See a Little Light

by Bob Mould

  * * *

  Body of Song was released in July 2005. I was relieved that fans and critics liked the album. I was also happy that, unlike in 2002, this record didn’t need a lot of explanation. A lot of the success was due to the efforts of the New York PR firm Nasty Little Man. Company head Steve Martin was a longtime fan, and Yep Roc was wise to hire Steve and his staff to supplement the hard work done by their in-house publicist, Angie Carlson. The visibility of the album was high, the music was solid, and there was yet another big hook: I was about to tour once again with a rock band.

  Earlier in 2005 Brendan had said to me, “Dude, why don’t you just put together a band? I’ll go on tour with you. We’ll go play the rock.” Brendan was pushing for including older material. I trusted his opinion, and besides, I was changing a lot of my hard-and-fast rules. So I loosened up about never playing rock with a band again and said, “Great, let’s do it.”

  I asked Rich Morel if he’d like to play keyboards in the touring band. Blowoff had gotten him out of the house, and now there’s an offer of this rock tour with hotels and festivals and all the garnish. He jumped at the opportunity and started learning the songbook. Reenter Jason Narducy, who already knew my music backward and forward. He came in to play bass and help with vocals, so now the four-piece rock band was complete. People were excited that I was playing guitar again and that, for the first time, I was going to finally reopen the Hüsker Dü and Sugar songbooks with a full electric band.

  I was feeling really good about things. I was deep into another wild summer, cramming as much beach time into July and August as possible, knowing that once the touring started, there was always that small chance that it could skyrocket and become as unpredictable as the Sugar years. I wasn’t planning on it, I wasn’t expecting it, but there was always that possibility. And now I was about to hit the road with a rock band for the first time in seven years.

  I was surrounded by a bunch of guys I trusted. Besides Brendan, Jason, and Rich, I brought on Body of Song engineer Frank Marchand as tour manager/sound engineer and Tim Mech as stage tech, and we rehearsed for two weeks during the dog days of August in DC at Brendan’s Blindspot Studios. We fired up the Sugar and Hüsker Dü songs and they sounded great. It sounded like us playing those songs—updated versions, interpretations, not faithful reproductions. Brendan would ask, “Do you want me to play like the record?” And I’d say, “Don’t play like Malcolm, don’t play like Grant—play like Brendan. Learn the song, play it the way you want, and it will be fine.”

  The rehearsals lifted this gigantic monkey off my back. Finally, I was relaxed with it. I knew that this time it was about the songs, not about me. After the 2002 COLAS tour, this was the moment to make a nice gesture. I knew people wanted to hear these songs in the loud rock format, so I thought, Why not give the people what they want for once? Let’s start the show with the first three songs from Copper Blue. It was time to celebrate the work.

  The way we played those early songs was music to my ears. Brendan is such an interpretive player, Jason is a wonderful singer, and Rich filled in all the chordal color. I could relax and not try to fill three voices at once. I could concentrate on playing rhythm guitar when I was singing and on playing lead guitar when I stepped back, letting the keyboards reinforce the foundation with dirty Hammond sounds and strings. Playing those songs was like riding a bicycle. But this time I wasn’t pedaling away from, or toward, anywhere or anything in particular—I was simply enjoying the moment.

  The tour started in September 2005 at an outdoor festival in Ireland called Electric Picnic. We were playing our first show as a band on a big festival stage, and we were using rented gear, which would qualify as trial by fire. There’s no better way to figure out if something’s going to work than to put it in the most difficult situation. Rich was the least experienced at that level, but he did fine. Brendan and I powered through it, and Jason was right there with us. That was a hell of a way to start things up.

  The next day we played the Mean Fiddler in London, and the place came unglued, especially when we played the Sugar material. It felt like 1992 again, except both the crowd and I were thirteen years older, and despite people coming out of their skin over the older songs, the PA didn’t fall over.

  In years past, by never playing songs like “Makes No Sense at All,” “I Apologize,” and “Chartered Trips” in the electric band setting, I felt like I’d buried them. I had tried to erase that time. It was liberating to lift the shroud from my older songs and incorporate them into the rock band show. They’re beautiful songs that stand the test of time, and I will play them to my grave.

  But there was some material I still wouldn’t touch: no matter how much people might love to see it, I can’t imagine myself playing side two of Zen Arcade. I wrote those songs when I was twenty-three years old, angry at the world, feeling misunderstood, persecuted, and disappointed. I can’t even get into the head of that person anymore. I can’t sing those songs. I’m a different person now.

  On we went to Brussels, then through Germany, Denmark, and Holland. Köln was a wild punk rock show—lots of slam dancing and aggressive behavior. Jason had seen a lot of that with his first band, Verboten, at all the hardcore shows in Chicago in the 1980s. Brendan had seen it with Rites of Spring and Fugazi. But when we came offstage, Rich was like, “I’ve never been in anything like that in my life.”

  The band dynamics were really good. Onstage, we were well rehearsed and focused, but very relaxed. Offstage, we had fun traveling as a group. Everyone showed up for lobby call on time—one of the little things that mean so much to a smooth tour.

  Brendan and Jason are both married with kids, and Rich and I are gay—Rich partnered, me single. We’d get to a town and Brendan and Jason would sightsee, go to the pub, do tourist stuff. Rich and I would do that, and also go to the gay bars. I was still a bad boy at this point, and this was my first real bad boy rock tour. Germany is a hell of a place to be single and gay and on tour with days off. One minute I was in the minibus talking with the tour manager about tomorrow’s stage time, and three hours later I was getting freaky with some hot leather motorcycle guy in a bathroom stall in a Hamburg fetish club. It was long overdue. Most guys in bands, and gay guys in general, do that stuff when they’re in their twenties. I guess I was a very late bloomer. It’s hilarious in hindsight. I told a few of my gay friends about what was happening, and they’re saying, “Oh, my god, I’m so jealous.” Those things really do happen.

  We came back for a four-week tour of the States—and I’m still misbehaving. I’m in the best physical shape of my life, we’re playing great rock shows, and there’s bears and cubs showing up, wanting to hang out after the show or whatever. You can do the math.

  The tour wasn’t all fun and games though. After the Atlanta show, we were faced with a 1,000-mile drive to perform at the Austin City Limits outdoor festival. The added challenge was getting through Hurricane Rita. The farther we went into the storm, the less traffic we encountered on the interstate. Eventually there were no other cars, only rented box trucks labeled with Red Cross placards. Through Mississippi and Louisiana we saw billboards ripped from their pillars and long lines for gas.

  We finally made it to our layover hotel in north suburban Dallas. Families displaced by the storms wandered around the lobby with ice coolers, their cars filled with their possessions. Nearer the front desk, the refugees were replaced by hundreds of people, in full regalia, who were holding a science fiction convention at the hotel. Displaced families and conventioneers in full fantasy garb singing folk songs—exactly what we needed after twelve hours of driving through a hurricane.

  The DC homecoming show was on October 7 at the 9:30 Club, and the show was going to be videotaped for a DVD. We’d been planning it for weeks, hiring a large crew, six cameras, multitrack audio, lighting design, the whole nine yards. It was a big deal to me, as I had never documented a show at this level. I was concerned though—two nights before, the New York show at Irv
ing Plaza had been rough. It wasn’t very musical, it was too loud, and I was trying too hard. When I look out at a crowd after the first three songs and I’m not sure if I’m connecting with them, I never think “this is too much, I need to tone it down.” Quite the opposite: I always start amplifying—turn up the volume, get more animated, speed things up. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

  The next night in Philadelphia, we toned everything down and got it back under control. When we took the stage in DC, we opened it back up again, and everything worked out fine. It was one of the best shows I’d played in years, and I’m thrilled we got it on videotape. It was the culmination of a number of good choices: working with Brendan, having Rich on keys instead of a second guitarist, and having the wisdom to tone down the show the night before filming in DC. It was a really special evening, and the footage was eventually released as the Circle of Friends DVD.

  Later that night we celebrated with yet another successful Blowoff event in the very same room. There were plenty of folks who attended both events. All my different worlds were coming together, and everything was firing on all cylinders. I had the rock thing and the DJ thing going at once, all under one roof, and it all felt natural and good.

  After a few nights off we flew to Seattle to begin a run of West Coast dates, ending with a show in LA on the eve of my forty-fifth birthday. It was probably the most scandalous week of my life to date. I don’t know what got into me. I was out of control.

  In Seattle I hit on some hot little cub. I got to Portland and, in rounding out my sleeping with someone from every branch of the military, spent time with a former Air Force guy who was about to become an Oregon state trooper. In San Francisco the music bears were out in force, and one of them had his mind made up that he was going to get with me that night—sure enough, he did. For the Los Angeles show, the crew got a cake and did the whole “Happy Birthday” thing on stage. At the show I ran into an old buddy from the East Coast—an ex-Marine, of course—and we ended up spending the night together at my hotel. He woke up at 6 AM for an appointment. What we didn’t know the night before was that the AIDS Walk was the next morning in West Hollywood, he had parked on the street, and so his truck got towed.

  The tour is over, it’s my forty-fifth birthday, and I’m in Los Angeles thinking I just haven’t had enough fun this week—I have to get in more trouble. But between the four shows and all the mad craziness, I’m pretty worn out. I’m hanging out in West Hollywood, I buy myself some clothes, I’m hitting on guys at Starbucks, but I’m lazy: I don’t want to go to the leather bars. I’m tired. I’m going to go to my favorite sushi restaurant in West Hollywood, sit and chill, eat some fish. I get there and order a whole bunch of food. I’m sitting by myself, reading Frontiers, a local gay paper. Frontiers has all the escort ads, and I think to myself, You know what, I’m not going to go to the bar, I’m going to treat myself for the first time in my life. I’m going to get a massage and a happy ending from an escort. I’m just going to order in tonight.

  I’m looking through the ads and there’s this and there’s that and blah, blah, blah—daddy this, Asian boy that—and I hit this one picture, a totally butch dude, rough trade, a man’s man. Nothing but a straight-up worked-out guy. I say to myself, You know what, I’m going to call this guy. I finish dinner and I step out and I call him. I say, “Are you available tonight?”

  He goes, “Yeah, what time were you thinking?” I say about ten.

  “Where do you want to meet?”

  I tell him I’m staying at the Ramada on Santa Monica.

  “I know the place. I’m there a lot. What’s your room number?”

  I tell him, and he says, “I’ll come to your room at ten o’clock.”

  I ask, “How much?” A hundred and twenty bucks. “Do you take cash only?” He says yes. So I go to the ATM and get some cash out, and continue walking back to the hotel.

  Then all of a sudden something I ate is getting to me and I’m about to fall out. What the fuck do I do now? I’ve ordered this escort, my stomach is totally rocked, there’s no way that I can be in decent shape for getting together with this guy. I’m moving as fast as I can to the hotel so I can relieve myself, but I can’t possibly have anybody over in this state. Do I call back and cancel? Fuck it. I go to the drugstore and buy some air freshener and Imodium and batten myself down. Around 9:15 the Imodium kicks in and I’ve got myself back in shape. It’s not like we’re going to have mad butt sex all night. We’re going to blow and go, and that’s going to be about it.

  I get myself put together in time for my ten o’clock appointment. The guy shows up and is doting and complimentary and does everything he is supposed to do. Fifty-two minutes into it, we’re done and he asks, “Can I go wash up in your sink, and it’s one hundred and twenty bucks.” I was like, Wow, this guy is a pro. I didn’t see a clock or a watch anywhere. He had it totally figured out. He didn’t even need a time cue. It was a great massage, and the sex was good too. Happy forty-fifth birthday, I’m officially a middle-aged gay man.

  CHAPTER 27

  Reenter my old friend Micheal Brodbeck, who used to work behind the counter at Factory Café on Christopher Street—the same Micheal who drove me and Kevin to the vet when we put Domino down in 2001. Micheal had left New York for Cincinnati in early 2002, but we’d stayed in touch. While I was on a solo tour in November 2005, Micheal got hold of me and said, “I see you’re coming to Louisville, that’s only two hours away. I might come to the show.” I said, “Sure, come on down, and if you don’t want to drive back and want to crash at my room, that’s fine.” Sure enough we ended up getting involved. I didn’t have that in mind when the day started.

  Micheal is five foot nine, average build, a very handsome man with welcoming eyes, a great smile, and a comfortable demeanor. We always enjoyed each other’s company, but I wasn’t ready to settle down. Still, neither of us dismissed it as just a physical encounter, and we kept in touch. We’d reconnected through our friendship, and now we’d added another layer. We talked about the idea of a relationship for many months. I was hesitant—I was on the road so much and lived in DC, and he lived in Cincinnati. I just didn’t see how it could work.

  As all this was going on, I kept touring solo, going over to Europe in January, then back for a tour of the United States and Canada in February and March. I was also beginning to curtail my personal craziness. Micheal and I talked regularly on the phone, and one discovery we made was that both of us were attending church. He’d studied a lot of different religions and somehow ended up back at Catholic church as well. In hindsight, the universe may have been lining up around me. Micheal was the catalyst of, and definitely proactive about, our budding relationship.

  We met up in late April in Palm Springs to attend the Coachella music festival, along with my best buddy Will and his then boyfriend. The four of us had a great time together. Daft Punk played their first show in years and unveiled their state-of-the art pyramid stage set. It was the best live show I had seen in fifteen years—I was thoroughly floored. For me, Daft Punk are the Beatles of electronica. That’s how huge they are.

  Micheal and I were becoming closer, and in June, he decided he was moving to DC to further our relationship. After all I’d been through in past relationships, and given how busy I was with work, I felt it necessary to say, “Don’t move here for me, don’t move here without a job, and don’t move here without your own place.” He got a job, a place to live, and we kept building our relationship through 2006. I was happy and excited, but also cautious.

  And I was finishing an album without even knowing it. After working together for four years without consciously realizing it, Rich and I had a dozen songs finished, and it was pretty clear that we had made an album. The record had a late-night California drive, a convertible-top-down, sticky marijuana vibe. It was a pretty diverse record though, sexy and dark, sad and joyous. Rich could rock and I knew a fair bit about electronica, and the combination of guitars and beats echoed t
he music we were playing at Blowoff.

  The self-titled Blowoff album was released in August 2006. We did a number of events on the West Coast, including Homo A Go Go in Olympia, Washington, and the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, where we played in front of thousands of leather folk. One of our weekend handlers was a fellow from a local leather shop. I thought I had run into him before; as it turned out, he was one of the models I used to see at my first gym in Manhattan. I used to think he was unapproachable, and here we were seven years later in San Francisco, and he was chaperoning me around, telling me how much he loves my music. Go figure. For years I’d been wondering whether guys were attracted to me because they thought I was hot or whether it was just because I was in a band. Maybe the answer is both.

  * * *

  Momentum was building on all fronts. Two weeks later I began recording my next record with drummer Brendan Canty and engineer Frank Marchand. Frank had torn apart his own recording studio in Maryland, driven it down to Brendan’s studio in DC, and built it up all over again. We were all excited to get back to recording. We were one day into recording the drums when I got an unexpected call from my sister, Susan: my mother was suffering from heart failure and was in an intensive-care unit in Florida.

  As soon as I finished the call with Susan, I told Brendan and Frank what was happening, postponed the session, and headed straight to the airport. I spent a couple of weeks down in Florida with my family, helping to get my mother back on track. If not for my sister’s persistence in riding the hospital staff about giving my mother proper care, she would have certainly died. Three weeks and several specialists later, she was finally fitted with a pacemaker and was able to begin a program that would eventually get her back to health.

  But in those few weeks, all the old family dynamics surfaced again, especially the friction between my father and sister. Both of them came to me with the same old refrain: I was the only one who could reason with the other. Just like when I was a child back in Malone, I was placed in the role of peacemaker. There was a big difference though: back then I played the role out of panic and pure survival, and now I was operating from a position of sanity and reason. I was grown up and had long been separated from my family of origin, the hold it had on me, and all the turbulence that it created. At forty-five years of age and with a whole lot of other experiences behind me, I could certainly handle this. That was the first big family health scare I’d ever had to deal with, and all things considered, I think I handled myself and the situation well. I’d come a long way.