Hi Melissa! What was it like plunging back into the grunge glory years for your new memoir, Even The Good Girls Will Cry?
The book wrote itself, all from memory and like a waterfall. I tell about the time that Courtney and I went to Milan Fashion Week and found ourselves backstage with Donatella Versace and all these supermodel boys offering themselves to us. A lot of the dark, heavy, complex stuff also came easily. I remembered too much, and I think it’s because I kept a diary and photographed so much that my memory lodged it in a very clear way. I can tell all these wild stories and the detail of the deli platter backstage and the grisly abscess on Courtney’s ass! But my obsessive documentarian role was what protected me. It was like building a forcefield. Bass players are supportive in nature. I’ve spent my life trying to understand why I am good at that role.
You left Hole after five eventful years…
We broke our own hearts along the way. I had dutifully stayed, trying to do what we set out to do, which is put women in a male dominated landscape. We had a Top 40 hit, we were as big as ever, and Courtney turned away and explored Hollywood and I was pissed. But that’s her journey. She was surviving insurmountable pain – not just Kurt and being left alone as a mother and her own struggle with addiction, but a lifetime of not being loved. And then it became a public witch trial. The legacy of Hole was in the gutters. No one took care of it because no one took care of her.
How did Courtney feel about you joining Smashing Pumpkins?
She was respectful, but angry that I was leaving for her ex-boyfriend. It was a lot of drama, but I’ve long said that Hole was my Bachelors in humanity and the Pumpkins was my Masters in music. I learned in Hole about how society treats women, and then I got to basically go on vacation and be the best bass player I’ve ever been by playing with the best musicians I’ll ever play with in my life. The intensity of Billy Corgan and his work ethic, and the radical dexterity I needed to have as a bass player, was insane. We were playing up to three hours a night, different setlists every night. It was Olympian-style musicianship.
As a fellow anchor to grunge royalty, was it inevitable that you and Dave Grohl would become a couple?
It makes total sense but when it was happening it was out of left field. I was boy crazy by the end of my time in Hole because my idle hands were so music-less. Then he came along and weirdly swept me off my feet.
You’ve recorded backing vocals for Courtney Love’s new album and will be joining her on her solo tour. What has it been like to reconnect?
Courtney putting out a new record, that is the happy ending of the story of Hole. I didn’t realise how much I needed to unify with her until I was in the vocal booth, wrapping myself around her survival call. She’s one of a kind in my life, and in the world.
Is this your musical comeback?
I was hoping the book would trick me back into music and help me fall in love with it again. I was in the studio last night, working on a soundtrack to my memoir. So I am making some music and I suspect I will make more.
Even The Good Girls Will Cry: A ’90s Rock Memoir is out now, published by Atlantic Books