Melissa Auf der Maur reflects on Hole’s Legacy and the importance of analog living

Audio Books is a column focused on the latest books about music. Every month, Grant Sharples sits down with authors, journalists, and poets to discuss the latest music memoirs, biographies, essay collections, and more.

Melissa Auf der Maur’s first performance with Hole was at Reading Festival in 1994. It was mere months after the deaths of Kurt Cobain, the husband of frontwoman Courtney Love, and Kristen Pfaff, Hole’s original bassist. Nevertheless, here was Hole, embroiled in a tabloid typhoon, performing for approximately 65,000 people. Auf der Maur, at the recommendation of Love’s former paramour (and Auf der Maur’s unlikely pen pal) Billy Corgan, replaced Pfaff on the world tour supporting their breakthrough album, Live Through This, and she flew from her hometown of Montreal to the band’s rehearsal space in Seattle to master the setlist as quickly as possible.

This is roughly where Auf der Maur’s memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry, begins. But much of the book’s intrigue lies in the stories leading up to this pivotal moment in its author’s career. After meeting Billy Corgan at a Smashing Pumpkins show in Montreal and developing a close friendship, Auf der Maur was inspired to form a band of her own and pick up the bass guitar. That led to an opening slot at Smashing Pumpkins’ next stop in Montreal, which led to Corgan recommending Auf de Maur to Love. Suddenly, she was a key figure in Hole. Not long after that, she was performing with Corgan on the Pumpkins’ Machina / The Machines of God tour. Auf der Maur’s memoir is a dizzying journey that flits from one mind-blowing anecdote to the next at a restless clip. Underneath the incredulity, though, is a persistent paean to the power of art and how it binds us to people we may have never encountered otherwise.

For the latest edition of Audio Books, I hopped on a Zoom call with Auf der Maur ahead of the book’s release to discuss her current friendships with Love and Corgan, how her various artistic endeavors intersect, when she wants her daughter to read this book, and the prospects of a Hole reunion. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Paste Magazine: When did you first get the idea to write a memoir?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Well, I have been keeping a diary since I was ten. So I’ve always been chronicling my experience of being human, which is a weird thing to be on the planet Earth. I’ve always been reflecting on it, but, just a couple of years ago, right before I turned 50, I was coming out of a decade of having quit music, becoming a mother, focusing on local, small-scale life, like the opposite of my global wandering. And it had been exactly ten years since I had quit music altogether, and my daughter was about to be a decade old, and it started. It had clearly been percolating. I don’t want to give the pandemic any credit in the world for anything, but the shutdown, the quiet and having to turn inward, started the process. I recognized that I’d been running from the ‘90s as fast as I could for a long time, and it was ready for me to actually take the time I needed to unpack it, not just for my own letting go and reflecting and healing, but also to offer it to those who care about the ‘90s or all the layers in my book: coming of age, women’s stories, women in rock stories, the analog-to-digital nightmare that we witnessed. But really, for my daughter, I realized if I don’t just get this looked at and done and out of my system, it will probably just stay like a beast inside of me. So I really did it for personal digestion reasons, but then it just happened so quickly and so easily and so beautifully. And now I love writing, and I want to write forever.

You’re also pulling from some of your old journals, photographs, and letters. What was it like going back through all of those things and processing them in the present day?

Well, the book itself [takes place during one] decade. It’s a chunk. It’s the decade that defined me and my generation. Do I give a bit of my important origin story and my cool parents and my cool city? Yes, but choosing that slice of a decade is a reflection of how I have moved through life quite often, like a decade done, a decade next. So something about 25 years, like a quarter-century perspective on the ‘90s and for cultural critics and commentators, I’m sure we all see that with every decade, a new zeitgeist or generational understanding happens. But for me, something about a quarter-century [since the ‘90s] and for me being a half-a-century old, it seemed like a very honorable timekeeper. I had waited long enough, but not too long, and I gained from the wisdom of what time offers people and culture. You know, like cultural critics can all agree that this is when you understand a movement.

This is when you can look back at history, and having participated as a witness, I want to participate in cultural witnessing of what happens in certain moments of counterculture, like women in art and women in history. It seemed like a cool chunk of time had passed, and I guess I was objective enough. I almost was able to be, yet again, a tourist in my own life. I got to go back as an outsider, the bass player who was already an outsider, but I got to approach it with a new detachment and objectivity that I thought was important. With the exception of some hard things, like loss, my father, drug addiction, there was pain that I really hadn’t dealt with. It kind of all just felt familiar and cozy to be back in it. There were really only a few, epically difficult things, which I think are obvious, like the painful parts in the book, which for people who might choose to listen to the audio book, you shall see there were parts that I could not speak without crying, like I could not speak without cracking. That’s when I realized that there really was still shit hurting in there, but generally, it felt great. It felt like an exorcism. It felt good.

There’s only so much of a distance you can put between yourself and the memories you have. I’m sure at moments you do feel like a tourist in your own life, but then there come those more painful parts, where you’re back in it and you’re processing it again.

Processing it probably for the first time! [laughs] I had run away from a lot of it. But what’s interesting is I wrote 90% of the book from memory. I had all the photos of almost every crowd I ever played for. I went through a roll of film a day. I kept a daily diary. I did not have to refer to those to write this book. In terms of people who study the mystery of memory, I credit the fact that I was a documentarian, which is why I remembered everything so clearly. Because I was so aware of the shit happening, and I was aware of the fact that I might not remember this, and I was aware of the fact that I didn’t understand what was happening, and I was aware of the fact that it hurt so bad I couldn’t see it. What’s amazing is my documentarian practices allowed me to remember better, and I wrote it mostly from memory.

Some of the only things that actually shocked me were the power of Courtney’s words in those two letters of hers that I published and I got her approval to. I realized that was [during] the chaos and intensity of me and Hole at the height of our success and the height of our beauty as women, and the height of our power and the trickiness of being Courtney’s right-hand woman. Those letters, when she gave them to me, I did not actually understand the power of them until I read them 20 years later. I knew that, in my book, one of the top commitments I had was to reframe Courtney from a credible witness’ position. I am a credible person. I am not a drug addict. I clearly take art and music very seriously. I am not here to cash in on dollars and bucks. I don’t want to be famous. I don’t do shit for money. I do things to be an honest, happy person. I knew that I was going to reframe her with all of my great perspectives, and watching her be burned at the stake, and watching a misogynistic world treat her like garbage when she was a widow with drug addiction, alone, with a child, with no parents of her own… I knew that this was my goal.

Toward the end of the book, when I reveal her character in her own words, I think I managed to give her the power. She shows how fucking smart and cool she is. I treat the reader to her own wisdom at the time when I feel like that is proof that this woman is far more intelligent and generous and considerate of the people who are important to her than the world would imagine. I do show, I think, an honorable quality in her that a lot of people don’t give her the benefit of the doubt of having, so her letters were one of the things I learned something new from. I didn’t receive them at the time in the way that she was offering them, like she really was offering deep insight into me as a woman coming of age. That’s why I wanted to show those, but mainly that’s what I learned for myself. She got to show me something in the end, too.

In that moment, she saw you really well when, at the time, it seemed like maybe you were having some trouble seeing yourself.

Exactly, and she also shows, which I think is important for the history of women in art and music, her deep understanding of beauty and the beauty-myth of things. Society, I feel like, is worse than ever right now, that beauty and the algorithms mining for little girls’ insecurities and trying to make them buy Sephora and be beautiful and look at themselves in the mirror and dress up. Courtney was like a complicated beauty person herself, yes, but she knows a thing or two about the history of beauty and how women can get trapped in that. It enforces that she is a frontline feminist of her generation, way ahead of her time as always, in so many ways. I’m very happy to be able to show that and show them in her own words. I didn’t even have to say it. I just had to show that.

You wrote 90% of this book from memory. What was that remaining 10%?

There’s a chapter in the book called “Warrior Goddess,” and on YouTube, one of the only professionally shot Hole shows of our early days, within months of Kurt’s death and months of Kristen [Pfaff] dying, ABC News sent a five-camera shoot to Chicago to record this concert we did in the fall of 1994. I’d been in the band for a month or two. I often have said, for the last decade, the legacy of Hole is lost to the gutters of YouTube. I’ve been saying that forever, because the world has forgotten Hole in a way that I think is unfair. But then this video reminded me how incredible those shows were, and my goal was to bring the readers onto the stage with me, the bass player, and to experience what a show in Hole was like at that time. What it was like being next to what is one of the most fearless female performers that will ever live, what it was like to be sitting in the gaze of all of these gawking people, some who were there for the car crash, some that were there because they knew she was powerful and had something new to say. I watched that thing like 20 times and looked at every single twist of her hand and every time she stagedived. I watched it over and over to see what those hands in the crowd were doing to her. And because I’ve been scanning and archiving my photographic negatives at the same time, I have this searchable database. I could search “backstage Chicago 1994 Reading Festival,” and photos would pop up, and that’s where I could get those details like the color of the dressing room door or the texture on the food table. My photos and YouTube gave me a little bit of color and dimension.

Being a photographer when you’re writing a book, you have things that you can refer back to from 20 years ago. You mentioned earlier that you fell in love with the art of writing while doing this book. Between writing, photography, and music, where do those three things intersect for you?

Such a crazy, cool question, because I am thanking the goddesses of creation every day lately. In 2026 I, as a musician, get to emerge in the world as a writer and a photographer, and even in my wildest dreams as an art student. I don’t know that I would have believed that, in one short life, I could have all three of those happen. What’s weird is that, in some ways, they don’t intersect. The only thing that intersects is my fire to live my passion, to tell the story of being a female human on the planet Earth in a short life. That is the only place it intersects because, in fact, my love of music and photography are polar opposite. I talk about it in the book. Photography is me alone, protected from the world alone, hidden behind a camera, in a corner or in a dark room. My world alone is photography, but then it’s nonverbal. It’s just visual.

Then my music is obviously all about collaboration and raw, vulnerable exposure to my band members, to the audiences, to the song, the music that I commit to putting out there, and those are polar opposite. And then you have this thing called writing, which in some ways is personal alone time like photography. I’ve been able to spend years sitting alone with a cat and now being able to talk to you about that is the opposite of anything I’ve ever done. That is so fucking literal. That’s why I like music and photography, and that’s why I ran from my amazing parents, who were amazing people of the world. My parents ruled the world of words. I was so intimidated by the way my parents could command a conversation, and what they believed in, both in their writing and journalism, but also at, like, a dinner party, I was like, mute. I’m not kidding. The reason why I turned to photography and music is I couldn’t even talk in school. I was so shy, so I went for those other things because they were non-verbal. They only intersect in the one person that is me.

It’s like they’re avenues for you to explore and express different things.

Yeah, and evolve as a human, evolve as an artist, and to find new ways of connecting with people. I love life, and I want to connect with people. I want human beings to find other human beings that resonate with them. As a kid, that’s what art and music did for me. [They] made me feel not alone. So I’m doing it in hopes that I can make somebody else feel not alone.

Speaking of that, one of my favorite parts of the book is when you’re thrown in the deep end of this Hole tour. Your first show is this massive festival playing to tens of thousands of people. What would you tell somebody who’s looking to go into that world and play shows and start a band?

I knew it at the moment it happened. That’s why I call the opening chapter “Through the Looking Glass.” Overnight, I went from one dimension to another dimension. I went from A to Z in one step. Most people work years upon years to get it. Weirdly, with the internet, I feel like now people can get discovered out of nowhere in their bedrooms and all of a sudden have a million followers. So it’s a different world out there right now, but in the real world, meaning the human non-digital, non-online world, for most people who were building a career in the arts, it took time. It still does take time. Your craft is key, and you have to do it for a long time. In the world of a performer, maybe you know this theory, it takes seven years to become an expert at a practice. I had been playing music since I was a kid, so I definitely had more than seven years as a musician and as a performer, even though I was just performing as a kid and in art school. But,
I would say it applies to anything. You want to fall in love? You want to have a kid? You want to be a public person and show your art? You have to buckle down and trust yourself and be in the moment, which is the only way I got through it.

I never got scared, even when I joined Hole and stepped on that stage because I had to trust that I was supposed to be there. It’s almost like a survival mechanism. Trust yourself, and don’t let the outside gaze and the outside world push you over, tip you down, influence you. My advice to anybody is find your inner way, your inner values,so that nothing will get lost. I even talk about in the book how I actually did lose my way a little bit down the line, but I started with a very good foundation of trusting myself. That’s kind of simple, but it is actually what I tell my 14-year-old daughter and her girlfriends, like your relationship to yourself inside your head alone, and what makes you feel good and what makes you feel bad, trust is the only thing you can rely on. Yes, your friends, your family, your boyfriends, your girlfriends, they can help, but at the end of the day, you have to be the one you rely on because shit’s gonna hit the fan somewhere. Shit happens. Life is not an easy place to be, so you have to rely on yourself. That’s what I would tell everybody.

Shit happens, and there are a lot of fans all over the place.

That’s correct! [laughs]

Has your daughter read the book?

No, I’ve told her [she has to be] 17. I don’t know. I wish there was, like, R ratings. Like, what is the rating of this book if there are drugs? I don’t know.

I think if I read that at 14, I wouldn’t quite grasp it exactly.

It’s kind of like kids watching Euphoria. Too young. Don’t do it. It’s too fucking fucked. But I keep telling my daughter and her friends: 16-17. You’ve been heartbroken, know a little bit about what you want to do with your life, and know a bit about sex and drugs, unfortunately.

The right amount of life experience to engage and then be like, “You did what, Mom?!”

Exactly! [laughs]

I also saw the other day that… I guess it’s since been debunked, but you and Courtney were talking about a Hole reunion. Where do you currently stand with all your former bandmates?

Just a couple weeks ago, I was in LA. Billy invited me to his podcast, and Courtney invited me for tea at the Chateau [Marmont]. We’re closer and more excited about each other’s middle-life resurrections than we ever were when we were younger. We’re so proud of each other that we all stuck to our own thing. We survived in the ways that we needed to. We escaped in the ways that we needed to, and it meant so much to me that in one week, I got to be with Billy, where the mentor, the guy who discovered me, gets to interview me about my book, tell me things about his perspective on my bass playing and his support of my book. And then I get to go to the Chateau, and Courtney gets excited because I sang on her record, and her record is amazing, and she’s going to put out a record, and her documentary got great reviews. So I think where I stand is: They’re still my band members, logistically. Is anybody going to play shows together? Music is as much of a mystery as love. You cannot fucking control that shit, especially someone like Courtney. The magic happens on its own time. I have no answer for you.

That’s in the book, too, when she gets more into acting. That’s not to say she’s uninterested in music, but she takes less of an interest in music around the Celebrity Skin era. But yeah, you can’t force music to happen.

You can’t force love to happen even if you want it to. Nobody can force anybody to fall in love or stay in love, or get the band back together. Who knows? TBD!

What are your hopes for the people who read this book, whether that’s your daughter, or whether it’s a total stranger on the street?

Well, it is macro and micro. It is a personal ode to my love of music. It’s an ode to my generation. It’s an ode to my city, my parents, my family. So it’s both wanting to recognize the beautiful things that gave me the amazing life that I have, but on a more personal yet weirdly universal level is I do want to be a credible voice of an analog way of living. I really do want to be, at this point, considered an expert that there is something in the magic way that we lived, that embodies a magic that is threatened today. We can lose this magic if we interface too often via screen. I explained to 14-year-old girls that flirting or trying to fall in love via text is not scientifically proven to be possible. You have to actually be in person to fall in love with someone. So my goal is to really speak to and embrace the analog way of life. Do not let it be robbed from us. We know who the tech fucks are trying to steal our time, our attention, our way of living, our experience and our souls. We are spiritual creatures in a physical body. When it comes to sacred things like love and music, try the analog way. It’s probably the more powerful way, or you might get lost along the way. I’m concerned about our society. I’m concerned about humans. I’m concerned that we’re losing the very fiber that makes us beautiful.

It’s like we’re losing what makes us people.

Exactly. We’re entering a RoboCop world. I’m very concerned about that, and that is a huge part of why I want to talk to as many journalists, go on as many podcasts as possible. I want to be an ambassador for analog living.

Even the Good Girls Will Cry is out now via De Capo Press.

Grant Sharples is a writer, journalist and critic. His work has also appeared in Interview, Uproxx, Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Ringer, NME, and other publications. He lives in Kansas City.

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