by Bob Mould
In the summer of 2000, Stephen Trask asked if I would play lead guitar for the soundtrack of the film version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. I’d known Stephen since 1997, originally through his band Cheater. The band began collaborating with actor/writer John Cameron Mitchell, and the marriage of John’s transsexual-themed monologues and Stephen’s words and music gave birth to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, an amazing and touching musical about a fictional rock band led by a transgender East German singer named Hedwig. The original stage show opened to great acclaim in early 1998; over the course of two years, I spent a fair number of Tuesday nights riding my bike up the river to the Jane Street Theatre to see the show, then going to dinner at Florent with Stephen, John, and various members of the cast and crew.
When the show was adapted for the big screen, I was honored to be included in the recording of the film soundtrack. I spent a week at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, learning and recording my parts. Under Stephen’s direction, I rose to the occasion. Not only was it my first time as a “hired gun” studio player, but through the Hedwig experience, I gained a new understanding and appreciation of the transgender community. Before, I hadn’t really understood why people would want to change their gender. Hedwig is a simple allegory about being transgender, and it shines a light on how complicated it is. A lot of times people aren’t that comfortable in their own skin. I could relate to that.
I was feeling good, working again, and in the midst of it all I was turning forty. My fortieth birthday party was a highlight of my year. I organized a three-stage party for forty people—cocktails at the loft, dinner at a wonderful little Argentinean restaurant a block away, then on to Barracuda for more cocktails. The three settings and the guests—musical peers, longtime personal friends, gay neighborhood acquaintances—made for a nice snapshot of my life in 2000. I would have kept it that way if I could, but life doesn’t always stay in focus.
In late 2000 Kevin and I started having problems with our upstairs neighbors. They made lots of noise early in the morning, and I couldn’t sleep or hear myself think. I was starting to lose my mind. We appealed to the co-op board but got no satisfaction. We felt handcuffed, and the acrimony turned into fullscale anger and resentment. Late one night Kevin was walking Domino around the block, and upon returning to the building entrance, he came face to face with the upstairs tenant. The guy was drunk and had left the keys to both the apartment and his Ferrari in the lock of the building door. He wobbled back toward his car, thinking he had dropped his keys on the ground. When he wasn’t looking, Kevin took the key ring out of the door, walked inside the building, and calmly dropped them all down the elevator chute. When the upstairs tenants were being especially noisy, I would blast music as loud as possible, going so far as to face the speakers directly into the ceiling. Our behavior was terrible at times, but all of our buttons had been pushed.
Kevin’s parent clock was ticking loudly again, and if we were to have a family, we figured Atlanta might be a better place to do it. The cost of living was much cheaper; also, Kevin’s siblings and parents lived in and around Atlanta, and their support would be invaluable. We also had two potential surrogate mothers in mind, both of whom lived in the Atlanta area. Deanna Mann was a lifelong friend of Kevin’s, a big-boned gal with a sharp wit, a creative streak, and dozens of tattoos. Lisa Pearl was a friend of mine from my WCW days—petite, demure, and artistic, she had been one of the in-house photographers. The plan was to artificially inseminate the mother—we’d mix our semen and the strongest sperm would win—and keep the birth mothers involved in raising the child, at least as much as everyone felt comfortable with.
But even as we were making these plans, deep down I wasn’t so sure Kevin and I should start a family. First, with my family history, I couldn’t see myself being a decent parent. Second, the lifestyle Kevin and I were leading at the time wasn’t geared toward the stability I felt a child would need. Third, Kevin’s marijuana smoking was a real roadblock for me; I just wasn’t sure that would work as a parent. I share the blame for not bringing that up—once again, by not voicing my concerns I helped to create an even more difficult situation. I was just hoping that Kevin would realize, without any prompting from me, that we needed to make some major changes, both individually and collectively.
In early 2001 we put the Tribeca loft on the market. In the two years since we bought the loft, property values in Manhattan had increased substantially, so we priced it fairly high, hoping to make a healthy profit. But we couldn’t find any serious takers. Instead of lowering the price, we took the property off the market in June, after three months. We tabled moving to Atlanta for the time being.
On May 17 I went back to Bearsville Studios in Woodstock to do additional recording for what was to be the Modulate album. I worked for a week in a log cabin–type outpost with a large, open recording room, a kitchen area, an outdoor grill, and sleeping quarters. Kevin and I brought Domino, and our friend Micheal Brodbeck, who we knew from the Factory Café, came to visit for a few days. I took the recordings home and spent a few more months refining and detailing the mixes on the computer.
It was especially comforting to have Domino along for those sessions. His health was deteriorating, and I’m certain it meant a lot to him to have access to the woods and nature. It meant a lot to me too—he often spent long stretches of his days in my home studio room, either under the recording console or on a couch in a corner of the room, which was familiar and relaxing as I worked long hours by myself at Bearsville.
I was now using Auto-Tuned vocals and programmed beats and loops, and I was building songs from samples—a relatively synthetic sound that was completely different from anything I had done before. I knew the resulting albums (Modulate and Long Playing Grooves) might throw my core fans for a loop, but I was fascinated by this new approach and wasn’t worried about the commercial or financial consequences. This was a whole new ball game. I was following my muse and not the old road map that I’d tossed out the window of the tour bus in late 1998.
And I felt much more comfortable dealing with homosexual themes. This was clear in the first half of Modulate, which dealt with very specific parts of my gay being. The main sample in “Sunset Safety Glass” has a colorful backstory. Early one Sunday morning, I was riding my bike through the Meatpacking District and heard the sounds of South American music emanating from a loft window. That sound was the influence for the signature sample. Later I stopped on a street corner near a meat warehouse that smelled of fresh blood. I then noticed the passenger door of a semitruck swing open, and out came a short, muscled-up Italian-American guy, wiping his lips with a paper towel. That was interesting enough, but more fascinating was the fact that he was perfectly dressed—as a Catholic school-girl.
“Lost Zoloft” touches on same-sex spousal abuse, low self-esteem, and the Chelsea clone culture, phenomena I’d observed many times in my community over the past few years. “Semper Fi” is based on my interest in gay military porn, which set dreamlike scenes where the “grunt” has a convenient out: he was drunk, drugged, and unaware of what was happening.
The charms of military men figured into a nice friendship I struck up later that year with Mark Simpson, a British writer who had gained great notoriety from coining the term metrosexual. We’d communicated via e-mail earlier in the year, and when Mark arrived in New York to celebrate the US release of his book The Queen Is Dead, we met at Leshko’s in the East Village for lunch. Within ten minutes we found some common ground. We shared an attraction to guys in uniform, Marines in particular, so we hit it off well. At the end of his New York City visit, Mark spent the evening at the loft. As he was turning in for the night, I gave him a Dirk Yates military porn video to view in his room. Mark had heard about these videos but had never seen one. Mark remains a friend, often traveling with me around the UK when he’s not busy writing exposés on (and, once, participating in) said military porn industry.
* * *
In June of 2001, Grant Hart an
d Greg Norton were talking about suing SST for unpaid and delinquent royalties. A lawsuit of this size and scope in the state of California would be very expensive—around $50,000—just to file and set in motion. 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. The suit was never filed.
An incident of much greater consequence to me, however, happened on July 4. Late that night I found Kevin on the roof of our building, having an intimate moment with one of our straight, married neighbors. I had already been through one fracture, and as this second episode was happening—or the second one I knew about, anyway—all I could say to Kevin was, “What the fuck are you doing? What are you thinking?” I felt humiliated.
This was the moment I realized Kevin was never going to be completely faithful to me. He was never going to change his ways, and I’d begun to resign myself to that fact. This episode wasn’t as traumatic as the one in Austin in 1994, but it dragged up all my flight instincts—not flight from Kevin, but flight from the scene of the crime. It was embarrassing to stay there, in that building. I mean, what would I say to the other guy when we’re in the elevator? How do I face his wife and kids without saying something about it? So we went back to Atlanta in late July and once again began looking for a place to start a family.
You’re probably asking yourself: Bob, why are you staying with this guy? A stupid yet simple answer: I loved him and I didn’t know any better.
* * *
Domino was an intense dog. His passions were chasing tennis balls, which he could do for hours, and tug of war, which he never lost at. He was so strong we used to let him latch his jaws onto a broomstick or large branch, and we could grab the broomstick at the far ends, and spin him around so fast that he would levitate, flying like Superman.
In his last summer, I would bring Domino to the living room, lie with him on the carpet, and play tug of war with a soft rubber pull toy. He could barely hold himself steady, but the densely woven carpet offered him the most traction possible. I never let that dog lose a game of tug of war.
Domino’s final days were hard to watch. For years he’d suffered from autoimmune disorders and was on several medications. His quality of life had deteriorated to where he could hardly walk, but never once did that dog give up on staying as absolutely active as he was in his prime. Kevin fed him pills, managed his health records, scheduled the veterinary trips, and took the best care of him. Without question, Kevin was Domino’s main “parent.”
Incontinence set in, and Domino had no choice but to urinate on the wood floors, which were ten-inch-wide slats of barn siding. The urine would seep between the boards, down to the sound batting underneath, and began to foul the apartment. It didn’t matter. I tried to train him to urinate in the walk-in shower, but he only managed it one time.
In late August we made the difficult decision to have Domino put to sleep. He still had his incredible focus, but we could see in his eyes that he was failing and that his quality of life was fading to zero. We planned his exit with the vet and tried our best to make Domino’s last few days as comfortable as possible.
We put down Domino on September 1, 2001. When his final morning arrived, we cooked a meal of steak and eggs and served it on three dinner plates on the floor. He never wanted to sleep in the bed with us, but for us to get on the floor with him and eat together from the human plates, that was as good as it could get for him. We drove to the veterinary office on the Lower East Side and started the process.
The first shot was a placebo shot of water and sugar, mostly for us humans to process what was about to happen. With tennis ball locked firmly in mouth, Domino lay still on the cool floor, trusting his owners and the vet who had done wonders in extending his life. The first real shot didn’t finish him fully so the vet gave him a second shot, and within a few seconds, Domino’s eyes went blank. He was gone.
The vet wanted his body up on the steel examination table, so Kevin and I reached underneath him and lifted. Domino weighed fifty-five pounds; when we used to lift him, he had a way of making his body much heavier, as if gravity were holding him close to the ground. Now he was as light as a feather, so much so that we almost tossed him in the air. His spirit had left his body, and he was on to the next destination.
We asked that Domino be cremated and that his remains be mailed to us. Micheal Brodbeck met us at the vet and drove us home. Instead of cutting directly across Soho, Micheal took the long route: from the Lower East Side, down around the tip of Manhattan, up the West Side Highway, past the World Trade Center, to Canal Street.
A few days later, Kevin and I went to Atlanta to visit his family, our friends, and my remaining acquaintances from the WCW days, as well as to go house hunting. We stayed with Andy Mitchell, a mutual friend from the Athens music scene, and his then wife, Anne Hubbell. Kevin and I found a four-bedroom Craftsman-style house near Piedmont Park that was similar to our previous home in Austin. It seemed like we would finally find some peace and quiet after two years enduring the upstairs racket in Manhattan. We made a successful offer on the house on a Monday afternoon; we were set to sign a contract the following morning.
Tuesday morning, Kevin and I were sleeping in the guest room. From years of ringing in my ears after performing, I’d grown accustomed to sleeping with the television on, to provide background noise. Andy had already left for his job at CNN, so only the two of us and Anne were at the house. Anne came running into the room, yelling, “Turn the TV to CNN!” That’s when we saw the first tower on fire.
We were transfixed, trying to figure out what was happening. The answer came minutes later when we saw the second plane rip through the center of the other tower. It was clear that not only was this no accident, but that New York City was under attack.
There we were, lying in bed in Atlanta, planning to sign a contract on a house. The thing was, our loft was only about ten blocks from the World Trade Center. We called up the realtor and said we couldn’t sign a contract because we didn’t know if our home in New York was still standing. The deal was off.
We had to get home but all flights were frozen. We had a rental car, so I called up the agency’s main office, explained the situation, and they allowed us to drive the car to New York City with no extra charge.
Kevin, Deanna Mann, and I drove from Georgia to New York. Saturday at sunrise, on the New Jersey Turnpike, we crested the hill where the skyline appears, and we spotted the pillar of smoke on the horizon. The Holland Tunnel was closed so we proceeded to the Lincoln Tunnel and drove down the West Side Highway, which was lined with semi containers, barricaded, and set up for triage.
The loft was inside the restricted area sealed off by police barricades and surrounded by news cameras. We parked a few blocks away, dragged our luggage up to the barricade, and showed our IDs in order to gain entry to our neighborhood. Once we were back in the loft, I went to the roof and filmed the sky for a few minutes. Then I got on my bike, rode down to the site, took one look at the destruction, turned around, and rode home. I never went back down there.
We decided not to leave New York. I’d gotten caught up in the patriotism of the moment. I thought, No way we can leave now, that would be a show of weakness. How dare they do this to our neighborhood?
In October I played a solo show at Brownie’s to benefit a firehouse in Greenwi
ch Village that had lost some men. I went out socializing with some of the firemen after the show, and they told me about a maneuver called “turning the pile.” At the World Trade Center site, reclaim crews worked around the clock in twelve-hour shifts, from eleven to eleven. Fifteen minutes before the shift was over, the crews would sink their machines deep into the rubble and turn the pile, which released all the toxic dust, fumes, and remains for the incoming crew to deal with. After hearing that, every morning and evening at around ten thirty, we ran around the loft, closing all the windows.
Day after day, for months, we’d look out the window and see a parade of large flatbed trucks, hauling debris and twisted steel up the West Side Highway toward the tunnel and eventually to salvage yards and landfills.
The loft was covered with a layer of pale grey powder. To this day, when I open boxes that were stored in the Manhattan loft, they let off a distinctive smell—of what can only be a mix of gypsum board, jet fuel, and charred remains.
* * *
After months of enduring both the aftereffects of 9/11 and the continual noise from the neighbors above, we once again put the loft on the market. This time we were going to sell, no matter what—although I knew it wouldn’t undo everything that had happened to us, between us, and around us. A change of scenery, perhaps, but if we moved together, it would likely be more of the same. Two moves, from Austin to Midtown Manhattan to Tribeca, and the only change that was certain was the address on the utility bills.
It’s the end of 2001, and I have two records finished, the hybrid guitar/electronic Modulate and the strictly electronic LoudBomb album, Long Playing Grooves. Body of Song went to the back burner. I envisioned that record as a continuation of Workbook, a sparser acoustic affair, but over the course of the three years, I didn’t write as many songs in that direction as I had hoped. I was wrapped up in the electronica.
I booked a long weekend at Hit Factory in Midtown and sat in the control room by myself for three days, giving Modulate the final once-over. The night I finished sequencing the album, I was completely burned out.