Parenting is never easy, and every published guide to raising children will emphasise that, now and then, it's important for even the most loving, caring, dedicated and responsible mothers and fathers to carve out some time for themselves, to cut loose and have some fun.
With that said, it's unlikely that any such guide will advise that dumping your baby with a couple of punks for a few days while you go out drinking is A Good Idea.
Not that Courtney Love has ever shown any desire to play by the rules.
The Damned's drummer Rat Scabies had never met Hole's force-of-nature frontwoman before the day in 1996 that she tasked him and Joe Strummer with babysitting her daughter Francis Bean in Los Angeles. But former Clash frontman Strummer and Love had known one another for the best part of a decade by then, having both been cast in Alex Cox's 1987 spaghetti western Straight To Hell. Even so, Strummer probably didn't envisage that he'd be spending a rare day off from working with Scabies on the score to dark Disney comedy Grosse Pointe Blank serving as a surrogate Daddy for Love and Kurt Cobain's only child.
Rat Scabies shares the story in the latest episode of the Messy Lunch podcast, hosted by chef Gizzi Erskine and journalist/broadcaster Leonie May Cooper. Over lunch at Michelin-starred East London restaurant Legado with Damned bandmate Paul Gray, Scabies recalls his one and only encounter with Love, introducing it with the words "Not funny".
"She dumped the baby on me and Joe Strummer and fucked off for three days," he continues.
At this point, understandably, the podcast hosts ask to know more.
"Me and Joe had been in the studio for a while," the drummer explains, "and he'd booked us two rooms at the Mondrian. And we were out by the pool on the first day off, and she turned up with Beanie [Frances Bean] and then just took off with this bloke down at the chalets. He was a singer."
After shutting down enquiries as to whether said singer was Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan (unlikely) or Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder (highly, highly, highly unlikely), Scabies continues, saying, "So we went down to the studio, to carry on, and left the baby with Joe's wife [Lucinda Tait]. And then his missus rang up a few hours later and said, 'I don't know what to fucking do, I've still got the baby here, and she's vanished.' Luckily there were people around who were like, 'Okay, we're used to dealing with Courtney', and they took Beanie. And then a day or two later, she claimed her back."
You can watch the full interview below.
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In a 1996 interview, Joe Strummer revealed that he'd been asked to work on the Grosse Point Blank soundtrack by star and co-writer John Cusack who, coincidentally, he'd also met while filming Straight To Hell in Spain.
"He was fired for not shaving his head," Strummer recalled. "That didn't stop us from hanging out a couple of days."
"I'm gonna release [the music] on my own record," he said. "Especially two or three bits of it that are particularly kicking. I'm beginning to leave quite a bit of things in my wake, so to speak. I think I could collect a CD that would be worth putting out in the next year or so. I think I'm going to call it Strummerville because, although it's me on all the tracks, I'm working with [techno artist] Richard Norris on some and Rat Scabies and Seggs from The Ruts on some, or with a UK percussionist, programmer and musician named Pablo Cooke on others. I thought to give it that name to make it sound like more than one person."
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