Hole: Live Through This

Greetings, readers, and thank ya for tuning in!

Since I geeked out pretty hard about Kim Gordon in my last post, I figured I'd stay in the same vein, and this vein led me to Hole, one of the must popular grunge bands in the 1990s, most famous for their album Live Through This. Some people might try to tell you Hole only received attention because lead singer/guitarist Courtney Love was the kooky wife of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, but those people don't know what they're talking about.

I know I don’t stand alone when I say Hole was a badass and, more importantly, a monumental band. It was raw as fuck--the lyrics were piercing and thoughtful, calling our society out on its bullshit attitude toward women. The musicianship was just as good as Nirvana or Pearl Jam. When bassist Kristen Pfaff overdosed, the band put things on pause, but recruited Melissa Auf der Maur and then released some EPs, a compilation album and then their third studio album. They dealt with all the same bullshit as other bands—switching labels, finding producers and creating a solid fanbase that worshipped the shit out of them.

I would give/do quite a few things to be alive in 1994 and see Hole perform at Lollapalooza. For Love to scream, “FUCK YOU!” to the audience I stood in, to have her spit on me and cause a ruckus, to roll around on the stage in her babydoll dresses. All the while rocking the fuck out on guitar and screaming her piss-sour lyrics, her band playing just as hard, but allowing Love to soak up all the attention.

The childishly aggressive demands of “Pay attention to ME!” got a little old, but Hole was an almost all-female grunge rock band in an industry where dicks are literally everywhere. If Hole wanted to stick around, things were going to have to get real.

Not going to lie, I think a considerable amount of the dramatics was done for press coverage. The behavior perhaps wasn’t 100% genuine, but it got critics to pay attention. And now, 20 years after the release of Live Through This, the album is chilling at spot 460 on Rolling Stone’s list of the Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Cobain killed himself right before it was released, which is pretty fuckin’ lame on his part. Like, you couldn’t even wait for your wife’s album to drop before checking out? Maybe he did that on purpose, because he knew the material on the album and knew that if he was dead when it was released, its meaning and lyrics would have much more impact. Perhaps he sacrificed his own life to see Love succeed, or hoped she would become successful enough to carry on and provide for Frances Bean without Cobain around? Too bad that didn’t fuckin’ pan out. I don’t know if you know this, but Frances Bean Cobain barely talks to her mother because Courtney Love went a little batshit crazy along her lifeline. Maybe it’s because of all the shit that happened with Cobain and “losing his estate” or whatever the fuck Love claims happened.

But I don’t want to make this whole thing about Cobain and Love. I’m weary of the whole “debate” about who shot who and who wrote what. Does anyone have anything interesting to say about the music itself? This past winter break someone tried to tell me Cobain was killed by the government, and (probably for the better) I was too baked to smack the shit out of him. But I wanted to. Enough with the gossip! Hole’s a cool band, dang it, and I want to have an intelligent conversation about Hole!

But that in no way means I have intelligent things to say about Hole. I mean, I’ll try, but that’s really all I can promise.

Live Through This is a very beautiful album. The music is just what you want from a grungy rock band. One thing I have to admit immediately, however, is the enormous similarity to how Nirvana created music. Love’s style of vocal delivery—her pacing, the changes in the timbre of her voice, the rough guitar riffs. Other things. Listen to any Nirvana song, then listen to “Plump” from Live Through This. “They say I’m plump / But I throw up all the time,” Love screams. Hole is not imitating Nirvana, but definitely vibing off them.

“Asking For It” has convinced me that Hole is Nirvana in female form. I have absolutely zero problems with this. “And if you live with me through this / I swear that I will die for you.” Big, elaborate pause... “Was she asking for it? / Was she asking nice? / She was asking for it / Did she ask you twice?”

The songs are rough and in-your-face, but every track (omit the last two) are packed into three tight minutes. This is orderly angst--it’s as if there’s a formula that made Nirvana what it was, and Hole has put its own spin on the recipe. I clap. I’m clapping.

“She Walks On Me” is raising the hair on my arms. It’s pretty savage. Hole is a bit of a savage band. The lyrics are fierce and violent, as well as extremely feminist.

Album opener "Violet" is a fantastic preview for the band. “They get what they want / And they never want it again / Go on, take everything / Take everything / I want you to.” In order to really stand out in a world full of men, Courtney Love dressed herself up to be ultra feminine, with makeup smeared all over her face. But her attitude, behavior and demeanor were the perfect foil for her appearance. The lyrics in the song change just slightly, but it’s a huge impact.

“I told you from the start just how this would end / When I get what I want / Well, I never want it again.” Love takes the power in this situation, asserting herself over everyone else.

Many of lyrics stress the socially condoned passivity of women. Love’s stinging, biting satire and sarcasm sung in her sickly-sweet croon adds a very specific element to the music. She is furious and impatient. 

I did some researching on the Interwebs and have discovered that this fury and impatience that possessed the members of Hole is detailed very clearly in the band’s name. I once saw this VH1 special on Love where she made fun of Nine Inch Nails and the band name, saying something like, “Fuck off, Trent Reznor, bragging about your nine inches. You don’t hear me saying ‘Big hole, little hole, tight hole, whatever.’” Many people assume the name is a reference to the female anatomy, but that’s not true.

It’s something Love’s mother once said to her. Love told her mom she had a terrible childhood (what a surprise, seems to be a trend that continued for her whole life) and her mom said, “You can’t have a hole running through you all the time.” So it is about emptiness, about missing something and knowing that something is absent, but not being able to get that back.

The name is also a reference to the play Medea (a witchy woman’s husband cheats on her, so to get revenge Medea kills her own children and her husband’s new wife. If you wondered when the phrase ‘Hell hath no fury’ is appropriate, Medea would be that situation). Medea states, “There’s a hole that pierces my soul,” and it does not surprise me that Love (who was a generally angry person when Hole was intact) could relate to Medea.

Live Through This was an album that proved a mostly female band could be just as successful as male bands doing the same thing. The musicians in the band performed just as fiercely as any other musician in the '90s. Hole just had a bit more spunk and therefore gained more controversy. I don't know why some people had such a strongly negative reaction to Hole and Live Through This--maybe because they were forced to face the idea that women had voices just as loud as men, and they were going to make them heard. But I can hardly imagine a world where men get angry at women for speaking their minds.

Anyone who doubts Hole’s legitimacy as a creative unit needs to direct their attention to “Doll Parts,” one of the most moving tracks on the album. Really listen to it, and then try to stay Hole didn’t know what was up.