Hole was an American alternative rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1989. It was founded by singer/guitarist Courtney Love and guitarist Eric Erlandson. It had several different bassists and drummers, the most notable being drummer Patty Schemel and bassists Kristen Pfaff (d. 1994) and Melissa Auf der Maur. Hole released a total of four studio albums between two incarnations spanning the 1990s and early-2010s and became one of the most commercially successful rock bands in history fronted by a woman.
Influenced by Los Angeles' punk rock scene, the band's debut album, Pretty on the Inside (1991), was produced by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, and attracted critical interest from British and American alternative press. Their second album, Live Through This, released in 1994 by DGC Records, combined elements of punk, grunge, and pop rock music, and was widely acclaimed, reaching platinum status within a year of its release. Their third album, Celebrity Skin (1998), marked a notable departure from their earlier punk influences, boasting a more commercially viable sound; the album sold around 2 million copies worldwide, and earned them significant critical acclaim.
They disbanded in 2002, and the members individually pursued other projects. Eight years later in 2010, Hole was reformed by Love with new members, despite Erlandson's claim that the reformation breached a mutual contract he had with her. The reformed band released the album Nobody's Daughter (2010), which was conceived as Love's second solo album. In 2013, Love retired the Hole name, releasing new material and touring as a solo artist.
Hole received several accolades, including four Grammy Award nominations. They were also commercially successful, selling over three million records in the United States alone, and had a far-reaching influence on contemporary female artists. Music and feminist scholars have also recognized the band as the most high-profile musical group of the 1990s to discuss gender issues in their songs, due to Love's aggressive and violent lyrical content, which often addressed themes of body image, abuse, and sexual exploitation.
Background
Hole formed after Eric Erlandson responded to an advertisement placed by Courtney Love in The Recycler in the summer of 1989. The advertisement read: "I want to start a band. My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac." Erlandson recalled of their first meeting: "We met at this coffee shop, and I saw her and I thought 'Oh, God. Oh, no, What am I getting myself into?' She grabbed me and started talking, and she's like 'I know you're the right one', and I hadn't even opened my mouth yet." (re-published in The '90s: The Inside Stories from the Decade That Rocked by Rolling Stone LLC) In retrospect, Love said that Erlandson "had a Thurston [Moore] quality about him" and was an "intensely weird, good guitarist". In his 2012 book Letters to Kurt, Erlandson revealed that he and Love had a sexual relationship during their first year together in the band, which Love also confirmed.
Love had been living a nomadic life prior, immersing herself in numerous music scenes and living in various cities along the West Coast. After unsuccessful attempts at forming bands in San Francisco (where she was briefly a member of Faith No More) and Portland, Love relocated to Los Angeles, where she found work as an actress in two Alex Cox films (Sid and Nancy and Straight to Hell). Erlandson, a Los Angeles native and a graduate of Loyola Marymount University, was working as an accountant for Capitol Records at the time he met Love.
Love originally wanted to name the band Sweet Baby Crystal Powered by God, but opted for the name Hole instead. During an interview on Later... with Jools Holland, she claimed the name for the band was partly inspired by a quote from Euripides' Medea that read: "There is a hole that pierces right through me." She also cited a conversation with her mother as the primary inspiration for the band's name, in which her mother told her that she couldn't live her life "with a hole running through her". Scans available here . Love also acknowledged the "obvious" genital reference in the band's name, alluding to the vagina.
History 1989–1991: Early work and indie success
In the months preceding the band's full formation, Love and Erlandson would write and record in the evenings at a rehearsal space in Hollywood, loaned to them by the Red Hot Chili Peppers;. during the day, Love worked as a stripper to support the band and purchase amplifiers and their backline for live shows. Hole's first official rehearsal took place at Fortress Studios in Hollywood with Love, Erlandson and Lisa Roberts on bass. According to Erlandson, "these two girls show up dressed completely crazy, we set up and they said, 'okay, just start playing something.' I started playing and they started screaming at the top of their lungs for two or three hours. Crazy lyrics and screaming. I said to myself, 'most people would just run away from this really fast.' But I heard something in Courtney's voice and lyrics." Initially, the band had no percussion until Love met drummer Caroline Rue at a Gwar and L7 concert in Long Beach. The band subsequently recruited a third guitarist, Mike Geisbrecht.
Hole's first show took place at Raji's, a small bar in Hollywood, in October 1989. The group later opened for 45 Grave in Huntington Beach in November 1989. By early 1990, Geisbrecht and Roberts had both left the band, which led to the recruitment of bassist Jill Emery. According to Caroline Rue, Love fired Roberts after she threatened a Long Beach club owner—the wife of mobster Eddie Nash—with a screwdriver when the club refused to pay them for their performance.
Hole released their no wave-influenced debut single "Retard Girl" in April 1990, and followed it with "Dicknail" in 1991, released on Sympathy for the Record Industry and Sub Pop, respectively. According to disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer, Love would often approach him at a Denny's on Sunset Blvd. where he went for coffee in the mornings, and convinced him to give "Retard Girl" airtime on his station KROQ-FM.
In 1991, the band signed onto Caroline Records to release their debut album, and Love sought Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth to produce the record. She sent a letter, a Hello Kitty barrette, and copies of the band's early singles to her, mentioning that the band greatly admired Gordon's work and appreciated "the production of the SST record" (either referring to Sonic Youth's album Sister or EVOL). Gordon, impressed by the band's singles, agreed to produce the album, with assistance from Gumball's Don Fleming. The album, titled Pretty on the Inside, was released in September 1991 to positive reception from underground critics, branded "loud, ugly and deliberately shocking",Q. "Review: Pretty on the Inside by Hole". (1991-10). p. 138 and earned a spot on Spins "20 Best Albums of the Year" list. It was also voted album of the year by New York's Village Voice and peaked at number 59 on the UK albums chart. The album spawned one single, "Teenage Whore", which entered the UK Indie Chart at number one, as well as the band's debut music video for the song "Garbadge Man".
Musically and lyrically, Pretty on the Inside was abrasive and drew on elements of punk rock and sludge metal, characterized by overt noise and feedback, chaotic guitar riffs, contrasting tempos, graphic lyrics, and a variation of Love's vocals ranging from whispers to guttural screaming. In later years, Love referred to the album as "unlistenable", despite its critical accolades and eventual cult following. The band embarked on a European tour in the fall of 1991 supporting Mudhoney. They also toured intermittently in the United States between July and December 1991, playing primarily at hard rock and punk clubs, including CBGB and the Whisky a Go Go, where they opened for the Smashing Pumpkins. In a write-up by the Los Angeles Times on the band's final show of the tour, it was noted that Love smashed the headstock of her Rickenbacker guitar onstage.
In mid-1991, the band began to get the attention of the major labels. The first to court them was Maverick — a Warner subsidiary founded by Madonna and music executive Freddy DeMann. Love, however, was uninterested: "[They] would have me riding on elephants. They don't know what I am. For them, I'm a visual, period." She was also uneasy about sharing the spotlight on a label so heavily associated with one of the industry's most iconic female performers. In a 1992 interview with Vanity Fair, Love described Madonna's interest as "kind of like Dracula's interest in his latest victim".
1992–1999: Mainstream success 1992–1995: Live Through This
Love and Erlandson began writing new material for a second Hole album in 1992, in the midst of Love's pregnancy with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Love's desire to take the band in a more melodic and controlled rock format led bassist Emery to leave the band, and drummer Caroline Rue followed. In an advertisement to find a new bass player, Love wrote: "[I want] someone who can play ok, and stand in front of 30,000 people, take off her shirt and have 'fuck you' written on her tits. If you're not afraid of me and you're not afraid to fucking say it, send a letter. No more pussies, no more fake girls, I want a whore from hell." In April 1992, drummer Patty Schemel was recruited after an audition in Los Angeles, but the band spent the remainder of the year without a bassist; Love, Schemel, and Erlandson began to write material together in the interim.
Hole signed to Geffen's subsidiary DGC label with an eight-album contract in late 1992. In the spring of 1993, the band released their single "Beautiful Son", which was recorded in Seattle with producer Jack Endino as a fill-in bass player; Love also played bass on the single's b-side "20 Years In the Dakota", as well as on their contribution to the 1993 Germs tribute album A Small Circle of Friends. In the spring of 1993, Love and Erlandson recruited Janitor Joe bassist Kristen Pfaff, and the band toured the United Kingdom in the summer of that year (including the Phoenix Festival on July 16), mainly performing material from their upcoming major label debut, Live Through This, which they recorded at Triclops Studios in Marietta, Georgia, in October 1993.
Live Through This was released on April 12, 1994, one week after Love's husband, Kurt Cobain, was found dead in his Seattle home. In the wake of Love's family tragedy, Live Through This was a critical success. It spawned several popular singles, including "Doll Parts", "Violet", and "Miss World", going multi-platinum and being hailed "Album of the Year" by Spin magazine. Ranked No. 12 in NME's list of the "Top 50 Albums Of 1994". NME called the album "a personal but secretive thrash-pop opera of urban nihilism and passionate dumb thinks", and Rolling Stone said the album "may be the most potent blast of female insurgency ever committed to tape".
Despite the critical praise for Live Through This, rumors circulated insinuating that Cobain had actually written the majority of the album, though the band vehemently denies this. The band's drummer Patty Schemel, who had been friends with Cobain since the late 1980s, said: "There's that myth that Kurt [Cobain] wrote all our songs—it's not true. Courtney and Eric wrote Live Through This." The band did, however, state that Love convinced Cobain to provide backing vocals on "Asking for It" and "Softer, Softest" while visiting the studio, and music producers and engineers present during the recording sessions noted that Cobain seemed "completely unfamiliar" with the songs. According to Rolling Stone rock journalist Gavin Edwards, Love and Cobain had written songs together in the past, but opted to not release them because it was "a bit too redolent of John and Yoko".