Hole

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HOLE

Formed: 1989, Los Angeles, California; Disbanded 2002

Members: Melisssa Auf Der Maur, bass (born Montreal, 17 March 1972); Eric Erlandson, guitar (born Los Angeles, California, 9 January 1963); Courtney Love, vocals, guitar (Love Michelle Harrison, born San Francisco, California, 9 July 1965); Samantha Maloney, drums (born New York, 11 December 1975). Former members: Jill Emery, bass (born Covina, California, late 1960s); Kristen Pfaff, bass (born Amherst, New York, 26 May 1967; died 16 June 1994); Caroline Rue, drums (born San Pedro, California, late 1960s); Patty Schemel, drums (born Seattle, Washington, 28 April 1967).

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Live through This (1994)

Hit songs since 1990: "Doll Parts," "Violet," "Malibu"

Hole, the alternative punk rock band, was largely the vehicle of its lead singer and principal songwriter Courtney Love, one of the most difficult and troubled popular musicians to emerge in the 1990s. Hole gained success with their angry but melodic rock music and with lyrics that vacillated between feminist manifesto and self-destructive melodrama. The band grabbed the spotlight a few weeks after the suicide of Love's husband, Kurt Cobain, the enigmatic lead singer of Nirvana, in April 1994.

Formed in Los Angeles in 1989, Hole's signature sound revolves around Eric Erlandson's distinct raucous guitar playing style, tight rhythms, and Love's emotionally charged singing. By the time of their debut on Caroline Records, Pretty on the Inside (1991), produced by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, Hole had developed a following in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. They also gained attention internationally as a riot grrl band known for wedding punk rock's do-it-yourself ethos with the polemics and power of political feminism. Hole, however, did not really make their mark until their major label debut on Geffen Records, mere weeks after Cobain's death.

Hole gained platinum sales with Live through This (1994). In this album Love's lyrics are often aggressive, shouted, and hollered rather than sung. She confronts controversial topics like rape in "Asking for It." She presents a swaggering disturbed bravado in "Miss World," in which she sings "I'm Miss World / Somebody kill me." Another single, "Violet," adapts the sonic structure popularized by Nirvana, with quieter and tension-filled verses building to a furiously loud paroxysm in the chorus. Through her no-holds-barred vocal style, Love did much to legitimize the expression of female anger. Live through This struck a chord with frustrated youth and female fans who empathized with Love's complexity and saw her as a real personality unapologetically capable of expressing the range of female experience.

In between Live through This and their follow-up, Hole toured. Love managed to undergo a Hollywood makeover and appeared in the movie The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996). In 1998, the band released the eagerly awaited Celebrity Skin, a mainstream, slickly produced album of pop tune craft that is markedly less depressing and confrontational than their previous recordings. Despite the polished sheen, or perhaps because of it, Celebrity Skin sold more than 1 million copies and it eventually went platinum. Through their short tenure as a band, Hole endured more than their fair share of drug problems and personality clashes. The band went through several personnel changes, and lost bassist Kristen Pfaff to a heroin overdose in 1996. After Celebrity Skin 's release, their replacement bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur departed to join grunge band Smashing Pumpkins.

When Love and Erlandson mutually agreed to dissolve Hole in 2002, they were the sole remaining original members, mostly because Love dictated the terms of the band's creativity and direction, and Erlandson was agreeable to her whims. In early 2001 Love filed a lawsuit against her label, Universal Music Group, seeking for release from what she termed an unfair recording contract. From 2001 to 2002, Love spent a good portion of her time in court, in a legal wrangling with former Nirvana members over rights to unreleased Nirvana material.

Hole made their mark as an outlet for Love's powerful demons. By promoting unabashed, aggressive guitar playing, the group created a new paradigm for female bands, but not without leaving a succession of lawsuits, controversy, and notoriety behind them.

Spot Light: "Doll Parts"

The hard-rocking, aggression of Live through This (1994) includes a song with which Courtney Love and the riot grrl phenomena came to be associated. Her lyrics are usually straightforward and leave little to the imagination, and in "Doll Parts" Love clearly plays with the ideas of femininity. It is up for debate whether or not she is being ironic when she declares that she is made of doll parts—in essence, that she is not real. Or perhaps she is pointing the finger of blame at a pop culture that focuses so exclusively and reverentially on women's body parts through repeated exposure on television, in films, and in music videos. Either way, "Doll Parts" offers a window into Love's tortured soul. The song marked a turning point; Love sings, "I want to be the girl with the most cake / I love him so much it just turns to hate / I fake it so real I am beyond fake / And someday you will ache like I ache," repeating the lyrics several times until they build to a scream. The song depicts a woman torn between what she wants to be, who she is, and what society expects from her.