Music With a Capital 'M'

The prolific HÜSKER DÜ have escaped the strictures of hardcore, to make truly remarkable music. “There’s nothing incredibly new about it,” says BOB MOULD. “We’re just doing what we do the best we can.”

- Andy Gill

In one of her more perceptive Time Out columns recently, Julie Burchill took a hefty sideswipe at the video popsters’ incessant flirtation with outsiderdom – all that “look at me, no one understands me” bullshit that still accompanies the high cheekbones and doe-eyed aquillinity – and came to the conclusion that to be truly revolutionary and original these days, a band would have to be old, ugly and visually unsaleable. An audio band rather than a video band. Hüsker Dü may well be the band of which she wrote.

Not that they’re that old – no older than Madonna, I’d imagine – or that ugly, or even that unsaleable (in the current resurgence of American rock, all things are possible); it’s simply that they don’t seem to give a damn, and never have done. Almost as if they realised long ago they couldn’t challenge the pin-up boys of the pop world, and so set about working in a different arena.

Bob Mould – guitarist, singer and songwriter – is soft-spoken, short-haired, paunchy, and wears an anorak over a sweatshirt bearing the legend “American Wrestling Association”. He looks like he might indulge himself – serious wrestling in America is a noble sport; but no, he likes to watch it on TV (Bob watches a lot of TV), and the real showbiz kind, at that. Bob says it’s the modern-day equivalent of Shakespeare, the only place the common man can get a full-blown morality play, with a bit of gymnastics thrown in for good measure. It’s one of the few subjects on which Bob gets mildly animated. His greatest desire, while in Britain, is not to see St Paul’s, the Tower or Big Ben, but to see Big Daddy, a monument among men.