Background and career
Melissa Gaboriau Auf der Maur (; born March 17, 1972) is a Canadian musician. Auf der Maur began performing in 1993 after forming the indie rock band Tinker while she was a student at Concordia University. She was recruited as the bassist for the American alternative rock band Hole in the summer of 1994 and is included on several Hole releases, including the album Celebrity Skin (1998). Following her departure from Hole in 1999, Auf der Maur briefly joined The Smashing Pumpkins as a touring member for their 2000 tour and began her solo career; her debut studio album Auf der Maur was released in 2004 on Capitol Records and Out of Our Minds, her second studio album, was released in 2010 on her own independent record label, PHI–MAdM Music. She has also collaborated with Indochine, Rufus Wainwright, Ric Ocasek, and Neverending White Lights. Auf der Maur is also a photographer and occasional actress. Her photographs have been included in National Geographic and exhibited at Sotheby's. She acted in How to Make the Cruelest Month (1998), Beyond Borders (2003), and Collaborator (2011). As part of her 2009 multidisciplinary project Out of Our Minds—which produced an album, a single, a film and a comic book—Auf der Maur acted as a film and record producer, working alongside her husband, filmmaker Tony Stone. Stone and Auf der Maur are the creative directors and owners of Basilica Hudson, an arts and performance center in Hudson, New York. VH1 placed Auf der Maur at number 68 on its list of 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll in 2007 and her solo albums have received favorable reviews.
Auf der Maur was born in Montreal, Quebec, to journalist and politician Nick Auf der Maur and journalist and literary translator Linda Gaboriau. Auf der Maur's father's family was Swiss-German and her mother's was mixed European-American. Gaboriau was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. As a result, she holds dual Canadian–American citizenship. Auf der Maur's surname translates to English as "on the wall", as "maur" is German for "wall" (die Mauer). She has stated that her grandmother, Theresia Schaelin-Auf der Maur, was "always pounding my heritage down my throat—reminding me that I'm the last one in North America to further the name". Auf der Maur did not meet her father until she was three years old. Gaboriau called Nick Auf der Maur after her daughter began questioning her about her father's identity. Reflecting on the encounter, Auf der Maur said "[my father] realised my mother Linda was the love of his life because she'd offered the gift of this child without any demands. He fell madly in love with her [and] pursued her for two years". Nick Auf der Maur and Gaboriau married in 1978 when Melissa was six years old. The couple divorced in 1979 after which Auf der Maur traveled worldwide with her mother. A portion of Auf der Maur's childhood was spent living in "a circus caravan in Wales, a red post-office box truck in Morocco, and a hut in Kenya" with her mother. During her time in Kenya, she contracted three bouts of malaria and returned to Montreal. In Montreal, Auf der Maur attended the Fine Arts Core Education (FACE) School and Moving in New Directions (MIND) High School—both of which are schools of alternative education. At FACE, she was a member of the classical choir and at MIND, she was "part of the small English elite", where she formed friendships with Leonard Cohen's daughter Lorca and Rufus Wainwright. At school, she became interested in photography and subsequently attended Concordia University, where she majored in photography in 1994. At Concordia at age 19, Auf der Maur began working part-time as a DJ at Bifteck, a well-known rock club, where she met several musicians including Steve Durand.
During her time as a DJ at Bifteck, Auf der Maur met fellow Concordia University student Steve Durand, with whom she formed Tinker in November 1993. Durand assumed guitar duties and Auf der Maur began playing bass, using a Fender Precision Bass that her father had purchased for her 21st birthday. The duo recruited a second guitarist, Jordon Zadorozny, and a drummer and began performing at Montreal venues. At a Smashing Pumpkins performance at Les Foufounes Électriques on July 23, 1991, Auf der Maur became friends with vocalist and guitarist Billy Corgan. During the performance, Auf der Maur's roommate heckled the band between songs and threw a beer bottle onstage while the band was performing, leading to "a strangling fist fight" between him and Corgan. Auf der Maur explained:
My friend Bruce [Cawdron], who later became the drummer in Godspeed You! Black Emperor, was there and he whispered, 'God, this guy has attitude. They're acting like they're playing an arena. And he then threw a bottle at Billy and shouted, 'Drop the fucking attitude!' Bill dived off the stage, put his hands around Bruce's neck, and they started fighting. I thought, 'Great. You just ruined the show.' I went up to Billy afterwards and said, 'I'd like to apologise on behalf of Montreal. You are my new favourite band.' Auf der Maur and Corgan became pen pals. Following months of no contact, Auf der Maur sent a letter to Corgan requesting that Tinker open for The Smashing Pumpkins during their next tour date in Montreal. Corgan accepted her request and Tinker performed the largest show of their career, to 2,500 people, opening for The Smashing Pumpkins at Métropolis on November 30, 1993. Corgan, Auf der Maur recalled, "patted me on the back. He said, 'You're a really good bass player. You're going to be in my band one day.' It felt like a dream come true – exactly the kind of confidence boost I needed." Tinker released two 7-inch singles, "Realalie" and "Green Machine", on the independent record label Bear Records in 1994. The group continued to release music until 1996. In summer 1994, Auf der Maur accepted Courtney Love's invitation to become the bassist for the alternative rock band Hole, a job she initially declined:
Billy called me and said, 'I'm coming through town on [1994's] Lollapalooza next week. But the great news is, you're going to join my friend Courtney's band.' And that's when it all started ... Within a week, I had every friend calling me saying, 'Are you crazy?' My father said, 'What do you mean? The big Pumpkin guy offered you a real job in music and you said no?' By that time, Courtney got my phone number and said, 'What do you mean, you don't want to join my band? You're getting on a plane to Seattle tomorrow.' And I did. She and Patty came to pick me up at the airport, and she was very funny, very sweet. And she was very good to me from day one. Very welcoming. She had all these lesbian nannies and assistants. There was a really cool, tight clan of mothering, care-taking lesbians. Everyone was very nice.'
In summer 1994, Hole was in need of a new bassist after the death of Kristen Pfaff. Of her original decision to decline Love's offer to join, Auf der Maur recollected: "I said no because it seemed like a very sad scenario to be going into ... it just seemed like a very sad place", citing Pfaff's death as a "red flag" and a reason to not join the band. Upon meeting Love and drummer Patty Schemel, Auf der Maur said she got "a flash of destiny in her eyes" and accepted the offer. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) at Concordia and was recruited as the bassist for Hole two weeks prior to its performance at the 1994 Reading Festival. "Lou Barlow and Evan Dando were watching from the side of the stage," she recalled. "I probably didn't even move. I just thought, 'As long as I get these parts right, it'll be just fine.'" From 1994 to 1995, Auf der Maur toured worldwide with Hole in support of its second studio album, Live Through This (1994). On the tour, Auf der Maur was described by guitarist Eric Erlandson as "bringing sunshine to the band" during the "dark and grey" atmosphere of the tour, which was problematic due to the band's recent bereavements—notably the death of Pfaff and Love's husband Kurt Cobain—as well as Love's drug addiction. Auf der Maur befriended Patty Schemel and rented a house with her following the two-year-long tour. The duo began a side project, Constant Comment, and released a split 7-inch single with Red Aunts on Sympathy for the Record Industry featuring the song "Firecrasher". Auf der Maur has since said the friendship and musical compatibility between her and Schemel were based on a "redhead connection"; Schemel has referred to Auf der Maur as her "anchor" during the period following the death of Pfaff and Cobain.
