Lana Del Rey is on the cover of this month’s Dazed magazine, with an interview conducted by none other than Courtney Love. A condensed version of the piece is now online, and it’s packed with great anecdotes and tips about Del Rey’s upcoming album, Lust for Life.
First, Del Rey and Love are huge fans of one another (and they briefly toured together in 2015):
CL: So, since I toured with you, I got kind of obsessed and went down this Lana rabbit hole and became – not like I’m wearing a flower crown, Lana, don’t get ideas – but I absolutely love it. I love it as much as I love PJ Harvey.
LDR: That’s amazing because, maybe it’s slightly well documented, but I love everything you do, everything you have done – I couldn’t believe that you came on the tour with me.
Second, Love once met Elizabeth Taylor while hanging out with her friend Carrie Fisher at Taylor’s Easter party:
CL: I looked at Carrie and I said, ‘This is not worth it,’ and Carrie said, ‘Oh, yes it is.’ So we snuck upstairs and, Lana, when you go past the Warhol of Elizabeth Taylor as you’re sneaking up the stairs and it says ‘001’, you start getting goosebumps. And then you see her room and it’s all lavender, like her eyes. And she’s in the bathroom getting her hair done by this guy named José Eber who wears a cowboy hat and has long hair, and I’m like, ‘What am I doing here? I’m not Hollywood royalty.’ And the first words out of her mouth are, like, ‘Fuck you, Carrie, how ya doin’?’ She was so salty but such a goddess at the same time.
Third, Del Rey says that interview she did from a trailer park in New Jersey in 2008 was “cringey,” but she does seem to have fond memories of living there:
LDR: I had been playing around for maybe four years, just open mics, and I got a contract with this indie label called 5 Points Records in 2007. They gave me $10,000 and I found this trailer in New Jersey, across the Hudson – Bergen Light Rail. So, I moved there, I finished school and I made that record (Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant), which was shelved for two and a half years, and then came out for, like, three months. But I was proud of myself. I felt like I had arrived, in my own way.
Finally, Love says Kurt Cobain “sat in every mastering session like a fiend,” a task she and Del Rey both agree is a pain.
Del Rey also revealed some details about her new album, Lust for Life. The Weeknd sings on the title track, which Del Rey reworked after consulting with pop mastermind Max Martin in Sweden. A rumored Sean Lennon feature is in fact a reality; Lennon sings on a song called “Tomorrow Never Came,” on which Del Rey namechecks his parents, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
After trading tweets with Del Rey, Love herself was also rumored to be on Lust for Life, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Maybe they were just excited about this great interview. Read the online version of Dazed‘s Lana Del Rey/Courtney Love interview here.
