'I realised I had to do it for women’: Hole’s Melissa Auf der Maur on Courtney Love, capitalism and sisterhood

The next great rock memoir is out this week, penned by Melissa Auf der Maur, one-time bassist in two of the biggest bands of the 90s: Hole and Smashing Pumpkins. The Canadian musician and photographer, 54, joined Courtney Love’s grunge survivors in the summer of 1994, mere months after the suicide of Love’s husband, Kurt Cobain, and the heroin overdose of their original bassist, Kristen Pfaff. Her first gig with them? In front of 65,000 people at the Reading festival.

Even the Good Girls Will Cry covers Auf der Maur’s art school years in Montreal to the “unique sisterhood” of her time in Hole, and then briefly being part of her heroes, Smashing Pumpkins. Having documented everything via diaries and photographs, she has a unique perspective as both insider and outsider – her account of staying at the house where Cobain had just died in Seattle, after agreeing to be Hole’s new member, is chillingly surreal. And while there are tales of childhood crushes (Rufus Wainwright) and big rock romances (Dave Grohl), Auf der Maur’s depiction of Love’s complexity is most fascinating, as the frontwoman wrestled with motherhood, drug addiction, the media and even conspiracies that she’d murdered her husband.

Ultimately, the book is an exploration of womanhood and creative integrity set against a backdrop of sexism and misogyny, as well as creeping consumerism. Inspired by her desire to confront the corporate takeover of society, in 2010 she co-founded the independent cultural centre Basilica Hudson in upstate New York, which she runs with her husband, the indie film-maker Tony Stone, with whom she has a teenage daughter, River. She believes the 90s was the defining decade not just for her but for modern history too: “The book touches on an entire world changing, the last analogue decade, the warning of what we saw happen, the tech maniacs trying to mine our souls,” she says passionately over Zoom from her home, leaning into the screen in one of her signature berets. “We lost innocence together as a people.”

How does it feel to be putting out this memoir?
I wrote this alone and I didn’t even really think about the “after”: I was just downloading the memories. It wasn’t until I read the audiobook in December that it actually dawned on me: this is insane. I thought: “Who actually writes down all the heartbreak, all the secrets, the sadness, the death, their first orgasm?” [Printed] words are more finite than abstract, poetic rock lyrics. But it’s a big deal to tell the story of a woman having an orgasm for the first time. There’s not enough of those stories. Now we’re all sexually liberated and everybody’s literally a porn star or something online, but in my generation, there certainly wasn’t enough shared conversation about what pleasure is. 

What did your 20s teach you about sex and relationships?
I would say that the thing I learned the most was that, in fact, it’s never what you expect. With my first love, Dave [Grohl, of Foo Fighters], it was: “What? That jock? That guy is the guy that I’m gonna fall in love with?” It’s not what you think.

You were a member of some of the biggest bands of the 90s but you documented everything from behind your camera too. What lens did that give you on the rock scene?
That’s a huge part of my survival – I was a visiting tourist in my own life. I kept so tethered to the person I was, whether because of my journaling and my photography, or my letters to friends back home in Montreal. It was a force field that I created to not ever get too sucked into the eye of the storm. It has been said by both Courtney and Billy [Corgan, from Smashing Pumpkins] that I didn’t give all of myself to those bands. It has been one of their even long-standing observations/polite complaints of me. I always figured that I’m not going to. I would drown.

In the book you say that you felt a calling to join Hole to defy the all-male rock landscape. What was that like?
Destiny called when I was coming down the escalator [at Seattle airport] to meet Hole for the first time. This was me coming to say to Courtney's face: no, thank you, I'm in art school, I don’t want to join your band. But I lost that [nerve] the moment these women were revealed to me in slow motion and I saw this barefoot wild woman [Love], this beautiful, sporty redhead [Patty Schemel, Hole’s drummer] and this little girl [Love’s daughter Frances Bean Cobain]. I realised: fuck, I got to do it for women. That's when it dawned on me: this is bigger than me wanting to go to art school. This is about women supporting each other.

Were the 90s as empowering for women in music as we like to think?
The patriarchy, which is now attempting to destroy the world further, was very much alive – even though, on the surface, between Sex and the City, the invention of supermodels, [groundbreaking all-female 90s music festival] Lilith Fair, all these girls in rock bands, we had this illusion that there was a new woman power coming to be. I realised that it was not a system that was actually very nurturing to women, hence Courtney being burned at the stake. 

What did you want to reframe about that period?
I knew it was going to be important for me to be honest about the pain that Courtney was in. One of the top mandates was reframing her as a demonised victim of a witch hunt [as well as] a very difficult human being and wildly impossible creature. I spent a lot of time trying to strike that balance of what I experienced, but making sure that I rooted this personal experience in a bigger message. 

What could you see in her that others couldn’t?
The foundation of your life plays a big part in who you are and Courtney has never known love. She named herself “Love”. This is her quest in life: how do you learn to love if you’ve never been loved? She was never given unconditional love by her parents; she emancipated so young. While I watched the world try to destroy this woman, I had an appreciation for the love I grew up under, even though my parents were complex and bohemian. No one tried to sabotage me. 

In the book, you choose artistic integrity over celebrity, or settling down. Do women in music have more agency now?
I’m so proud of all the women in music but the tragic thing is brand association. Even the coolest musicians don’t blink before doing an advertisement campaign for a giant corporation, which I never would have done. We knew that they were coming to buy you. We saw the threat. And, yeah, the women are ruling mainstream music but it’s still a creepy, capitalist, psychotic machine. When I ejected myself from that machine, I spent 15 years creating a tiny corner of a neighbourhood of a tiny town in America because I wanted to believe in the place that I live and work. The digital threat and the corporate takeover threat in 2010 is what inspired the founding of Basilica. New York was being taken over by Live Nation and Ticketmaster, it had less and less independent spaces. 

What instigated your political awakening?
My father [Nick Auf der Maur] and my mother [Linda Gaboriau] were political radicals. My mother is an American who left [for Canada] in the 60s because she saw the direction [the country was going in]. She thought the injustices against women and minorities, not to mention war, was unacceptable. She raised me very clearly stating: the way the American system is built will first kill their own, destroy their own people, then be a threat to the world. Now I'm relieved I don’t have to tell people that any more. My parents questioned everything and tried to imagine a greater society. My mother is alive – she’s 83 and living the best life as a dramaturg and a translator. That’s better than having Chanel sponsor you. 

What annoys you the most at the moment?
Predatory capitalism taking over the planet and every human in it.

What's given you hope recently?
The Walk for Peace by the Tibetan monks across America. These monks have been doing this for thousands of years. It’s the hope that we will learn from the past and ancient wisdom. But also even just ancient 90s analogue ways. One of the main reasons I’m going on this book tour is so I can go and speak to new generations: don’t let the algorithms get you. Be aware. Question everything. 

What's the best lesson you've taught your daughter?
Beware of the internet. She has no access to it, and when she uses it in temporary, short-term [periods] on my devices, it comes with a clear awareness that it is a world that can have incredible things like Billie Eilish, and all of the amazing things that she is doing. But there's also the evil empire in that algorithm that is trying to prey on your innocence and insecurities as young girls. 

What do you wish you’d known at 18 that you know now?
I knew more then. When I started writing this book, I realised that [my younger self] was going to be my greatest teacher moving into this next phase of life. And what I wish I had known is that 18-year-olds and their instincts are to be protected. Do not let the world shift what you already know about yourself. The innocent, early sense of self is the weathervane for the rest of your life.

Even the Good Girls Will Cry is published on Thursday, Atlantic Books, £22; Melissa Auf der Maur will be touring bookshops in England, Scotland and Ireland from 7-13 April

Kate Hutchinson is the Nerve's music critic. A writer and broadcaster, she’s behind the audio series The Last Bohemians, and the 2025 music podcast Studio Radicals, which Radio Times called "podcasting at its best". She currently presents a fortnightly show on Soho Radio.