get it across," he elaborated. "And then when it starts to falter, you come
back to reality. It happens little by little. People accepting your music
helps. You get to the other side, to where it becomes second nature.
Sometimes I start tryng to explain the way I play. But it's like, how do you
tell people to put the palm of your hand on the 3rd fret here, and then just
start whacking strings at the 15th fret with your other hand while you're
faced at a 45 degree angle ... a lot of it is just winging it. Sometimes I'll
get off on a tangent where I can't come back. I just go blank. I get so
wrapped up in it all. I just try to completely remove myself from reality
and not think consciously about anything that anybody else is doing, not even
think about what I'm doing, just whatever sounds come out is what it is.
"I had hit a point where I wasn't getting any better and then all of a sudden
I got a lot better," Mould said. "It wasn't a mastery of the instrument,
but just a better understanding of how to work with it. A lot of it comes out
of sheer frustration. You've got your barre chords and your suspended
chords and you learn your little bit of jazz thing, you know, your 13ths.
And then you're like, 'oh yeah, I can play fake lounge chords.' And then all
of a sudden you just go 'wait a minute, what would happen if I decided to take
the idea of hammer-ons and twist it around backwards so that I'm not using
vibrato?' I have to think ahead. If I want to do a bend, I can hammer on
7th fret, 9th fret, and start by jacking the string with my hand behind the
foundation note instead of doing it up there. Or doing things like trying to
put the pickups at the top of the neck. A lot of how I started experimenting
on my original discipline was trying to learn how to play everything backwards,
and that opens up a whole new school. I had a nice period where I started
finding out the value of real obnoxious feedback, and working different
grooves with it. A lot of it is just breaking convention and really not
listening to what other people are playing. I was never a flashy lead player,
and I don't consider myself a good lead player now. But it's like you have to
learn the rules before you realize there's none."
Now that Warner Brothers has gotten into the act with a major league record
contract, don't expect the Hüsker Dü machine to suddenly turn into
the Big Red Machine. "When they signed us they knew what they were gettng,"
said Mould. "They were getting a band that had been set in their ways for
nearly seven years and they weren't going to be very open to major change.
They wanted Hüsker Dü for the band that it is, not the band
they think it should be. They don't affect our creativity whatsoever."
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Still, they were not about to return the advance money. "We invested in
recording equipment," Mould allowed. "We keep our overhead really low. We
do a lot of investigating our options as far as whether it's cheaper to bring
our own or rent full PA monitors and tack it onto your guarantee. We found
the best thing is to go with a proven sound company in a certain city, bring
in your own monitor system, bring in your vital microphones, your vocal mikes
and DR lines, and just go with a good rented system. We rent lights; we don't
need to bring 150 lights with us. We just need a PA that will kick out 120
clean at the board." Roots guy that he is, bedrock individualist, Mould is
also Hüsker Dü's manager.
"I think the business has changed to where it's not enough just to be a
guitar player in a band and write songs. It's nice to know what's going on
and which radio stations in which cities are playing you, who's doing the
interviews, what time of day, which radio stations are the ones to talk to
right away, and which ones you do a phone interview with later, and how's
the record selling here, and who's the local person who's going to come out
to see you, and what's the guarantee, what's the break point? How much did
the PA really cost? You have to play the right venue for the market you're
dealing with. If you're getting a lot of commercial play you want to make
sure you do a bigger show. You try to translate record sales and press and
radio play into what knd of show you're going to do; not what you're going to
play on stage, but what promoter, what night of the week. We were always
doing New York on Wednesday just because we thought it was more valuable for
us to get into Philadelphia on a weekend, or get into Baltimore or Washington
on weekends. Now we do Washington on Sunday night; you always do Boston on
Sunday afternoon; you always do Cleveland ob Friday night. You always do
Madison Friday, Milwaukee Saturday, Chicago Sunday afternoon.
"We usually do a 75 minute set. We don't write a set, we work in blocks of
three or four songs that fit well together, usually taken right off the
records in that order because that's why they're in that order in the first
place, 'cause they work well together. We'll jump from maybe half of side one
of one album to side two of another album, and then interchange a lot of
songs depending on the mood, depending on what the crowd's like and depending
on how we're feeling. If somebody blew their voice out, we try to avoid a song
where there's a lot of high notes. We try to cover for each other. It's a
matter of pacing, knowing your material
Continued on page 106
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