The Ups And Downs Of Frances Bean Cobain And Courtney Love's Relationship

Sometime between 1989 and 1991, Nirvana's frontman Kurt Cobain met his female counterpart in Hole's frontwoman Courtney Love. After dating for a short time, Love found out she was pregnant, and in February 1992, while Nirvana was on tour, they tied the knot in Hawaii. Cobain and Love's relationship was known to be tumultuous and they both famously struggled with drug addiction, but they attempted to rehabilitate when they found out they were having a baby.

Frances Bean Cobain was born on August 18th, 1992. She was named after Frances McKee of The Vaselines, a band her father covered often, while her middle name "Bean" originated from the fact that her parents thought she looked like one during the ultrasounds. Tragically, after a series of overdoses and a short stay in rehab, Kurt Cobain died by suicide on April 5th,1994 before his daughter was 2 years old. This left Frances Bean with just Love to look after her, and the mother and daughter have had a rocky relationship at best.

Thankfully, Frances Bean has grown up to be a beautiful, intelligent, and talented woman, taking after her parents as both a musician and an artist. In recent years, she has also been fairly open about the difficulties she's had with Love. So let's get into all of the ups and downs of Frances Bean Cobain and Courtney Love's relationship over the years.

Given that Courtney Love was very publicly using drugs when she and Kurt Cobain had Frances Bean Cobain, it shouldn't come as a surprise that CPS did a welfare check a few weeks after she was born. The case was dismissed and all seemed well until 2003 when Love was arrested for attempting to break into her ex's house and overdosed on pills. Frances Bean's paternal grandmother was awarded custody and Love was permitted visitation.

Speaking with People after the incident, Love admitted that Frances Bean had been present when she overdosed and even made her mom tea while they waited for an ambulance. "That's the only time my daughter has ever, ever, ever pitched in on one of my little crises. I made it fun. I said it was going to be gross and I was going to have to make myself throw up, but it was going to be okay," she said.

Frances Bean eventually moved back in with her mom, but in 2009 when she was 17, Love lost custody of her daughter yet again. As Love's attorney told People, it was "simply about Frances preferring to live with her grandmother at this time." Love didn't take Frances Bean's decision well and took to Facebook in a since-deleted post to say, "Any kid of mine who pulls this s*** has lost her position ... She was deceptive she lied and shes lying to herself."

In 2009, the teenage Frances Bean Cobain took out a temporary restraining order against Courtney Love. The testimony was reported by The Fix in a since-deleted article, in which Frances Bean told the court that Love, "has taken drugs for as long as I can remember. She basically exists now on ... Xanax, Adderall, Sonata and Abilify, sugar, and cigarettes. She rarely eats ... She often falls asleep in her bed while she is smoking, and I am constantly worried that she will start a fire (which she has done at least three times) that will threaten our lives."

In addition to these accusations, France Bean also blames her mother for the death of two family pets, one of which supposedly consumed Love's pills, and that mother and daughter had gotten into a physical fight. Frances Bean's testimony went on to detail, "She incessantly rages about her many theories relating to the supposed incidences of 'fraud.'" The judge granted the temporary order to Frances Bean, her dog Uncle Fester, and her paternal aunt and grandmother. Of course, this was over a decade ago, and the mother and daughter duo have been spotted together numerous times in the last several years.

Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love both famously battled heroin addiction and after he died, Love continued to spiral. She once told The Fix in a since-deleted article about the first time she tried heroin. "I was about 16, I guess. It was a horrific experience. At the time, I was working at a dance hall in Taiwan, trying to earn money, so I could afford an apartment in San Francisco." She went on to describe how she tried the drug again at a party in California sometime later, stating that's when her "whole heroin drama" began. Years later, Love announced in February 2020 that she was 18 months sober.

Frances Bean, unfortunately, found herself in the throes of addiction herself. In 2016, a video surfaced of Love and her daughter at Paris Fashion Week seemingly under the influence, raising alarm bells for some fans. Thankfully, in 2018 Frances Bean announced via Instagram in a since-deleted post that she was two years sober. She said, "This moment is a representation of who I am on February 13th, 2018. It feels significant here, now because it's my 2nd sober birthday. It's an interesting and kaleidoscopic decision to share my feelings about something so intimate in a public forum. The fact that I'm sober isn't really public knowledge, decidedly and deliberately. But I think it's more important to put aside my fear about being judged or misunderstood or typecast as one specific thing."

The Newbridge Silverware Museum of Style Icons in Ireland launched an exhibition called "Growing Up Kurt Cobain" in 2018. The exhibition centered around Cobain's life and some of his possessions were on show. But according to a source for RadarOnline, there were some items Frances Bean Cobain didn't realize Courtney Love had allowed to be on show. "Frances didn't know until the last minute Courtney was giving Kurt's diaries to the museum and Frances was devastated she had revealed such private documents. She told Courtney she was just using Kurt for publicity again and has virtually stopped speaking to her again."

Frances Bean met with the The Independent at the museum where she said, "I don't look through his journals. It feels too intimate. I am really regretful that my mom put those out there. I know it was her way of trying to contribute his personal thoughts and I know that people really want to know that. I can't imagine being dead and having people know my intimate thoughts. What an invasion of privacy, I don't think it is merited especially since in his art he decided not to put out that thinking. It is a different thing to get to know him through his art, a deliberate public extension of himself."

There has been a conspiracy theory circling since Kurt Cobain's death in 1994 that he was murdered. Many pinned the crime on the rockstar's wife, Courtney Love, but the case has been determined closed for years and his death was ruled a suicide. But a journalist known for his conspiracy theorists, Richard Lee, filed a lawsuit in Seattle against the city and the police department to release the photos of Cobain's death scene in an attempt to prove that he died by homicide, rather than the previously determined self-inflicted gunshot. The case had been dismissed, but Lee repealed the decision and brought the issue full circle again in 2015.

The court filings, obtained by The Wrap, read, "Most people who have to endure such a personal tragedy are allowed to do so in private but not Courtney Love Cobain or Frances Bean Cobain, due to ... 'the viral nature of the internet.'" Love also testified that Lee made her fear for her safety, as in 2005 he had been arrested for stalking her. Although the matter has been put to rest, the Seattle police department did reexamine the case in 2014, developing a series of photos that had previously been unseen and releasing them to the public. Little can be determined, apart from the gunshot shells, Cobain's drugs, and his suicide note, and his death was again determined to be a suicide.