Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm really grateful that you're here. On today's show, I'll talk about the new film project Hail Mary with its co-directors, the playwright and star of the new play Cold War Choir Practice, join us in-studio, and we'll celebrate the centennial of The King of Zydeco. That's the plan. Let's get this started with Melissa Auf der Maur.

[music]

Alison Stewart: In 1994, the band Hole took the stage at the legendary Reading Festival in England. The band consisted of Courtney Love, Eric Erlandson, Patty Schemel, and it was my next guest, Melissa Auf der Maur, who played the bass. It was her first performance with Hole and her seventh time ever on stage. Melissa writes about that moment and everything before and after in her new memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry. It covers her five years with Hole, her deep and complicated relationship with Courtney Love, and her time with The Smashing Pumpkins. In the air-defining alternative rock scene of the '90s. Melissa Auf der Maur joins us now. According to page 92 in your book, it's your birthday.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Correct. St. Patrick's Day.

Alison Stewart: Happy Birthday to you.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: So why the bass?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Oh, so many reasons, but the first time I ever eloquently conceived why the bass, it was on my way to receive my first-ever bass award in '98 or something. I was in a car. I knew I had to give an acceptance speech. The first thing that came out, pen to paper, was, "The bass is the mother of all instruments. She is the one that you don't notice until she's gone."

Alison Stewart: Ooh, ooh.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Yes. I was obviously a 26-year-old. I hadn't been a mother. Now I am. I understand further.

Alison Stewart: You understand what that means?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Everyone knows the bass is the glue. Everyone knows that the bass is the thing that you feel in the audience, but you don't recognize the feel. You don't watch it like you do the lead singer, the drum solo, the guitar solo. I was a wallflower, and I loved music, but I found my way through to the big stage by way of bass.

Alison Stewart: I was interested in what your early thoughts about music were. Was it something that you just loved? Did you decide, "I want to do this with my life," or--

Melissa Auf der Maur: Oh, obsessed. Obsessed.

Alison Stewart: Tell us more.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Both parents were public broadcasters. They each had their own radio shows. I grew up watching my mother slicing her radio shows on tape. Her record collection of the '60s and '70s; she interviewed everyone from Zappa to Cohen. My mother was my musical inspiration, that gateway, but what I felt so clearly as a young girl was, "Who are my people?" I was seeking all the time, my generation and my moment to find my way in to what I saw my mother obsess over in a good way. As a journalist, she obsessed over the voices of her generation.

Finding my moments in 1991. I worked in clubs. It was always there, but I also went to a music school, an experimental-- like the equivalent of fame LaGuardia Public Music School for my entire education. I was always singing, playing trumpet, xylophone, choir. I always had music in my body. It was just finding my way to make big purpose with my life and finding my way into my generational movement, and I did.

Alison Stewart: How did you find your people, initially?

Melissa Auf der Maur: On a goth dance floor at 14 at a club Thunderdome with The Cure and the Sisters of Mercy playing. That's in my book, of just like, "Wow. Hold on," on the floor of The Cure on The Head on the Door tour. As a young teenager, I found it there. Once I was old enough to really be working in bars, I just started going to the clubs in Montreal where I grew up. Had an amazing college radio stations, punk clubs. I started working as a ticket girl at the equivalent of CBGB's there.

Alison Stewart: Underage?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Oh, way underage.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Melissa Auf der Maur: Quebec, there is no age. It's a drinking age of 18, but you can go as of 14, so I was already there. I got an exciting job as a cassette DJ at the age of 19. That changed everything. When I realized that I could control the music, vibration, and mood of an evening, I worked three to four nights a week as a cassette DJ, put myself through college with that job. That's when I found my people. Do you remember Max Fish here? It was the equivalent of that, called Le Bifthèque. It's where all the bands that played would then go there till the wee hours. That's where I met everybody.

Alison Stewart: That's so interesting. Controlling the mood.

Melissa Auf der Maur: I mean, that's what DJs do.

Alison Stewart: Yes. When did you realize that was happening?

Melissa Auf der Maur: I don't know.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Consciously. I've realized everything now that I've written the book, now that I've reflected, what drove me so hard to be a servant of music. I think DJing was the first time that I realized that I could have some agency over what people-- I was quite bossy as a shy flower girl. Flower girl? Yes, I guess I was a hippie wallflower and flower happy child who basically never took requests. Politely said, "No, no, I. I know what I'm going to do tonight, thank you." I wouldn't take requests.

Alison Stewart: That's so Canadian.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Very politely refusing.

[laughter]

Melissa Auf der Maur: Politely refusing the way of this nation at the moment.

Alison Stewart: We're speaking with artist and musician Melissa Auf der Maur, who played bass in the band Hole, later in The Smashing Pumpkins. She just released a new memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry. All right. When you were initially asked to join Hole, you said no.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Of course. What else would a good girl do? Studying photography, had her own band already. I had my whole life planned out for me. By a very young age, I knew that music, yes, but photography was my other passion. I was studying. I was about to apply for my master's at RISD. It was very clear to me that I'd be a fine art photographer with a passion project for music. I would probably find a way to weave photography and music together.

At that point, I already had a band. Billy Corgan had seen me play, recommended me when Courtney needed a bass player to replace her. Rest in peace, deceased Kristen. The answer was no. Clearly no. This was just weeks after Kristen's death, a few months after Kurt's death. Between drugs, fame, pain, no, that was not what I wanted. Then it was because I said no that I think the band took me quite seriously, because they realized that I was not desperate to get into that game at any price.

Then, essentially, I ended up accepting their invitation to come meet them. Then the moment I saw the women in need of a bass player, but also all women in need of sister support, I joined for women, not for music, not for my career. I had this flash of, "This is my way to participate in bringing new female stories to the male-dominated landscape." I also saw a woman widowed, challenged. Fundamentally, Courtney is a brilliant, tortured artist. She's not an easy creature. Her holding her toddler's hand. The amazing drummer Patti, who became my best friend in the band. I just looked at these women, a lot of this is in the book, of no one was looking after this team that were in complete mourning, grieving, and trauma upon trauma, and expected to take the road.

As a pretty grounded person, I arrived, and I realized these people just need me. You know what? We're doing this for everyone. We're doing this for all women that need support in a difficult moment. Mainly, my obsession with rock music. My mother, who was a very strong independent feminist of the '60s and '70s, but she wasn't in the band. She was interviewing and kissing the men in the band. I morphed it in there, like, "I'm going to be the one 'in' the band." There was a combination of feminist music commitment and also just deep compassion for people who are misunderstood, in fact, and not taken care of with addictions, mental instability, and loss.

Alison Stewart: As you described yourself, you're grounded, but you're a fairly private person at that point in your life. How did you cope with suddenly being thrust on stage in Hole? A band that was under scrutiny?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Well, the introduction to my book starts at Reading in front of 65,000 people. I'm 22. I just arrived in the band 10 days earlier. The chapter is titled Through the Looking Glass. It was as simple as I am entering a new dimension. A David Lynch looking glass. I'm Alice in Wonderland. There is no logic here anymore. I have entered the underbelly of the world, which is fame, public, et cetera. I had a little bit of practice.

My father is a larger-than-life-- He's long gone, but he and his death figure prominently in this book. He was as charismatic, and I am not joking, as Courtney. When my father walked in the room, people noticed. I grew up in the shadow of a large personality who went from broadcasting to running Downtown Montreal, who had the largest funeral in Montreal history, who has a street named after him. I grew up in the shadow, and I was very well primed to understand when eyes follow you down the street, how to shut them out. I just shut it out. I just was in the moment on the stage with the people who needed me. A lot of the book is this duality of the inner world and the outer world, of what's happening actually in the giant world of fame and what's happening deep, deep, deep inside.

Alison Stewart: I want to read a part of the book-

Melissa Auf der Maur: Ooh. Oh, I love this.

Alison Stewart: -where you describe your relationship with Courtney.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Okay.

Alison Stewart: It says, "But there's no controlling or questioning Courtney's power dynamics. She has clearly set out to establish me as her wonder twin. The good girl to her bad girl, the virgin to her whore, the calm to her chaos. To this end, she has perfectly cast a Canadian redhead as a straight woman to her crazy bitch."

[laughter]

Melissa Auf der Maur: Correct.

Alison Stewart: Was the relationship on stage the same as it was off stage?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Yes, absolutely.

Alison Stewart: It was the same?

Melissa Auf der Maur: It still is today. It's deeper and better and sweeter now. We just locked into what we needed to be for-- This is the big question. Is it for the world? Is it for the stage that we became these two archetypes, or is it for our own inner growth and learning? It's probably both, so yes. Yes.

Alison Stewart: For your own inner learning?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Yes, of learning-- You know how every relationship is a mirror to you and every-- She was that mirror. I was her good girl mirror. What we brought out of each other and our extremes bred the extremes within each other. We got to play it out on stage and also backstage, and also on what I refer to often in the book, this rock mythology. There's a reason why rock musicians, whether it's a David Bowie or a Marilyn Manson, these archetypes are no different than Thor and Persephone. We're just replaying mythology. I was finding my way through, yes, my own individual person, place, and partner with Courtney, but also just the universal unfolding of humans trying to find out the meaning of life, and what your role is in this lifetime.

Alison Stewart: I was reading through the book, and I thought you might get to this part. A place where, actually, I was there when this happened.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Oh.

Alison Stewart: Okay?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Is it Lollapalooza?

Alison Stewart: No, it's at the MTV Music Awards. It's that part where Courtney throws her compact on stage. Kurt Loder is interviewing Madonna. You write, "She bombs a live interview by tossing makeup items from her purse onto Madonna's had. Awkward last for all as I move ahead, barely taking notice of it from over my shoulder." I was standing next to her when she was doing that. [unintelligible 00:13:19] your manager, who it was. I said, "Are you going to do anything?" He just lifted his shoulder.

Melissa Auf der Maur: What can you do?

Alison Stewart: "What can you do?" You walked away from that moment. What made you decide, "I'm not going to get involved"?

Melissa Auf der Maur: In that chapter, the turning point, it's the end of Live through this. We have gone around the world a couple of times at that point. I start to acknowledge that this is where I start really dissociating and separating myself because you can't actually control a tornado, but you can be conscious of it happening. You have to choose your direction for self-preservation.

Alison Stewart: Yes. I've been speaking with Melissa Auf der Maur. Her book is called Even the Good Girls Will Cry. Today is Pub Day, by the way. She delves into the coming-of-age story and the era-defining rock scene of the '90s.

You got to show your stuff on the second Hole album, Celebrity Skin. You were able to make creative contributions to the album. Let's listen to Use Once & Destroy, and we can talk about it on the other side.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Great.

[MUSIC - Hole: Use Once & Destroy]

Alison Stewart: I can hear the bass.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Yes.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Melissa Auf der Maur: Courtney used to call that in the set list. When we'd be making the set list at the beginning of the night, she'd say, "Let's play Melissa's song." Because Melissa's song is what I always want to play. I always wanted to play that. Bass and drum, heavy, primitive, primal, that's my thing. Yes.

Alison Stewart: How did it feel to finally contribute your own voice, the bass to--?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Yes, and my voice, actually, my vocals. Because actually, side bar, Courtney's putting out a new record this year, and I went to sing on it in London. I'm very proud of her. It's very next step in her storytelling of herself. In the booth, I remembered flashbacks to Celebrity Skin of my special siren song. Glassy three/four-part harmonies wrapped around her growl is really where we manifested the good girl/bad girl into sound. I love Celebrity Skin because it embodies the two girls becoming one.

The bass, I'm very proud of that role. It felt wild because I had been in the band for quite a few years. It took a long time. There's a lot in the book about the aftermath of Live Through This and the excess. By this point, when we're making Celebrity Skin, hence the title, Courtney has also started to shift into Hollywood.

Alison Stewart: People versus [unintelligible 00:16:29]

Melissa Auf der Maur: Cleaning up, too, actually. The most together she'd ever been. It was a very productive time. We were also losing a lot of the visceral magic because our entire generation was watching the loss of our innocence and the co-opting. We were bought by the machine. MTV helped, kind of woven, and all the big major labels and everything just became this really too glossy, too corporate. It was hard for me. I loved my musical contributions, but I was becoming very disengaged in terms of everyone from the '90s didn't want to sell out, and we all sold out. I left for that reason. I just felt like we all lost our way, understandably, because we were tempted with all these things and the power of music combined with the power of machine. It's hard to say no.

I also lost Patti, our best friend. She disappeared to drugs. She's alive and safe now, and we have, of course, reconnected. There were a lot of sad things with drugs happening all at the same time. My father was dying. It was hard to say. I loved my bass and vocals in that, but it was a very rough time. That's where the book brings the reader to this moment where the '90s is coming to an end. So the listeners know, it's '91 to 2001 is the chunk I have focused on in my '90s rock memoir.

Alison Stewart: What was your relationship to fame in that decade?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Just ridiculous. I was too cool for school, of course. I also went running from it. That's, I think, why a quarter century later, writing this book, I gave heads-up to everybody, to Courtney, to Billy, to Dave, all the kind of big famous people in that book.

Alison Stewart: Dave Grohl, Billy Corgan.

Melissa Auf der Maur: I gave a heads-up to everyone. They're all like, "Great, go for it," because they all know that I'm not hungry for fame or fortune. That's why I left all of that long ago. Coming back now is to try to offer myself, my daughter, who I want her to know that she had a self-realized mother who unpacked her shit--

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Melissa Auf der Maur. Her book is called Even the Good Girls Will Cry. It is her coming-of-age story during the era-defining rock scene of the '90s. You went out on your own, and you have your own album out. Can we play the single Followed the Waves from your album? Let's listen.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Of course.

[MUSIC - Melissa Auf Der Maur: Followed The Waves]

Alison Stewart: What could you do as a solo musician that you always wanted to do?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Plan my own day, do everything my way. I made two solo records in the early 2000s. I self-financed both of them. I refused to have a record label. Then I got Capitol Records and Roadrunner. I put out records with real labels, but when I left the '90s and left the team player that I was to Hole in the Pumpkins, freedom. Freedom is all I've ever wanted since the '90s. That's what I got with those solo records. Mainly, though, of course, writing my own songs, stepping center stage, being a singer, bass player is a unique thing. To front a band that was really cool musically in terms of achieving new heights. It's a rare combo. Anyone who plays bass knows it's hard to do. Bass is easy. Bass and singing is weird. Anyway.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Melissa Auf der Maur: I stepped out of the shadows, and it took me decades, really. Between my cool parents and my cool grunge parents that found me and made me and gave me this life in music, it's taken me quite a while to just step into my own light. I feel like here I am, a quarter century later, and really it's only now that I've arrived at my 50s and I feel like autonomously myself.

Alison Stewart: What was your spiritual life like in the '90s?

Melissa Auf der Maur: Profound. It's all over the book. When I was working with the editor, I said, "Listen, you know, yes, we're going to cover women in rock, we're going to cover the '90s, we're going to cover all the obvious things, but the esoteric thread and the dreams that dictated and changed my life cannot be lost in here. I do not want to alienate people who do not believe that your subconscious or forces from beyond or astrology have any impact on you." I really wove my esoteric revelations I had at a very young age throughout the book. I'm waiting for those who read the book who pick up on that thread. I feel like it's a parallel other thread of the book that, for me, is the most significant one, which is, I always felt that it was way beyond me and my tiny life that was at work with my being found by Billy and joining Hole and riding that wave of my generation. That was a very strange and unique destiny that was not accidental.

People who don't believe in this, in this book, I try to bring you into my story, and by the end of the book, I'm asking, "Can you deny that there was not a strange destiny or a higher force at work here?" I have no choice but to believe that. My parents were academic, intellectuals. They didn't raise me with religion. They were anti-religion. I had no spirituality guidelines. I found them through music, but through dreams as a teenager, that guided me. I had a dream that told me the only way I was going to make maximum contact with humans in this lifetime was through music. That's when I picked up the bass. That's what the book starts with. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: It's true. My guest has been Melissa Auf der Maur. The name of the book is Even the Good Girls Will Cry. It is out today, which also happens to be her birthday. Very nice to have you in the studio.

Melissa Auf der Maur: Thank you so much, New York City.