Courtney Love to sell her stake in Nirvana catalogue for $162 million? Not true, say reps

Image Credit: PRN/PR Photos; Everett CollectionAn item in the New York Daily News’ Rush & Malloy gossip column positing that Courtney Love was ready to sell her 75% stake in the Nirvana song catalogue to global investment firm Oaktree Capital—complete with a quote from an “insider” stating that “Courtney thinks [it] comes with too many memories … It’s haunted”—spread like interweb head lice yesterday, far and wide.

But no one, it seems, called Love’s reps to see if there was any credence to the story, and it turns out, there isn’t. There’s “nothing to it,” her publicist told EW in a succinctly worded, pronoun-free statement. “Not a clue [how the rumor started]. Never even heard of that company Rush & Molloy reference.”

Nevertheless, this is hardly the first time Love’s ownership of late husband Kurt Cobain’s estate has made the news; in 2001, she fought surviving members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic over the then-unreleased track “You Know You’re Right”; and in  2006, sold 25% of her share of the band’s publishing rights to Larry Mestal, a former Virgin Records executive, for $50 million. Last fall, Unsanctioned use of Cobain’s avatar in a 2009 Guitar Hero release actually united Love with longtime foes Grohl and Novoselic temporarily; both vehemently opposed it in public statements (although only Love, as sole executor of her husband’s estate, threatened a lawsuit against Guitar Hero parent company Activision).