Cute Girls Watch When I Eat Ether

The other day, I scanned through my 'Most Played' playlist on my phone. 23 out of 30 were Hole songs. That set me thinking. How did I become the Hole fan that I am today?
Rewind the story to one and a half years ago.
I had randomly decided to google Courtney Love band top songs, after reading so much about her in Kurt Cobain's many biographies. Most people who migrate from Nirvana to Hole fandom start with hating the aggressive self proclaimed 'suicide blonde'. For me, it was indifference.

A few clicks, and I'd watched the Violet and Miss World videos, billed as Hole's best two songs on some websites, and I knew I'd found my new favourites.
I've decided to discuss three of the most iconic Hole videos: Miss World, Violet and Doll Parts in this blog post, now that I've perhaps almost heard all of Hole and Courtney Love discography (still have to catch up on her pre Hole bands - Pagan Babies, Sugar Babydoll and some demos that I keep coming across :P)

While Miss World may not be the best Hole song (it's more of a power pop ballad with a few punk moments), watching its wonderfully set video makes it stand out from most songs. Love's voice takes a gentle, innocent tone in the very old world glam beginning as she dabs a huge powder puff all over her face: "I am the girl you know can't look you in the eye
I am the girl you know so sick I cannot try..."

Then the guitar picks up and one of the catchiest, poppiest hooks ever in the Hole discography take over, although all expectations of this being another Britney Spears/Mariah Carey record are trashed when a bittersweet cry breaks out from Love's stained red lips for "Kill me pills, no one cares my friends,

My friend!"

The phrase 'Kill me pills' is from American confessionist poet Anne Sexton's nickname for the barbiturate Nembutal. As her biographer Diane Wood Middlebrook puts it, Sexton was '...the 1950s housewife and mother; the seductress; the suicide who carried "kill-me pills" in her handbag the way other women carry lipstick; and the poet who made lasting art.' Sexton is one of the many muses for Love, and makes for a compelling character who wrote some of the most instrumental poetry with regard to womens' issues in the 1960s. My favourite poem by Sexton is Music Swims Back to Me, do have a look.

The song and its video have a running theme of symbioticism, of beautiful harmony between the yin and the yang, the soft and the dark. Eric Erlandson, the lead guitarist of Hole, co-wrote this song with Courtney Love. Love and him are the duo who were consistent in all the line-ups of Hole from its inception in 1989 to demise in 2002. Courtney on rhythm guitar acts as the perfect foil for Erlandson's lead parts, while the bassist Kristen Pfaff's soft, melodious backing vocals perfectly complement Courtney Love's strong voice. And all this time, Patty Schemel's steady drumming seamlessly drives the song forward. Its in songs like this one that I feel that this particular line up has been the best one yet.

There are a lot of interpretations of this song, mostly revolving around themes of depression, suicide and substance abuse in young, image obsessed girls. The artwork of its album seems to convey the same message, with the now iconic in Alt-Rock lore teary-smudged-eyeliner-yet-ecstatic-to-be-crowned pose of model Leilani Bishop:

Pleasure Pain. The Ugly Side of Pretty. All running themes in Hole's first few works, perfectly encapsulated in one album cover and song.

All of this may seem passé now, but back in the 90s when near perfect demigoddesses like Madonna were the ideal role models for young girls in pop culture (with the other option being virginal, pure, manufactured teen pop stars like Willa Ford, Christina Aguilera etc, while punk legends like Patti Smith and Joan Jett now belonged to the previous generation), bands like Hole and the ones from the riot grrrl punk/grunge scene in Seattle seemed like a breath of fresh air. They sang about the dichotomies in this patriarchal society; freely revolted against the squeaky clean, cute, nice girl image (hence Grrrls! not girls, lol), even put out a manifesto...it was almost a movement on its own. I think I'll devote a separate blog post for that later since Hole categorically wanted to not be clubbed with the Riot Grrrls (sample their cheesy song on this: Olympia, billed as Rockstar on Live Through This). 

A single line in Miss World captures all of this background noise: "Cute girls watch when I eat ether."

The society approved 'cute girls' silently encouraged the unravelling of average young girls who were brought up to aspire to be perfect, even if meant 'eating ether' and ending their lives.

The brilliant then-bassist of Hole, Kristen Pfaff, contributed the lyrics to the chorus from one of her former band Janitor Joe's songs: "I made my bed I'll lie in it/ I made my bed I'll die in it."

More about Pfaff and her tragic demise at age 27 just a week after the Miss World single released, on a future blog post. (yay I'm getting more ideas this way, hope I don't get too lazy though:P)

Miss World is my favourite music video by Hole, and easily so. Have a look yourself here at the superb imagery perfectly matching the bittersweet lyrics of the song here:

Hole - Miss World:

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The first song I heard by Hole was Violet.
"And the sky was made of amethyst", she sang after the opening hook, "All the stars were just like little fish."
It was past midnight, I was tucked in bed in cold, dry January, and there was dead silence around me.
"You should learn when to go, you should learn how to say NOOO!"

Two lines and I was hooked.

The single 'Violet' had a creepy/interesting cover art featuring a Victorian era mourning picture of a child's corpse with her doll (the practice was quite prevalent and widely accepted as a norm back then, read about it here)

Again, the song has dark undercurrents. It is about  a person accepting and even enticing abuse, especially in the lines "Go on, take everything / Take everything, I want you to", and "I want it again, but violent, more violent". Courtney Love also has a fascination with the word 'violet': She and Kat Bjelland, her ex bandmate in Pagan Babies, considered it a muse (Kat's later band Babes in Toyland released a really badass song called Bruise Violet!). My favourite part in the song is when Love indulges in alliteration by putting the words violet and violent together, and then jumbling them up in a beautiful mess often in several of the song's live versions:

"And the sky was all violet 

I wanna give the violet more violence"

Here's a tribute to Patti Smith, who's been cited by Love many times as her idol, as her song Kimberly has the lines: "Burst from the barn and flames in a violent violet sky"

The music video has themes of "pornography versus ballet, strippers, and beautiful out-of-synch artwork" as described by Melissa Auf der Maur, who by then filled in the spot of bassist after Pfaff passed away. Women with bare backs sitting poised on beds, strippers recruited for the video by Courtney Love herself after she visited the strip club she used to work in at a point in time, along with shots of happy young girls and a smeared lipstick-messy hair Love slapping herself and singing create a very out-of-the-world charm and feel.

On a personal level, Violet is about Love falling out with her ex Billy Corgan, lead vocalist of Smashing Pumpkins. Love introduced the song on Jools Holland's show as being "...about a jerk. I hexed him and now he's losing his hair." (Corgan went bald around that time!) Violet is hence featured at No. 9 on The Daily Beast's "14 Fiercest Breakup Songs" list in 2010. (Quite a shitty list, in my opinion though. But you get the point. And lists are shitty anyway. :P)

A look at what the critics had to say about Hole's now signature song:"With its daydream whispers and startling gunshot-guitar chorus, "Violet" shakes, rattles and roars like a godless marriage of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way." (Rolling Stone, 1994) The song was placed in a 2010 NME article titled Hole's 10 Finest Moments, where it was referred to as "the quintessential Hole track" and a "titanic temper tantrum and exhilarating rush of inconsolable rage at full vent... “Go on, take everything, take everything I want you to”, she bellows, turning powerlessness into power over riffs that swing from sweet and melancholy to boiling and volcanic on a dime."

Well. I don't really have much to say about it then. This song is c-l-a-s-s-i-c. Like Teen Spirit it can sometimes get a bit too mainstream a song to be the favourite of a die hard fan, and if listening to Violet daily is a bad habit to nurture then I am guilty as hell! I don't really have one absolute favourite Hole song, but on some days if you ask me then I will say Violet :)

Hole - Violet

***

Now coming to the final music video I will talk about in this blog post. Doll Parts was the second single to have been released from Live Through This. Pfaff had just passed away, and a few months back so had Kurt Cobain. In the midst of all this, the video was shot with Jennifer Finch from L7 filling in as bassist in the video and a small blonde boy reminiscent of Kurt scurrying in and out of a bare room where Love sat on a lone bed, strumming a guitar in melancholy. The video was every bit a mourning, tragic story that the context of the lyrics wasn't. It was in fact, about when Courtney first met Kurt, and the initial feelings of love not being reciprocated, as "Yeah, they really want you

They really want you, but I do too."

And then the haunting lyrics which proved to be a premonition of what was to come: "Someday, you will ache like I ache." 

Doll Parts Single artwork with Hole memorabilia

Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love first locked eyes on each other at eleven in the evening on Friday, January 12, 1990, and within 30 seconds they were tussling on the floor, according to Cobain's biographer Charles Cross in the brilliantly written Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain. You can read the excerpt from this book about how they met and fell in love here.

Doll Parts was about Courtney realizing she wanted Kurt, even though both were in different relationships then, and agonizing over it possibly being unrequited love. This had made the generally thick-skinned Courtney all delicate and vulnerable like a doll, feeling she may break anytime soon: "He only loves those things because he loves to see them break".

 Love had sent Cobain "a heart-shaped box scented with perfume and inside a porcelain doll, three dried roses, a miniature teacup and shellac-covered seashells" after their first meeting to 'apologize for the tussle'. The box was later the influence for Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box, my all time favourite from their discography.

So its pretty interesting to see how a simple, bare track about budding romance and fear of rejection took on a totally different meaning with the video. The video is nothing short of haunting. There's a totally different bassist just filling in space for the tragic Pfaff, and a mini Kurt entering a dim room containing a grieving Love and then exiting just as the song ends, moving towards a white light and leaving Love in a room full of darkness.

Doll Parts is technically a very simple three chord song, and Love has gone on record saying that she finds it difficult to comprehend how a simple three chord progression song could become so big, but admits it has some of her best lyrics. Many lines like, "I want to be the girl with the most cake" are Hole fan slogans and have found their way into pop culture.

Doll Parts is the closest we'll ever come to a quiet ballad from Hole, and its right up there with the classics.

Hole - Doll Parts

Next up, *REVIEW OF JACK WHITE'S NEW ALBUM*
I have started writing after months and am glad I'm just writing something, even if I'm the only reader :P