All Around the Hole World

All Around the Hole World
Hole, Courtney Love, & Melissa Auf der Maur NEWS

March 4 - 11, 2000

Photos by Kenneth Willardt

Courtney in Mademoiselle
You can find Courtney on the cover of the April 2000 issue of Mademoiselle on newsstands now! Here is the complete article in which Courtney discusses plans to release new music for free on the Internet.

Love Bytes
Courtney Love riffs on Madonna, celebrity porn sites, and an upcoming brave new Web venture.
by Jeanie Pyun

Rock-star moments are few and far between, so when you come across one, you take a breather and let it burn into your brain. It's about one in the morning, and Courtney Love, in a post-photo-shoot-and-interview languor, is lying smack center on the floor of an empty parking-lot-size studio in Los Angeles. From one end of the stark white room, you can see her - long rust-denimed legs, black poodle-y fur jacket and a head of blonde fluff, with one black poodle-y furred sleeve trailing smoke from Love's 80th Merit Ultra Light that day. (It might have been her 72nd or 79th, but she had to have been on her fourth pack.) The tableau could be that of a contemplative and solitary dreamer, if not for the earsplitting volume of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," Love's new cover of the Bob Dylan song, and if not for the throng of underlings on the sidelines, wearily waiting for their boss to finish enjoying the studio's acoustics.

Wherever she is, Love's live-wire persona attracts gawkers like static, a handy knack when one's a rock icon/movie star--and now Internet entrepreneur. Hole's front woman and Man on the Moon's female lead sat down (in a corner of said studio) with Mademoiselle, eager to discuss her entree into a whole new world, that of the Web. (Apparently, Love does conquer all.) We wound up talking about everything from why women will rule the Internet to what Drew Barrymore keeps in her closet:

MADEMOISELLE: So tell us about your Internet project.
COURTNEY LOVE: What we're doing is building a portal [planned for a late spring/early summer launch] where you'd be getting entertainment news and everything else you get at Yahoo! or wherever, but the advantage is that when I release a record, you can have it for free, in the mail or as an MP3.The portal is also a kind of collective brain trust--you'd be looking at the stuff that me, my band and my friends are into.
MLLE: For example ....
CL: For example: I was watching Boys Don't Cry and this song comes up, "Codine Blues," This song was incredible-an authentic, pure, deep, dark song. It's by the Charlatans, this old San Francisco hippie band that I hadn't even heard of. I went on the Internet and found out that Buffy Sainte-Marie wrote it, and that Donovan, the Leaves, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Monkeywrench did covers, I bought every version, just because it's one of the most weird, inspiring dance songs you've ever heard, That's an example of just being in love with something and wanting to share that with the rest of the community. That would be stuff that would go into our brain trust. Or like my neighbor Carrie Fisher's insane penis site. She's this huge Internet junkie. Every single day she sends me a new site. She just sent me one, and it's just different penises. They're funnier than hell. They offer you a certain mind-set and they really make your day.
MLLE: Anything you'd offer for other mind-sets?
CL: We can introduce girls to really cool stuff. One of the things is snowboarding. That's where all the girl bass players and lead guitarists and drummers went. They weren't getting rewarded for plugging in, they were just getting rewarded for playing acoustic at Lilith, so why the hell even bother? But look at those snowboarding girls, who do it topless and with tattoos, they are getting rewarded for totally expressing themselves.
MLLE: What about established dot-com areas, like beauty?
CL: Well, that's another for-instance: essential oils. I'm obsessed with them. I'm a scientist about them. I believe that in my past life I was probably a Benedictine monk who made perfume, because I am a total fiend about essential oils. And through the Internet I have discovered some very important things. There's all sorts of ways to make lavender oil. Millions of ways. There's one company called El-Amin and they make the real, true essential oils that are really intense. I tell people about them.
Actually, I got a big suitcase of them for Madonna for Christmas last year. (And do you know what she got me? A tape for, like, $4.99, on Kabbalah, which she'd already gotten me! And she's wearing a tiara on the "American Pie" video. Apparently, she said to our mutual stylist, "Courtney's tiara look was never really done that well, so I'm just gonna redo it.") Anyway, she called me and said, "Well, what do you do with all this stuff?" So I sent her a book, because they have everything from mustard to tansy, I mean, if you mix certain oils, it literally alters people's moods, and for someone who used to be really into drugs, well...
MLLE: It could be intoxicating in a good way, What will you be calling the portal? How will people log on?
CL: We registered fifty domain names: "yummycherry," "cherrysmooth," "pinkpajamas.com" and "dontblush.com." At the moment, we're partial to cherrycool.com. I've always been interactive with my audience: I used to send, like, close-ups of me throwing up to people who wrote me letters. But I'm older now; I'm a mom. I have all these clothes in the garage, and we were thinking that with a great domain name like "fancylikeaprincess.com, "if you send a Polaroid of yourself dressed up like a princess-no matter if you're a boy or a girl--we'll send you some of my cruddy old stage dresses.
MLLE: Was sharing with your fans part of the motivation behind building this portal?
CL: It's like when I was [a teenager] in juvenile hall, and somebody said to me, "You know, Courtney, you don't have to be here. It's not like you committed a felony. Why are you in here, just reading books?" And I was like, "Because I don't like the world." But then somebody introduced me to the Clash, to the Pretenders and Chrissie Hynde, and I realized, "Oh, I can be outside, I don't have to be in jail." It's that moment when you're able to take someone's adolescence and show them that not everybody hates them and not everything sucks.
MLLE: You mentioned releasing your records on the Net for free. How will your record company react to that?
CL: I made the decision to resign from my label, which in the state of California an artist can do after seven years. Most artists use it as a shakedown to get more money. But I just did it to get out. I don't want to be on a major label anymore, I think that they are becoming obsolete.
Our record company, which was Geffen, no longer exists as we knew it, because there was a merger between Universal and Seagrams, and all these people who had been marketing liquor came in to market music. I'd sit down with these executives and it would be like, 'You do the lower-class wine coolers and I'll do the upper-class scotch." And I was like, "We're not wine coolers, we're art."
My buddy, Edgar Bronfman [Jr.], who's the head of Seagrams, doesn't understand that aspect of it, despite being a songwriter himself. Can tell a story here?
MLLE: Um, sure.
CL: Bronfman, he's a sexy guy: l had a big confrontation with him at a charity auction, and I'd say it turned into a flirtation. He stood up and said, “I hear you're unhappy.” And he's looking down at me and he's, like, this tall [Love indicates a very tall person]. Then he said, quote, "You don't want to mess with me--I'll crush you, little girl "And he said it with this lovely flirtatious smile. So I quite liked him, but he really annoyed me when he said that. And at this charity auction, there were very rich men in the room, Mr. Lew Wasserman and Mr. Jeffrey Katzenberg and Mr. Rupert Murdoch. They were selling trips to Tahiti and pens for $10,000. And I just looked at Bronfman and kept getting cheesed, like, what the hell, "l'm going to crush you, little girl"??
So this trip comes up, to Paris. And the guy doing the auction starts the bidding [Love does an impression of the announcer]: 'Mr. Rupert Murdoch, what do you bid?" And Murdoch bids 20 grand. All of a sudden, my paddle goes up. $21,000. And I cannot believe that I'm doing this, I cannot afford this. The whole room turns still. "Girl in the back, girl in the back" the guy doesn't know who I am for the longest time--and we're up to $22,000, then $25,000. Someone says, "lt's Courteney Cox." So he's like, 'Courteney Cox, Courteney Cox," then he finally goes, "Courtney Love, what do you want to do?" and we were at $33,000. Sweat broke out on me. I kept hearing, "I'm going to crush you, little girl, I'm going to crush you, little girl." So I stood up on the chair and said, 'I want to kick Rupert Murdoch's ass!" And the whole room clapped! Anyway, that was my moment with Bronfman. After I threw down my 33 grand, he was much nicer to me.
MLLE: Huh. So who's designing the portal?
CL: Brooke Barnett--she's 20 years old and she designs all of our good Web sites and they're brilliant, in that flowers-are-opening and stars-of-sprinkling-lollipops and little-midget-people throwing-daisies-out-of-their-heads way. It's all very fabulous and she does this great job. MLLE: How did you guys hook up?
CL: I handed one of those L.A. new media gurus a spare song that I had lying around. I said, “I’ll pirate it on the Net"--which is breaking the law-"what are they going to do, come and arrest me, put me in manacles?" None of them knew anything. I was like, "Get it off, get me shares, get me hits, get it to the kids, do something utopian, progressive and sensible and radical. I'd rather give it away than have it sit there."
Anyway, two months went by, and I was getting increasingly frustrated. It was just talk and talk. Finally, I went to Brooke [Love and Barnett met over the Net six years ago] and said, "You know, you've declared that you can do this and that you're really good at it, so do it." And it's amazing, Brooke created the site, she put up the song and got hundreds of thousands of hits, and all these men are trying to take credit for it.
MLLE: That's incredible.
CL: And because Brooke got so many hits, people are after her data. They've been bugging and bullying her--they want the names of those kids. That's the goal on the Internet, data mining. What we guarantee is, if you come to our site, we won't give your data away. We're not telling anyone about you, because that's literally selling you out.
MLLE: Did it surprise people that a 20-year-old put together such a successful site?
CL: Kids like Brooke grew up on the computer, and a guy who's 45 is not going to get it. It's like the Nike ad. You don't talk about it, you just do it. And that's where women come in, because we're like, what the hell,we'll just do it ourselves. That's what the Net's about, it's like the new frontier, the West. You can go out there and kick ass all by yourself. Young women have incredible Internet opportunities. What I hope is that they use it to their advantage.
The fact is that woman are better at the Internet, period. Because it so much fits our sensibility of weaving, of intuition, just biologically. I read this book called Zeros and Ones, by a woman named Sadie Plant, and its big thesis is how the Internet is feminine-based. It's really inspiring, because I had felt so disempowered and confused. I taught myself about the computer--it's almost like how the guitar was to me, or a new language.
MLLE: Do you think the Net brings people together, or isolates?
CL: You know, one of my best friendships started by e-mailing about four years ago. He's martied and I love his wife--it's not like a boyfriend thing--but he's my one true e-mail love. I e-mail him two to three times a week. He's a famous director, so he was paranoid that I was saving his e-mails. And I was like, "No, you're saving mine."And then I mentioned something I'd said and he was like,"Oh, I have that one on disk." Hello, book!
It can also be like public therapy. Back in '94, I started posting after my husband died. I was alone a lot--just me and my computer in my big mansion in Seattle. But I didn't know the incredibly savage things people will say because they can in the dark.
MLLE: Lies can proliferate on the Net. Do you believe in regulation?
CL: No. In order to have an effective free market, you have to take the shit, too. And it is one big toilet on that level. There are Web sites that are bone-chilling. The stuff that's really nasty is part of a basic phenomenon that has to do with [a reaction to] strong women. Like I always wear tap pants and fat-girl underwear, and in pictures they erase my tap pants and paint in a little nothing. Seeing your fake lotus on the Internet is like, "Whoa, man, this is not my lotus at all!" I get freaked out. People's evil comes out when they're posting. But if celebrities are receptacles for some sort of emotion, then so be it.
MLLE: Now for less heavy stuff: Shopping?
CL:I think the Gallery on eBay is incredible. You put in pine cones and anything with pine canes comes up. You put in your monogram and anything with your monogram comes up. eBay is so great because it embodies what was so positive about Reaganomics. It's a free market, based on the honor system, in a nutshell.
Drew Barrymore had never been on the Internet until this past Sunday. I took her on. We put her name in Yahoo! and 408 fan sites popped up. I did not have that many, so when my boyfriend took this picture of us, I was looking like, "Huh, bitch!" She's never gone into a site, and she's like,"Oh, my God, butterfly rain and Drewtopia!" So we went into a chat room and everyone was like, "Is Drew here?" And she's like, "Yes, I'm coughing." l don't think a person in there believed her, but she was very excited.
Anyway, I took her on eBay and she's the most unmaterialist person. She's like, "Could you write daisies?" And "Let's get butterfly stuff." Both of us got crystal lotuses. You know, men build skyscrapers, we have lotuses? I also got a mother-of-pearl table with a sacred heart. Also, Gurl.com had some upscale coats, man. I hope everything's returnable because I bought things that were $170.
MLLE: Don't tell me that you feel overly materialistic for buying a $170 coat.
CL: But Drew's even better--she doesn't even participate in the whole fashion or trend thing. I'm not making fun or anything, but her closet is the saddest place in the world. I go into that closet and I'm like, "You make me insane!" Old Navy is high-end for her. But it's genius: She doesn't care. She lives in bad jeans that are really dirty, with a thousand dogs, not a stick of furniture and, like, an old wand of mascara. And when she went to do Ever After: A Cinderella Story, I said, "Cinderella is the worst myth ever told to girls," and she's like, "You really need to trust me, I worked it out. "Then the head of the studio tried to shut it down because he said that Cinderella's blonde and she had to lose 15 pounds. And--I admire her so much for this--Drew's like,"Cinderella's plump and has brown hair and doesn't wear any makeup, so kiss my ass."
Isn't that cool? She held out against them. Part of that strength comes from not participating. I think she gets a more positive body image from it. She's really inspiring to me and to other girls--and I'm older than her. She's not going to talk about it herself, the stuff she does. Like on the Charlie's Angels set, they're eating tons of food every day--they're all gaining weight. And she made Cameron Diaz gain weight. They're not using guns; they're using their wits. And it's actually a great script.
MLLE: You read the script?
CL: Yeah, they offered me the villain. And to Drew, I was like, "I'm not taking Frances [Love's daughter by her deceased husband, Kurt Cobain] to a movie in which I kick your ass." Hello, Cruella! Thank you, my friend. I'm not playing the villain.

Samantha is now Hole's OFFICIAL DRUMMER!! YAY!
Rockrgrl.com announced on March 6 that Sam is now officially replacing Patty Schemel as Hole's drummer. Here is the article:

It's Official -- Maloney is In!

Courtney Love wasn't too happy to read in the November/December '99 issue of ROCKRGRL that Hole drummer Samantha Maloney (who appeared on the cover) still considered herself a temp.

"Courtney came to rehearsal and said 'What do you mean we haven't asked you to be in the band? Of course you're in the band,'" Maloney told us at the Los Angeles NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) show in January. "I told her that nobody had asked me to officially be in the band," Maloney explained. "'Well, I'm asking you now!' Courtney said."

Although Hole is still sans bass player since Melissa Auf der Maur's defection to Smashing Pumpkins, at least one personnel matter has been resolved. Samantha Maloney is officially the band's permanent drummer, replacing Patty Schemel, who has been missing in action since the release of the Celebrity Skin album last year. You (and Courtney) heard it here first.

The launch of Holemusic.com
The official Hole site mentioned in Mademoiselle now contains exclusive photos, mp3s, and will update sometime this week with news on what the band is up to! Click here to go to holemusic.com!.

"Versace did not supply this outfit: Hole's Courtney Love models the 1994 'kinderwhore' look"
-Photo by Jeffrey Thurnher/Corbis Outline, Spin April 2000

Hole in Spin's 15-year retrospect
Check out the April 2000 of Spin which has clips of articles about Hole and Courtney from previous issues. It is part of Spin's 15th anniversary issue in which you can choose from four different covers: Madonna, Beastie Boys, Nirvana, or Notorious B.I.G.

Pages 90-92

"Imagine this: You're peaking. At the prime of your life. You've finally met somebody of the opposite gender who you can write with. That's never happened before in your life, and this person's a better writer than you. And you're in love, you have a best friend, you have a soul-fucking-mate, and you can't believe it's happening. And as a bonus he's beautiful. And he's rich. And he's a hot rock star. And he's the best flick who ever walked. And he wants to have babies. And he understands everything you say. And he completes your sentences. And he's not embarrassed about praying; he's not embarrassed about chanting, about God, Jesus, none of it. And there's even room for you to fix him, which you like, 'cause you're a fixer-upper, He's perfect in almost every fucking way. The only fucking happiness that I ever had.... And then it all gets taken away."
--COURTNEY LOVE, FEBRUARY 1995

Nautica Stage, Cleveland
August 29, 1994 Pale arms outstretched, offering herself up for crucifixion, or a pie in the face, or a big hug, Courtney Love exclaimed, "Fuck with me, fuck with me. It's the only thing I like!" A few hoots. A desultory heckle. We were only three songs into Hole's first American show since the suicide of Love's husband, Kurt Cobain, and the heroin overdose of bassist Kristen Pfaff; the band's premier gig as opening act for Nine Inch Nails' sold-out tour, and already the ride was bumpy:
Nobody wanted to play Love's codependent game of "I'm rubber, you're glue, fuck you." The few Hole fans in attendance-high school girls huddled together to the fight of the mosh pit-were simply awestruck. Everybody else acted like the band's appearance must be a gesture of mercy. And the setting-a concrete outdoor amphitheater in a riverfront mallplex-only further deadened the atmosphere. There was no moment of silence for Cobain, as there had been at Lollpalooza in Philadelphia, just silent curiosity as Love sauntered onstage. Hole immediately roared into "Beautiful Son," and mid-song, Love took off her coat with a flourish, revealing a dingy gray mini-dress and thigh-high stockings.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a promising opening to a sordidly sad B-movie. After the feedback subsided, Love nervously blurted out, “You know, I punched a guy on the plane." The crowd tittered, confused. "Miss World" was a raggedy mess, and when Love changed the coda from, "I am the girl you know / Can't look you in eye" to "I am the girl you want / So sick that I'll just die," it was obvious that she was not just nerve-racked but racked in general.
The crowd grew increasingly impatient, but Love staggered on. A guy yelled, "I wanna fuck you, Courtney!' She shot back, "I wanna fuck you, too, but only if you're a water sign." The band jerked into "Gutless,” then, without a word, Love put down her guitar, yanked up her top, and began to pose in her black bra. As the crowd looked on, stunned, she tore it off, thrust out her chest, and slurred, "Now you know why I get all the guys, you fucking shitbags.' It was like watching your sister strip for a stag party.
During "Doll Parts," after moaning, "He only loves those things because he loves to see me break" (instead of "them"), she wobbled back from the mic almost punch-drunk. By this time, the band had bailed, and Love was alone, singing, "Someday you will ache like I ache," again and again, her voice a faint sob. She finally stumbled over to a huge speaker and leaned into it like she was about to pass out. Then, while being led off by an assistant, she stepped back, pulled up her top, then flipped us off with both hands.
If you cared at all, it was devastating. I thought about what I'd say to her if I had the gall to get angry. Melodramatic junk like: Jesus, Courtney! Do you want us to feel every single fucking wince of your pain on every single fucking song? Do you want all your reviews to read like half-assed scripts for a punk-rock A Star Is Born? Is too much sadness never enough?
But melodrama is a luxury most of us don't have. And besides, maybe we do want Love to stick her ring finger in our mouths so we can suck her dry. I hope there's more to it than that. But right now, I'm not so sure.
--CHARLES AARON, "LIVE," NOVEMBER 1994

"Pretty on the outside: 'I wore this dress at almost every single show for six months,' says Courtney Love. 'I think I conceived Frances on a night I was wearing it.'"
-Photo by Jeff Minton, Spin April 2000, p.26

Even during their most earnest attempts at a straight-ahead live performance, a Hole show is no mere rock gig: Each and every fan is elevated (or, occasionally, buried) by the mad life Love has led for an incendiary 29 years. She has lived through not only the gruesome death of her husband and best friend, but also an impossibly unstable childhood, a globetrotting turn as a stripper, a whirlwind marriage, and a pregnancy lousy with scandal.
And, of equal if not greater importance to her music, she's also been a player, either minor or major, in nearly every notable punk and postpunk scene of the past ten years. Her zigzag wanderings-stops in Britain, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, Portland, and Seattle, among others-add up to an education that would alone ensure a bachelor's degree in punk rock. "Even if I were talentless," cracks Love, "after seeing Echo & the Bunnymen eight million times and Nirvana ten million times. how could I not write an okay new wave record?" Hole's second album, Live Through This, however, easily surpasses Love's self-deprecating description. and her success as a performer and writer is due more to drive and intelligence than to good timing.
If there were such a thing as a rock-star competition-and for Love. there unmistakably is--she would easily take the cake. Some might argue that we have no need for such a bloated, antiquated notion-after all, Nirvana can be found on a compilation called Kill Rock Stars-but pop would be a million times less fun without such constructions. Of course, unless the artist comes armed with a thick skin and an affection for the absurd, serving as a dartboard for the many longings of young adults can be painful. But not only is Love comfortable in the glare of the spotlight, she barely needs to squint.
Heroine. villain, feminist, slut, poet, punk, fashion plate, gossip, punching bag. bitch, survivor, wife, morn: Love slips into each of these roles as if born for the part. Her deeply confessional songs-"I may lie a lot, but never in my lyrics," she says-are sometimes revised during her shows for extra voyeurism and bloodletting. Don't bother trying to untangle what is real from what is artifice; at this point the knot is so gnarled that the strands are barely traceable.
"All I have to do is lick my finger, stick it up in the air, and shit sticks to it," Love says. "I leave a bar, and I know that no matter how quiet I've been or what I haven't done, for the next month it'll be spoken of that I came in and yelled and screamed and fucked whoever on the floor."
--CRAIG MARKS, "ENDLESS LOVE," FEBRUARY 1995

It's late at night in the green room of a recording studio in New York City, where Hole are working on their third album, Celebrity Skin. Courtney Love is still wearing the fashionable
black outfit she wore to meet movie people that day. "Madonna was talking to me about responsibility," she says. "Our responsibilities. It's like, a 17-year-old girl comes up to you and tells you that she does drugs because you did drugs. I mean, that's like a heavy negative social responsibility. How do you atone for that?"
"That girl is doing drugs because she wants to," I say.
Love would have none of this. "I see pictures of how I looked," she says. "It's disgusting. I'm ashamed. There's death and there's disease and there's misery and there's giving up your soul. There's this creaky old-man phenomenon that happens to you. The human spirit mixed with certain powders is not the person, it's the demonic presence.
"Vanity Fair said Madonna 'doesn't have a self-destructive bone in her body,'" Love continues, "Well, I have many"-Love gives a wheezy laugh-"and I've broken a bunch. I think self-destructiveness is given a really bad rap. I think that self-destructiveness can also mean self-reflection, can mean poetic sensibility. it can mean empathy, it can mean hedonism and a libertarianism and a lack of judgment. But when you're living the fantasy of someone else's shadow, you're not light."
--PHILIP WEISS, "THE LOVE ISSUE," OCTOBER 1998

"Steve Malkmus (of Pavement) is like the Grace Kelly of indie rock."
-Courtney Love, Hole, 1994

Page 121

Courtney Love and Stevie Nicks

Courtney Love: Tell me more about your love life
Stevie Nicks: Well, when Lindsey (Buckingham) and I broke up during Rumours, I started going out with Don Henley. And you know, I was like the biggest Eagles fan of life.
That's a perfect couple right there. I mean, that's the California, the San Andreas Fault couple. He was really cute, too.
He was really cute, and he was elegant. Do taught me to spread money.
How did he teach you to spend money? I've never had a guy do that for me.
Well, I just watched him, that's how. He was okay with, say, buying a house like that [snaps her fingers] or sending a Learjet to pick you up.
I had a Learjet phase for a little bit, but I couldn't really afford it. While we're on the subject, tell me about your rose Porsche.
Me and a bunch of my friends were in my house in Phoenix; we were up all night doing lots of cocaine and watching that movie Risky Business. That's one of my favorites. And I just made a call and that Porsche was delivered.
You said, "I was a rose Porsche"?
I said, "I want the same Porsche that's in Risky Business." There's a rose Porsche in Risky Business?
Yes, there is. And I bought it. That morning.
Wow. You know, I still think Don Henley is sexy.
--BLONDE ON BLONDE," OCTOBER 1997

Page 124

Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love

"Kurt was a gobbler," says Courtney Love. "If you had acid, he'd take acid. If you had mushrooms, he'd take mushrooms. When it came to drugs, he was abusive in a very intense way. If there were 40 pills, he'd take 40 pills, instead of taking two pills and making it last a month.'"
Love, pulling hard on her ever-present cigarette, recalls the hellish spectacle of her husband's frequent overdoses. "The day Frances was born, this dealer came to the hospital. There were 8,000 nurses and doctors outside the door, and Kurt was in the hospital. He's already on the fucking morphine drip for his stomach, and then he arranges for this dealer to come and stick a needle into the IV. He like totally died. I've never OD'd, ever. I've gotten really fucking blasto, but instead of OD'ing, I start talking too much, screaming and running around naked and getting hysterical, cutting my arms, you know, crazy shit. But I never have fallen on the floor blue."
--CRAIG MARKS, "ENDLESS LOVE," FEBRUARY 1995

New role for Courtney in Julie Johnson
Courtney is considering a film role in "Julie Johnson," which would probably delay the production of another film she was set to star in called "Darker Saints." Here is the article from MTV

Courtney Love Eyes Role In "Julie Johnson"
by David Basham

It appears that there will be more movies than music in the near future for Hole frontwoman Courtney Love.

Love, whose newest film "Beat" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in January, is reportedly considering taking a role in "Julie Johnson," according to "Variety."

Based on Wendy Hammond's play of the same name, "Julie Johnson" deals with a New Jersey housewife (to be portrayed by Lili Taylor) who leaves her husband and becomes romantically involved with her lifelong friend Claire, the role which Love is considering.

"Courtney Love and Elton John discuss God knows what at Santana's shindig."
-Photo by Kevin Mazur, March 30, 2000 Rolling Stone (with 'N Sync on the cover).

Hammond, Head of the Dramatic Writing Program at the University of Michigan, adapted her play for the big screen, and Bob Gosse ("Niagara, Niagara") has signed on to direct the film.

Love, who also starred alongside Jim Carrey in "Man On The Moon," is currently in the midst of a dispute with the band's label, Geffen Records.

The band has also yet to announce whether it has landed a new bassist to replace Melissa Auf Der Maur, who left Hole in October and has since joined the Smashing Pumpkins.

Love also has another film project in the works, "Darker Saints," which would presumably be pushed back a few months in order for her to complete "Julie Johnson."

"Motorcycle Boy" from BAND Courtney Love
Thanks to all those (and there were a lot of you!) who wrote to tell us that "Motorcycle Boy" is from the band named after Courtney and not Courtney Love herself.

Melissa Auf der Maur news
The new Smashing Pumpkins video for "Stand Inside Your Love" has been released! The Pumpkins are currently on their promotional tour for their album Machina/the machines of God, which debuted at #3 on Billboard's 200 Album chart. Here is a new article from JamMusic about Melissa during the Pumpkins' stops in Montreal and Toronto which talks about the transition from being in Hole to the Pumpkins, and mentions Melissa's boyfriend Dave Grohl, Melissa visiting her brother, her presenting an award at this year's Juno awards, and a possible Pumpkins/Our Lady Peace in Canada later this year.

Photos by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, March 16, 2000 Rolling Stone (with Santana on the cover).

A Smashing new addition
by Jane Stevenson

MONTREAL -- Melissa Auf Der Maur says she's getting used to being rock music's pinch-hitter.

The 29-year-old Montreal bassist is currently working her way through her second alt-rock supergroup, having hooked up with the Smashing Pumpkins last fall after leaving Hole.

"I'm very good at adapting to very complicated personal situations," said Auf Der Maur, in an exclusive Toronto newspaper interview with The Toronto Sun yesterday.

"It's part of my personality in many ways. I think it reflects even the role of a bass player in a band. Often, musically, as a bass player, you have to be very sensitive to what the other people are doing. You're kind of like the person in the background that glues everything together."

Auf Der Maur's comments come prior to the Pumpkins' arrival in T.O. tomorrow in support of the band's new album, MACHINA/the machines of God.

To back up a bit, Auf Der Maur joined Hole five years ago after bassist Kristen Pfaff fatally overdosed. She was even recommended to Hole frontwoman Courtney Love by none other than Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan, who had known Auf Der Maur since 1990. (Love and Corgan have since had a well-publicized falling out concerning Corgan's involvement in Hole's last album, Celebrity Skin.)

When Auf Der Maur was ready to move on from Hole, it coincided with Pumpkins bassist D'arcy, who played on MACHINA, leaving the band. Corgan then got on the phone.

"This Pumpkins opportunity seemed like a perfect musical thing," Auf Der Maur said. "More than anything, it's where my bass told me to go. I needed to play this rock music."

Auf Der Maur first saw the Pumpkins in 1990 when she was in the audience for a concert they gave at the Montreal club Foufoun Electrique. Immediately after, she formed her first band Tinker. Their sixth show was opening for the Pumpkins.

"With Hole, it was a lot more of a 'female in music thing' that was very important to me," she explained. "This is a lot more about music. Not to say that Hole wasn't. But even in Hole, the way I exercised my musical self in that band was by singing lots of backup and literally my personality complementing Courtney's personality. Whereas in this band, it's just about my bass and about playing with the best drummer in rock music."

Corgan said Auf Der Maur brings both "good energy and good musicianship" to the Pumpkins, which is rounded out by guitarist James Iha and recently reinstated drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, fired back in 1996 for his chronic drug use and involvement in the fatal accidental overdose of touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin.

"I think in our case, me and James and Jimmy having played together for about 12 years, it's a difficult thing to walk into," said Corgan in an exclusive Canadian newspaper interview with The Sun yesterday. "So I think having a personal relationship with Melissa, both me and James, before she came in, I think makes that a lot easier."

As for D'arcy's exit, Corgan said it wasn't a big surprise.

"You can feel somebody kind of drifting for a long time. There were a thousand things that went on. It's hard to put stuff like that in one sentence."

Corgan chose his words carefully when asked to respond to D'arcy's January crack cocaine bust in the band's homebase of Chicago.

"You know any trouble that any band member's found themselves in is not easy to deal with," he said. "I don't mean this in a coy way, but we're real people with real problems and real successes and part of the beauty of the band is we're not perfect."

Auf Der Maur, meanwhile, who was last in her hometown at Christmas, said she was glad to be back for "a frantic 36 hours," including a club show tonight.

"I have a little brother who's 17, so I got to see him," said Auf Der Maur, who reportedly had boyfriend Dave Grohl, band leader of The Foo Fighters, in tow.

The Pumpkins Toronto appearances tomorrow include a visit to MuchMusic (3:15 p.m.) and an HMV autograph session at 333 Yonge St. (5-6 p.m.). They will also play The Guvernment and Auf Der Maur will present a Juno Award at SkyDome for best-selling album.

In fact, Corgan met with Our Lady Peace members Raine Maida and Mike Turner yesterday to discuss the possibility of the Pumpkins hooking up for a cross-Canada tour later this year.

"I hope so," said Auf Der Maur. "I need to tour Canada now. It's my favourite place to play."