by Bob Mould
Generally, there was no more homophobia in the hardcore scene than anywhere else in America, although as 1981 progressed, the media began reporting on the “gay cancer,” and homophobia escalated throughout the country. Numberwise, the hardcore scene didn’t seem any more or less populated by homosexuals than most major cities were. Then again, the scene attracted the margin walkers, the folks who were outside the norms of society, so maybe there was a slightly higher ratio of gays to straights. There were bands that were clearly antigay—Bad Brains immediately comes to mind—but I don’t recall a lot of hostility toward the gays. There was a greater common enemy: Reagan, the president who couldn’t address the AIDS crisis in a public forum until September 1985, three months after his old Hollywood friend Rock Hudson was diagnosed with AIDS. It only took him another two years to actually utter the word AIDS.
That first trip left a deep impact on a number of levels. We realized we weren’t alone in the fight to change the direction of modern music. We’d learned how to travel together without agitating each other, which would be key to the success of future tours. We appreciated the kindness and generosity of other bands along the way. We became a really good live band—better than almost anyone else we’d seen. Most importantly, though, I had a three-day fling with a Navy guy. Kidding… sort of.
Our homecoming show was Saturday, August 15, 1981, at 7th Street Entry, and Steve Fjelstad recorded both sets on a reel-to-reel four-track. The first set comprised the faster, more aggressive material we’d been showcasing during our tour. If the Ramones were fast, and the Buzzcocks were faster, and the Dickies were even faster, that meant Hüsker Dü needed to be the fastest band in the world. After months of rushing onto a stage and packing fifty minutes of songs into thirty minutes, we accomplished that feat by necessity.
People absolutely came unglued during the first set. It was clear to everyone that the band had changed greatly in the past three months. Before we left, there was breathing room in our performances; now that breathing room had been replaced with a claustrophobic, frenetic intensity that reflected our eye-opening experiences on the road, our elevated ambitions, and our burning need to upstage any band in sight, including our local contemporaries, the Replacements.
The homecoming gig was the perfect way to wrap up that huge summer. We covered a lot of land. We took a lot of speed. And we made a record.
CHAPTER 5
After recording the homecoming show at 7th Street Entry, we spoke with Mike Watt and sent him a rough mix of the first set, the faster, more intense one. New Alliance was an upstart label, but we had a good feeling about Watt and he was eager to release our record. This was an important moment for the band—after meeting with resistance from Twin/Tone, we’d found acceptance in the punk capital of California. Equally as important, we’d begun to forge a relationship with Black Flag and, ultimately, that would lead us to SST Records. There was also the simple thrill of knowing we would have a full-length album release, even if it was only a live set recorded on a three hundred dollar budget.
I had no idea then how far the music I was playing had strayed from the music I’d enjoyed as a child. But we were young and full of testosterone. I was twenty turning twenty-one. The evolution was environmental as much as any sort of conscious choice. We had to adapt to survive, and this abrasive white-static roar was the new mutation. This is what we had to offer because it was what we had to work with.
But really, a song called “Guns at My School”? What did that have to do with “Happy Jack”? There was nothing happy in a song about firearms on campus—it turned out to be rather prescient though. “MTC” was a gripe about the bus routes of the Twin Cities. “Push the Button” was an obvious nod at the looming nuclear threat that was part of the collective consciousness in the early 1980s; many truly feared that Reagan was trigger-happy and were mortified that he actually had the power to obliterate the earth. “Bricklayer” and “Ultracore” were two of my attempts to raise the bar of hardcore—we were punker than punk. There’s no lasting value to the words though. They fall into the “blind rage” school of hardcore. “Gilligan’s Island” and “Do the Bee” just added a veneer of levity to our two-by-four-swinging approach to the set.
I took the tapes to a Christian mastering house in Gary, Indiana. I picked that place for two reasons: one, the irony of having a religious facility master the album, and two, to visit my Navy pal Richard in nearby Chicago. I went straight to Richard’s apartment in Boystown and was greeted at the door by a rather large and ruggedly handsome jarhead. He looked as if he’d just woken from a deep sleep. He told me Richard didn’t live there anymore, and was very short with me. It didn’t take me too long to figure out that they’d been boyfriends, Richard had been sleeping around, and now I was left with nowhere to stay.
I headed to O’Banion’s and ran into Ray Morris, singer for the punk band Six Feet Under. I told him a truncated version of my predicament, and he offered to let me stay with him and his girlfriend. I graciously accepted his offer. It took one afternoon to master the tapes, and I left the sessions with an acetate to play for the other guys. The sound quality wasn’t stellar, but the finished recording had a vibrancy and spark that represented the band well.
That September, after Hüsker Dü played a show with Dead Kennedys in Chicago, John Cale appeared backstage, offering his production services. He was intoxicated and kept trying to hug us and lift us off the ground. Despite his undeniable influence on the previous two decades of modern music, we politely declined his kind offer, as we were a little surprised and unnerved by his behavior. But the fact that Cale had heard about the band was surprising, and it signaled how quickly our reputation was spreading.
* * *
In November 1981 a burly club bouncer named Fred Gartner came to me with the idea of opening a club in the upper level of a downtown bar/strip club called Goofy’s. 7th Street Entry had found it difficult to book all-ages shows, so we aimed to fill that void. We named the room Goofy’s Upper Deck and started promoting shows with UK hardcore bands like Discharge and US touring acts like Black Flag, the Minutemen, and Meat Puppets. We also tried to showcase many up-and-coming Minnesota hardcore and punk bands. 7th Street Entry was less than two blocks away, but their talent buyer and promoter, Steve McClellan, quickly made his peace with us. Steve was my primary mentor in terms of booking, and he showed me how clubs made deals with agents, how to spot false expenses, and how to make the most favorable deal for the band. (Goofy’s lasted almost two years before getting closed down after a miniriot.)
At the time, I was living in southeast Minneapolis with two of the Veggies, Tippy Roth and Dick Madden, in the second and third floors of an old house across the street from one of the first Target stores in America. It was a place to hang my hat for the better part of a year. It was also the house in which I experienced my first Minnesota tornado. One summer afternoon the sky went still and turned an ominous grey green. Suddenly a funnel popped into view, and I ran for the cellar. When I came up moments later, the roof from a nearby house sat, nearly intact, in the middle of the street.
That Christmas I went to SuperAmerica, a regional chain of gas station/convenience stores, and bought turkey dogs for my solo Christmas dinner. The heater in the house had gone out that week; the water pipes froze, then burst, turning the stairwell into a solid sheet of ice. The landlord tried shimmying up the handrail, but it broke under his weight and he tobogganed down the stairs, crashing in a heap by the front door.
Nineteen eighty-two began with the January release of Land Speed Record on New Alliance Records. At the same time, Biafra offered us a European release on his Alternative Tentacles label, which we quickly accepted. The cover was a clear political statement: an archival photo of flag-draped coffins coming home from the Vietnam War. It also held an inside meaning: there were three caskets in the foreground of the photo, a subtle reference to how we felt at the end of that first national tour.
In a November 1980 issue of the Minneapo
lis arts weekly Sweet Potato, local critic Terry Katzman may have described Hüsker Dü’s sound best: “A familiar guitar hook or riff occasionally surfaces, but before you place it, it disappears. The band exists on the sheer strength of its music, nothing else.”
In February we went back to Blackberry Way Studios to record three songs—“In a Free Land,” “What Do I Want,” and “MIC”—for the In a Free Land single. The cover was a photograph of an actual flag-burning we staged at Macalester, thematically continuing the incorporation of the American flag. My two contributions, “In a Free Land” and “MIC,” were political rants; I’d already reached the zenith of my “antiestablishment” songwriting phase. This was not only the most professional-sounding recording we’d made to date (out of two), but “In a Free Land,” in particular, showed a huge jump in my songwriting quality from my typical white-hot noise to a melodic, anthemic statement of dissatisfaction.
New Alliance quickly released the single in May, and we planned another tour to promote the single. We were beginning to build a catalog of songs, in addition to having more records to sell at shows.
You can imagine that my attention span for college was waning, and my grades were hardly stellar. I was very close to getting my degree in urban studies, but it had become apparent that music was my calling. Music had gotten me through my childhood, music was the language I spoke with the other two members of my band—and people were listening to what we had to say. After traveling the country, performing music at a breakneck speed for what was arguably a lunatic fringe audience, and being accepted by our forefather bands, it was a no-brainer: it was time to drop out of college.
My parents were not thrilled with this news but understood my passion for music. My father was the source of so much turmoil throughout my early years, and yet he was also the one who helped bring music into my life; he was actually quite understanding about my musical ambitions. Maybe it was the former air force saxophonist in him, but he wisely chose not to deny or denigrate his son’s desires—the chance he never had. But my aunt June, who had strongly supported my desire for higher education, heard the news and immediately concluded that I was driving around the country selling drugs.
That June we set off on a national tour, bringing along stage tech Robin Davies, a friend of ours who played bass with the Madison, Wisconsin, band the Tar Babies. We got off to a great start when the owner of a club in Lincoln, Nebraska, didn’t want to pay us our agreed to fifty bucks. We took two of the club’s microphones hostage and were planning to come back later and break the large plate-glass window in front of the club if he didn’t settle up. He paid us.
We spent a few days in Boulder with local band White Trash, crashing in their rehearsal garage and eating free happy-hour food at an Irish-Mexican restaurant they worked at during the day. Then we went through western Canada, including two more nights at the Calgarian Hotel, and Seattle, where we played with the Fastbacks, who put us up too. Fastbacks drummer Duff McKagan, who eventually wound up as the bassist in Guns N’ Roses, would come to the Fastbacks House, wanting to watch MTV. But we’d commandeered the TV room to watch pro wrestling, and we didn’t relinquish control. I can neither confirm nor deny the ongoing rumor of a bed being broken by one of the members of Hüsker Dü—all I can say with certainty is that it wasn’t me.
Back in San Francisco we once again stayed with Biafra and Theresa for a few days. For our last night, we were put up by the militantly political hardcore band MDC. They and some other punks were squatting at an abandoned Hamm’s beer brewery called the Vats where they’d skateboard by day and sleep at night. MDC were nice guys, but a bit edgy—there was a lot of biker speed going around the San Francisco scene at the time. We slept in one of the large brewery tubs that evening, and Robin was out in the van with the equipment. The following morning, Robin came in to gather us up to leave and found himself in the hallway face-to-face with a snarling Doberman. The guy who owned the building had showed up unannounced, with huge dogs. He had a rather large tumor on one side of his head. He released the dogs into the vats, so now we’re in this big cement bowl with the dogs. We got out of the vat as quickly as possible, just hightailed it out of there. That was adrenaline for you.
After playing a show in San Diego with Battalion of Saints, we arrived for the first time in Los Angeles and met the entire SST crew. We’d met Greg Ginn and Black Flag bassist Chuck Dukowski at the “blue paint” show in Chicago, but this was my first meeting with the band’s singer, Henry Rollins. Rollins was an intense individual, a physical yet cerebral type of guy. He was into weight lifting, writing in his journals, being the newest lead singer of Black Flag, and not much else that I could see. Quiet and diminutive, Joe Carducci was SST’s operations manager. Mugger, the notorious Black Flag roadie and zany lead vocalist of the controversial Nig-Heist, was around the office on a daily basis, and eventually became the label’s accountant.
The SST office was a ground-floor space, no more than seven hundred square feet, located on a somewhat busy corner near Artesia Boulevard in Lawndale. There were several desks, their record stock, assorted musical paraphernalia, and, in the back, a small bathroom with a tiny shower. Carducci and Rollins lived there, sleeping under their desks. Rollins offered to sleep elsewhere so that one of us could sleep under his desk, which I found particularly charming and touching, adding another dimension to his personality.
Spot, a slightly eccentric yet affable guy, was Black Flag’s recording engineer. We were thrilled to have him oversee the two-day sessions for Everything Falls Apart, which we recorded at Total Access Studios in Redondo Beach. When we weren’t at Total Access, we were enjoying the California sunshine and eating chili fries, burgers, government cheese, and the various fruits and vegetables that SST would buy for the office. We played basketball with Greg and his brother, the artist Raymond Pettibon. Pettibon created the iconic sexually charged antipolice illustrations that would adorn many Black Flag records and show posters. Dukowski handled live bookings for SST bands under the name Global Booking, and while in the office, I asked him and Carducci lots of questions about the music business.
The Minutemen would drop by fairly often, and we always enjoyed spending time with those guys. George Hurley, the drummer, was more of a “ladies man” than anyone in the SST entourage; Mike Watt, the bassist-vocalist-songwriter, was always up for a heated political discussion; D. Boon, the guitarist-vocalist-songwriter, was upbeat and amicable, no matter what was happening around him. Watt and Boon were extremely giving of their time, energy, and resources.
But our tour rolled on, and after a quick stop in Tucson, we played the Ritz in Austin, and people threw beer cans at us, which may or may not have been a show of endearment—always hard to tell in Austin. We played that show with local punk/performance art group the Dicks and stayed with their flamboyant lead singer, Gary Floyd, whose house was decorated with kitschy tchotchkes and sex toys. Austin was a progressive place with plenty of colorful folks, like the Big Boys, whose guitarist, Tim Kerr, helped build a thriving skate scene in nearby Pflugerville, and whose hilariously provocative lead singer, Biscuit, was also a fine visual artist.
Then it was on to Dallas, where we stayed with the guys from the Hugh Beaumont Experience: King Coffey, Brad Stiles, and Phil Flowers. A couple of those guys would figure in my life later, and this is where the first connection was made. Then back to the Ritz in Austin, where people threw empty beer cans at us again. Then Houston, playing with CH3 and the Circle Jerks, and on it went.
We went back to San Diego for a multiband show with Battalion of Saints and Minor Threat, the straight-edge band I’d scoffed at back at O’Banion’s in Chicago. I had not gone one day without a drink since the age of thirteen. In my adult life, it was a three beer daily minimum, and, on a long night, upwards of twenty beers. I had little time for rules, and straight edge was one of my early glimpses into the contradictions of hardcore punk. For all the anarchy, the “no rules” posture, there sure seemed to be a lot of ru
les: don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t fuck. This did not sit well with me. I was not going to conform to this notion. So after sound check, we scattered aspirin all over the stage, and when Minor Threat came up to play, there were pills everywhere. No one from their band said anything to us, but Robin Davies remembers things being a little tense. Spreading the aspirin around made a clear statement about what side of the fence I was on. A childish stunt, yes. Antagonistic, probably. Mean-spirited, definitely not.
Up next, the LA show at the Olympic Auditorium was a six-band extravaganza featuring Black Flag, D.O.A., 45 Grave, and the Descendents. When I was a kid, the Olympic had wrestling and roller derby every week, and I’d watch those matches on TV or see photos in the wrestling magazines. In the background of a lot of those shots was a sign that said THE OLYMPIC and listed the phone number RI 9-5171. So when I walked in and looked at the place, I already knew that sign and the familiar array of blue seats. I felt like I was in one of the Seven Wonders of the World. We were on second, and people were climbing the PA and diving off fifteen feet into the crowd. It was very hardcore stuff. These days you don’t usually go into shows where you feel like you might not come out alive—or even just different, somehow changed.
That show was a gathering of the punk tribes. D.O.A. was classic punk from Vancouver; 45 Grave were a Hollywood goth band; Descendents were a power-pop punk outfit on New Alliance; Black Flag brought their own rougher crowd. There was always a bit of tension around these large shows. For example, if TSOL were on the bill, then they’d draw the prone-to-violence Orange County crowd. The Olympic was neutral territory. There were maybe 2,500 people in attendance; the floor seemed filled.