As Hole’s groundbreaking albums Pretty On The Inside,Live Through This, andCelebritySkin are reissued, Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson tell Uncut all about underground clubs, rhythms sections and Fleetwood Mac reunions…
UNCUT: Whatwereyour rolesin these reissues?
ERIC ERLANDSON:I would say a sort of steward, custodian, curator. I oversaw the audioremastering, anddug into my archives for some of the artwork. It was a fun project, working with all the supportive people at Universal and Black Belt Mastering on the Zoetropes, Record Store Day colour vinyl, bonus discs, gatefolds, and photolithos. I’m so happy forPrettyOnTheInsideto be back in print.
COURTNEY LOVE: Vinyl has made this huge, incredible comeback. I’m seeing zoetropes and actual pressed flower crowns inside the vinyl. It’s insane. For years reissues were these crappy K-Tel things that nobody put any love into. Nobody cared, so why would I look? I came in towards the end, when Holland Greco at Universal showed me what she had done withPrettyOnTheInside. Holy shit. She had found the world I built by hand: the flyers, thecolours, the Pantones, my handwriting, the poetry, Auden, Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, all these strange little images. She understood that it wasn’t just an album sleeve. You had to build aworldor it wasn’t going to work. She gave a shit, which made me give a shit. Suddenly I could look behind me without turning into a pillar of humiliated salt. Now I’m interested.
What was it like revisiting these songs? Is there one that stands out as surprising in a good or bad way?
COURTNEY LOVE: All songs change over time. All songs do. Once a song takes on its own life, it isn’t entirely yours anymore, and that is the objective. I hate it when artists tell you exactly what their songs are about. Why would you close them down like that? People think “Violet” is one thing or another, but it became bigger than whatever anecdote may have started it. “Teenage Whore” still surprises me because I just said it and the whole thing came out at once. You can hear the life you had when you wrote it, but then thirty years of other people’s lives start.
ERIC ERLANDSON:When looking atthe albumsas a trilogy, I was struck by how much we had evolved, each album creating a realm reflecting our inner and outer worlds at the time. I get asked which is my favorite song or album. I look at them as ex-lovers. I’ve moved on, but I appreciate each one for the gifts and lessons they brought.I tend to look fondly back on the songs that contain happy accidents in the studio.“Babydoll”,“Sassy”,“AskingForIt”,“Rock Star”. And I love how lyrics or motifs from certain songs would reappear in later songs. During this process, rather than anything standing out — or any new meanings — I began to see how each song was adding to thestory as a whole.
Youwere the two mainstays in the band from its inception. What was your collaborative/creative relationship like? How did that change over time?
ERIC ERLANDSON:There are so many ways to describe our relationship, everythingfrom discordant harmony, oppositional unity, convergent tension, or delicious friction,to the love vs.strife of Horace, harmony arising out of conflict via Ovid. Or to quote Shakespeare, “Hot ice and wondrous strange snow.” We changed rhythm sections on each album, so that kept things evolving between us by default. New energy in the room. We were both ambitious in our unique ways. But the tension between us, via our childhood programming and differing methodologies, January 9 vs. July 9, was there from the very beginning to the very end.
Was there a momentwhenthings clicked for you as a band?
COURTNEY LOVE:“Teenage Whore”. That song just arrived. It’s the first song onPrettyOnTheInside and it came out all at once. No polite little warm-up.There are songs youhave to wrestle into existence, and then there are songs that kick the door down and tell you exactly what the band is. That was one of those moments. That was the click.
ERIC ERLANDSON:By the time we were in the studio with each new rhythm section for each of these albums, there were already weeks and weeks of rehearsals. So that feeling where everything was starting to gel usually happened way before we entered the studio.Though, hearing the raw songs come to life, blasting back from the playback speakers, was always a wow moment for me.
Did you have any studio rituals for preparing yourself for a take?
COURTNEY LOVE:I dress for the song I want to receive. That isreally importantto me. I put on makeup, I choose the clothes, I chant, I do my sound work and I get completely present. I also try to stay off my phone for at least a week before I record. The intensity in “Violet” isn’t a vocal trick. Youhave tomean it. You make space for the song, you dress for it, and when it arrives, you get out of its way.
All three of these albums are very different, suggesting the band was evolving very quickly. What kinds of conversations were you having about how you wanted them to sound and what you wanted them to say?
ERIC ERLANDSON:Prettycame out of our personal relationship and what Courtney and I were listening to and connecting to at the time.There were two great underground clubs in LA then,Jabberjawand Club Fuck, wherepunk,post-punk , goth, industrial, techno, noise, New York, Seattle, Minneapolis, London,gay/straight,and kink all converged. You can hear elements of all that inPretty. Live Through Thiscame out of our move to Seattle post-Nevermind. It came out of Courtney competing with Kurt, but also her love of R.E.M., Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, and my love of My Bloody Valentine, the UK scene, my prog influences, and Kristen [Pfaff]’s math rock via Minneapolis. And of course, it had elements of a ‘90s-styleRumours. It was suddenly okay to have the Beatles as an influence without going paisley or twee pop.
COURTNEY LOVE:They’re different because they were supposed to be different. Why would I make the same record three times? Each one needed its own world.Celebrity Skinwas a California record, but not postcard California. I know Mulholland. I know the stolenwater, the citrus, the oil, the movies,and the high-desert chaparral. I know what that place is built on. I knew what I was doing.My next record will be very different again. That’s the point. If you want the same recordover and over, I’m not your girl.
ERIC ERLANDSON:Celebrity Skinfound us back in LA at the end of the decade, end of the century, end of the millennium. End-times decadence at an all-timehigh. Courtney, postLarry Flynt accolades, was focused more on the film world, not the underground music scene as she had been. WatchingChinatown. Watching Fleetwood Mac reform and rehearse. Watching everyone consuming copious amounts of substances. Reflecting on all the death.Britpoppingin the UK. Every pseudo-grunge band getting signed and then fizzling out. Nü-metal on the rise. OnCelebrity Skin, we were consciously going for polish, sizzle and sheen. Hollywood all the way. We werereflecting backthe glitter-glam-celebrity-worship last gasp of the age of Pisces, which was followed by 9/11, when everything changed.
What is the state of Hole today? Do these reissues mean that the band is active again?
COURTNEY LOVE:No. The answer is no. These reissues are not a secret announcement that Hole is active again. I’m focused on the new record.The purpose of these editions is to give the records — and the worlds surrounding them — the care they deserve.I am proud to see that happening.
ERIC ERLANDSON:My intention with Hole now is preserve the legacy of what we created during that decade. More neat stuff to come.
Do you hear the band’s influence in rock or pop today? Are there any artists that you think are continuing the work you were doing or have been influenced by these records?
ERIC ERLANDSON: I don’t hear our influence at allin anything today. But I appreciate the interest in our band. These are different times. To express anger coming from a‘90s point of view seems silly now. Contrived. It was very real at the time. The question is: What’s real now, in this digital age ofextraction,imitation,tokenization, everything watered down into weaker versions of the past? Chain wallets on the blockchain. Bands are already selling merch at their very firstshow, andhaving corporate sponsorships. I don’t hear that blending and clashing of ideas that I used to find exciting. And the computer grid used today has squashed most music into humdrum drone.My wish is that the new generations of musicians stop lookingoutward, andinstead go deeper inside themselves to find their authentic truth of expression. With AI rapidly shaping our precious life experiences, the world needs this more than ever.
COURTNEY LOVE:Of course Ihear it, but influence isn’t oneparticular guitarsound. It’s permission. Permission to be emotional, funny, ugly, beautiful,and furious, and to build a whole world around the work without waiting for somebody to make it palatable.Olivia Rodrigo understands lineage. She has all these references and turns them into her ownlanguage. And Charli XCX, to me, is Trent Reznor: the work rate, the constant change, the refusal to sit still.I hate the phrase “pop girlies” when it’s used to make serious artists sound frivolous. A lot of those women ground it out for ten years in clubs and studios. They did the work. If they want to pick up guitars and play a little rock and roll too, great. Don’t ever judge the book by its cover.
Pretty On The Inside,Live Through This, andCelebritySkin are available viaUMe