Cobain’s Widow Will Ask Court to Block Auction

Rocker Courtney Love said Wednesday that she plans to take legal action to stop the sale here this weekend of things that belonged to her late husband, Kurt Cobain, including a discharge slip from a drug rehabilitation center.

A total of 13 items, also including a bride-and-groom snow globe purported to have been used on their wedding cake, are to be sold as part of a 1,150-piece celebrity auction Saturday and Sunday at the Executive Collectibles Gallery. Cobain, the leader of the rock band Nirvana, killed himself in April 1994 after a long bout with drug addiction.

Executive Collectibles President William Hughes said the Cobain items will go on sale as planned.

“Tell [Love] she can bid like everybody else,” he said. Hughes said he expects the auction to take in more than $1.5 million, but said the Cobain items probably won’t fetch more than $6,000.

Love said she is disturbed by some news reports implying that she is responsible for selling the items. Whoever did provide them, she said, has no right to sell them.

“In a million years, no one in my family would do such a vile thing,” she said. “I’m completely disgusted.”

Hughes said the gallery bought the items, including an empty pimple cream bottle, from someone who got them from a friend of Cobain’s. He said they have been authenticated, and that he has not heard from Love’s attorney and is not concerned about her threat to sue.

“We don’t have to get her approval, because she doesn’t own the items,” Hughes said. “If there is a legitimate dispute, we would face that. But unless somebody says that it’s stolen, we don’t put any credence in it.”

The Cobain items are “very personal and close to Courtney, and she’s just bitching because she didn’t keep [them],” Hughes added. “Tell her she can bid like everyone else. We’d love to see her.”

Hughes said that the gallery did weigh questions of taste in deciding what personal items of Cobain’s to sell. He said he turned down one offered item, a spoon used for shooting heroin, because “I didn’t want to be looked at as promoting drug abuse. We just shied away from that one. The market value is $5,000 to $7,000.”

Hughes also considered excluding the document discharging Cobain from drug rehabilitation, “but it was showing he was trying to get help,” he said. “I thought it would not be as bad as the heroin spoon.”

The pimple cream bottle, Hughes said, is “an amusing novelty item. For somebody to know it was used by [Cobain] is kind of neat. It’s a cheap, affordable item . . . a way for individuals to be able to own a piece of something of his.”

Also on sale are a 1933 “King Kong” film poster that Hughes estimates will fetch $50,000 to $60,000; a white stage jumpsuit of Elvis Presley’s that Hughes said might go for $60,000 to $80,000, and a sample of John F. Kennedy’s hair along with a pair of his cuff links, both of which could go for $10,000 to $15,000, he said.

Other items include guitars signed by Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, the Grateful Dead and Neil Young; a military uniform worn by Tom Hanks in the film “Forrest Gump,” and song lyrics and the list of songs that Stevie Ray Vaughan wrote out before playing at his final performance. His helicopter crashed after the show.

Also contributing to this report were Times correspondents Steve Hochman and Buddy Seigal.