“‘MTV Unplugged’ was a musical challenge and an opportunity for us to shine.” – Melissa Auf der Maur
It was early February 1995, and Hole’s Courtney Love and Patty Schemel were up to shenanigans. Night was enveloping Manhattan following a full day of rehearsals for Hole’s impending MTV Unplugged performance, and the two friends were slinking around iconic SIR Studios in Chelsea after having heard Madonna was also utilizing space there to prepare for a spate of promotional appearances around the release of Bedtime Stories. Like explorers, they set off together, searching for any sign of the Material Girl.
“I remember we found Madonna’s room and walked in — the door had been left open a crack — and no one was there … just, like, a piano with a tea cup on it in a giant room,” Schemel tells Billboard, recalling how Love made a beeline for the trash bin. “She goes, ‘Look, Patty!’ and tips the garbage can so I could see what was inside. And what is it? A banana peel and a used tea bag. And Courtney’s like, ‘This is what she does for her voice … she drinks ginger tea!’ That was kind of the cool part about being in Hole, those moments where you’re like, ‘Cool … so, Madonna likes bananas.’”
The very next day, Nirvana’s manager, Danny Goldberg, waltzed into Hole’s rehearsal space — with Madonna by his side, according to Schemel. “She had this sort of fluffy coat on and I was sitting at my drums,” the musician says. “Danny introduced all of us, and I was like, ‘Oh man … it’s Madonna.’”
Moments after the pop superstar exited the room, Love broke into song, strumming the opening chords to what remains one of the band’s most popular songs, recalls Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson. “Courtney joked around about Madonna and changed the lyrics to ‘Miss World’ into pure comedy, singing the line ‘interview with a vampire’ for the first verse,” he tells Billboard. According to him, it was one of the more “fun, lighthearted moments” during the week Hole spent in the Big Apple ahead of the Feb. 14, 1995, taping of their Unplugged set at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Hole’s raw, emotional appearance on Unplugged — the beloved MTV series that enlisted top charting musicians for intimate, stripped-down shows — first aired 25 years ago on April 17, 1995. It was a little more than a year after the release of Hole’s second studio album, Live Through This, and less than two weeks after the first anniversary of the death of Love’s husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain.
Reflecting back on the experience a quarter of a century later later, Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur tells Billboard she distinctly remembers an air of sorrow looming over the Unplugged rehearsals and ultimately, the taping itself.
“To make matters even more melancholy, I remember clearly Hole had its first of only two ever band therapy sessions,” says Auf der Maur. “She was a woman therapist, called Dr. Cooper — and Patty and I giggled all week long about our session with ‘Agent Cooper,’ my beloved and all-time favorite Twin Peaks character. Most of Hole’s experiences during the Live Though This journey were shrouded with drama and emotions, and it was a quaint notion in 1995 for a band of our context — living in the wake of death and drug addiction — that some ‘speech’ group therapy would help our cause.”
The bassist adds: “It was a nice idea, but not essential to our survival at that point.”
Schemel says she “vaguely remembers” Hole’s therapy sessions that took place early in the week of Unplugged rehearsals, mostly because they were extremely awkward. “Every band has a dynamic — that family dynamic — and I remember thinking, ‘Should I really be honest here or do I just keep on kind of trudging through the way I know has been kind of OK for me to survive in my band — especially with my drug addiction?’” she explains.
“I think I was honest,” she says. “I think I was like, ‘You’re all mean and’ … I mean, I really opened up, and it was not the time for that because we really needed to depend on each other for this taping.”
Prior to their arrival in New York City, where they’d be shuttled back and forth between their rehearsal space in SIR Studios and their rooms at the Mercer Hotel in SoHo, Hole had been touring non-stop for six solid months, including runs of shows in Australia and Japan. So, says Erlandson, the band was tight — in sync.
“We had a week to get the Unplugged set together and tape it before heading back out on our U.S. tour,” Erlandson explains. “We’d only done a couple of shoddy acoustic in-stores, but never a complete acoustic set. And Nirvana had set the bar high for Unplugged. They had those ready-for-acoustic, singable songs, and then added the cellist, the Meat Puppets, and a Bowie cover to really spice things up. How could we compete with that?”
To oversee their week of rehearsals and the eventual filming of their Unplugged set, Hole called upon legendary Saturday Night Live music producer Hal Willner, who was more than up to the task. (Willner, 64, died from coronavirus complications on April 7, 2020.)
“I think Courtney knew him from before, during her New York City days,” says Erlandson. “It was decided that he would be the perfect musical supervisor for our Unplugged performance. I was excited to work on new arrangements for our songs, new covers, and doing something different for our Unplugged. I discussed my ideas with Hal about adding musicians, a little ensemble, and using acoustic guitars with amps and pedals — creating some magic. Courtney was adamant about a cellist, but I wanted to add other textures.”
Schemel even recalls a tuba player coming in for some of the sessions, and being disappointed by Love’s lack of commentary. “She said nothing,” Schemel says. “You think you know somebody, but they don’t mind the tuba, and you’re surprised by it.”
Auf der Maur has fond memories of working with Willner that week. “His assignment was to refine a raw rock band into an acoustic and classy one,” she explains. “The acoustic part was not out of Hole’s comfort zone, as most of the songs were written on an acoustic guitar, but it was the transposing of guitar solos, hard-hitting, punk-infused drum parts, which was the fun part.”
Schemel was also excited by the challenge that an Unplugged taping presented for Hole as a group. “Thinking about taking our songs and really stripping them down … it really shows your musicianship, for one, and so everybody in the band was like, ‘Oh, we’ve gotta bone up here. We really have to be prepared.’” She says she remembers “having to really — just as a player — to tune it down a little bit, and to just listen … to use my ears and not hit so hard and think about all the delicate parts to the songs.”
Auf der Maur tells Billboard the taping came at an instrumental moment in Hole’s career. “I have very fond memories of that performance: It was just as Hole and Live Through This was really getting a lot of traction and success, and we had just found out we’d be headlining Lollapalooza with Sonic Youth, so MTV Unplugged was a musical challenge and an opportunity for us to shine.”
In short order, the arrangements began taking shape, Erlandson reflects, and slowly, “Hal brought in some of the cream of the crop from the New York City’s avant-garde scene to fill things out.” Among them were harpist Zeena Parkins, clarinetist Erik Friedlander and the late Ralph Carney on cello.
“I loved working with Erik, Zeena, and Ralph,” Erlandson recalls. “As musicians, they were way out of our league, but somehow, the melding of their free jazz-slash-John Zorn training with our ethos worked. I wish I could’ve dug in deeper with them.”
According to Erlandson, the final Unplugged set list wasn’t settled until a day before the taping. “Some of the sessions were tense, depending on Courtney’s moods,” he explains. “She kept trying to add songs right up until the last rehearsal and trying to write new ones. I could tell when Erik, Zeena and Ralph were put off by her divadom at times, so Hal and I tried to assuage them.”
The guitarist also notes that throughout rehearsals, “there were drugs mucking things up, as they do,” and tells Billboard that ever since that momentous week, “whenever I see a FedEx envelope, I’m instantly transported back to New York City circa 1995.”
There were other moments of tension throughout that week, Erlandson says. “Courtney wanted us to play a couple of — at the time — unreleased Kurt songs … the last ones he wrote,” the guitarist describes. “I was always wanting to distance us from that connection, but it was as if she wanted to rub it in everyone’s face.”
Hole ultimately decided to do a rendition of Nirvana’s “You Know You’re Right,” which the surviving members of the band would later release in 2002, following a protracted legal battle with Love.
“I remember Eric was really against it,” Schemel tells Billboard about performing the tune. “He didn’t wanna do it, but it seemed like in every situation, Courtney always felt comfortable with doing a Nirvana song whenever she wanted to do it — but Eric never really wanted to do ‘em.”
The final set list would feature eight Hole originals — including “Sugar Coma,” “Asking For It,” and “Doll Parts” — along with covers of Donovan’s “Season of the Witch,” The Crystals’ “He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss),” and Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf.”
The show was shot on a Tuesday. In addition to Hole’s Unplugged, the network also filmed episodes that day with Melissa Etheridge and The Cranberries. Milton Lage directed all three tapings.
“I remember Courtney did her rehearsals and then she came into the truck where we were, and wanted to look at some of the tapes. That’s when I first met her,” Lage tells Billboard. “I said, ‘Courtney, that was great,’ and she snapped at me, and said, ‘Don’t you lie to me.’”
Tom McPhillips, who designed the set for Hole’s Unplugged, says he wanted to come up with something “a bit ‘out there’ for Hole,” so he decided to use transparent drapes made out of clear PVC plastic, “with naked pink dolls hung all over them. However, going about finding enough dolls and doll body parts became quite a challenge in the days before online shopping. We went to thrift stores, toy shops, and called toy wholesalers to gather enough dolls to make it a look.”
The audience for that taping was filled out with the band members’ friends and associates, including Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. “Backstage, right before the show, I remember kissing actress and ex-girlfriend] Drew Barrymore],” Erlandson explains. “It was Valentine’s Day, after all, and I was in love and it was the perfect setting — Brooklyn Academy of Music, acoustic guitars, and hearts galore.”
As the time for the taping approached, Schemel says her nerves went into overdrive.
“I was so scared,” she says, noting she had to write reminders to herself on her drumheads to hold back, to hit softer. “You’re in a quiet studio where everyone can hear everything, and everyone is sitting down in the crowd … it’s intimate, like a coffee-shop vibe. I always had my drums to hide behind, but I look at my face during that taping, and it’s, like, a stone face. I look at my face and think, ‘God, I could have lightened up a bit,’ but we didn’t have that noise — that crazy chaos — to hide behind, and that was scary for me. I went into autopilot.”
Erlandson recalls being tipsy and “a bit ‘loose’” at the start of the taping, “and the stool I was sitting on wasn’t quite right, so I ended up hunched over with my head down the whole show. F–ked up my back real good.”
He admits to Billboard that Hole’s set “ended up not very ‘unplugged’ at all,” noting all of the band’s instruments were fed through amplifiers, “and Patty was playing at pretty much full tilt during a lot of it.” But the guitarist also recalls an almost “jol” mood during the taping, “with a lot of laughter from the audience — Courtney was in her element, doing her stand-up shtick.”
The next evening, Hole would plug back in for the first of two sold-out shows at the Roseland Ballroom, today, the site of a high-rise apartment building.
Hole’s MTV Unplugged remains a career highlight for Auf der Maur, even after all this time. “I am very happy that it was professionally filmed and lives in the YouTube archives of the world,” the bassist remarks. “It’s something to show my daughter someday.”
For Schemel, the best part of the night was Hole’s performance of “Drown Soda.” “We kind of built that one up more dynamically, and from there on, we started doing it live, which was fun for me because it was drum-heavy.” Additionally, she jokes, “I’m just glad I didn’t wear a mock turtleneck,” a reference to Nirvana’s drummer Dave Grohl, who did wear one during that band’s Unplugged taping in 1993.
Erlandson, who says he’d still like to see the recording from Hole’s Unplugged released as an album, most enjoyed the thrashy finale “when Courtney came over and attacked me with her guitar, frantically rubbing the strings on mine, and pushing me off my stool. I could finally relax.”
He adds: “So much work, held together with staples. I was unsure of our performance at the time. There were some good moments, with that danger element, on the verge of falling apart at times, which kept things exciting. After the taping, hearing it back, we weren’t thrilled with the results, which is why we never released it. I did use two tracks, ‘Season of the Witch’ and ‘He Hit Me,’ for our My Body, the Hand Grenade compilation. Those were the standouts for me. After watching it again recently, I appreciate it more. And now with Hal gone, and Ralph too, I’m determined to get it properly mixed and released.”
