THE HOLE TRUTH

IT'S BEEN ALMOST FOUR YEARS SINCE HOLE RELEASED THE GROUNBREAKING ALBUM, LIVE THROUGH THIS. SINCE THEN THE LINEUP HAS GONE THROUGH ITS SHARE OF PERSONAL PROBLEMS AND SINGER COURTNEY LOVE HAS BECOME A FILM STAR AS WELL AS A ROCK & ROLL ICON. THEIR NEW ALBUM, CELEBRITY SKIN DELIVERS THE RAW POWER THAT HOLE FANS ARE ACCUSTOMED TO AND A NEW LEVEL OF MATURITY.
BY MICHELLE MANELIS


Sprawled on the couch of her hotel suite at the legendary Chateau Marmont, smoking the first of many cigarettes, the norotiously diffucult Courtney Love is flanked by bassit Melissa auf der Maur and guitarist Eric Erlandson. It's the end of the day, and to put it midly, Love is not in the mood. She's lying under a blanket, but sites up occasionaly when she's either irritated or just wants to sound off. Despite all they've been through, Hole are clearly amped by the new album and the prospect of getting back to playing rock & roll again.

Why so long between albums?
ERIC [smiles]: It was actually not that long, it was only like two years, if you consider the fact that we toured for a year-and-a-half after our last album and then we had to recover a little bit...
LOVE: Personal problems.
ERIC: Yeah, personal problems. And then the movie, which took three months to make. And then...
MELISSA: A lot of recovering for everyone.
LOVE: Yeah, the personal problems were demanding to be resolved quickly.
ERIC: So it's been a sold two years of working on this album, and spending a year in the studio so that's like...
MELISSA: And then we tried different cities - we tried New Orleans.
LOVE [groans]: Oh that was a bad city to try.
MELISSA: We tried Memphis.
LOVE: New York
ERIC: Then we moved here. Melissa moved from Canada, Love was in Seattle... We all moved to LA, which is where we started.
LOVE: Yeah I can't believe we lived there - it seems like so long ago, like a thousand years.
ERIC: This city definately affects everything.

Is there any particular process to the way that you wrote songs?
LOVE: Yeah, it's weird. And the universe puts it out in different ways. "Boys on the Radio" was a banal piano song that we wrote. The melody is from this really good song that me and Melissa wrote when she was first in the band. The we played a song called "Sugar Coma" on MTV Unplugged and Eric came up with this great great part in the middle six months later. Then Jeff Buckley died and and then it was about drowning. And then it became about Evan Dando because it was supposed to be like a Lemonheads song. And then it became about Brian Wilson. It's demented just how much one song strays. [Looks at Melissa] Right? And then we took the banal piano riff which had a good lyric and a good concept to it and then we glued some of those lyrics onto the song. So it's one song.
But then again, "Heaven Tonight" was written in 45 minutes in responce to the fact that Eric and I had written "Northern Star" in an hour-and-a-half but it was too depressing and I wanted to leave the studio with a song to play to my child. So I wouldn't leave until we had a happy song.

Do you take much notice of reviews and critics in general?
LOVE: I don't read them any more. I haven't read them in about a year. I'm in total kind of blackout - unless I have to, unless it's legal. [Laughs] And then it's an issue, but generally they don't come to my house.
ERIC: Yeah, I stopped buying the magazines becuase I'd have closets and closets full of them. [Laughs]
LOVE: Oh, were you collecting stuff? Were you putting it in a scrapbook still? Oh well, it's gone past that point, quite frankley. [Drags on cigarette]
ERIC: Oh, way past. But, like, when you first start playing in bands and you get your first press, it's weird, because right after our first tour, our first album [Grins] - it was like [Throws hands in the air], "No more!"
LOVE: And it's so schiztophrenic too, what gets said and how the media is, just in the last give years in American and Australia. This sort of erosion of value systems due to this huge, ridiculous amounts of media. It's not even gossip any more, it's like synthetic speak about celebrities, and when you're one of the celebrities at the end of it, it's absolutely beneath you and ridiculous to take any notice of it all psychically, because it's just chatter for the masses and has zero to do with you. So you can't read it, or you would be crazy. I mean, we all have our problems. [Laughs]

Do you think that Hole have been unfairly criticised?
LOVE: We've never been criticised that much because we've always been really good. So we don't get much shit - and we don't deserve it either.

Reading the lyrics, it's clear that a lot of it is close and to the heart. Does that make you feel vunerable?
LOVE: I don't know how obvious these lyrics are. As a matter of fact, I think these lyrics are far less obvious than lyrics that I've written on the past two records. I reined myself in consciously, much of the time and many of the songs that people are going to project to be about X, Y, and Z are actually not at all about X, Y, or Z, or this person or that person. Lots of songs, for instance, on the record I've got my boyfriend and things like that. So in terms of vulnerability no, because I don't think there's anything to literal. If I wrote the phone book you guys would say it was about something that it probably wasn't about. But that's your job. [Smiles] You go ahead. You do it.

Thanks. Was it a conscious decision to move to make Celebrity Skin more accessible than what you've done with the past?
ERIC: It was a natural progression, but it was also conscious, yes.

How do you think the diehard Hole fan will react? I think you'll definately covert a lot of people, but you may lose some in the process.
LOVE: I don't care. I don't care. [Sits up] I remember when we made Live Through This, we played a show in Atlanta, Georgia, where we made it. We just turned out these new songs and there were all these kind of really core punkers, Sonic Youth-type people, ad they were hearing what to them was almost like Abba. And I was like, "You know what guys? I'm breaking up with you because this sucks. It's time for a change - I need to be loved for who I am." If you're going to be an architech and build buildings, the buildings need to not be torn down in five years. It doesn't matter how many you build - I mean sure, you can go and be a big developer and go and build stip malls and that's fine if that's what you chose to do in life, fine. But I'd rather build great buildings and if I only build three or four of them in order to build a good building, in this case methaphorically speaking obviously, the door must really work. And not only does the door need to work, but it's so people can come in so that it isn't elitist and bourgeois. Like, "No you stay out, because you're not intelligent enough." You're going to affect culture if you're born and you say, "God, I have a world view, and I need to compose my world view on the world, that's just my drive." That's just what I want to do.

But is it hard for you to avoid second guessing the type of music people will want to hear?
LOVE: No, not at all, if you can stay on a straight middle line and not be reactive to what other people. I learned this from Milos Forman and other film directors that I've met who've had to be these mavericks with their certain kind of vision. And everyone has an opinion, but - you know what? - you just have to be deaf to that. It doesn't matter what other people say.
MELISSA: And there is a common thread between all three records, it's really so obvious.
LOVE: Oh so obvious.
MELISSA: And the change has been a natural evolution of growing up whichever way. It's not schizophrenic in the least, I would say.
LOVE: You'd have to be so reductive to not see that, it's just incredibly obvious.

There's a lyric in "Petals" where it seems to be a continuation from the last album.
LOVE: Yeah, that was a lyric from the last album. Sure, I borrowed it.

Can you talk about what that particular song means?
LOVE: I don't even know. That's your job. Seriously, I thought I knew what "Malibu" was about and then we were mixing it again and I figured it was about something else. And then I realised that my first boyfriend was from Malibu and maybe it was about him. I don't know what the hell they're about. I know what some of the more literal ones are about. I know what "Awful" is about, I think "Petals" is about chaos and nature and trying to find truth in God. But if I keep talking about it, I'll sound like Tori Amos - so you go do it.

Well, I need to ask you about a couple more lyrics. On "Celebrity Skin" you sing, "Wilted and faded somewhere in Hollywood/I'm glad I came here with your pound of flesh/No second billing because you're a star now."
LOVE: That was a Shakespeare throwdown. There are four Shakespeare throwdowns on this record. We're elevating the form.

Would you mind being more specific about it?
LOVE: Oh god - it was just some burlesque lyric that came out in five minutes. I didn't really have any profound meaning. You know, it's like a cabaret - it has nothing to do with me. It was just a trope.

So your reference to Cinderella wasn't written in any kind of autiobiographical sense?
LOVE: Not consciously, no.

Would you agree that it's an ironic song because you're poking fun at...
LOVE: Yeah I'm poking fun of myself, I guess, and this whole conundrum that I've entered. But in some ways it's almost like an MC - I'm distanced from it as well. That's how I feel when I sing anyway.

Where you say, "You'd better watch out for what you wish for, it better be worth it," I'm assuming 'it' means success.
LOVE: Yeah.

Has it been worth it for you?
LOVE: You know what - it's the end of the day and please don't take this personally - I'm so burned out.

I'm sorry, I'm sure you've been asked this a million times today.
LOVE: No - not that one at all actually, but I don't know how to answer it. But keep going, hon.

A lot has been said about Billy Corgan's involvement. I interviewed him recently and...
LOVE: Was he in a good mood or a bad mood when you interviewed him?

Exactly like you. It was the end of the day, he was lying on the couch...
LOVE: Oh well, when he's in a bad mood he does this bad Bobby Riggs, Billy-Jean King thing, but lately he has been in a really good mood. It is a very, very positive, wonderful relationship between me and him that has gone on for many, many years. The whole relationship certainly has not been postive and wonderfuil, but that makes the yielding of what me and him did together on this record that made it so positive and wonderful.
I was basically in the mood I'm in right now all the time - right after we finished writing, or the midway point of writing - and I sent him a tape. I was just cranky and in New York and I didn't even know if I wanted to do this. I had all these movie offers and I could have just filled up a year of film. I was like, why go back and be in the burlesque when I can just go with this other life?
He called me up and talked me up and said, "You have to this. These are great songs and I can really help you." I didn't feel like I could get it from Patty or Melissa or Eric because they're like family. Plus Billy's brilliant at some stuff, he's a great phaser, he's got an incredible left brain, really good. He is really well trained on the piano, has a good ear.
I had a context of only knwoing the vessel of craft that I had - I was only knowing what grunge had taught me, and as much as pop had taught me, I hadn't say down and taken enough theory, I hadn't been like him and spent a thousand years learning weird guitar stuff. Or like Eric learning weird guitar stuff. So he came out for 12 days. It was really hard for me to be submissive to him, for one thing, because in our former relationship [laughs] it wasn't that way at all. So it was hard to accept his knowledge and he was very wise and very kind to me. It was like having a really good math teacher who won't give you the answers and I was going in the bathroom and I wanna die because he was pushing me through in just 12 day, stuff in terms of phrasing that I knew I knew but couldn't articulate. It was really tough but it was also wonderful. And then he was gone. He helped me develop so much more craft than I thought I had.

Wasn't he orginally supposed to produce the album?
LOVE: We could probably stay in a room together for about 12 days - and then I'd lose all my hair.

Have you ever worried about drying up creatively?
LOVE: No. You know why? Because if I do, I'll stop.

What sort of things inspire you? What keeps you motivated?
LOVE: Well to be really honest, the monument of it all. Like an architect or a director or s songwriter - it's really the monument that you're leaving. It's proof of you're DNA. I've thought about it and I think that's the true answer. You could fill it up with other stuff if you wanted , don't you thinkg? [To Melissa] Don't just not. Help me. [Visibly tiring]

Do you feel a bit schizophrenic because you're a successful rock star you're also a big movie star?
LOVE: Uh-uh. Should I?

Well, in a way you're waearing two different hats.
LOVE: Why am I? Who says that/. Some pathetic, bourgeois media who says you can't do this and you can't do that because other people don't do it well - men, namely. That's just crap.

You don't think your fans are saying...
LOVE: No! No! It's the media schizophrenia trying to dicate our values in the world. They're trying to say, born a serf, die a serf, which is very British and very classist and not American at all. And if something's un-American, well - I'm not down with it. So it's just that kind of bad, classist bullshit that mostly comes from British, Murdoch-type owned media advocates in its schizophrenic fashion.

But can you really be a rebel in a Versace gown?
LOVE [Yeling] Yeah. Who said you can't? Abunch of fucking guys in denim? Fuck them! No women said this. But then you're putting this idea of redundancy into rock like there's some rule. And if there's a rule, then what's the point? It's not supposed to have a rule. There's like, the idiots of here doing the burlesque and the Gwyneth Paltrows over there with the cell phone? Fuck that. It's bullshit. Just because other people haven't done it well, that's not my problem, it's not my fault. Who are you talking about? Mick Jagger? Madonna? It's not my fault if Madonna blinks too much on screenn. It's not my fault, don't blame me for it. Reorr! [Makes cat nose]

No, what I'm trying to say is - you're fdans used to relate to you as a young, angry, messed-up person, but now that you've become this kind of glamour queen...
LOVE: What fans? Who are you talking about? Here's our context: we in the media are going to present you with this context, little sheepies - opium, opium, opium - nothing. Subtext, nothing, subtext - we have nothing to put on our page. People have values. I think that this Lewinsky trial has certainly proven, certainly in my country, that we don't fucking care. And we are people and we do have spines. And the media can't tell us whart to fucking think or what to be!

Do you think radio is set up for mediocrity as far as what you hear on the radio in general?
LOVE: When I am in my really cranky phrases, I notice I don't even want to be offended by music. I don't want to think sometimes, I just want to have a fucking power ballad, too. I think that's what folk music is, sort of...

So you're secretly listening to Journey in your spare time?
LOVE: No, no, not in my spare time. I listen to interesting music that's thoughtful and artful, but sometimes I don't. Sometimes I like to listen to really stupid, bad stuff that just makes me feel better - and I think most people are like that. I don't think that everybody loves music. I think most people buy maybe just two or three reocrds a year, they just want to drive and they just want to feel in love. The way to insinuate some intelligence into that is to love that form sincerely anyway, and then to take your intellect and impose it on the music, not in a purposely insidious way, but impose it so that then you are elevating the form.

Lilith Fair is such a huge commercial success. Do you feelthat you've had anything to do with that success, as indirect as it may be?
LOVE: No, I don't think we've had anything to do with that, but I'll tell you, I'm very, very into it because it's - although it's not my genre- on a certain level it makes the female dollar that much stronger. I used to have a real pissy kind of thing about the billions of dollars yielded by the post Alanis/singer-songwriter sort of phenomenon. Althought it gives some people comfort and a lot of her songs are very, very well crafted, so it's not really a diss. But I had a pissy thing about it until I realised in the most wonderful way it just like, gilded the lily for us. It made it possible for this to be safe for people. I was watching a crowd's reaction to Shirley Manson and it was like, ten years ago, if Garbage were out these boys would have been really shitty to her. But because of the whole phenomenon of this stuff being shoved down our throat, they were so grateful to her. It was great. It was great to see her get her due from these boys. It was like [MISSING] a goddess and we need [MISSING AGAIN] really cool and nice and that's what Lillith has given us - the ability to have it be safe. So God speed.

How do you feel about being a role model? Because like it or not you're a role model for for a lot of young girls.
LOVE: Yeah, I know. I had a really good experience with Madonna this year in terms of talking to her more and feeling and accepting that a little more. She takes it maybe more seriously than I do, which is fine - but you have a responsibility whether you like it or not. And there's things that you can and cannot advocate, if you're going to be a person with values. And when you realise that, it's like the superego moves in and all of a sudden there's this voice that guide you in terms of being a good citizen and being a good member of society and an invaluable artist. But that voice also can also be crippling when it comes to creativity and then you have to stare it down and tell it to shut up. Because within me, it's very hypocritical - it's a voice that says, you can't sing, or you're not this. It's also the exact same voice that judicial and is sover - I mean that metaphorically. It's a voice that's prudent and isn't gonna allow out into the world that which will bring back the furies, and the fire and the fun of what we did before.

Can I ask you what you are doing now film wise?
LOVE: I'm gonna do Milos Forman's movie about Andy Kaufman with Jim Carrey a couple of days after the MTV Awards, it's not going to take that long. And I just did - it was the first time I did an irreverent thing on purpose - this movie in New York called 200 Cigarettes, which is a straight-up romantic comedy set in 1981, is really fun. A big cast - Ben Affleck, Christina Ricci and a guy named Paul Rudd, who was in Cluless. Di you ever see Clueless?

Yeah, I interviewed him recently as well. He's great.
LOVE: We made out - for three weeks! It was so fun and I got paid to make out with him! It was just like the best.

He's very cute and under-rated.
LOVE: Oh, he's amazing. He's got a facility, a Tom Hanks facility, except when it's seven in the morning, when he's melting down, he turns into this hammy Kevin Klein. But that's good, if that's his only flaw. On top of being inpeccably professional, he's a super good kisser.

Well that helps.
LOVE: I know. it was so much fun.

DO you agree with the view that you really never leave high school?
LOVE: Well, Hollywood too, you never do. I mean, that's high school.
MELISSA: But musically speaking, you're still finding you're voice.
LOVE: Yreah, while your brain is still gorwning and... It's two seperate answers really. While your brain is still growning. One of the reasons I'm so close to the Bunnymen records is because that's when my body was still growing, literally, was when I was listening to these records and just learning how to write., so that's what was literally encoded onto me - the way they wrote. And I can write that stuff in my sleep. So, you wonder... wow, if you sit around and listen to prog rock, like Billy did, when your brain is still growning, you can write that in your sleep. Or King Crimson, like Eric did - and you can write that. So you're connected to that.

But as far as how you see yourself? It's like the fat girl who loses 30 pounds but still looks fat when se looks in the mirror. A lot of people say they still tihnk about themselves the way they did in school.
MELISSA: I hope you grow out of it.
LOVE: I think you consciously have to try and be a conmmited Darwinist and like commit to - that's what's so great about America and the west in general - is commit to your manifest destiny and... My fortune in life, truly, is that I never went to high school. I never ever went to high school. I never did participate in that ritual of adolescence. I was teken out of the game and put in some other weird ghome. But at least I didn't have to go through that and because of that I dion't have a lot of fear. I've only realised this recently. Probably what makes me as brave as I am about some stuff is that I didn't have to put up with that whole rite of passage and what's appropriate and what isn't. I never even knew.

Do you have any stand-out memories of Australia?
LOVE: The Quantas lady was named Veronica. Ronny I call her. I can't believe that Gallagher gets to pee on people and all I did was say "fuck". That's so retarded. But there you go.

Yeah, that was news everywhere..
LOVE: I know. But the Qantas guy said recently that that flight had been Australian Airlines and they weren't in the Qantas family yet, they didn't have that Qantas vibe, so I have a feeling that Veronica doesn't have her job any more. I think you'd have to pee on someone now to get arrested.

What would you say is the greatest myth about fame?
LOVE: It's a very cold and clinical sort of power and you must know what to do with it if it's something that you want. If it's a world view that you need to advocate. For instance, if you're the editor of a magazine, it's that simple, which I think is the same as fame anyway.
ERIC: I think you're born with it, that little acorn, whatever that is. And it only happens to a few people and there's all these other people that are wanting it for themselves but they don't have...
LOVE: Or don't need it. They don't need it. And they don't even know that they don't need it. They'd be find without it.

Any Australian bands you like?
LOVE: We've been thinking of adding another guitarist and we've been thinking of taking someone from the Rock n' Roll High School, girls out, that are good guitarist for this tour, for credit. I don't know if we're going to do that but it's certainly something we're thinking about. I like the Saints. I like a lot of those old Australian...
ERIC: Lime Spiders.
LOVE: We love the Birthday Party.
MELISSA: Split Enz.

They were from New Zealand.
LOVE: Yeah, New Zealand band. They were the pride of my country. That was my country.

Is there any philosophies that the band abides by?
MELISSA: The Zodiac.

What star sign are you?
MELISSA: Pisces.
LOVE: Cancer. [Points at Eric] Capricorn. There's 12 songs on this record, so in grand Los Angeles tradition me and Melissa sat down and assigned each song a sign. Then we sequenced the record in accordance with the Zodiac. Because Americans like the Zodiac and McDonalds. So we sequenced them like that but it didn't work. But we wanted to give the record a really LA send off. And it works.

Is there anything that you want me to put in this story that I haven't asked you about?
LOVE: Oh God, no!

Sometimes someone will want to delcare something...
LOVE: Oh no, no... I've declared enough.

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