‘It starts with Witchy Poo’: Melissa Auf der Maur credits Geddy Lee for AGO exhibit

Former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur has a three-room 6000-square-foot exhibit, “My ‘90s Rock Photographs,” at Canada’s most prestigious art institution, Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario, and credits Geddy Lee, or “Witchy Poo” she comically calls the Rush frontman, for getting the ball rolling for this “dream come true” and “midlife resurrection.”

The 200-plus candid and intimate photo exhibit, culled from a personal archive of over 10,000 photos she snapped during “the last analog era,” runs until next June. There is also a 240-page hardcover photo book including commentary. She released her memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A ‘90s Memoir, back in March.

Auf der Maur famously joined Hole after apologizing to Billy Corgan at a Smashing Pumpkins’ club gig in Montreal in 1991 after her friend threw a bottle at him. She later mailed him a letter mentioning her new band, Tinker, which led to them opening for the Smashing Pumpkins in 1993 and Corgan recommending her to frontwoman Courtney Love. Auf der Maur joined Hole in the summer of 1994 and played in Smashing Pumpkins for a year in 1999-2000.

At the photo book signing last night, in the Walker Court atrium of the AGO — packed with her 90s peer group and much younger — the Montreal-born bassist who documented her rock ‘n’ roll life in hotel rooms, buses, backstage and onstage, nearly broke down in tears twice, once as soon as she began talking about this exhibit being “one of the most formal honorable moments of my life” and the second when she mentioned her mom in attendance, “who paved the way for our generation to push boundaries of what a woman can be.”

Auf der Maur later took the opportunity to go through “the cool list of the actual ensembles and people and how this project came to be,” which led to the Geddy Lee revelation. She didn’t mention how she knew Lee but appeared in his 2023 TV series, Geddy Lee Asks: Are Bass Players Human Too?, where he visited her at home in Hudson Valley, New York.

“It’s very exciting because all magic roads often went way back to a wizard,” she said. “And so it starts with Witchy Poo, wizard bass player himself, Geddy Lee.

“And it isn’t because I was a Rush fan as a child. You can thank that, too. But no, it’s because it is he who connected me to a couple of head-banging metal dudes at Banger Media, who then introduced me to the documentary director powerhouse, Jennifer Baichwal, who then brought my frozen-in-time photographic archive to the attention of the Art Gallery of Ontario chief curator at the time, Julian Cox, and the co-curators, Sophie Hackett and Jim Shedden. And this is how it came to be. Wizards and witches do most of the work in our lives, thank you, if you let them in, if you listen, if you follow.” 

Earlier in her remarks, Auf der Maur reflected on this enormous accomplishment. “It’s a photography exhibit that proves that — I could cry which I never do — our dreams can come true if you stay true to them and be very patient.”

She said she started photography at 13 “as a very shy girl who felt comfortable hiding behind the lens in a dark room. I rarely put my camera down for 20 years. Really not until the world went digital and all the photo labs were gone. And everyone else began to document everything all the time, for me.

At 22, a “very wild twist of fate” led her to join the band Hole and tour the world, changing her life overnight.  “I photographed every day. On stage, backstage, every crowd we played, and all the amazing people I met. And that resulted in over 10,000 photographic negatives,” she continues.

“And I let them sit, knowing very well with every decade, the archive will gain meaning and that, eventually enough time had passed, and we could share it together and learn something about the past. I captured my generation’s spirit and the music as fast as I could without time to reflect on it, but knowing that I would reflect on it later. 

“And here we are, now, later, together, in the future. And this archive is our collective memory of what would become our last analog decade. This is a form of a collective mourning of what was lost. But also an opportunity to reclaim and explore a longing for the old ways we lived for hundreds of years. And decide what we want to give back, as artists, as humans, as friends, as lovers, as anything. Just humanity at large.”

At its centre is BASS WOMB ROOM: My ’90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings, an immersive mirrored-pyramid installation combining Auf der Maur’s ’90s home recordings with field recordings captured while touring.  “And who doesn’t also want a giant hero pyramid in their lives? So, the AGO allowed me to go beyond the walls into sound, light and moving image installation,” she said.

The accompanying 15-track album, her first new album in 15 years, includes previously unreleased songs and experimental recordings, and is available on cassette and digitally.