Canadian musician, photographer and venue owner Melissa Auf der Maur had a busy weekend in Toronto, which included two book talks for her newly released autobiography, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A ‘90s Rock Memoir, and a late-night DJ set—all part of the inaugural Wavelength Music Festival + Conference.
Wavelength founder Jonny Dovercourt told the sold-out crowd at the free Art Gallery of Ontario event that Auf der Maur, the former bassist for Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, was the perfect speaker for Wavelength’s first-ever conference because although he started the music series in 2000, he said, “We’re a product of the 90s, a spirit of real idealism, of real belief in music for the sake of music that motivated that decade.”
He added that he “blew through” her book in two days. “It’s just an addictive read. The words jump off the page, and you really, really, really feel the heart and the authenticity of the story,” he said from the stage at the AGO’s spacious third floor Baillie Court on Saturday afternoon (March 21).
Auf der Maur, born in Montreal and now based in Hudson, New York, runs the 1200-capacity arts space Basilica Hudson with her husband, filmmaker Tony Stone, and their 14-year-old daughter. During the Q&A, it became clear the memoir aims to provide context to the 90s, the last analog decade, in which audiences and artists connected in the moment, and photography gave her peace and purpose from an often chaotic, destructive musical era.
If her answers were any indication, it’s a bigger picture read, not just a retelling of life on the road, but some cautionary tales and lessons to take into the future. She also hopes it will help reframe Hole singer Courtney Love and her importance and contribution to that seminal rock era, saying “she was burned at the stake…
“I certainly am not impressed by where Hole’s legacy sits compared to her husband, who left her. I find that very unfair, so yes, it was a failure, in my opinion, and we’re trying to correct it right now… Society failed Courtney, and women like Courtney.”
Attendees — many appearing to also be a product of the 90s themselves — could purchase Even the Good Girls Will Cry from the table at the back and Auf der Maur did a signing after the Q&A. To allow time to get through the line-up, they didn’t take any audience questions.
Instead, Auf der Maur read some passages from the book then sat with the AGO’s curator of photography Sophie Hackett and curator of special projects and director of publishing Jim Shedden to answer their questions. The two are also co-curating an exhibition of Auf der Maur’s photos, opening Sept. 2., for which she whittled down 15,000 photos to 220. Melissa Auf der Maur: My ‘90s Rock Photographs will also have a companion hardcover book, co-published by AGO and DelMonico/D.A.P.
During the Q&A, which was filmed by Wavelength and documentarians from Mercury Films, she said she wrote the book “to have some objectivity. Hopefully, some healing has happened, perspective, simultaneous to a cultural historic opportunity. Enough time has passed where a bigger dialogue can happen about what was witnessed, in my case, in the ‘90s through the lens of bass player, photographer, musician, indie film, indie music hijacked by corporate creeps. So, a quarter century is a good place to start, enough distance.”
Hackett asked her why she wrote in the book that she would never wish for another time to come into womanhood?
Besides the extremes of the decade, she said, “There’s other reasons for having written a book too, which is for future women, the future people who need to live in what is an ever changing, strange planet and societies, and wanting that,” she said. “I feel like it’s my duty to both explain what I witnessed in that tick where everything, Y2K, 9/11, all of a sudden, the world is different.
“And, look where we’ve arrived, a quarter century later,” she added.
“My book is both committed to make sure that we get the magic and keep the magic of the last analog decade, but it’s also, kind of like when I joined Hole, I felt like it was my duty as a woman to help, even though it was dramatic and chaotic,” she explained.
“I actually said ‘no’ to join at first, but I realized quickly this is my opportunity to participate in a historic moment where women try to inject themselves in the male-dominated rock women’s scape. Similar as a grown woman, mother of a teenager, I want to say what I saw, which is ‘We saw this change happen, and we did not like it.’ And I want to make sure that I put on record that I tried,” she laughed.
