Bob Mould chronicles 'soundtrack of my transformation' in autobiography

       
        At times Husker Du resembled a free-jazz band in its pin-wheeling, ecstatic din. It took hardcore punk’s love of velocity to superhuman levels. At other moments, shards of melody that could’ve been a bubblegum or garage-rock song from the ‘60s clawed through the roar.

    But as great as the band was – an unprecedented union of noise and melody, buzzing chaos and sugar-buzz pop craft -- the personal relationships proved toxic. Hart has lobbed insults at Mould in interviews throughout the last two decades, and Mould makes it clear in “See a Little Light” that the drummer was the primary reason he couldn’t continue with Husker Du just as it was cresting commercially.
      
    “I had, and still have, no interest in the name Husker Du or in creating or revisiting that part of my life,” Mould writes. He works through the band’s  history as if fulfilling an obligation, acknowledging the trio’s achievements with a certain emotional detachment. Of the music on the band’s 1984 masterpiece, “Zen Arcade,” he says, “I wrote those songs when I was 23 years old, angry at the world, feeling misunderstood, persecuted, and disappointed. I can’t even get into the head of that person anymore.”

    Yet how much did Husker Du’s singular sound owe to that emotional dysfunction? What started out as a three-way collaboration became a competition for songwriting credits, singles and artistic recognition between two Alpha males, with Norton pushed to the margins. By the end there was little semblance of a band, more like competing solo careers jockeying for prominence on what would be the trio’s final studio album, “Warehouse: Songs and Stories.”

     The Mould portrayed in a recent biography, Andrew Earles’ “Husker Du: The Story of the Noise-pop Pioneers” (Voyageur Press), is that of a confident leader, a superb musician who essentially managed the band and was first among equals when it came to directing the music. But while detailing how he micro-managed Husker Du’s affairs in his autobiography, Mould describes a troubled, deeply insecure personal life.

        He grows up in rural upstate New York amid domestic abuse and alcoholism. Between the ages of 13 and 25, he drinks excessively while struggling with his sexual identity. On the indie-rock circuit, he feels lost, a “self-hating homosexual” even after coming out at 33. Hart himself was gay and plunged into a heroin habit just as Mould quit drinking, driving a deeper wedge between them. Little wonder that Husker Du sounded like a band constantly at war with the world and, frequently, itself.
 
    It isn’t until Mould discovers electronic music in the late ‘90s and briefly abandons his ties to the indie-rock world that he begins to feel a part of a community. He experiments awkwardly with programmed beats, processed vocals and sample-heavy tracks, but the music becomes “the soundtrack of my transformation” as an openly gay, secure individual, Mould writes.

    In the last decade, Mould has found a hard-won peace. He still makes refined guitar-based rock records, deejays at clubs, and is “light years” personally removed from the emotional wreck he once was. “But the cathartic thing?” he writes of his music. “Those days have come and gone.”
       
        greg@gregkot.com

Bob Mould, an evening of reading and music: 8 p.m. June 16 at the Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport, $25; mercurytheaterchicago.com.