Live Through This
Live Through This is the second studio album by the American alternative rock band Hole, released on April 12, 1994, by DGC Records. Recorded in late 1993, it departed from the band's unpolished hardcore aesthetics to more refined melodies and song structure. Frontwoman Courtney Love said that she wanted the record to be "shocking to the people who think that we don't have a soft edge", but maintain a harsh sensibility. The album was produced by Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie and mixed by Scott Litt and J Mascis. The lyrics and packaging reflect Love's thematic preoccupations with beauty, and motifs of milk, motherhood, anti-elitism, and violence against women, while Love derived the album title from a quote in Gone with the Wind.
Live Through This was met with critical acclaim, and charted in nine countries before being certified platinum in the US in April 1995. Despite this, it was also the subject of some public discussion regarding unsubstantiated rumors that Love's husband, Kurt Cobain—who died by suicide less than one week before the album's release—helped ghostwrite the album. This claim has been disputed by band members, producers, and music biographers, though the band confirmed that Cobain sang additional backing vocals on two tracks during a visit to the studio. It was also the only Hole album to feature bassist Kristen Pfaff, and the final album to be released during her lifetime, as she died two months after the album's release.
In critical circles, Live Through This is considered a contemporary classic, and was included in Rolling Stones 2020 updated list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time at number 106. It has also been featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and was ranked number 84 on NME
Background
Hole released their debut studio album, Pretty on the Inside, in 1991. Despite moderate sales, the album was a critical success among English and American press. In March 1992, following the album tour, drummer Caroline Rue and bassist Jill Emery left the band due to artistic differences. In April 1992, vocalist Courtney Love and guitarist Eric Erlandson arranged auditions for a drummer at the Jabberjaw in Los Angeles and recruited drummer Patty Schemel. Following the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, Love, Erlandson, and Schemel relocated to a Carnation, Washington home owned by Love and her husband, the Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, and began rehearsing and writing new material. "We had been going more pop, less journal-entry noise stuff," said Erlandson. Love said: "I was very competitive with Kurt because I wanted more melody. But I already wanted that before Live Through This."Originally signed to Caroline Records in the United States and City Slang in Europe, Hole began record deal negotiations with Geffen Records in early 1992. In February 1992, they signed a seven-album deal with Geffen subsidiary DGC Records, reportedly with "an advance of a million dollars and a royalty rate considerably higher than Nirvana's". On November 8, 1992, Hole recorded "Beautiful Son", "20 Years in the Dakota" and "Old Age" at Word of Mouth Recording in Seattle with producer Jack Endino. The songs were released in April 1993 as Hole's fourth single on the City Slang label. On January 21, 1993, Love and Schemel recorded five demos at BMG Ariola Ltda. in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Produced by Craig Montgomery, the session had originally been scheduled as a demo session for Nirvana, who were recording material for their upcoming studio album In Utero. During breaks in Nirvana's session, Love and Schemel recorded a number of songs later featured on Live Through This, including "Miss World", "She Walks on Me", "I Think That I Would Die" and "Softer, Softest".
In 1993, the band recruited former Janitor Joe bassist Kristen Pfaff, an accomplished cellist and classically trained musician who brought a new level of professionalism to the group. Erlandson said of Pfaff's membership: "That's when we took off, all of a sudden we became a real band." After a brief tour of the United Kingdom in mid-1993, the band sent a series of demos to the record label. "When we got the Live Through This demos, I realized very quickly that Hole had gotten a new rhythm section," said producer Sean Slade. "It was much more musical."
Recording
The recording sessions for Live Through This began on October 8, 1993, at Triclops Sound Studios in Marietta, Georgia. The studio was booked at the recommendation of the Smashing Pumpkins, who had recorded their second studio album, Siamese Dream, there. Hole hired the producers Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade, as she and Cobain had enjoyed their work with Radiohead on their 1993 album Pablo Honey. Erlandson recalled that Hole continued to write material throughout the recording sessions over the ensuing weeks: "We never finished writing; we were writing the whole time, trying to come up with more and more songs because even though it looked like we had a good, solid album, we knew we were missing some pieces. We were still writing intensely and frantically putting songs together. It wasn't like, "Oh we have these 12 songs, they're done, and we're going to go in and record now.""The first week of recording was spent recording basic tracks, including drums, bass, scratch guitars, and scratch vocals. After basic tracks were completed, Cobain visited Hole in the studio before Nirvana were set to tour to promote In Utero. The band invited Cobain to sing backing vocals on several tracks, which he initially refused, as he was unfamiliar with the material. When Cobain asked, "How can I sing on it if I haven't heard it?", Love answered by encouraging him to "just sing off the top of head". Cobain provided backing vocals on "Asking for It" and "Softer, Softest". Kolderie said Cobain sang on around five tracks, but could not remember which. After taking a break for dinner, the session devolved into a jam with Cobain on drums, Love and Erlandson on guitars and Slade on bass.
Musician Dana Kletter sang backing vocals on seven songs, including "Violet", "Miss World", "Asking for It", "Doll Parts", "Softer, Softest", and "She Walks on Me". Slade said, "I think one of the reasons that 'Doll Parts' might have been a hit is that harmony Dana does on the 'You will ache like I ache' part, it's almost like an Appalachian close harmony against what Courtney is doing. It's very melancholic." Slade and Koderie avoided double tracking Love's vocals, as they felt it "took the fierceness away". Certain imperfections were also left in the final mixes, including Love's voice cracking in "Doll Parts", which Geffen executives had asked to be removed.
According to Schemel, an employee at Triclops Sound Studios introduced the band to crystal meth. Schemel, her brother Larry Schemel and Pfaff engaged in intense drug usage during recording. "Miss World" was one of the songs Schemel and Pfaff recorded while high and Schemel said "that song was recorded a bit altered". Slade said that the basic tracks were completed within five days, and that Pfaff's basslines were completed on the basic tracks: "This has never happened on an album that we've done in all these years — every single bass track on Live Through This was from the basic tracks. There was no bass overdubs because there was no need to because they were perfect." Love completed between ten and twelve tracks of vocals for each song, which were then arranged by Slade and Kolderie.
The band finished recording on October 31, after which production and mixing lasted an additional nineteen days. The album was mixed by Scott Litt in Los Angeles and Seattle, except for "Gutless", which was mixed by J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. in New York City.
Composition
Music
Live Through This marked a departure from the band's noise rock roots toward a more alternative rock format. Love had sought a more mellow sound for Live Through This, stating: "I want this record to be shocking to the people who don't think we have a soft edge, and at the same time, that we haven't lost our very, very hard edge." The resulting music was starkly less aggressive than the band's former work, blending more structured melodies and smoother arrangements with heavy guitar riffs. "During the tour for Pretty on the Inside, we had been going more pop, less journal-entry noise stuff," recalled Erlandson. "The whole industry was going, like, "Look, you can be melodic and punky and be successful!" We never said, "Let's do this, let's copy this formula." It was natural."Consequently, Live Through This featured a mixture of songwriting techniques, including use of power chords as well as arpeggios, and occasional use of keyboards. Musically, the album's content ranged from heavier rock tracks such as "Plump" and "Violet" to slower and more mellow rock ballads, such as "Doll Parts" and "Softer, Softest", which featured the use of twelve-string electro-acoustic guitars and more stripped-down progressions and strumming.
A great deal of the songs on the album were written over a two-year period by Love, Erlandson, and Schemel, in both Los Angeles as well as in a makeshift studio Love had set up at her and Cobain's secluded home in Carnation, Washington. Love also stated that "half the fucking songs were written in the studio." According to Love, the songwriting process for the album was "really easy": "We started at Jabberjaw. I wrote "Violet" there. Then we moved to Seattle in the middle of that. "Miss World" was written in Seattle, if I remember correctly... We had this great rehearsal space : It was just perfect, up on Capitol Hill, near the Urban Outfitters. Everyone got really close. There was just a great flow." Love also stated that she had been listening to The Breeders, Pixies, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Joy Division while recording the album, and that their work served as primary influences on her at the time.
The album features one cover song, "Credit in the Straight World" by Welsh post-punk band Young Marble Giants; the band's frontman, Stuart Moxham reportedly "hated" Hole's version of the song, saying they had turned it into a "pornographic Led Zeppelin track".