Hole - The New Music Interview (1995)

C=Courtney/E=Eric/M=Melissa/P=Patty/I=Interviewer C: Did you ever see The Breakfast Club? Well there's Molly, there's Sporto, there's Brian and I'm a combination Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson. I: Now, the career for Hole as a band is operating a two levels I think. You've got Courtney's media blitz going on but then you have what happening for you musically: bonding, creating, going forward, even disintegrating maybe. But how hard is that to keep together as an entity when Courtney's playing a higher-stakes level, at a media level too. Does that put undue pressure on you? C: I try to take that and bring it to this. E: She's the celebrity punk and we're the celebrity punks. C: We sell the same number of records as Metallica every single week. I: But are you playing the game at that media level for the band or for maybe another reason? C: For the band and for films, that's the reason I do some mainstream media, is for films. For Hollywood stuff which is just an interest of mine but not one that would interfere with the band. We'd break up if we sucked. And you know what, you wouldn't be interested in talking to us if we sucked. I: Do you feel like you've climbed this mountain when in the beginning you just wanted to be in a band and just make music... C: ...and be as big as the Pixies because that's what the rules were back then... I: ...and of course you've totally eclipsed that... C: Well that's because of Kurt. I mean you know, the whole agenda back then was to be as big as The Pixies. And the biggest you could possibly be was as big as Jane's Addiction but nobody even thought that way; as big as The Pixies was kind of it. And then with what happened to Kurt it all of a sudden became like: "Oh you sold a quarter of a million? Failure!" Whereas before it would have been a really big thing. So now you really need to sell platinum or else it sucks and that's really a sad state of affairs in some ways. M: But that means the audience is getting bigger; the audience is obviously expanding. C: ...I guess to a degree, dumber sometimes too... E: It's a matter of timing. It's like Echo And The Bunnymen or Joy Division or Psychedelic Furs. If any of those early New Wave Bands were around today they'd be huge, way bigger than they were. They were nothing back then. I: If you always wanted to be in a band, your dream was to be in a band, was there a feeling though that maybe back then you were just doing it because you were trying to live a rock and roll dream and maybe at the back of your mind you didn't think you had it but then you realized you did have it? C: I always knew I had it, what about you... P: Yeah I always knew. And I think that's what you have to have, that determination. C: Yeah we saw Melissa and the airport and we were like "oh she can play! that's it!" you know? M: I think I was wearing these pants when you picked me up! P: I think they were purple. M: No they were green cords. C: Eric's the most insecure one. E: But I don't think about it. C: Yeah but you latched on to my arrogance. E: I hate your arrogance! C: Yeah but you used it and created it into your own arrogance. E: Oh that's right, I'm arrogant now, you're right...watch out for arrogance because it rubs off on you. C: ...otherwise you would have quit when your girlfriend died. C (on stage): Go Eric for ***'s sake! I swear to god I hate not having a guitarist! I: Is there a way that you can crack the whip and realize that queen *** role-playing can sometimes have a real positive effect? That you can, like a coach on a football team, be an *** and drive the players on to bigger and better things? C: Absolutely. But you don't get there through the Hitlerian process of fear and intimidation. Like I know someday who surrounds himself with people whose lips are firmly on his butt but they all hate him...and he also gets more than he deserves. Yes we have Metallica’s management so we get a lot Metallica analogies but I do buy this one and that is that every record we sell, we sell the hard way. Even though I fulfill and archetype, simply fulfilling an archetype and selling records because of that archetype is a crap way to go. If you sell every record the hard way that means that you are "a career artist." I: Sometimes when you're toying with visuals, names or whatever they can sometimes act as a lightening rod. C: It's self-fulfilling. I: Thank you that's another way of putting it. Bad karma/good karma kind of thing. C: Well I had a relationship with someone who wrote a song and every time I hear that song...he wrote it before me...but every time I hear that damn song I just think "that's our relationship," and it makes me cry, even though it was before me. Sometimes I'll write songs and I won't know who or what they're about, they'll just be channelled or whatever. And then a year down line it will be like, Jesus, this is apropos isn't it. I mean, Live Through This, lyrically if you look at what has happened in my life in the last year and a half it's like, "wow!" C: I had this weird vision the other night of Sonic Youth. They were going on [stage] and they were like skating on...this is going to sound kind of pretentious but...my blood, my guts and my entrails...there was too much acid when I was a teenager or something...but I could just see all this emotional [stuff] of my own on the stage and they were sort of skating on it. M: Who's they, Sonic Youth? C: Yeah and I kept envisioning Kim in her white dress slipping and getting all my blood all over her white dress... M: Well talk about the washing machine thing then...I mean Thurston said in his online report about Sonic Youth being the washing machine after the dirty Hole. I: I wanted to ask you about the video for Violet. Who's idea was that? Was it a video director's idea or was that a band idea? M: Lady Lay Aesthetics, that would be her. E: Mostly Courtney's flashbacks. I: Victorian peek-a-boo, rosebud, I had all these feelings when watching that. C: ...acid flashbacks, old film stock... I: What were you going after there? C: I wanted to degrade stripping, I mean I love old *** but at the same you know all of the videos over the years that have put stripping or half naked women on a pedestal, I wanted to sort of show the degrading experience that it is. I: Looking back on it you consider it degrading? C: Oh yeah, it was degrading when I did it! Last night I stage dived, in an incredibly beautiful nightly I might add, and it was ripped off of me. The gentlemen that work for me kept trying to cover me up and I was like, no, I've been naked in front of people before it's ok. I was just like screaming, you know, why did you do that? Why didn't you just pass me back the way you do Eddie [Vedder] like a football hero? Why'd you have to *** me? *** you! C: God bless Molson's [Canadian beer] I might add. M: I was waiting for you to say that. C: What's half a million between friends? I *** with it, I put it on my face, it's good for red heads, blondes, brunettes...Molson Canada! Poor a kegger of it in the bathtub... E: You guys have no shame! C: Hey no one paid me to say that! I'm making more money at that show than Kurt made when Nirvana played in Brazil with this huge Hollywood cigarette smoking behind them, right? He was like "hell I smoke, what the hell!" A quarter of a million he got for that show and we were like blown away. We took all his share and put it in Frances trust fund to say "your dad made that in one night and you're going to college for four years." Well now we've doubled that. M: For beer! But at least it's in Canada! C: For beer! Which is not even bad for you compared to cigarettes. A little bit of hops, a little bit of barley, all your amino acids are right there. Not that I'm a big beer drinker or anything but... M: Tuktoyaktuk [Northwest Territories in Canada]. E: I just want to go up to that latitude! M: Yeah it's great to be able to go that far North! C: 72 ?? in the whole town. I: Do you feel a sense of potency right now as an entity, as Hole? C: Absolutely! Mojo! E: We take our vitamins. C: That's why we don't break up...if the whole Courtney thing was...you know, if we sucked...if we broke up I'd just be Liz Phair, I'd quit. I'd be like a potato, I'd be boring as hell. And I wouldn't have a good rhythm section because then I'd just be paying them and their heart wouldn't be in it. So you know, the band is in the best shape it's ever been. Too bad I've lost some of the innocence but I haven't lost it all. I wish I still had that "we could be The Beatles" kind of innocence I had when I was like 17, 18 or 19...but I still have it to a degree. I know I can use that celebrity power or whatever it is to make the divide close.