Kathleen Hanna on Kurt Cobain friendship, Courtney Love sucker punch, Bikini Kill legacy

Kathleen Hanna is the queen of her own world now.

The 55-year-old punk rock icon, best known as lead singer of Bikini Kill and pioneer of the musical feminist movement Riot Grrrl, opens up about her life and career in “Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk” (Ecco, 324 pp., out now).

In the ‘90s, Bikini Kill’s music became a righteous snarl for women alienated by sexism, particularly the band’s 1993 single “Rebel Girl.” Over the years, the song has been embraced in pop culture for its feminine fieriness, from soundtrack appearances on “Orange is the New Black” and “Little Wing” to a cameo in Miley Cyrus’ Super Bowl preshow prep.

But Hanna says the fesity banger, inspired by labor activist Joe Hill, goes beyond surface-level girl power and rock ‘n’ roll rebellion.

“I also think about kids who stand up to their teacher in class, whatever gender they are, and say, ‘You got my pronoun wrong,’ ” Hanna tells USA TODAY. “There’s all different ways to be rebellious. It doesn’t just have to be being a punk rocker and wearing a certain kind of outfit or having purple hair.”

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Kathleen Hanna on writing about her sexual trauma

Hanna, who has a background in crisis counseling, gets candid about her experience with sexual violence in “Rebel Girl.”

From having nude photographs of herself published by an ex-boyfriend in college to being groped by a venue employee during an unruly Los Angeles concert, Hanna says it was important to acknowledge this spectrum of abuse.

“The traumas with a capital T set me up to keep being traumatized because I kept getting into bad situations because I thought I deserved it,” Hanna says. “So, I would walk into toxic situations and stay, whereas maybe if I had learned earlier to listen to my intuition and all of that kind of stuff, I may have left.”

The “Reject All American” singer hopes sharing her history can comfort and empower readers dealing with trauma.

“A lot of times, I wouldn’t talk about this stuff because it felt overwhelming and like it was too much and nobody would believe me,” Hanna says. “So, I hope that people who do have complicated and difficult stories read this and they’re like, ‘Oh, I feel seen, or I feel validated.’ ”

Kathleen Hanna coined the phrase ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ during her Kurt Cobain friendship

Hanna befriended Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain when the two were part of the art and music scenes in Olympia, Washington. She inadvertently contributed to the band’s mainstream breakthrough after a night of debauchery together.

During a drunken “rampage,” Hanna wrote “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit,” on Cobain’s bedroom wall, and he used it to title the lead single of Nirvana’s major-label debut “Nevermind.”

“It was a night of partying. I wrote something on a wall,” Hanna says matter-of-factly. “Did I have any idea it was going to become one of the most well-known songs in the world? Absolutely not.”

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“Smells Like Teen Spirit” peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, while “Nevermind” went on to sell 10 million copies.

“These were two kids from Aberdeen who loved KISS and started a band, and they were very enmeshed in a scene that was like, ‘Don’t be on a major label. Don’t make money,’ ” Hanna says. But “millions of kids have picked up guitars because of them. Millions of kids have started writing songs and expressing themselves.”

She adds: “I just really wish that Kurt was still around so we could be old together and chit-chat.”

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What Kathleen Hanna learned from Courtney Love assault

While attending Lollapalooza 1995, Hanna was approached by singer-songwriter Courtney Love, wife of Hanna’s friend Cobain. Despite not having a relationship with Love, Hanna writes that the Hole frontwoman harassed her in the crowd after Hole’s set and later punched her in the face.

Love was given a criminal citation for the assault and subsequently prosecuted for the offense.

“It happened at a specific time when there was a lot of people who I loved who were dying of AIDS, suicide or drug abuse, so it was like this weird thing that happened at a very hard time in my life already,” Hanna reflects. “And I had no idea why this was happening because there was no precipitating event. I didn’t say anything rude. I didn’t do anything.”

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But instead of condemning Love in the press, Hanna kept to herself. She says the experience helped her define her relationship with the media, as outlets covering the assault portrayed Love’s attack as a “catfight” between the women.

“I made the decision at that point not to talk back or not to insert myself to try to tell the truth because I knew it would just fuel the whole thing, and I didn’t want to provide free content for people,” Hanna says. “I wanted to make music, and I wanted to be there for my friends, and that was more important to me than getting my side of the story out there.”

Kathleen Hanna on her marriage to Beastie Boys’ Adam Horovitz

Hanna also opens up about her decadeslong relationship with musician Adam Horovitz, better known as Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys. The two married in 2006 and share a son.

While the couple has yet to release music together, Hanna says Horovitz inspired her to rethink her approach to business. The professional support afforded to the Beastie Boys with their major-label status stood in contrast to Hanna, who says she was “DIY-ing myself into the ground” with the lack of support on her independent label projects.

“I didn’t know about jobs like publicists, manager, booking agent, so we did everything ourselves. And that was great,” Hanna says. “You have control over the situation. But at a certain point, when do you have time to write songs if you’re always booking shows and you’re doing your own management?”

Aside from music, Hanna says their contrasting experiences with public scrutiny were a sobering reminder of the gender-based stigma that plagues female artists.

“I’ve been boycotted so many times by so many different groups of people, and Beastie Boys — while I love a lot of their later work — their earlier work was very sexist and, in some cases, homophobic,” Hanna says. “And it really helped validate the fact that I felt like some of it was happening because I’m a woman and specifically a feminist woman, and that it just becomes a lightning rod for all kinds of people to get angry.”

Kathleen Hanna is embracing musical legacy with Bikini Kill reunion

Despite the fervent support of its diehard fans, Bikini Kill disbanded in early 1998, with Hanna citing her own mental-health journey and internal issues in the band as contributing factors. Following a two-decade hiatus, Bikini Kill reunited for a performance in 2017, which helped reactivate the band’s touring life.

Hanna says putting the band back together has given her the opportunity to “go back into a situation that when I left was really not healthy for me to be in.

“I needed to leave Bikini Kill when I did,” Hanna says. “I was so overwhelmed, and I think our relationships had degraded to such a bad place because we felt attacked from all sides and constantly misrepresented and treated poorly.”

Hanna has found redemption in reconnecting with the band’s music. The Riot Grrrl rockers, she now sees, were not simply political provocateurs. They had a great musical pen, too.

“As I’m singing these songs (again), I’m like, ‘These songs are awesome,’ ” Hanna says. “I’m being validated that we weren’t just a feminist band. We’re actually a great punk band.”

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential, 24/7 support to survivors and their loved ones in English and Spanish at: 800.656.HOPE (4673) and Hotline.RAINN.org and en Español RAINN.org/es.