During an appearance on the “Messy Lunch” podcast, The Damned drummer Rat Scabies recalled an interesting encounter he had with Courtney Love, claiming that she “dumped” her daughter Frances Bean Cobain on him and The Clash’s Joe Strummer.
“[I met her] once. She dumped the baby on me and Joe Strummer and f*cked off for three days,” he said (as transcribed by Alternative Nation).
“Me and Joe had been in the studio for a while, and he’d booked us some rooms at the Mondrian [Hotel in Los Angeles]. And we were out by the pool, our first day off… And she turned up with Beanie, or [Frances Bean]. And then, just took off with this bloke down at the chalets. He was a singer.”
Asked if it could have been Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, Rat Scabies replied: “No, I don’t think it was him.” He also denied any possibility of it being Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder.
“So, we went down to the studio [to], you know, carry on… We left the baby with Joe’s wife,” he continued, noting that they were by the pool. “And then, his Mrs. rang up a few hours later. [She said], ‘I don’t know what to f*cking do. I’ve still got a baby here. And she’s [Courtney] vanished.’”
“[We] put it in some funny clothes,” he joked. “But that was it. Seriously, you know. And luckily, there were people around, who were like, ‘We’re used to dealing with Courtney.’ And they took Beanie, Frances Bean. And then a day or so later she claimed ‘em back.”
After the interviewers described the day he met Love as “a memorable time,” he quipped, “Well, I didn’t really meet her, she just sort of breezed past me.”
