The heavy hand of fate

From: Montreal Gazette, 2002-11-18
Date added: 2002-11-20

back

"Is this a step down for her, or what?" my boss asked. We were talking about Melissa Auf der Maur, daughter of the late, much-mourned Montrealer Nick, and the onetime bassist for rock bands Hole and, briefly, Smashing Pumpkins.

See, Auf der Maur has been out of the spotlight for 18 months, since wrapping up her stint with the Pumpkins. She has resurfaced in a project called Hand of Doom. It's a Black Sabbath tribute band, with Auf der Maur as Ozzy.

Irony is an intricate concept these days. And my boss obviously wasn't getting it (or maybe she was - have you seen Ozzy lately?).

"This is literally just me and my friends wanting to have fun," Auf der Maur said from her New York apartment this week. "I got off tour with the Pumpkins in December 2000, and promised myself I'd take a year off and let the music come back to me."

Hand of Doom started when Auf der Maur's friend Molly Stern asked her for pointers on getting deeper into the world of the bass guitar.

"I suggested she learn Black Sabbath songs," Auf der Maur said. "That holds the key to all good rock music."

One thing led to another and, soon enough, there was a full-blown tribute band, with Auf der Maur in the lead.

"It's a bit tongue in cheek," she admitted, "but it's not a joke at all. "

"I love Black Sabbath. Ozzy has the best lyrics. Those riffs are the best. We're not at all making fun of anything.

"It was also the beginning of a plan in terms of performing. I hadn't performed as a lead singer. It was really good to strengthen my voice. Ozzy's range, style and lyrical content were really influential in getting me in touch with my voice."

The project, it should be noted, started before MTV, and America, discovered The Osbournes. (Auf der Maur says that the timing has been the source of many in-jokes for her band.)

Auf der Maur spent last year going through piles of photos. She was an avid photographer when she joined Hole in 1994, and kept the pursuit going by documenting her world during the six years that followed. She has an exhibition coming up at New York's Sotheby Art Auction House and is working on a book of photography. Besides the pictures, she also started going through old four-track recordings of her songs and uncovering what will become her first solo album.

"That's my absolute priority," she said. "I've been working on it all winter and all spring and it's shaping up to be a fine rock record."

It will also be a heavy rock record.

"Heavy and mystical, beautiful and dark," Auf der Maur elaborated. "I'm a pretty deep, heavy person. But always, in life, love, music and spirituality, there always has to be a lightness, another reality, so I don't alienate people with this crazy, mystical reality."

She recruited a dream list of collaborators for the recording - beginning with her favourite producer, Chris Goss (from Masters of Reality), who has worked with her favourite bands, Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age.

"He said he absolutely wanted to be the guy to help me make this record. He said he heard all the directions and the different things I was tapping into and he had never heard a woman attempt to tackle these particular styles."

Among the musicians she approached were Montrealers Jordon Zadorozny (of Blinker the Star) and Steve Durand (who played with Auf der Maur in her first band, Tinker).

"(There was also) Nick Olivieri from Queens of the Stone Age and Josh Homme from Kyuss; Eric Erlandson from Hole and James Iha from the Pumpkins.

"On drums, I went through the catalogue of the hardest rock drummers I had ever seen. One was John Stanier from Helmet, and Bran Bjork, who is the original Kyuss drummer and was later in Fu Manchu. And there was also Adam (Willard) from Rocket From the Crypt."

Auf der Maur sings on the record, and this is where the lightness comes in. She is happy to report having gone after sweet, airy vocal textures to commemorate her days singing in choirs at Montreal's FACE high school.

"I do not growl or scream," she said. "I sing. (...) There's no way I would ever want the vocals not to beautiful. The guitars are beautiful, but heavy, and the vocals are always light and pretty, I guess. There's a definite dynamic of feminine-masculine. It's a tug-of-war between the super-feminine side of myself and a Viking galloping through fields and playing heavy rock music."

The project is called Auf der Maur. "It's my last name. It's honest. It's in the spirit of Van Halen or Danzig or Rammstein. If you have a heavy, weird last name, use it. (Especially) if you can imagine it in beautiful gothic lettering.

"It's a German sentence which means 'on the wall' or 'off the wall'. It's mystical and heavy-rock-music-sounding to me."

The album is in post-production and should be ready by summer's end, at which point Auf der Maur will begin shopping around for a record label.

The beauty of having conceived, financed and co-ordinated the album herself, she said, is that she didn't have to cater to any record exec's idea of what her music should be. Her guests responded to the do-it-yourself approach, and there was a real communal spirit to it.

"It was friendship, music and life, all in one," she said. "There's something about music now that's really fitting into my life. I'm doing what I want to do with whom I want. It just feels so great. Literally, I'm the happiest I've ever been. I'm more proud of this than anything I've ever done.

"One thing about being in Hole and the Pumpkins is that I always felt I was visiting somebody else's planet - though I really tried to make it my own, especially in Hole. I was a step-mom or stepsister to Hole. I am officially the mother of this child and I feel so wise and proud."

Hand of Doom performs next Saturday, June 29, at Caf? Campus. Tickets cost $8.50, available at Admission. Call (514) 790-1245.

- By T'Cha Dunlevy

back