00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin melis Off. Deemauer came of age in Montreal's bohemian art scene in the eighties and early nineties, at the very moment that alternative rock was becoming the defining sound of a generation. Through an unlikely chain of events, her band Tinker landed an opening slot for The Smashing Pumpkins and Billy Corgan. Sensing her natural talent on bass, Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love. What followed was a turbulent apprenticeship of Deemauer joined whole for to live through this tour in nineteen ninety four, just weeks after the deaths of Kirk Obain and Hols prior bassist Kristin Faff. Later, she toured with The Smashing Pumpkins, released two solo albums, and as Sense built a life as a musician, photographer, and cultural curator, having co founded Basilica Hudson, a multidisciplinary art center in New York's Hudson Valley. Even the Good Girls Will Cry as Melissa's best selling book, part rock memor, part travel diary, part psychedelic scrap book, a vivid dispatch from what she calls the last analog decade, capturing that era in all its messy, angsty glory. Off Demauer writes with the tenderness of a true survivor, about the illness and death of her father, her past relationship with Dave Grohl, and her complicated, deeply human portrait of Courtney Love. Now she's following it up with a companion photo book, My Nineties Rock Photographs, drawn from the remarkable archives she shot from one of rock's last great decades. On today's episode, I talked to Mliss off Demauer about both projects, about how her parents encouraged an unconventional life in the arts, how alternative music went mainstream, and how her relationship with Courtney Love has evolved over the years. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's my conversation with Melissa off Demauer. 00:02:09 Speaker 2: JI, in whole was happened because of death. I replaced a deceased woman who died two months after Kurt committed suicide. So the whole runway to my joining that band was death. 00:02:20 Speaker 1: With Cony Love, who I don't know, but just from everything you know I know of her, you just presume. I mean, I wouldn't think she's getting out of the decade. 00:02:28 Speaker 2: Of course, impossible She's an absolute miracle. She should have been dead seventeen hundred times. She is not. She's alive. And we didn't speak after I left the band for well over a decade, and we are now the closest we have ever been. 00:02:45 Speaker 1: That's great. 00:02:45 Speaker 2: She's in the best mental health and clarity than she ever has been. She has an album in the can that I sang backups all over. She has a memoir coming out at the end of the year, in a documentary film that's a real reframing in her own words, of her survival. Basically, she's but yes. 00:03:05 Speaker 1: She's going there and all that. Like in the dock, is it like it goes pretty heavy? 00:03:08 Speaker 2: I mean it did. This is very Courtney. But it did premiere at sun Dance in January. She didn't show up, and now she's reshooting it. When it came out to rave. 00:03:18 Speaker 1: Reviews, she's just put the original film as like an extra or something. I loved it. 00:03:24 Speaker 2: Redoing it, but I mean it's probably going to be better. I don't know, but it's sure. She's going to have her moment like this is my year, my little bass player a year. In twenty twenty six, she and Billy who are my grunge parents that I refer to because Billy from the Smashing Pumpkins was my entree and my introduction to Hole and he was my musical mentor. So there are these ominous parent figures. And when I left the nineties running after my two stints in yeah, two huge bands, but also notably two of the most I never saw it this way until I left in decades later, like, yeah, you were in two huge rock bands, but you were also in the bands with the most difficult front people, like notably difficult front people. 00:04:10 Speaker 1: Different reasons but different, Yeah. 00:04:11 Speaker 2: Very different people. Courtney and Billy are radically different, but they were for better. For course, my my second parents who ushered me into my adulthood. And when I left both their bands, I didn't speak to either of them for a decade, and we're closer than we've ever been. So the good news is that there's happy endings in gen X like alternative rock purgatory Land. 00:04:34 Speaker 1: I'm so happy to hear that. 00:04:36 Speaker 2: You know, everyone's alive and talking and apologize it's still time to go. 00:04:39 Speaker 1: You know it's bad, I hope not. Yeah, it's true. Actually, as a fan of I'm a Billy cording fan, and he sometimes drives me nuts as a fail someone. Why would you say that? What compels you? I can't remember exactly, but everyone you know, it's like every third interview I'll read it. Isn't I a wild card? 00:04:59 Speaker 2: He is very He's truly himself. And when I met I was nineteen. When I met him in nineteen ninety one, he was nobody. His band had a twelve inch out and we became quick friends, pen pals, and I was entirely captured by the sound of the music. It wasn't the man, but when I walked into the band the first show, they had a Montreal for a dollar in front of twenty people, I heard the sounds of my ancient soul in this band. I didn't know who they were. I just it captured me. It changed my life. I committed to making music and picking up the bass after that. But I became friends with him, and we also discovered shortly after that we're both born as Saint Patrick's Day and in the world of astrology, but also just saints are holy and cool. But pisces were very overly sensitive creatures. He was very unique as a rock dude at that time because I mean, obviously Kurt had his own true tortured poet martyr tragedy, and Billy had his own weird, esoteric vibes that was very different than like, I mean, obviously Sound Garden and Pearl everyone had their own thing, but Billy's twist was sort of like I'm going to say this with all the love, but sort of like new age pompous intellectual philosopher, which is what made him interesting to people like me. I was like, wow, cool, he's like so poetic and strange, but he also just throws these curveballs because it's not Yeah, it's a little much. 00:06:32 Speaker 1: I love a line though, between like that and like annoying for any I mean even for Dylan or Joni Mitchell. It's all the same. It's like the lawn between being that kind of a purpose. Not necessarily I'm not necessarily to compare him to Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, but in a way it's, yeah, our generation he's fairly committed to. 00:06:52 Speaker 2: Which I love. I love that he's so using his platforms are getting bigger and bigger, like from wrestling to podcasts to the Pumpkins being the biggest they've ever been. Yeah, I mean hooray, because they you know, they really they did dip. I mean I was on when I toured with them. It was the farewell tour. We were the band was dismantling, and he made a weird concept then, which was also kind of like an example of how weird Billy was as we went on a world tour to say goodbye to the world the band was ending, and who really does do a farewell tour at the peak prime of there? Like it'd only been a band for a decade. It's not like it was like you two saying goodbye after fifty years. So he's a funny human that way. And I remember the whole time on that tour with him thinking like, wait, what's Billy's planned after this? Like why why is it? You know, I knew I was just a visiting, temporary member, but but it was the honor of a lifetime to play in my favorite band who inspired me to pick up the bass to begin with. 00:07:52 Speaker 1: And both times, I guess, and also in both instances, you're also replacing a bit of an iconic. 00:07:56 Speaker 2: Well iconic and tragic and tragic. So the problem Kristin Faff, who I replaced in Hole. She played on live this but hadn't even really been in the band for very long. She made an amazing record with them and played in that first video, Miss World, and then died before they even supported the record. So I came in at the moment where the band is ready to support the album, and then Darcy from the Pumpkins, who longstanding member that Pumpkins were always that formation, And this part of the book I think is new for a lot of But there's a lot of parts of my memoir that obviously I've never told anybody. 00:08:39 Speaker 1: But. 00:08:41 Speaker 2: Having just done an epic three month memoir book tour this spring and talking to and doing what I thought was going to be ten bookshops to turn into forty seven events and multiple a day, and hundreds of people interfacing a day with hearing their response and questions of you know, things that they had never heard, like the deep dive that people want of the behind the scenes. But one of the kind of nexus moments in my book is that strange moment that I knew at the time, but writing about it twenty five years later, when I leave Hole and join the Smashing Pumpkins, all within a month. It was a very back to back, strange move, but also very in sort of mythological rock history moment, just very controversial for the good girl to just like leap out and go into the other and replace Darcy who had mysteriously kind of disappeared. And it was a testament to me and Billy's esoteric piss's connection is I had just quietly internally decided I was done with Hole at the end of this tour of them, because well it wasn't even the end of the tour, but Courtney was really focusing on movies Hollywood, and I just wrote a letter in my diary flying home from the last show I ever played with them in Vancouver in nineteen ninety nine, and it just said that's it. I'm done. I don't feel like waiting around anymore for a band leader to decide if for making music or waiting to tour or not tour. And then I, within a week of me making that internal decision and preparing the terrifying resignation letter to Courtney, Billy calls my rotary phone and says, Darcy's disappeared and I need you to join my band. I'm like, how do you know that I am leaving? This band. Why would you ask me that? But I am and it worked out beautifully. But it was totally bizarre. But that I'd explained in the book detailed is I think is even news to me of remembering how tightly woven that moment was. 00:10:40 Speaker 1: Because in your mind if they feel like very different, yeah, blocks of time. 00:10:43 Speaker 2: Right, yes, And I forgot how you know, like in romance, how overlapped. And it's a testament to Courtney our mutual respect and now even more so, at this stage of our lives, were able to reflect on what made us a good match. Back then, I try to explain from the bass player good girl to the right of the the horror, I'm the virgin. So I tried to explain this dynamic of the two women in this band. But it's not till decades later now that she and I can reflect on how that happened and how beautifully compatible we were so polar opposite and when I left what she was not happy about, and then when I announced I was joined the Pumpkins, which she was not happy about, she very eloquently you know it shows her fundamental love and trust of me. Is in respect for me. She never said one bad word other than Melissa has gone off to be Billy Corgan's purse. And that was her nice, low hitting insult to all right, see you later. But I was very impressed at the time that this is like taking the high road. I'm just a purse, no big deal. 00:12:00 Speaker 1: Did you think it was gonna be much worse? 00:12:03 Speaker 2: Yeah? 00:12:03 Speaker 1: But no. 00:12:04 Speaker 2: I mean that's why I actually people ask me in this memoir, what I you know, The hardest parts, of course to were to write about drug addiction of others and my father's death. But what were the things that I'd learned about in the book? Was revisiting the letters of Courtney that she wrote to me that I print in the book for the first time ever. I mean, I hadn't even to miracle they survived because they were faxes and on that fading fact paper. And when I was putting my archives together, I found it right in the nick of time before it totally evaporated. By I re print in full two big letters that Courtney wrote to me at the peak of our power, both in the celebrity skin moment but also our power as women together on covers of magazines and all the fashion moments, and at the Versace shows, and it was a very elevated, high intensity time of our career, and it was the end of the nineties and women seemed to be on top, which is another story. But she writes me two letters that I think are too the most powerful things in the book. And what I like is that I get to give Courtney the floor. She gets to show the people who read the book just how brilliant, eloquent, generous and noble she is. And the first one is the beauty manifesto, where she's given me some lessons and beauty around the Malibu video and the edits, and she thinks I should be goofyer or i'llso be an ice princess and I'm a queen, not a princess. That a so cool, great letter. And then the second one is her response to my resignation, and it is generous and incredible. And I took it with a grain of salt at the time because I just need it out, and I didn't read it for twenty years, and when I read it putting this book together, I realized, and she is, for anyone who's been in the room with her, always the smartest person in the room. Even now after all the trauma and an addiction and damage, brilliant, brilliant mind, and the handwritten letter that she sends me in response to this out of nowhere ish decision for me to leave. I learned about myself twenty five years later. I did not at the time realize how bang on she was about parts of me that I had not yet grown into. I was only twenty six, and this very wise woman really schooled me, and I wasn't ready for the lesson. And I now as a as a middle aged wise woman, I understand a lot of what she was saying that I missed at the time. 00:14:39 Speaker 1: Which is cool. How do you think she knew that about it? I knew that about that. 00:14:43 Speaker 2: I'm so smart because she I think her and Billy, both since I put this memoir out, had been shockingly supportive, like proud mom and dad? Who want to do you. 00:14:53 Speaker 1: Really think it's shocking? 00:14:55 Speaker 2: Well? 00:14:55 Speaker 1: Maybe, well, we. 00:14:56 Speaker 2: Didn't like both of them, No, I guess it's not now that we've we've talked about it, But I had been out of their lives for a long time, and I don't know. Well, they're also quite potentially competitive people. So only reason I say shocking is it proves that it's all love like we they love me, I love them. They want me to succeed. 00:15:15 Speaker 1: You know, Billy, you're You're like the child of a divorce, but it's like the parents can come together for the graduation. 00:15:25 Speaker 2: And essentially, since my book came out, both Billy and Courtney in different ways, have said to me, we knew that you were this great and we both saw it anew from the moment we met you. And now the world, like Billy even said at one point out a Q and A, he ended up filling in last minute of My la Q and A. When Jennifer Finch from L seven called in sick, he came and said, in front of a live audience, now the world gets to know how amazing you are. I've always known it from the moment I met you at nineteen. I hadn't seen such self assurance in a young person. And he again, what this putting out a memoir is insane, just for everyone out there. If you want to heal your life, I write a memoir. It's so painful. But then once it's out and you've purged it and shared it, and then you start getting the feedback. Some as hard I've had trouble with other people, but this is an example of the people that are like showering me and we're bonding through my purging and self reflection and empowering my story. But Billy said something that really a sense of what happens in your middle age when you start looking back, and especially when you were a difficult and sometimes hated person. Both of them were, you know, very misunderstood yet celebrated of course, and I think they both live with a lot of pain around and both had very hard childhoods. They were not and loved and that's what in this Q and A. I was so it really. I think I probably teared up if I didn't entirely cry. But he said, you know what made you different? You know, Courtney and I were survivors. We had tough childhoods, and we were as strong as shit because we came from hard. You were strong without that kind of pain. 00:17:17 Speaker 1: And it was. 00:17:18 Speaker 2: Deeply I felt, you know, whatever, that the new world of therapy so seen. You know, I just had not even to myself understood. But you know, my father had pain, and as I've been so I held an embolded strength of a man who for whatever complicated reasons. 00:17:37 Speaker 1: It is. 00:17:37 Speaker 2: My father had a lot of pain. 00:17:41 Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from a less aftemar after the break. And your mom was complicated too, Yes, it came an equally interesting way. 00:17:53 Speaker 2: Yeah, my father was in line with like true torture pain, like alcoholic addicts. So that's why the wisdom of a daughter of an alcoholic is a kind of chiseled wisdom that comes either just enjoys you and you become an addict, or you kind of work with it and try to you know, you go through complicated things where you then try to save people and you want to love everyone for all of their impossible traits, and you compromise yourself and your own happiness. 00:18:24 Speaker 1: And yeah, and you must feel I mean, it's been out now and it's been really well received in a lot, but it's still you must feel like an open, exposed nerve still. And I am a big one, big exposed. 00:18:36 Speaker 2: 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 Nineties Rock Memoir came out at March, and my nineties Rock Photographs come out in September, and it is pulling from my archive of fifteen thousand negatives shot between nineteen ninety one and two thousand and one, decade that defined me in my generation, 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 nineties rock music, and then I've been trying to get myself back to this more conceptual artist. But the joy of writing the memoir was I got to really and also take the time to scan all my negatives, and in that photographic journey that is coming out in September, is even more wide open, like my boobs, my nose bleeds, my messy bedrooms, like the rough and tumble existence backstage, and the messiness of you know, the glorious things too, the giant crowds. And I don't mean that because we're so lucky to make giant crowds. But I have a whole room in the museum exhibit that's coming in concerts with this photo book. And the last room is an ode to the fans and to the journey. Is the bass player in my interior spiritual world basically that merged with these oceans of people. And there's actually a video installation in the middle of that room called the Bass Womb Room, which is a throbbing heartbeat, a soundtrack I am making, and it's the inner soundtrack and prism like light in video installation, surrounded by these photos of fans, giant like crowds of thousands, and it's like a zigzag between like the tiny intimate inner self that brings a sound through their instrument to commune with these oceans of fans for years, and that is very powerful, I'm assuming, you know, But music, I believe is the highest form of creative spiritual communing with a with humans. You know. I love painting, I love theater, I love film, of course I love photography. But the actual exchange and the way that music moves through people's lives and it's not just the power of the stage, but of course that rumbling of the bass through the ocean of the moving people, with the people who are playing it that's heavy, is incredible, but it's also when they go home and listen to it alone in their room. It's like this inside outside private public. And a lot of my work in the photos is really reflecting the inside of my life, the young girl I'm trying to protect from the giant abyss, but then also the power of this remarkable relationship with human kind. It's very exciting to be working in this medium to be able to reflect on what I and every other person whoever was in a rock band is doing out there every night, and what those people in the crowd outs are doing. And uh, when I talk with artists as a you know, an advocate for music being the the superpower, as I just remind them, like, you can't hold it. It is not a thing. 00:22:22 Speaker 1: Yeah, it is abstract. 00:22:23 Speaker 2: It's just sound, which is like essence, like environment. It's so it's like air. 00:22:29 Speaker 1: It's so powerful, moving airs. 00:22:31 Speaker 2: Yeah, which is literally the bass yeh is literally the base. 00:22:35 Speaker 1: You know? 00:22:36 Speaker 2: Did I mention I'm a bass player For these people listening, I am a highly defined I am a redhead Canadian bass player. That is my top line description, it's a. 00:22:45 Speaker 1: Great way to two I am says it all. It says it all and your base plane is like listening. I hadn't listened to whole in a long time. Listening to celebrity skin it's like, what the bass really stands out? 00:23:02 Speaker 2: And it's cool? Is it now that people are so nerdy crazy deep diving in the nineties I have from my memory, I did a bunch of of course press, but talking to the bass magazines, of talking to these super nerdy bass people who are like, well, there's a Melissa sound like does alyssa feel that people know about that when you're in the studio if like they're super nerdy rock enthusiast engineer. This was all news to me when I was doing these interviews, like, oh, really there's a thing. And then these nerdy bass player magazine people were like, yes, there's like a whole there's a style that you have and a feel that you have. And then you did you watch the Billy Corgan podcast with me? I did not, so because you're a Billy fan. That's it's I mean, I try. 00:23:44 Speaker 1: Not to take into any podcasters because I like that. 00:23:47 Speaker 2: I'm sorry if I don't listen to podcasts either. I didn't listen back to it, but I was in the studio with Billy and we had a conversation about my book. He invited me on the podcast and for the first time ever, again this is sort of the joy of twenty five years later and sitting with your ex band member, he broke down my bass playing to me, which never happened before. And again it had something to do with time pass because he's also played with a lot of bass players since, and because last summer he was playing like a small secret ish show in Montreal of like rarity songs, not with the Pumpkins, and I joined for one song for Everlasting Days, which is on that last record that I toured with them, and I was in that video and it was like riding a bike. I don't play bass much at the moment, and it was powerful for me to just get on stage with Billy play that song and feel so instantly like cellular memory alive and love it. And he said at soundcheck that day, when I started playing, he said, oh, there's that feeling, there's that pocket again. It's been a while. And then that's why when he did the podcast he broke it down. He's like, well, you have a very particular feeling. It was the first time. And he's such a muso, like if there was ever someone who could describe why technically or what I'm doing, it love describing things. Yes, so he uh, he broke it down. So for all the bass players listening or anyone who thinks about pockets, he describes the unique and I guess not a lot of bass players have this. Most bass players play on the beat of the kickdrum, so it's like you're playing with the kick drum. Some people in other kinds of music are behind and laid back, and that's like a space between, and that's possibly in jazz. I'm sorry for the super musos out there. I don't actually know, but some people are behind the bucket and I, which I guess is less common, but maybe for certain rock style, am ahead of the kick and I push push, push, push push, and I had I mean, I guess I've never I just play the way I've always played. I mean when I joined Hole, I had owned my bass for a year and I had only played six concerts ever, and my first show in front of sixty five thousand people at the Redding festival. I didn't make a mistake and I just played these songs. I don't even know how wow. And I used to say, and I still kind of do well. Base playing is easy. That's why I could do it. And some people are like, well, it's easy for you. 00:26:16 Speaker 1: Anyway, I find other things that are easy too. I we do find I guess one as an artist. 00:26:21 Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you it was easy for me to write my book. I was ahead, done, ahead of time. Well, actually, when I quit music at forty to become a mother, I founded an art center down the street Basilica Hudson, down the street from where we are, and I mom and pop alternative art center reclaimed eighteen eighties factory on the Hudson River, and I managed, promoted, and booked all our music festivals for decades. So when I wanted to raise my daughter in an environment that was creative and exciting, I moved a small town America after growing up at the best city in the world, Montreal. So I wanted to bring the vibrant counterculture, alternative culture to the city I was raising my daughter. So we founded this art center, Basilica Hudson, and I wrote every press release. I mean, I was promoting the whole thing in it. But I also someone recently because I've been trying to do social media this year, because I was not on social media. I kind of quit in twenty ten. I had a blog, like from two thousand to twenty ten, so my web people have been noting like, hey, you were writing, like that's why we're kicking off my substuct you know next month. Is that I always was blogging when I and when the blogs came. When the internet arrived, I started right away these diary entries which are kind of full like beginning, middle end. 00:27:41 Speaker 1: But do you mean them to be or do they just come out? 00:27:43 Speaker 2: It just come that way. It's like I want to tell this thing. But I mean, having spoken about my father and the ease in which I wrote this book, I am completely convinced that he wrote it with me. There so not only just you know, on my shoulder, definitely writing it with me. But I grew up reading about my life in the city, the life of my city in his articles, and he has a very particular call the beginning middle end way of storytelling. And I think having had my childhood narrated by somebody has shaped the way I walk through the world, narrating my own day and my own month and my own decade. And I think that's why it came so easily. But that being said, it wouldn't necessarily have been easy or good. And apparently it's good in terms. 00:28:33 Speaker 1: Of off this writing this did I mean it probably would have found its way to me anyways. I love music, I love to read, and so whatever. But it's very good. I mean, it's really thank you. 00:28:43 Speaker 2: I am super proud of too things. 00:28:46 Speaker 1: But it's so long. 00:28:47 Speaker 2: It's one hundred pages longer than they asked me to And when I submitted my book, I had already cut a hundred pages out of this. So I now realize the sub stack will probably have a lot of the outtakes because I had to cut a ton of the Jeff Buckley story that like lots of interesting like sidebars that I wish I didn't have to cut. It was literally six hundred pages, so I cut one hundred plus pages out, and when I submitted it to the publisher, I wrote a cover letter that said, I know this is longer than you asked for, but I couldn't help but notice that Thurston More in Flees memoirs were about this long, and I think there's less women in my department telling those stories, so I think we should probably keep it as long as it is. And I got greenlit the exact book that I handed in, nothing edited. I was ready to cut. It's like we could cut, like the details about my Welsh choir teacher. You know, if you're really looking to trim it down, you're like, no, we're keeping the Welsh choir teacher. Okay, great, but to the point of it being well written. Both my parents were the most My mother is still alive and a master of the word. She's a literary translator. She lives in the world of manuscripts and has for fifty years. So like I watch her. Her days ruled by now a computer. But when I was growing up, a typewriter and hundreds and hundreds of pages. 00:30:14 Speaker 1: It's just so. 00:30:15 Speaker 2: And my father wrote his articles at the bar and a typewriter. So the written word was the power of my parents, but it translated into their talking the way they communicate. My mother is one of the most eloquent speakers of anything, culture, anything emotion. So I was raised by good speaking people were amazing writers, and so that ended up fueling obviously some kind of like I didn't know that I had it, but I managed a channel, I suppose. But when I had, right when I had handed in the book, they were psyched. We were waiting for the first industry reviews to come to sort of get the bell weather of what those book buyer kind of librarian people, not like reviews of like rock people who care about Dave Girl. So it was like we're all waiting of like what's what are the initial reviews going to be? And I remember it happened to be around then that Evan Dando put out his memoir and I was invited to go see him play. I hadn't seen the Lemonheads and obviously Forever, and I went to the show in New York City and I hadn't seen Evan, who was a big part of unless he was cut out too, so like there's one he's not in there, But like there's so many people I had to get balance, like how many guys and bands am I going to talk about? How many? Versus how many spiritual visions I had? So anyhow, I ran it. I went to see him backstage before the show and I said congratulations on your book. And he said, oh, I hear you have one memoir coming out, right, And I said yeah, and he said have you read it yet? And I said read it? I wrote it and he said, oh, I didn't read mine until I was doing the audio book. Granted, Evan is like proudly a mess. 00:31:56 Speaker 1: But I thought he was like a literary I mean, he's a smart. 00:31:58 Speaker 2: Guy, but I guess he doesn't have the discipline perhaps to write. I'm sure he dictated stuff. All I know is that's what he said to me. I think it was known even I'm not busting his spot because I think it was even said in New York Times, like he didn't write it. But I then went back to my publishers, who I love, Hashet de Capo and my agents and said, wait a second, Evan didn't write his book. Tell me more like, well, most rock memoirs are ghostwritten. And I didn't know that. And I said, oh shit, are people going to think somebody else wrote my book? And hands down my agents and publishers and I think it translated into the way it was received, said absolutely not. It's too personal, it's too originales. Oh, they'll think. 00:32:42 Speaker 1: Exactly what we just assume right picking it up, this is going to be. 00:32:46 Speaker 2: But anyone who can get through a book or who cares about writing, apparently, if you read it, you can tell no one could have channeled like it's because it's not just I guess my voice that I found, but it is the thing I worked the hardest on, which is where the bass player in me comes out. Is the arc of the arrangement in a song. It's verse, chorus versus chorus, bridge, bridge bridge. It's like I built a structure of this book that reflected a song arrangement of Dreamscape number one, Dreamscape number two, father interlude. So I have all of these sort of interludes and then broken up by my photos. So I really wanted to be a journey and not just a literary experience. And apparently people believe I wrote it, and I did write it. You've heard it here. 00:33:32 Speaker 1: Now after the break, we're back with the rest of Melissa A DeMar Your dad is seemed coolest. Yeah, I mean your mom too, But I really did relate to your your dad in so many lays. 00:33:48 Speaker 2: I mean, like timeless journalists that I hope still. 00:33:52 Speaker 1: Exist, I don't know. I don't think they did. 00:33:56 Speaker 2: He was definitely from another century already, so now they're really outdated. Yeah yeah, right before coming into this, I was approving as the error of to his like see in writing I'm It's only child, but I was just a hit. Just received a request from moment Factory. You know that's a big and immersive you know, they're a Montreal based thing, but they do all the Billie Eilish like Olivia Adrigou everything shows. But they also have deep roots in Montreal and Montreal is really invests in their culture queebeck. Even over the rest of Canada, the government invests in the identity and the artists and the culture of the city and so there's always something. So Moment Factory decorate the Montreal and the city of Montreal with installations all over the place. So like, for example, our mini Notre Dame Cathedral, you know, which is the miniature of the Paris one. Moment Factory has one of my favorite like New Age Cathedral video sonic shows. Some people think it's kind of like cheesy, but Montreal has this really cool lo fi hi fi thing where it's an ancient city but it's super high tech, which is why moment Factory and all like the special effects for films like the French Canadian. The quebecer is a very very like high tech, but the culture is very ancient and so but there's always these interventions happening between futuristic video installation mon Factory and an old place in Montreal. And I just as I was walking into this interview, was approving the use of a quote of my father's for a moment Factory video installation they're going to be doing at the Montreal Cemetery. So the Montreal Cemetery is the equivalent of pat Laches and it was for Canada, you know, for like old cemeteries. But it was designed by Home Homestead, who did Central Park. So all of Montreal is based around this, this giant, beautiful mountain, so Mount Royal, the Royal Mountain. 00:35:52 Speaker 1: That has been a park exactly. 00:35:55 Speaker 2: And I grew up in front of the park. I grew up on the park and the cemetery is on the top of the mountain. My father is buried there. And Moment Factory are doing an immersive history tour of the museum of the cemetery, like projections Dead of Winter. So they were getting my approval as my father's error to approve the quote that I don't know if it's going to be written on his tombstone or audio projected, but it is. My life has been so much fun it should be illegal. And he, you know, he had the largest funeral of Montreal history. He was completely in love with his city. His city was his muse. He gave every bar, every alleyway, every homeless person, every nune all the love equally. And he devoted himself to that city but burned at both ends by being a journalist and a basically an ambassador of the spirit of that city. 00:36:51 Speaker 1: And he was a journalist, but he was also like a bit I can mean, you know, run. He did a bit of every I mean. So he was a. 00:36:57 Speaker 2: Journalist, of course. He started as a newspaper journalist, but then grew into radio, had his own television series which is on CBC, so ahead of its time, like Vice TV. Probably were directly inspired because those are guys I grew up with. But it's nineteen sixty nine to nineteen seventy three, every summer man and a camera on the streets of Montreal asking the people of Montreal at that counterculture moment, what's on your mind, and they would just stand with the camera and speak to all the wild people in the hot summer streets in Montreal. I have all the archives are incredible, and that's what got my father into politics. So he had as had his own radio and then his own TV show, and he met the people who are the voters who were not satisfied with the politicians. So when my father got into Montreal politics and won as an independent in nineteen seventy four at the age of thirty two, it had never been in politics. He wins his first election and continues to run different districts, but then eventually gets the stronghold of downtown Montreal as his neighborhood. And all the bar owners, all the little ladies, everybody depends on my father. His father. His number is in the phone book and you can call him twenty four hours a day, as like the Montreal helpline. So my father lived to be that guy that you could stop on the street and complain about your garbage pickup or whatever. And then when I got old enough and I was on the campaign trails with him and knocking on doors and waiting on election night getting all of these you know, weight is he gonna lose? Is he gonna win? And watching this like ferocious, like determination to represent the people of Montreal, and as a twelve year old girl being like I remember one night being so scared, like if he loses, he'll be so disappointed. He works so hard, and I remember tugging on his sleeve and saying, Nick, why do you do this? And like this is why he's my hero. And he looked down. He said, Melissa, because I don't trust those assholes to do this, and this is what we should all be living by right now. Don't trust the asshole politicians to be taking care of the people. And he did it, and he had the voice of his column He wrote from the Montreal Gazette three days a week for his whole career, and it was just what's happening in Montreal. He was the voice of this is and he had his morning radio slot, but mainly his columns, which then was a book when after he died, we put together a collection of his work and it was and that's where I get a lot of the quotes in my memoir where I bring his stories about my life through his voice. And it is a funny place that we're starting in this conversation about but my father was a very particular storyteller, and that he wrote in that format, which at the time is like the blog slash social media of the time. It's the sure substack whatever it is. But he just three days a week wrote like a letter to montrealer. It's like, hey, I'm at the bar. I met this person. I think strawberries are stupid and raspberries are overrated. Like he just wrote whatever the hell he wanted, and he was the voice of Montreal. And I grew up, you know, with kids who would tell me like we read your father's column every morning at breakfast, and like so I and then I was a character in the column, Like he'd talk about what he got me for his birthday, or the time we went to a Buddha pest and he got scammed by a person with the coconut shells and he lost one hundred bucks. Like this was just he just told him. 00:40:25 Speaker 1: Dad looks at the kind of person who would be thrilled that he got scammed by breast. 00:40:29 Speaker 2: He yes, and again I was scared. 00:40:31 Speaker 1: Is he mad? 00:40:31 Speaker 2: He was kind of laughing. He's like, I can't believe. And then he tried to go back to find the guy. I was like, you're not gonna be able to find this guy anyhow. He was incredible, but he died at my age that I am right. 00:40:40 Speaker 1: Now, you're oh, yes, So does do you have this sort of typical the usual thing? I keep wanting both my parents are still alive, and but I sort of wonderf that'll happen to me as well. But I feel like there is a thing where people sort of start to get anxious around well to their parents. 00:40:59 Speaker 2: Well, grief is a beast. So no matter what, death is the greatest mystery other than love, because love is throughout life, but death is over and then it's just left of those who didn't die to deal with the mystery of what the health. Yeah, and so I think, if anything, I get tingling and weird every Easter, because he died on Good Friday, cremated on Easter Sunday, and buried at the biggest funeral Montreal history on Easter Monday. So we had this arc and every time Easter comes, I start my DNA starts sort of like flickering, and I start having new feelings about him. I think it's been like twenty seven years now, or something. So it's and that it doesn't change like there was at the twenty five year anniversary. I think it might have been the first time I wept, like like I just woke up. I realized this is horrific. This is it's still it's like you protect yourself from loss and grief. But what's interesting is now that I'm on the eve of turning the age that he was when he died. I mean, I have actually felt a tiny bit spooked about that, and I'm not you know, I'm not afraid of death actually, and I'm grateful that I witnessed my father diet at the young age my I was twenty six, and it was the greatest gift gateway of my life to be able to like just look straight on at the brutality of like how especially the way he went out. Just fuck, you can't live. See you later. 00:42:29 Speaker 1: Yeah, you're such a fun person to talk to you. I wish I had even more time. 00:42:35 Speaker 2: Do you have any other questions? I didn't answer. 00:42:37 Speaker 1: I have a bunch of questions. So doing celebrity skin your drummer, bile drummer and hold patty? Yeah? 00:42:47 Speaker 2: She u booted out. 00:42:49 Speaker 1: She gets replaced by a man. 00:42:51 Speaker 2: I mean, what brutal, what terrible, tragic, horrible. 00:42:55 Speaker 1: And the producer is a guy who is interested. I don't. 00:42:58 Speaker 2: I've never yeah, Michael byin her, and he had a reputation at the time for making hit records about being hard on drummers, so we kind of knew it going in. 00:43:07 Speaker 1: Was that his agenda to get her possible. 00:43:10 Speaker 2: I mean, the thing that's so tragic about it is that what makes Celebrity Skin great is the songs. And Patti wrote all those parts, and we worked for years writing that record, and her punk meets just the coolest style of drumming. The record is great because she wrote me and her wrote together as bass player, drummer, rhythm section in that style. 00:43:32 Speaker 1: That is that. 00:43:33 Speaker 2: But the agenda for everyone, for the managers, the label, and for Courtney the bandleader, was make the most glossy, radio friendly, ready to go hit record. That's what was being commissioned. And so, according to some people, perfect drums and not nuance. But then I also write a whole chapter which you might remember, called the Rise of the Digital soul Sucking Monster, where I discover there's a new invention called pro tools, and it lives in a tiny toaster and it's leaving our fabulous, expensive studio and going up into Runyan Canyon with all these guys doing coke on computers fixing drum and bass parts. I was like, excuse me, what is happening actually, And so I write, there's a whole chapter dedicated to what I saw coming, and I will and the joke is, yeah, they wanted it to be perfect. And I describe this conversation of me and this pro tools engineer, which was like a new specimen of human explaining showing me these wavelengths, like, is that what they're called wavelengths? Yes, this is your base part waveforms, thank you, this is your base part. This is the kick drum, and I'm moving it to make it perfectly. And I said, wait wait, but he said, Michael wants them perfect. And I said, I said, but wait, but what about the perfection of human imperfection? Are we risking losing? And what's cool? 00:44:59 Speaker 1: Though? 00:44:59 Speaker 2: Now I have to say, I mean the making celebrity skin was so painful because I lost my best friend in the band. She didn't die, but she did disappear to her addiction for a decade after that, So it was like losing her, and then also just the turmoil of the pressure of like make the hit, and just like the fame that was rising, and Courtney's miracle of becoming all of a sudden a red carpet ready, like the whole transition that what happened during Celebrity Skin was so drastic, So there was a lot of pain wrapped in and my father died while we were making it, on the eve of releasing it, so I was a shell of a human. So I have very painful associations with making the record, But twenty five years later, I'm very proud that it stands very strong again, mostly for the songwriting, and I'm very proud of my bass playing and my backups, so you know, there's like twelve of my vocals to every one of Courtney's growls. So proud of it. And I think it has also aged beautifully as far as authentic tape recording and slight pro tools intervention. So now we've gone too far, you know, now. I mean that's obviously everything from dance music to pop to hip hop. I mean, obviously it's a lot of it's all mad on machines, But as far as rock bands go, it's very important. And I'm assuming Rick Rubin is still making real records with bands in the room, you know, like that's still that's so rare now because a bands don't even exist because people can't afford practice spaces, so you can't everyone's at home making their music because you can't have a drummer and a bass where and you have to have ten jobs to be able to do anything, so you can't be in the studio like in a dumpy space for ten years. 00:46:38 Speaker 1: Realized too, you know, like people used to get like even for myself when I was in bad like the drummer. You know, drummers just have like they can't ever stop. I was just can't and I was thinking about how like they amusing used to bother everybody. Yeah, you're like the like the beat to everything is the same. You're like, well, it's like the beat on a song ever changes, like the rhythm. It's like the rhythm is just locked through because you don't have a person. 00:47:02 Speaker 2: Well, isn't that also reflecting like how mono are arts and culture other than incredible artist You know, there's always birthing of incredible radical counterculture original artists, but the general mainstream of existence is like everyone's wearing the same clothes, liking the same coffee, and doing the same thing on their stupid phone. So the the the ironing out of characters that you know, we were blessed as gen x of, like the the Alan Gibbs, you know, the beat poets of the sixties through the nineties, not to mention the seventies. I know, it's cool. 00:47:39 Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at the book right. 00:47:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a section of the book called Fellow Travelers, and it's the I went to art school for self portraiture, but it turns out I went to art school for selfies, and that's like a whole grid of showing my selfies. I took with every from Danny DeVito to Adam Sandler to you know where you look so young and happy Freedom Concert, which was an amazing show, and everybody was, you know, grateful for what we have in the liberated America compared to at the time in the great nineties Freedom Free Tibet Festival, Utopia. 00:48:19 Speaker 1: That decade, that from ninety one to two thousand and one, that as you explained it, with that being the decade decades never really do start culturally like with the turn of a right. But so nine even one, two thousand and one, you really do capture it amazingly, and you explain it kind of maybe as like a thing that wasn't so great, and probably in hindsight it wasn't. As a kid at the time, it felt amazing that popular culture was dominated by alternative things, alternative rock, ridge hip hop, which felt very countercultural still like scale, like everything was counter Video games are a big business, yeah, you know, skateboarding like all of this. So as a kid, you're like, this is like life is amazing exactly, but you kind of explain it, and I can understand it now is a bit of a loss of something important. 00:49:07 Speaker 2: And I stole, co opted and stole youth culture, counter culture scene, and now you can't even have it anymore. Back to this monoculture everything. I mean, we watched our generation basically be like packaged and our you know, don't give a shit about what we're wearing, gonna sound like whatever we want to sound like, don't even put on makeup when I'm going on stage, like that, genuine, just carefree, original, you know, no one trying too hard, just being yourself. You know, got put onto literally the runway and like Jkruad, so like it went from like this cool organic thing to like mainstream and now we're just kind of like flying through like fake alternative mainstream forever, you know. So for me, the it's an ode to the last analog decade, but it's also it's a love letter, but it's also a eulogy. It's gone, it's dead, you know, like that was you know, before all this like meta meta of self reflection and likes and seeing yourself in the mirror of your phone. It was just so free and like no one thought about, you know, that whole that silly saying of dance, Like no one's watching. That's what the nineties was, just do you. And we were so empowered because we were also coming out of the eighties, which was a stupid like I feel like we're in the eighties all these like porn, Sephora fucking like whatever, this plastic surgery, crazy mainstream like girl horrific, and I'm a mother of a fourteen year old girl. Luckily she's a weird alternative looking redhead. Anyways, So yeah, we were coming out of the eighties being like, God, we're not going to like wear workout clothes. Anyway, now we are back workout with like blown out hair. 00:50:50 Speaker 1: Yeah, and would know. And at least in the eighties there was a what turned out to be burgeoning alternative scene that you had the pick Sees or whatever. 00:51:00 Speaker 2: Not to mention Robert Smith and the Cure and Morrissey and England. England just gave it. The eighties were like the dream music for me. I talk a lot in the book about my love of depeche Mode. Like writing the book, I pretty much only listened to the Cure of the Smiths and depeche Mode, like I mean, I just went back to I went back to my childhood of like the girl who fell in love with music who then decided she wanted to find her generations sound, you know. So I the eighties was where I fell in love with music, and it was those guys you. 00:51:31 Speaker 1: Missed not putting that on here. So this was this book was written. 00:51:34 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'll figure out I'll make a playlist. 00:51:36 Speaker 1: Actually this missing depeche Mode. I'll let you know what you're sing for. I wish I had more time to talk to you. I want to talk to you more down the stairs, just if you have a little bit of time, of course, but hopefully we'll see you sign off or anything. 00:51:48 Speaker 2: That's it. You cut it off for doing this. Yeah, of course, thank you for having me. I was very happy. 00:51:54 Speaker 1: I pad the book. It's really beautiful. An episode description, you'll find a link to a playlist of some of my favorite songs s featuring Melissa off Demahmer. Be sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record podcast to see me all our video of interviews, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Lea Rose, with marketing and help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tomaday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond,