Professional Widows: Contesting History with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Female musicians account for almost 8 percent of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's inductees. The Rock Hall, however, often invites rock widows to accept their late husbands' awards. As a result, rock widows' sustained presence at Rock Hall induction ceremonies illustrates the hall's bias against women's contributions to rock history. This article uses textual and discourse analysis to examine how HBO generated programming out of rock widow Courtney Love's fraught history with Nirvana following the band's 2014 induction into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame. The channel broadcast the Rock Hall's 2014 ceremony, which included Nirvana's induction and reunited Love with her late husband's family and band, including drummer Dave Grohl. Within a year, HBO programmed Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways and Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, two documentary projects that foregrounded Grohl's and Love's contributions to Nirvana's legacy and were particularly instructive in their illumination of Love's significance to the band's legacy. Love used HBO's interest in Cobain as an opportunity to reframe her career through their marriage. Thus, in this article, I recognize Love's rock widow status as a guiding force behind Nirvana's mid-2010s renaissance on HBO and a challenge to HBO and the Rock Hall's hegemonic masculinity.