She's Not Yoko Ono, Okay?!

Yesterday marked the 20-year anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death, and while media outlets the world over scrambled to provide the most fitting tribute, the U.K. Telegraph decided to seek out Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, to discuss Nirvana's now-newsworthy legacy. And, because she's Courtney Love, the interview is just shy of bananas. First and foremost, she addresses the concern swirling around the Nirvana musical she's supposedly all but greenlit, insisting:

“It’s more a play, conceived by a brilliant team. I can’t name names, but when you hear who is possibly involved, it takes on a new dimension. Otherwise it’s Vegas rubbish, and I will never allow it. There will be no jazz hands on Smells Like Teen Spirit!”

So, on the one hand, phew — but on the other, do we necessarily trust her judgment on these mystery non-Vegas-y contributors? She recently gave Jay-Z permission to sample "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on "Holy Grail," and while Hova is indeed pretty far from jazz hands, it does make you wonder. Some hasty and highly speculative predictions: Billie Joe Armstrong has expressed some serious Cobain fandom and tasted brief Broadway success with American Idiot; if he can find time between making cover albums with Norah Jones, I could seem him angling to be involved. Also, Trent Reznor has been getting all up in movie soundtracks, lately — maybe the stage is the next step? I mean, they wouldn't let Bono near another musical after the cataclysmic brain fart that was Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, right? Would they? Someone reassure me, please.

Of course, an obvious choice for collaborators would be remaining Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoslevic, but that's looking pretty unlikely, given Love's predictably prickly attitude towards them in regards to the band's upcoming Hall of Fame induction. Speaking of the April 10th ceremony, Love noted that she will most certainly be accepting the award on Cobain's behalf, explaining:

“I wasn’t in Nirvana, but it’s what widows and kids do. And it does give me ownership of the mythology, rather than just handing over to Krist and Dave their ownership.”

Still, my personal favorite line comes when the interviewer, as many have done (myself included), points out the oft-drawn parallel between Love and Yoko Ono, to which Love responds:

“I don’t think the Yoko comparison is fair, I never sat in on rehearsals... But Kurt thought Yoko was cool. He was an early adopter. He gave me a Yoko Ono box set when I was pregnant. Which I threw at his head. I wasn’t really a fan.”

Because, I mean, what else would Courtney Love do with a Yoko Ono box set? Listen to it? Pshaw. In other news, that image is officially replacing "room full of kittens with Tempurpedic floors" as "My Happy Place."

Which is actually somewhere I may soon have to go, since when it comes to her own band, Love's news is not so excellent: Apparently, the "Celebrity Skin"-era Hole reunion she gushed about only a short while ago was essentially conjecture. As the told the Telegraph:

“We may have made out but there is no talk of marriage... It’s very frail, nothing might happen, and now the band are all flipping out with me.”

NO, COURTNEY. WHY, COURTNEY. YOU ARE YOKO-ING YOUR OWN BAND, COURTNEY.

Oh, but it gets worse. Regarding Hole's promising new single, "Wedding Day," she dubs it “a two minute 59 second slab of punk-pop greatness," and in describing her "fearless" musical style, asserts:

“I can’t just do a really good rock record and that’s the end of it. I can’t be Nickelback. And not to be a [bitch], I can’t be the Foo Fighters.”

Wait. Did she just use Nickelback as a primary example of "a really good rock record"? Also, since when is "punk-pop" an acceptable genre mesh? Aren't the two diametrically opposed in ethos? In short, I am now officially nervous about the Nirvana musical team. If it's Chad Kroeger, I swear to God...

Meanwhile, I'm just going to take some deep breaths, back away from the Nirvana-Hole deluge, and go watch Yoko Ono's video for her latest song, "Bad Dancer" — because if nothing else, it's goofy and joyful and includes Yoko in a bowtie. Plus, if that's not enough, I can always imagine Courtney Love throwing an EP of it at someone's head.