Music

Hole finally reuniting with their classic lineup

by Mark Teo

We typically see absolutely ludicrous stories when survey Courtney Love’s headlines: Remember when she claimed she’d found the Malaysia Airlines wreckage? Or when she announced that the Kurt Cobain musical was happening? Or when she dragged Alan Cross into her Twitter-based trial?

Well, today, we have better Courtney-based news. Namely, that she’s putting together a Hole reunion, featuring the band’s classic lineup: Drummer Patty Schemel, guitarist Eric Erlandson, and Montreal-born bassist Melissa Auf Der Mar. (Purists might argue that Kristen Pfaff is a central cog to the band, but she passed in 1994.)

Love revealed the news to The Quietus, who published the story today.

“I started playing with Patty and Melissa and Eric, just to see how that was,” she said. “We already played like three or four times in the last week.”

This, of course, comes as news to us: Hole disbanded in 2002, and while Love revived the project in 2010—and released the lukewarm Nobody’s Daughter with guitarist Micko Larkin, bassist Shawn Dailey and drummer Stu Fisher—other band members never consented to the initial reunion.

Auf Der Mar, for her part, initially denied that the band was reuniting. She, in the initial stages, wasn’t even aware of the reunion.

“I think you can’t take a Hole reunion thing that lightly. It’s gonna take a little more organizing than just ‘I’ll come and sing some backups and then we got Hole,’ I don’t know what to say,” she said in 2009, according to Prefix. “I’m a little confused as to what the plan with that is.”

In 2010, Erlandson, too, dismissed a reunion outright. “Courtney’s adamant about never doing a reunion. It won’t happen until she changes her mind and a few other things,” Erlandson told AlternativeNation. “Now that her album is being released as Hole, in my opinion, the legacy is ruined. I’m moving on.”

Looks like he’s changed his mind. As for the lineup, it’s largely remembered as the band’s most visible: It was the touring lineup for 1994’s Live Through This—Pfaff recorded the album, but Auf Der Mar replaced her—and the recording roster on 1998’s Celebrity Skin. Here’s “Malibu,” from the latter record.