Celebrity Skin
Celebrity Skin is the third studio album by American alternative rock band Hole, released on September 8, 1998, in the United States on DGC Records and internationally on Geffen Records. It was the last album released by the band before their dissolution in 2002. Hole intended for the record to diverge significantly from their previous noise and grunge-influenced sound as featured on Pretty on the Inside and Live Through This. The band hired producer Michael Beinhorn to record Celebrity Skin over a nine-month period that included sessions in Los Angeles, New York City, and London. It was the band's only studio release to feature bassist Melissa Auf der Maur. Drummer Patty Schemel played on the demos for the album but was replaced by session drummer Deen Castronovo at the suggestion of Beinhorn. This issue created a rift between Schemel and the band, resulting in her dropping out of the tour and parting ways with the group, though she was still credited.
The band sought to use Los Angeles and the state of California as a unifying theme and began writing what they conceived as a "California album" in 1997. Unlike Hole's previous releases, the final songs on Celebrity Skin featured instrumental contributions from several musicians outside the band, primarily Billy Corgan, who co-wrote the musical arrangements on five songs. Auf der Maur's former bandmate Jordon Zadorozny, as well as Go-Go's guitarist Charlotte Caffey, also contributed to the composition of one track. Frontwoman Courtney Love, who wrote all of the lyrics, named the album and its title track after a poem she had written that was influenced by T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land". Motifs of water and drowning are also prominent throughout the album.
Celebrity Skin is Hole's most commercially successful album. It peaked at number nine on the US Billboard 200, number four on the Australian Albums Chart, and number 11 on the UK Albums Chart. To date, it has sold over 1.4 million copies in the United States alone, has been certified as double-platinum in Australia by the Australian Recording Industry Association, and platinum in Canada by Music Canada and the United States by Recording Industry Association of America. It garnered Hole a number-one hit single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart with the title track, "Celebrity Skin". Critical reaction to the album was very positive and it was listed on a number of publications' year-end lists in 1998, including those by Time and The Village Voice. The album was named the 265th greatest album of all time by a 2013 poll by NME magazine and was featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Production and composition
Recording history
In September 1995, Hole completed the final leg of their year-long tour in promotion for their second studio album, Live Through This. During the hiatus that followed, the members of Hole began working on individual projects. Frontwoman Courtney Love was cast as Althea Flynt in The People vs. Larry Flynt alongside Woody Harrelson, lead guitarist Eric Erlandson collaborated with Rodney Bingenheimer and Thurston Moore on the short-lived project Rodney & the Tube Tops from 1996 to 1997, bassist Melissa Auf der Maur provided backing on Ric Ocasek's album Troublizing, and drummer Patty Schemel played with the Lemonheads on the tribute album Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks.After Love completed her obligations promoting The People vs. Larry Flynt, the band reunited to write new material for their next album, titled Celebrity Skin. According to Love, the embryonic versions of the songs "weren't very good" and "not written well". However, the songs developed following the band's relocation to several parts of the United States, including Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans. During their time in New Orleans, the band recorded a number of demos, including an early version of "Awful" and songs which later developed into "Dying" and "Hit So Hard". During these writing and recording attempts, Love had grown frustrated as she felt the songs were not coalescing into a unifying whole. Erlandson later said he felt that "everything was falling apart... Making that record was insane. There were obstacles at each step of the way." Because of this perceived lack of direction, Love decided to use California as a theme to build the songs around: "Let's tie this together with a concept, even if it's fake," she recalled, "for directional purposes." Specifically, Love sought to interpret California as "a metaphor for the American dream".
The band entered Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles in April 1997 to begin the recording sessions of the album. The original plan was to have Billy Corgan as executive producer, who was a second choice after Brian Eno, however, Corgan did not initially participate in, or contribute to the recording process. Michael Beinhorn was hired as head of production instead. Recording sessions for the album were spread out over the course of eight to nine months in various locations. The majority of the album was recorded at Conway Recording Studios, however, additional recording was done at Record Plant West in Los Angeles and Olympic Studios in London, United Kingdom. The final recording sessions were completed at Quad Studios in early 1998. These sessions were also video-taped by a friend of the band, as noted in an October 1998 article in Spin magazine. Auf der Maur characterized the sessions as being based around Love's busy schedule at the time: "It was her Hollywood phase", during which she would "chain-smoke Marlboro lights", "go to the beach at 7AM with a personal trainer and auditioning. She'd just done Larry Flynt."
According to Love, her vision for the album was to "deconstruct the California Sound" in the L.A. tradition of bands like The Doors, The Beach Boys and The Byrds, but she was struggling with the composition of the record and felt like she was "in a rut". After sending early recordings of the songs to Corgan, he decided to join the band in the studio for a total of twelve days in an attempt to help Love with her songcraft. Love compared Corgan's presence in the studio to "a math teacher who wouldn't give you the answers but was making you solve the problems yourself", and stated that he had her study key changes as well as melodies and phrasing from songs by Frank Sinatra and The Beatles:
Of the album's twelve tracks, Corgan shares instrumental songwriting credits on five. In addition to Corgan, Auf der Maur's former Tinker bandmate, Jordon Zadorozny, and Go-Go's guitarist and songwriter Charlotte Caffey helped co-compose the track "Reasons to Be Beautiful".
A wide variety of guitars, effect pedals and equipment were used during the recording of Celebrity Skin. Love used Fender tube amplifiers, Matchless amps, Ampeg amps and a Randall Commander that belonged to Love's late husband Kurt Cobain. Love's primary guitars during the sessions were her custom Fender Vista Venus and a Chet Atkins Gretsch. Erlandson's guitar set-up was much more complex, using numerous guitars through different effects in a set-up he arranged with Beinhorn. He used three of his Veleno guitars that were also used to record Live Through This, a 1968 Fender Telecaster and "numerous other guitars". Each signal from each guitar was split to two separate channels. One channel included a Tech 21 SansAmp, a collection of vintage analog synthesizers, including a Serge modular system, an ARP 2600 and a Moog modular system with a Bode frequency shifter. The other side included a Watkins Dominator, which "provided tons of low end", and generators that were later used during the production process. Recording was officially completed in London in late February 1998.
Drum tracks
Despite receiving credit on the album, Patty Schemel only recorded drum tracks for its demos, and was replaced by session drummer Deen Castronovo during the final recording sessions; thus, her drumming does not appear on the finished tracks. According to Schemel, Beinhorn was actively "psyching her out" in the studio when she began recording. According to sound technician Chris Whitemeyer, Beinhorn would request endless takes of Schemel's drumming, only to then lower the volume in his booth to inaudible levels, sit back, and read a newspaper. Whitemeyer also stated that Schemel was forced to drum in the studio eight hours a day for over two weeks, and that Beinhorn "wanted Patty to give up". Schemel later likened the recording sessions to "athletic training". After Schemel completed over two weeks of recording, Beinhorn brought Love into the studio and had her listen to recorded loops of Schemel's "weakest playing", and then suggested Castronovo as an alternative. Beinhorn also claimed to Love that Schemel would get "red-light fever" in the studio, implying that she was incapable of remembering the correct parts to play during recording. Whitemeyer claimed that Castronovo had been asked by Beinhorn to play on the record before Love or any of the other band members heard Schemel's drum tracks, and that Beinhorn "had it all planned out" early on.Beinhorn's pressure, coupled with a feeling that Love wasn't supporting her, resulted in Schemel leaving the studio, requesting a settlement, and breaking ties with the band. Several months later, Schemel showed up to join the band for promotional photoshoots as per her original contract with the label, but refused to tour with the band to support the record. In 2002, Love admitted in an interview with Carrie Fisher that despite Beinhorn's meddling, it had ultimately been her decision to have Schemel replaced on the album:
Music and arrangements
Celebrity Skin marked a major shift in Hole's musical style, emphasizing a more mainstream alternative rock sound. Jael Goldfine of Paper magazine notes that the album "defined the post-grunge power pop sound of the '90s." Rolling Stones James Hunter observed that the album features shifts in guitar sounds that alternate from "silveriness to something rougher in a heartbeat," adding that it is teeming with "minimalist explosion, idiomatic flair and dead-on rhythms." The Independent later referred to the album as having ushered in a pop rock "era" for Hole.In 2018, Melissa Auf der Maur reflected "That wasn't something I was striving for but it was something Courtney and the label were. At the time I was like, 'why are you making this so fancy?' but she had a whole vision for her art." Rebecca Nicholson of The Guardian observed a darker subtext to the album's glossy production, however, noting: "Celebrity Skins aesthetic is caught up in that turmoil of competing identities, a push-pull of glossy glamour and its seedy underbelly. For all the slickness of Michael Beinhorn’s production and the big-budget videos that accompanied its singles, the songs remain raw and cynical, as wary and worn as they are defiant."