The bassist who stood onstage with two of alternative rock’s most volatile bands is finally telling her side of the story.
Melissa Auf der Maur, the Montreal-born musician who played with Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins during the decade’s most turbulent years, will publish her debut book Even The Good Girls Will Cry: A 90s Rock Memoir on March 17, 2026, through Da Capo Press. The 432-page memoir promises an insider’s account of the alternative rock explosion, filtered through the eyes of someone who witnessed it from the stage rather than the crowd.
Auf der Maur’s path to those bands began in Montreal’s underground scene, where she worked as a cassette DJ and ticket seller while crossing paths with Nirvana, Jane’s Addiction, and Sonic Youth. A thrown beer bottle and a fan letter to a post office box led to her band Tinker opening for the Smashing Pumpkins. Billy Corgan’s recommendation to Courtney Love followed, and suddenly Auf der Maur was joining Hole for their 1994 “Live Through This” world tour, stepping into a band reeling from the deaths of Kurt Cobain and their previous bassist, Kristen Pfaff.
“This book recounts the decade that defined my generation, 1991–2001, and my experience in rock bands,” Auf der Maur says in a statement. “I was a front-row seat to an incredibly intense and unforgettable moment in the counterculture.”
The memoir combines autobiographical narrative with travelogue and what the publisher describes as “psychedelic diary” elements. Auf der Maur writes about Love with particular intimacy, portraying her as “screaming in the darkness as if to push back the sorrow.” The book includes previously unpublished photographs from Auf der Maur’s personal archives.
Since her years with those Grammy-winning bands, Auf der Maur has built a multifaceted career as a photographer, curator, and producer. In 2010, she co-founded Basilica Hudson, a multidisciplinary arts centre in Hudson, New York, where she currently lives.
Pre-orders for Even The Good Girls Will Cry are available now. For a generation raised on ’90s alternative rock, this memoir offers something increasingly rare: a firsthand account of the era before the myth calcified into legend.
Live photo – Steve Gerrard
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