SPOILER ALERT! To get the big unanswered question out of the way up front, don’t count on a Husker Du reunion any time soon.
“Beyond my personal reasons for not looking back, a Husker Du reunion would surely tarnish the history of the band,” front man/guitarist Bob Mould writes in See a Little Light.
In his exhaustive new bio, Mould – co-founder of the highly influential Minneapolis indie punk group Husker Du – makes it very clear how he feels about his former band mates. From internal fights over royalties to drug problems, Mould has no intentions to go back home again, at least not to Husker Du. A Sugar reunion – his post Husker project? Who knows?
See a Little Light, written with rock journalist Michael Azerrad (known best for his book Our Band Could Be Your Life), is a gratifying take on Mould’s life, from his early beginnings in an unhappy home in Upstate New York, to the founding of Husker Du during his college days in Minnesota, up through the band’s antagonistic endings, the brief career of the successful alt rock group Sugar and his current role as a solo artist. But the most interesting insights into Mould’s world he saves for talking about his life as a semi-closeted gay rocker. While he never really came out as a gay musician early on, partly because of his being uncomfortable with how gay men were often portrayed as weak and effeminate, thanks to a new set of gay friends, Mould learned to embrace and ultimately revel in his new role as gay rock icon.
There’s still plenty of plenty of fun insights into Mould’s life as a musician crammed into the book, (Husker Du and The Replacements actually got along; Mould’s connections to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show; and many more) its Mould’s personal revelations that are the most intriguing.
A lot has been written by others about Husker Du’s demise and about Mould himself, it’s refreshing to finally hear Mould’s side of things.
See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody by Bob Mould/Hardcover/416 Pages/Little, Brown and Company/2011