Book Review: Hüsker Dü: The Story Of The Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock

Hüsker Dü: The Story Of The Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock
By Andrew Earles
(Voyageur Press, 2010) In the spring of 1987, NBC’s squeaky clean morning program, The Today Show, traveled across the country for a week. The focus was on Middle America, as the network wanted to highlight what was going on in the humdrum middle of the country—where the air is clean, the people are simple, and nothing of great importance happens except maybe some heartwarming human interest stories. No culture, no pushed boundaries, nothing but fields of wheat and corn. Or at least that was the impression.
The show pitched tent midweek in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area for stories on affordable housing prices, comic Louie Anderson (who toyed with co-host Jane Pauley with a mischievous glint in his eye), the Minnesota Twins, the plight of the American Farmer, and a vital music scene which had bubbled up to national attention. To illustrate this final point, the show’s producers came up with the most surprising aspect of their not-very-adventurous-week: A performance by local rock band Hüsker Dü. Known for their musical aggression, volume, and—in the early days at least—breakneck speed, the group was not a combo one would normally see on such a mainstream program as The Today Show. Or that early in the morning. But there they were, bleary-eyed, annoyed with Bryant Gumbel’s inane questions, and running through a tepid version of “Could You Be The One”, all in front of an audience quite outside their normal realms. (Though there were some hoodlum types in the back of the audience—skipping school, no doubt—shouting for the song “Folklore” as Mould winced at Gumbel’s bumbling inquires.) The Today Show appearance is a good example of what makes the Hüsker Dü story so captivating: From the cramped, sweaty stage of the 7th Street Entry to national television. Nowadays, that kind of career trajectory can take only a few years, maybe even one, but back then the seven years it took Hüsker Dü to wind up under the glare of national television was something of a coup.
Similar to their music, Hüsker Dü’s story is a brilliant but tough one: Band forms, digs into hardcore punk before pushing the boundaries of an otherwise confining genre, band conducts business on their own terms, releases their own records, suffers almost immediately from internal struggles for control, signs to an infamous independent label, gets critical accolades early on, makes groundbreaking records, remains critical darlings, ditches an independent for major label, and finally expires to strife.
A band this important needs a biography to match its greatness, and author Andrew Earles has taken on the task and gets off on the right foot by interviewing the right people: Bassist Greg Norton and drummer Grant Hart, as well as insiders and people from SST, their longtime independent label. The glaring omission, of course, is guitarist Bob Mould, who is apparently working on his memoirs. One cannot fault Earles for continuing with the biography without Mould’s input, but it does make the project a greater challenge to execute well.
Like the band, Hüsker Dü: The Story Of The Noise Pop Pioneers is full of flaws. Unlike the band, however, it does not compensate for its weaknesses. From the onset, Earles claims his book to be rumor and drama free; in the introduction he writes, “There are more people carrying around salacious untruths about Hüsker Dü than there are people who have actually HEARD Hüsker Dü.” I’m not sure what he means there, and having grown up and lived in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, I don’t think that statement is accurate. All bands are essentially marriages and, really, what is a marriage without drama?
Noble as it may appear, skipping the rumor/drama part of this particular story is a mistake. Two of the members are gay, and while one’s sexual preference has no bearing whatsoever on their talent, any homosexual will tell you being gay in this country is a singular act of bravery in itself, one worthy of celebrating. After all, the “Rock World” (even the oftentimes smug punk/hardcore scene) is dominated by heterosexual white men, so any band going against the grain should get some credit, even if it wasn’t an issue at the time. Sure, Earles can imply it doesn’t matter they were gay and, obviously, that’s true. Yet had he taken the time and explored this issue, he would’ve identified a subplot unusual for most rock biographies—he could’ve given hope to any young gay musician feeling he or she doesn’t have a place playing hard, fast rock music; he could’ve stuck a finger in the eye of homophobia. Hindsight can be a biographer’s best reference point and it should be utilized, but here it is not.
Earles does a great job of deconstructing the band’s early recorded work, including their landmark Zen Arcade album, highlighting the fact that it might not have been originally conceived as a concept record, but unfortunately he fails to actually ask the two band members themselves, leaving the issue unnecessarily up for grabs. Instead, he spends too much time dissecting what exactly is “hardcore.” Too much time is also spent discussing Hüsker Dü’s influence on other groups washing up in their wake; too much time is spent thinking up the perfect Hüsker Dü mix tape; too much time spent trying to convince the reader of this band’s greatness. Too much time is spent.
This brings me to the final and most ridiculous flaw of the book: The mere glancing look at the all-important final (and painful) year-and-a-half of the band’s career, which includes the tragedy of their manager’s suicide on the eve of a national tour. Until this point, all of the band’s records are given a pretty good track-by-track analysis except for their final (double) album, Warehouse: Songs and Stories, leaving the reader with the impression that the author has no vested interest in this later era of the band, and they shouldn’t either. A terrible oversight.
Not all of the problems are Earles’ fault, however. Amazingly slipshod editing cripples the narrative and timeline, as entire sections of the text end up being repeated elsewhere. It’s these kinds of mistakes that make me want to call this book a complete failure of a biography, but it isn’t quite that bad; despite its flaws I did find myself struggling to put the book down. To his credit, Earles has actually written a book and has spent time interviewing the right people. He untangles the band’s messy history, generously quotes from long forgotten magazine interviews, and deftly uses the band’s tension to boost his narrative. Until Mould’s autobiography comes out, this is pretty much all we have (besides the Hüsker Dü chapter in Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life). It may be an interesting read, but in the end, this one is disappointing and is nowhere near the biography that Hüsker Dü certainly deserves.
Purchase: The Story Of The Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock [at amazon.com]
Watch Hüsker Dü play “Could You Be the One” on The Today Show:

Andrew Lau @'Crawdaddy'

One of the bands I always wanted to see live...then I (re)discovered a tape I had recorded of them live at the Paradiso when I lived in Am*dam back in 85/86 and my memory was a blank. Oh well - the droogz obvs worked that night!!!

Mentioned this to Grant Hart when he played my local pub last year and after he stopped laughing he did ask if I cld send him a copy of it when I dig it out of storage...

Hey I guess it's nice to see that we have all straightened up somewhat since those heady days LOL!