[Courtney Love as an infant, with father Hank Harrison, and mother Linda Carroll]
Are Rock Stars "born" or are they "made?" The latter assumes a creator - who would likely wield the same power to DESTROY what they made if they saw fit. Suppose such a creator lacked empathy, was perhaps even psychopathic, with a voracious sense of greed - why not market the destruction of one's creation and capitalize even further upon that "rock star" than when they were alive?
These are very dark concepts to contemplate, but sometimes we must think like the enemy in order to discover their tactics and make sense of this mess we see in the world. One of the mainstream media's most important jobs, is to prevent us from doing so. They do it by witholding information, distorting information, or flooding the airwaves with so much that it becomes an indistinguishable cloud of white noise that we'd rather would just go away completely.
["The crookedest street in the world," San Francisco's Lombard Street]
The following is made up of quotes from various articles and interviews which are all publicly available. All quotes from said articles and interviews will be in italics. When an individual is quoted directly, their name will be in [Brackets] "and their quote will look like this." All sources are listed at the bottom of the page.
Her parents...were part of the city’s burgeoning psychedelic scene...Her father, Hank Harrison, had been a college friend and roommate of Phil Lesh in the early ‘60s, had briefly managed the Warlocks “for one week” in 1965, and stayed in contact with the Dead up to the ‘70s, gathering material for his books on them. [Courtney] "He managed the Grateful Dead for 5 seconds and he was an amateur acid maker" [Rozz Rezabeck] "Hank Harrison, he went out as their tour manager ostensibly, actually he was their LSD dealer."
[Harrison] "when she was little she was wonderful. Very very intelligent I gave her an IQ test, she has a 150 IQ"
[Harrison appeared in the 1967 CBS documentary "Etched in Acid," coming off more like a CIA Agent than a former "acid head" that ran with the Grateful Dead.]
A lifelong diarist, [Linda] Carroll always felt she had a story to tell. Her children grew up listening to stories of her time in Catholic school in 1950s San Francisco and her acid trips with Jerry Garcia in Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s...Young Linda was so echt-hippie that Jerry Garcia personally introduced her to LSD on a risky wrong-way ride up San Francisco’s snaky Lombard Street: “I’m going up—it’s how the crow would fly,” said Jerry. Linda liked LSD but wasn’t an alkaloid Icarus. Her addiction was to self-seeking...…Courtney’s also said, “My mother had ties to a lot of the women around the San Francisco hippie scene, like Ken Kesey’s wife and the Magic Bus people.” [Harrison] "Linda had a sort of cadre of chicks from San Francisco. From Catholic school, girls’ Catholic school."
So far, LSD and the Grateful Dead seem like a common level upon which Linda and Hank would meet. Tripping with Jerry Garcia no less! Courtney Love's quote about the "magic bus people" is not a statement to be taken lightly in this regard, as Ken Kesey conducted the infamous "acid test" parties, at which attendees were dosed with copious amounts of LSD. In fact, members of the Warlocks/Grateful Dead are believed to have attended the first of these parties, possibly even playing some music. The CIA is known to have been involved at some level as well - if they weren't the primary organizers themselves. And the "Magic Bus" was an operation in which "hippies" went around the country dosing people with acid, promoting its use. This is all very much at the heart of what people have come to acknowledge as the transition from the "beatnick movement" to the "hippy movement."
Harrison met Love's mother in early 1963 at a party for Dizzy Gillespie, according to Harrison, who both raised and denied allegations by his ex-wife that their daughter was conceived through date rape...She was conceived, Carroll wrote, when an intense and interesting guy she met at a party named Hank Harrison threatened to commit suicide if the 18-year-old Carroll refused to have sex with him. They married soon after in Reno...she was pregnant when they were married in November 1963 in Reno. Their daughter was born the following July, and the marriage lasted less than two years...Linda’s own bad, brief teenage marriage left her with trouble child Courtney.
The above contains 2 versions of how Courtney was "conceived." The first version is from an article penned by Joel Selvin. The latter is allegedly from a book Carroll wrote herself. [It's worth noting here that Carroll defends the reputation of her sexually abusive father in one of the promotional articles concerning said book.] Whatever the case, doesn't sound like Linda Carroll had a very romantic journey into motherhood.
Courtney Michelle Harrison was born on 7.9.1964 in San Francisco, CA. [Courtney] "I was born into a big custody trial. And I was called “child x” in the San Francisco paper. It was a big deal because my grandparents had a lot of money."
This is a reference to Courtney's maternal grandparents [Linda's adopted parents], who allegedly owned a very successful company that made eye glasses. This is something we will get more into later.
"He [Hank] gave me acid, I don’t remember, I’m pretty sure…my father’s just out and out nuts"...[Rozz Rezabek] "He’s always been heavily involved in dealing LSD… [Hank] left Courtney with like some groupie at the commune who gave her LSD in her Corn Flakes like every morning, which made Courtney extremely enlightened and self actualized, but it also did a lot of damage"...
Phil Lesh was her godfather…“We were doing tons of acid, changing sex partners, and tripping out,” Hank said; and in a child custody dispute, her mother would testify that Hank gave Courtney LSD as an infant...[Hank] "There was lots of interactions where I took her over to see friends of mine who were very very famous people in the band at their homes. So she spent a lot of time with all the different band members in their houses and talking to their wives…Mountain Girl and Garcia and Tom Constantan and Phil Lesh and so fourth - knew her…Garcia was a babysitter for her for a while, when we were still married…I never thought anything would happen bad. Was a bunch of people like that, yeah she was exposed to the Dead culture. And also the “Hippie Culture” I was bringing people down off of bad acid trips. I had to often go out and leave her with my girlfriend who was - her name was Jerry Danter. And I never had any worries about that."
While Hank denies ever dosing his daughter with LSD, his elaborate stories where she's being shuffled around between the various icons of Acid culture while he's out "rescuing" acid heads in the street certainly doesn't hurt the case against him in that regard!
In Love’s first year, Harrison became increasingly violent and emotionally unstable, according to the book, and the couple divorced around Love’s first birthday…She depicts Love, as a toddler, watching, unmoved, as her puppy tumbles down a flight of stairs.
The book referenced above is Linda's. I have not read it, but it sounds like her depiction of a young Courtney is that of a mentally disturbed child lacking in empathy for the lives of others. According to Harrison, Courtney is a sociopath, an attribute he takes credit for passing down to her.
"Sociopathy refers to a pattern of antisocial behaviors and attitudes, including manipulation, deceit, aggression, and a lack of empathy for others." - psychology today
At the age of 5 Courtney appeared on the back of the Grateful Dead album “aoxomoxoa,” known for the hidden phrase in the title, We ate the acid...
The above was taken from an MTV documentary. The fact that she is on the back of "aoxomoxoa" is disputed, but Courtney seems happy to play along with it regardless.
[Harrison] "By the way, I took a polygraph…I did not give her LSD I did not expose her to LSD or any other kind of psychedelic. Period. And I can prove it...
Is a polygraph "proof?" Sure, it may count for something in a courtroom. But how does one "prove" they didn't dose their daughter? I don't know if that's even possible! Doesn't make him guilty of the crime, but this concerted effort to establish the idea that he is in possession of such "proof" rings more of guilt than innocence to me.
[Courtney and her adopted father, Frank Rodriguez]
According to divorce papers filed in San Francisco Superior Court, Carroll claimed her ex- husband had threatened to abduct the infant Courtney and take her to another country. Hank denied the allegations, but Linda won the case. By that time, she’d married Frank Rodriguez, who legally adopted Courtney. The court granted only limited visits to Harrison, restricting them to Carroll's residence and insisting on the presence of a third party…[Courtney] "He was alleged in court -- I don't know if it actually happened -- to have given me acid," she said...
Is this the story of a mother trying to protect her daughter from an unstable, abusive man? Where was she, when young Courtney was being shuffled around to various band members and getting LSD in her corn flakes? It's one thing to have a divorce, gain custody, and move to another state. But to actually have her new husband LEGALLY adopt Courtney sounds like an attempt to shut Harrison out of her daughter's life in the most complete way possible.
She got married again, he [Harrison] said, "and suddenly there was a change. They adopted her out from under me. They moved to Oregon and wouldn't tell me where she was.”
[Hank] "I used to manage the Grateful Dead, and this girl who’s an old Dead Head came up and said “hey are you Courtney’s Dad? I’m her banker!” I said “does she have a lot of money” she said “Oh yeah! I can’t talk about it.” All she said was “a lot.”
Hank tells a pretty consistent story about this business of Courtney inheriting money from Linda's adopted parents, the Risis - and insinuates that this is the reason she became so aggressive in her efforts to get Courtney away from him and to strip away Hank's legal rights as her father. More on this later.
She lived with her parents in San Francisco until their divorce in 1969; then her mother took her to an Oregon commune in 1970. She had a loose hippie upbringing: one biographer describes her childhood house as full of musicians, groupies and freaks; and Courtney later shuddered, “There were all these hairy, wangly-ass hippies in our house…running around naked.”
[Courtney and her new family up at the Oregon Commune?]
Linda and her new baby fled north to Oregon with an ambitious trash man, known to her friends as “the garbage Adonis.”...The new family moved to Oregon where [the] family had 2 daughters, and later adopted a son. Linda studying psychotherapy put the family on the couch. [Jamiee King - half sister] We were in therapy constantly. Mom would give us big red batons, and we would have to hit each other to get the anger out. We had teepees in the backyard and people came from England to have conventions of believing in fairies, it was a different time. [Courtney] "We had this family meeting which was called “what’s bugging me about you is...” It was crazy."
[Jamiee King - half sister] My sister’s never really forgiven my mom for the way that she was raised. My dad was probably the best at understanding her and accepting her.
A photo from the book shows Courtney beaming in front of her lovely, hand-built cabin on the site of the former chicken coop. So … there’s more to the story: No, she wasn’t locked up in a chicken coop, but she did live solo in her own cabin behind the house, for the protection of the other kids—and Linda.
So the family moves up to Oregon onto a hippy commune, where the kids are subjected to all sorts of, what sound like, psychological experiments. Now, Courtney was born in 1964, so she would have been around 5 in 1969. I wonder how old she was when they decided to move her into the re-purposed chicken coupe behind the house?
Soon Courtney’s behavior was so out of control that her mother sent her to a new therapist. [Courtney] "The man that I went to therapy with was a pervert. And he had pornography in his bathroom, he was gross. He wrote down that I was slightly schizoid at the age of 9, you can’t be slightly schizoid at the age of 9., besides which, I’m not. And that stayed in my file and haunted me"
Was Courtney the little mentally disturbed monster MTV portrayed her to be in their "documentary," or was she simply acting out the way any severely abused child would? Children who are normal don't need experimental therapy! Normal children FORCED into experimental therapy become ABNORMAL! What really happened here at this commune up in Oregon?
[Frank Rodriguez, Courtney's adopted step-father]
[Courtney] "he [Frank] was great to me, he was the one adult figure in my life who was nice to me." Despite their best efforts, Linda and Frank couldn’t make the family work. They divorced when Courtney was 7.
In 1972 Linda remarried and moved the family to New Zealand, bringing along everyone but the increasingly difficult Courtney. The 8 year old was left behind in the care of a family friend. It was a move that would cement the rift between mother and daughter forever.
Wait, didn't Frank and Linda have 2 daughters after moving to Oregon AND an adopted son? If Frank was such a kind hearted man and father, why would he let his children go like that, all the way to some strange location in New Zealand, with his ex wife? And who was this "family friend" Courtney was left with?
Eventually, Courtney moved back in with her stepfather, Frank. [Frank] "Linda appealed to me, and asked if I would take Courtney and I said yes I love Courtney." Courtney adjusted to her new life well, immersing herself in art and acting classes. For the first time, she began to dabble in music.
[Courtney quoting her own lyrics] "We're gonna go down to shady lake, where we're gonna make sweet sweet love." At least it had a hook, and I was in 5th grade!...I can't remember a time not wanting to be famous...
While stating the above, Courtney grins ubiquitously as she recalls a song she wrote and mailed to Neil Sedaka [pop producer/musician], all about "making sweet love." She was probably around 10 years old at the time.
[Courtney] "All I could see is that I would be famous and then everything would be fair."
What does Courtney mean by "fair?" Was her entire childhood part of some sort of "deal" where she had to suffer, in exchange for the fame - as a sort of "reward?"
At the age of 12 she applied to the new Mickey Mouse Club, only to be rejected. [Courtney] "I wish my mother had been a stage mother. I wouldn't have had to forge my parent's signature when I tried out for the New Mouskateers as Coco Rodriguez, and read Silvia Platt...I was so raised in a cave I read a poem about incest trying out for the new mouseketeers."
"I found out later that Courtney Love had made it to the call-backs and was going to be cast as a Mouseketeer," [Lisa] Whelchel told us. "But she found out some little kid from Texas flew in and got her part."
Love tells it a slightly different way. "I tried out for the Mickey Mouse Club when I was 11," she said in The Independent. "But I read a Sylvia Plath poem… so that wasn’t really flying with Disney."
Here we have Courtney, in her own words, talking about how she brought up incest while trying out for the Mickey Mouse club. Are we supposed to find it ENDEARING that Courtney, at age 11 or 12, thought incest was acceptable enough to bring up while trying out for the Mousketeers? This occured, presumably, during the time she was staying with Frank Rodriguez. The one "adult figure" in her life that was nice to her. She also makes what is supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to being "raised in a cave." This is an interesting statement considering she was kept in a re-purposed chicken coupe behind the family house as a child.
I think what people may percieve as "a punk rock attitude" or a "self-made woman" in Courtney, is actually a mis-reading of her inability to relate to "normal" society, due to the damage she suffered as a child. Perhaps she "acts out," not because she is some kind of "fearless warrior of counterculture and individuality," but moreso because she is the opposite. An imprisoned lifetime slave to the sick machine that created her. And MTV wants us to applaud this, as if these are endearing traits, worthy of praise and admiration.
"Incest: sexual intercourse between closely related persons...the crime of sexual intercourse, cohabitation, or marriage between persons within the degrees of consanguinity or affinity wherein marriage is legally forbidden." - dictionary.com
[Courtney and Frank Rodriguez's 2nd wife?]
After 7 months in Oregon Courtney had to face an even tougher rejection. Living with Frank just wasn't working out.
[Frank Rodriguez] "It came to a point where my wife and Courtney were at odds, and I was presented with a choice. Her or me, and the conflict was just intense and I couldn’t handle it. Who wants her? She couldn’t make it with me. She didn’t make it with her mother. She was abandoned. She was lost."
When Courtney went to live with Frank for the 2nd time, it appears that he had already re-married, and so they all lived together. Why was Frank's wife "at odds" with Courtney? We assume this was due to her psychotic behavior, or some other stepdaughter/stepmother strife. But the reason is never actually given in the segment. Frank then states his wife presented him with an ultimatum, "her or me." Now think about this for a moment...if a man is cheating on his wife and the wife finds out...if he is LUCKY, the wife will tell him "her or me." Were Frank and Courtney involved in an inappropriate relationship, which may have actually been concentual? Was this the real reason his wife wanted him to choose? Maybe, maybe not.
[Harrison] "Some of Linda’s husbands later on had some problems, especially when they went to Australia without telling me. I have really no idea what happened to them down there"
Australia? I thought Courtney's mother fled to New Zealand?
It’s been a messy life, funded by the Risis’ bequest—not millions, but enough cash so that Linda could answer a 1973 ad in The Whole Earth Catalogue and schlep her proliferating brood to a total-loss sheep farm in New Zealand. Her four other kids adapted to the chaos; Courtney went berserk, yo-yoing between Oregon, New Zealand, reform school and Portland punk clubs until Linda emancipated her at 16 and signed over a slice of the inheritance…
It sounds like Courtney did more than yo-yo into New Zealand, as the above post card seems to suggest she was enrolled in school there, and preparing to take part in a theatre play of Oliver Twist - though it's hard to read her messy writing. [I guess she'd be around 9 years old at that point?] The return address seems to be a Hostel. Why was her mailing address a hostel if she was staying with mom on a sheep farm? And what was Harrison alluding to, when he said some of Linda's later husbands in Australia really had some problems? Did he mean New Zealand, during the time Courtney wrote this letter?
Imagine. Courtney is this child, being juggled all over the place - even internationally in some cases - staying with who knows who, being subjected to who knows what, staying who knows where. Yet Harrison, who we assume was nowhere to be found, seems to provide some of the only details as to what was happening to his daughter during this time. And all the while, money from the Risis seems to be flowing into it all in some form or another. The only thing that explains this to me, is that Courtney was in the middle of some sort of mind control/trafficking campaign - and everyone involved is doing their own version of damage control here - which is why nothing ever quite makes sense or feels conclusive.
[Harrison]...So I got a buddy of mine, he had a private plane, fly me up to Salem and I went and saw her…
In this revealing recent interview, Harrison speaks about re-connecting with Courtney while she was in "juvy" [jail for minors]. The interviewer asks Harrison about a part of his recent book where he allegedly states Courtney was subjected to "Stanford Experiments."
[Harrison] "I don’t know if they were Standford per se. But there was some kinda Oregon State bunch too don’t forget, you know? Oregon box. You know, Reich? They had this thing about RE parenting. Reichian psychology. They put her…they were doing Tarot reading, fire walking, hatha yoga, raja yoga…running on no food, that kinda stuff…it was Portland...it was back in the day you know…they were just as bad as the Haight Ashbury. I mean wasn’t nothin different about it, 'cept it was Oregon…. I don’t know what they were exposing her to but it was…oh yeah, they gave her pills…toolinahl. Tuinal. Which is the blue and the red pill. Sleeping pill. It’s a hypnotic. Truth serum type of thing. Secenol, tuinal. ..
Notice that Harrison did not outright deny the "Stanford Experiments" question, but quickly pivoted to Oregon, and what was going on there. If you pay attention, Harrison is really good at changing the topic when he doesn't want to talk about a specific detail. The interviewer then asks how old Courtney was at the time.
[Harrison] "…before she went into juvy, 14. Between 12 and 14. And they were getting her to try and ERASE me from her mind. And I found out that the reason they were doing that….they thought I was after their money! And at the time I didn’t even know they had the money!"
How does Harrison know about all of these experiments and drugs and brainwashing, and memory erasing, and other crazy treatments his daughter was subjected to during those years he was supposedly absent in her life? Perhaps she told him, perhaps he is making it all up, perhaps he was directly involved! But given the shocking detail, we have to wonder just WHY Harrison offers all of this up. There must be either some truth to it, or a will to distort the truth - which insinuates that the real story might have actually been far worse and shocking than he is letting on! But who the hell knows...
[Courtney with former boyfriend, Rozz Rezabeck]
Now, recall the quote earlier from Rozz Rezabeck, about Hank leaving "Courtney with like some groupie at the commune who gave her LSD in her Corn Flakes like every morning"
Rozz was supposedly a former boyfriend of Courtney. So the information he gives regarding her and Hank Harrison, I assume, is mostly from her or the horse's mouth. But whatever the case, observe that above he states it was Harrison who took Courtney to a commune. Well, I thought Linda was the one took her up there in Oregon, specifically under the nose of Hank? Did they both leave her in a commune at different points in time? Is Rozz mixing things up here?
After 7 months in Oregon, Courtney had to face an even tougher rejection. Living with Frank just wasn’t working out. This latest betrayal pushed Courtney over the edge into a world of anger and ever increasing alienation. Now a young teenager, Courtney began living a nomadic life. Bouncing from foster home to foster home, but trusting no-one.
[Courtney] "You’d walk in the door and know that guy would molest you, just know it. Like within an hour and be out."
I don't think young Courtney developed this advanced "molester detector" ability without having been molested previously. In fact, Roz Rezabeck tells a pretty shocking story in one interview involving an underaged Courtney and Ted Nugent. Who knows what fact and fiction is, but where there is this much smoke, there's probably some fire.
Then at 13 after getting caught shoplifting, Courtney was sent to juvenile hall and from there, reform school...After years in juvy and foster homes, Courtney had become an alienated wild child, who’s new monthly stipend never went far enough.
[Are these pictures Courtney drew while at a Hillcrest Reform School?]
The Hole: "The meaning of the hole is a prison cell where a prisoner who is being punished is kept alone : solitary confinement." - merriam-webster.com
[Harrison] "...and it turned out the letter head was from juvenile hall. Frank didn’t say she was in juvy!…because she was “beyond parental control."...When I first got her out of juvenile hall she didn’t have any money at all...She had no clothes, mom had just abandoned her into Juvy. And I said “Courtney what are you doing in this situation you're a millionaire” She said “no mom says the money’s gone.”
[Harrison] "She was told that I was dead…but the real motive behind it was they thought I had some claim to the money…it turns out…the lawyers that were running the adoption…it wasn’t really an adoption it was a “take away” - they were Catholics too, they were telling Linda and Chat Risi and Ruella Risi that…Fararri and Risi is a large optician on Montgomery street in San Francisco….and the lawyers told them if they didn’t do something about me in the end…when the child was of age I could make a claim against the money because the child was in their name, cause they were using the child as a tax dodge….I told her about it [her money], that was a mistake, I shouldn’t have done that.
I have tried to find information on this "Fararri and Risi" Optician company without success. Certainly this aspect of Hank's story could all be valid, or at least partially. Or mostly lies! But the important point, I think, is the idea that Courtney's life was being financed to a degree - and there was an air of secrecy and questionable legality to it all.
On one hand, Harrison speaks of MILLIONS. On the other, Courtney speaks of a measley $500 per month allowance - even though she does allude to her grandparents being wealthy in other places. While $500 per month wasn't a TON of money back in the early 80s - it was plenty enough to pay rent in a nice middle class neighborhood, probably with a couple hundred to spare. For someone of Courtney's age at the time [a teen], that might as well have equated to being "rich." But she goes out of her way to downplay the amount of money she was recieving at the time, as if it was nothing, or not nearly enough!
[Harrison] "...in that era, to have 2 1/2 to 3 million dollars in trust for a 5 year old child or a 3 year old child would be a lot of money."
[Harrison] "At that time, she was ALMOST ruined. I mean she was in juvy. They kinda turned her into a whore and all kinds of street kids…she was beat up by a bunch of punks in Oregon a couple of times..."
Who is THEY and how did they "kinda" turn Courtney into a whore? She is about 14 years old here when she was in reform school. Who was pimping her out and to whom? And how did Harrison, who'd allegedly been estranged from her for years, seem to know every little thing that happened to his daughter when he wasn't around? Why was she getting beaten by punks in Oregon? Hank paints a grim picture of the young teen Courtney - who only seems to get used and abused in all of the worst types of ways. The question I have is, was she just a lost soul who'd been abandoned in the streets - or was she a mind controlled slave who's ultimate purpose was yet to be determined by her handlers?
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Sources:
deadsources [Blogspot]
lostlivedead [Blogspot]
Kyle and Jackie O [Youtube channel]
www.sfgate.com
Alternative Air [Youtube channel]
diva.sfsu.edu
scarycoyote [Youtube Channel]
www.encyclopedia.com
The Ochelli Effect [Youtube Channel]
RockStop
Mtv/VH1
Etched in Acid [CBS]
observer.com
latimes.com
metv.com
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