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Hole

A Los Angeles band led by Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson that moved from abrasive punk to the mainstream with Live Through This in 1994 and Celebrity Skin in 1998.

Origin
Los Angeles, California, United States
Years active
1989-2002, 2009 to the early 2010s
Genres
alternative rock, punk rock, power pop
Labels
Sympathy for the Record Industry, Sub Pop, Caroline, DGC, Geffen, Mercury

Los Angeles

Hole formed in Los Angeles in 1989, after guitarist Eric Erlandson answered an advertisement placed by Courtney Love. It read: "I want to start a band. My influences are Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Fleetwood Mac." Their first show was at Raji's, a small Hollywood bar, in October 1989. The singles "Retard Girl" (1990, Sympathy for the Record Industry) and "Dicknail" (1991, Sub Pop) followed.

Love wrote to Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, enclosing a Hello Kitty barrette and the singles. Gordon agreed to produce, with Don Fleming of Gumball assisting. Pretty on the Inside was made at Music Box Studios in about a week and released by Caroline in September 1991. Its single "Teenage Whore" went to number one on the UK Indie Chart. Love later called the record "unlistenable".

Live Through This

Drummer Patty Schemel joined in April 1992 after an audition in Los Angeles, and bassist Kristen Pfaff, who had played in Janitor Joe, arrived in 1993. In October 1993 the band recorded at Triclops Sound Studios in Georgia, with the producers Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade. Slade said every bass track on the record came from the basic tracks, with no overdubs. Live Through This came out on DGC on 12 April 1994 and yielded Miss World, Doll Parts and Violet.

Pfaff died in June 1994, and Melissa Auf der Maur was hired for the tour, which opened at the Reading Festival on 26 August. John Peel wrote that the band were "teetering on the edge of chaos". The album reached number 52 in the United States, went platinum and sold 1.6 million copies there. Critics in Rolling Stone, Spin, the Los Angeles Times and the Village Voice poll ranked it the best album of 1994.

Celebrity Skin

After the Ask for It EP in 1995 and a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman" in 1996, the band tried to write in Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans without the songs coming together. Love decided to build the record around California, which she called "a metaphor for the American dream". Sessions began at Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles in April 1997. Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins spent twelve days in the studio and shares instrumental credits on five of the twelve songs. Michael Beinhorn produced, and the session drummer Deen Castronovo played on the finished record. Schemel is credited on the album, but her drumming is not on the finished record.

Celebrity Skin was released on 8 September 1998. The title track, Celebrity Skin, reached number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, and Malibu reached number three. The album peaked at number nine in the United States, number four in Australia and number eleven in the United Kingdom, and sold 1.4 million copies in the US. Hole left a tour with Marilyn Manson after nine dates and played their final show at Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver on 14 July 1999.

After

Auf der Maur left in October 1999, and Love and Erlandson ended the band with a message on its website in 2002. Love revived the name in 2010 for Nobody's Daughter, released by Mercury with a new line-up. Reviews were mixed, and Erlandson publicly disputed her right to use the name. She later retired it, and told Pitchfork that releasing the album as Hole had been "a mistake". In October 2019 Love, Erlandson, Auf der Maur and Schemel were photographed rehearsing in Los Angeles.

Hole sold more than three million records in the United States. The writer Maria Raha called them the highest-profile female-fronted band of the 1990s to sing openly about feminism. Brody Dalle, Sky Ferreira and Lana Del Rey are among the artists who have cited them as an influence.

Members

Records

Songs

Nirvana, Sonic Youth, The Smashing Pumpkins, Fleetwood Mac

Where to go next

Reference

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Sources

  1. Hole (band), Wikipedia
  2. Hole: Live Through This, Pitchfork (2018-06-03)
  3. Hole: Celebrity Skin, Pitchfork (2026-06-14)
  4. You Will Ache Like I Ache: The Oral History of Hole's 'Live Through This', Spin (2014-04-14)
  5. Celebrity Skin at 20: Courtney Love's expose of Hollywood's seedy underbelly, The Guardian (2018-09-21)
  6. Celebrity Skin Turns 20, Stereogum (2018-09-07)
  7. BBC Music review of Live Through This, BBC