by Bob Mould
One of the interested labels was V2 Records. Kate Hyman was the main A&R person and had worked with Moby, who was still flying high with 1999’s Play. Kate was very interested, but the business folks at V2 didn’t want to do a three-record deal in which all the records come out at once and the potential deal fell apart. It may not have been the wisest business move, but I’d vowed publicly that I was going to release the three albums simultaneously, so that’s what I was going to do. I continued searching for a suitable arrangement.
Body of Song wasn’t fully realized by then, so I decided to release Modulate, the LoudBomb record, and LiveDog98, a live album from the 1998 London Forum show, the one show that Michael Cerveris really ripped on. Releasing the live disc would fulfill my stated intent of releasing three albums at once.
After consulting with Josh Grier, I decided to do simultaneous North American and European licensing deals for Modulate, similar to the deals with Ryko and Creation in 1992. In the US, Modulate (as well as Long Playing Grooves) would be released by my own label, Granary Music. The albums would be manufactured by United Musicians, an artist collective run by Aimee Mann and Michael Hausman, and distributed by Sony-owned Red Ink. In Europe, London-based independent label Cooking Vinyl signed on for three albums, the first two being Modulate and Long Playing Grooves. Neither label was involved with the LiveDog98 album, which I would sell at upcoming shows.
I put together the packaging for Modulate and Long Playing Grooves using years of photographs I’d taken in various lower Manhattan locations. The Modulate gatefold package features one of the best portraits ever taken of me. Lisa Pearl’s photograph captured what I think is my strongest feature—my piercing blue eyes.
Three months before the release of Modulate, I came up with the idea of supporting it with a multimedia presentation called Carnival of Light and Sound, which I referred to as COLAS. I would be flanked by two large screens, and would perform by myself in the null space between them, using minimal stage lighting.
I had three months to come up with two hours of video content, as well as recording backing tracks for all but two of the songs. I was playing Sugar and Hüsker Dü songs as well, and I recorded new backing tracks that sounded consistent with the electronica-based Modulate material. I was on a self-imposed deadline, and there wasn’t a lot of time for me to consider the artistic ramifications of creating blippy backing tracks to songs that so many people seemed to hold sacred. This was all part of the new deal. I worked on those tracks in my studio day and night. When I got burned out on backing tracks, Kevin and I would head out and shoot more video footage. I also reached out to friends, independent filmmakers, and video artists for more content. There wasn’t a moment to spare, so I reverted to my DIY ways and taught myself how to make videos on an editing suite we set up in the den.
Unknowingly, I had created a beast of a project for myself. Maybe I was in over my head. Quality control was sneaking out the window. Why did I do this to myself? What was I trying to escape from?
A week before leaving for tour preproduction, we found a buyer for the loft. I hired an attorney to oversee the remainder of the paperwork and finances. We packed the house in a hurry, called a moving company, and had them collect and store our possessions for the foreseeable future.
Then Kevin and I went to Atlanta for two weeks of rehearsal. We stayed in a two-bedroom corporate apartment for the month, trying to keep some semblance of normalcy about our lives. After breakfast we headed to the gym. The Atlanta gym was one step away from a bathhouse, evidenced by both the open displays of arousal in the group shower and by the fellow who casually brought his translucent butt plug into the steam room. It was thoughtful of them to arrange for the hepatitis vaccination truck to come to the gym once a month.
Every day at noon, Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” would sound out across the workout floor. It made me feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, when his alarm clock would play “I Got You Babe” every morning at 6 AM. We’d usually follow our workouts with lunch at the gay steak house and a trip to the gay bookstore/coffee shop Outwrite.
The critical response to Modulate was mixed when it came out. British magazines like Q and Mojo were quite generous in their praise, calling it “unfashionable and intensely melodic” and “some of his most effective pop.” Other publications such as Alternative Press and Billboard were much harder on Modulate, labeling it “a largely frustrating set of Saturday morning cartoon electronics” and “an unsuccessful attempt at diving into a genre that relies less on the organic than it does on the synthetic.” I sensed it was going to be a tough campaign. Little did I know how tough.
We were trying to get “SoundOnSound,” a jangly, catchy midtempo song that most closely resembled my previous work, played on the radio, so we hired independent radio promoters, which in plain English translates to payola intermediaries. Tens of thousands of dollars went out the window in a mostly fruitless attempt to gain traction on commercial radio.
In 1998 I had worked with Carla Sacks, a New York–based publicist, on the campaign for The Last Dog and Pony Show. I liked Carla, and her staff seemed fine as well, so I hired them to do press (and publicity) for Modulate. A few months after the record was out, one of Carla’s assistants was at a business dinner and made some unflattering comments about the record. Josh Grier happened to be within earshot and let me know about it weeks later. What a great campaign this was turning out to be.
There were problems with Red Ink as well. They insisted on manufacturing 55,000 copies of Modulate even though I’d suggested we start with 20,000. I knew this record wasn’t going to sell 55,000 copies—my previous album had barely cracked 60,000 and this was a less accessible record. There were some good people at Red Ink, Alan Becker in particular, but they had unreasonable expectations for a difficult piece of music. I tried to set more realistic goals, but the machine won out.
Technically, the show ran smoothly thanks to sound and video engineer Colm O’Reilly. But after seven or eight shows performing by myself, with nothing else onstage but the two large screens, I could sense that the presentation was wrong. I would look into the crowd each night and see the faces of indifference and confusion. I couldn’t feel too frustrated with them though—for so many years they’d seen me in a certain light and now they were hearing some of their favorite songs performed in this strange new way. I could understand their shock. Actually, I think it was a shock to everyone involved (maybe even myself). I think the audience gave it as fair a shake as they could, but I knew something wasn’t clicking.
In hindsight, the biggest mistake I made was not getting somebody to help me make Modulate sound like a real electronic record. The genre had become highly sophisticated, and my primitive approach didn’t hold up well next to the competition. I knocked myself down on this one. I could tell within weeks of the release that I was going to have a hard time getting up from it. I tried my best to explain to people what I was trying to do, but the more I explained, the more complicated it all sounded and the less people heard what I was saying. It’s funny, in a way. Everyone loves Zen Arcade, and I barely have an explanation for what precipitated the writing and creating of the record. But with Modulate, which most people view as a failure, I feel obliged to show people all the backstory. Commercially speaking, Modulate was not one of my finer moments. But I think my songwriting was both innovative and revealing, and someday I’d like to revisit the tracks with my current skill set.
The other mistake was trying to make three distinctly different records at once when I might have been better off taking the twelve best songs, no matter what style they were, and pooling them to make one good record. I got in way over my head, no one stopped me, and I was adrift in the deep blue sea. Sometimes the end result doesn’t fly with the masses. That’s life.
We toured for four weeks—four very long weeks. Kevin and I were living on the road, the crowds were indifferent, and morale was falling. We were living out of two large roll-aboard duf
fel bags, our laptop computer bags, and a rental car. Everything was in chaos. Kevin had a car accident in Chicago, admitting afterward that some attractive man had caught his attention and had caused him to slam into the car in front of him. His quip at the time was “I wrecked the house,” referring to the fact that we were basically living out of the car.
The intimate incident with Kevin and the neighbor didn’t help, Domino dying certainly didn’t help, and 9/11 really didn’t help. There was a lot of stuff crumbling. There was a lot of stuff falling. There was a lot of shit happening. A lot was collapsing. Everything felt like it was sinking.
An ugly cell phone conversation with my longtime booking agent Frank Riley on the drive from Toronto to New York was indicative of my state of mind. Frank and I have had productive disagreements over the course of our working relationship, but on this day, for some unknown reason, I chose to dump all my frustrations on him, just blind venting about lukewarm reactions and poor advance sales for the New York show. None of this was Frank’s fault, which made this one of the more regrettable phone calls I have ever made. I called him back a couple of days later and apologized. Frank knows how tough the road can be on people, and I was grateful that we were able to get our working relationship back on track.
When I finally finished the first leg of the tour in Charlotte, Kevin and I drove overnight to Atlanta and then flew to Las Vegas for some relaxation. After a few days of gambling and eating, we drove to Palm Springs for two days of gay adventure—opening up our physical relationship with strangers. Kevin was clearly comfortable with it, and I went along with it. The fractures in our relationship were all over the place anyway—how much more damage could this do? We had tried this once in New York in 2001, and it was neither an enjoyable nor upsetting experience for me.
I was making a lot of compromises with Kevin. I was sure I wouldn’t make a good parent, but I agreed to have children with him. As far as casual sex, I don’t want to imply that Kevin dragged me into it—I’m a man, and men think about it all the time—but it wasn’t something I would have explored if Kevin hadn’t lobbied for it. So I was doing big things I wasn’t totally comfortable with. And it wasn’t exactly working. Maybe there’s a lesson in that.
I’d had such a great long ride with the critics, and now for the first time in my twenty-three-year career they had turned on my work. It was a new thing for me to deal with, and it didn’t feel good. That album wasn’t just a collection of songs, it was a reflection of some massive changes I’d made in just about every aspect of my life. And now a lot of people were calling it a failure. Sometimes I can easily dismiss negative criticism by saying “They just don’t understand” or “They’re not musicians, what do they know?” But when they make valid criticisms, and I recognize and agree, it stings. One major criticism was that Modulate sounded very rudimentary and didn’t play to my strong suits at all (passionate vocals, unique guitar style). The thing is, there was nothing I could do to change what had happened; I could only move forward and learn from the experience.
We resumed the COLAS touring on the West Coast, finishing up on May 7 in Austin. I was relieved to be done with that tour. I was proud of the work I had created, but after weeks of confused faces in the crowd, it was time to move forward—and in a way, back too. I returned to what I knew could work.
I went straight from Austin to David Barbe’s studio in Athens to record a dozen guitar-driven songs with David on bass and Matt Hammon on drums for what would become Body of Song, the third album of my trilogy. We simply set up a drum kit, a bass amp, a guitar amp, and a vocal mic and started recording.
I’d written this guitar-based material before the Modulate backlash, so it’s not like I had some kind of career resurrection strategy in mind. I was just trying to get these songs arranged and recorded. It all felt really familiar and natural. When you get together with two other guys in a wooden room with wood instruments, and you’re surrounded by the smell of sweat and burning tubes, it’s quite different than when you’re at home alone with a computer.
Because we had sold the loft before the tour started and put all of our possessions in storage, we were now essentially homeless. It was time to decide where to live. Along the course of the tour, we had narrowed our options down to three cities: Atlanta, Chicago, and DC. By now the family plans were pretty much out, so Atlanta had no real allure. Chicago is a wonderful city, but the hard winters worked against it. DC’s positives? It was only four hours down the road from New York and we knew a few people there. Scott Stuckey lived in DC, and he was tight with Kevin. I knew 9:30 Club owner Seth Hurwitz and a fellow musician named Rich Morel.
At the beginning of 2002, David at Rebel Rebel had said, “You’ve got to hear this record, it’s this guy from DC, his name is Morel. The record is called Queen of the Highway. We got an advance copy and you’re going to love it: it’s gay, it’s disco, it’s guitars, and it’s butch.” He played it for me and I was instantly sold. It was really great music, an original blend of rock, glam, and disco.
I met Rich a few weeks later, before I started my tour. He was in New York for his record release party, and the guys from Rebel Rebel introduced me to him. Rich and I hit it off right away—we were like two peas in a pod. It reminded me of the first time I met Jim Wilson: talking so easily and enthusiastically about gear, music, and life.
After the May sessions, Kevin and I drove to DC and stayed with Scott Stuckey and his wife, Kristina, until we found and bought a hastily renovated four-story brick townhouse in the gradually gentrifying U Street neighborhood. We were now official residents of the nation’s capital.
In June 2002 I flew to Long Beach for an outdoor show with Soul Asylum. I hadn’t seen the band since all their success, and a lot had changed in all of our lives. At this point I barely knew the guys, but it was nice to see them again. Actor George Wendt, a big fan of both Soul Asylum and mine, was hanging out in their dressing room/trailer and we exchanged pleasantries. Wendt opened their cooler, which contained nothing but half-melted ice and water, and asked guitarist Dan Murphy if there was more beer. Dan said, “No, George, there’s no more beer.” Completely deadpan, George proclaimed, “If you’re outta beer, I’m outta here,” and moved on.
In July 2002 Kevin and I went to England and I played five shows with the Flaming Lips. I brought a VHS tape containing a truncated version of COLAS and played along. These shows went over better than the US dates—Europe in 2002 was much more accepting of various kinds of electronic music. After those dates I played outdoor festivals in New York and Chicago, returned home, and spent the remainder of the summer in DC.
We hadn’t realized that DC empties out in the summer, especially in August. Politics goes on vacation and the gays head to the beach. Seventeenth Street, which normally resembled a quieter Christopher Street or Eighth Avenue, looked like a downtown block from a forgotten western town: you could almost see the tumbleweeds rolling down the street. There were very few people in town, and I was having trouble making friends.
Kevin was spending most of his time with Scott Stuckey, and we were heading right back to the same spot we’d gotten ourselves into in Texas in 1995. I was distancing myself from him all over again. I was thinking, I hate this place, why am I here? What did I do to deserve this? I’d wanted out of Austin in 1996, but I now recognized that I’d wanted out of Austin by myself. That was the thing—I had really wanted out of the relationship and should have gone back to New York alone. But I didn’t do it. Same with the move from New York to DC. I could run but I couldn’t hide, and I didn’t leave Kevin.
* * *
Perhaps because I was a notable out gay man in DC, I was invited to participate in the Human Rights Campaign National Dinner held October 13, 2002. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is the largest LGBT political action committee in the US, and their annual dinner is one of their primary fund-raisers, as well as a hot ticket in the gay scene. HRC also reached out to me to contribute a track to their Being Out Rocks compilati
on CD to coincide with the dinner. I also volunteered to do publicity work, sign pictures, and in return was seated at a dinner table with Judy Shepard, the mother of slain gay teen Matthew Shepard, and Betty DeGeneres, Ellen’s mom.
I had helped raise money for God’s Love through John Giorno, and at Barracuda for the Anti-Violence Project, but this was a high-visibility fund-raiser, rubbing elbows with the real celebrities of the LGBT world. It was another step in my personal journey as an out gay man, light-years away from the confused homosexual teen who left a gay-intolerant farm town at the age of seventeen. It felt nice, even if my services were paltry compared to the folks who do the heavy lifting for LGBT rights on a daily basis.
After the reaction to the COLAS tour, I wanted to get back out in front of people and start righting the course. So the day after the HRC dinner, I began a three-week solo acoustic tour, playing some of my best-loved songs and reverting to the familiar singer-songwriter format. It was nice to have the pressure of the synchronized show off my back, and people reacted much more favorably this time, which was a relief. The only crisis was that Kevin immediately fell ill with a throat infection. Many nights he would go straight to the hotel to sleep, while I went to the clubs and handled the workload. Along the way he ended up in two emergency rooms. After being discharged a second time, he yelled at me for allowing the hospital staff to administer a light opiate for the pain, knowing that he was a recovering heroin addict. That was more his responsibility than mine, but I took the blame.
In December we went to Australia and did an acoustic tour. I was in Adelaide, singing the chorus of “Hoover Dam,” when my lower left molar broke in half. I did the rest of the tour with a superglued molar, eating soft food on one side of my mouth and screaming the rest of the time. When I wasn’t on the clock, I wanted to be alone, to rest, and to have some quiet. Kevin picked up on this and would disappear for hours.