Former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur has made rare, explicit comments about her past relationship with Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, describing how the romance shaped her understanding of intimacy and her own sexuality.
The comments revisit a largely private chapter from the late-1990s alternative-rock era and have drawn renewed attention because Auf der Maur framed the experience as part of a broader conversation about women’s pleasure.
In an interview with PEOPLE, Auf der Maur said she was not sharing her “secret” for Grohl specifically, but “for all women” exploring “the mysterious journey of org*sms,” while adding that the relationship helped her recognise “how you can have blinders” about your own needs.
Auf der Maur also offered her most candid detail about the relationship, saying that before dating Grohl, “no one had ever put so much effort into making me orgasm in my entire life,” and that she “was not even that into sex.” She suggested the personal revelations were intended to contribute to discussions around the “mystery of female orgasm,” rather than to re-litigate the romance itself.
“That secret of my life is not revealed for Dave, clearly,” she said. “That secret is for all women who embark on the mysterious journey of org*sms and the overlooked mystery of women everything.”
“One of the gifts that that relationship gave me was an awareness of how you can have blinders about your own need of unlocking your own code,” she continued. “It’s for the mystery of female org*sm. It’s contributing towards the cause.”
“[Before Grohl], no one had ever put so much effort into making me orgasm in my entire life,” she revealed. “[I] was not even that into sex.”
The pair’s relationship has long been associated with a high-profile period for both artists, and earlier Alternative Nation coverage noted that a Smashing Pumpkins member once spoke about falling in love with Grohl during that same broader era of cross-pollination in the scene.
Auf der Maur’s latest comments underline how interconnected that late-’90s alternative world was, while also showing how musicians are increasingly willing to revisit personal history through the lens of wider cultural conversations. Neither Auf der Maur nor Grohl has publicly expanded further on the relationship in the material cited.
