Courtney Love Reveals Details About New Album, Book And More

Courtney Love is just finishing the rough mixes for her next album, so don't expect to see the final product in stores — via a still undetermined label — until February.

These were a couple of the things that the former Hole singer revealed in a comprehensive interview on the moonwashedrose.com website. As previously reported by ChartAttack, the 42-year-old Love has been working closely with songwriter/producer Linda Perry and once and future Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan on her new material, her first new songs since 2004's America's Sweetheart. That's an album that Love now describes as "crap," despite the fact that she thought it included some good songs.

"The art was horrific and not my idea, and the label didn't back it at all," she said. "I was busy taking drugs to dull the pain of having lost everything, and made a shit album to boot."

The new album, on the other hand, is described as "grand," "really romantic and really deep," and "beautiful." Love said that Bob Dylan, Radiohead, U2, R.E.M. and Fleetwood Mac were all influences on the new material.

"This record is lovely, but very real. We allowed some natural flaws to remain. We use my voice, as it is, which is rich and deep and honed by a lot of smoking."

Love has played demo recordings of her new songs for Moby, Michael Stipe, Creation Records founder Alan McGee, Bono, film director Cameron Crowe, actor and former boyfriend Edward Norton (who's the subject of one of the new songs, though Love won't reveal which one) and some other friends.

"I don't always listen to what they say, but the feedback is great," she said.

Love is also looking to return to acting, both on stage and in film, which her daughter Frances Bean Cobain is also trying to break into after attending an acting camp. Roles should come easier to Love now that she's shed more than 60 pounds in the past three months by adopting a macrobiotic diet, doing yoga and spending 30 minutes a day on a treadmill. She's also staying straight and sober after years of drug and alcohol addiction, she said.

"Sometimes I'd love to drown myself in a bathtub full of crystal percocet and blow, but it passes. Generally you get a craving and it's gone within three hours if you want to wait it out, or I just chant and it's gone in 10 minutes. I don't have a lot of cravings — just for Krispy Kremes."

Love has been working on a book called Dirty Blonde: The Diaries Of Courtney Love that includes poems, letters, lyrics, lists, diary entries, photos and "a lot of my own dirty blonde shameless hussy behaviour," but she said she doesn't name names in it.

"I've had a lot of romances, big romances, and I'd never destroy the memory of those right now in my life by publishing information about them. Billy [Corgan], for instance, was a big romance of mine."