Can you speak to that a bit?

Yeah.

I mean, another category in our big archive categorizing is on the road or in between the interstitial moments between a girl and a band or offstage, backstage.

It's those moments in the hotel room, the day off or a long drive or flight between.

So those were like those were my peacekeeping sanity moments where I'd be alone after.

I mean, when you play I did a calculation in my memoir.

I don't have it offhand, but how many eyes and ears one performed in front of in those bands in the 90s.

What is your hope after diving into this nostalgia and seeing nostalgia on the rise as well with this documentation being out there in the exhibition and the books?

Find out about it, right?

Yeah, but I mean, there's... consciously, when I started writing the book on the eve of turning 50 and my daughter was 10, and I realized she's going to be a teenager and not know anything about this whole part of my life.

And I also went running from the 90s as fast as I could.

So I hadn't really processed it.

So I was like, I got to do this for my daughter, for myself.

And then also, which is why I demanded that they keep the whole book as I had written it for my cultural contribution to my voice and my generation.

I take it very seriously that if you've experienced a radical moment in your generation, that if you can, you should share it with the future so that the future, for those that believe in the past and who want to look at the past to learn, this is my, the book, the memoir really is my official contribution to what it was like to be a human female in the 90s who lived an extreme experience that goes from, yes, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but counterculture parents that changed the world we lived in, like that generation, and a spiritual realm, which was essential and is the core to my story, which I had a year of dreams and visitations between the age of 19 and 20 that told me to make music my life and predicted many, many parts of myself.

present

Yeah.

But like I'm finally, I finally have the symptom.

The last six months I'm now actually...

I'm like officially oh cool wow I skipped a period and I will tell for this theme that's so cool is my daughter is 14 and a half and her first spotting was the month my first period got officially skipped over twice so the moment I acknowledge oh shit a girl who's been regular ever since I had my period when I was 15 now just missed my period enough to realize I'm starting menopause my daughter gets her first spotting We go on this incredible mother-daughter in celebration of my memoir to a Welsh literary festival called Hay-on-Wye, one of the most important literary festivals in the world.

And I decide I want to bring my daughter there because in my book, I explain, back to honoring my radical mother, by the age of two, my mother and I had lived in a gilded circus caravan in Wales, had lived in a British post office truck in Morocco, and had... lived in a hut with monkeys in kenya by the age of two where i spent my second birthday so just so people see my gorgeous fearless mother but so she and i lived in this tiny town in wales for a second when she was on her nomad wild woman adventure where she was like smoking hash and having sex with guys in rock bands while i slept like alone in a caravan somewhere so i brought my daughter on this pilgrimage and met my mother and her best friend who was my spirit godmother who did these travels with me so just in the spring i brought my daughter river on a pilgrimage to wales and we went to the field with my mother and my godmother where we lived in this like centric caravan off the grid and we found the hermit Buddhist hermit that lives on that land now since we left 45 years ago.

It was totally wild.

And my daughter, through this pilgrimage, A, got to see how her mother really was raised.

And then

I think that'd be the last thing people would expect you to write.

Well, in that chapter, Warrior Goddess, I want to bring the reader on the stage with me, the bass player, and the world that I describe on stage is a volatile, dangerous place to be emotionally.

psychically, physically.

So I bring the reader, and it's in Chicago, to the Metro, the stage with me in October of 1994.

And the reason I choose that show, other than the Metro is legendary, of course, is that in the gutters of YouTube, miraculously, someone uploaded the five-camera ABC TV episode shoot of this show.

You know, I don't know why it happened to be that one, and I don't know that it was ever aired, but it's on YouTube, and you can watch from top to bottom an incredible whole concert in the peak of the drama of Live Through This.

So in October of 94, to put into perspective, you know, Kurt had died in April of Kristen, the bass player, had died in June.

I go, you're being put in these circumstances with these two... polarizing figures who are by the way are psychologically direct opposites of each other yeah but different you know different so many as well but the same in some ways too you're the one connecting figure um what would you tell yourself looking back if you could talk to 20 year old melissa now and tell her something about that situation what would you tell her

I think that'd be the last thing people would expect you to write.

Well, in that chapter, Warrior Goddess, I want to bring the reader on the stage with me, the bass player, and the world that I describe on stage is a volatile, dangerous place to be emotionally.

psychically, physically.

So I bring the reader, and it's in Chicago, to the Metro, the stage with me in October of 1994.

And the reason I choose that show, other than the Metro is legendary, of course, is that in the gutters of YouTube, miraculously, someone uploaded the five-camera ABC TV episode shoot of this show.

You know, I don't know why it happened to be that one, and I don't know that it was ever aired, but it's on YouTube, and you can watch from top to bottom an incredible whole concert in the peak of the drama of Live Through This.

So in October of 94, to put into perspective, you know, Kurt had died in April of Kristen, the bass player, had died in June.

I go, you're being put in these circumstances with these two people polarizing figures who are by the way are psychologically direct opposites of each other but different you know different so many as well but the same in some ways too you're the one connecting figure um what would you tell yourself looking back if you could talk to 20 year old melissa now and tell her something about that situation what would you tell her

So Smiths and-

The Smiths obsess, The Cure obsess, Depeche Mode, Sisters of Mercy.

I started going to clubs at a young age because Quebec has no rules.

You know, it's 18 to drink, but you can go there at 15.

So I started going to nightclubs, and there was a club called the Thunderdome and, and it was where I discovered all of the New Wave of the time and what it felt like to be in a room, like, swelling with melancholic excitement about [chuckles] being around your people, quote, unquote.

Like, I found that very young.

So by the time I was working at cl- as a ticket girl and a cassette DJ and I had, was about to fall in love with music for real and pick up the bass, I had...

... t- tell me a little bit about your dad.

[laughs]

A metaphoric mess.

I am, like, metamorphosizing and, like, healing actively and evolving, and then I have this companion book that comes out six months later.

So probably by the time this is-- in September, the visual companion, which is to my-- So my '90s rock memoir came out in March, and my '90s rock photographs come out in September, and it is pulling from my archive of 15,000 negatives shot between 1991 and 2001, the decade that defined me and my generation, and, and photographed by a woman in the band, and it's, I think, the thing I'm most artistically proud of because that's all I actually ever wanted to be.

I was in art school as a photographer.

I assumed I'd make photography my life, but then I was hijacked by Courtney and the giant circus of '90s rock music, and then I've been trying to get myself back to this more conceptual artist.

But the, the joy of writing the memoir was I got to really... and also take the time to scan all my negatives.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh

...

but I also loved Sebadoh.

You know, I liked all kinds of primitive music.

I like...

I just liked the, when the spirit...

Because my...

Courtney did a ton of work to advance the, [laughs] the, the voice, like, a female's voice, and people respecting it, and things really changing actually in the wake of it.

The personal experience was pretty bleak at some points, and that both of that can be true, which I think we're not very good at acknowledging that two sl- two conflicting things can be true at any one time anymore.

Exactly.

That was a huge, um, breakthrough for me, in fact, while writing, because a big part of me dig- going backwards was, you know, finally being honest with myself about the pain and losing my best friend in the band, Patty, to her addiction, and then being thrust into this abnormally commercial expectations, both musically but also visually, and having to step into this, like, role as, like, a pretty girl in the band to the, you know, wild, strong woman and all these things that I had to do that were not... didn't feel good.

I didn't, like, uh, and, and were heartbreaking.

I mean, the loss of Patty, although she's alive now and we are reconnected, but at that time, losing my father and my best friend and my basically integrity and my sense of... was debilitating.

I became a very broken, numb, yet highly functioning, very, you know, there and showing up for my role.

But it wasn't until I was writing the book where I admitted to myself how painful that was at the time, but also that revelation that you just said, where I actually also, with 20 years hindsight, see the beauty and the power of what I was given.

Sign up for your £1 a month trial today at shopify.co.uk/shift. Go to shopify.co.uk/shift. That's shopify.co.uk/shift. [ding] [gentle music] What influenced the timing? I mean, why now?

And so Melissa got on a plane

intending to refuse yet again.

I had definitely said, no, I do not want to be in a band of grieving drug addicts in a bath of fame and corporate major label hell in America.

I truly was absolutely not.

But then when she did convince me to get on a plane and say no to her face, the slow motion version of what shifted in me is that on the flight between Montreal and Seattle, and this is in July 1994, I listened to a cassette copy of... like an actual rip-off cassette of Live Through This.

As a DJ, yes, I had played pretty on the inside.

I knew it.

I mean, how does that impact the rest of your life when

Did that affect your personal relationship with fame and your interest in having it or not having it? Well, I

never wanted it to begin with.

So I was horrified from the moment I stepped into Hole.

It's like why I said no is I didn't.

I want a life as an artist.

I want a life of integrity.

I'm not in it for fame, fortune, fame.

I wonder, though, does being seen have value for you? Yes.

I like that

idea too.

I was actually upset at the Guardian.

They're my favorite.

They're my favorite.

They're my news source, the Guardian.

And they're the only one that gave the spoiler of my father's death.

yeah, the moments differently, or how you remember differently.

Did it take you a long time to adapt to that?

I had no time.

I went from one band to the other in one week.

So I had no time to adapt.

I completed my celebrity skin tour with Hole.

Courtney became a Hollywood movie star.

So this crazy transition happened for her.

My

father went from.

Journalism, so he had his own TV shows, radio shows.

He was more political, my mother was more rock.

And he taught me the thing of you've gotta make your own life.

You're the one, don't listen to them.

He was as punk as Kourtney.

But do you romanticize it? Tell me about those first couple gigs, the first couple years in the band.

My

father went from journalism.

So he had his own TV shows, radio shows.

He was more political.

My mother was more like rock.

And he taught me the thing of like you've got to make your own life.

Like you're the one.

reminisce about the 90s, but when you were in it and you think back on it, because I think this whole book you wrote from memory, which is crazy because I can't remember yesterday, but do you romanticize it? Tell me about those first couple gigs, the first couple years in the band.

People reminisce about the 90s, but when you were in it and you think back on it, because I think this whole book you wrote from memory, which is crazy because I can't remember yesterday, but do you romanticize it? Tell me about those first couple gigs, the first couple of years in the band.

No, I don't romanticize it at all.

That's why I wanted to write about it is I know other people romanticize the time, but I also do have deep compassion for what was happening.

You know, Courtney and the position she was in, the rest of the band and the position they were in, I mean, it was...

And there was not good support, because it was all the wake of Kurt's death, so the managers and the label, everything was upside down.

Nobody was taking care of anybody.

You know, drug addiction was just, like, a commonplace.

Confusing.

Yes.

So I didn't realize, in fact, now that I've been talking to people about my book and my story, how many people have actually said, oh, you were the one I related to.

You were the one that got me to play music.

And because Courtney is profoundly unique and alienating in a cool way.

So I bring the reader on the journey of all of a sudden, I am looking at myself in the mirror.

I am having my photo taken every day.

So

... your album? Let's listen.

Of course.

[singing] [rock music]

Mm-hmm

... bring...

I'm waiting for those who read the book who kind of pick up on that thread.

I kind of feel like it's a s- it's a parallel other thread of the book that for me is the most significant one, which is that I always felt that it was way beyond me and my tiny life that was at work with my f- being found by Billy and joining Hole and riding that wave of my generation.

That was a very strange and unique destiny that was not accidental.

And what was it about Montreal music and the scene in the 90s that really shaped you as an artist? How did that environment prepare you for what was going to be coming down the railroad tracks?

Yeah, I mean, obviously in the book, I go pretty deep right off the bat into my two parents.

The top of the book is chapter one is my incredible mother, chapter two is my incredible father, and chapter three is the incredible city I was raised in.

So I often, my whole life, in fact, and even those who got to know me in the rock world really understood that really was my parents and my city that made me unique but also uniquely prepared to dive into a global stage of drama addiction tragedy fame creative zeitgeist all these incredible things that i was thrown into at 22 um So it's both my remarkable parents and my city that really shaped a unique, I guess, perspective on what it means to try to live your life to your fullest.

So I credit mostly my origins for how I somehow ended up in this once-in-a-lifetime very rare opportunity to travel the world in a giant rock band and be plucked out of absolutely nowhere.

Like, I was not on the road globally seeking these wild nomads to join.

They found me in Montreal hiding in the underground.

So what advice would you give to young women today who are trying to break into the music industry?

And then through that, it kind of opened up this whole idea for me that, oh yeah, Quebec's like so much cooler than Toronto.

I mean, whereas I was indoctrinated by that in the 70s by my parents.

They were telling me about Toronto versus Montreal a long time ago.

It's the New York-Boston rivalry.

But what's interesting, you say that, is I just did a very intensive few days in Montreal for press a couple of weeks ago for the book.

And speaking to majority French, like the Francophone world, because the Montreal village of English is so tiny.

There's like one newspaper and one radio show, whereas Quebec is like ginormous media, more than the rest of Canada per capita.

not so great in some cases but incredible in other cases like the fact that we have the band that rejected the players prize because it was sponsored by ford in the same band with the guy that started the proud boys

[laughs]

... or something.

I'm still trying to be that.

But, um, I was demoralized.

By the time I was writing my resignation letter to Hole on a flight from Vancouver to LA, we had ruled...

We had played Glastonbury.

We headlined all these incredible, this Canadian festival, and when I saw that she was not her, she was no longer committed to it, I, um, I, I...

[laughs]

kind of getting crushed in that.

And our identities, back to, actually, I love, thank you, you brought up me evaporating.

So by 98, I'm on tour with Hole, and I'm basically an ice princess who, by the way, my father died while making Celebrity Skin.

I was being put really in this role as, like, pretty girl at the photo shoots, and all of a sudden I was just becoming this, like, mannequin to Courtney's, like, Hollywood.

And I was being mined for my beauty, which I had, when you met me, I'm glad you think I was pretty, but I did not wear I did not look at myself in the mirror.

I did not think of myself as a pretty girl.

I thought of myself as like a

Yes.