My Career in Five Songs

Alt-rock pioneer Bob Mould selects the key cuts from his 40-year career with Hüsker Dü and Sugar and as a solo artist.

- By Joe Bosso

Over a remarkable 40-year career as a member of the bands Hüsker Dü and Sugar, and as a solo artist, Bob Mould has garnered his fair share of huzzahs and hosannas. His aggressive and highly dramatic signature guitar style was famously admired - and emulated – by bands like the Pixies and Nirvana, among others, and a number of his albums have topped critics' polls and greatest records of all time lists.

All of which the 61-year-old singer-songwriter and guitarist takes with healthy doses of humility and perspective. I think I'm the same as any musician, he says. I'm grateful when anyone pays attention to the work I do, let alone when colleagues or other people make such wonderful comments about it. To me, it all goes back to when! heard the first Ramones album and thought, Wow, anybody can do this. That's no slight to the Ramones; I'm just talking about the simplicity and beauty of it. To go from that day to today, talking about 'greatest albums of all time' – that's quite a leap and a stretch.

Abrasive and bruising guitar work has long dominated Mould's oeuvre, although there have been fascinating detours into introspective, acoustic-based songs and even a dalliance with electronic music. I like to try new things occasionally, particularly if I've stayed at one thing too long, he explains, but I always seem to come back to a sound that I adopted back in my youth. At the center of it all is his artful, muscular rhythm guitar playing - earth-moving stuff crafted from equal parts British Invasion (Pete Townshend looms large here) and New York punk. I'm pretty comfortable saying that I excel at rhythm guitar, he says, even more so as I get older and age affects the way that I play and the fury I put into it.