Even the Good Girls Will Cry

I am a child of the ’90s, and like many, will see that decade as a golden one because they are the years before social media ruined us all. Perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic here, but I share these sentiments with the author Melissa Auf der Maur who writes about this special decade in her recent memoir Even the Good Girls Will Cry, a ’90s Rock Memoir. Some may recognize her name from her time in the band Hole, some may recognize her name from her solo album she released years later, and some may recognize her name if they’re from Montreal and knew her locally-famous Dad Nick Auf der Maur. But if you liked listening to ’90s grunge rock, and the word Lollapalooza rings any sort of bell for you, you should definitely read this book.

Reviewed by Anne Logan

Book Summary
Focusing mainly on the years 1991-2001, Melissa takes us through her most formative period as a musician. There are a few brief chapters on her childhood in Montreal and her parent’s bohemian lifestyles, but the focus remains on this specific decade and it’s musical influences. She grows up in the streets of Montreal, immersing himself in the world of music, and eager to explore her artistic side. This started with photography, which she quickly learns to lean on as a way of making sense of her world. I read the advanced reading copy of the book so I didn’t get the full immersion that regular readers would, but the narrative is dotted with her own photographs that she took while on tour, and at home. After a chance meeting with Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, he later asks her to join the band Hole, fronted by larger-than-life singer Courtney Love. This comes after the a very dark time for the band; Love’s husband Kurt Cobain had committed suicide just a few months earlier, and their bass player had died of a heroin overdose. Unaccustomed to hard drug use, Melissa enters this chaotic atmosphere, bringing a sense of much-needed stability to the band, but shocked at the drama she is forced to navigate as their popularity grows amidst the turbulent world of global touring. After 5 years of this exhausting life, Billy Corgan once again offers her another opportunity; leave Hole and join The Smashing Pumpkins as their bass player. She jumps from one fire into another; a jam-packed schedule of shows and press commitments, crisscrossing the world as a megastar and putting her own artistic ambitions aside for yet another complicated group dynamic. The book ends with her realization that she must become her own artist to fulfill her own longings, walking away from the glamourous world of rock stardom to pursue her own dreams.

My Thoughts
Those who grew up listening to these bands will delight in the behind-the-scenes look we get at life as a rock star during that time. The mention of the bands she interacted with on tour all launched me straight back to that period of time, listening to the radio in my bedroom. My Spotify playlists have been injected with a much needed dose of ’90s grunge since I’ve finished reading this! We also get a glimpse into the very tangled and incestuous love lives of these same musicians. For instance, did you know that Melissa dated Dave Grohl (from Nirvana and the Foo Fighters) seriously for two years? Her candid photos of the two of them along with her descriptions of his ‘mama’s boy’ personae are delightful and generous to read about. But no matter who she name drops, Melissa is careful to respect people’s privacy and dignity. She doesn’t mention these celebrities to boost her own profile, she’s giving the reader an honest account of what her life was like at that time, which sounds like an entertaining but exhausting mix of events.

The author has a deep spiritual side that she references often, but she never goes into fanatical detail about it, seemingly aware that although we want to know this side of her, we don’t want to fall into it for pages at a time. She makes light of her ‘woo woo’ interests, but prefers to focus on her musical beliefs first and foremost. The relationships she struggles with in her life, including those with her family and bandmates, tend to benefit from this mystical side of her, which gives the reader a chance to analyze the affects of these people on Melissa right alongside her. She has the uncanny ability to really understand herself and her situation from a metaphysical point of view, which I appreciated reading about. The death of her father is difficult to read about, but her memories of that time are so bolstered by her intense dedication to writing that it feels as though we are right there alongside her as she recalls these formative moments in her life.

She can err on the side of ‘too cool for school’ at times, which she admits to. But her deep passion for music makes her an authority on the subject, so I was more than happy to read about her opinions. Her writing is so fluid that I felt like I was learning a lot but still being entertained at the same time:

“The rise of mainstream industrial-goth culture, epitomized by Marilyn Manson, made for a strange brew in alternative music. The scene was flooded with wannabe goths in Halloween costumes fraternizing with bros in bum-revealing pants slapping low-slung basses. Then there were the offshoots of Green Day’s punk success, kinda cute SoCal boys making joke songs” (p. 317 of Even the Good Girls Will Cry by Melissa Auf der Maur, advanced reading copy).

Folks will remember this time AND these music trends, but what makes this book so fun to read is to experience it from the inside, through Melissa’s artistic and empathetic lens. So if you listened to alternative rock in the ’90s, you should definitely read this memoir, even just for the fun of it.