• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 18, 2014

CANNES, FRANCE -- Grey Worldwide Chief Creative Officer Tor Myhren opened his interview with rocker and actress Courtney Love here this morning cautioning the Lions Festival’s delegates that he would not bring up the subject of drugs as part of some prearranged agreement with his subject, but minutes into the conversation, Love was the one who brought it up.

Describing an early career crossroad of whether to go to Los Angeles or Seattle, she said while there was a scene in the latter, “I knew it would be dead before I got there, because of the drugs,” she said, adding: “Oh damn, I said it.”

The anecdote was in response to Myhren’s question about a branding choice that Love made to name her band “Hole,” which Myhren called the “best name ever for a band.” Love explained that it was at a period where she was transitioning from an earlier band “Babes In Toyland,” and she initially was considering the name “Swamp Pussy” before settling on Hole.

Keeping in mind how inappropriate Love’s reference to drugs and death and the Seattle rock music scene might have been, given the way her husband Kurt Cobain died -- apparently, the Lion’s Festival tech gods also felt that way, because less than a few minutes later, while making a point about how “rock stars do better when they are dead…” the video feed of the seminar literally went dead in the festival’s press room.

It was almost as if the rock gods were censoring her.