See a Little Light

by Bob Mould

  I stopped, looked at him, and said, “I’m right there with you.”

  He was like, “Wow.”

  “David, I’m a wreck,” I said. “I don’t even know if I’m coming or going. The last two years have been so busy, I don’t even know where I am. I’m completely wiped. What we went through trying to make that record, all the shit this year, I’m right there with you. How do we want to do this?”

  “How much more work have we got?”

  “We have the rest of North America, home for the holidays, then the one week in Japan. Can you at least give me the stuff that we’re booked for?”

  “Absolutely,” David said. “That’s what I signed on for, and now that I know there’s an end date, when I go back to Amy, everything will be fine.”

  After that the rest of the year was a breeze. All the pressure had been lifted. We finished the US tour, took a break for the holidays, and in January 1995 convened in Los Angeles for one day to shoot blue-screen performance footage for the “Gee Angel” video. Immediately after filming, we flew to Japan, played seven shows in eight days—going up and down the entire country—and had a great time. The pressure was completely off.

  This trip, the Japanese-food test came in the form of a small ceramic container filled with hot oil, with stuff floating on top of the oil. You would eat the floating substance with a strainer. It was bad enough I had to say no to the drink, the act of which can be taken as offensive, so I couldn’t really say no to any of the food stunts.

  They asked how it was. I politely replied, “It is a… different taste.”

  “It’s whale sperm,” I was informed. “Very good for the libido.”

  I thought for a second, and then pretended to be grossed out, seeing as the record company folks were heterosexuals.

  The tour wasn’t all giggles. We visited the Peace Museum in Hiroshima, a depressing and moving experience that reminded me of my 1987 trip to Dachau with Mike Covington.

  After Hiroshima we flew north to the island of Hokkaido to play in Sapporo, where the 1972 Winter Olympics had been held. This was in January, and even though the rest of the country has temperate weather, almost like San Francisco, we were coming in for our landing with a blizzard going on, a total whiteout. Actually, the landing turned out to be smooth as silk. Once we got settled in Sapporo, the four of us broke off from the promoter reps and went out to a birthday dinner for a friend of a fan who had followed the entire Japanese tour. It was one of the best meals I’ve ever had—the fish and vegetables were so fresh, and it was unbelievable. Nobody spoke English except for us, so we had to order in Japanese. No stunt food was served.

  The last Sugar show was in Sendai. Only David, his wife, Amy, and Kevin and I knew the band was over. Malcolm didn’t know. I told him we were going to take a really long break.

  David and I had made the call to keep the decision to ourselves. The press campaign in 1994 had lasted long enough for me, particularly with the Spin story, and I just wanted to finish the tour without another round of uncomfortable questions from the press. But it wasn’t right to keep it from Malcolm. I made a bad call.

  After Hüsker Dü broke up, I wondered, Does anybody out there have a handbook for how to do this? Does anybody have a handbook for how to end a really intense relationship? What’s the proper way? Do I tell people everything they shouldn’t hear? Do I shake hands and walk away? To this day I’ve found no good way to end a band. People get bruised and feelings get hurt. Sometimes people become vindictive.

  I tend to be identified most with Hüsker Dü, because that’s where I started. But few know the half of how much fun I had with Sugar. Hüsker Dü was an eight-year ground war that started with me and some guy smoking Thai stick in the basement of a record store, and ended with that guy’s mom suggesting we should only play on weekends. Sugar, in twelve months, went from three men building a stage extension out of road cases for a punk rock show in Morgantown, West Virginia, to playing gigantic European festivals with Metallica. Which part of my life do you think I enjoyed more? Sugar was intense. The band was not enormous, but we were mighty close to the top. We had a good view of the valley below.

  After that final show in Sendai, David and Malcolm flew back home to the States while Kevin and I stayed in Japan for an extra three days. We woke up the morning after the Sendai show to the news of the Great Hanshin earthquake, which killed over six thousand people and caused massive damage in the Kobe area. Despite this tragedy, Kevin and I continued with our vacation as best we could. We didn’t talk about the end of Sugar—we just shopped, ate, and traveled with friends. We loved Japan, and it was a nice way to unwind before heading back to Texas, where Kevin was all I really had.

  CHAPTER 18

  Thinking back to the summer of 1991 and the European and Australian solo tours, through returning from Japan in early 1995, I’m hard pressed to remember a moment longer than two hours when Kevin and I were not in each other’s company. We were deeply in love, there was a greater good, and there weren’t a lot of explosions. We were alike in some ways, but the biggest difference was that Kevin had a calmer head than me. If I started to vent about something on a business level, he would listen, repackage it, and go defuse it. If I got upset at a certain aspect of a marketing campaign, Kevin would go to John Hammond and make it work. If I went ballistic over a misquote in the British press, Kevin would go to Creation and arrange for a redaction. Had it been me dealing with people, in my agitated moments, things might have been uncomfortable. Maybe that’s why record companies don’t like dealing directly with artists.

  My business philosophy boils down to three basic points: don’t promise what you can’t deliver, know what you’re worth, and show up on time. I imparted this philosophy to Kevin (and others who worked with me) more through deeds than words, and mostly just left him to execute the work. Starting in May 1992, Kevin was the one keeping track of the schedules and details. I was directing traffic, and he was alongside me the entire time. We were rising together, eating together, working together, and sleeping together. Everything we did, we did as one. We were glued together for the better part of four years.

  It wasn’t like Kevin built tables, then all of a sudden walked into this position. He grew up around the Athens music scene. He knew the lay of the land. He might not have known the specifics of how to get the business done, but he learned quickly. He was a much better “people person” than me; he had the charm that goes along with good looks, and a solid product to sell.

  But the workload in those three years was unrelenting. There were many days when both of us rolled out of bed, headed immediately for the office, and didn’t leave our desks for at least twelve hours. On the road it was constant movement, endless requests for interviews and appearances, and exhaustion from the physical wear and tear of traveling the globe on a regular basis. There was no off-season, no vacation, and the constant topic of conversation was the task at hand.

  There were times when our relationship could have turned destructive, due to the complete overlap of work life and home life. Kevin could have his moments of anger as well. But we took good care of each other, for the most part. We thought the world of each other. And we were both long-term relationship guys.

  Still, the smart money says one shouldn’t work with one’s significant other. And sure enough, work had begun to take a toll on our relationship.

  Mike Covington and I never really worked together, so we didn’t have those inherent stresses and strains. The only overlaps were few: a couple of video shoots, a failed photo shoot at the farm in 1988, and the Workbook art box, which I adore to this day.

  Over the years, I’d lost touch with Mike. He sent me a letter in early 1990 expressing his sorrow for all that happened and how he never meant for the relationship to end so poorly. It was very thoughtful of him to send the letter, but by then I was over it. When I’m done with something, I’m done with it. When Hüsker Dü was done, I walked away and never looked back. When Mike and I were done,
I walked away and didn’t look back. Not looking back is a recurring theme in my life—for better and for worse.

  The one time Mike and I reconnected in person was in the spring of 1993. He was living in Atlanta building customized boutique furniture, and I was on tour performing at the International Ballroom. He brought me one of his creations: a hand-weathered, whitewashed CD case that stood thirty-six inches high. The front panel was constructed out of a recycled plantation shutter. I was so proud of him, that he had created this beautiful piece of work, and thankful that he had given it to me.

  Mike said, “I think I just met your boyfriend. Is that him over there, the tall blond guy?”

  I said, “Yeah, that’s Kevin.”

  “Wow! You go.”

  I was like, “Yeah, he’s great. Thank you.” That’s the last time I saw Michael Allen Covington.

  * * *

  In doing research for this book, I found Mike’s obituary online in the newspaper from Halifax County, Virginia, where Mike’s family still lived. It was very plain: “Michael Allen Covington, 40, of Atlanta, died January 29, 2003, at his home. Services will be held at South Boston Baptist Church, Windy Hills Cemetery.”

  That’s pretty much it. There were no details, no cause of death listed. Steve Fallon last saw Mike in 2001 and said it looked like he’d been burning it pretty hard on both ends. It shook me badly to learn that Mike was dead. It was all I could think about for weeks. I thought about our time together, mostly the good times. Sure, it ended badly, but it takes two people to end something. Mainly I was stunned to realize my first lover and I had drifted so far apart that it took me six years to find out he had died.

  * * *

  Five weeks after the last Sugar show, I played a run of solo dates in my strongest towns. There were two shows I remember well. February 26 was the second of two successive nights at First Avenue, and within ten minutes I had completely lost my voice. So I had the sound person set up another vocal microphone, and I asked audience members to come up and help me sing. It was great that people took the chance to come up onstage and sing with the singer, so to speak. Those fans really listened hard to the words, knew them well, and obviously felt them deeply. It was a wonderful way for the fans to salvage what would have been a miserable show.

  The other memorable show was on March 4, at the Academy Theater in New York. The room was packed and steamy, the crowd was enthusiastic, and things were clicking. I finished my set, walked off to the wings, and waited for the din to get loud enough to return for an encore.

  Suddenly a stagehand grabbed me and said, “You have someone upstairs who wants to see you—Pete Townshend.” Without missing a beat, I said, “Could you go up and tell him that I’m not quite done yet?” I finished the show, headed up the narrow staircase behind the stage, and walked to my dressing room to meet my distinguished guest.

  I was soaked with sweat and still charged up from the performance, just starting to process the fact that I was now meeting one of my formative artistic influences. In deference, I had to dial that energy back so I could have a civilized interaction with him. Once I downshifted and felt a comfortable energy between us, I began to take notice; he appeared younger than his years would belie and had a familiar focus in his eyes, the knowing gaze of someone who holds the answers.

  Pete said, “I’m a big fan of yours.” I was caught off guard for a moment, then responded, “I know your body of work as well, and I’ve been a big fan of yours since childhood.” He started naming off some of my songs he liked, “Celebrated Summer” in particular. Pete was accompanied by Michael Cerveris, who was playing the title role in the Broadway production of the Who’s rock opera Tommy. We all talked about the Broadway show, my new album, and projects that Pete was working on. After a few minutes, we wrapped up our casual meeting with a typical “Let’s stay in touch.”

  It was the high point of the tour, but after the last solo date, April 13 in Boston, I was back home in the big, beautiful house in Austin—and left completely to my own devices. I was in my own head space and it wasn’t always the healthiest one. I was usually alone in one of two rooms in the house, isolated and ignoring what was going on around me. One of those rooms was the office, where I was spending way too much time on the computer; AOL, SimCity, and Usenet binary porn had infiltrated my life. When I wasn’t distracted by the flashing pixels, I was in my studio room, writing a record about the end of a relationship—and it may have been about my relationship with Kevin.

  With no Sugar duties, Kevin didn’t have much to keep him occupied. He’d sit in the front den with his friends smoking pot and listening to music all day, and I simply didn’t care. Kevin and I were at opposite ends of the house, rarely coming together beyond dinner, sleep, and sex. Perhaps it was a by-product of having been coupled for five years and joined at the hip for at least three of those five. We’d begun to create separate lives, and we weren’t keeping each other apprised of, or interested in, our individual situations. I don’t know if it was the beginning of some unspoken yet mutually assured destruction or a simple case of relationship negligence, but I lay claim to half the blame.

  I was composing this dark breakup record, and once again, here was the prescience—write it and it shall be so. In years past I played everything for Kevin, even works in progress. This time, as I was writing the record, I kept him away.

  Kevin started spending even more time away from me and befriended Austin musician Alejandro Escovedo. Al was a pleasant enough guy, but beyond being musicians, he and I had nothing in common. I didn’t approve of the friendship, but I also didn’t get in the way of it. When Kevin wasn’t burning it down in the front den, he was in South Austin with Al’s kids. Kevin was making a whole new social life separate from me. The distance between us grew as 1995 went on. I turned away in isolation, and the only person I was really communicating with was my engineer, Jim Wilson.

  Jim would come by the house to listen to the demos, and he loved both the songs and the homespun recording approach. He’d say, “Don’t overthink it, just do it.” At the time, I was listening to artists like Sebadoh and Guided by Voices. There was an immediacy, charm, and simplicity to their lo-fi recordings that made me realize I didn’t need to always spend weeks recording single parts, which can sometimes suck the life out of a song. I’d overthought myself into a hole with FU:EL. The idea that the first time is the best time wasn’t so much a discovery as a rediscovery—after all, it was the way I’d made records for the first eight years of my career.

  A perfect example would be “Thumbtack.” I had the words for the song pretty much written. Then I sat down with the lyric sheet, my Yamaha twelve-string, and a DAT machine, hit record, and “stumbled” through a few chords. As I opened my mouth to say the first line (“Here’s the town we live in…”), I unconsciously settled my left hand on a first-position B-5 chord, almost randomly setting the key for the song. The next five minutes were completely improvised, and the version that made the album was that first and only attempt at recording—and, in fact, writing—the song.

  As the years continued, I further explored that elusive spot, that magic moment lying between unconscious creativity and conscious performance.

  During my solo album recording sessions with Jim, we spent a lot of time detailing sounds and ideas, using different amplifiers and miking techniques, and I learned a lot from this experimental yet methodical approach. I programmed the kick and snare patterns on my Roland R-8 and played along on cymbals and toms. After that I began piling on the remaining instruments and vocals. Between experimentation and recording, we spent about six weeks at Cedar Creek. It was a lot of time, but we had great fun—more than I was having at home.

  The emotional content of the songs was a lot to contend with, but Jim’s upbeat personality kept the sessions from turning into a wrist-slitting party. I kept people away from the project without contemplating what might result from my hermit-like behavior. Kevin is out of the loop. Emotionally speaking, the writing is
on the wall.

  Jim and I spent two weeks mixing the tracks at Carriage House in Stamford. Once the record was mixed and mastered, I went back to Austin. I took the CD into the front den and played it for Kevin. This was the first time he was hearing these songs, even though they’d been written three rooms away. When I’d composed this music, I wasn’t sure of what was happening elsewhere in the house, but the silence and indifference resonated throughout our home, informing my doubts, my fears, and my perhaps-unconscious desire to end something. After his initial listen, Kevin had no comment.

  Kevin was managing Vic Chesnutt but earning no money. And for most of 1995, I didn’t mind—and I didn’t care. I never once went to him and said, “Why don’t you help out with the bills?” Instead of dealing with Kevin head-on, I was funneling my feelings into my music. It was really good music, but once again, I was minimizing chaos in my daily life, avoiding confrontation, and accepting the shaky status quo. I’d mastered this trait as a child, and now I was doing it with Kevin.

  In December of 1995, I traveled to Syracuse to see my brother and his wife and kids for a few days. Neither Kevin nor I had cell phones yet. I couldn’t get hold of him for two days, which had me both bothered and worried. Normally, when either of us traveled, we had our ritual, our usual times to talk, and we talked a lot. I didn’t know how to reach him, which showed me the fracture was deeper than I’d realized.

  The night before I was going to fly home, I was asleep at my brother’s house. I was woken from my sleep by a psychic jolt that shook me to the core. I jumped out of bed and had a moment of sheer panic and terror. This wasn’t the feeling of waking from a bad dream, but the feeling of a lightning bolt, tearing and exploding everything as it passed through my being. I was in a cold sweat and never got back to sleep that night. I was scheduled to leave the next afternoon, but after this experience, I opted to take a morning flight. I had a strong sense that, by switching flights and not mentioning anything to Kevin, I was about to get my answer. I arrived at the house that afternoon, and a short while later, Kevin showed up with some guy I had never seen before. He was startled to find me at home.