by Bob Mould
May 1985 was also when we first crossed paths with William Burroughs. Famed Beat wordsmith John Giorno had a small record label called Giorno Poetry Systems and asked Hüsker Dü to be part of a compilation album called A Diamond Hidden in the Mouth of a Corpse, which also featured Cabaret Voltaire, Sonic Youth, and Diamanda Galás. We gave John an outtake from Metal Circus called “Won’t Change.” I told him we wanted to donate our royalties to charity, and he suggested a new organization in New York City called God’s Love We Deliver. The organization was made of a handful of volunteers who drove around town and delivered meals to people suffering from full-blown AIDS. I said that sounded great, and we challenged everyone else to do the same. John was excited, went to everybody, and they all agreed. Then John scheduled a photo shoot for us, himself, and William at the infamous “Bunker,” Burroughs’s writing room on the Bowery. That was our first meeting with William.
I thought back to working in the library at Macalester, reading Naked Lunch cover-to-cover in one sitting, and how much the drugs, the sex, the transgressive grittiness of the book affected me on so many levels. And how, amazingly, the path I had started on six years prior had led me to William Burroughs himself.
And now we were hanging out at the Bunker, which is still maintained like a shrine. William was a striking figure, and I was very much on one knee the whole time. We sat around the big table, smoking pot and drinking coffee, and he asked questions of us in his slow and deliberate voice: “So, you’re from Minneapolis? What do you want to do with your music?” He was stoic and revered, dapper and proper—I watched his every move and listened to his every breath.
At William’s side was James Grauerholz, his faithful custodian and amanuensis. James was a strikingly handsome man, proper and caring, and very good at keeping William current by bringing new and relevant people to him. And John Giorno was this wild, energetic Buddhist Italian, oozing sex and words and positive spiritual energy. What a crew—all so different, all so welcoming, bringing us into this sacred place.
In the years that followed, I would always stop by to see William at his modest home in Lawrence, Kansas. There was a fair amount of land around the house; James had purchased a number of adjacent parcels so it was somewhat buffered. James had his own house nearby. Locals would come in to have lunch with William once a week, then take him to town to run errands and get his hair cut. It was amazing. I can only hope that in my later years, I fall into a similar situation where there’s this super-smart hot guy who oversees my estate while bringing in new people to keep it fresh. (Don’t think I wasn’t taking notes.) And always, after smoking a bunch of weed, William would bring up the possibility of going out back to throw some knives. You went along with it, because it’s William.
I think back to something else that John once told me. He and Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg used to get into leather jackets and pants and go running for hours through these huge marijuana fields in the Midwest. When they came back, they’d be covered with resin from the plants. They’d scrape the resin off the leather with knives and end up with this sticky substance that was stronger than hashish. As different as our backgrounds, ages, and art forms were, we shared similar experiences. They’re the same crazy stories, with different names and places. I’d never run through fields to gather hashish resin, but I had fled from Dobermans who were chasing me out of abandoned beer vats in San Francisco. It was all part of the same tradition, the same sensibility. I never would have said it at the time, but in some strange, cosmic way, as an American outsider/storyteller, I was in the same lineage as those guys.
CHAPTER 9
After seeing Hüsker Dü at the Ackerman Ballroom, Warner Brothers A&R person Karin Berg flew to Minneapolis to meet with us. Karin had worked with many great artists over the years, including Joni Mitchell, Television, and the B-52s. At Nicollet Studios we played her Flip Your Wig. She loved what she heard and told us in no uncertain terms that Warner was interested in this record. It was surprising that Warner was so eager to sign the band. Then again, college rock had sprung up in the Northeast and was now spreading all over the country. Media outlets like CMJ, Rockpool, and even MTV were all starting to move in our direction, as was the rock audience in general. Turned out the whole thing was just a few years away from exploding.
We knew it was time to go to a major. We saw a larger audience that was ready for what we were doing. And if we were to address that audience, the records had to be available—all the time, everywhere. There were other labels in the running, but we were impressed with Karin, as was everyone we talked to about her. Karin was maternal, calming, and perceptive about music. We decided to sign with Warner.
Although Karin was very interested in Flip Your Wig and we were frustrated with SST, we still felt some loyalty to the label that had done so much for us, so we decided to give them one more record. Flip Your Wig would be their last. In hindsight, it may have been a misstep in terms of reaching a bigger audience, but at the time it seemed like the honorable thing to do. Like I said, we were the good soldiers. Karin was disappointed, but she understood—and we assured her there would be another strong album right around the corner.
Somewhat ironically, now that Ray Farrell was on board, SST was doing some great work for us. Ray was willing to exploit the band’s pop potential. He serviced college and commercial radio with a twelve-inch promo single of “Makes No Sense at All,” as well as finding outlets for the video, which recreated the intro of the Minneapolis-based ’70s TV sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was a genuine expression of regional pride—the kind of regionalism that was largely swept away by MTV, which did much to homogenize the mystique of musical outbacks like Minnesota.
Jumping to a major label had huge political repercussions in our community. We were acutely aware of it, that we were the band. It’s true that the Replacements were still on an independent label, but they weren’t really a part of the community—they were a rock band in the classic sense. In hindsight, a key difference between the two bands becomes very clear: the Replacements never started a label to help out their friends’ bands. They didn’t give back the way Hüsker Dü gave back.
We kept our plan to move to Warner under wraps for as long as possible. It was easier to keep a secret back then, pre-internet. With an important career move like that, it’s best not to tell people until the ink is dry. And we had to prepare for a backlash not just from SST but from the staunch anticorporate factions of the underground community.
Going on our first European tour helped, and September 1985 started with a ripping performance at the famed Marquee in London. We were in peak form. The rest of the tour, however, is a bit hazy thanks to stronger-than-American beer, plentiful hashish, and a bottle of scotch on the hospitality rider every day. Most of my memories revolve around our modified bread truck bouncing down the highways of northern Europe, overnight ferry rides with groups of Scandinavian men drinking and fighting among themselves, and late-night cards at the hotel. At Rock City in Nottingham, a group of Hell’s Angels came backstage to meet the band and present us with a large bag of crystal meth. I snorted some of the sulphury powder off a switchblade that was held under my nose by one of the “friendly” bikers.
The following night we performed at the legendary Hacienda in Manchester. I was scouring the venue, hoping to find some remnant of the bygone energy of the early Manchester scene, but all I found was a surly lighting director who would not capitulate to Grant’s request not to be rotisserie-cooked by the hot white lights behind the drum riser. We were informed that we were playing “the fucking Hacienda” and that there would be no back talk. Three songs into the set, Grant simply turned the lights away from himself.
After wending our way through Scandinavia and Germany, we finished up the tour with a blazing performance at the Electric Ballroom in London. In the back of the room, there was a lighthouse-shaped device that displayed the decibel level in ascending colors, almost like a rainbow thermometer. If it got too loud, the top of the
tower would light up and the PA would shut down. During our set I was transfixed by this thing, wondering, “Is Lou going to push it over the edge?” We were definitely a loud band, but it was more about our claustrophobic clustering of songs—a Hüsker Dü show was an assault, slamming sonics together to shock people.
Then we returned home and toured the West Coast yet again. On November 1, we played the Santa Monica Civic Center with the Meat Puppets and DC3. This big-room multiband bill would be the last of the SST punk rock shows for Hüsker Dü. We informed SST that we were leaving after they put out Flip Your Wig. For a moment, Greg Ginn tried to make a case for us staying, and when that fell on deaf ears, he moved on to other interests. So much for the backlash from SST.
We signed with Warner on Veterans Day, November 11, 1985. We threw a huge catered party at Nicollet Studios, complete with a champagne fountain built out of drinking glasses. Many of our friends and family attended, along with fellow Minneapolis musicians and the Twin/Tone crew. Both my mom and my dad had supported my career, but my father never liked flying, so he stayed home while my mother flew in. She had the time of her life, overjoyed to be part of this celebration. Even some local TV stations covered the party. It was only a contract signing, but we’d contacted the press and made it into a newsworthy event. People had a good time and thought all the celebrating was cute.
We hoped that if we could succeed on a major label without compromising our integrity, it might open the door for other bands to follow suit. We weren’t the only alternative band signing with a major, but we were probably the most vocal about creative control and autonomy. We wanted to reach a larger audience, we knew Warner would give us a bigger platform, and we were confident they wouldn’t try to reshape our look, sound, or message.
Our Warner deal was pretty standard, with a solid advance that we knew we could earn back. All those years on the indie circuit had made us a strong touring act and so efficient and thrifty that we didn’t need any financial help from the label to go on the road, which put us in Warner’s good graces. We were very concerned with being charged for video and indie radio promotion, and we did our best to protect ourselves from decisions made beyond our control. Warner agreed to let us self-produce our records. Karin didn’t meddle in the creative process, whereas other A&R people were notorious for acting like frustrated producers. They’d want to get into the specifics: “You know, if you just cut that first chorus in half…” They would say things that would make our eyes roll. Karin never did that.
If you can’t tell, I felt particularly defensive about the move from SST to a major—I’d been so brash, so vocal, so dogmatic in the past, railing about large corporations. We’d set an outspoken example. We were just asking for it, right?
So I wrote a long piece in the respected punk fanzine Maximumrocknroll. We’d met the MRR folks—Tim Yohannan, Ruth Schwartz, and Jeff Bale—when we first went to San Francisco in 1981. We’d played Risk with those guys and watched with amazement as these radical leftists got so intense about a game of world domination. MRR was the natural choice for my little manifesto, not just because it flew the flag for punk rock values, but because I knew Tim would give me the page and not make a mockery of it.
It was a tricky piece to write. I could have complained about the fact that SST hadn’t always been supportive, not to mention diligent, about paying us on time, but the punk community held SST in high regard. So I tried to put a more positive spin on things. The 1,350-word piece made it clear that we’d retained complete artistic freedom in the Warner deal and that the next Hüsker Dü album would be, in the best sense, just another Hüsker Dü album. “We haven’t gone through a new image change,” I wrote, “’cause we’ve never had one.”
But I also took the opportunity to address other sensitive issues, like why the band had abandoned political lyrics after Metal Circus. Basically, we didn’t feel qualified to speak about politics and we weren’t comfortable with hardcore’s knee-jerk embrace of anarchism. I also talked about why we strongly discouraged stage diving at our shows: “It has nothing to do with elitism; we’re concerned about ourselves staying in one piece, and not endangering unsuspecting people in the audience. Everyone has a right to see Hüsker Dü, not just the slammers in the pit.”
And then I got down to reassuring the underground community some more:
We’re still conscious of our audience, we’re trying to play all-ages shows, we’re trying to keep the ticket price down…. Just because we’ve signed to Warner Brothers doesn’t mean that there won’t be ten new bands next week. If anything, it might be a sign that something is happening, that some people are finally listening to the underground, and they might even respect what’s going on. Nobody at Warner has asked us to tone down; they haven’t asked us to sound like U2, they’re completely happy with the high end distortion and tons of ride cymbals and people yelling and singing pretty and writing any kinds of words they want. They signed Hüsker Dü because they liked Hüsker Dü and not because they think we will be the next Rick Springfield.
And after all that, there wasn’t actually much of a backlash. Maybe our audience understood. Or maybe it just wasn’t that big of a deal after all.
Still, I was extremely sensitive about the situation, and I remember Grant making a comment that left a sour taste in my mouth. We’d signed with Warner soon after the Replacements had signed with Sire, a Warner subsidiary. Grant said something to the press about it, something like “They were worried they were going to have enough money to buy cars. With Hüsker Dü, we’re just worried about how many cars we’re going to buy.” Now we were twenty-five at the time and we all say some dumb shit when we’re twenty-five, but I thought it was one of the dumbest things that could have been said. It was just another one of Grant’s kooky pronouncements, but it irked me. Not only did it amplify this artificial and unnecessary acrimony with the Replacements, who were our friends, but I feared the comment would annoy some of our core fans. Another telling difference between Grant and me.
The two of us were a lot alike and a lot different. The parts that were alike is where the battle was. We had both been gifted, smart, golden children, and as a result, Grant could never take no for an answer and neither could I. So when I started to take charge, it didn’t sit well with him. He was the flamboyant, free-spirit type, and to retaliate he started painting me as a square.
This was also around the same time that I began my “briefings.” I’d have the three of us sit down, especially before the Warner Brothers record, and get focused on what we were going to talk about to the press. That was a sore spot for Grant. (In retrospect, though, it was visionary—now bands develop their talking points and even do media training.) In one briefing, I wanted to discuss what I knew was going to come, the backlash due to moving to a major. I said to the other guys, “Can we all sit down and make a conscious effort to stay on course?”
Grant said, as if to be a clever cat, “Should we talk about being gay?”
I just looked at him and said, “That’s not really what I’m talking about here. We just jumped from an indie to a major, let’s get this straight.”
And I know he didn’t like that. His response was along the lines of “Why don’t you do all the fucking interviews and put words in people’s mouths?” That’s the dynamic that was now in full effect. I’m trying to steer the band, keep it focused, but it felt like Grant never missed an opportunity to be contrary. And if it weren’t me proposing these briefings and business meetings, it would probably be a Warner employee.
I was becoming even more single-minded about what I wanted the band to achieve, and I thought we could best do it by being professional, responsible, and accountable. On the other hand, Grant was becoming even more of a free spirit. And between the heavier workload and the new label arrangement, I had neither the time nor the interest to include Greg in serious discussions. Ultimately, Grant and I were the songwriters, and we were dealing with the creative and business sides of the band on a daily
basis. We had our frictions, but both of us knew that this was our destiny, so we needed to agree on the major objectives and move forward in unison.
Thankfully, working with Warner was less adversarial than anyone had anticipated. We had instant allies in the alternative marketing department: Mary Hyde, Jo Lenardi, Cathy Lincoln, and, later, Julie Panebianco. Steven Baker was our product manager, and he worked with Grant on the visual side of our projects. I worked on the audio side with Howie Weinberg at Masterdisk in New York. Greg was free to pursue his newest passion: playing a daily round of golf in rural Minnesota.
But our biggest booster and ally at Warner was Karin Berg. Karin was also able to focus on bands’ strong suits, as opposed to picking apart things that just didn’t matter. She had a bigger picture in mind, which was good because as an A&R person, it was her job to champion her bands to all the different departments of the label.
In late 1985 we began recording what would become Candy Apple Grey, our first album for Warner. Karin Berg was virtually the only Warner employee who stopped by the studio. Sadly, my memories of those songs are colored by a verbal hand grenade that Grant directed squarely at me. During the wrap-up of the sessions, he and I were alone in the large recording room of Nicollet’s Studio A, and out of nowhere he blurted, “I’m going to have the first fucking single or else!” I thought, well, you don’t have to tear my head off about it. It was clear he had written the singles on that record.
I had written an abrasive opener in “Crystal,” a conscious attempt to maintain some kind of punk credibility. If the old fans put the record on and it began with some sweet little love song, they’d be gone. If we could at least hold them for the first three minutes, maybe they’d listen to the whole thing. (And yet the converse was also true: the abrasiveness would probably turn off a lot of new fans.) After that: Grant’s “Don’t Want to Know If You Are Lonely,” great song, first single. “I Don’t Know for Sure,” not a great song. Grant’s “Sorry Somehow,” great song, second single. Then, my two “downer” acoustic-based songs, “Too Far Down” and “Hardly Getting Over It.” Ironically, these songs have endured well beyond the first single off many albums I have written and recorded. To this day they’re two of the strongest songs in my repertoire. One key line of “Hardly Getting Over It” is “What do I do when they die?” That’s how death was for me—I didn’t know how to deal with it. In third grade I didn’t attend the funeral of my classmate; when my grandfather died, my parents didn’t tell me until weeks after the fact.