Gotta Make Polls for the Polls I Make - ILM HUSKER DU POLL RESULTS

I'd love Bob Mehr to turn his gaze on HD.

Woo -- yeah THAT would be something.

Been a while since I read it and I know there’s comments on another thread, but that Earles book is not very good. At least Greg Norton gets his say in it, though.

I'd love Bob Mehr to turn his gaze on HD.

Yes, that would be amazing.

Mould's a complicated guy with a lot of damage he's trying to figure out, and I think that explains his book, which I didn't really enjoy. He's seemed more sanguine lately - when I interviewed him in 2020 he was talking about the peace he struck with Grant while they were working on the Numero box set, and his sadness over Grant's death. But you just have to listen to his songs to know this is a guy who holds a grudge and is on very visceral terms with his own emotions.

In its defense, the book doesn't scan like bitter score settling or anything like that, but it has this smug history is written by with the winner tone to it that rubs me the wrong way. The weirdest thing about it is how for all the focus on Husker Du (at least at the start of the book, sensibly), it often feels like Mould barely knew Grant and Greg. Which is oddly possible; Mould mentions how they never socialized outside of the band, and later, when their manager David Savoy commits suicide, Mould mentions how he knew next to nothing about his personal life or family, too.

Still, this is a group that was together from '79-'89. That's longer than the Police, or the Smiths, or the Beatles. You'd think those hundreds and hundreds of hours spent in motels or the van together would amount to more, but maybe not. (Mould claims Greg would diligently drive in silence, while he and Hart would sleep in the back, because they were the hard workers that needed their rest, of course, writing these songs that make all the money, something Mould pretty much literally states). Maybe the band was just interpersonally dysfunctional from the start and it really was strictly professional, like office mates. Or as I was saying with my complaints about the way this story is being told, maybe (essentially) last man standing Mould and his own damaged personalty were the problem and he's ultimately unable to fully see or admit it.

I was browsing this book in the library, mostly to see what he had to say about Workbook, and his writing about the other members of Hüsker Dü was really externalized: "they were doing this or that", but not a lot of curiosity or even acknowledgement that there might be reasons why. Same with Chris Stamey playing on the first solo tour, wanting to avoid hearing damage and annoying Mould by keeping the volume too low.

Exactly.

A (male) musician being self-centered??!!!! Whaaaaaaat?? Idk what y’all expected — what I want from a memoir type book is for someone to show me who they are, whether I like it or not. His book succeeded for me on that level.

All memoirs are self-centered, but some are more gracious than others. As I've been reading this I have kept in mind how Robert Forster wrote about a different Grant.

And you hope the passage of time would "grant" a memoirist a certain amount of insight, too.

The Forster memoir is to me a model of its kind: wry, often rueful, impeccable in its accounts about recording + songwriting, and humble enough to acknowledge that there are shadows in his best friend he never understood.

I just got to the part in the book where the band has broken up, and Mould is working on solo stuff. He plays some songs for someone, and they get this look on their face and ask him if he's ever heard of Richard Thompson. "No," says Bob. The guy hands him "Bright Lights" and "Shoot Out the Lights" and Bob listens and, would you believe it, Bob agrees he sounds just like Richard Thompson! Who he's literally only heard of for the first time! Bob is just that good.

Sigh. It reminds me of this interview with Billy Joel I saw once, where he was talking about taking some late in life piano lessons, just to brush up, and as he was noodling around the teacher goes "you know that's Mozart, don't you?" Amazingly, Billy Joel, who is also just that good, was simply messing around on the piano and came up with the same thing as Mozart! Just amazing!

Mould does cover "Shoot Out the Lights" a few years later iirc

On the tribute album? That was X. Mould did "Turning Of The Tide" there.

Mould too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS1qLAfXSoE

He told me about neve having heard Thompson before Workbook too, when we spoke in 2020. I don't know, it checks out! He never said it like "I had that sound before him", more that he was initially totally ignorant of this complex music he was growing to love, being some scuzzy punk rat raised on the Beatles and the Beach Boys.

Like I said, I really didn't like the book. But I do really like Bob as an interviewee - he's very engaging, very engaged, self-deprecating at times but also passionate.

"I had that sound before I heard of him", I mean - he wasn't trying to obscure a debt of influence he owed, more reeling at the fact that he'd never consciously heard of this guy whose style he'd natively worked his own way towards.

I've interviewed him a couple of times, and yeah, he can be a good interview.

I do believe that he had never heard Richard Thompson before, I was reacting more to the gratuitous humblebrag of him picking up an acoustic guitar and then, what do you know, sounding at all close to one of the greatest and most distinctive guitarists of all time.

A subsequent humblebrag comes when someone tells him "A Good Idea" sounds like the Pixies, and gosh, he'd never noticed that before! "There was an unconscious homage too: I didn’t realize the similarities between “A Good Idea” and the Pixies’ “Debaser” until Sugar was riding around America during the summer 1992 dates. I simultaneously laughed and gasped at the horror of having accidentally pilfered Kim Deal’s bass line." Earlier in the book he opens for the Pixies as a solo act, and mentions "I had a few conversations with Charles (aka Black Francis) from the Pixies. We treated each other as equals, a very cordial interaction." Well, yeah, duh. Pixies owed tons to Husker Du, it's part of the lore, and Mould later even mentions the famous Pixies musicians wanted ad. So Mould really didn't need to namedrop in that manner. It reeks of insecurity, as does his claim that Metallica were supposedly fans (so?), or the backhanded namedrop of meeting the Clash in the early HD years, "they were nice chaps, but very intense, as if they were very aware of their importance."

It's hard to know what's up with some of this, maybe it's Azerrad's doing. Like when he writes that the fourth single from "Copper Blue" "would be the upbeat and catchy “If I Can’t Change Your Mind.”" Who writes about their own songs that way?

Ha, I can kinda picture him saying "upbeat and catchy" through clenched teeth and a rictus smile.

Could be a lot more obnoxious. I stopped watching Quentin Tarantino's interviews because I got sick of listening to him talk about his own work like he was his own biggest fan.

The problem is that the most interesting personality in the band - and the one most likely to write the most illuminating account, bias and all - is no longer with us.

I say illuminating - Greg is in a unique position in that he’s neither Grant but Bob but he’s said a fair amount from his perspective since the Azerrad 80s book and I don’t know if he ever had the interest in anything further

Neither Grant *nor Bob

Re “history as written by the victors” point upthread, I think it’s sometimes unfortunate that the last word from an insiders POV is often from the person who in many ways I’d read last, but OTOH we could easily have nothing.

There's a great oral history on the '80 Minneapolis scene by Magnet, but the Hüsker Dü parts do get uncomfortable in how contentious they are:

https://magnetmagazine.com/2005/06/12/a-tale-of-twin-cities-husker-du-the-replacements-and-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-80s-minneapolis-scene/

For example:

Norton: When Bob said we were going to do the individual songwriter credits, I thought it was just Bob being pissed off at Grant, not realizing I was the only one who thought the songs the three of us worked on were collaborations. I mean, it said, “All songs by Hüsker Dü.” Bob went back and changed it, so he got all the money.

Hart: Bob can stink up a room without saying a word. The guy has an intimidation factor that’s exponentially greater than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. He can loathe you through a wall. Bob had all of this contempt. It was like, “Why are you in a band with me if you fucking hate me so much?”

-

Mould: When David committed suicide, that was the beginning of the end. Everyone sort of retreated into their own corners and dealt with that in their own particular ways.

Hart: That makes a great fucking story. Bob, I’m sorry your friend died and everything, but you’re still a prick.

-

Hart: Bob said, “It’s up to you, Grant. Should we go on and play, or do you just want to head home?” And I’m like, “Hell, man, let’s go play.” “Well, Grant, we already canceled it.” “OK, so you wanted to give me the fucking opportunity to think you gave a fuck.”

-

Norton: I was pissed off at Grant. I was pissed off at Bob, too. It got to the point with Bob that I realized I had nothing in common with him. It was obvious he didn’t give a shit about me anymore, so whatever. It was fine.

-

Norton: Grant would say he quit the band in December when we were on the last tour. Then Bob got himself a lawyer and had himself removed from the contract. So according to Grant, he broke the band up. According to Bob, he quit the band. Bob would probably say he fired me. Leading up to when Bob withdrew from the contract, I had had conversations with him about me and him keeping the band together with a new drummer. At the same time, Bob told Grant, “Let’s you and me keep the band going and kick Greg out and get a new bass player.” Basically, it comes down to this: Who do you believe? I don’t doubt Bob had plans for a solo career and this was a great time for him to get it started.

(I should add, this was published in 2005, when relations between all three were probably at an all-time low.)

I'm essentially hate reading this thing at this point, but gah, when he hits his pro wrestling writing stint, or dalliance with electronic music, or the death of his fucking dog, he just becomes even more insufferable. He's always right, only he knows what's going, all he's doing is the right thing, why do other people keep messing it up? He alludes to the lawsuit Hart and Norton tried to file to get the SST rights:

I offered to pay for the lawsuit, but in return Grant and Greg would have to stay uninvolved so that I could sue SST myself without encumbrances, changes, or midstream indecision. I had Josh Grier draw up an offer for a one-time payment of $15,000 each to Grant and Greg. As ever, they would retain co-ownership of the Hüsker Dü name, but would be silent partners in this lawsuit.

I didn’t care about the name Hüsker Dü, nor holding sole ownership of the SST catalog. I had, and still have, no interest in the name Hüsker Dü or in recreating or revisiting that part of my life. But while conducting research for this book, I found and reviewed the document, and it most certainly appeared as if I was trying to buy them out. And yet it meant so little to me that I’d forgotten about it until seeing the document.

Yeah, no shit, Bob.

Always wondered what Gibby Haynes meant when he said "he went all Bob Mould on me"