an incredible memoir<\/a> and a beautiful coffee table book in one year.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> I don\u2019t have a manager, and I don\u2019t know if people are supposed to do two books back-to-back six months apart. A manager would\u2019ve not gotten it to happen nor recommended it.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know what I was expecting, but it\u2019s absolutely gorgeous and I highly recommend anybody reading this article to pick it up.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> I wonder if you were expecting like, \u201cOh, she\u2019s on the side as a fine art photographer taking pictures of flowers or still life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> I guess I thought it would be, and I don\u2019t want you to take this the wrong way, but less focused. I know that you\u2019re a very broad-minded person, and I thought it would be across all the realms of interest that I know that you hold in your heart. This is very specific.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> Yeah, it\u2019s not a product of a publisher who just said, \u201cHey, make a coffee table book.\u201d This is two years in the making with archivists, photo historians, art historians, and spending two years with 15,000 negatives that had to be reduced to 200. And so, for me, who is a very expansive dreamer, to be able to write my memoir, I needed to create a limitation of time and space, and the same went with my photos. I changed my photography practice to become a documentarian and not a fine art photographer because my subject changed, my life changed.\u00a0<\/p>\nI had always assumed that photography was going to be my way into the world and that music would be this hobby on the side. It\u2019s a known thing that when Courtney [Love] asked me to join Hole, I said, \u201cNo, I\u2019m studying photography and I\u2019m going to go do my master\u2019s.\u201d That was my solid excuse, and then she convinced me otherwise.\u00a0 My main connective tissue to the girl back home that would protect me from becoming completely devoured by the decadent rock world and expansive global travel confusion public stage was my camera.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MANSON:<\/strong> Wow. What a magnificent monologue.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> I\u2019ve also been on a speaking tour. [Laughs]<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> There\u2019s a photograph on page 155 of you and Courtney on your way to the MTV Awards which is where we met in the flesh. You\u2019re in the back of a limo, and you\u2019re seated beside Courtney and Frances [Bean Cobain], her child is in your arms. This is an extraordinary photograph.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> In one decadent space, it\u2019s that term, \u201cit takes a village,\u201d the raising of a child and Frances being the daughter of a widowed single mother in a rock band and the bass player taking her role as a co-rearer. It was a really serious role I had, it looks like I\u2019m breastfeeding her in that picture actually.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> It almost looks like a religious painting.<\/p>\n![\"Melissa](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_5493.jpeg\")
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AUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> I see what you mean, yes. It is like the handmaiden who takes care of the queen\u2019s child. It\u2019s actually quite symbolic of our relationship, of the warrior deity who had nowhere to go in the wake of the suicide, but back on stage. I mentioned earlier, I said no originally to joining the band. But then when I said yes, it was because I recognized that I had a duty for women across the ages and the future that it was going to make for women, hence Daisy Chain Festival this weekend.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nWhat we did as a duo for ourselves, but also for the cultural history books of women in rock and in history, I have really come to terms with. But it took me 25 years, a memoir, and looking through these photos of understanding the yin and yang of the feminine order and how proud I am that through aligning myself with a woman like Courtney, who was so misunderstood that I personally watched being burned at the stake. I\u2019m like, \u201cI know who that woman is. She was misunderstood, and I am going to reframe this because it deserves reframing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
MANSON:<\/strong> Well, you know I am a huge fan of Courtney. I watched her be demonized myself because I was around in that period, and the way that she was treated was abysmal, but that\u2019s a conversation for a whole other time. What I\u2019ve always found fascinating about you is that you could always hang with the dudes, but you are very much a woman\u2019s woman. How did you find space for yourself around someone as large in energy as Courtney? Did you feel that you had to shrink yourself or were you just born a generous, powerful person?\u00a0<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> What\u2019s interesting is last night at the public library in a tiny town in Ontario, Canada, the woman who interviewed me was a singer in a rock band in the \u201990s in Canada and she took this moment introducing me to tell the audience, \u201cWhen Melissa joined Hole, no one in our local scene was surprised. Melissa seemed to have an otherworldly energy around her.\u00a0 There was something from another time or another place. When she joined Hole,\u201d this woman said, \u201cWell, of course she did because she\u2019s strong enough to do that.\u201d Did I have to eat shit sometimes and deal with things I didn\u2019t want to do? Patty and I used to always say, \u201cWe\u2019re just waiting for Courtney.\u201d Our role wasn\u2019t a drummer, wasn\u2019t a bass player, it was just waiting for Courtney.\u00a0<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> Professional waiter. That\u2019s all musicians are, no? So, where does the title come from, Even the Good Girls Will Cry?<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> The title of the book was delivered to me by a demon when I was 19 in a life-changing\u2014I won\u2019t even call it a dream\u2014visitation that changed the way I perceived the world. It was almost like a warning from another time and place, and this demon woke me up with a whisper, \u201cEven the good girls will cry,\u201d and it burned through me. It wasn\u2019t until I had written my memoir and I had a totally different, terrible title\u2014<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> Give us the terrible title.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> Raging With Our Hearts on Our Sleeves.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> Oh, dear. Not your finest moment.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> There was one year of my life, and I am totally not bipolar, I have no manic depression\u2014<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> You\u2019re the norm, Melissa.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> I\u2019m a very normal, good girl, very polite. [Laughs]<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> I love this.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> And in one year at the age of 19, I had this insane thing happen where these dreams just kept freaking me out and changing the way I saw the world, told me to play music, sent a demon to whisper in my ear, and all of a sudden, I\u2019m 52 years old finishing my book, and I dare to write down that terrifying dream of the night the demon came. I fucking write it out, I\u2019m like, \u201cOh my god, the demon gave me the title.\u201d<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> You really are an incredible writer, I was very struck by how candid this book is.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> Oh, thank you.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> One of the favorite chapters for me is right in the middle of it, you talk about the dying journey of your beloved father.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> I was very moved by the quote that you include from Courtney\u2019s letter to your father promising to look after you for as long as she lives and it\u2019s exquisite. But what I found really fascinating is how you felt your grief empowered you.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> I can tell you that there\u2019re two parts of grief. Grief is a beast of no particular shape, timeline, and form. It does its wild thing in every person. So, my journey with losing my father at such a young age and in such a dark way during a time where I was surrounded by drug addicts is that from A to Z. When I tell the reader in the book that the day after my father died, I woke up and said, \u201cThis death is a gift.\u201d Maybe it\u2019s survival mechanisms, maybe it\u2019s Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking, my magical mind at that moment said, \u201cThis is the greatest gift of your life.\u201d This shadow of my father is both glorious and difficult. He was also an alcoholic and had a darkness.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> All the contradictions of people.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> So, there was something in the loss of my father that activated this choosing of myself for the first time. In saying goodbye to him, I let him go. But then I suffered for decades. I wrote this book for my daughter and for all the young girls in the world, but I wrote it to heal from my father\u2019s death that I never unpacked. The editor I hired to help me was both a literary editor and a grief specialist. I hired them not just for my father\u2019s death, but for our generation and the end of the world as we know it. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s all hell on earth now and doomsday in the future, but we lost.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> I\u2019ll say that.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> The way that you speak up for the injustices in our world is what I admire the most about you, you warrior Celtic maniac. You are sharing the glory and the hell all in a seamless voice in your public world.\u00a0<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> I really appreciate you seeing me, it\u2019s very consoling. When you leave Hole, Courtney sends you a letter and you print it in its entirety in the book and then make no comment about it. You let the letter speak for itself. I was just curious if you had anything to say about that now. Did it hurt you? Did it inspire you?<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> Very good question because in the arc of this book, the reader will see that I have painted a very clear picture of this difficult, glorious, contradicting, powerful woman. I don\u2019t candy-coat her, but I also shine great light.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> You absolutely do.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> By the time we get to the end of the book, my decision to reproduce her two very lengthy, powerful letters in full was for two reasons. One, I wanted her to speak for herself. When I found them going through my archives, they were fading and I had not read them since 1999.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> Did you remember that they existed?<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> I totally remember they existed. I fucking didn\u2019t rip them up because I\u2019m too polite, but I did not like them. At the time, I thought, \u201cShe\u2019s two-faced, this is all about her.\u201d And then I sat there in my 50s and I read this woman\u2019s two letters and I humbly understood she knew something about me that I did not. That is also why I wanted to share them. She taught me later in life about my blind spots then, and that\u2019s how brilliant she is.<\/p>\n![\"Melissa](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0803.jpg\")
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MANSON:<\/strong> Let\u2019s talk about the incredible collection of you and Dave Grohl\u2019s<\/a> love-<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> Oh my god, that\u2019s enough. [Laughs] You know what\u2019s amazing? I\u2019ve been on a book tour for nine months, do you know that he never comes up? I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s because it\u2019s the wake of his out-of-wedlock child, but strangely he has not come up.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> Wow.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> It\u2019s a pretty glorious love story. I shared it not because I want to highlight the Foo Fighters, but because we had a true, big love. It totally was all wrapped up in the wake of my father\u2019s death, and the decision to leave Hole, and to take Billy up on the offer of joining my favorite bands. For the bass player in Hole and the drummer of Nirvana to fall in love in 1999 to 2001 at the turn of the millennium, it was pretty saga-like.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> Y2K, baby. It\u2019s like Marianne [Ihlen] and Leonard [Cohen].<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> As a Montrealer, I\u2019ll take the poet position in this one.\u00a0<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> This is an extraordinary portrait of two rock stars in the \u201990s, a very specific decade. The \u201990s were so fucking incredible in many ways, just as you point out, a bridge between analog and digital. We really did see history shift, and it\u2019s all cataloged for the first time.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> One of my biggest declarations to my daughter and her teenage friends is that love was better in the \u201990s because, if we were lucky, you\u2019d have a fax machine. Otherwise, you\u2019re totally reliant on getting across the planet to be with the person you love or talking on the phone from time to time.\u00a0<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> There was also the mail.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> I cheated and used faxes.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> You totally cheated, you fucking cheat bitch. [Laughs]<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> In my case, we were literally on tour. He\u2019d be on one continent, I\u2019d be on the other, and we\u2019d be in a hotel for one night, and we\u2019d only have one night to get the letter to each other.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> That\u2019s hot. But were the \u201990s really as great as we all think they were?<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> Oh, no. I love the fact that I can be on these book tours and romanticize love, and music, and art, and counterculture\u2013<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> But there was ghastly sexism and lad culture.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> This is the one area where I say, \u201cHowever, this illusion of the \u2018woman decade\u2019 of Oprah, Sex in the City, and supermodels\u2014are you fucking kidding?\u201d Look how they treated Courtney. It took me 20 years to even wake up to the level of sexism that you and I lived within.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> Exactly.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> People treated Hole so differently because she was pointing the finger at all the injustice everywhere all the time. Look at \u201cAsking For It.\u201d\u00a0 Look at the lyrics of her fucking songs.<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> But you have a child now who is growing up in this culture, far removed from the culture we grew up in. As a mom, what\u2019s your overview for her?\u00a0<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> One of the reasons why I\u2019m bringing her to Daisy Chain is to see you, and Olivia [Rodrigo], and Die Spitz, and to see that there are women in 2026 needing to raise funds to protect our bodies. What the fuck is happening? 30 years ago, I was photographing the Tibetan Freedom Concert for Spin magazine.\u00a0<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> I was there, baby.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> There we were, privileged \u201990s, just fighting for an ancient civilization. We are literally going to be, this weekend, gathering to protect the rights of women\u2019s bodies 30 years later.\u00a0<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> Okay, you\u2019re giving me goosebumps.\u00a0<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> So, I have a double-edged thing that I\u2019ve been raising my daughter with. She has access to all of the most inspiring women on the planet Earth. I\u2019ve brought her to see you, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and I say to my daughter, \u201cRiver, you are so lucky to have all of these women singing for you, showing you that you can express yourself, hearing the depth of a woman\u2019s quest of finding herself.\u201d But between the rapists in the White House, the algorithms of Sephora, and the predatory fashion that\u2019s turning little girls into the equivalent of strippers, I have no idea what\u2019s happened. We have not made progress globally, and this is why we probably\u2014<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> Continue to reel.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> My daughter unfortunately hears both sides. She hears her mother say, \u201cYou\u2019re the luckiest girl in the world because we get to listen to this music, but never ever take your safety and body for granted.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\nMANSON:<\/strong> I love you, Melissa. You\u2019re doing god\u2019s work. And on that bombshell, I have to bid you adieu because I have to go to rehearsal and you\u2019ve got a flight to catch.<\/p>\nAUF DER MAUR:<\/strong> I do. I\u2019m getting out of my breastfeeding pod right now. Big hug.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
![\"Melissa](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_0802-e1788496682638.jpeg\")
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