The Hole/Smashing Pumpkins bassist’s much buzzed about new memoir is the feminist music history book Gen-X needs right now
“The greatest stars, the ones that endure, are the ones, beautiful or not, who are
generous with their spirits and faces in the images they present to us…. “
– Courtney Love ”Beauty Manifesto DuJour” from 11/09/1998, reprinted in Melissa Auf
Der Maur’s Even the Good Girls Cry
After Courtney Love appeared on Billy Corgan’s music podcast The Magnificent Others
last month, people had a lot to say— about her, about him, about Kurt Cobain and Sonic
Youth’s Kim Gordon, and about the 1990s in general. Whose band was better? What’s
Dave Grohl’s deal? Are these rockstars mad narcissists, genius icons or both?
There’s literally nobody who could answer these questions better than Melissa Auf der
Maur, who played with both Hole and Smashing Pumpkins during one of the most
pivotal —and currently most reconsidered— periods in music.
If Auf der Maur’s new book Even the Good Girl’s Will Cry seems incredibly well-timed,
prophetic even, amid the culture’s current obsession with the 90’s, there’s a good
reason for that. Approaching her 50th birthday and finding herself with free time during
the COVID 19 pandemic, the Montreal, Canada native and current Hudson, New York
resident, began reflecting as a lot of us did, about her life.
As touring bass player alongside two of the most enigmatic characters in rock, she
explores each band’s impact in the book, recalling interactions with them as an innocent
22-year-old young woman finding herself as she perfected her instrument. More
significantly, she delves into a unique period of time that only Generation X can fully
understand, as humanity transitioned from analog creation and communication to a
digital dominance of basically everything. There was a lot to unpack.
Sifting through her extensive archive of photographs, journals and other ephemera, the
project took shape, though it was something she’d intended to revisit for years as she
was just as much a “documentarian as a musician” back then. It was —like seemingly
everything that happened to her in 1991-2001— cosmically destined. Given the 30-year
nostalgia pendulum, it was also the right time to dive in.
“I always knew that I was documenting a time in history; in my personal history, in our
cultural history, and in the history of rock music,” Auf der Maur tells me in the parking lot
of a Koreatown cafe before her first LA book event at the nearby Dynasty Typewriter.
“This is the history of women in culture and women in arts. “
Her story as it pertains to the scheme of feminism and music’s evolution is insightful, a
bit juicy at times, but mostly unflinchingly real, especially for those of us who happen to
be around her age and remember what it was like to be turned on by the visceral riffs of
alternative music, and the imposing grandeur of her “grunge parents” Love and Corgan
in their heyday.
Beyond the pair’s own love triangle (Courtney left Billy for Kurt in 1991), both were
polarizing all on their own, even back then. In Love’s case, there was a shadow of drugs
and death to contend with as well as overall public disdain for her raw and outspoken
ways, mostly rooted in misogyny. Defiant and dangerous, Hole challenged it all on stage
and Auf der Maur not only contributed, she took notes and lived through it all.
She initially said no when Corgan, who she met at an early SP gig in Montreal,
suggested she join Hole. Kurt Cobain’s suicide was followed by Hole’s original bassist
Kristen Pfaff dying of an overdose just as they were about to tour 1994’s Live Through
This. She was stepping into a dark situation, but she was bringing light and she seemed
to know it even back then. Things weren’t much easier when Love got sober, became a
movie star and they began to record Celebrity Skin four years later, but the band had
something to prove and despite the struggles, they made a great high-production value
rock record.
Auf der Maur’s time with Smashing Pumpkins came immediately afterward and lasted
about a year, during which she honed her bass skills and saw more of the world. Her
wild rockstar journey ended as the aughts began, but she continued with some stellar
solo music, a Black Sabbath tribute band, more photography and years later, the
creation of a thriving NY arts community (built with her husband Tony Stone) called
Basilica Hudson. Then she became a mother, which changed her focus for years to
come, but also inspired her to look at her past experiences through a modern female
lens for the memoir.
“We came through the birth canal of this new world and we weren’t submissive. We
weren’t blind. We saw what was happening and we were angry, but we couldn’t stop it,”
the author shares. “A big part of my book is trying to say to my daughter and her
generation —she’s 14— we saw this happen and I am so fucking sorry. I just want my
story to be of help to understand… so that the future, the people who are living in this
new future, can somehow put the pieces together. So, I wrote it for personal healing, but
also as my offering to the cultural reflection of history books. It’s so disturbing where
we’ve landed and we all are grieving what we’ve lost, you know?”
True, but with the exception of her father’s death and losing drummer Patty Schemel
from the band in 1998, her story is not somber. Auf der Maur’s tales of tempestuous
stage moments alongside Love, rocking the globe playing for tens of thousands nightly,
doing fabulous fashion-focused photo shoots and big budget videos, working with the
biggest producers in the music business and hob-nobbing with famous actors and fellow
musicians (even making out with some of them, though she only references her ex-
boyfriend Grohl by name) is a really fun, aspirational read.
“I didn’t do this to just publish a book about the 90’s and go on podcasts,” the writer,
who did her mentor’s pod before Love, explains of her motivations. “I did it because I
needed to unpack the past that I went running from, to heal the wounds I hadn’t yet
dealt with and to purge— to get the 90’s out of me, because it was such an intense time
for all of us, especially those in rock bands, especially the ones in the nexus with all the
levels of death, fame, talent, greatness, horrificness.”
It’s no tell-all, but it is honest, mostly on an introspective level. There’s also a contextual
and mystical flair to her prose that makes it stand out amid other memoirs out there, not
surprising considering her parents were celebrated journalists. Auf der Maur is an
evocative storyteller. But did she have any trepidation writing about others in the book?
Did she check with everyone first?
“I emotionally, spiritually and personally checked in with every major character, Dave,
Billy and Courtney. I reached out and I went to see each
of them to discuss and say, ‘I’m doing this,’ to let them know, not ask for their approval
but just simply to let them know I’m writing my story,” she shares. “I got a full thumbs up
and ‘we love you and trust you’ from all three. They know I’m not in it for money, glory or
fame. I just want to be true to who I am. I love them. There was no threat, and I did
show all parts of them.”
In particular, her examination of Love’s place in rock music and the influence it had
–and can continue to have— on women, girls and culture itself, has a redemptive quality
that’s been sorely missing on the media landscape. As Love prepares to release new
music (Auf der Maur sings on a few songs and says “it’s incredible”) and a documentary
about her unapologetic past and present that just premiered at Sundance, her bassist’s
book couldn’t have been more prescient.
The alignment was coincidental, but it all feels like it was meant to be. After a recent
viral Instagram post that had the web buzzing about a Hole reunion, which quickly got
quashed, the bassist still doesn’t rule out ever playing live with Love again in some
capacity.
“I’m not against it. I always say that Courtney is the most unpredictable, wild, wonderful
force,” she says. “The fact that in 2026, we both are coming out of 15 years of a kind of
hibernation– we could not have planned that. So you just have to trust in the magic of
it.”
She clearly did just that with Even the Good Girls Will Cry. Its cathartic energy may have
started with her, but it is for everyone. “The writing process was amazing, but to look
back at that person and the painful parts; I could have lost a big part of myself
permanently,” she says as we wrap up an inspiring conversation. “I finally grieved for my
loss and the things our generation lost. A big part of writing the book was trying to
celebrate and grieve what we lost, while hoping that we can bring some of it back.”
Info on Melissa Auf der Maur upcoming book events can be found here.
