IT must be difficult for Bob Mould. Let's face it, being Bob Mould, the legend, must be hard enough at times. You know, the man who married angsty, red-raw howling guitar to the sweetest of melodies; the man who captured a generation of emotion and changed the way rock … well, rocked. Will he ever escape Hüsker Dü? Does he care? Taunted with the spectre of an old band day in, day out must weary even this most erudite of singers. Indeed, in interviews these days he holds the kind of weary-but-I'm-trying-not-to-show-it countenance as if he's quietly contemplating just how long it'll be before he has to rake up his past again.
"It's gonna happen" he says with a weak smile. "And I don't mind talking about it. It's just that I think Sugar is far more interesting at the moment. At least it's fresh."
THIS month has seen the return of Mould in a band context after the darkly introspective outpourings of the complex, but frankly baffling, solo efforts that he recorded for Virgin after intellectual rock's most favoured sons splintered. His erstwhile bassist (sic -MMMM) Grant Hart has re-emerged recently under the Nova Mob banner whilst Mould's Sugar have managed to reclaim untold glories by sounding not unlike classic mid to late Hüsker Dü. Not surprising really. Bloody brilliant though.
Mould, with a view to introducing Sugar as a real group rather than the B. Mould backing band, lets his new compatriots, assist David Barbe and destructo drummer Malcolm Travis, answer the lion's share of questions. He sits looking reflectively at the plastic assholes going through their sexless motions on a soundless MTV, occasionally speaking up when a particular morsel takes his attention away from the screen. Like the prospect of Sugar's second album already being half in the can even before the mind-shakingly wonderful "Copper Blue" is cold on the shelves.
If the material for both albums was written side by side, why not release it as one package, having released doubles before?
"Because the material is so utterly different" he informs casually. "You'll see when the record is released in March. It's a much harder, much more aggressive record than "Copper Blue", and it would've been just too much to take as one package. The two don't sit at all well together even though we were recording them simultaneously. The harder stuff will be on the next release, and there was some stuff in the middle, kinda like an interzone mish-mash, but I don't know how much of that will survive, some of it has been buried. When you hear it it'll all make sense."
"Personally it's relaxing for me to know that it's already done" opines Barbe, from his chair in the corner of the room. - "To always have one in the can is a great feeling. When someone says 'your new record is great', you can say 'thanks, wait 'til you hear the next one!'"
"The thing is" he continues. "If we don't get it all down when it's written, there will always be good music that's lost". Now, that would be a crime.
MOULD pulls on a cigarette, one of the many that he has at hand this afternoon. "It's all about variation" he says. "It's about variations on a theme, variations on that same one inversion, that one chord that gets used over and over again all the way through. It's like, how many different ways can I re-work it in my writing? How many spins can I put on it?"
Rather a lot if "Copper Blue's" deep sense of entrancement is anything to go by. "Changes" is simple, stripped down, almost skeletal rock; but it shines.
"As long as I and the people that I work with, and the people that listen to the music seriously, like the different spins and takes on it, then hell, I'm not going to stop."
That having been said, with Sugar the focus of all his creative force, Mould reckons there are no excuses for anything less than total acceptance for "Copper Blue".
"There is no reason why people shouldn't listen to this record. "Workbook" was for me, and solely for me, and "Black Sheets of Rain" was written stylistically in a way that I don't like, in that it mirrored the Seventies' taste for progressive rock. I've never liked Cream, and I never will. Nothing personal, but that's not the kind of music that I like. "Copper Blue" works like the Sixties' pop music. It gets to the point, it works, it tells a story. There is no excuse for people not to listen to this record."
Reproduced from Indie-cator, Issue No 1, October 1992.
Sugar Index *** Husker Du Index *** Bob Mould Index