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Viper Room
Los Angeles, CA
Jan 9, 1999
Updated: Wed Feb 3, 1999
From Sonicnet (Jan 11/99):
Hole Play Acoustic Benefit
Post-grunge rockers Hole played an acoustic show at the Viper Room in Los Angeles on Saturday to benefit the Center for Living, a nonprofit organization that teaches yoga and meditation and counsels underprivileged children and people with chemical dependencies. Counting Crows' Adam Duritz, Live guitarist Chad Taylor and Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland, who was sporting a mohawk, were among the rockers in the audience. Actors Drew Barrymore, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Tom Hanks also converged on the recently renovated Sunset Strip club as Hole played songs from their latest album, Celebrity Skin, and older tunes as well.
Go to MTV's Hole News Gallery for all their articles with RealVideo
From MTV news (Jan 12/99):
Hole Talks About Playing For Hanks, Pitt, And Hollywood Elite At Benefit Show
Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, and modern day everyman Tom Hanks were among those who turned up at Los Angeles' Viper Room Saturday night for an acoustic benefit performance by Hole.
Courtney Love and company rolled out an assortment of songs from the group's latest effort, "Celebrity Skin," as well as a series of surprising covers during the set, including Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," the Beatles' "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away," and a rousing rendition of Guns N' Roses' "Paradise City."
Between numbers, Love was her irrepressible self berating the music executives in attendance for talking, and toasting guitarist Eric Erlandson's birthday with a fond, vivid reminiscence of their romance some ten years ago. While the band entertained the troops, they were also getting their fair share of entertainment from gazing at the glitterati that filled out the crowd.
"You were watching (Tom Hanks) in the crowd? You were watching while we were playing?" Love asked bandmate Melissa Auf Der Maur after the show.
"I could see Tom Hanks, running that extra mile for me," Auf Der Maur replied.
"Are we similar? 'Cause we have the same birthday," Love added. "He's sort of Mr. America. Maybe I'm the dark side." [28.8 RealVideo]
As we reported last week (see "Courtney Love To Play L.A.'s Viper Room"), tickets for the show were $200 apiece with proceeds benefiting the Center for Living Yoga in Los Angeles.
Hole is already on its way down under for a three-week run through New Zealand and Australia as part of the Big Day Out tour, and will return to the States to co-headline a tour with Marilyn Manson.
From Entertainment Weekly (Jan 14/99) (Thanks Emmet:
Hole Lotta Love
Courtney Love entertains Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, and Drew Barrymore at L.A.'s infamous Viper Room
by Chris Willman
The grand reopening of L.A.'s Viper Room last weekend got underway with a Kundalini yoga guru, Gurmukh Kaur, in white robe and turban, beatifically assuring West Hollywood's assembled black-clad: "Our birthright is happiness." In other words, we all get to be the girl with the most cake, right?
Fitting, then, that the headliner was Courtney Love -- who's been a yoga student of Kaur's for about a year and a half -- leading Hole in an acoustic performance benefiting Golden Bridge Night Moon, a meditative "center for living." Those contributing $200 a head to hasten the promised Age of Aquarius included Tom Hanks (cocking his head quizzically as Love bragged from the stage that he's a fellow Pisces) with Rita Wilson; Brad Pitt with Jennifer Aniston, the latter giving a friendly hug to ex-beau Adam Duritz of Counting Crows; "Ally McBeal"'s Portia de Rossi; and, of course, perennial Courtney confidante Drew Barrymore.
Outside the club, Love gave the practice of Kundalini yoga full credit for the physical benefits others have attributed to plastic surgery. "I never exercised my whole life; I just sat around and chain-smoked. It gave me strength and built my character," said Love, popping eyes in a black minidress cut out for maximal cleavage, while a softspoken Kaur murmured something in praise of her celebrity charge's improved "electromagnetic fields." Love's famous feistiness isn't completely om-ward bound, of course: Inside the club, she had plenty of peeved words from the stage for the "actor-boys" in the crowd who she felt weren't properly attentive. Chided Love, "What are you talking about back there? You f---ing faux-nihilist Entertainment Weekly readers! Is this not as transcendent as Royal Albert Hall Dylan 1966?"
It wasn't, quite, but Hole's spirited unplugged-ness still drew plaudits. So did the once bare-ish Viper Room's new burnt-sienna Art Deco interior, the result of seven weeks of renovation. But the specter of River Phoenix -- who is memorialized via a sidewalk plaque and tiny pink flowering bush that went nearly unnoticed alongside the red carpet -- stood over the arrivals, even if no one among the assembled media had the nerve to bring up the late actor. Asked by EW Online what associations the Viper Room holds for her, Love demurred, "Oh, come on -- that's too loaded." Queried what he likes most about the club, Mohawk-bearing Stone Temple Pilot Scott Weiland quickly answered, "I like the fact that nobody's died here in a long time."
Among the highlights of Hole's full-length unplugged set were one and a half Guns N' Roses covers ("If he's (Axl's) not gonna be him, I'll be him," Courtney told the crowd), along with selections borrowed from the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Lemonheads. Love also regaled the star-studded audience with a few tidbits about her own catalog. After singing "Hit So Hard," which has been interpreted any number of ways, including literally, she remarked, "that song is about a really great orgasm. There's no rock critics here so I can tell you the truth." At last!
From MTV news (Jan 14/99) (Thanks Emmet):
Courtney Love Extolls The Positive Power Of Yoga
With the mehndi craze pretty much having drifted off into fad oblivion, trendsetters and musicians such as Madonna, Alanis Morissette and Courtney Love have now become swept up in a revival of interest in yoga, the Hindu stretching exercises designed to promote physical and mental well-being.
Both Madonna and Morissette openly touted the positive effects of Yoga while promoting their respective new albums, while Courtney Love and the rest of Hole performed at a benefit for Los Angeles' Center For Living Yoga School this past weekend at the Viper Room.
MTV News caught up with Courtney Love and Yoga School instructor Gurutej Kaur after the show, and talked with MTV's Chris Connelly about the rejuvenative effects of yoga. Love even confessed that the exercise regimen has toned her body to such a degree that some in the press have credited her trim physique to plastic surgery.
"Courtney has an amazing soul," Kaur said as Love buried a smile in her hands, "and I just told her the other day while we were doing some yoga, I just looked at her and said, 'You have the sweetest soul.' And she's just got this power behind her and this mouth that's just everywhere. But for her inner essence, all [the yoga] does is bring that forth. It brings your spirit forth, and that's who and what she is."
"And now I'm able to turn something really nasty and that might be paranoid into something positive," Love added. "Everyone thinks I've had lots of plastic surgery. I haven't actually had lots of plastic surgery. I had a little bit, but that was a long time ago."
"When exactly have you had just a little plastic surgery?" Connelly asked.
"Shut up!" Love said. "We're not going to say this on camera. I did it in 'Allure' this month, I confessed. But it was like years ago. 'Cause what I heard people think [I've had done] is so nutty. Come on! If I needed it, I'd do it. I don't think there's a real issue about it. But it's just yoga, swear to God. It's all about drinking lime juice, and then some tequila. Doing this yoga and then having a smoke. Balance."
From MTV news (Jan 15/99):
Hole Copes With Guns N' Roses Inactivity By Covering Songs
The biggest surprise at last weekend's Hole concert at the Viper Room in Los Angeles wasn't the acoustic interpretations of material from "Celebrity Skin," but the band's decision to cover not one, but two Guns N' Roses songs.
When MTV News' Chris Connelly caught up with the band backstage after the show, frontwoman Courtney Love and bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur weren't shy about their affection for the long-dormant band and its mercurial lead singer, Axl Rose.
"We miss them, right?" Love posed to the rest of the band.
"Yeah, we were paying homage," answered drummer Samantha Maloney as Love and Auf Der Maur broke into an a cappella rendition of "Sweet Child O' Mine."
From Rolling Stone (Feb 11/99):
People are always talking about surgery" said Courtney Love pointing to her gravity-defying breasts. "but look, this is all yoga" This uplifting piece of news came during a $200-a-ticket benifit show for the LA yoga center Golden Bridge/ Night Moon, which coupled the sacred with the profane at Johnny Depp's newly reopened Viper Room. Hole played an hour-plus acoustic set to a mixed crowd dressed in turbans, Prada, and press passes. Tom Hanks, Roseanna Arquette, a mowhawk-wearing Scott Weiland and Portia De Rossi (from ally mc beal) sat sequestered at tables, while the Counting Crows' Adam Duritz mingled with the Yoga center's co owner Gurumukh Kaur and various MTV personalities.
A group from Golden Bridge opened with some Hindu yoga chants before Love hit the stage. Kicking up one leg on the amp, she clutched her prayer beads in one hand and a ciggarette in the other, and launched into a true to form version of Guns and Roses "Pardise City" which by the songs end seemed tailor made for Hole. The band went on to play its own numbers "Miss World" and the new "Hit So Hard" softening its caustic sound with Eric Erlandson on a acoustic guitar and bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur simply sipping red wine and singing backup. Love occasionally picked up her guitar only to ditch it later with disintrest. She deftly toned her railing vocals down to sensitive ballad-level, only to let it rip later in fierce numbers like "Doll Parts" She tempered the outbursts with a brotherly sing along of the Beatles' "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away" but redemmed her sardonic edge in a clampy closing rendition of "Celebrity Skin" Though Hole were out of their electrified element, Courtney Love's powerful persona and searing lyrics quashed the potentially embarrassing unplugged moments. Here's to Hollywood-style enlightenment (Visa and Mastercard accepted)
Lorraine Ali
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