Hole were one of the greatest rock bands of the ’90s, and there are plenty of people who would love to see them reunite. It could happen. The band’s entire Celebrity Skin-era lineup is alive and seemingly healthy. But will it happen? Over the years, Courtney Love has publicly gone back and forth on the idea of a reunion. At the moment, she’s back to teasing it.
On Tuesday, Love posted a glamorous-looking Instagram video of former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, set to Hole’s 1999 hit “Malibu.” Auf der Maur joined Hole in 1994 after the death of original bassist Kristen Pfaff, and she stayed in the band until 1999. Love captioned the video, “So do we tell the kids about the tour @xmadmx ?” Auf der Maur responded, “it starts with eternal love ….”
Love relaunched her Instagram in January after being off the platform for a few years. The first post on her revived Instagram was on Jan. 28, and it was a pair of photos of her and Auf der Maury at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.
The last time that Love and Auf der Maur performed together was in 2018, performing a couple of Hole songs during a Love tribute at Basilica Hudson, the upstate New York venue that Auf der Maur co-founded. There were a lot of Hole reunion teasers happening around that time, but then Love shut them down in 2021, telling Vogue that a reunion was “just not gonna happen” and that “you guys have gotta get over it.” In 2023, however, Love joined Billie Joe Armstrong’s Coverups onstage in London and told the crowd, “I’ve been living in a cave in Birmingham for about nine years. We’ll give this a fucking try, right?… Later, I’ll be back in Hole.”
These days, Love is in LA, not Birmingham. She’s the subject of a new documentary called Antiheroine, which premiered at Sundance in January. Love no-showed the premiere, and she hasn’t promoted the film on Instagram. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Love doesn’t like the documentary and wants to reshoot and recut it. Her manager Jonathan Daniel tells the magazine, “The cut that went to Sundance was never intended as final.”
In 2024, Love and Auf der Maur reunited in the studio for the first time in decades, and photos of the two of them showed up online. At the time, the speculation was that the two of them were working on music for Love’s long-delayed solo album. If and when that record comes out, it’ll be the first Love album since 2004’s America’s Sweetheart. There was also an official Hole album called Nobody’s Daughter in 2010, but that was essentially a solo album, recorded with a completely different lineup. Love has said that her upcoming solo album will feature R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and Echo & The Bunnymen’s Will Sergeant, but not PJ Harvey, who she called “fucking rude.”
Love has also been working on a memoir for a long time, which was first announced in 2010. About a year ago, she said that the book would be out by Christmas. It was not. Auf der Maur has written a memoir of her own, and hers has a release date. Even The Good Girls Will Cry: A ’90s Rock Memoir is out Mar. 17 via Da Capo/Hachette. Former Hole drummer Patty Schemel published her book Hit So Hard: A Memoir in 2017.
A proper Hole reunion would have to include both Schemel and guitarist Eric Erlandson. The last time that all four members of the band’s late ’90s lineup played together was in 2012, doing a surprise after-party performance for Schemel’s documentary, which was also called Hit So Hard. It’s hard to even imagine how a Hole reunion tour would look in 2026, but I would like to see it.
In other news, Courtney Love proclaims herself to be “Geese-curious” and says that she’s “trying to get it.”