Bookworm

Rip It Up, Issue 147, 1 October 1989, Page 10

Bookworm

Bob Mould. Solo

After the noise, there was silence. As if sensing that the sound and fury had been too great to surpass —and too consuming in personal and artistic terms to sustain — Husker Du one day ceased to exist.

The band lay aside its burgeoning legend and stopped. As simple and as complicated as that. A statement wasissued and the typical rumours drifted lazily into circulation, centering mainly around personality clashes and chemical abuse, the Scylla and Charybdis of rock n’ roll. . Thus did one of the mostimportant American bands of the decade disappear— not with the expected bang, but with a whimper. No valedectory album ortour, no penultimate reaping of those glories accrued in a decade of constant writing, recording and touring. Gone, with only a whiff of anti-climax to mark their passing: Months go by: still, there is no work. What has happened? Questions left unanswered — until now. :

The firstyou hear s the folkish plucking of acoustic guitar strings. The tuneis contemplative, almost soothing. Itis gorgeous, itis ... nothing less than the sound of Bob Mould, refurning from the (literal) wilderness. This first, instrumental track, - : ‘Sunspots’, serves to announce WorkbooK'sintent. And while, granted, Husker Du did some gentler stuff, 00, there was nothing quite to match the delicacy and restraint of this piece. When it seques into ‘Wishing Well', the tone of the album is set—it's subtle, reflective, assured. This could be something of magnum opus. : Which should come as no surprise.

As one of the two songwriting poles of thatband, Mould was virtually unique amongst the harder edged US songsmiths. Welded inextricably to the noise were sentiments at times almost embarrassingly candid, yet delivered unflinchingly; a man with his (wounded) heartfixed firmly on his sleeve. Today Mould, quietly spoken, - unfailingly polite, appears more philosophical than embittered about those final glory days: “It obviously happens to every band, sooner orlater. | think that we just got really tired of playing

together. When we started the group in 1978, we were 17, 18 yearsold. Whenwe gotto 10years later we weren'tthe same three people who putthat band together. We all had different priorities in our lives, and the music wasn't strong enough to hold them all together. There were a lot of personal differences, a lot of personal problems— but for me, to sumitup, we justgrew apartfrom each other, and had nothing at allin common at the end. To continue it wouldhave beenalie—for

everybody. “I have no regrets at all, musically —though of course there are things | wish we would've tried that we didn't, perhaps because, unconsciously, we were afraid of failing. | don’t think we extended ourselves as much as we probably should have. But| do think everything we did was real vital. “Personally, well ... the last few

months of the band's existence were really very difficult, and emotionally very draining. It was like a slow burn, and when itfinally blew up, it just

seemed like it happened overnight, butin actuality it had been coming for awhile. I thinkthat's true of any long-term relationship. “llook back now, and there were some really greattimes and some incredibly miserable times, but those are the things that take you to the nextstage. | don'tdeny my history, but| certainly don'tintend to live off it. . Dead Past | Which s probably all that needs to be said about the dead past. Certainly, it's as much as Mould is willing to concede. Further questions, assumptions, speculations —all are dismissed gently, with a soft verbal shrug that indicates far more succinctly than an outright rebuke, that he would much rather speak of the here and now. Of hislengthy sabbatical, he is rather more forthcoming: “| didn'twantto getinvolvedin all the nonsense that was going on over here —the rumours and half-truths thatwere purporting to be the real story of the breakup. So | thought the most healthy thing would be to go and work on my music, getback to the realissues for a while. I sort of got involved in this farm up in northern - Minnesota, and | pretty much spenta solid year up there more or less by myself, just working on musicevery day, and not doing much else. | divorced myself from a lot of familiar situations— a lot of it was just not wanting people around asking what | was going to be doing, oreven fo know what other people were doing. I didn't care about music other people around asking what | was going to be doing, or even o know what other people were doing. | didn’t care about the music other people were making— | just wanted to reacquaint myself with the things | enjoyed aboutmusic; akindof . cooling down and rebuilding process

which was real critical for me atthe time.

“Yousee, there’s a price to touring constantly, and you are forced to pay it— you have no choice. It means you have virtually no personal life, and not as much time to write as you would like. And you don't have fime totake an objective look atwhat you arewriting. Husker Duwere incredibly prolific: we were recording almost as quickly as we were writing. Butyou can only do thatfor so long, and | certainly felt that, at the end, we were in danger oflosing our objectives. “Also, | just wanted the luxury of relaxing for a year, working on my playing and singing — I've never

thought of myself as a good singer, until now. | wanted to strike up new - working relationships with people, andto challenge myself a little, which Ithink | was pretty badly in need of.”

Cloaks & Crutches Mould stresses that the album’s emphasis on acoustics does not necessarily constitute a reaction against the old:

“People would be amazed, | think, atthe number of Husker Dusongs on the last three or four albums that had been written on an acoustic guitar,” he laughs. “My audience, I'm sure, hjave this vision of me with a big wall of Marshall Stacks at home, blasting away. lt's not like that at all. And the songs here that are acoustic-based, well that was clearly the true form of the song, so why tamper with it2 Why start walking with the crutches again¢”

Which begs the question: will he admitthat noise can often be used simply as a cloak, a means of covering structural inadequacies that would, in a sparser setting, be glaringly obvious¢ “Ohyeah, definitely. |, uh, realised that a number of years ago. But | think as you grow, and become more familiar with writing and more comfortable with what you're doing thatyou don't need all those distractions. If the words are good, and the song is a strong one, everything else is almost superfluous, somefimes. ' “I recently did two solo acoustic

shows— which really have to rank as the mostterrifying thing I've ever

done.” He laughs softly. “You getup there, and all of a sudden you're very aware of these people sitting maybe six, eight feet away from you, all looking right atyou, very intently, waiting for you to do something to entertain them.

“Andthere’s no wall of speakers or anything up there to hide behind. There's nobody else to take their attention away, even for a moment. You'reit. You've just got your guitar and your songs. And that'’s when you find outif a song has got what it takes.

“Butthe shows went well — | was surpised how well, actually. | listened to tapes of the shows later and they sounded fine. It was so incredibly

tense, though. There was one point where | was doing ‘See A Little Light' fromthe new albumona 12-string and this one string just snapped, and suddenly the whole guitar jumped outoftune. | had fo set it down next to me and keep going, singing it unaccompanied until the end.”

Mould laughs again, louder. “That was about the scariest part of the scariest part of my life. Butthe - audience really liked it —they went overthe top, in fact, and suddenly | knewitwas a good song. “Playing for people, o me, is the validation of all the torment. The

biggestthrill, | think, iswhenlsee people singing along; it's a strange feeling, but a great feeling. This last tour, promoting Workbook, there was one show when the record had only been outforthree or four days and there were people there who already knew all the words fo all the - songs! We just looked outand thought, Wow, this really matters to them.’ And that's just a wonderful feeling, a greatthing. There's nothing else quite like that.

“There's a difference between seeing people sing to the music, and seeing them hit their friends to it—andlknow what | prefer.” Times have changed, certainly — but by no means for the worse. :

SHANEDANIELSON