See a Little Light

by Bob Mould

  But back on planet Earth, I didn’t have a record deal. I talked with Karin Berg and we came to the conclusion that she shouldn’t sign me to a solo deal, no matter how bad or good the music was. This was a concerted effort not only to divorce myself from my past, but also not to live off of my past accomplishments. Had I pursued a future with Warner Brothers, everyone would have said I quit the band to have a solo deal. It was the wise move, even though it would have been very comfortable for me to continue working at Warner.

  One sunny summer afternoon, the Soul Asylum guys and their manager, Dave Ayers, all came up to the farm. I hadn’t seen them in ages and a lot had changed—I was a far cry from the howling alcoholic of years past. They all walked around the property, checking out the buildings. I played a song or two for them, and they appeared to like the music but were more concerned with getting back to town in time for a Minnesota Twins game. Dave pulled me aside and said, “We need to get together—come on down, I want to hear more of this music, if you don’t mind playing it. I won’t talk about it.” Later the following week, I went down to his apartment, played him most of the new stuff, and he sat there stunned.

  He said, “Have you ever heard of this guy Richard Thompson?”

  I said, “No, who is that?”

  He pulled out I Wanna See the Bright Lights Tonight and Shoot Out the Lights, two classic albums by Richard and Linda Thompson. He hands them to me and says, “I’m not going to say any more, just take these records and listen to them.” Once I got home and listened to them, I got really self-conscious. I was like, Uh-oh, I think I see what Dave’s talking about here: the Celtic melodies and chord progressions, the dark, introspective lyrics, the nasal singing voice. My new music was similar to Richard’s, despite my being unaware of his work. But I didn’t think for a minute about changing what I was doing—if people made the comparison, so be it. I had faith in my new musical course.

  To stay engaged with the current scene, I cofounded Singles Only Label with Steve Fallon and WFMU DJ Nick Hill. The 45 was a cheap and easy way to give new musicians exposure. And, of course, I loved my jukebox singles when I was a kid, so this project was a natural for me. We put out great singles by Moby, R. Stevie Moore, and years later, a collaboration by Kurt Cobain and William Burroughs. Soon, the 45 single would become the coin of the indie rock realm.

  Earlier this year, I met Anton Fier through Steve Fallon. Anton had been in consideration for producing the follow-up to Warehouse, and had drummed in bands like the Feelies, the Lounge Lizards, and his own band, the Golden Palominos. Anton’s style was rooted in classic rock drummers like John Bonham and Ginger Baker. It was expressive, yet very methodical in how it advanced a song. Anton offered his services—“If you need a drummer, let me know. And I have a bass player that might work too, a guy I played with in Cleveland—he’s in Pere Ubu.”

  I said, “Tony Maimone? I love Pere Ubu, I saw them at the Walker Art Center in 1979. I sat there in the front row for both shows, walked around the stage talking to everybody in the band. That sounds really great, thank you.”

  That summer I went back to Hoboken to visit Steve. Anton wanted to hear the music I was working on, so he rode back with me in my pickup truck from Hoboken to the farm. It was a two-day drive, it was ninety-five degrees, and we were riding through Ohio and Indiana with the windows down, no air-conditioning. Anton was a dry-cleaned guy—all pressed suits and crisp white shirts—but the only way he could keep his hair in place on the ride was to wear this dirty baseball cap of mine backward. This was not his style at all. Once we arrived at the farm, we spent a day and a half listening through the music I’d been writing. Anton had kind words for the work, and his measured praise was an additional boost for me.

  At the same time, Linda Clark was shopping the demos to various labels. The first demos included “Wishing Well,” “If You’re True,” “Sinners and Their Repentances,” and “Poison Years.” Interest built at Atlantic, Geffen, and Virgin. Late that summer we sent out the second batch, which included “Walls in Time” and “Brasilia Crossed with Trenton.” By October it was clear I would have a new major label home.

  A&R guy and longtime fan Mark Williams, previously of A&M, along with label copresidents Jeff Ayeroff and Jordan Harris, brought me to Virgin Records. The Virgin deal was much better than the Warner deal—two albums firm, with three single-album options. A $225,000 advance for the first album, $250,000 for the second, and additional escalations for subsequent options. I could have bought all the cars I wanted.

  * * *

  In December 1988 I began recording Workbook. Anton, Tony Maimone, and I recorded the basic tracks at Prince’s Minneapolis studio, Paisley Park, with Lou Giordano as engineer. Lou had a very difficult five days—Anton was being unduly hard on him because we weren’t getting the exact drum sound Anton wanted. I’m not certain why Anton was challenging Lou so much, but it was constant. One extreme instance was in regard to a “drum punch”; there were two bars in a song that Anton wanted to record over. To do so with drums is very difficult on both player and engineer; it takes an incredible amount of trust, skill, and timing. The drums took up eighteen channels of audio on the twenty-four-track tape, and punching in and out on that many tracks at once is a major chore. “Get me in at the top of bar sixty-one and out before the downbeat of bar sixty-three,” Anton told Lou, adding ominously, “and if you erase the downbeat of bar sixty-three, I’ll kill you.”

  The last day or two, we were in Prince’s main room, working on bass overdubs. Tony got his bass parts finished fairly quickly. Outside of Sheila E.’s drums and Prince’s scarves on the wall, Paisley had an antiseptic vibe, a blend of airport terminal and hospital waiting room, complete with a twenty-foot-high by two-foot-diameter birdcage, presumably for a dove.

  I was done with Paisley Park, and in January 1989 my longtime stage crew member Bill Batson drove all my equipment from Pine City to rural Willow, New York, near Woodstock, where renowned jazz musician/composer Carla Bley had a studio in her home called Grog Kill Studio. I hired engineer Steve Haigler, who had worked with producer Gil Norton on the Pixies. Steve and I hunkered down in the middle of the woods for three weeks of recording.

  I had all my guitars, amplifiers, and other equipment set up in the live room. I was surrounded by vintage microphones and warm wood surfaces. As I sang and played, I looked out the large studio windows onto a pastoral January landscape of snow, trees, and more snow. Other than the music I was making, everything was still.

  This was my first major recording project after being tied to a band for eight years, and I had this incredible freedom to express my thoughts in any way possible. But I also had the responsibility to make a great album that would highlight my rhythm section, as well as prove that I was capable of much more than recreating my past or skating on my laurels, that I was a serious artist in my own right.

  I brought in New York–based cellist Jane Scarpantoni, who had recently worked on REM’s Green album. I sent Jane my work tapes, which laid out the string arrangements in audio form—I’d never learned to notate with sheet music. Jane loved the arrangements, and beyond those parts I gave her latitude for improvisation, most notably on “Brasilia Crossed with Trenton” and “Poison Years.” Jane went on to perform or record with many notable artists, including Nirvana, Sheryl Crow, and Bruce Springsteen.

  Those weeks of singing, playing guitars, and recording cello at Grog Kill were exhilarating. The cellos brought the music to life, adding a new voice, a depth that had never existed in my work. All the time on the farm, the emotional investment, the months of solitude—it was all coming to a head and I could see the album coming together. I was shedding my former skin, forging a new sound, and I was quite pleased with what was on tape.

  In February Haigler and I went to Blue Jay Studio in Carlisle, Massachusetts, to mix the album with assistance from house engineer Mark Tanzer. This was the biggest record I had made to date, in terms of arrangements, the sophistication of songwriting
, and studio costs. I was thrilled with the final result. My first solo album was done and dusted, and I hoped that people would give it a fair listen—and not simply hold it up against my previous band’s daunting discography.

  The title Workbook was influenced by Chet Atkins’s 1961 album Workshop. The cover of Workshop shows Atkins, wearing a sweater, holding his guitar, appearing to be working in his elaborate home studio. The back cover photo of Workbook is a reference to that photo, with me wearing a sweater too. That photo was taken in the granary on the farm in Pine City. I was sitting in the middle of the ground floor where the grain trucks used to back in to catch the cured hops that were poured down a funnel from the attic. Mike designed the Joseph Cornell–inspired memory box cover, which I still look at every day. Among the artifacts in the memory box were small shells, arrowheads, and antique typeset pieces he’d found in various places. The centerpiece was Jesus removed from his cross.

  I love the liner notes to the Atkins album, which were written by David Halberstam, who went on to become a legendary Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist: “This is the lonely man’s room and Atkins when he is working is a lonely man. ‘Can’t take my time in the studio. We’re making money there and when you are making money you can’t really take your time.’” I sure could relate to that.

  I was very aware that I’d been in a band that made a lot of great records and left a deep impression. I told everyone at the new label, please, no mention of my old band, no sticker on the record, let’s downplay it. I was taking away my own ace card, the one thing that could have made it easier. I was starting over.

  I had probably been the first of my generation of American underground musicians to step away from a well-known band to begin a solo career. I wasn’t aware of that at the time, but I think I made the move with grace. I sensed there was a part of the punk audience that would feel betrayed, but it was important to move beyond the sound of the past eight years. In the generation prior, Pete Townshend’s Empty Glass would have been the model—the Who were a bombastic group, but Pete tackled difficult emotional matter with a more mature view.

  The album got very nice reviews, which was a real relief. And when I heard that Rolling Stone was going to give it the lead review, and a glowing one, I knew things were going all right. “The road to success and maturity can indeed be treacherous for anyone who ventures onto it,” wrote critic David Browne, “but Workbook is proof that every once in a while, it’s worth it.”

  Critics and fans have often assumed that many of the lyrics of Workbook are aimed at my former band mates. But the words were mostly stream of consciousness, although inside those streams are rivulets of bitterness. The only song that consciously spoke to the breakup was “If You’re True,” which didn’t make the album. Virgin eventually released a live version recorded at a May 1989 show in Chicago; the words spoke directly to the final year of that band. A sample stanza:

  No more friends that lie and hide

  No more games to play to get to know the answer

  No more lazy days, unproductive days

  Inspiration haze that every artist seems to know

  * * *

  For the first time in my life, I handed over almost every aspect of the business to other people. Linda Clark and Rick Bates were managing my career. At their suggestion I was now represented by renowned music attorney Alan Mintz. They hired a large accounting firm to handle my finances, which was a big deal for me—I’d never let go of the checkbook before. Now I was free to be purely a bandleader, the focal point of all praise and criticism.

  But if I had been managing myself, I might not have followed the label’s suggestion to spend $75,000 on the video for “See a Little Light.” All the numbers were at least double anything I had ever spent before. The album advance was also double, but still, the video was crazy expensive. Videos were 50 percent charged back to the artist, which increased my debt beyond the advance.

  I put together a band of expensive hired guns to do a limited run of dates and present the record: Anton, Tony, and Chris Stamey (formerly of the dB’s) on guitar and synth guitar. Anton had toured with Herbie Hancock, so he had very high standards. He came in with a list. He needed dry cleaning and a nice hotel—not the best, but much nicer than anything I was accustomed to. Anton brought his digital recording rig in two large flight cases. I do things on a most-favored-nations basis, so Tony and Chris got whatever Anton got, and up the budget went. The salaries were pretty high for a small club tour as well. All this was new to me, but this was a different caliber of musician I was working with and I wanted them to be happy.

  The first show was at Maxwell’s, and I was a complete fucking nervous wreck. It was my first show since everything fell apart in Columbia, Missouri. Thankfully Maxwell’s was a familiar stage for me. Steve Fallon kept me calm as best he could. Before the show I was coming unraveled, much like the Gildersleeves show back in 1983, but for different reasons. Back then I felt invincible and wanted to make sure no one forgot the show. But in 1989 I was out of my comfort zone, uncertain how the band would sound, even unsure as to how I should portray myself onstage. New musicians, new guitar, nothing felt the same; for the crowd, nothing looked or sounded the same. All my identifying marks were erased, and it was my first step toward creating a new public identity as a musician. Even my physical appearance was different—I’d lost a lot of weight in 1988 from a combination of stress and not eating road food, so my pudgy, rounded features were gone.

  Walking onstage that night, it was the strangest feeling, as if I were trying to fill my own big shoes. Maxwell’s had been the site of several classic shows in my past, and here I was going back to the scene, so to speak. But it turned out the worry was all for naught—the set went well, the band played great, and the crowd was behind me all the way. All the precision drills that Anton hammered into us paid off. It would have been hard for the four of us to fall apart on that small stage. Even still, in the basement dressing room after the set, I started hyperventilating from the stress; I must have looked like Dennis Hopper’s character in Blue Velvet with an oxygen mask strapped to my face.

  So we continued on this short club tour, and the shows went pretty well. The press kept getting better, my confidence grew, and I became comfortable in my new incarnation as singer–songwriter–band leader. We went back out in the fall, doing a full loop around North America, but without Stamey. Chris is a great guy, but the setting was too loud for him. He was very honest about it. In rehearsals I wanted him to get louder and turn up, because I kept turning up, getting more physical. I told him we needed to step it up and hit people with it. He said no. I said, “What do you mean?” Then he pointed a finger toward one of his ears and said, “Alex Chilton took this ear, and you’re not taking this one,” the pointing to his other ear.

  After that comment, it was as if I was looking at a calendar in my mind, thinking, It’s seventeen days until Chris gets sent home. Like a prisoner putting Xs over the dates as they pass, waiting to get out. It just wasn’t going to work. Make no mistake: Chris is a very good player. But after hearing his concern, which was more than valid, I’m thinking, No, this is only going to get louder as time goes on. I didn’t hold it against Chris, but I knew he had no future in the band.

  During this tour I performed my first-ever solo acoustic shows at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California. I’d seen Rosanne Cash perform there the year before and was a bit intimidated by the history of the room. I quickly got over it and turned in two solid shows that evening. I was learning on the spot: how do I make this voice and solitary guitar sound like the raging storm? What I learned: if the song is good, it will resonate, no matter what the orchestration. This was the first time I had no distortion in which to wrap my sound; I had to fill in the percussion with my playing; I had to sing clearly. It was a bit frightening at first, alone onstage delivering my words and music, but once I found my footing, it felt very comfortable—as if the words were meant to be delivered in this alm
ost-solemn setting. At the time, I didn’t see it, but this was a formative night for me, and the experience would be one to stand on.

  * * *

  Back in 1988 Mike had begun working for a scenic company down in St. Paul, designing and building sets for TV commercials. He rented a small loft in a building in Lowertown, St. Paul, so he wouldn’t have to drive back and forth every night. At the time I thought that made sense. As it was, we only saw each other a couple of times a week—and in my mind, we were still a couple. I had been faithful throughout the relationship. But I was getting so busy, I wasn’t noticing that he was slowly detaching. We were drifting apart.

  Mike had a beat-up pickup truck and was missing payments on it. I happened to be standing in the parking lot of the scenic company where he worked in St. Paul when the bank came to repossess his truck. I ran and got my checkbook out of my truck and wrote a check for whatever the amount was. But when I told him what I did, Mike was pissed off and I couldn’t figure out why.

  As 1989 wore on, the disintegration continued. I was losing my mind on the farm. There was nothing left for me—I’d simply worn the place out. Then the house started getting overrun by box elder bugs. By late spring 1989, they covered the south-facing walls of the house. Infestation. I couldn’t get rid of them; they were everywhere. It was like a swarm of red locusts. I took it as a sign that it was time to move on.

  After a business trip to California, I had a panic attack about flying home to Minnesota. I got all the way to the gate and flipped out. I had convinced myself the plane was going to go down, which is weird since I’d flown for years with no fear whatsoever. It was probably all about the prospect of heading back not just into my hermit-like existence in Pine City, but back to a relationship that I knew in my heart of hearts was broken. I ended up staying in Burbank an extra day to compose myself.