Headlines about the size of the late Kurt Cobain’s penis popped up in a lot of people’s news feeds this week, proving once again how quickly “fake news” can spread.
A headline at Kerrang! reads: “In a recent interview, Courtney Love revealed that Kurt Cobain was packing heat.”
Loudwire reported that Cobain “was a well-endowed man per a recent testimonial from his ex-wife Courtney Love.”
In an article headlined simply “Kurt Cobain Had A Big Penis,” Chart Attack reported: “Courtney Love decided to pull out the, ahem, big guns in a conversation about her late husband in the new issue of GQ.”
And, Alternative Nation shared: “Courtney Love revealed that Kurt Cobain was more ‘beautiful’ than Brad Pitt in a new GQ magazine interview, and that he was ‘well hung.’”
Fact is, Love made no such comment in “a recent interview” or “the new issue of GQ.” The quotes from Cobain’s widow were published by GQ eight years ago – according to a simple Google search. (Vulture's headline in 2011: "Kurt Cobain Was Anatomically Gifted.")
In May 2011, the magazine published an oral history of Nirvana and quoted Love as saying: “Kurt had more presence and more beauty than Brad Pitt — who wanted to play Kurt, by the way. He was a leader, he was strong, in fact he was well f**king hung, if you really want to know.”
She was also quoted saying: “You ever wonder why he thanked Quentin [Tarantino] on the back of In Utero? Quentin asked him to play Eric Stoltz’s part in Pulp Fiction. You can ask Quentin that, because it’s true.”
Both of these quotes, or parts of them, are being regurgitated this week and cited as “recent” or “new.”
According to the website of Boston’s WAAF 107.3: “In a recent interview with GQ magazine, courtley (sic) love reveals that her late husband could back up that ‘libido’ line from ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’” Also running a story this week is Latin Times.
(Full disclosure: The U.S. website for iHeartRadio on Wednesday reported “in an interview in the most recent issue of GQ the Hole frontwoman gets maybe a little too candid about her late husband Kurt Cobain's manhood.”)
Why eight-year-old comments about Cobain’s endowment have come up on music blogs is anyone’s guess. Oddly, Kerrang! referred to "an interview from 2011 recently unearthed by Loudwire" even though Loudwire – and Alternative Nation – sourced Chart Attack. Neither WAAF nor Latin Times cited a source.