MELISSA Auf der Maur has an interesting history. Ever since she released her eponymous debut solo album earlier this year music fans have read her interviews with fascination.

She waxed lyrical about her years as the bassist of two of the most prominent rock bands of the last decade -- Courtney Love's Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins.

But on her recent tour of Europe Melissa has been going back even further into her past.

"I was very lucky to have a day off in Switzerland yesterday," says the fiery-haired 32-year-old. "I went to the home town of the Auf der Maur family to discover my roots, literally.

"I'm very happy to be able to date my family name right back to the 800s."

Melissa is actually from Montreal in Canada.

The Swiss surname, meaning "on the wall", comes from her father Nick Auf der Maur, a Canadian politician and journalist.

Melissa's musical education continued after she graduated from high school when she became a rock DJ in a bar in order to support herself through university. "Anything to be around music," she says.

When she was 17 her father bought her a bass guitar. Inspired, Melissa formed a band called Tinker but they weren't to last. A fortuitous meeting with one Billy Corgan changed everything.

Melissa met Billy at a small club in Montreal in 1991 where his band had just played a gig. She approached the singer after his show to apologise "on behalf of Montreal" for a bottle being thrown at him. She somehow remained friends with the notoriously standoffish singer and a couple of years later Tinker were supporting the now globally successful Pumpkins. One night Billy took Melissa to one side and told her she was going to be in his band one day. But six months later he called her up with another proposition -- to join his friend Courtney's band Hole.

"It meant Tinker had to end and that was one of the most painful things," says Melissa. "My first response to Billy was, 'No, thank you, I've got my band'. But it became clear what I should do when my mother and father and even my band members were saying, 'Really? You're not going to do this?'."

Melissa joined Hole at a time of great emotional upheaval for the band. They had lost their bassist Kristen Pfaff to a heroin overdose and Courtney Love had just lost her husband, one Kurt Cobain.Understandably it was a difficult atmosphere to settle into.

"Hole was much more of a life lesson," says Melissa. "The life and emotional reality of that band was much more intense than the music. I grew as a person because I immediately had to be very sensitive and aware of the emotional symbolism my arrival represented -- I was replacing someone who had died."

During her five years with Hole, Melissa only got to help out on one album -- the critically-lauded but under-performing (thanks to Courtney's unwillingness to promote it) Celebrity Skin. Frustrated musically, and unhappy with having to live in Los Angeles, Melissa left Hole in 1999.

Five years on Melissa now has no relationship with Courtney.

The week Melissa left Hole, Smashing Pumpkins' bassist D'Arcy Wretzky also quit to go into rehab. As Billy Corgan put it, "the stars had aligned again" and Melissa joined her favourite band. "It was a rock fantasy come to life," grins Melissa.

Melissa spent a year with the Pumpkins on their farewell tour and once it was all over she took a break to decide what to do with her career.After a year she finally decided to plough all her money into making her own album.

Her musical "experiment" produced good results. Her ambitious and full-blooded debut -- which she describes as "a complete reflection of a big part of my inner world" -- got her a record deal and for now Melissa's future holds more music-making and performing.