Fuck Yeah, Courtney Love!

Eric Erlandson’s setlist from a Seattle Hole show in 1998.

The handwritten notations indicate which guitars to use on each song. Eric has some pretty cool guitars. This list is heavy on Fender Telecasters, but on two songs, “Celebrity Skin” and “Use Once and Destroy”, Eric busted out one of his original Veleno guitars. These are rare, handmade axes crafted from aircraft aluminum.

It was Kurt Cobain who turned Erlandson on to what has become one of the Hole man’s main guitars: an obscure Seventies model called Veleno, fabricated entirely of metal. “Kurt had always heard that [Nirvana producer] Steve Albini played this metal guitar and that’s how he got all that sustain high end on the early Big Black records,” says Erlandson. “So Kurt told me about this Veleno thing, and I said ‘I’m going to look into it.’ I found this shop in Tacoma, Washington, that had one. It was when Hole was recording Live Through This. I loved it. Pure sustain. I started looking around for more.”

Today, Erlandson owns three Velenos: one chrome-finish model with a Seymour Duncan pickup and two gold-finish ones with Seventies humbuckers. The chrome and one of the golds used to belong to Mick Mars of Mötley Crüe. “I bought them at this shop in the [San Fernando] Valley [an L.A. suburb],” says Eric. “Turns out Mick was dumping them because he had a big divorce.”