Searching For Love: Courtney Love in Liverpool, 1982: 3 (Art Decades)

During 1982 Courtney Love spent time in Liverpool where she lived on a monthly allowance from a family Trust Fund and hung around Probe Records, attended gigs at the Warehouse or club nights at Kirklands and, no doubt, drank at Ye Cracke on the edge of Toxteth or in The Grapes on Matthew Street. Julian Cope recalls her in HEAD ON, his rather wonderful memoir of the early 1980s. Heady times and formative years when stories were crafted and lives defined. Moments that never leave and help form adult life.In the intervening years, Love’s Liverpool period has taken on an apocryphal dimension, and a public falling out with Cope and her own tendency to self-mythologise have both contributed handsomely to this. Now Dave Haslam, author, DJ and prolific tweeter, has written what can really only be described, in the traditional sense, as a pamphlet to unpick the story. Nothing wrong with this sort of pamphlet, indeed, on the contrary I’d argue there is a gulf between journalism and longer form writing that can be very nicely filled by publications like this. Too much journalistic writing raises issues and then leaves them unexplored while too often books are padded out with fluff to reach a commissioned word limit. This middling form offers rich potential while it also favours the esoteric, niche subject. It proves to be ideal terrain for this story.SEARCHING FOR LOVE is, however, really one for those like me who were there at the time or others who are simply devotees of Courtney Love. Written in an investigative yet enthusiastic style, it balances curiosity with a natural scepticism that rightly leaves many of the harder to authenticate claims or assertions in a twilight space for the reader to determine fact and fiction. Who knows the truth about how Love lost her virginity? What did her Father really bring over from Ireland? It captures the spirited energy of the times really well and memories came back to me of places, people and bands I’d long since forgotten. I was on the fringes of all this but – yes – I recall Bernie from Probe who went out with a girl who worked in the same office as me. The subtext of all this explores the intensive, formative closeness of youth and the important fleeting relationships that ultimately shape a subsequent life. A small book with a big heart and a deceptively grand subject.One day the 60 pages in this characteristically low budget, indie venture will hopefully form part of a bigger volume. In the meantime, for those, like me, that are touched by the subject, this is certainly worth the initial investment.One moot point – it doesn’t have an ISBN number which is a real shame. A book like this needs to be catalogued carefully and stored. Otherwise the story could be lost again.

Very disappointed with my book. Total waste of $63 dollars. Small in size, no pictures and info I could have got of the internet.Obviously have to research before I buy again

Basically just an essay, and it could have benefited from more detail - such as expanding on how Courtney introducing Cobain to Echo & the Bunnymen's 'Ocean Rain' led directly to the sound of Nirvana's 'Unplugged'. It would also have benefited from Love's input on why she chose Liverpool as her destination following Ireland. In fact, there is an entire full-length book waiting to be written about this. I would hope Haslam intends to conduct full interviews with all the key players and write a full-length book in the future, because so much is left unanswered here.