Melissa Auf Der Maur reflects on relationship and split with Dave Grohl

Melissa Auf Der Maur has reflected on her past relationship with Dave Grohl, and shared the reasons behind their split.

The former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist discussed her past relationship with the Foo Fighters’ frontman in a new interview, and shared what made them part ways despite being “madly in love”.

The two dated in the period of 1999 and 2001 – around the same time that Hole released their hit third album ‘Celebrity Skin’ and Foo Fighters released breakthrough record ‘There Is Nothing Left To Lose’, their third full-length album that contained classics including ‘Learn To Fly’ and ‘Breakout’.

According to Auf Der Maur, what brought her and Grohl together was the fact they were “both obsessed, committed to rock music” and “non-drug addict, technically happy [and] highly functioning people”.

“We were very similar and in many ways, I think our roles in Hole and Nirvana [are] what subconsciously pushed us together,” she said on Sirius XM’s Fierce: Women In Music programme.

“I was just leaving Hole [and] entering this sort of like farewell finale tour with the Pumpkins. Dave was just rising up with the Foo Fighters and we had this beautiful compatible couple of years where, I mean, we were madly in love.”

She continued: “We also really recognised the turning point we were both at as ’90s musicians that were very close in age, that started very young in our small cool hometowns in Montreal and DX. We had a very similar group that we came from… we weren’t like starving to be rock stars. We came from very integrity-based music scenes in our cool cities.”

Their eventual split, she explained, was due to them both wanting to follow different career paths as time progressed.

“It was all love,” the bassist said, recalling the terms in which they ended on. “[I] wanted to retreat from the ginormous corporate hell that our music scene had become, and he was not finished yet and had some more proving or ambitions or business to do.”

“It was purely like, ‘I love you and I want you to go do what you wanna do and you love me and you want me to go do [the same]’ And it was simple and very clear.”

In the time since their split, Auf der Maur married filmmaker Tony Stone, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter called River (via People). In her time away from the music scene, she and Stone also formed a New York-based nonprofit art centre in 2010, called Basilica Hudson.

Grohl later married TV producer Jordyn Blum and has since had three children — Violet (aged 17), Harper (aged 14) and Ophelia (aged 8).

His most recent work with Foo Fighters arrived earlier this month, when the rock veterans shared ‘But Here We Are’, the band’s 11th full-length album. The album marks their first new music since the unexpected death of drummer Taylor Hawkins, and also features vocal contributions from Violet Grohl on the single ‘Show Me How’.

Last week, it was confirmed that the album had been certified Number One on the UK Albums Charts — beating off close competition from Noel Gallagher, who released High Flying Birds’ latest LP ‘Council Skies’ on the same day.

In a four-star review of ‘But Here We Are’, NME praised the album as being one of their most emotionally honest releases to date.

“It feels like Grohl is singing directly to those he has lost, while other moments are made for addressing packed audiences, united in loss and grief,” it read. “Through it all, there’s a sense the band aren’t just trying to make sense of this new chapter, but find a way forward.”

In other Melissa Auf Der Maur news, back in 2020, fellow Hole member Courtney Love teased fans by revealing that she had been in the studio once again with the bassist.

“I actually had Melissa and Patty (Schemel, drums) come with our tech to this old-world rehearsal studio,” she told NME during the interview. “We had a good session, but it takes a bit of time to get back into the rhythm of it all. It’s something I’d love to do and I’ve been taking guitar lessons over Zoom during lockdown and I’m writing again so we’ll see!”