Our Band Could Be Your Life

by Michael Azerrad

  “I don’t think it’s about selling out, it’s just that all of a sudden, your world becomes invaded by other people, by the mainstream, by Rolling Stone, by Musician wanting to go on the road with you for three days—all these things that we railed against, and we were sort of getting sucked into it and it starts to move faster and you become a willing accomplice without knowing it. To me, you think, ‘Finally, we’re changing things.’ But you’re being changed by things as much as you’re changing things. It’s a two-way street. I only know this years later. At the time you have no idea—the tornado spins and if you can grab your shoes as they go by, you’re doing well.”

  Zen Arcade not only made Hüsker Dü a nationally known, critically respected band; it also expanded the music’s audience beyond the punk underground. “That was the beginning, for us, of the college-educated, ‘less prone to black leather motorcycle jacket’ crowd,” Hart says. “More women were coming to the shows. People were getting more interested in the lyrics and reading between the lines.”

  With Zen Arcade there was a thrilling feeling that American post-punk had finally arrived because it could sustain something as ambitious as a double concept album. Zen Arcade had stretched the hardcore format to its most extreme limits; it was the final word on the genre, a scorching of musical earth—any hardcore after Zen Arcade would be derivative, retrograde, formulaic. The album wasn’t only about a character coming of age, nor was it merely about Hüsker Dü coming of age, or the unmistakable sound of a band leaving its musical adolescence behind—it was about an entire musical movement coming of age.

  At this time Hart, drummer of one of underground rock’s hippest, most celebrated bands, was living at his folks’ house in suburban South St. Paul. One day, on a manila envelope that Hart was using to sketch out the track sequence of the next Hüsker Dü album, he found a note: “Grant: Would appreciate it if you didn’t have a party while we were gone—we’ll be back Monday. Food in freezer. Love, Mom.”

  The liner notes for Zen Arcade mention that “Carducci wants another album already, but not another double LP,” and they obliged, recording New Day Rising just as Zen Arcade came out in July ’84, releasing it a scant six months later.

  Hüsker Dü were hardly resting on their laurels: from the summer of ’84 to the summer of ’85, they released eight LP sides of consistently excellent music. And SST had absolutely no complaints about the deluge—after all, a steady stream of albums by its top band helped SST with everything from cash flow to having the leverage to get paid by its distributors for other releases.

  Even better for SST, Hüsker Dü had deferred taking royalties on their albums so the label could stay solvent. Most of their income came from touring anyway, so record royalties seemed like gravy. “We were being real nice guys,” says Norton. “Which may not have been a good thing in hindsight.” But with the success of Zen Arcade, record royalties weren’t just gravy anymore—they were the whole turkey. Hart says that by 1987 SST owed Hüsker Dü something like $150,000, which the label was still paying off years later.

  Hüsker Dü didn’t even have a contract with SST until the very end of their association with the label. “It was all based,” says Hart with a sigh, “on peace, love, and anarchy.”

  Having dispensed with adolescence with Zen Arcade, the band approached more adult situations on New Day Rising. “You grow up, you change your perspective,” Mould explained. “You’re not always eighteen years old, drunk, with a mohawk, driving around screaming and hollering about anarchy—you don’t do that all your life.”

  As Hart, Mould, and Norton became better musicians, they discovered they were increasingly able to play at slower tempos and still have the rhythms hang together, allowing for more extended melodies. And as usual they were writing better songs. The band was still coalescing, still forming out of the big bang of Land Speed Record, into something focused.

  New Day Rising, with its alternating currents of radiant fury, caustic introspection, and urgent desire for redemption, made for an exhilarating ride, starting with the incantatory “New Day Rising,” where Mould and Hart sing the title phrase over and over as the track builds with an almost gospel fervor. Hart’s torrential “The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill” typifies the band’s unique blend of catchiness and intensity; Hart’s piano-driven “Books about UFO’s” achieves an irresistibly jaunty, jazzy swing the band had never attempted before. Mould’s “Celebrated Summer,” perhaps his best song to date, manages to be teeming, fast, and wistful all at the same time, as does the jackhammer folk of another Mould classic, “I Apologize.”

  Hüsker Dü occupied an unexplored no-man’s-land between hardcore noise and pure pop, reclaiming melody from the domain of mass-produced mainstream pap, but furiously smudging it over with distortion, a sort of smoke screen to deter the straights. “They had tuneful material,” says Spot. “They were kind of working from within a classic pop structure. And doing something else with it. Kind of like they broke into it with a coat hanger and got the keys out and went on a joy ride. And then wore the tires out.”

  Upon its release in January ’85, New Day Rising won widespread critical praise—U.K. tabloid Sounds called Hüsker Dü “the most exciting and important American rock group since the Ramones,” adding that the band’s mission was to “breach and expose the gap between modern American youth and their image.”

  But the band was starting to have its fill of SST. At first Hüsker Dü worked with Spot because he was the hip producer at the time—and he was cheap, too. But after a couple of records, “We had no other choice but to work with him,” says Hart. “SST made us work with him.” They had wanted to self-produce New Day Rising, but SST, perhaps wary of a self-indulgent financial quagmire, insisted on flying Spot to Minneapolis to supervise.

  Spot, surely aware of the power struggle, arrived in Minneapolis and promptly asserted his authority by ordering that the entire recording console be moved two inches. “There was a lot of tension between everybody,” says Spot. “They wanted to produce it themselves and then I was there. I had to do what the record company wanted. And it was one of those situations where I knew my territory and I did my job, whether it was popular or not. So it came out of that era where maybe everybody was starting to take it too seriously.” New Day Rising would be one of the last recordings Spot did for SST.

  The album does have some sonic problems; on “Heaven Hill” it sounds like Hart is singing inside a giant oil drum. Elsewhere, the vocals are smothered in a heavy mist of amplifier fuzz and cymbal wash. Hart and Mould vowed to produce themselves next time. It wasn’t such a bad idea—Mould had already produced various bands, including Soul Asylum, and knew his way around a recording studio.

  The more zealous precincts of the underground community seemed to believe that New Day Rising, with its modestly improved production values and musicianship, better-crafted arrangements, and more prominent melodies, was a “commercial” album, an accusation the band had to defend against constantly. But in the absolutist logic of the underground, anything that was popular was bad, ipso facto. In 1985 a fanzine interviewer asked Norton: “If you were signed to a major label, your music would have a much greater possibility of breaking mainstream listening venues and becoming what most people would consider commercial. How do you respond to that?” Norton replied that becoming popular is not necessarily the same thing as selling out, but the response surely fell on deaf ears.

  That spring the members of Hüsker Dü were publicly stating their allegiance to SST, even as three major labels pursued the band after the critical swoon over Zen Arcade, not to mention twenty thousand copies sold of a double album and thirty thousand of New Day Rising (and this was before they’d even toured New Day Rising on the crucial East Coast). And yet Mould strongly hinted that jumping to a major wasn’t out of the question. “If a band is responsible and level-headed about things, you can make that jump,” Mould told Rockpool in April ’85.

  But years later Mould admitted they were t
hinking much more seriously about a jump than they had let on at the time. “We knew there was a much bigger audience that we could at least have a shot at,” Mould said in 1999. “And we were five or six years into our career at that point, knowing unconsciously at least that it couldn’t last forever. You want to try to make a run for it.”

  SST tried to help Hüsker Dü play ball with radio, but the way Hüsker Dü perceived it, SST’s real allegiances lay elsewhere. “I think there’s a little reluctance on their part to let anything get a little more attention than Black Flag,” Hart said once they were safely off the label. “SST is a lot like some kind of commune, and that’s perfectly fine and good, but a lot of times there’s the syndrome of the head of the commune.”

  Hart said the band was annoyed at SST’s insensitivity—the label allegedly refused to allow them to debut the “Makes No Sense at All” video at the Museum of Modern Art and irked the band by including a Hüsker Dü track on the Blasting Concept compilation, with what they felt was a misogynistic Raymond Pettibon cover illustration. “With SST there was nothing that was ours,” Hart said. “There was nothing that we could be proud of without them trying to take that away from us.”

  Hart went on to hint that SST thought the Hüskers might be a little “soft” because they stayed in motels and occasionally wrote happy songs. “We don’t have to convince the world that we’re suffering to convince them that we’re artists,” Hart said, jabbing at Black Flag’s angst-ridden style. “There are those that choose to take that course. There’s nothing wrong with being happy.”

  All the while, Mould was still running Reflex Records with the band’s stalwart supporter, Terry Katzman. “It was really important to showcase other talent from your same town,” Norton explains, “to let other people in the rest of the country know that, hey, we’ve got a little burgeoning scene going on here and there’s some good music and entice people to come to Minneapolis to tour or make it easier for Minneapolis bands to tour.”

  Reflex released a few regional compilations, as well as area post-punk bands such as Rifle Sport, Man Sized Action, Otto’s Chemical Lounge, and Articles of Faith, with Mould and/or Minneapolis studio mainstay Steve Fjelstad usually producing; they got the bands a fair amount of press in fanzines nationwide. The label was run as a co-op: the bands paid for recording and the label paid for pressing, with profits split fifty-fifty. By 1984 the label had a distribution deal with Dutch East India Trading. The Minutemen released their 1985 Tour Spiel EP on Reflex. But by May 1985 the band was now too busy to deal with Reflex, even with Katzman’s assistance. “It would really have had to have been organized, and they weren’t that organized,” says Katzman. “Totally unorganized is what we were.”

  CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: HART, NORTON, AND MOULD AT A CHICAGO SHOW IN 1984.

  GAIL BUTENSKY

  An SST press release at the time described Hüsker Dü as “three guys from the twin cities with one desire: to set people hümming their tünes and then to kick their ass.” The band’s next album did just that, in spades.

  As the label’s best-selling band by far, Hüsker Dü finally had enough clout to produce their own record. Instead of cramming the recording and mixing into a hectic, amphetamine-fueled few days, they recorded over several months, from March through June (although May was spent touring New Day Rising). This time the sound was crisp and the vocals distinct, more a considered studio creation than just three guys cranking it out as fast as they could. And the songs were stronger than ever.

  The result was their best, most consistent album. Flip Your Wig delved even further into pop melody, but the approach remained quintessentially Hüsker Dü—even on Mould’s sublime “Makes No Sense at All,” Hart’s drums roll and tumble as frantically as ever, Norton’s bass gamely keeps pace, and Mould’s guitars still strafe the changes with overwhelming volleys of distortion and speed. Six years, six records, and hundreds of gigs into their career, Hüsker Dü was at the top of their game.

  The two songwriters were trying their level best to outdo each other, and with spectacular results: Hart countered Mould’s infectiously swinging “Hate Paper Doll” with the expansive Sixties pop sounds of “Green Eyes”; Mould answered Hart’s hectic soul wipeout “Every Everything” with the towering complacency-buster “Games.” The cacophonous raga of Mould’s “Divide and Conquer” blows through eight verses before a righteous chorus finally puts the song through the roof; the song’s whirling dervish intensity is matched only by Hart’s passionate rave-up “Keep Hanging On.” Except for the two instrumentals tacked on to the end, every song sounds like a hit in some alternate world where the rivers run with an equal mixture of battery acid and honey.

  Flip Your Wig, released that September, won the band even more airplay, debuting at number five and soon becoming the first independent release to top the charts of the top college radio tip sheet College Music Journal, going on to spend nearly half a year on the charts. The band got major stories in national rock magazines Creem and Spin while both New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig made the top ten of the 1985 Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll, an unprecedented feat. Mould was understandably optimistic about the band’s future. “Hüsker Dü’s a kind of diamond in the rough right now,” he said. “We’re just starting.”

  Although the Hüskers had already enjoyed some commercial radio airplay, “Makes No Sense at All” made modest inroads into radio’s AOR (album-oriented rock) format, traditionally the preserve of mainstream rockers like Bryan Adams and ZZ Top. This fueled speculation that the band would soon succumb to a major label. “A lot of majors have been calling,” Mould told Boston Rock in the fall of ’85, “and they’re all really interested in the band, but I don’t really know if we’re all that interested in them.” The band members also told several other magazines that they were not interested in signing to a major label.

  But that didn’t mean it was the truth. “We were elusive for half a year,” Hart admitted. Added Mould, “It saves a lot of questions by doing that.”

  At that point the band was touring constantly and usually selling out the house. But their audience was growing incrementally, not by leaps and bounds. The band felt they’d hit a sales ceiling that only a major label could break through. There were also outside forces at work. One of the biggest indie distributors, JEM, had gone bankrupt by 1985. “When that happened, that changed everything,” Mould explains. “It wasn’t many months after that everybody had to go to a major, because when JEM couldn’t pay on the indie stuff, a lot of indie labels got shoved out right at that point.”

  Then a quite prestigious label renowned for its artist-friendly attitude and long-term dedication to its bands, Warner Brothers had been in touch with Hüsker Dü since Zen Arcade. During the Flip Your Wig sessions, the label made an offer that Hüsker Dü agreed to sign.

  The clincher was the promise of complete creative control of their records, from the cover to the music, something no other major was prepared to grant. Hüsker Dü’s contract soon became a model for many indie bands seeking to jump to a major.

  It was a momentous move. Hüsker Dü was the first key American indie band to defect to a major; the event marked the end of an era within the American indie community. “It was definitely a parallel universe, is the way to describe it; it was definitely a subculture that had no mainstream intentions at all,” says King Coffey. “There was no radio besides college radio. People had to learn about this music by reading underground publications and listening to college radio. There weren’t any A&R people hanging out and trying to befriend you in L.A.—who the fuck cared? That’s why it was really shocking and revolutionary when Hüsker Dü got their deal.”

  Some insiders were shocked and others outraged, and many were excited to see their favorite band graduate to the big leagues. And still others had apparently seen it coming a mile away. When Ian MacKaye heard the news about Hüsker Dü, he flashed back to 1981. “I heard about them—Hüsker Dü, they’re from Minneapolis,” MacKaye recalls.
“When you heard them, the walls fall down, people are dancing, no one can stop. It just sounded so incredible.” But MacKaye was disappointed by the slow, arty “Statues” /“Amusement” single and later asked Mould about it. “And [he] said, ‘Well, we were just trying to get on college radio,’ ” MacKaye recalls. “It kind of tipped their hand from the very get-go for me. So when they signed to Warner Brothers [five] years later, I wasn’t surprised. Of course they’d be the first to go!”

  Warner did acknowledge Hüsker Dü’s grassroots appeal and worked the band through roughly the same channels they had come up in, albeit with far more financial and organizational firepower. “Warner was the most reasonable of the labels about listening to our concerns about not wanting to be packaged,” said Mould. “Don’t make a big stir, just let us put out records. Don’t try to make us something we’re not.”

  Warner knew the band had toured relentlessly for five years and built up a large, loyal fan base, the kind that money just can’t buy. The band might not score any blockbuster hits, but if they kept overhead low and hit a modest sales target, they’d make a profit. And it never hurts to have a hip band on one’s label.

  At the Warner’s alternative marketing department, Hüsker Dü had staunch, sympathetic allies in Jo Lenardi and their old friend Julie Panebianco, both former indie scene stalwarts. “We had our little spot that they let us work in and we had distribution,” says Mould. “It all looked good.”

  But despite all this, the band’s sense of independence was not a natural fit with a major label. “I can engineer our records,” Mould said around the time of the signing, “since I know exactly what it should sound like. I’d also like to still be able to work with booking the band. I’ve booked Hüsker Dü for quite some time now and I don’t think we need a manager to tell us what we’re worth. Most importantly, we don’t want someone to work on our image, since we’ll never have one.” For all Warner’s good intentions, these could not have been completely welcome words.