Long before she joined Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins, Melissa Auf der Maur was shaped by Montreal’s clubs, classrooms and creative spirit. Her new book, My ’90s Rock Photographs, reminds us why the city’s musical legacy and its last great analog decade still matter today.
When people talk about the alternative rock explosion of the 1990s, cities like Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles usually dominate the conversation. Montreal has never asked for the credit, yet for decades it quietly nurtured musicians, photographers and artists who would leave their mark on popular culture. Melissa Auf der Maur is one of them.
Before she became the bassist for Hole and later The Smashing Pumpkins, before she documented one of rock’s most fascinating decades through the lens of a 35mm camera, she was a young Montreal artist growing up in a city where music wasn’t simply entertainment. It was woven into everyday life, echoing through classrooms, record stores, neighbourhood cafés and legendary clubs that welcomed tomorrow’s stars long before the rest of the world knew their names.
To understand Melissa’s story, you first have to understand Montreal. This has never been a city defined by one sound. It has always been a meeting place where cultures, languages and musical traditions come together to create something uniquely its own. Jazz, rock, folk, punk, heavy metal, hip-hop, electronic music and chanson all found room to grow because Montreal has always rewarded curiosity, experimentation and creative risk-taking.
That musical identity stretches back more than a century. During American Prohibition, Montreal became North America’s playground, attracting visitors seeking nightlife that had disappeared south of the border. Jazz flourished in clubs across the city, and a young Oscar Peterson developed the extraordinary talent that would make him one of the greatest pianists of all time. As the decades passed, Montreal continued to reinvent itself, producing artists as diverse as Men Without Hats, Voivod, Harmonium, Bran Van 3000 and Arcade Fire, while becoming an international centre for electronic music, underground culture and digital arts.
The city’s festivals tell the same story. Every summer, the Montreal International Jazz Festival transforms downtown into one of the world’s largest celebrations of music. Osheaga Music and Arts Festival introduces audiences to established stars and tomorrow’s headliners, while Les Francos de Montréal celebrates the richness of French-language music. Together, they remind us that Montreal doesn’t simply host concerts. Music spills into its parks, cafés, streets and neighbourhoods, becoming part of the city’s cultural heartbeat.
I remember those years because I was there too, although I was a little older than Melissa. Like so many Montrealers, I spent evenings moving from bar to bar and club to club, soaking up a music scene that seemed to be bursting through the seams. Local artists like Men Without Hats and Voivod were proving that Montreal musicians could make an international impact, while touring acts regularly stopped here on their way to becoming household names. Looking back, it feels like the entire city was humming with possibility.
Few places captured that spirit better than Les Foufounes Électriques. More than just another downtown nightclub, it became one of North America’s essential stops for alternative bands travelling between New York, Boston and Toronto. Melissa worked there selling tickets and spinning cassette tapes between sets, placing her at the centre of one of Montreal’s most exciting musical chapters.
On July 23, 1991, an up-and-coming Chicago band called The Smashing Pumpkins performed at the club during their Gish tour. During the concert, someone in the audience threw a beer bottle that struck Billy Corgan. Embarrassed by what had happened, Melissa introduced herself after the show and apologized on behalf of her hometown. Neither of them could have imagined that years later, Corgan would recommend her to Courtney Love after the death of Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff, changing the course of Melissa’s career forever.
More than a year earlier, on April 17, 1990, another young band had taken that same stage. Nirvana arrived at Les Foufounes Électriques while touring behind its debut album, Bleach, performing for a crowd of roughly 200 people with drummer Chad Channing. There was no Nevermind, no worldwide fame and no global phenomenon waiting around the corner. It was simply another night in a Montreal club where audiences had a habit of discovering tomorrow’s legends before the rest of the world caught on.
One of my favourite Montreal bands from that era was The Gruesomes, a group Melissa also mentions in her memoir. Reading those pages made me smile because it reminded me just how connected Montreal’s music scene really was. Who knows, our paths may have crossed in one of the city’s clubs without either of us realizing it. As Melissa’s journey through the music world was just beginning, mine was slowly winding down as life took me in a different direction, toward marriage, family and the next chapter. That’s the funny thing about Montreal in those days. We were all part of the same soundtrack, even if our stories eventually played out in different ways.
Melissa’s creative journey actually began before the clubs. She attended Montreal’s Fine Arts Core Education (FACE) School before continuing at Moving in New Directions (MIND) High School, two schools that encouraged artistic expression rather than conformity. She later studied photography at Concordia University, where photographer Raymonde April challenged students to see the camera as a personal language instead of simply a tool for documenting events. Looking back, it’s easy to see how those experiences shaped someone who would become both an accomplished musician and an exceptional visual storyteller.
Listening to Melissa’s recent appearance on Broken Record, one thing becomes clear. She has little interest in reliving the tabloid mythology that surrounded the 1990s. Instead, she reflects on the people behind the headlines, speaking thoughtfully about Courtney Love as an artist whose intelligence, creativity and determination were often overshadowed by sensational media coverage. It is a reminder that history rarely tells the complete story.
Photography became Melissa’s way of preserving those untold stories. When she joined Hole for the Live Through This world tour, she made one simple request at every venue. She wanted a fresh roll of 35mm film waiting backstage so she could continue documenting the world around her. Wherever the band travelled, the camera travelled with her.
She photographed dressing rooms, hotel hallways, rehearsals, audiences, backstage conversations and the quiet hours between performances. Using self-timers and cable releases, she even photographed herself during concerts. She wasn’t trying to build an archive or produce a future coffee-table book. She was simply paying attention, trusting her instincts as both a musician and a photographer while documenting everyday moments that would one day become extraordinary.
Over time, those rolls of film became an archive of more than 10,000 photographs. They include candid moments with Frances Bean Cobain, time spent with Pavement, Sonic Youth and Beck, rides through cities with Drew Barrymore, behind-the-scenes moments during the filming of Hole’s “Celebrity Skin” video and assignments photographing Lollapalooza for Spin magazine. Together, they capture not the celebrity of the era, but its humanity.
That remarkable archive is now becoming My ’90s Rock Photographs, arriving September 8 through DelMonico Books in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario. Featuring more than 200 carefully curated images, the 240-page collection is much more than a visual diary of the alternative rock era. It is the work of an artist who instinctively documented her world long before anyone imagined those everyday moments would become part of music history.
For Generation X, these photographs represent far more than nostalgia. They capture what Melissa often describes as the last great analog decade, when concerts were experienced instead of viewed through phone screens, friendships unfolded face to face, and memories were preserved on rolls of 35mm film rather than stored in the cloud. Melissa wasn’t trying to build an archive or create a legacy. She was simply paying attention to the people, places and moments around her, trusting her instincts as both a musician and a photographer.
That is what makes My ’90s Rock Photographs so compelling. Most books about the 1990s are assembled years later by writers, photographers and historians looking back. Melissa’s is different because she was already there, camera in hand, quietly documenting life from the inside. Her photographs don’t simply preserve the alternative rock movement. They preserve the atmosphere, friendships and creative spirit of a world that no longer exists.
For Montrealers, the story carries another layer of meaning. Melissa’s journey began in the city’s classrooms, continued through its clubs and eventually reached audiences around the world, yet she never stopped carrying a little of Montreal with her. The same city that nurtured jazz during Prohibition, embraced heavy metal, celebrated synth-pop and became a home for electronic innovation, also helped shape an artist who would leave her own unique mark on music history.
Perhaps that’s the real story behind My ’90s Rock Photographs. It isn’t simply about Hole, The Smashing Pumpkins, or even the alternative rock explosion of the 1990s. It’s about a young Montreal artist who carried the city’s creative energy wherever she travelled, documenting one of music’s most influential decades through an unmistakably analog lens.
When readers open this remarkable collection, they’ll certainly discover backstage moments with some of rock’s biggest names. I hope they also discover something else. Hidden between the pages is another story, one about Montreal itself, a city whose classrooms, clubs, festivals and creative spirit quietly helped shape an artist who, without realizing it, preserved a remarkable chapter of cultural history.
Sometimes the world’s biggest stories don’t begin on the world’s biggest stages. Sometimes they begin in a Montreal classroom, inside a downtown nightclub, or with a young artist carrying a camera loaded with 35mm film and simply paying attention.
While My ’90s Rock Photographs offers an intimate visual record of Melissa Auf der Maur’s life inside the alternative rock movement, it also serves as the perfect companion to her memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A ’90s Rock Memoir, which was published by Da Capo. Together, the two books mark another milestone in Melissa’s extraordinary creative journey, pairing the images she quietly captured with the stories, memories and reflections behind one of alternative rock’s most unforgettable eras.
If this article made you think, brought back a memory, or made you see something differently, I’d love to hear from you. Send me an email at sandboxworld@gmail.com. I read every message personally and, with your permission, may feature your thoughts in a future article because the best stories are the ones we share.
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