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In May 1966, Bob Dylan famously sang “Like a Rolling Stone” at the Royal Albert Hall. Nearly 60 years later, Courtney Love performed the classic right next door.
On Tuesday, Love was at London’s Royal Geographical Society in conversation with actor-writer Todd Almond, celebrating the release of his new oral history Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan’s ‘Girl From the North Country’ and Broadway’s Rebirth (Almond starred in the Dylan musical, and casted Love in her 2015 opera debut, Kansas City Choir Boy).
Following their onstage interview, Love stood up and tore through the Sixties classic, with Almond providing backing vocals. Backed by acoustic guitar, she conquered each lengthy line — only stopping a few times to glance at the lyric sheet in her hands. Check it out below.
While speaking to the crowd, Love once again confirmed that Hole are not reuniting (she’s dismissed these rumors over the years) and that she has plans to tour soon. She also said her memoir will be arriving at the end of the year, via HarperCollins.
The event follows Love’s recent onstage appearance with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, when she joined his cover band (the Coverups) for Cheap Trick’s “He’s a Whore” and “Surrender,” as well as Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ “Even the Losers.”
“My name is Courtney Love,” she told the crowd. “You may not remember me. I’ve been living in a cave in Birmingham for about nine years. We’ll give this a fucking try, right?”
Last year, Love penned a searing op-ed in The Guardian about the lack of female artists in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “The Rock Hall’s canon-making doesn’t just reek of sexist gatekeeping, but also purposeful ignorance and hostility,” she wrote. “If the Rock Hall is not willing to look at the ways it is replicating the violence of structural racism and sexism that artists face in the music industry, if it cannot properly honor what visionary women artists have created, innovated, revolutionized and contributed to popular music — well, then let it go to hell in a handbag.”
