{"id":540148,"date":"2026-03-16T13:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T13:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/540148\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T13:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T13:09:11","slug":"i-watched-society-burn-a-woman-at-the-stake-melissa-auf-der-maur-on-her-bandmate-courtney-love-and-the-farce-of-the-90s-life-and-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/540148\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I watched society burn a woman at the stake\u2019: Melissa Auf der Maur on her bandmate Courtney Love and the farce of the 90s | Life and style"},"content":{"rendered":"

It took Melissa Auf der Maur 25 years to tell anyone, even her husband, how her father had died. It was April 1998 and she was the bassist in Hole, the blistering alternative rock band founded by Courtney Love<\/a>. They were on a brief break from recording what would be the band\u2019s hit \u2013 and, for a time, final \u2013 album, Celebrity Skin, while Love, clean from heroin addiction, was pursuing a Hollywood film career.<\/p>\n

Auf der Maur\u2019s father, Nick Auf der Maur, was a Montreal politician, activist, newspaper columnist and career drinker who, in his youth, had been arrested for performing poetry in the street naked (with a gin and tonic in hand) and getting into a bar brawl with Jack Kerouac, who, he said, was a racist. He was also a heavy smoker. The lump that developed on his neck turned out to be throat cancer, which spread to his brain. When radiation didn\u2019t work, he underwent an experimental procedure that cut out part of his throat and tongue, leaving him unable to eat, drink or talk properly. At home to visit him, Auf der Maur picked up the landline to make a call and heard her father\u2019s voice on the line to a friend. He was saying he wanted to end his life, and he wanted help doing it. She put down the phone and then, later, spoke to the friend. If her father was going to end his life, she wanted to be there.<\/p>\n

Two of her father\u2019s friends came to his house and morphine was put into his kiwi smoothie \u2013 one of the few things he was able to eat or drink. Auf der Maur arrived after he had taken it and watched until his eyes closed. \u201cYou can let go now,\u201d she told him. \u201cLet go.\u201d<\/p>\n

With her father, Nick Auf der Maur, in 1982. Photograph: Melissa Auf der Maur<\/p>\n

It is one of the many breathtaking admissions in Auf der Maur\u2019s memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry, about her time as a rock musician in the 90s in Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins<\/a> \u2013 with all the chaos, dysfunction, crushing of idealism, romance and tragedy that came with it.<\/p>\n

I wonder why she has chosen this moment, and this book, to finally share what happened to her father? \u201cBecause I would never want my daughter to grow into a woman with her own mother still hiding from the defining moment that made me an adult woman.\u201d She is about to turn 54; her daughter, River, is 14. \u201cI felt this urgency,\u201d she says. \u201cLike a fire. I must face this. Face it, to heal it, purge it, to let go, move through it, move beyond it.\u201d Her father was a vivacious, dapper, spirited man. \u201cAnd it was going to be a short, brutal, unhappy last round. And laws, governments \u2013 not really my thing. But I do think that humans should do what they spiritually, emotionally feel is correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auf der Maur \u2026 \u2018It felt like destiny.\u2019 Photograph: Bryan Derballa\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Auf der Maur is sitting wrapped in a blanket, radiant with red hair, her cat curling around her neck, while a wood fire burns behind her in Hudson, New York. A snowstorm is coming, she tells me on Zoom, and her daughter has just been sent home from school. Is she worried, I ask, about the repercussions of sharing details about her dad\u2019s death now? Assisted dying did not become legal in Canada until 2016. \u201cI mean, so much so that I don\u2019t really want to make a comment on it, but the book was reviewed by lawyers.\u201d <\/p>\n

Writing her memoir has been a great unburdening: she describes the writing process as like a \u201cwaterfall\u201d coming out of her. The book opens backstage at Reading festival in 1994, with Love parading around in fishnet tights and no knickers. Auf der Maur had joined the band just weeks before, after the death of the band\u2019s previous bassist, Kristen Pfaff, who had overdosed on heroin. Reading was Love\u2019s first performance after the death of her husband, Kurt Cobain, by suicide four months earlier. The band\u2019s 1994 album, Live Through This, their first on a major record label, was put out just a week after Love became a widow and single mother to their baby daughter, Frances Bean. As Auf der Maur writes in her memoir: \u201cCourtney was not OK. She was grieving, she had a young daughter to raise alone, and she was on drugs. On top of that, she was the most famous widow of the most famous dead rock star in the world. She was a raging, rolling tornado.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auf der Maur had come straight from playing gigs in tiny Montreal clubs to this tempest of a band, windswept with grief and pain, all of it playing out in front of audiences of tens of thousands. She had no interest in joining Hole at first; she wanted to go to art school, to continue her passion for photography and stay true to that holy grail of 90s values: never to sell out. It was Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, a friend and brief fling of Auf der Maur\u2019s (also an ex of Love\u2019s) who suggested her for the gig. Love did not take no lightly: she kept ringing Auf der Maur, eventually persuading her to get on a plane to Love\u2019s home in Seattle.<\/p>\n

With Patty Schemel (right) in 1994. Photograph: Melissa Auf der Maur<\/p>\n

What Auf der Maur found waiting at the airport struck her: Love, her daughter, and Hole\u2019s drummer, Patty Schemel. \u201cAll of a sudden, my preconceived notions \u2013 that I don\u2019t like major labels, money is going to screw people up and fame is going to make drug addicts even worse, all these obvious things \u2013 just landed differently. Because, at the moment, I saw the flesh-and-blood women, with a small child \u2026 And it felt like destiny.\u201d Here was her opportunity to make music about the inner lives of complex women, with other women, in an overwhelmingly male landscape, with one of rock\u2019s most raw and incendiary frontwomen. And there was an audience ready and waiting. She thought: \u201cI\u2019ll do it for the greater good.\u201d<\/p>\n

If this sounds lofty and idealistic, it is worth noting that Auf der Maur\u2019s very existence is one of female rebellion. Her mother, Linda Gaboriau, was an American academic and literary translator who forged her way into the Quebec separatist movement after moving to Montreal in the 60s. She was also the first female rock DJ on the city\u2019s English rock radio station, where she interviewed everyone from Frank Zappa to Leonard Cohen and was romantically linked to more than one of them.<\/p>\n

Auf der Maur at Basilica Hudson, the venue she owns with her husband, Tony Stone. Photograph: Bryan Derballa\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

By the summer of 1971, Gaboriau had stopped using contraception and, in her words, become \u201cselective\u201d about whom she slept with. One of these men was Auf der Maur\u2019s father, who would not even know he had a daughter until she was two years old. \u201cI am a product of a political act, I am not a product of love,\u201d she says. Still, her father was thrilled. \u201cHe was an eternal bachelor \u2013 he never would have become a father if this wild woman had not come along and given him this gift.\u201d He moved next door to her and her mother \u2013 and her parents did briefly marry \u2013 but the relationship did not last. They remained friends until his death. Her mother, now 83, is still a force of nature and still working, she says. \u201cThe decision she made, of being a single mother by choice, is a radical idea for anybody, even now. If I have friends considering it, I always say: \u2018Go and have tea with my mother.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Compared with her Hole bandmates, Auf der Maur had a pretty straight childhood. Love was estranged from her parents; her father had lost custody of her after he was accused of dosing her with LSD as a toddler. As a teenager, she was put into care and was tossed out into the world at 16, left to sleep on sofas and find work as, among other things, a stripper. When Auf der Maur arrived at Love\u2019s Seattle house that day in 1994, security guards flanked the outside, as distraught fans kept vigil for Cobain. The yellow police tape was still there, marking the room in which he had died. During Auf der Maur\u2019s time in Hole, Love came close to death more than once. On tour in Paris, she ended up with an abscess so big from using dirty needles that she was hospitalised, but discharged herself and was back on stage that night. While recording in New Orleans, the whole band nearly burned to death in a house fire. There was weed and cocaine and a lot of heroin. And all the while there was Love\u2019s young daughter \u2013 on her mother\u2019s lap chasing her fingers on the fretboard during the recording of an MTV Unplugged session, crying in smoky clubs.<\/p>\n

Auf der Maur\u2019s anger at the record labels \u2013 the corporate machine that signed grunge bands and made them enormously famous, but never helped their artists deal with the consequences of that fame \u2013 is palpable. \u201cNo one was taking care of these people who were in major trauma. No one was helping them. They were just pushing Courtney and her daughter on tour, which was insane.\u201d As the only non-junkie in the group, Auf der Maur carried the weight of concern for everyone. \u201cWas Courtney impossible, difficult, a drug addict, terrifying, and even mean sometimes? Yes, she was. But it took me one second to understand that she was also a survivor.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Courtney Love in Los Angeles, 1997. Photograph: Lindsay Brice\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

By 1998, not only had Love been accused of using drugs while pregnant, it was also being suggested \u2013 in a documentary and book \u2013 that Love had killed Cobain (an inquest had ruled he died by a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head). She tried to block the publication of both. However, the authors of the book went on a press tour with Love\u2019s estranged father, who supported their theories. When it arrived in Montreal, Auf der Maur\u2019s father rushed to the stage and caused a scene to halt the event. After it, Love sent him roses with a note: \u201cThe father I never had \u2026 Thank you for defending my honour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auf der Maur had grown up witnessing her mother\u2019s \u201cfearless independence and absolute refusal to have society dictate how she was going to live\u201d. By the time the 90s came, \u201cit was supposed to be \u2018women power\u2019 time. But with Courtney, I watched society burn a woman at the stake.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a lot of sadness and a lot of grit in this book, but it is also incredibly funny in places. \u201cI\u2019m glad you saw that,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s because you\u2019re British.\u201d Much of the farce, the excess, the ridiculousness, \u201cit\u2019s like Monty Python meets Sp\u0131n\u0308al Tap,\u201d she says, and laughs. There is the scene where Love smokes a cigarette through her vagina, and another where Auf der Maur and Love go to a Versace fashion show in Milan in 1998 and it appears that Donatella Versace has acquired them some young male \u201ccompanions\u201d for the evening. There is the date with Ben Stiller, and the time Love throws the contents of her makeup bag at Madonna while she is trying to record a TV interview. The connecting theme, though, is always the coming of age of a defiant young woman trying to find her place in the world.<\/p>\n

\u2018I was trying to define the next chapter.\u2019 Photograph: Bryan Derballa\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Auf der Maur left Hole at the height of their fame and joined the Smashing Pumpkins\u2019 huge world tour. She left after a year because, she says, she needed to find herself again. She had also begun a relationship with Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl<\/a>, frontman of Foo Fighters. They met at the MTV awards, when Grohl was incredibly rude about Love, with whom he had a longstanding feud. Grohl later turned up on Auf der Maur\u2019s doorstep to apologise. Theirs was a deeply late-90s romance, two touring rock musicians communicating by faxes and phone calls. In her book, she says he was the first man to make her orgasm.<\/p>\n

When they both came off tour, in 2001, she wanted to live a simpler, creative life, settling in an art scene in Montreal or DC. He had just won a Grammy. \u201cI had assumed that having both of us come out of such dramatic, painful experiences in Hole and Nirvana, we\u2019d share in a \u2018let\u2019s get out of here. I\u2019m done with this party\u2019 way of living. But he had unfinished business in show business.\u201d As she writes in the book, he wanted a \u201cwife waiting for him back home, while also being a gigantic superstar\u201d. She says now: \u201cThere was nothing wrong with that. He can want that, he got that, and he did it.\u201d By 2003, he was married, just not to her.<\/p>\n

I wonder if she has seen that he recently fathered a child outside that marriage, and if that made her reflect on her decision to leave him? \u201cNo, I always just knew him from my experience at the time \u2026 He really is very sweet-hearted and pure.\u201d She pauses, then adds: \u201cI don\u2019t know how pure you are after a lifetime of fame.\u201d<\/p>\n

On stage in 2004. Photograph: David Lodge\/FilmMagic<\/p>\n

When they dated, they were both at a fork in the road. \u201cAnd he took one way, and I took the other.\u201d Her path took her through two solo albums; the birth of her daughter with her husband, Tony Stone, a film-maker and a producer; and the setting up of the arts space Basilica Hudson, next door to their home in Hudson. Alongside this memoir, she will also be putting out a photo book and an exhibition from her large trove of photography from the 90s, and she\u2019s working on a musical project. Love has also written a memoir, but first she will be releasing a documentary and a new album, on which Auf der Maur is appearing.<\/p>\n

Her relationship with Love, who lives in the UK now, is \u201cthe best it\u2019s ever been\u201d, Auf der Maur says. \u201cI\u2019m incredibly proud of a woman who should be dead, who instead is evolving.\u201d Her new songs, she says, \u201care going to be a gift for anyone who wants to understand a woman like her \u2013 and it\u2019s essential that we have a better understanding of complex women like Courtney\u201d.<\/p>\n

I ask what she would like people to take away from her memoir. \u201cA lot of what\u2019s in this book, I did not think about for 20 years. I was running from the 90s, running from my father\u2019s death. I was trying to define the next chapter, trying to move on so fast while not letting time do its work.\u201d Now, she can see more clearly. The book is dedicated to her daughter and all girls, but really, she says, she wants anyone to read her story and \u201cfind, especially now with all these outside influences driven by algorithms, what makes you tick? What moves you and rings true to you? And simply follow that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even the Good Girls Will Cry: My 90s Rock Memoir by Melissa Auf der Maur is published on 19 March by Atlantic Books, \u00a322. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It took Melissa Auf der Maur 25 years to tell anyone, even her husband, how her father had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-540148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}