SXSW 2011: HIT SO HARD

Patty Schemel in Hit So Hard.

Wham, Bam, Mam

By Don Simpson

Some of you might be asking the same question I asked myself when I first received the press release for Hit So Hard: The Life & Near‐Death Story of Drummer Patty Schemel. Why would I want to watch a documentary about the drummer of Hole? Nothing personal about Schemel, but she is not the first person who comes to mind when I think of Hole. Knowing absolutely nothing about Schemel, I figured that it would not hurt anything for me to give Hit So Hard a chance.

Hailing from Marysville, a farm town outside of Seattle, at age 15 Schemel formed her first band, Sybil (later known as Kill Sybil), with her brother Larry. Schemel was 20 when she joined Doll Squad, an all-female punk rock band from Seattle. Then when Chad Channing left Nirvana in 1990, Schemel was considered to be Kurt Cobain’s leading candidate for Nirvana’s new drummer...that is until Dave Grohl’s audition. Nevertheless, Schemel developed a close friendship with Cobain so when Hole's original drummer, Caroline Rue, left the band in 1992, Schemel was Courtney Love’s first choice.

Schemel played drums on Hole's sophomore album, Live Through This (1994), and while touring, performed high profile shows at the Reading Festival, Big Day Out and Lollapalooza. (In 1995, Schemel became the first woman ever to appear on the cover of Drum World magazine.) Hole entered the studio in 1997 to record their third album, Celebrity Skin, but Schemel left the band before any tracks were laid down. Schemel had worked on the writing of the album's material and contributed to the demos so her name and photo were still included on the album sleeve. (The album’s drum tracks were performed by a male session drummer; eventually Samantha Maloney became Hole’s third drummer.) Love claims that Schemel's drug habit was to blame, but Schemel insisted she left Hole due to personal and musical differences between her and Celebrity Skin producer, Michael Beinhorn.

In 2001, Schemel joined Love's short-lived band, Bastard, along with Louise Post (from Veruca Salt) and Gina Crosley (from Rockit Girl). Schemel also played drums on Juliette Lewis' Juliette and the Licks’ debut EP, ...Like a Bolt of Lightning. Schemel performed on Love's solo album, America's Sweetheart, and toured with Imperial Teen. In early 2010, Schemel formed the band, Green Eyes.

That said, music takes a back seat in P. David Ebersole’s documentary. Hit So Hard is more about drug and alcohol addiction. Schemel is a member of the “Unlucky 13th Generation," a group of people who have been mired by a plethora of pain, hardship and death. As someone who seemed predestined to fall prey to that curse, Schemel developed a heroin addiction in the early 1990s. (She notoriously refused to be part of Kurt Cobain's drug intervention in March 1994, claiming that doing so would be hypocrisy.) Eventually, she found herself unable to stay in any bands. In order to support her drug habit Schemel sold all of her possessions and began living in a parking lot near the corner of Temple Street and Alvarado Street in Los Angeles, California.

Many have hypothesised that the Grunge movement and prolific drug use in the 1990s was reverbial feedback from the very same twenty-somethings who suffered through the conservatism of the Reagan-Bush era during their teenage years. Like the various Punk movements that came before and after Grunge, the angst from feeling disenfranchised for so long came through in their music and fashion. But their rebelliousness did not dull the pain and thus turned to alcohol and drugs for their proverbial ostrich hole.

Hit So Hard features recent and archival talking head interviews with Schemel, as well as her friends, family and colleagues. But what everyone will be talking about is Ebersole’s Hi-8 footage during various tours and while she was living with Love and Cobain just prior to Cobain’s death.