Glam punkNYMPHS

Ex-Nymph Inger Lorre Pens Retort To Hole's 'Sassy'
Article By Carrie Borzillo for ALLSTAR, July 21, 1998

Courtney Love watch out... Inger Lorre is back with a vengeance. As a retort to Hole's "Sassy" on Pretty on the Inside -- which includes an answering machine message from Lorre -- Lorre has penned a song all about Ms. Love titled "She's Not Your Friend" (allstar, July 20). The track will be included in her solo debut album, Transcendental Medication, due tentatively this fall on Triple X Records.

"She's Not Your Friend" goes like this: "Not as dumb as you tried to make believe/ So stifle the scream/ Behind your smilin' grindin' teeth/ A smile and a scream/ She's not your friend/ She can tell you what she wants to/ But she's not your friend."

The answer to the question "Why?" dates back to Love's early years in Los Angeles. "I heard about her through Dave Brown, an artist, sax player, and coffeehouse poet, about this woman who burned down the apartment building where a friend used to live, and she stole some girl's engagement ring and all that," explains Lorre, former lead singer of Nymphs, a band Love has praised.

"And people would tell me, 'Don't be friends with her, she's crazy,'" continues Lorre. "Then I get this phone call out of the blue and it's Courtney going, 'Hi, I really like your band and I think we should be friends... We look like sisters, don't we?' I'm like, 'Huh?' I got off the phone crying, thinking, 'I don't look like her, do I?' It was before the plastic surgery and when she was fat."

Anyway, one thing led to another, Love befriended Lorre's then-best friend, slept with her boyfriend and a bit of a rivalry developed, leading Love to call Lorre "despicable" in the famed Vanity Fair article from 1993. "She stole my whole trip," says Lorre. "But she stole the stupid aspects of it, the getting onstage naked and all the craziness. All the good stuff, like writing a good song, she had to hire someone like Billy Corgan to do.

"The whole difference between me and Courtney is I never wanted to be a star," continues Lorre. "With Courtney... she has nothing to do with art or music."

Lorre also includes Love in her forthcoming, not- yet- titled graphic novel, which she says will be released on New York- based Fanatic Graphic Novels in the summer of 1999. The book will also feature Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro, John Frusciante, and Anthony Keidis.

"It's about my life in the music industry," says Lorre of the book. "People ask me how it feels that Courtney Love ripped off my whole character. Well now, everyone can see."

As for the rest of Lorre's new album, she says it's nothing like the Nymphs. "It's really angst-y, very dramatic music," she says. "Like if PJ Harvey and Patti Smith merged and Massive Attack came along for the ride... I worship at the altar of PJ Harvey."

Lorre, who is clean and sober these days, says it's taken her several years to get back in the music game because the industry was "scared" of her following the famed incident where she pissed on the desk of Tom Zutaut, an A&R executive at Geffen, around the release of the Nymphs' 1991 self- titled album.

"I was very fed up with the whole music industry," she says. "I was sick of being the patron saint of fucked- over musicians. I wanted to chill out for awhile. People would say to me, 'I wish I did that,' but it fucked up my whole career. People were scared of me. They thought I was insane."

Lorre's new band includes Bill Donahue, who has played keyboards with John Cale, Dave Green of the Colored Greens, Keith Hartel from Adrenaline O.D. and Motel Shootout, and ex-Paleface drummer Paul Andrew.