WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 524 - Bob Mould

Episode Date: August 13, 2014

Bob Mould shook up alternative music in the '80s and '90s with his influential bands Husker Du and Sugar. But Bob seems willing to shake up his own life at every turn, too. Bob tells Marc how he took advantage of sudden opportunities that set his life down different paths, like becoming a writer for pro-wrestling, composing The Daily Show theme song and coming to terms with his true identity. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that.

Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Lock the gates! it's been kind of a rough week it's difficult but we're moving through it today on the show bob mold bob mold from husker do from sugar from bob mold from a lot of things you may not know about bob mold bob mold is an amazing guitar player and songwriter and and and creative force of nature i was so thrilled to have him

in my garage and talk to him he played guitar it was amazing it was fucking amazing his new album is available everywhere including merge records.com slash shop where you get a 20 off with the offer code wtf you can also check out his tour dates at merge records.com bob mold shortly this guy made some of the best fucking rock music in the world ever reinvented it hoosker do is monstrous in a good way and sugar copper blue i mean those sugar records fucking great and such a sweet guy look forward to that conversation coming up in mere minutes. Mere minutes, my friends. What else do I want to tell you about?

The IFC show Marin is premiering on Fox TV in the UK tonight at 11 p.m. And in Ireland, I believe. And probably other places that I should know but don't know. That's the first season of Marin, so enjoy that, my friends, in England and Ireland. Enjoy it. season of marin so enjoy that my friends in england and ireland enjoy it i haven't told you about uh well obviously we had the the repost of the robin williams interview with my thoughts in the immediate aftermath of learning of his death um that's a real hard one, folks. It's going to hurt a while. But earlier that day,

we posted an amazing interview with Bob Newhart that was a complete honor to me to do. I just want to remind you that that's up there because the Robin Williams interview went up the same day. Both of them legends.

Both of them beautiful people. Great so sad to lose robin and so amazing to have bob still with us but since i've last talked to you i've done three of the oddball festival dates i have i'll be honest with you man i'll oh wait before i forget charlotte north carolina tonight at the comedy zone tonight tomorrow and saturday i know i was just there at oddball but uh i'll be there tonight doing the hour plus tonight tomorrow and saturday come down but i was just in charlotte i was just in tampa i was just in atlanta doing the oddball festival now as i said before i'm going to be honest with you people i i've never played for 10 000 fucking people are you kidding me i've been doing comedy half my life 25 years you know i could sell out maybe a thousand in some of

my good markets really good markets i'm more of a 5 to 900 seat guy. 10,000 people, and I was going a little crazy. I was really stressed out for weeks leading up to these oddball festival dates. The acts on the show, Jeffrey Ross emceed. It was Brent Morin, and then me, and then reggie watts hannibal ruris and then uh chris hardwick aziz ansari and louis ck that's a that's a monster show 10 000 seats were sold and i was driving myself crazy because a lot of you who know or have witnessed my evolution as a performer i've been moving the other way i'm not trying to get bigger.

I'm trying to get smaller. I'm trying to get mark-sized. I'm trying to have the same lack of boundaries and candidness and intimacy with my stand-up as I do here in the garage or when I'm having dinner. That's sort of what I do. I believe that the training and the craft will be sublimated, internalized, which it is, after half my life doing this, 25 years or so. And that that will all be in place and I never have to think about it.

And that's the beauty of it. That's sort of like driving in a way. That the machine will take care of itself. just have to to be in the present let my brain do its thing be in the moment make the funny happen in the moment if possible but when you're about to play for 10 000 to 15 000 people you're like i better have a fucking set it better be tight there better be tags because i know what happens you get up on a stage that big with that many people. You got to roll out those jokes and you got to wait for that response to come back.

And you've got to sort of get a sense of the timing of maybe 8,000 of the 10,000 who are paying attention or laughing deeply and figure out how to pace yourself. But you can't don't leave any hangers. Don't have any any sort of noodling jokes. Make sure there are beats at the end that there's closure it's like when you prepare for a letterman set or a short set or a four and a half minute set i don't know if that's the greatest representation of me but it's it's a skill unto itself to put together that set and make it punchline efficient and make it work and it's the same sort of uh you know effort you have to bring to a 15-minute set. I was doing 15s. Everyone was doing 15 except, well, Hannibal did 25,

Aziz did 25, Louie did 30. But me, Reggie, Chris, Brent, Jeff was hosting. They were just 15-minute spots. So in my mind, it's like, how bad could it go in 15 minutes? Well, it could hurt pretty bad. But why would it hurt, man? Why would it hurt, Mark? You've been doing this 25 years.

Well, sometimes, sometimes when you get in front of a huge audience, it's the loneliest place in the world. And you can just feel it. Sometimes if you're not locked in and you're not doing your show and you're just got a guy standing by himself on a big old stage in front of 10 to 15 000 people you might want to disappear there's a little party that wants to disappear but there's another party that wants to go look at me who's gonna win well when you're a professional that guy who's gonna win that guy the guy who's look at me listen to me i'm trying to put some love out there at least trying to make you laugh doing a

show so i wrestled with that fucking thing i wrestled right you know you got to get that first one in you know and i i was i was nervous and anxious and everything else and i didn't know what set i was going to do and i knew i was going to lean into it too hard because i'm in my mind i know how to get big i've been big before i spent over half of my career just hammering away and am i gonna have to do that am i so let's get back to tampa florida first night of oddball fest i'm freaking out it's hot as fuck it might be raining i'm scribbling my set minutes before I have to go on. I've been scribbling it on and off all day. I want to do some local stuff.

I want to plant myself in the situation. I want to hit hard. It's still light outside, but I'm not letting any of this stuff fuck with my head because I know I got to show up for work. There would have been a time in my life where I would have been freaking myself to the point of paralysis, but I've been doing this a long time i don't need to do that to myself but i'm still pretty scared and i made the decision to wear my jean shorts that's right folks not only do i not know what i'm going to do exactly when i get on stage in front of 10 000 people but i'm like

fuck it it's hot i'm wearing jorts i'm gonna wear jorts that's who i am today, it's hot. I'm wearing jorts. I'm going to wear jorts. That's who I am today. And it's like, honestly, Tampa is one of the only places in the world where if you wear jorts, you're actually pandering. So I got up there with my jean cutoffs and I leaned into it and I focused and I went, I regressed in a way to old Mark energy and just stayed on top of it. But I killed. I did pretty good. Everything hit. It was nice. I did pretty good. Everything hit. It was nice. It was a good feeling.

And I'm like, all right, got that under my belt. Everyone did great. The second half of the show, it's nighttime, so there's the two things that happened there. I was talking to Louie about it. At nighttime, it's like, yeah, there's more focus because they're not looking at each other and wondering why everyone's sitting outside.

But at night, they got focused. You've you can't you know that's all you got to look at but louis also pointed out well also by the intermission you know they've had a few more cocktails but either way quite honestly everybody killed everyone did great the audiences were great my panic was how is this a good environment to do stand-up and it seems antithetical and then someone pointed out to me dude they're coming for that it's a comedy festival you're not opening up for a rock act it's not like shit i gotta do 20 before tom petty like i i had no idea what a fucking rush it could be but when i went to fucking uh charlotte the next night i was like i got this i'm gonna mix it up i'm down south i'm gonna talk about jesus i'm gonna do a mark maron set i'm gonna do what i do i'm not gonna fucking freak

out and lean into it too hard just do do what you do in that situation mark you're in front of 11 000 people just do it you're professional it's fucking awesome it was great hanging out with the comics had a great time hanging out with uh with uh brent moran and ross and hardwick and i i hung out with louis yeah i love it i you know it's great to see the guys and you know i'm gonna be at the ones i'm not at all of them but i will be at the ones in uh austin houston in dallas coming up i'll be at the ones up in mountain view uh and the one in Irvine. I'll also be at Red Rocks in Denver. I guess what I'm telling you is I recommend it.

Go out to the Oddball Fest because, you know, I was a little skeptical as a performer, but it's pretty amazing, and it's not like anything you'll ever see, you know, before. It's arena comedy, and it's fucking great professional comics. I mean, Gaffigan's doing some, Burr's doing some, Silverman's doing some, Etel's doing some. Great comics, you know, everywhere. I was walking around at intermission, and when I was offstage with my pass,

meet and greet, some random photos, watching the show from the audience, watching one of my friends up on stage do his thing in front of the 10 11 000 people spectacular i will be honest with you though i only wore the jorts the first night i was thinking like this is gonna be my thing i'm gonna be the jorts guy on the festival but uh jorts only happened in tampa and that's where they were supposed to happen you get it you with me Florida huh you know what I'm saying you know what's going on down there a lot of crazy shit

all right man it's it's my fucking pleasure right now because I I just getting to know this guy we'd met a couple of times he rocks hard he's a he's an original and uh i was thrilled to talk to him and i learned a bunch of really interesting stuff so let's go now to my conversation with bob hi it's terry o'reilly host of under the influence recently we created an episode on cannabis marketing with cannabis legalization it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer.

I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category. And what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative.

bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at TorontoRock.com Hold. can you hear is that how you're gonna wear that pretty good yep that's how you do it yep that's how i do it stick one on your head yep Yep. One on your ear. Yep. Just in case. Just in case I go deaf.

How is your hearing? It's not bad. It's not bad. I think I have tinnitus because it's gone through three distinct phases. Yeah. You know, that first phase that I think everybody that goes to live shows, you know, you get to your car or you get back on the bus and you have that. Yeah. For about 36 hours. So that's the first one right and then there's mosquitoes right which is when frequencies start you know they come at you like a vacuum cleaner like

like white noisy kind of things yeah yeah and then they just stop yeah and like everything sounds different yeah okay so there's that and then now i've got i started having the fog horn really yeah which is like i'd be in bed at night sleeping on this side and then on this ear that i'm sleeping on i would start hearing like oh come on man really but i have to assume that with Hoosker Doo, you must have blown your fucking brains out, no? That band didn't get super loud until the very end when we were playing bigger rooms and I could bring like tons of amps.

Yeah. You know, the cymbals are a lot of what does it to people. Like in rehearsal spaces and the cymbals are at ear level. Oh, really? Yeah, that sound, that sound that all the time well you look great you look incredibly healthy and together thank you like i i saw you at bumper shoot uh-huh with worcester yeah yeah and you played like songs from the entire career yeah you just go through the catalog it must be amazing to have a fucking catalog the size that you have

like i i was doing my research and i always get nervous when I interview musicians, because it's sort of like, I'm going to get up to speed. And then you get online, and you're like, oh, there's no fucking way I'm going to get up to speed. No. You just, no. You just got to talk. Yeah.

But I go all the way back. I mean, I listened to, I got the reissue of Zen Arcade, and then I picked up an original one, and then I was just listening to that second album. Uh-huh. and then I picked up an original one, and then I was just listening to that second album. And the pace and intensity of that music is unlike anything. Yeah.

Well, I mean, there was a lot of people in the late 70s and early 80s. I guess for people who weren't around at that time, there was that first wave of punk rock that everybody thinks about. Oh, Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren. Yeah. Fashion, late 70s. Right. You know, Silver Jubilee and all that stuff. Yeah. And then the next iteration was this American hardcore that, you know, a lot of it started all over the country at once.

Like who were the bands? Well, I mean, in Los Angeles, there was, you know, X, Germs, Black Flag, stuff like that. Yeah. 45 Grave. You know, San Francisco, Dead Kennedy's Flipper. Then you go up to Vancouver, you know, black flags, stuff like that. 45, grave. You know, San Francisco, dead Kennedy's flipper. Then you go up to Vancouver, you know, DOA subhumans. Down in Austin, Texas, big boys, the dicks. Minneapolis was Husker Du, replacements, soul asylum.

All happened at once. Yeah, naked ray gun in Chicago, strike under. Then all the discord stuff in DC, minor threat, SOA, which is where Henry Rollins came from. Yep. All that kind of stuff so you know it was this amazing thing where i think that first wave of of of punk you know whether it was ramones blondie television or the sex pistols clash buzzcocks the next wave was was less about fashion and more about you know sort of changing the 70s AOR corporate rock arena thing. We were trying to build this network of new rooms that, you know, VFW halls play for 20 bucks.

Yeah, and just take the door or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, and you guys were all, everyone was into promoting themselves, flyers, fanzines, mailings. Yeah. Word of mouth. And promoting other bands. So, you know, and this was before the internet. This was before cell phones. You know, everybody had had notebooks and these notebooks were like sacrosanct

you know like i got this band's manager's number when we get to that town we can call him and i talked to a lot of guys from that world and and it was you'd show up in town and you'd see who the local acts were to open or you'd open for somebody that was just coming through that it was like it was it was almost a friend circle yeah totally a friend circle and you had to sort of be like a sleuth like okay where's the indie record store that sells you know the hardcore punk stuff and you find it then you get there and they say oh there's like a show at the at the you know indian reservation tomorrow night you guys could probably get on that you know and you just and you do these things and you have these amazing experiences in reservation in reno yeah okay man's like seven seconds they'd be you know i remember

that it's like we went to like some i think it was like some like uh you know religious you know one of those music stores that supplies to like churches and we would rent a pa and put it in a garage at this you know on a reservation and play for like 40 people really yeah it was nuts but that's like a specific memory indian reservation came that didn't just pop into your mind i remember that because the the flyer they instead of who screwed you they called us who screwed you and i'm thinking oh this is a reservation of court you know so wrong so where did you where'd you start playing guitar would you grow up um i was born and raised in a small farm town in northern new york town called malone were you was your family in

farming uh no no um my mom was uh a tell she worked at the bell telephone she was the night operator like switchboard patching stuff and uh when they did that yeah you could call if you dialed zero you could talk to your mother yes yeah be gracious and she could listen to all my calls and uh that's what happened yeah That's how they figured it out. Yeah, they knew. But when I was like six, seven years old, my parents bought like a mom and pop grocery store. So I grew up in like the Dobie Gillis setup, where it was the house, and then you go through the kitchen, and it was like a grocery store. So were you stocking shelves and stuff and running the register?

Running the register, the whole thing. And what's your dad's name? Willis. So it's like, that's Willis' the register? Running the register, the whole thing. And what's your dad's name? Willis. So it's like, that's Willis' boy. That's Willis' boy, yeah. Did you have brothers and sisters? Yeah, oldest sister, Susan, and an older brother, Brian. Are they all right?

Yeah, they're doing good. Well, good. And then when did the guitar come in? When did your mind get blown? I mean, what were you like in school when you were a kid? Well, smart kid, too smart probably. You know, just had a gift for numbers you feel out of place uh yeah for a lot of reasons but uh so but my my uh my dad was a

horn player in the air force but he never played music around me but the one thing that he did was when they got the grocery store he would have to buy cigarettes and stuff from the people who stocked the jukeboxes. Okay. And when they pulled the singles off, like in 1966, he would go and buy boxes of them for a penny a piece, and those were my toys as a kid. The 45s from the late 60s, mid to late 60s. Yeah, like mid-late 60s, like Beatles, Beach Boys, Dave Clark,

Five Mamas and Papas, Motown, Monkeys, everything. Do you regret that you don't have the box anymore? I have all of them. You still have all of them? All of them except a stack of Motown ones that got stolen when I was going to DJ a soul night in my college. Oh, my God. Oh, yeah. Oh, no.

They sit front and center in my workroom. Really? Yeah. I look over here. You have a shelf. Mine sit right there. Just in a row? Yeah.

Like how many we talked about? Three beer crates full of singles. I do that. Were they with the picture covers or no? No, like no duck sleeves even because it just came out of the jukebox. They were all beat up. And those were the things that you listened to early on. And do you remember which ones were like, holy shit?

Well, it's funny because I just did a, I did a show at Carnegie Hall. It was a song book tribute show for Paul Simon. Uh-huh. And one of the songs that I remember as a kid was the song Faking It was from Bookends. Yeah, yeah, it's a great song. And the reason I remember it is I used to memorize label copy. Uh-huh. And the running length of that song was two minutes and 74 seconds.

Yeah. Because in those days you had to stay under three minutes if they wouldn't play it right so they tried to slip it through yeah that's a good song did you play a song on that show yeah i just played yeah i played that car uh yeah bacon yeah i played carnegie earlier this year yeah and for paul simon yeah and it was just a bunch of you guys playing paul simon music yeah we had uh well the guy was like john doee, Judy Collins, Sam from Sam and Dave, the Wilson sisters from Heart. And did Paul come out at the end?

Nope. He didn't? No. He wasn't even there? No, of course not. That's interesting. So how does a show like that get booked? How does someone decide to do that?

He must have sanctioned it, correct? Yeah. It's a friend of mine. His name is Michael Dorff. He started the Knitting Factory in New York and then here. And now he has these venues called City Winery that are showing up around the country. And every year we do this.

He does these shows that raise money for underserved kids in New York City for musical instruments and lessons. And I'm very fortunate. Every couple of years he will have me on one of the shows. So that's sweet. So did you guys do a record as well? No, it was just a number of bands played for a couple hours at Carnegie Hall, and that was it. Okay, so you're a math kid, and you're listening to rock and roll.

Yep. And that one had an impression on you, because that's catchy. Faking it is catchy. Yeah, or good vibrations. What kind of horns did your dad play? Alto sax. Okay. So he could jam?

Could he blast? He never played in front of me. You never know. You didn't know at all. Not one note in front of me. I knew he had the horn. He never took it out. Bizarre.

But he got me the singles. And also, my grandmother would take care of me a lot. And she cared for a woman that got struck by lightning, who you know yeah hard to move and hard it couldn't move on her own and in the house that this woman lived there was a baby grand and i would put on the am radio and sit at the piano and i would hear a song and i would be able to figure it out on the piano on the piano and so so you had a knack for it yeah so i heard these songs i had these singles i sort of figured out music theory just by myself. What was the lady who got struck by lightning doing when you were doing that?

Just sitting there? She was in the other room. She was getting bathed or something that I didn't. So it was like over for that lady? No, she was okay. It was just hard, you know. It wasn't so she was like frazzled. That's either a strike of bad luck or amazing luck.

I don't know how that goes. What does it mean when you get struck by lightning i'll read into anything bob i have heard people have had gotten struck by lightning at least twice you've got to start thinking that you're not meant to be if you get struck by light you got to take off the tank hat wrong headgear yes all right so you start plinking around on piano and you figured you could out. Doing that, and then I got one of those little M&E plastic chord organs, you know, the ones where they have the chord buttons on the left and then the keyboard on the right.

Yeah. And I started writing songs when I was nine. Uh-huh. So I did that for a little while. Did Husker do cover any of those? No. I'm saving those till the end. Because you know how this goes.

Sure, sure. You save the beginning till the end. When they make sense again. Yeah. Where's my oatmeal? Exactly exactly i got a song so i so i write these cute little songs about my dog and about my mom and stuff you know and then i started you know as i got 11 12 years old i started to you know drop away from music for a little bit got into sports started listening to bad not bad music but what my friends were listening to right townie rock yeah well you know like fog hat fleetwood mac full city man got into kiss yeah and then zeppelin and not so no i hated zeppelin how is that i love i love those guys

now but because when the beatles broke up i remember the article in the new york daily news this said the beatles are over and the heir parent is a new blues outfit called Led Zeppelin. And I was like, there's another fucking Beatles. You're a big Beatles guy. Yeah. Very loyal. Yeah. I'm not a Stones guy.

I'm a Beatles guy. Yeah. There's no room for both. There is now. But when you're nine and the Beatles break up and they're trying to sell you Led Zeppelin, it's like, no fucking way. Right, I get that. So, all right. So, I want to go back because I'm trying to track this.

It's my belief, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. Like, I listened to the first couple Husker Du records, and you seem furious. Yes. Scorched earth. Yeah. That was the idea. I mean, I see pictures and I'm like, oh, my God, this guy looked like he was about to explode. Yes, lots of earth. Yeah. That was the idea. I mean, I see pictures and I'm like, oh my God, this guy looked like he was about to explode.

Yes. Lots of things. Yeah. Well, how did you get there? I mean, when did you start playing guitar and when did you start shredding yourself from the inside? Well, I picked up for my 16th birthday, I asked for and received the first Ramones album from my folks.

And when I heard that record, everything changed. album yeah from my folks and when i heard that record everything changed i mean i was i was i had a i had like a like a sg copy that i bought in a sears catalog and you know i would i would like lip sync to kiss and stuff yeah and i was writing you know trying to write like songs but then when i heard the ramones everything changed i was just like this is it anybody can do this now right it's not makeup and learjets and scarves and you know all that stuff it's these guys on the street playing this really basic fundamental music yeah so that changed my world that was when i said i can learn this and i can do this i moved from northern new york state to the twin cities in the fall of 1978 to go to Macalester College. Yeah. Small liberal arts school.

I got the underprivileged full scholarship. Nice. My parents were poverty level, so I got that. Did they keep the store, though, all the way through? Oh, yeah. They kept all that, but we had no money. So this was my way out of this farm town. How'd you pick that school?

You were just looking? I applied to a lot of schools. This farm town, by this point, I knew I was gay. I knew I had to get out of this small town. Right. Just because your options were limited or because of the hate? Both. And just looking for opportunity, wanting a better life.

So I was 17, moved to the Twin Cities. There was a record store really close to the campus called Cheapo Records. That's where I met the drummer. It's still there, isn't it? Yeah. So that that's where i met grant hart the drummer and other songwriter and husker do you guys get along now uh we communicate but you know we're we're both really difficult let's not beat around the bush yeah we both we both want we both have our ways of doing things and we it's you do this thing i mean band dynamics is something is beyond me but i guess because i don't understand i've never in a band but like in my mind like when i hear about guys like you

guys are like dinosaur junior i'm like you really you can't keep it together or the smiths you know or the smiths or anyway sound garden oh yeah but it's just sort of like like like there are these moments where it's like you guys were just about to be bigger than life yes but there's too big a problem yeah but you're saying but but most rock musicians have this self-defeatist thing like you it's the fear of success i think or i guess yeah just like oh no i'm gonna be huge and maybe they'll figure out that i only really know three chords but that's all you need i know i know that now but it's funny you know so many more than three chords because that's weird so you took the ramones on but you were that you were just plinking around on guitar you must have learned those beetle chords at some

point oh yeah yeah yeah learn you know just self-taught figured you know listen to records figured stuff out and then uh because you write don't you use all those pop chords you're not a ramones player um i was like that early on but then i figured out how to you know i figured out i had to do more stuff you know look to likeend, the Janglier open chords and stuff like that, play two parts at once on the guitar. Yeah, you're an amazing guitar player. Thanks. It's an interesting style. Okay, so you go to Cheapo's.

Go to Cheapo's. We meet. Grant says, I know this guy, Greg Norton. He works at Northern Lights Records down the street. He's got a bass guitar. Maybe we can get together and play music in the basement over there because it's a bigger basement than cheapo's yeah so we got together we had a keyboard player for a couple shows uh nice guy fella nice fella named charlie pine like a synth or oh farfisa oh really so we would do stuff like sea cruise and stuff but it was great so we we were playing the first shows

were at these like a 3-2 bar in the twin cities and for people who don't know minnesota drinking 3.2 alcohol half beer yeah that's what they serve here yeah near beer at a 3-2 bar so we would do like a couple sets like sea cruise mixed in with you know fast cars by the buzzcocks and non-alignment pack by para ubu and sea cruise you mean that the old song that they're let me take you on dim robert gordon he covered that right yeah yeah so so we did you know we did that fun charlie like that yeah but then uh at the end of this that we did two nights and at the end of the second night we asked him to leave the stage and we had already written five or six songs and we did those on our own were they on the any of the records uh i think a couple might

have made it on a land speed record so that was uh this is like the spring of 79 we did that and then we started you know started trying to play at the punk rock bars in the twin cities yeah started meeting other bands other musicians and replacements yeah replacements started right about that time were you guys friends yeah we were friends uh friendly rivalry uh-huh yeah because you were both added at the same time yeah well the replacements uh you, great band. There's a fellow named Peter Jesperson who worked at a record store and he sort of took

the Replacements under his wing and brought them over to Twin Tone Records. Right. And then we sent a demo to Twin Tone and they said,

we don't, you know, we can't agree on it so we don't want to work with you guys. So we were like, well, fuck y'all. So we just said, well, we're going to do it

our own way and then we started tapping into this hardcore punk network and they're definitely a stones band yeah yeah yeah totally they're rock and roll band we were like we are not a rock and roll band so so we had this friendly rivalry but uh paul and i would hang out and and listen to listen to music together and throw ideas around so it was drink yeah a little bit what'd you drink back then uh everything yeah but mostly you know like beer cheap wine yeah depends different records was you know along the way were different alcohols so you would sit with westerberg and listen to records and have conversations about music yeah i'm with peter jesperson and with chris mars and

yeah we'd listen to stuff talk stuff peter would try to educate us because he was the record store guy. And what was his take? Stuff like Only Ones, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Another Girl, Another Planet, which your replacement's covered. Yep. Did you guys do that too?

Nope. No. They got to it first. That's the only song though, isn't it? What? Isn't that their big song? What, Only Ones? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I tried to listen to the rest of it. It's okay, but it's not that song. No, they had a great song there. But yeah, you know, so it'd be that kind of stuff. And so, you know, it was a great time up there. You know, the late 70s through the mid 80s in Minneapolis is really exciting. Well, it's freezing. Freezing.

But like you said, all these great bands, especially you guys and the Replacements, come out of there. But what led to... Xen Arcade was this huge record for you guys and was a huge record for the form. Because I listen to your music, I still can't identify it as punk rock necessarily. Because you got all those pop chords in there and there was some sort of organization around how you wrote songs that was different. And how did you wrestle with that stuff? I mean, what was your process? Well, when we started coming out to the West Coast in the early 80s,

we saw all this stuff, Kennedy's Black Flag Flipper, all this really nihilistic punk rock thing. We were like, oh, this is sort of cool. Let's tap into this for a little bit. We sort of play like this anyways, and people liked it. And after about a year and a half, two years of that, we that we're just like man there's a lot of rules in this thing you know like you gotta wear this chain that way and you gotta hate you gotta hate this particular kind of politics it was just like all these rules and we're like what are these rules about we're

just we want to make music so you know uh with zen, that was the big break away from hardcore and way toward, you know, we really wanted to make more of a personal statement. Yeah. And, you know, Zen Arcade is, you know, it's a loose concept record sort of tying all three of us together. And, you know, we had this, you know, sort of storyline of this kid that designed, you know, video games. And he made this game called Search, you know, and had this kid that designed you know video games and he made this game called search you know and had this girlfriend that died and so you guys all sat down and wrote a story we were writing songs and when we saw that it all fit together then we started creating characters as a way to sort of pin the thing together right and then it became you know it's not as methodical as

like quadrophenia but you know it was pretty ambitious at the time yeah and you know the minute men saw that and they were like we want to make a double album too so they did double nickels and the dime you know and you know the minute men for people who don't know their music or never got to see that band i mean to really understand late 20th century american you know like west coast rock yeah you know you know that sort of funky thing you really have to go back and look at those minute men records so influential it took me a long time to wrap my brain around the minute man and then and then fire hose because my friend dave cross was a huge fire hose guy but even that like because i'm such a blues based idiot like i didn't you know i just didn't understand the

drive even when the first time i heard your band i was like dude's too much going on and i don't where's the hook i don't where's the hook yeah And, but it took me a long time to get it. But all those, the SST guys were kind of influential. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, Black Flag was so important to, you know, Los Angeles, that whole, you know, anti-police culture, you know, Ray Pettibone with all those graphics. I mean, that stuff was really subversive and provocative. And the police would come by SST, you know ray pettibone with all those graphics yeah i mean that's that stuff was really subversive and provocative and the police would come by sst you know and you know sort of harass people who work there in the bands yeah so that was a really so you were down here

living here well we would come we would come and stay for a couple weeks at a time who'd you stay with uh we would stay we would sleep at the sst office which was not which is maybe 300 square feet yeah and people would sleep under desks what was the idea what was the idea of sst i mean who's uh who's uh like that label i mean it's not it's not around anymore but you were on their black flag on the minute men right fire hose minute men minute men meat puppets and then later sound garden sonic youth dinosaur junior, Dinosaur Jr. That's right. They were all there. Did you feel like it was a community? Yep.

Yeah, it felt like a community. I mean, Chuck Dukowski, the bass player from Black Flag, he would book tours for bands, and he was really helpful to us. You know, Rollins. I mean, when Black Flag would go on tour, we would stay at SST, and I would sleep under the desk where Henry would sleep under you know yeah under the desk where henry would sleep when he was there when he wasn't sleeping in the in the tool shed or wherever it was now were you guys all wasted all the time um hooskers could party down yeah

yeah we knew how to we knew how to use those food stamps for generic beer generic beer black and white labels yeah i forgot about that beer the meat puppets were you friends with those guys yeah we went through phoenix they were crazy yeah they were wild guys trippy god they were just like i mean it was like like beef heart psychedelia meets you know meets crazy horse meets super country yeah fast punk rock and you know all that like the mid-60s psychedelic stuff that they wove in yeah so cool yeah and they and I love that you guys all knew each other and you just hung out. Yeah. So you do Zen Arcade, you do this big concept album, and all of a sudden now you're defining a new genre. Yes.

And there's pressure now. Yes. And what happened? Make another record as quickly as possible and don't think about it. No, no. Yeah, we made New Day Rising came out five months later. That was SST, right? That was still SST.

That was six months later? Yeah. Zen Arcade came out, well, the first, July 84, there was 3,000 copies pressed that sold instantly. SST didn't press it back, didn't get it back in stock until September of 84. I guess that's the liability of the small label. Yeah. Yes, indeed. So January 85, we put out New Day Rising.

Yeah. And then September of 85, we put out Flip Your Wig. And that was, by then, the major labels were at us. Yeah. And we could have taken Flip Your Wig to Warner Brothers, but we had a sense of loyalty, and we felt like on the way out that we sort of wanted to give the last record to SST. Uh-huh. wanted to give the last record to sst uh-huh and you know flip your wig was like an amazing pop record and you know in hindsight it would have been much better to give that to warner brothers where we ended up but right you know i mean we were trying to you know sort of took one for the team and try to be nice on the way out and but was that the last record that was the last record for

sst and there was two more husker do albums uh candy apple gray was the warner's debut came out in march of 86 and then warehouse songs and stories was the last album for the band and warners and that was january of 87 now in this in this early community of hardcore i mean were you like openly gay at that time no um you know how military is don't ask don't tell my thing my thing it seemed like in hardcore to me it was like don't advertise don't worry, don't tell? My thing, it seemed like in hardcore to me, it was like, don't advertise, don't worry. Yeah. Right. Because all the, you know, it was all the freaks and the misfits and the weirdos and

the artists and punks. And there was, I mean, it was just sort of like, yeah, you're probably gay. That's cool. Just, you know, don't be all gay out there and that. You know. Don't act all gay. Our bands don't do that well and and and and i you know i mean i you know i was gay you know but i didn't i didn't have a gay identity at that point

i was a guy who played guitar in a punk rock band so angrily yeah well you were you were gonna you were you were wondering where all that anger came from was it from that well that was one of things sort of being a self-hating homosexual but when you say self-hating was it that you didn't accept yourself or you were frustrated oh no i accepted i accepted the fact that that i was attracted to men but i didn't i didn't fit into what i perceived the lifestyle to be and i think it was probably more defined then yeah i mean it was a i mean that was a really there was a really strong definition there was that you know the macho leather and sort of the effeminate you know drag whatever you want to call it and also you know the first time that huskers went to san

francisco was july of 81 and that was like the moment when the word aids was brought to our attention yeah and that was the moment where reagan couldn't say the word for at least four years. Right. And ACT UP was created around that time to fight the sort of negligent, almost allowing of death. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, to me, a lot of the anger was, you know, not feeling like I had an identity within the community combined with the government telling me that I should die. Right. And you're sort of like, telling me that I should die. Right. And you're sort of like, well, fuck you all again.

Yeah. But you didn't have a voice around that. I mean, you couldn't feel that you could participate in that movement? I could have, but I guess I felt more comfortable just being a musician. Sure. Like, you know, I mean, there were people at that time who were doing incredible stuff whether it was you know sylvester doing you know doing amazing stuff on the west coast you know tom robinson jimmy somerville the people who did the real heavy lifting they self-identified and that was their identity and their work and to me i just i was

like i just want to be my work right now well it's interesting because like even within the work because you would think within music that there would be but there were definitely different camps i mean there were obviously out gay performers and people who who we all assumed was gay and and they didn't have any problem with that but it was not in the world that you were in that alt rock punk rock you know was it was uh it was not it was not that type of world. There were bits and pieces of it, but it just wasn't my thing. Yeah. So for better or worse, I just wanted to stick to my craft, I guess.

Yeah. And you wrote some great pop songs. And if people go back, they're all gender non-specific. So again, it's just the universal nature of the story but did you know that yeah you're like all right i'm gonna write in code yeah are you as miserable as me you know i mean well i mean the smiths made a thing you know well yeah well he's he's kind of a complicated character indeed and people love that so well he but he was very i mean he spoke to that that melancholy, though.

I mean, you definitely spoke. Like, when I see pictures of you when you were heavier and sweatier, you know, and just sort of, it was just this weird rage machine. Yeah, it's like, how do these guys get out, get away from the gas station attendant thing? Well, I don't know. It was a little nerdier than that, I think. I projected that on there. No, it's cool. I mean, yeah, I mean, we were very unlikely.

Yeah, well, when I saw you play recently, it's just very interesting that you can still, like, your energy is very directed, and the songs sound cleaner and better, and your guitar playing is probably better than it was then, I'd imagine. It's different. I think it's better, yeah. Yeah, but the intensity of the music is still there, even though you have some distance from it. When you play those songs, do you lock back into it,

or is it more embracing? I mean, how does that work? Do you time travel? I don't go back to that place. Yeah. And there's certain songs especially like side two of zen arcade you know it's just so visceral and guttural and it's a lot of my songs and it's a lot of anger and rage i can't really conjure that specific emotion anymore so you know

within the the husker do catalog i go back to the poppier ones the fun ones the right the you know sort of let's let's let's uh let's have a toast to punk rock kind of songs. Right. People love those. They're catchy. They're easy to play. Conjuring Rage is difficult. Yeah.

Because it was sort of amorphous. Yeah. I mean, multi-tiered. Yeah. You know, as I've gotten older and come to understand myself, it's not the most valid of emotions for me at this point. Well, let's talk about that for a minute because I have problems with rage. You do. I do. It comes upon me sometimes.

It's all right. Is it? It's all right. But when you were growing up, I mean, did your parents know? I don't know maybe they did it was never spoken about and even when it was apparent and then public still not spoken about even when i had partners and we lived together not spoken about huh but not not hostile not hostile just don't speak about it right Right. And are they still alive? My dad passed a year ago.

Sorry. Well, September, October of 12. And, yeah, so that was a changer. Yeah. But, no, I mean, you know, I had a great, you know, as good a relationship as I could have with my parents given, you know, given sort of the chaos that I grew up with and, you know, the tension, the the tension the violence the hyper vigilance that that puts in you as a child what kind of violence uh you know just you know you know physical stuff you know dad yeah get me get mad oh really so you grew up with rage yeah oh yeah yeah oh see i didn't know yeah it's it's yeah and it because i did as well it's erratic was he a drinker yep that was it and it wasn't erratic because it always started the slow boil would start on friday when he started after knocking the cocktails back what do you drink a beer drinker oh yeah and he just saw it happen

you could sit there in the house and it's like okay our hour was like clockwork and it was about what and it was nothing just every you know just, fucking customers, fucking this, fucking that. It is. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, you know, and then like, it's, you know, and then Sunday night it starts to dissipate because we have to go back to school on Monday. So like when you say violence, was that towards you and your sister? I didn't get as much of it. As who?

Others got it more than me, yeah. Oh my God. Well, part of that is right right as i was born there was an eldest child who passed and oh really yeah at what age uh nine oh really yeah kidney cancer so it was that transference thing one leaves the next one comes i'm the golden child oh my god and you know i sort of escaped it you didn't know that kid. So I sort of escaped it. You didn't know that kid. So when, like internalizing that, because I see I'm trying to sort of piece it together for myself. Is that you, do you consider yourself alcoholic? Yeah.

Yeah. But you've been sober a long time? 27 plus years. Yeah. And when did you first get sober? It was the summer of 86 86 i was 25 going on 26 i had not missed a day of drinking since i was 13 and you started drinking at home yeah because we had the grocery store there was there was there you know we sold beer you know it's like i could

make a six-pack disappear anytime i wanted yeah so it was always there and then when i went to college it was always there and being in a band it's always there so you had all this internalized you know frustration over not having a a way to identify sexually and the the way you were wired by an alcoholic father and fueled by the booze and you had the freedom to just fucking you know beat the shit out of your guitar. That and working in an environment where alcoholism is encouraged. Right. And that is what sort of, I imagine, pushed the band apart.

Well, this is the summer of 86, and a number of things happened at once with Husker Du. I got sober. Greg Norton, the bass player, got married and moved to the country he's out and uh you know granhart the drummer got involved with a bunch of different people and you know went down a personal path that i was not aware of until the very end of the band drugs yeah so in that 18 months you know it just blew apart yeah but because we were still working together and then you know so that's summer of 86 because we were still working together and then you know so that's summer of 86 beginning of 87 where house songs and stories come out we have like a three-month american tour big theaters and stuff the eve of the tour our office manager

commits suicide oh my god so it's sort of like you know so that's the guy that's been with you for a couple years yeah and you were friends with him? Yeah, yeah. Every day. Was he depressive? Yeah. Oh. You can't stop it. No. I didn't know how to process it when it happened. Did you find him? No.

I got a call from his mother. Oh. And I didn't know how to handle that at all. Had you felt like doing that? Yeah. Of course. Yeah. You know, I toyed with it. it yeah as much as you can toy with

like well i'm gonna try this well we you know when you're when you're an alcoholic or a drug addict you just do the slow style yes you don't want to commit to the the task yeah it's just kind of slowly disintegrate well if i do that i'm not gonna be able to drink tomorrow so it's it's gonna cut into my bar time so that happens that's summer of 86 i woke up one morning looked in the mirror saw my dad and just said i gotta stop this i'm not going to make it if i do this again yeah that that weird that that day where you're all bloated and sweaty when you just when you see when you see the rest of your life in one snapshot, and you're just like, oh my God, I am becoming...

The monster. I'm becoming this. I have to stop. Okay, so what'd you do? Just stopped. Uh-huh. Stopped. Cold.

And then where were you at creatively at that time? What was the plan? We were writing the music that would become Warehouse Songs and Stories, the last record that came out in 87. Our office manager kills himself, and then we go out on the road for a year, and we're all in a van together, and we're not talking. Not that we talked a lot by that point, but everybody's looking for the exit, but nobody wants to say it.

So we go through all of 1987, and, we were out doing some shows in December of 87. Right. And then it came to light that, you know, Grant Hart had, you know, had some, you know, addiction issues that, you know, that I didn't know about. I should have known, you know, I was right there. How could I not see? Yeah.

Did you feel betrayed? No, I felt, I just felt like, oh my God, this is like, it's like people are dying. you know i was right there how could i not see yeah did you feel uh betrayed no i felt i i i i just felt like oh my god this is like it's like people are dying people are addicted everybody's different why am i here and you know one of the saddest things about the the breakup of husker one of the things that i really feel bad about is i left for my self-preservation but in the years following i didn't defend anybody else's choices i just went about my business and i think some people wanted to blame it on other people's addictions and i'm like no in reality this thing was coming apart anyways it's just maybe that was like that showed me the way to get out you're talking about fans or And I'm like, no, in reality, this thing was coming apart anyways.

It's just maybe that was like that showed me the way to get out. You're talking about fans or labels? Yeah, fans, everybody. You know, mythology. Sure. Mythology says. And, you know, my one regret, I guess, or my one, you know, one thing I'm sad about with that is that I didn't, I neither attacked nor defended anybody. Yeah. I just went about my business. Mind defended anybody. Yeah. I just went about my business.

Mind your business, yeah. Yeah, so, you know, in a way, I guess if I'd said the things I'm saying now then, maybe things would be different, but hey, you know. You can't, well, you don't know to do that. Yeah, not when you're, not when your own life, you know, not when you quit your life and start a new life. Sure, and when someone else is in their sickness

and you're in your sickness, there's no way to be diplomatic. Who the hell knows what those feelings are? No idea yeah so i mean the band blew apart it was not it was not particularly ugly and it wasn't pretty it just sort of dissolved like you know like the end of a vacation or something well it sounded like you know everyone had an agenda and not necessarily healthy but it sounded like the bass player knew where he seemed to like, he, yeah, he was like, I'm done hitting the links.

And then Grant was like, you know, he was out of control. Well, he, he, he, he,

he, he had left his current family of Husker doing moved to a newer family of guys, musicians and stuff that it was just a whole different circle of people. Yeah. So I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So similar kind of thing. And I'm just like, I get it. and stuff that it was just a whole different circle of people yeah so i mean like him yeah or yeah yeah similar kind of thing and i'm just like i get it and this is when i get it you hold up and

made a workbook yeah at the same point as the band was blowing apart i left the twin cities and moved up uh upstate to halfway to duluth in a small town called pine city i bought a farm up there with 10 acres and chickens. You still have it? No, I lived there for a year and a half, and I went insane. I had to get out. You took your Husker Du money and bought a farm.

Bought a farm and sat up there and tried to figure out what I was going to do. So I sort of had to reinvent myself because the last thing I wanted to do was make a record that sounded like Husker Du. Well, that record, I think they just reissued it, didn't they? A workbook? Yeah, we just did that.

I just listened to it. I know they sent it to me. So I listened to the vinyl. I'm big into vinyl. And it's like a beautiful, deep record. But it's certainly not a Husker Du record. It's definitely lower in the volume, a lot of acoustic, and just very lyrical. And it sounded very

intimate how much early on since everyone credits you uh certainly everyone who's could do like you know people like cobain and the pixies and and and and anybody who is involved in the next wave of independent music you guys are like mythic yeah Now, when did you become aware of that? And did anyone guide you into Sugar or into anything else? No. So what happened is I made two records for Virgin Records with Anton and Tony. Yeah. Got pretty deep in debt.

Virgin wanted me to renegotiate the deal. Yeah. I got a new attorney, and my new attorney, who's my current attorney, I've worked with him for 20 plus years, he just said, you know what? Why don't you just walk away from that deal go play some solo shows go make some money write some songs see what happens so in 1991 i spent almost the entire year out doing solo acoustic shows how'd that go that was great because i would just write songs and try them out for people and it was very pressure, no record company leaning on me. Because I remember that time.

I remember thinking, like, how difficult is that? Because when I first heard Husker do, and then when you made this transition, I'm like, where'd the other guy go? I know. He was just taking a break. So, 91, I'm doing all this stuff. And as it turns out, in the summer of 91 my booking agent had me working in europe all summer and i was playing these like you know these like boutique festivals with sonic youth who i was friends with and you know dinosaur jr was on a

lot of the shows and nirvana who i remember because i had gotten the demos for what became nevermind yeah as a possible producer really yeah and i ended up producing that butch big yeah it worked out best for all of us yeah so i would i wouldn't have nearly done that did you who produced the husker do records i did we did them ourselves man because i mean they definitely took something from you because like when i listen to the husker Du records, everything's way up. Oh, yeah. Everything's up front. Yeah, because I listen to a vinyl of Nevermind, and it doesn't make any difference.

Because everything is like fucking way up. So that must have been what they were looking for. Yeah, but Nirvana were on a lot of these festivals. So I would watch them, and they were trashing the stage every night. And I'd have to go out after them with a 12-string. You know, it's like I'm up there doing my Richie Havens thing. So, just trying to keep the Krusty's involved. How did the Husker Du fans respond?

Throwing shit, you know. Fuck you, get off the fucking stage. Really? Dinosaur Junior. Really? Yeah. That's funny, because Jay's going out with a guitar and some pedals now by himself. Yeah.

But, you know, I mean, yeah. So, yeah, the irony was not lost on me i was just like wait a minute i invented this wait a minute you know do you have that deep womb single jay and lou and before dinosaur yeah um but you know and that was also the a lot of those uh that was a lot of the uh tour that became the year punk broke. Right. The documentary. Yeah. So all this is happening, and I'm writing these songs, and I'm thinking about making a pop record with loud guitars, and then Nevermind comes out. And then I meet with, at the end of 1991, I go over to England, and I meet with Alan

McGee, who was running Creation Records at the time. You know, real great label. Uh-huh. And he was a huge fan, and he heard some songs you know real great label uh-huh uh and he was a huge fan and he heard some songs and he had a lot of faith and he said i'll sign you don't have a lot of money but i can get you a lot of work i said great i came back to america got together with a label a ryco disc or you know a really good indie label at the time did two separate deals and then uh had a bunch of songs got a bass player named David Barbie and a drummer named Malcolm Travis, got them together for what was ostensibly to be the third Bob Mould solo record.

Right. We were working in Athens, Georgia, did like three weeks of rehearsing 30 songs to get ready to make these albums. And 40 Watt Club calls us and says, hey, somebody canceled. Do you guys want to play on Tuesday? And we're like, sure, we'll play a show. And then we're like, what are we going to call this? And we're at a Waffle House in Athens, Georgia. I look down, there's a sugar packet on the table.

I said, how about sugar? Okay, cool enough. Yeah, so that's it. So the next day we're playing a show is this band called Sugar. Yeah. sugars yeah so that's it so the next day we're playing a show is this band called sugar yeah and then we go up to uh you know suburban boston and spend a month making what would become copper blue and beaster those are fucking copper blue such a uh a huge record man that record it's fucking great we love that record but then but all of a sudden like whatever break you were taking

you're fucking back man oh yeah on the guitar it's like a wall yeah and and and you know so produce those uh i worked i produced those with a friend of mine lou giordano who was a engineer out of boston who actually did live sound on the road for husker do for the last couple years so he knew oh yeah yeah yeah we we all you know we all we were the art we were the architects of this thing yeah in ways so we're husker Du fans like, he's back? The UK press was very much like, oh my God, he's back. And again, this is nine months after Nevermind. Yeah.

So the history is Husker Du sets the table for the Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, Nirvana, Shoegaze, all this stuff. Yeah. And then I go to creation you know and in europe it's like he's back yeah right so it's it's like they set the table inadvertently for me yeah and people you know and the thing is people always get on me about this you know do you feel vindicated or do you feel like you know i'm just like man this stuff just happens you know it's like i you know i'm i like, I'm fine with loose change.

It's cool. I don't need the whole bank. And you're working, too. I mean, it's important to keep working. Yeah, I'm working and working and working, and we're touring hard, and we're going to Japan for the first time, and all these amazing opportunities.

So Sugar is this three albums in three years condensed insanity. Did that sell more than anything else you did by far yeah yep because that was because the the entire culture of music changed yeah you were at the beginning of it and and you didn't you didn't earn off of that a lot but then like what you invented came back around and you re-entered it and yep killed yeah pixies nirvana they set it up yeah and i just come back and then everybody's used to it now then all of a sudden vocals slightly under distorted guitars yeah isn't that difficult to understand right so it's become mainstream music oh it's fucking sweet so it's nice so yeah

and and even to this day you know when people do that i'm like you got to be kidding right it's like what you know me and butch big we're together, you know, in the old Smart Studios in Madison in 84, making Tar Babies records together. I know this drill. It's like we sort of did this thing. Y'all did it together. Yeah, it's like we just do this thing because we love music, you know. Yeah, but you guys are at a level of it that, you know, to be as creative, it's a weird thing, and the same with comedy or anything else, is that who the hell knows who makes the cup, but usually the guys who hang in are the guys who really you know deserve it slow and steady yeah yep and what what what do you do i mean i know you've put out a lot of records since the sugar records but what were some of

the things that you let yourself do that you never thought you would do musically uh well i mean after sugar you know after sugar disbanded uh in 95 i started working on uh you know a solo record at home and it was a it was more lo-fi you know where you live in uh i was in austin texas at that time and uh really into stuff like sabado guided by voices so i was like you know be really fun to just make a record at home and yeah i started getting into that made a couple solo records one in 96 one in 98 and then uh the record that i made in 98 last dog and pony show was my farewell to rock you know 20 years in the van 20 years being a rock guitarist i wanted to be a gay guy yeah yeah you know i moved back to new york city

and i was like i want to get my other life going how old were you 38 so you're like i'm ready i'm ready i'm ready now i'm ready to take on the identity i'm going to the gym i'm hanging out on eighth avenue you know i'm going to fire island so yeah so in 1999 i really got into the gay lifestyle and you know in in new york that was amazing at that time yeah you know it created all of the archetypes that you know everybody copies uh-huh you know what'd you lock into uh what did i look into um are you bare now but then i didn't know i was trying to shave my body and have six-pack abs and all that weird shit you did i tried it didn't work so you went through what a lot of good guys go through in their mid-20s yeah or their late teens yeah totally

yeah like yeah weird colored underwear oh man so yeah so i did that and that led me to electronic music so but emotionally did was there were you was it a relief it was just it was finding a new way of life but i mean like like i have to assume that like to make that decision and to engage that freedom finally to say like say, like, all right, let's feel this out. I mean, it takes a certain amount of courage, even though you're compelled to do it, you know, anyways. But, I mean, was it fun? Yeah, well, I was longtime partner to Ann Monogamous, so I didn't really, you know, wasn't, like, you know, wasn't fruit salad all the time. It was sort of like, just let's hang around and see what happens.

fruit salad all the time yeah it was sort of like just let's hang around see what happens yeah and uh you know you know it was crazy you know like hanging out with like porn stars and you know all this you know this stuff that you think you know like you're like oh my god this is so gay and it's really and it's really fun so i'm doing that in 99 but like in august of 99 i got a call to go work at pro wrestling what yeah i don not know about this i i mean i i think i saw a little whenever i forgot i'm glad you brought it up man but are you a big pro wrestling guy yeah that was my thing as a kid you know there were kids you know kids like baseball kid like you know like comic well you like kiss so i was like pro wrestling kiss spectacle yeah so you know how did you get that call um i uh a friend of mine named gary jester worked at a

company called world championship wrestling and that was the tbs turner aol time warner wrestling they were the direct competitor to vince mcmahon the wwf at the time and they had they were having a shake-up in the in the in the creative side and i had been giving them ideas all throughout the 90s and they knew that i knew the business and they said why don't you come in and be a creative consultant so i got in there you knew as a fan yeah they knew that i was smart you know i'd gotten smartened up i knew how it all worked and they were looking for scripts they were looking for new ideas yeah something fresh something different so i went down there and just got you know thrown into the lion's den and it was amazing

it was a really amazing time and it worked um it worked as best as best i could there was a lot of things that derailed my ideas other people came in and i did not have seniority or power i was just this guy who had really good handwriting could produce a show on the fly yeah good with math good with you know kept my head down said yes sir no sir and but you but you had a good handwriting, could produce a show on the fly, good with math, kept my head down, said yes sir, no sir. But you had a good time? I had a great time. I mean, man, that's a whole separate book.

Yeah. I mean, it was really, really, really great stuff because I got there, like they brought me in on a Sunday night for a pay-per-view and I watched it in the production truck with the new boss. And he's like, what do you think of this? What do you think of that? What do you think of that? What do you think of this? I said, well, this should have gone longer.

You don't want to really expose that guy's weaknesses. This storyline could work, but I'm not really sure it makes sense. And so they're like, okay, so come to Monday Nitro tomorrow and meet with Hogan. So they put me in a room with Hogan right off the bat. The shrewdest politician in the business and were you a fan um i was a fan of the business okay yeah to be nice yeah and uh and you know i'm talking with hogan i'm running this idea by him and you know he said hmm sounds good brother yeah you know all the time saying who's this fucking mark yeah yeah so so

you know like where'd this guy come from and but you know i hung in saying who's this fucking mark yeah yeah so so you know like where'd this guy come from and but you know i hung in there stuck it out they found a spot for me and uh as it turns out the job that i ended up with was uh working at uh my my showtime job was gorilla position and to explain what gorilla position is in the old days up in northeast wrestling you know uh you know vince senior and vince, Vince Senior, Vince McMahon, and they had a guy, Gorilla Monsoon. He was a wrestler. And he was the one that would, in the old days before wireless and everything, during the matches, he would come down. He'd walk from the back to the ring, go down and just nod at the timekeeper and walk back.

And that was the signal for the guys in the ring to down and just nod at the timekeeper and walk back and that was the signal for the guys in the ring to finish yeah and he would sit behind the curtain and give everybody their instructions so they call it the gorilla position uh-huh so doing monday nitro we're doing three hours of tv live every monday night we would start at 8 eastern wwf would start at 9 eastern i'm sitting behind the curtain our show on our show with time code behind the curtain. Our show with time code on the left side, their show with time code on the right side, I'm sitting there with a script, 16 segments that we have to do in three hours and eight minutes,

and we have to hit our marks. So the first five segments, the first hour. Segment six, we have to get on the air at 8.59 so that we can trump their hot open. Start it, right. We trump their hot open. Right. We do all our ballyhoo and you know it's weird hogan running and all that shit so i'm sitting there i'm the

last stop for all these guys to get their lines their cues so i'm doing this watching their show so when they go on commercial i get on a wireless mic and tell the refs they're on break speed it up so that we try to do gimmick. We're doing all this zabada to keep people on our show. You're actually, the two networks are wrestling. Yeah, we're competing, and I'm sending signals to the boys in the ring through the ref who's got a wireless. That's hilarious. Oh, yeah, it was nuts, the stuff that we did.

But it was a blast, right? Oh, yeah, it was a blast, and met great people, you know, just great people. Kevin Nash, who was like NWO guy, you know, big sexy. He was Diesel in the WWF. And he came over and he was sort of running the locker room. Yeah. And at the first booking meeting, I sat in and I didn't say much, but I was taking good notes and keeping stuff straight for everybody. We took a break and walked out and he goes, you're a musician.

He goes, are you gay and you know this is the first like second day in and i'm sort of like uh i said yeah i am kev is that going to be a problem he goes nah how a lot of gay friends you smoke pot like yeah sometimes like sushi like hell yeah he's right on brother you're riding with us the initiation yeah it was just and then we were you know it's like a group of us yeah it's fun pot talking sitting up till three in the morning in the hotel talking old 70s detroit wrestling with the chic and bobo brazil and oh my god so you're really crazy shit like you know yeah bobby shane the original king of wrestling in florida crazy you know watch the donkey matches andarillo in 58 and all this shit.

You know, gimmicks, you know. Yeah. Trying to come up with shit. Yeah. I mean, I interviewed, I don't know a lot about wrestling, but I interviewed Punk, CM Punk. Yep. And, you know, he's a great guy. And I saw that documentary, Beyond the Mat.

Oof. That's tough. What's that guy's name? Jake Roberts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Jake, he's totally turned his life around. That's tough. What's that guy's name? Jake Roberts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Jake, he's totally turned his life around. That's amazing. One of the other ex-wrestlers, this guy Diamond Dallas Page, came up with this yoga thing.

Yeah. And he also, like, Jake was one of his mentors in the old days, and he brought Jake out to Atlanta to live with him. And they started filming it like a reality thing. Uh-huh. And he got him clean. He got him clean and sober. He looks great. Really?

And Jake was one of the best minds in the business. It was sad to watch that movie, but he's turned it all around. That's amazing. Mick Foley, Terry Funk. He's going to work with Terry Funk. Mick's a great guy. Yeah, Mick is.

I've met Mick a couple times. Yeah, he's a sweetheart. Yeah, really good writer, really great. Just does a lot of fun stuff for kids. My partner, Brendan, in this thing, in WTF, he grew up with the wrestling. Oh, boy. He knows all about it, and he gets real excited about it.

Yeah, Punk's a good guy. I never met him. I knew about him back in 2001. You know Colt Cabana? Yeah, I know Colt. He's got a podcast. Yeah. Art of Wrestling.

Right. Yeah, he modeled it after this show. Excellent. And I interviewed him when I was up in Chicago. Yeah. art of wrestling right and he was yeah he modeled it after this show excellent and uh and i interviewed him when i was up in uh chicago yeah and he told me about that whole you know that whole independent wrestling thing and well you know punk was like straight edge like you know the x on the hand like discord minor threat dc punk rock so yeah it's it's all good yeah it's uh it is very the spectacle of it the show of it the people that love it really love it and it's one

of those things that i just like i think I'm a little too old to lock into, but I definitely appreciate that people really fucking dig it. And it bums me out when people are like, oh, that's fake. It's like, well, no, it's predetermined. It's choreographed. It involves complete and absolute trust in the person you're doing all this crazy shit with, because they could accidentally drop you on your head and kill you. And it's like Cirque du Soleil meets, shakespeare no these morality plays exactly that's what it is

you've got your you've got your face and you've got your uh yeah i got babies and heels yeah yeah it's all that's yeah so okay so you're doing wrestling and you're doing electronic music yeah what the hell did that stick that didn't stick um yeah it did sort of stick it got me to a couple different places i made an electronic record called modulate in 02 that a lot of good ideas but i didn't know what i was doing yeah uh 03 i moved to washington dc and met a fellow named rich morel and we started these dj nights called blow off in 03 you know i got to dc i didn't have any friends you know i just split from my partner once we got there and i'm like and i got to dc i didn't have any friends you know i just split from my partner once we got there and i'm like and you moved to dc yeah yeah from new york so it was uh it's weird

yeah um so in 03 started djing and you know did you know got in you know that's sort of how i was expressing my electronic and dance side more and you know, started easing back towards guitar rock as the aughts went on. I made a record in 04 called Body of Song. District line was, I think, 07, Life and Times in 09. Yeah, and then that sort of, you know, gets us up to when I started working on the autobiography. And you're comfortable? More comfortable, yeah. Well, I think it's fascinating to me that you did something that rarely happens in an artist's life,

is that you hit some sort of place where you allowed yourself to evolve and to continue to become comfortable with yourself. You knew there was a price to pay on some level. Yep. Yeah. price to pay on some level yep yeah and but it was more important for you to realize you know what you're fully capable of and you know take risks and and and try to embrace you know the things you were afraid of are you are you the kind of guy when you make a shift when you know you're going to make a shift like that are you like it when i go i'm gone like here's my thing i'm going to move on so i'm gone i'm not looking back well i like real hard turns i don't know if

i ever had anything that defined me that that specifically because I was as an artist. If I call myself that it was just it was different. It was just a sort of the way I frame it is it took me about 20 years to arrive in myself. So if I look at my anger period, which was not marketable, no, you know, no one was celebrating me. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't paid to be that way well well no i mean i was a marginal act that had you know clearly anger problems and i i think is it didn't work like i believe that like well everyone must be angry and bitter

inside so why aren't they relating to me and then i realized that well no no a lot of people aren't that way and it's not necessarily entertaining so it was never that drastic it was sort of a small a slow coming into myself is what it really was okay yeah because i want why i ask is because like these things were end of rock beginning of gay oh and pro wrestling what yeah you know like i would just do these like sort of real abrupt breaks well you had it was like well that that was an opportunity that you chose to embrace i mean you didn't see it coming it wasn't like you were like i'm pounding on the door of the pro wrestling world. Yeah.

Like those are those decisions where it's like, well, that sounds fun for a while. Yeah, and this isn't going to happen again next year. I better do it now. Sure, why not do that? Yeah, well, that, yeah, that's different. So now, how did you, I want to come back to this in the sense,

I know your father passed away and that you had, now that I know that there was this, you know, this horrendous dynamic that you were able to to transcend somehow it was what it was yeah it was what it was yeah and and one of the one of the things but are you at peace with it i mean did oh yeah was it a slow death uh it was a long it was a it was a long a long a long uh last lap for him it was it was tough you know it's a couple years long, long last lap for him. It was tough. It's a couple years, COPD, and then eventually they found the big tumor, lung cancer. We had some really good time together towards the end, both when he was very aware and as he was transitioning out.

as he was transitioning out and uh it it was really you know my dad was this gigantic figure in the family that you know and it was never challenged and you know had had made it hard you know so you know my you know my my siblings have different views and i just felt like i have to really go and try to understand his life while i have the chance to try to learn about my grandfather his father and the stories and then oh yeah it's this way empathy compassion i'm so sorry really i had no idea and then it's okay huh you know and then all of a sudden it's like of course everything's forgiven now it all makes sense now wow and you know so then you know it's so now i'm the messenger to the others and trying to do that so did he apologize i didn't didn't want one. No? I just wanted to know what happened.

Yeah. You know, because we all have, you know, this is the thing. You tell stories. I tell stories. We do this thing. We unknowingly build these legacies. Everybody in the world does. And if you can't create clarity with your legacy before it ends, it it's sort of it can be lost misunderstood

or tumbled down generations yeah uh and and of course you you catch it and you you know i you know again the day that in 86 when i looked in the mirror and saw my future and i didn't want that one so yeah i mean it's it's it's it was it was great for me it was great for me it gave me a lot of clarity a lot of extra clarity beyond the things that I had figured out. You know, it just, so yeah, I mean, absolute peace. Absolute peace. That's good. Yeah.

Congratulations. Yeah, yeah. I mean, as much as, you know, I'm sure there could be flare-ups at any point. But it's, yeah, I mean, i'm happy that i took the i'm happy i took the time and took you know accepted the challenge i guess that's great to me it just really i needed to know the story i needed to hear the story from the source and not that not the you know the mythology or the you know the the the you know the the realities we create we make the distance from our families

and create these realities, and then we have this story that we carry, and then when you find out, like, wait, somebody took out chapters four through eight. Right. And it's also why wrestling is compelling, is that those stories are very, there's a line.

When it's good, it's amazing. Yeah. How did, you wrote the theme to The Daily Show. Yeah. And I remember that. Because you're friends with Liz Winstead. Yes. So she, how did that happen?

Do you still make a few bucks every time they play it? Yes. That's great. I'm grateful for that. It was a wonderful thing. Liz Winstead and I were friends in Minneapolis in the 80s and hung out a lot together. And she was one of the original creators of The Daily Show with Craig Kilbourne. Yeah, it was, gosh, who were the other?

Yeah, Craig was the original host. Yeah. And, you know, and then things changed later and john stewart came in but but uh liz came to me with you know we're doing this we're putting this show together we're going to call it the daily show and you know we'd like you to do you have anything that would work really good for theme music and i said well liz i just finished a record and i have two instrumentals that i think might be okay and i'll you know i'll let you hear them both and pick the one you want and they picked the day and that was a had a dummy title dog on fire because i couldn't come up with any words and uh they i recorded a version for the show yeah and that became the theme and is still the

theme song to this great they kept it yeah it's really i'm so grateful yeah really grateful for that other people you know people re-recorded it and changed it a little yeah it's really i'm so grateful yeah really grateful for that other people you know people re-recorded it and changed it a little bit but i mean i'm still the creator so it's cool that's nice man yeah really that's nice to make money while you're sleeping yes i like that all right so do you want to play or you feel like it or no i'll play a song yeah give me a song all right hold on let me set it up okay let me see all right song and all these songs i write for you they tear me up it's not hard to do. Listen to my voice, it's the only weapon I kept from the From the war From the war And I can soothe every ailment you endure

And I can see into the future most assured I don't have a choice It's the only voice I know From the war, up from the war Up from the war, up from the war And everything we made reduced to dust You were the one who taught me most to I'll carry your remains, your emblem and your name And nothing left will ever be the same Do do do do do do do do Oh yeah

Do do do do do do do do do do do do do And this war we fought was violent and long Weeks turned into years But we kept on keeping on Ringing in my brain is what remains it's what remains This war has worn me down Broken dreams and a hole in the ground Don't give up And don't give in Great. Thank you, man. It's a heavy deal, right? It's a very heavy deal. I really appreciate you coming. Thanks, Mark. It's been really fun.

I'm a big fan. Love the show. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Who knew? Did you know that stuff? Professional wrestling? What was that?

What? Huh? I love it. I love Bob Mould, and that song was... I love when people play in here. I love what I do. What can I? What? Huh? I love it. I love Bob Mould and that song was... I love when people play in here. I love what I do. What can I tell you? Thank you for listening.

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