Melissa Auf der Maur, "Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir" (DaCapo, 2026)

Apr 2, 2026

Melissa Auf der Maur, Canadian musician and former bassist for Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins, reflects on her bohemian Montreal roots and the serendipity that launched her into '90s alternative rock. She revisits joining big bands after tragedy, reframes Courtney Love's complexity, and teases a vast archive of photos, a book, and a documentary.

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INSIGHT

Joining Hole As Feminist Action

Melissa links her mother's frontline feminism and her Montreal upbringing to her decision to join Hole as an act of feminist solidarity.
She says she joined Hole not for fame but to put women on a male-dominated musical landscape.

INSIGHT

How Corporate Money Broke The Counterculture

The music industry traded counterculture authenticity for corporate control, seducing artists with money while eroding artistic agency.
Melissa stresses that artists lacked support and were vulnerable to major-label temptations despite anti-system ideals.

INSIGHT

The Last Analog Decade Moment

Melissa frames the 90s as the last analog decade before digital control and surveillance reshaped music and culture.
She recounts studio engineers preparing to edit her bass into a hard drive as emblematic of the 'digital soul-sucking beast' taking over artistry.

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Melissa Auf der Maur's new memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A '90s Rock Memoir(DaCapo, 2026) is a remarkably open-hearted, clear-eyed memoir of the '90s Alternative era by the bassist of Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins Even the Good Girls Will Cry begins with Auf der Maur's bohemian upbringing in Montreal, where her early, deep connection to art and music gave her entry to the colorful and thriving local creative scene. Working as a cassette DJ and ticket girl, she would see (and sometimes meet) the luminaries who'd pass through town--Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, Pavement, Sonic Youth. Thanks to a thrown beer bottle and a long-shot fan letter to a PO Box, her band Tinker scored a life-changing opening slot for The Smashing Pumpkins and, sensing her natural talent on bass, Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love, just one of the many uncanny threads that weaves destiny throughout this riveting memoir. Whisked from her local scene and thrust into the eye of a hurricane of grief on a global stage, Melissa joined Hole for the band's 1994 Live Through This world tour just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole's prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff, with Courtney Love at the center of it all. It was a tour of passionate intensity, as a chaotic yet stunningly powerful band constantly threatened to spin out of control. Melissa brings the reader with raging intimacy into the action, offering a heroic portrait of the unforgettable Courtney Love as she howled into the darkness as if to keep grief at bay. That was only the beginning of Melissa's journey through alternative rock. Part rock memoir, part travel diary, part psychedelic scrapbook, Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a behind-the-scenes rock 'n' roll memoir with a soulful intimacy and mystic undertone that sets it apart from memoirs by her peers. It is a vivid dispatch from the last analog decade, artistically capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory.

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