Melissa Auf der Maur took fans of ’90s alt-rock connoisseurs Smashing Pumpkins by surprise in June last year when she re-emerged on stage in her native Montréal. Wielding her trusty P-Bass, she joined Billy Corgan and the Machines to hold down the low-end on The Everlasting Gaze.
Fittingly, the track – from the Smashing Pumpkins’ 2000 release, Machina/The Machines of God – was the first to feature Auf der Maur in the music video following the departure of original bassist D’arcy Wretzky.
It marked the beginning of Auf der Maur’s tenure with the band, which she described as her “‘Master’s in Music’… just phenomenal music training” in a recent Bass Player interview.
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Last year’s brief reunion with Corgan wasn’t a one-off, however. Auf der Maur’s memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry, released earlier this year, kicked off a conversation that led to the bassist joining the Pumpkins on stage at Lollapalooza this past weekend.
It wasn’t just any other show, either. It was their first appearance at the festival – which, coincidentally, takes place in the Pumpkins’ hometown of Chicago – since 1994.
“It was a natural, healing and gorgeous reconnection that happened around the release of my ’90s rock memoir,” Auf der Maur says in an exclusive interview with Bass Player.
“This past spring, I was scheduled to do a memoir event in Los Angeles, with Jennifer Finch (rest in peace) as my conversation partner. She called in sick that morning. Billy was planning on popping in as a friend to support me and my book.”
Auf der Maur ended up asking him – at the last minute – to be her conversation partner. “This led to one of the most meaningful conversations between my mentor and me, and was really exciting for the diehard music fans in the audience that night.”
This soon led to another opportunity altogether. “Just before we went on stage, he shared with me that the Pumpkins had confirmed headlining Lollapalooza in their hometown and said sweetly, ‘If you wanna join us for a song, please do.’”
Around the same time, Auf der Maur’s daughter was checking out this year’s Lollapalooza lineup, giving her the nudge she needed to join the Pumpkins on stage.
“I casually mentioned that Billy had invited me to join for a song and she said, ‘You better do it so we can go for the weekend,’ and we did, and it was awesome.”
Thankfully, Auf der Maur wasn’t thrown in the deep end as the Pumpkins had organized a warm-up show at Chicago’s iconic Riviera Theatre on July 29.
“I arrived in Chicago the day of the Riviera warm-up show so we could soundcheck together. Billy showed me the new twist on the ending lick, which took a couple minutes. We ran through the song one-and-a-half times. That was it.”
She continues, “Part of me accepting the invitation was testing the theory that music is like riding a bike… the heartbeat and rhythmic feel is eternal. The fingers need a little awakening and refreshing, but otherwise I am ready.”
The next day, Auf der Maur was fully prepared, or, as she puts it, “It felt like putting on my favorite leather boots, very comfortable and at home, but an omnipresent powerful feeling of karmic past lives being played through music.
“Playing on that stage, connecting with the band and the fans, is a way of kindling that magic, and it felt incredible. The Riviera, glorious, gorgeous theater, felt romantic, whereas Lollapalooza felt momentous, not only in scale, but in the return to those stages which the Pumpkins graced in 1994 and Hole in 1995.”
And if that doesn’t quite set the scene, Auf der Maur added, “As Billy introduced me, my favorite Charlie XCX song, SS 26, was wafting through the breeze from the other main stage a mile away, which was hilarious.”
Choosing The Everlasting Gaze was also a “no-brainer.” Aside from being one of her favorite Pumpkins songs of all time, she notes that, while it’s in some ways overlooked, “judging by the crowd’s response, it is being well received as one of their great riffs.”
I was honored and floored when Olivia told my daughter, ‘Without your mother this would not be possible…’
True to her ’90s sensibilities, Auf der Maur opted for her “trusted black Precision bass with the mirror pickguard that I used during the Machina tour, but for ease, I plugged into their bass player Jack [Bates]’ rig. Ask him what it was!”
“I would’ve preferred my overdriven tube Ampeg stacks,” she admits. “I’m pretty hard on the attack, so I need a pretty saturated, smooth sound. There is no way for me to lighten my hits; the moment I get on that bass, I hit hard. I guess it’s my style.”
The Pumpkins also leveraged their Lollapalooza set as an intergenerational bridge to a younger crop of rock artists, inviting Yungblud and Olivia Rodrigo as special guests.
“I didn’t get a chance to meet that charismatic Yungblud, but saw his set and loved his tribute to Ozzy,” says Auf der Maur. “He’s filling a void of emotional, heavy rock males – I was moved.
“Olivia, on the other hand, was a total bonus track! I love her new record, and I’ve been following her thanks to my music-obsessed teenage daughter.”
Rodigo’s ascent to the top – and her admiration for the female rock icons who came before her – is also something that Auf der Maur is keen to point out.
“My daughter’s first giant concert was the Guts tour at Madison Square Garden almost two years ago,” she recalls.
“I managed to get backstage passes. I was honored and floored when Olivia told her, ‘Without your mother this would not be possible…’ I think it might’ve been the first time that cross-generational affirmation was said out loud to me. It made me proud, but most of all grateful that ‘we’ have arrived.
“I said yes to joining Hole in 1994 as a commitment to put women on the male-dominated landscape of rock music. And look where we are now.”
