Melissa Auf der Maur + Naomi Fry: Even the Good Girls Will Cry

Moderating this discussion is staff writer at The New Yorker Naomi Fry. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

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A remarkably open-hearted, clear-eyed memoir of the '90s Alternative era by the bassist of Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins.

Even the Good Girls Will Cry begins with Melissa Auf der Maur’s bohemian upbringing in Montreal, where her early, deep connection to art and music gave her entry to the colorful and thriving local creative scene. Working as a cassette DJ and ticket girl, she would see (and sometimes meet) the luminaries who’d pass through town—Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, Pavement, Sonic Youth. Thanks to a thrown beer bottle and a long-shot fan letter to a PO Box, her band Tinker scored a life-changing opening slot for The Smashing Pumpkins and, sensing her natural talent on bass, Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love, just one of the many uncanny threads that weaves destiny throughout this riveting memoir.

Whisked from her local scene and thrust into the eye of a hurricane of grief on a global stage, Melissa joined Hole for the band's 1994 Live Through This world tour just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole's prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff, with Courtney Love at the center of it all. It was a tour of passionate intensity, as a chaotic yet stunningly powerful band constantly threatened to spin out of control. Melissa brings the reader with raging intimacy into the action, offering a heroic portrait of the unforgettable Courtney Love as she howled into the darkness as if to keep grief at bay.

That was only the beginning of Melissa's journey through alternative rock. Part rock memoir, part travel diary, part psychedelic scrapbook, Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a behind-the-scenes rock ’n’ roll memoir with a soulful intimacy and mystic undertone that sets it apart from memoirs by her peers. It is a vivid dispatch from the last analog decade, artistically capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory.

Photo credit: Jessica Chappe

Melissa Auf der Maur, was born and raised in Montreal, Canada with a fine arts education. She is an acclaimed musician, photographer, curator and producer, best known as the former bassist of rock bands Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins. In 2010 she co-founded Basilica Hudson, a multidisciplinary art center in Hudson, NY, where she lives with her family and magic cats.

Naomi Fry is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes about culture.

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