Thanks to a thrown beer bottle and a fan letter to a P.O. box, Melissa Auf der Maur’s first band scored an opening slot for the Smashing Pumpkins in her bohemian home town, Montreal. Sensing Melissa’s talent, Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love. Whisked from her local scene, Melissa joined Hole just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole’s prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff, with the just-widowed Courtney Love at the centre of it all. That was only the beginning of Melissa’s journey through alternative rock, a trip she undertook alongside 90s luminaries including Rufus Wainwright, Michael Stipe and her former boyfriend, Dave Grohl. Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a vivid dispatch from the last analogue decade, capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory.
