show Love claimed that when she was "12 and a half" she gave rockstar Ted Nugent oral sex backstage at one of his shows.[18]

At 16, Love traveled around the U.S., England and the Republic of Ireland, living on a trust fund established for her by her mother’s adoptive parents.[19] In England, she moved into the Toxteth, Liverpool, home of musician Julian Cope, of The Teardrop Explodes, and became a regular at rock shows. In his autobiography Head-On, Cope refers to her as “the adolescent”.[20][21]

Eventually, she went to Portland, Oregon, still pursuing music. She worked as a stripper.[22]


[edit] Early musical career
Love began her music career with a brief stint as lead singer of Faith No More. Keyboardist Roddy Bottum described the band as “democratic”, saying that Love’s dominating personality did not fit in. The two have remained friends, working together in 2005 on a track for the film Adam & Steve.

At 22, Love moved to Portland, then to Los Angeles in 1987 with musician Kat Bjelland, beginning a period in which she formed bands with Bjelland only to be ousted from each. The pair first formed a band in Los Angeles, with Jennifer Finch, called Suga

Miscellaneous Information

Friends and Family

Pamela Anderson [Friend]

Russell Brand [Friend]

Noel Fielding [Friend]

Avril Lavigne [Friend]

Anna Nicole Smith [Friend]

Drew Barrymore [Friend]

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