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Melissa Auf der Maur, "Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir" (DaCapo, 2026)
00:45:12
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- [00:00]
Melissa Auf der Maur
I was groomed to become one of his wives.
- [00:03]
Disorder Podcast Host
This week on Disorder, the podcast that orders the disorder, an Epstein survivor tells me her story and what justice looks like for her.
- [00:13]
Melissa Auf der Maur
I want to see action, and I am demanding action. Do not just talk the talk. You need to start walking the walk now.
- [00:20]
Disorder Podcast Host
It's one of the most powerful interviews I've ever done in over 20 years as a journalist. Search Disorder in your podcast app to listen right now. Hey NBN listeners. We're running our 2026 New Books Network audience Survey and we'd love just a few minutes of your time. NBN has been bringing you in depth conversations with authors and scholars for over 15 years. We haven't done a comprehensive audience survey since 2022, and a lot has changed since then. It's time to hear from you again. Here's why we're asking. We want to understand who's listening, what subjects and podcasts you love most and and where you'd like to see us grow. Your responses help us tell NBN's story to the publishers, libraries and institutions we partner with. When we can show that our listeners are serious readers, lifelong learners, and heavy library users. It opens doors to new partnerships, better resources, and ultimately a stronger NBN for everyone. And one more thing, if you leave your email address at the end of the survey, you'll be entered to win a $100 gift card to bookshop.org, a chance to stock up on books while supporting independent bookstores at the same time. The survey takes just five minutes. Your answers are confidential and your email will never be shared. Head to newbooksnetwork.com to take the survey today. We really appreciate your support. Now go take the survey.
- [01:45]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:50]
Rebecca Buchanan
Hi, this is Rebecca Buchanan, host at New Books Network and today I am here with Melissa ofdemar to talk about her new memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry. Melissa, thanks for being here with me today.
- [02:03]
Melissa Auf der Maur
I took a bite of my granola as you were introducing. Good morning from Los Angeles.
- [02:10]
Rebecca Buchanan
Could you start out by just sharing why you decided to write this memoir and kind of release it now? What was it like? Why did you want to share your story?
- [02:23]
Melissa Auf der Maur
To be clear, it is my 90s rock memoir. It's about the decade that defined me and my generation, 91 to 2001. So it is a 25 year perspective. That was both good timing for me personally. I believe that a couple of decades is exactly enough time past that. Some wounds have naturally healed through time and others that have not been dealt with need to be dealt with. So it was for personal reasons, good timing. But I also very much did this for the larger cultural commentary conversation. And I believe that a quarter century later is exactly enough perfect time to frame the cultural historic impacts of certain themes in my book. And I have a very layered. Yes, it's a 90s Iraq memoir, but there is much more to it. And my mandates to myself were way beyond my women in rock 90s thing. There's a lot of other layers which I will let you explore or go to if you want. And I don't have to describe the whole layer cake, but it was a very, very clear time for me as a. As a woman coming into my new chapter in life. My daughter's just become a teenager and I wanted to clear up a lot of unresolved business of my own so that she can have a lighter, freer, purged mother. And so I could better understand myself to move into new creative realms and spiritual, emotional realms of myself and in tandem have this generational conversation. Yes.
- [04:10]
Rebecca Buchanan
So, you know, I have to preface this by. You and I are the same age. Right. I think I might be. Cause you just. I think you just celebrated a birthday.
- [04:19]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Yeah, I'm born in 72. I'm 54.
- [04:21]
Rebecca Buchanan
And I too just. I sold. My birthday was February, so I'm an Aquarius. So little. Right. But so for me, there was much in here that resonated just with being a young woman in the 90s. Right. And growing up in the 90s. Could you talk a little bit like. Because. But you do talk about. We'll get to the music stuff, but I'd love for you to talk about your family a little bit because that plays such a big role in this. And you even thinking about who you are and kind of defining yourself because you're. You came from this very non traditional family base.
- [05:02]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Yeah, incredible. I mean, I was very clear when I sold my book to the publishers that my origin story was essential to be given time and space for. Because. Not just because, of course, my parents and my incredible city of Montreal and my bohemian counterculture childhood defined me and made me. But also because it's part of the larger cultural evolution of counterculture. My parents were pioneers of their generation, both in broadcasting journalism. My father went into politics. My mother ended up landing in literary translation of French Canadian theater. But they both started as broadcasters in the 60s and were very, very alive and engaged with the cultural actions of their generation. My mother was total frontline feminist of that era, chose to have me as a single mother. My father was a radical journalist who turned into a politician because he fought for the public, the humans, not for the politicians and the corporate interests. So they were both incredible people to witness, engage in the place that they live and that the way that they activate community and activate thinking. And so I was very influenced by them. And primarily I lay it out because it doesn't only say something about the counterculture of the 60s and 70s which fed into the 90s. And I'm very clear that yes, I was in love with music, but when I joined whole reluctantly because of the level of death and drugs and destruction that was happening in that band, I joined it for women. I joined it to be part of our generation's frontline feminist action of putting women on a male dominated landscape. So that extension of my mother's actions from her generation is very important for me to, to show and to tell the thread through which again makes it both personal but also cultural and universal. A bigger story that I'm telling and my actual city of Montreal and my, you know, happily declared socialist Canadian that I am also has so much to do with what I'm really trying to explore in the book on the big, big level is, you know, the turn of millennium and how we got here, how we got into the mess that we are. And through my unique lens of true progress and two true alternative ways, and a city that in many ways Montreal is still protected from most corporate hell based on the fact that the French language, the freezing winters, as well as the Quebec Socialist government that supports their own and keeps the American corruption at bay, these are all huge parts of who I am. But what I think we need to look at with the United States and with the world at large. And that my generation, as we know, the counterculture, wild broken poets, kids of our early 90s, got bought up and sucked into the major label mainstream and destroyed, quite literally people, many people died, suicide, drugs, destruction and selling of souls to the corporate greed. And I wanted very much to write a story about the last Analog decade and how a woman like me grew up in this counterculture, found herself in the highest version of counterculture in the 90s in our zeitgeist music moment. And then watched it all go to shit, it all fell apart and it predicted where we are now, which is tech creeps, corporate interests buying elections and moving us into a horrendous post capitalism destruction. And our planet is suffering for it, our people is suffering for it, democracy is suffering for it. So I really needed to participate in my generation's dialogue I have a responsibility to my daughter to say what I saw happened and to apologize on behalf of our generation that we witnessed this horrific thing and even us, the smartest or the big platforms could not stop it. We really, you know, I want to say I'm sorry. I saw what happened and I really. I saved myself from it, but I was not able to stop the world from where it's going. And we have to find, through art, music, and community, a way to live with this.
- [09:39]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah, yeah. You know, as you're talking and as you're saying that, like I say, I grew up outside of. Outside of the Twin Cities, so I spent a lot of time in Minneapolis, First Avenue. You know, that Minneapolis music scene was kind of my space. Right. And so, so much of what you wrote about did resonate with me. This kind of like, how do you find your way in this world? And. And I will forever say that for me, as a, you know, a young person growing up and, you know, in the 80s, Ronald Reagan kind of ruined our world. Right. And so you were. You were in a different space, though. You were in Canada, in Montreal. Can you talk a little bit? Because you talk about this in the book, what that kind of scene for you was like, what the music scene was like, how you kind of. Because you were also a photographer, you're an artist, right? Like how you kind of participated in this scene, that Canada is very different than what we had going on in the U.S. yeah.
- [10:40]
Melissa Auf der Maur
The irony, though, is in the early part of my book, you'll maybe you remember, but I received a birthday card, my 13th birthday, from Ronald Reagan and the then Prime Minister of Canada. And I recognized even then how ironic and insane it was that I, from this counterculture family, was receiving a birthday card from Ronald Reagan, which is framed in my house in irony right now. And we were less aware of the destruction that Reagan was playing. There was this whole thing in Canada and the U.S. happening at the time. Free trade and trying to open up, you know, that was part of the capitalist, you know, in the end problem. But at the time there was like this, like, Canada is expanding, it's building relations with its big trade partner. And so I was aware of the presence, but it wasn't as dire as it was, say, in like, DC and the discord scene and Fugazi and all the really politically active punks, post punks of the United States. I really was raised in more of a utopia where quite literally, my father was an elected official and he did it because he didn't trust politicians. So I was around a utopia where you actually believe that the people you are voting for are representing your needs. So in many ways I was protected from by the disgusting greed. But I was indoctrinated by my progressive parents. My mother's an expat, she grew up in Boston, studied and the Ratcliffe Harvard School for Women. Real. I was indoctrinated by parents that the system in the United States only hurts their own and will not sustain. So I, when I joined a rock band, an American rock band, at 22 years old, I came in eyes wide open, like, okay, these people are being abused by their government. They don't even know. And most of the people that were in these bands came from nothing. No health care, poor education, broken families, poverty, mental illness, addiction. And they were not as clear as I was that this system did not serve them. They were already just against the, you know, anti system. They just didn't part. I was the only one voting. You know, I was a Canadian dual citizen voting in that first Clinton election to try to get a Democrat in. And like the people in my band weren't even tuned in today. You know, I was raised by politically engaged people and I understood that my vote counts. Even if I just arrived in the country I was voting. So I mean I, you know, I, I was clear what I was stepping into. So it's not like I like arrived in America thinking everywhere was politically cool and like I just knew that I was crossing over into an abyss, you know, and there's, and then the whole thing, the joke is that would, I wouldn't change anything because the power of American creatives and that moment in music is the most like incredible. So America makes remarkable individuals and hence the individualism of the Manifest Destiny and Make your make it your own. Canada is a remarkable society and it has an incredible way of making you feel safe within a community. So it's two very different things that for a while there I saw the best in both of them. And I do continue to be a dual citizen and live in the US while very attached to my homeland. But I'm, you know, deeply concerned about where we are now. But it's again, why I wrote this book is I. We saw it coming, you know, we saw this arriving.
- [14:18]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. And you know, one thing I thought for me was also interesting is that you get at like, especially in this kind of 90s grunge kind of alternative era, the real struggle with the corporate struggle, right. This struggle with like money that was coming in from really big produce, you know, really big record Companies having lots of money and, and you know, that pull between like we can give you money and give you these things, but they don't really care about you. Right. And, and not even. I think there was one point in your book where you talked about how like all like that you owed money after, you know, when you left whole. Right. Like so there's this, there's this sort of push and pull that you really get at too with the way the exploitation of young people during the night. Right. Like sometimes we think I, you know, I often will have students who'll talk about how great this the 90s was or how great the 80s was and all of this. And I'm kind of like, yeah, but there was also.
- [15:21]
Melissa Auf der Maur
But I think that's still happening. I mean the problem is the music industry in general. Go try to go find Billie Holiday's record contract. The music industry is corrupt. The artists still aren't. Taylor Swift is an anomaly. She had to be so screwed over to be able to then making billions to buy her catalog back. The music industry is a corrupt system. So that wasn't new to the 90s. It just is. It was more that our generation when it started in the early 90s and sub pop and the Seattle Explosion, all that these were underground communities and individuals that didn't buy into the system. We were against the system. And the whole thing of our, our generational don't sell out. Don't sell your soul to the man. You know, be powerful independence. We all got bought and sold the major label thing. They, they seduce the. But again, because as I mentioned, a lot of these people didn't have love support, didn't have financial stability. Like of course it's going to seduce people. And then yes. Is there temptation in and around fame? Because then yes. And you hope that you can change the world if you have the platform. I just think that our generation was uniquely in tune to the pros and the cons of this merging of counterculture and the big system. And ultimately we lost. But I think that what's important about our perspective and what I try to really dig at in this book is that we were the last analog decade. So it's not just did we lose the sacred way of how we listen to music and go to shows with undivided attention from the audience. No, I'm talking about about before the technical corporate creeps wrapped their world around us. They now that you know, it was pre surveillance. It was pre monetizing every second and every click of our finger. So it was both an awareness that we were losing our own generation's magic and our own souls, but also everybody's. We witnessed. I talk about a very specific moment in my book where I saw while we were making Celebrity Skin, the last whole record, and we were working in this beautiful old fashioned studio in Los Angeles with tube tape, tube amplifiers and ribbon microphones and big thick tape. And I saw these guys coming in and out of the studio, these tiny little boxes, and I asked what they were and they were hard drives and they were going to go put my incredible sounding bass sound into a machine to manually move it in a computer. And I bring the reader in to say, come see what I saw in real time. I saw the perfection, greed, control people, send the minions, grab the magic, bring it into a computer. And that chapter is called the Rise of the Digital Soul Sucking Beast. And when I discovered that they were planning on putting my human base part into a machine to manually move it on a computer, I said to the technician, but isn't that a threat to the natural imperfections that happen with musicians playing live in a room? And he said, and he just looked at me blankly like a cyborg drone and said, well, the producer wants it perfect. And then I, at that moment and I describe in the book, what if perfect isn't perfect, what is. So that's the whole control thing, you know, the, the evolving into this insane control of humans which we have clearly arrived. So yeah, that's. You know, I really try to bring the reader into those last years of when we actually witnessed the, the hijacking.
- [19:17]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. You know, I think too, your story of how you, how you picked up the base and how you even like got joined whole add, like is a story of analog. Right? Like that can happen. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about just that, like how you got. Because it wouldn't happen. This would not happen today. Right.
- [19:38]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Yeah. So beyond Analog, it's like fairy tale fable world. My book Even the Good Girls Will Cry has very another. You know, many of the layers were. One of the reasons I wanted to tell this story is that there is a fairy tale quality to my story and my life. And I credit a lot of it being that I'm somebody who listened to the signs and listened to the magic in the room and the accidental beer bottle thrown on the stage and then the apology and then me writing a fan letter to a P.O. box and Billy Corgan receiving it. The way that my coming into what was then the biggest music moment of our generation happened when a 2122 year old girl, me, just went out on a limb and felt something in a band and started her own band. And very quickly, like Cinderella style, I went from being completely in the obscure Montreal music scene, having only played six concerts and tiny clubs, into the world stage and being Hull's bass player. My seventh concert ever was at the Reading Festival with Hole in front of 65,000 people. And so I went in a very, very quick, radical trajectory. And all of it happened by. There's no other force that I can call it. It's by magic, you know, by magic, accidents, intuition, you know, you can't plan and control that no computer. Unless you want to make an AI story about a fantasy rock fable. You could, but this is a true story. And I wanted to tell this story to also empower young women and young people and dreamers to believe in their intuition and to listen to their dreams. I quite literally describe the dreams I had at 19 and 20 that move me towards picking up the bass and making music. I and only described that it was as if there was an intervention from some spirit world that told me that music was going to be the way I can connect with humans in this lifetime. So I followed this dream and I don't say it lightly when I say to young women, hey, any advice? Or follow your dreams, listen to your heart. I really use my emotions and my body as an antenna to receive information up to what, where to go in my life and where to follow my feelings and dreams. And I want this to be an analog inspiration tale where people can dare to cut off the algorithms and the tentacles of the fractured connectivity of this digital world we live in. To remember that the ancient, silent, quiet voice inside of you that connects you to the universe and you to a higher purpose in there is where the magic happens. If we give over to these machines, no magic will happen. This is not going to end well. We know where this is going, where these creeps want it to go. They want to take away our humanity and the magic, then the joy that happens within that being human. So, you know, I'm a real pro human person and this book is to get on a big campaign of pro human, pro analog world
- [23:02]
Rebecca Buchanan
TikTok tienne ma short dramas de los que puedo terminar. Well, you know, I have to say that I love, I. I love all of that, right? Because often too, I mean, everyone but young people are told like, and with young girls especially, like, you're too emotional, right? You can't, you shouldn't be, right? These ideas that, like, care and empathy and emotion and concern are bad things. Right. And that we. And so young women, I mean, I see it all the time and I have a, you know, I'm raising a teenager as well, like making sure, like that my daughter knows and like believing in who you are and trusting your gut is okay. Like if something is not sitting well with you, get out of there. If. Right, right. And I think that's something we often. And people just want to sort of poo poo. I don't know if that's the best way, but people want to just kind of say, yeah, no, I'm, you know, we need the cold hard facts. And yeah. And I think what you're talking about is so important and so important to remember and think about.
- [24:15]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Thank you. And I, you know, I too have a 14 year old daughter and you know, I, I've been reflecting back to a lot of people how so many people like, oh, teenage girls, wow, wait till you get there. That is a horrific, insulting and no way. And that, by the way, is not my experience with my gorgeous 14 year old, emotional, sensitive person evolving into the most complex body and time of her life. She better be a little upside down and weird. I mean, she's becoming a woman. That is intense and the hormones and the, the way the world starts looking at you differently. This is insane for us to not be generous. You know, when I tell my daughters all the time, my, my one daughter, but all of her friends, because she comes with a big plan and it's, it's, remember, girls, your grandmothers a hundred years ago could not vote. Your mothers could barely get a mortgage or a credit card and their own. I mean, meet my mothers, my grandmother, my mother, and just remind them we're only just beginning. This is 100 years into women's rights and women's autonomy. And I never, despite all the illusions of the Taylor Swifts and the pretty Girls on the YouTube and the whole like, I'm famous for being an influencer. Like, no, no, this is an illusion. We are so far from being a woman power world. And like I'm constantly. And obviously that's what our band had so much to do. And Courtney was such a unlikable, demonic woman, which is exactly what we're talking about. You know, she was a unloved, third generation motherless daughter who was trying to be heard and yes, seeking attention because she was neglected. And I am a good girl to her bad girl. I'm the virgin to her whore. But we made a archetypical duo in the 90s for a reason that resonated with people, because we played out both sides. And my book now, the good, credible girl who wasn't a drug addict who didn't say fuck you to people. I was good. I, I, I did what I was supposed to do. I, I, I was the pretty girl that people weren't scared of all this stuff. And I have a particular lens on what it means to be a good girl. And yes, the modeling of believing in yourself. I trusted myself and I was able to leave when it didn't feel good. And all of these things you just said is that, that's why this book is for my daughter and her friends. I dedicate it to her and her friends because they need those lessons. Because, by the way, we weren't taught those. You know, my mother is frontline feminist. She does, she, she modeled. We can only model what we possibly can, and then we have to counterbalance hardcore with all these horrendous algorithm evil models where they're throwing all these like, what seems like porn star teenagers into the algorithm of every teenager on YouTube. It's terrifying. So, yeah, I, I have a pretty serious concern and mandate around women, and I despise it when I hear people say, oh, teenage girls, I'm like, yeah, they better be, like, difficult.
- [27:25]
Rebecca Buchanan
Actually, I'm the best way. I mean, I, I love the difficulty that is my, like, I love my teenage girl in all those ways. Right. But I also get to see her kind of stand up for things that at a time where, like, you know, that I never even thought about. Like when you think about, like, reproductive rights, when you think about kind of just, just human rights in general. Right. Trans rights, all these things that she's kind of like, you know, you, I'm not, like, I'm not moving to a red. Like, I, you know, like, she already has these agendas that are framed by feminism in these ways that, you know, she might not say it, but I see it and I love.
- [28:03]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's still, we still have a ways to go and there's a lot going against us at the moment. But yes, the only thing we can do is model strong mothers to these daughters and in my case, write this book in hopes that any young woman coming into her age that might be intrigued by the 90s and analog living and art and music pre the Internet. Hopefully she'll find herself in my book. Yeah.
- [28:31]
Rebecca Buchanan
So let's talk a little bit about your time in hole. You mentioned Courtney Love, and you give Courtney a lot of space in this book. And really, I have always felt that Courtney has gotten a bad rap. Right. Like, she can't get. There are many times that that woman cannot catch a break. Right. Like, oh, beyond.
- [28:52]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Beyond catch a break. That would be nice. This is called burning at the stake. Demonizing. Accusing a woman of killing her husband, even.
- [29:01]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yes, yes, no.
- [29:02]
Melissa Auf der Maur
And a woman that was left for. Left by her husband, who is the hero of all. Every human and their dog wears a Nirvana T shirt. And nobody knows who hole is. Like, this is a system that chose the man who abandoned his family over the woman who was left behind. And Nana even chose him. Chose to try to destroy her in the wake. And I am very much here to reframe that.
- [29:32]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about that? Because you entered. Oh, like. And I think too. I think you entered whole because of multiple tragedies. Right. I also think Kristen doesn't get. You know, there's many women who get a chapter and, you know, it's like, let me tell the story of the 90s. Oh, here's the chapter for women. And then the rest is like the boys Club. Um, and so you entered during lots of tragedy that was going on. And. And I just can't like the fact that, you know, they still survived all of that and kept going with all of that. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- [30:10]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Well, I mean, yeah, the suicide was in the spring. The bass player Kristen's overdose was in June. And then I joined in July. So I joined in the wake of death. I originally said no because of that circumstance, but then I. I realized that I was actually needed and I had a strength and light that I could bring to the situation. And it was both for women at large in music, but also for these individuals that, you know, the. The drummer Patti and. And. And Courtney and Frances being the daughter, picked me up at the airport when I was kind of brought in to technically saying, no, I don't want to join your band, to her face, but ended up being more of a audition slash joining the band. And when, as I was descending the escalator at the Seattle airport, when I saw these women, I realized they needed. It was an opportunity much beyond music, but about female healing and female support of one another. So again, like I was saying earlier, I joined it for really kind of women's political action in many ways. And at the time, I was only 22, and I just sort of followed that gut of, oh, shit, I don't really want to. This is going to be hard, but I see A higher purpose here. And I'm so glad I did. And my relationship with the women in whole are better than they've ever been. And it's a miracle that Courtney's alive. She should have been dead 10,000 times. Patty, the drummer who was at the time one of the only few out lesbian girls in a rock band, should have also been dead. They both descended in and out of major heroin addiction for a decade plus. And they're both coming to my book events, Patty in LA tomorrow and Courtney in London next week. So I mean, we are a happy ending of women that stuck by each other even when we didn't even really know each other and even when it was dangerous to sort of do it. But. And at the same time, simultaneous to that, we put women on the main, the big stages of the festivals where no one else did. We put women on the COVID of Rolling Stone when no one else was. And you know, there was always pop people, but rock women with anger and visceral rage. And by the time I left the band in 99 whole, we're the biggest female front rock band ever. You know, the heart had happened, but, you know, there's very few women in rock that had reached the heights that we did. And. And yeah, so much of it has to do with just being part of a women's history books really.
- [32:56]
Rebecca Buchanan
Well, you know what, it's interesting because you put this, the letter when you left hole, you wrote a letter like you, you know, let them know and Courtney wrote a letter back to you and you put the whole letter in there and, and I think you kind of say the same thing. Like it was a very different reaction probably in the moment than reading, like reading it now. Like she was pretty savvy in kind of like it wasn't always, you know, like, like in the house. She, she really did understand the industry in ways that needed to be understood. Right. In order to kind of exist or stay in it. Like last in it for a while.
- [33:33]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Yeah. And more importantly, she understood me. And that in terms of my own, why I showed is the deep emotional, actual generosity of spirit that she has, is that of course she's completely misunderstood. People think she's a demon, but obviously me, the girl that shared the stage in the studio with her for five years, knows something other people don't. And I work really hard over the course of 400 pages to show the warts and all and the addiction and the difficulty and the competition and all that. But then by the time I leave, she respects me and she tells Me how it's going to go as far as some of the business stuff. And it was, of course, the most terrifying thing I had to do at that time, which was tell Courtney I was leaving her band. But I print the full letter so people can actually see the, the nobility of this woman. That yes, she was running her own ship, she knew exactly how she wanted to go, but she also, at the same time, in the same letter, empowered me to find myself and that she wanted me to be leaving to find myself and not, quote, unquote, be Billy Corgan's purse. Because I was moving on momentarily to be the bass player in Smashing Pumpkins. Which was not why I left Hole. I left Hull because my time was done and Courtney was moving on to become a Hollywood movie star. And she wasn't giving the music enough attention and I was sick of waiting around for her. So I was choosing music and choosing myself and completely simultaneously, which is a bit the fairytale continuation of the story is that the long standing bass player from the Pumpkin Darcy woman bass player, she disappeared into an mia. We don't know, mental illness, addiction, it wasn't clear. But their longstanding bass player disappeared right as I was psychically leaving Hole. And Billy Corgan was my mentor who had found me in the obscure Montreal scene. And he called me and said, you know, those stars have lined up. It's time to join my band. And I had already made the decision, but it all looked very strange as I was basically leaving one giant band for another giant band. And Courtney and Billy had their own. They were lovers, they were collaborators. There was a lot of. It was a tricky, sticky situation I was in. But in the end, I tell the story in this book and everybody, everybody's true higher selves. I believe I have been able to show that Eve, despite all of the competition or control and me being like the hired gun or that me being the sidekick side player and actually my relationships to them now prove it, that there was true, true respect and understanding for one another. And that's what's beautiful about bands, especially people who come from broken families. You, you find, you know, music can save you and band members can see you and be better than your family members at times. And I'm feeling very grateful right now that my two, I call them my grunge parents in the book Courtney and Billy. And that they are. They're shining proud on the sidelines for me in my book right now, they're watching the reception and they're seeing that it's my time to tell My side of the story. And I have nothing but love and support from them. And that to me says at all that, you know, music is magic.
- [36:56]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. So, like, you know, so we have, like, people can read it, hear your story about kind of Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins and being in the 90s, but you also bring in yourself as an artist, like, as a visual artist. Right. And a photographer, which I'm like, I love that you took pictures. Like, I'm like, I want to see all the pictures.
- [37:18]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Well, they're coming out. My second book comes out in September.
- [37:21]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yes, all the pictures. Because I'm like, any. And like, you know, it's like when you. There's some point where I just. It was so, like, you were like, I. Once a week I went. I think it was like once a week I went and would develop all the roles of film, you know, like,
- [37:35]
Melissa Auf der Maur
you said that one hour photo.
- [37:36]
Rebecca Buchanan
Yeah. It's like, oh. And I was like, I love that time.
- [37:39]
Melissa Auf der Maur
I. Oh, yeah. I. I just. While I was writing my book, I had my 15,000 negatives scanned. And my companion book, my 90s rock photographs, comes out in September, along with an opening of a big museum show in Toronto that will travel. So I am the luckiest that at the age of 54, I get to unveil as an author and a fine art photographer all at the same time. And I once was just a woman in the 90s in a rock band. And I'm so grateful. And, you know, my patience and hard work seems to be finally paying off because I never wanted to exploit any of it. It just came when I wanted to heal and see and share what I witnessed and what I. What I hope can be helpful guides and lessons for others who are finding their way through their wild youth. And so, yeah, I had my photos. My photo book comes out in September. And for anyone who wants to see the 90s through my pictures, I took a picture of every crowd every night. I had a roll of film on the band rider and every crowd I played every backstage. And I had to Somehow dwiddle down 15,000 photos to 220, and they will be for you to see soon. And they could have a bigger, longer life because there's a lot more of them. And it's a real. It's a time capsule, it's a time cap, because the big analog digital transition, we lost a lot of culture and a lot of art and visuals through that digital transition. And I'm working with an incredible group of photographic historians and curators who have come and sort of taken collaborative control of my archive to set it in the context of what we don't really have as the. Is the photos of the 90s, really, there was too weird of a transition and a lot of people didn't back up their old hard drives and those digital cameras started being used. And mine are all photographic negatives and a very rare collection of apparently from these photo archivists and one of the few, like, never bore, never before seen time capsules in photographic language of that counterculture moment in the 90s. So I am excited to share that too.
- [39:59]
Rebecca Buchanan
No, I was super. I love that, like, of anything you can put as a writer, it's like, I need a roll of film. That made me so happy. But I think, like, that is so true because I think about even, like, the photos that were taken. Often people are like, I was there. I didn't take. We didn't pull out our camera. Right. Like, I can tell you the stories of the shows I went to, but, like, you have that visual stuff, which is great. So, I mean, I could talk to you forever, but I. I know, like. But I know you have other things you need to do. So I'm gonna ask you. My final question is kind of what. The book just came out. So, like, self promotion and it's. You sort of leaned into it with this, like, the photo book, which I'm very excited now. I'm very excited. But yeah, like, what else is going, like, what's going on with this that you want people to know about or anything else they need to know?
- [40:51]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Well, the photo book is exciting.
- [40:54]
Rebecca Buchanan
I also
- [40:57]
Melissa Auf der Maur
am grateful to have a National Film Board of Canada and CBC documentary film documenting this whole evolution of the coming out of this story of mine and my photographic archive. So there's an intern next year. There'll be a documentary in and around what my archive can be for understanding what was lost in the 90s, you know, but really this month is the ode to my book. I've seen it from the start that my memoir is the mission statement of my lens on my generation. And I. I'm very hopeful that people will get different things from this book. You don't have to be into rock music to like this book. You don't have to be a feminist to like this book. You just have to be a human that sees the layered, messy complexities of being human during that specific time. And I also have been told that the audiobook, which I guess the first week of sales came out and their publishers are very happy by a very Strong audiobook. I did read it, and I have friends that have told me that officially they just put the book down the moment they started hearing me read it. That one of my friends is a casting director, and she's like, you should just tell the book company to forget the book. You got to make it mandatory that they listen to you read it, I guess, you know, and I will say that I recorded it. And I. I went into it just thinking, oh, this will be exhausting talking to myself for eight days straight in a little room. It transformed me. It was far more emotionally more emotional than I expected. I cried in places I didn't expect. I couldn't get through so many passages. That one thing we didn't talk about, which is. Could be of interest to some listeners, the death of my father. A very, very, very difficult situation in my life. He was the age I am now, 54, and he really. He was an alcoholic. He basically smoked and drank himself to death. But he was an incredibly remarkable person. And a lot of my ability to have compassion for the drug addicts and the rock bands is that my father was one of the most remarkable, wonderful, magnetic people in the world. But he had an inner struggle that. That took his life early. And so there's a lot going on in this book about addiction and assisted suicide and suicide in general. So there's a lot going on for that in there. And there was parts of the book that just, like, I didn't face my father, the grieving of my father's death until I wrote this book. And then when I had to read it in an audiobook, I just had no clue how difficult that would be. So there's a lot of raw emotions, and I guess I would encourage people that consider reading the book. I hear that the new generation of people, like maybe millennials or Gen Z, they read the book while the author reads in their ears at the same time. It's a dual action. So I don't know. However you want to do it. I invite you into Even the Good Girls Will Cry. To learn a thing or two about something, to feel what it is to be human and vulnerable.
- [43:58]
Rebecca Buchanan
I have actually seen that happen. Reading the book while someone's talking to you. I kind of love it, so. Well, thank you so much, Melissa, for talking with me on New Books Network about Even the Good Girls Will Cry again. Melissa Offdemar, thank you.
- [44:13]
Melissa Auf der Maur
Thank you so much. Goodbye.
- [44:15]
Rebecca Buchanan
Bye.