Eric Erlandson was sitting on a beach in Mexico when the headline caught his eye. Hole’s guitarist and co-founder was vacationing with his girlfriend, Drew Barrymore, and thus deliberately out of the loop. After nine months of touring, he was on a much-needed break, his last before the summerlong playground of Lollapalooza.

He should have known better. Given that Hole’s other founding member is one Courtney Love, Erlandson’s blissful, worry-free escape simply wasn’t to be. The day-old newspaper beckoned him from across the sand. “Hole Singer ODs,” the headline read. That was all he could make out. His thoughts swirled from annoyance to concern to confidence that everything was surely all right before settling on a slightly jaded “Wouldn’t it just figure if Courtney died while I was on vacation?”

A quick look at the story revealed, of course, that Love was just fine. (What was initially reported as an overdose was eventually termed “an adverse reaction to prescription medication.”) His worst fears put to rest, Erlandson was skimming the rest of the article when it hit him — a development that was somewhat surprising and most definitely pleasing.

It was the nature of that headline: “Hole Singer ODs.” Not “Courtney Love ODs” or “Grunge Widow ODs.” Nope, “Hole Singer.”

The circumstances might have been strange and unfortunate, but that headline symbolized some kind of progress. Erlandson had quietly awaited this particular Zeitgeist shift for three years, ever since Hole’s music and meaning were firmly subsumed by the irresistible Love star force, with its limitless aura of spectacle, tragedy and provocation. Conventional wisdom has suggested that a random gathering of cabdrivers, grandmothers and Vanity Fair subscribers would be able to peg Courtney Love in a police lineup, no problem. But no one would be able to pick out mug shots of Erlandson, drummer Patty Schemel or bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, let alone figure out what “Hole” is.

Hole provide a definitive answer in this year’s Lollapalooza program book. Paying homage to Blondie, their page is emblazoned with the proclamation, in big rococo letters, that “Hole Is a Band.” A band that definitely intends — in between Love’s inevitable rants, stage dives and column inches — to speak very loudly for itself every night on the Lollapalooza stage.

If Hole’s popularity were based only on celebrity, they would have sold a lot more records by now. Instead, with promotion, marketing and life as they knew it shattered by the successive deaths of Love’s husband and Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff, Live Through This moved only about 100,000 copies — initially. Then the freak-show aspect subsided, and after Hole added Auf der Maur they went about the business of playing music. The record topped nearly every ’94 critics’ poll and — despite never charting higher than No. 52 — was certified platinum in April.

That makes Hole, for the moment at least, the best-selling act on the Lollapalooza main stage, and one gets the feeling Hole would be the chief attraction regardless of sales figures — as was expected, a portion of the Lolla crowd is departing before headliners Sonic Youth take the stage.

Certainly, Hole’s million-or-so fan base still includes legions of the merely curious as well as loopily obsessive Love worshippers and kids who see the band as only a legacy. The rest of Hole’s audience might feel those things, too, but it also relates intensely to the music.

“The most frustrating thing for me is that people view most female artists as this single person,” Erlandson says. “The thing is, I know for a fact that we’re more of a band, and we’ve always been more of a band. I don’t want to be in a ‘backing band,’ and Courtney doesn’t want that, either. That’s not the way we work.”

So allow me to introduce you to the four members of the band Hole. Except that I can’t, because none of them have materialized in the appointed place (an obscure Manhattan hotel) at the appointed time (3 p.m.). When they do turn up, one of them is missing. We were supposed to conduct a joint interview, something that can’t be done without Love, who spends her day shopping and napping.