Melissa Auf der Maur Recalls 'Beautiful Love Affair' with Dave Grohl — and Why They Broke Up
The former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist dated Dave Grohl from 1999 to 2001
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty
Melissa Auf der Maur and Dave GrohlRocker Melissa Auf der Maur is reflecting on her three-year relationship with Dave Grohl, which she says ended on good terms after the pair realized they wanted different things in life.
The former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist, 51, opened up about her romance with the Foo Fighters frontman, 54, in a recent interview for SiriusXM’s Fierce: Women in Music with host Lori Majewski.
Auf der Maur and Grohl dated from 1999 to 2001, and she said that though they “were a very compatible match,” they ultimately craved different futures.
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty
Melissa Auf der Maur and Dave Grohl“We had a beautiful love affair… We [were] both obsessed, committed to rock music, to the power of music, and both very non-drug addict, technically happy, highly functioning people,” she said. “So we were very similar, and in many ways, I think, our roles in Hole and Nirvana [are] what subconsciously pushed us together.”
When the pair got together, Auf der Maur was leaving Hole, which she’d joined in 1994, and had begun touring with the Smashing Pumpkins. Grohl, meanwhile, was starting to find success with the Foo Fighters after previously serving as the drummer for Nirvana.
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“We were madly in love, but we also really recognized the turning point we were both at, as ‘90s musicians that were very close in age, [who] started very young in our small, cool hometowns in Montreal and D.C.,” she said. “And when we broke up in 2001, it was all love. It was purely like, ‘I love you and I want you to go do what you want to do and you love me and you want me to go…”
Despite their similarities, Auf der Maur said she had become jaded by the state of the music industry and wanted out, while Grohl still felt he had more to achieve.
“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,” she said. “I remember just saying, ‘Don’t you want to just settle down into a cool art scene in D.C. or Montreal and just like, be humans?’ His fire and his ambition was not…”
She continued: “And here we are, 20 years later, we’ve got what we wanted: He got to be the biggest rockstar in the world, and I got to be a small-town art factory hero.”
Auf der Maur eventually went on to marry filmmaker Tony Stone, whom she met in 2006, and the two share 11-year-old daughter River. The couple founded the nonprofit multidisciplinary art center Basilica Hudson in Hudson, New York in 2010.
Grohl, meanwhile, married Jordyn Blum, a former TV producer, in 2003. They’re parents to daughters Violet, 17, Harper, 14, and Ophelia, 8. He and his band released their 11th studio album, But Here We Are, earlier this month.
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