Celebrity Skin

Background

In September 1995, Hole completed the final leg of their year-long of tour in promotion for their second studio album, Live Through This (1994). Despite remaining unproductive in the months following the tour, the members of Hole began working on individual projects. Frontwoman Courtney Love was cast as Althea Flynt in the The People vs. Larry Flynt alongside Woody Harrelson, lead guitarist Eric Erlandson collaborated with Rodney Bingenheimer and Thurston Moore in a short-lived project Rodney & the Tube Tops, bassist Melissa Auf der Maur recorded Ric Ocasek's album Troublizing (1997), and drummer Patty Schemel was a guest musician with The Lemonheads on the tribute album Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks.

Following Love's promotion of The People vs. Larry Flynt, the band reunited to write new material for 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, Tennessee 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". Despite reports, these sessions did not result in the recording of a complete album and the master tapes were not stolen on an airplane. Erlandson debunked these claims in 2002. The writing process was completed in under a year and the band went through "fruitless attempts" at finalizing the songs before the band were satisfied enough to enter the studio.

Recording

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.

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 Billy Corgan, Corgan joined the band in the studio for a total of twelve days. 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.

What [Billy's] great at for me— what he did for me has nothing to do with Eric and Melissa. It has to do with me. I was in a rut, I could not even get out of bed. I didn't want to make this record, I didn't want do anything. I was dull, my blade was not sharp, and he's probably one of the only people on the planet that can challenge me. My craft was at this place and Eric and Melissa and Patty couldn't help me; they all have brilliance and craft, but because I'm in a band within a family context with them, they weren't outsiders enough to really just help me.

According to Erlandson, who discussed the recording sessions online in 2005, Love was allegedly "not caring about" playing her instrument during the sessions, focusing only on singing and song-writing. He also confirmed Corgan's involvement in the recording process, and revealed he played bass on "Hit So Hard" and the outtake "Be a Man". Earlier in 2002, Love revealed on the band's official online forum, that Corgan also played bass on "Petals".

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 Boda 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.

Drum tracks

Patty Schemel only played the album's demos and was replaced with session drummer Deen Castronovo. Initially, Love blamed Schemel's drug addiction as the cause of her absence, however, Schemel insisted it was due to "musical differences". The differences cited by Schemel were between her and Beinhorn. She claimed that Beinhorn was "totally psyching [her] out in the studio" and after a meeting with the band, Beinhorn brought in session drummer Deen Castronovo, to which she felt "betrayed by the band".

According to Chris Whitemeyer, a sound technician working on the record, Beinhorn would request take after take of Schemel's drum parts, and would dim the volume in the sound booth and read the newspaper while she played. Whitemeyer stated that Schemel was drumming in the studio eight hours a day for over two weeks, and that Beinhorn "wanted Patty to give up". After Schemel completed over two weeks of recording, Beinhorn brought Love into the studio and had her listen to loops of Schemel's "weakest playing", and then suggested Castronovo as an alternative. Whitemeyer also stated that Castronovo had been asked by Beinhorn to enter the studio before Love or any of the other band members heard Schemel's drum tracks, and that Beinhorn "had it all planned out" early on.

The event resulted in Schemel leaving the studio and requesting a settlement and breaking off ties with the band. Several months later, Schemel participated in the promotional photo shoot for the album, but refused to tour with the band. In 2002, Love admitted in an interview with Carrie Fisher to having Schemel replaced on the album:

Patty, who's been my drummer for years and years and years, she had like a two-year living-in-a-tent crack existence downtown. I did this very classic rock horrible thing where I let the producer tell me that she sucked, let him play me a tape— this is so, like, out of the rock bad cliche book— let him play me a tape of her sounding the worst, that he had basically cobbled together. He'd kept a guy on retainer the whole time [...] I ruined her life for two years because I kicked her out of the band for the duration of the record.

In later years, Schemel and other band mates resolved the issue and have remained friends. At a screening of Schemel's documentary Hit So Hard at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2011, Love later called Beinhorn "a Nazi".

Release

In spite of the extreme measures undertaken by Hole's label, DGC Records, to prevent the album from leaking (including an "iron clad" agreement that prohibited music journalists who received advance copies from allowing anyone else to hear or record the album), the first single from the album, "Celebrity Skin", was leaked three weeks before its intended release dates and played "nearly a dozen times" on New York radio station WXRK (92.3 FM) and their Los Angeles-based sister station, KROQ-FM (106.7 FM), on the weekend of July 31 to August 2, 1998. DGC spokesperson Jim Merlis denied that the leak originated from them and issued WXRK a cease and desist order on August 3. Nevertheless, San Francisco radio station Live 105 (105.3 FM) played the single again the following weekend.

Critical reception

Upon its release, Celebrity Skin received positive critical acclaim. AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine said the album was "a glaze of shiny guitars and hazy melodies, all intended to evoke the heyday of Californian pop in the late '70s," awarding the album three and a half stars out of five. Former Village Voice and Pazz and Jop writer Robert Christgau rated it two out of three stars, an "honorable mention", noted that Love was "better punk than actress, better actress than popster" and listed the title track and "Awful" as the album's notable songs. Robert Cherry of the Alternative Press described Celebrity Skin's sound as "meticulously orchestrated guitars, multilayered vocal harmonies, quantized drums and sheeny studio magic" and said the songs "hit nerve centers like a thousand AM classics." The Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov awarded the album four out of five and referred to the album as "end of the summer crunch-pop from the most enigmatic woman around" but criticized Love's "painful, quasi-Freudian vein" and "Michael Beinhorn's slick, SoCal production." Tom Edwards of Drowned in Sound gave the album an 8/10 rating and a mixed review, referring to "Awful" as "gorgeous, pure blues" and "Hit So Hard" as "the best song about love since 'Retard Girl'," but concluding that "it's a weak record full of empty music either way." Entertainment Weekly reviewer David Browne said "the music is sleeker and more taut than anything Hole have done" in his B+ review. The Los Angeles Times awarded the album a full four star rating, with reviewer Robert Hilburn calling the album "one wild emotional ride" and "a far more complex work than the invigorating, mainstream coating would lead you to believe." Steve Sutherland of NME mentioned that "the first thing you think when Celebrity Skin smacks you in the nose is that you may never need to hear a rock 'n' roll record ever again," compared the album's sound to Fleetwood Mac and rated the album 8/10. Rolling Stone awarded the album four out of five stars and described it as "sprung, flung and fun, high-impact, rock-fueled pop" and noted that "it teems with sonic knockouts that make you see all sorts of stars and is accessible, fiery and intimate – often at the same time," while Spin reviewer Joshua Clover rated the album 9/10 and referred to the album as "a record filled with quotation and reference, backtalk and revision" and said "there are too many great songs, and this is a magnificent pop record." Several publications also listed Celebrity Skin in year-end periodical lists, including Time, who listed the album at number 9 on its Best of 1998 Music list, Spin, who listed the album at number 11 on its Top 20 Albums of the Year list, and The Village Voice, who listed the album at number 14 in the Pazz and Jop Critics' Poll.

Celebrity Skin was a commercial success, charting in 13 countries worldwide within a week of its release. In the United States, the album debuted at number 9 on the Billboard 200 with sales of 86,000 copies in its first week. The album was certified Gold by the RIAA on October 13, 1998 and later certified Platinum on December 21, with sales of over 1 million copies. As of 2010, the album has sold nearly 2 million copies worldwide; 1.4 million copies in the United States and 124,221 copies in the United Kingdom. The album has also been certified Platinum in Canada with sales of over 100,000 copies and two times Platinum in Australia with sales of over 140,000 copies.

The album received three nominations at the 41st Grammy Awards in 1999: Best Rock Album, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group. "Malibu" later received a Grammy nomination at the 42nd Grammy Awards in 2000 for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group. and its music video, and the director Martin Coppen, was also nominated for Best Cinematography at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards. In 2002, the music video for "Malibu", and its cinematographer, won the 2002 Lifetime Achievement Award in Cinematography from the Music Video Production Association.

Track listing