If you’re one of many Nirvana fans who found deceased frontman Kurt Cobain’s appearance in Guitar Hero 5 to be in poor taste, you can apparently count yourself in the company of his widow, Courtney Love. Love entered a meltdown of sorts on Twitter early this morning, claiming she planned to sue Activision, claiming that the never approved his use in game. Activision, on the other hand, claims that everything was approved and above board. For all of the (sometimes intelligible) sides of the argument, head under the cut.

Love claims, via two posts on her Twitter which we’ve joined for clairity, (but not corrected for legibility, as she’s been in pretty much a stream of consciousness rant for the majority of the day) that “we have NOTHING to do with this it was presented to me and oi said “show me a better avataR” TO DRAG MY HEELS., never did i intend on allowing GUITARHERO for me or for Kurt i am NOT yoko fucking Ono no ofense to her, but i am a different person entirely and this is insane”.

Activision fired back earlier today, stating that “Guitar Hero secured the necessary licensing rights from the Cobain estate in a written agreement signed by Courtney Love to use Kurt Cobain’s likeness as a fully playable character in Guitar Hero 5“. Assuming all of this is indeed true, one is left to wonder why Love would “drag her heels” by asking to see a better version of Kurt’s avatar if she were so opposed to the concept to begin with? Why not simply say “No!” and be done with it?

Meanwhile, the remaining two-thirds of Nirvana, drummer Dave Grohl and bassist Krist Novoselic, issued a joint statement regarding the situation:

This is a statement regarding Nirvana, Guitar Hero and the likeness of the late Kurt Cobain.

We want people to know that we are dismayed and very disappointed in the way a facsimile of Kurt is used in the Guitar Hero game. The name and likeness of Kurt Cobain are the sole property of his estate – we have no control whatsoever in that area.

While we were aware of Kurt’s image being used with two Nirvana songs, we didn’t know players have the ability to unlock the character. This feature allows the character to be used with any kind of song the player wants. We urge Activision to do the right thing in “re-locking” Kurt’s character so that this won’t continue in the future.

It’s hard to watch an image of Kurt pantomiming other artists’ music alongside cartoon characters. Kurt Cobain wrote songs that hold a lot of meaning to people all over the world. We feel he deserves better.

Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl

Looks like this may well get worse before it gets better. We’ll keep you updated.