Math is Hard for Courtney Love. So is telling the truth.

In an interview with New York Magazine–held while she took an illegal cigarette break in a movie theater bathroom during the premiere for It Might Get Loud, David Guggenheim’s documentary about the history of the electric guitar starring Jimmy Page, Jack White and the Edge–Courtney Love added yet another layer to her coprophagic auto-hagiography. The journalist just ate it up. And now the Love puff piece is getting quoted all over.

Okay, well, sorry to make you break that rule. So, are you enjoying the film?
Oh, God, yeah. It’s fucking great. It’s just insanely intimidating. The five days I worked on October [the U2 album] were the days that Edge was doing his guitar sounds. And then I got fired.

For what?
Girl stuff! Steve Lillywhite’s wife — may she rest in peace — she didn’t want me there. Well, anyway, I saw Echo & the Bunnymen last night and that riff, that riff for "I Will Follow" and then the riff for "Rescue," which [E&tB guitarist] Will Sergeant taught me. So I saw that yesterday. I went to hear "I Will Follow," which I wasn’t sat down and taught at that time in 1982 or ’83, ’cause I was 14. It’s like, fucking, this whole other side of rock or something.

Okay, WTF? Do journalists just nod and smile and never fact check or call anybody on the BS, even in parenthesis or footnotes? Jeez, Love is like rock’s pre-cursor to Sarah Palin in the loose and fast spin department. 

U2’s album October was recorded July-August 1981. Courtney love was born July 9, 1964. She would have been 17 at when the album was recorded, not 14. "At that time in 1982 or ’83,"  to quote Courtney, she would have been 18 or 19.

Poppy Z. Brite who wrote the biography Courtney Love: The Real Story, states in the book’s prologue–after admitting that she spent time with Courtney and considered her a friend:

The purpose of this book is not to condemn or defend Courtney Love – everyone seems to feel obliged to do one or the other – but to chronicle the first thirty-two years of her fascinating life as accurately as possible.

In the chapter of the book on Courtney’s stay in Ireland, no mention is made of U2 or working at Windmill Lane Sudios, though there are details about CLo taking classes at Trinity College, where her father Hank claims he taught (he didn’t, though he did research his book on megaliths). Brite writes this is "circa 1982" after Courtney’s foray as a  stripper in Japan ("circa 1981"). 

Courtney has on numerous occasions talked about spending time with Julian Cope of Teardrop Explodes and has always been a dropper of well-known names, so if the U2 story was true, wouldn’t it have come out by now, certainly to her friendly biographer, rather than conveniently falling from Love’s lips during film featuring the Edge? Or is this some recovered memory that popped up out of Love’s post-drug haze, thanks to the miracle of her daily chanting?

Granted, celeb profiles, aren’t on a par with Marcy Wheeler’s great work and really don’t carry the weight or impact of investigative journalism–but journalists need to call their subjects, be they politicians or celebrities, on their prevarications. Even if the interview happens in the toilet. To quote Sarah Palin, the members of the media:

have such important jobs, reporting facts, and informing the electorate, and exerting power to influence. You represent what could and should be a respected honest profession, that could and should be a cornerstone of our democracy. Democracy depends on you.

And Courtney,

Quit making things up!