BOB MOULD PART III
Bob Mould is on tour now with his new album Here We Go Crazy. I talked to him right before it was released.
If anyone thinks that I am playing favorites with Bob Mould, well, YES I AM…
I have been a fan of his since ’87. I was 13, getting into punk, and coming of age in high school. There’s too many stories I could tell that would link to his music or how he inspired me over the years. As one of the greatest guitarists of all time, and now well into his 60s, he just released a mondo piece of work called Here We Go Crazy. I have interviewed him for instinct twice before, and this time I found a more serious tone, though he also laughed more this time around talking a lot about perspective.
Jeremy Hinks: Well Bob, thanks for coming back, I haven’t talked to you since right before the last election, also congratulations on the new record, I enjoyed it rather a lot.
Bob Mould: Thank you.
JH: You once mentioned how much Rob Halford does for the community, I shot a Judas Priest gig since then, and my ears are still ringing. But, can I get your opinion of when Halford was up there singing with Dolly Parton?
BM: PRETTY COOL, that’s hard to say “NO” to a proposition there. Each successive year, or each successive time that he pops up to do press, whether a tour, book, or whatever, he seems more and more comfortable with who he is, and his long-view perspective on the community is great, I’m happy for him, and it’s cool to see.
JH: He brings so much to the community, it’s Rob Halford, the GOD OF METAL, and this is who he is. And who doesn’t love Dolly Parton, she is such a solid support to the community.
BM: That was so cool, and we need people like Dolly Parton to stand up for the community.
JH: I feel that way, I am so enraged right now, and I have no one threatening me, I have all the privileges in the world, no one is going to say anything to me. So, I am the guy who is pissed off that too many dumb straight American white guy’s making decisions for others.
BM: Where do you think they learned this intolerance?
JH: Well, I was raised Mormon, nuff said.
BM: I was raised Catholic…
JH: Yeah, but the Mormon Church is STILL homophobic at its core, used to be racist, then they think they can wave a hand, and it all goes away. They were 38% of the Boy Scouts, then once they started to accept gay scouts, they cut all ties with them.
BM: I guess they can do that, religion notwithstanding, more recently the last 3 or 4 years, when it was so clear that people were about to go after the trans community, not much the community as a whole, but trying to cleave off part of the community, and then attack that smaller part of a larger group. This current behavior has been enabled and some people are enabling and giving permission to others to act this way. For NO particularly good reason that I can see, I see lots of reasons, but I don’t see many credible reasons.
Related Post: Bob Mould “Forcast of Rain”, The Punk Series II
JH: Agreed, I’m gun-owning, former law enforcement, all that, I have never once been threatened by a trans person. NEVER… I love these people, I would take a bullet for them, never been threatened. I found it so discouraging that they are trying to ban “Storytime with Drag Queens” I have never heard of a trans person hurting a child, but I have heard of a thousand religious leaders doing that. I mean, who is the safe person with your kid?
BM: I agree with what you just said, people take offense to drag queens reading stories to adults, teenagers, and children who presumably are accompanied by adults, mostly their parents who made a conscious choice in how they want to raise their child, by bringing them these storytelling events.
If we work with that, then it’s outside forces interfering with the way that people have chosen and continue to choose and raise and educate their children. Do they have a problem with the story? Do they have a problem with the storyteller? Do they have a problem that it’s not THEIR story to tell, would they rather tell those stories? To choose what stories are acceptable to parents who brought their children to hear these stories.
I think the people who have a problem with it, have a different story to tell, and they want to find a way to marginalize and eliminate all other storytellers, which sort of bumps up against trying to rewrite history, which sort of bumps up against a lot of things we have seen in other countries in the past.
JH: In our first interview, you said Berlin was a wonderful city that is trying to own up to its history, and what happened in Berlin all those years ago, is happening here. I don’t know if you know what the “Doomsday Clock” is but we just moved to 89 seconds… Like “WAKE THE FUCK UP PEOPLE”.
BM: Yeah, the past 3 years there has been a concerted effort to marginalize and demonize and otherize the trans community, trans folk, trans kids, trans curious people, Desanits seemed to be the trial balloon, Florida being the trial state and for me, it felt not the same as but similar to the pro-family movements of the late 1970s that came out of Florida.
JH: It’s probably their kids.
BM: Yes, and the timing of HIV spreading through marginalized communities. It’s “Similar” but maybe not exactly the same. But over these last 3 years, the repetition, the constant, if it’s “Fake News” or trans kids in sports, predatory kids in bathrooms, this kind of untruths, that get repeated over and over. And now there’s still less than 50% of the country that voted for Trump but those people now feel entitled, or that they have been given permission to view that intolerance as acceptable, or even a greater plan for education. These are big concerns.
JH: Yeah they are banning the board of education, you guys want to push us back to pre-Civil War.
BM: You’ve seen the pic for DoE.
JH: As qualified as Hegseth and RFK, JR.
BM: *Linda McMahon was with Vince McMahon who did how many “Wrestlemania” with Trump in Atlantic City, and they made him a star in one later, and Vince McMahon had to step down from his life’s work, because of how many different exposed NDAs with some pretty crazy sex behavior. This is the wife of a person who created the “Pre Determined” social spectacle, I mean I am a big pro wrestling fan
*(Bob wrote the Scrips for pro wrestling in the early 2000s), you know that lineage, that being adjacent of being caught in that kind of a triangle, is that the direction we want to go with education? By the time this runs it will be MOOT I’m certain, (laughing) (You know, Linda McMahon, the lady excited about A1 stake sauce going into our schools).
JH: Yeah, like last time we talked you brought up the Fallwell guy.
BM: Yeah, the pool boy scandal. Do as I say not as I do.
JH: Let’s talk about the new record.
BM: Yeah, lets.
JH: So “Here We Go Crazy” was a great album, I listened to it, and it was some of the darkest I have heard of you in a while. Like, Anne Sexton’s dark, as dark as “Black Sheets of Rain”.
BM: OH? Okay. I don’t know if it’s a new territory covered or a new way to cover the subjects.
JH: Let’s start with “Breathing Room”, I remember some time ago you said you went back to the Roman Catholic Church to see if they still had anything to offer you. You are pulling some of the imagery in these ideas “Most of the days, I rifle through my notebook, page after page, filled with scribbles and lines, make a mantra for confession time, both of us agree we need some downtime”. That sounds like an intense relationship.
BM: Well, 2020 was a pretty bonkers year, and that song was written in 2020, (Laughing)
JH: Ok, nuff said…
BM: It’s literally as things were closed down, and many of us were frozen in place, either alone, with someone, with a family, but for me especially, without a job, my essential job is playing live music, so having written and recorded a record was the best I could do to try to wake people up to looming fascism and not being able to go out and reinforce that message, it got a little crazy, everybody got a little bonkers. “The mantra for confession” felt like a good metaphor for things written, I didn’t mean to stick it to the church.
JH: It also seemed like a relationship, “Mantra for confession time” I felt like there was tension with a person about communication.
BM: Well, definitely no “Forgive me Father for I have sinned” but it’s a convenient usage of the word, it wasn’t literal.
JH: Where did the term for the title come from “Here we go crazy”, or “Here, we go crazy” You can take it a few different ways.
BM: There are at least two ways you could take it, it’s a phrase, it was “Should I put a slogan on this”, It could be “Applebees, here we go crazy” or ” Fun Disco, here we go crazy”, it’s a slogan. It seemed like a fun title, “Here we go”.
JH: When you said in the song, “Carnival Rides, take it to the turnstile, after a while we get to the slide, waiting for the static to fall, take a number if you feel so inclined, I feel so safe in my breathing room”, that feels like a different side of the story.
BM: yeah it was gathering a different set of images, those are sort of amusement, rides, and slides, just painting a picture.
JH: Let’s see, the song “When Your Heart is Broken”, has some of the most solid “Bob” guitars on it, I mean, I look for “The Bob Guitar” on every album, and that song nailed it.
BM: Thank you, yeah, not a lot of solos on this one, but that little bit that shines in the signature.
JH: So, “You won’t know which way to turn, watch it blaze glowing into endless days, tossing turning restless nights, teardrops falling from your eyes, I barely make it to my bedroom now I stay inside these empty moments fill my head with grief”. That’s heavy man.
BM: Yeah that’s pretty heavy stuff, and that’s so perfectly me, even more than the guitar thing, it’s such a happy hum-able melody, a straight-up pop song with some pretty weighty words in there. That’s one of my specialties.
JH: I love how you can write these depressing, heavy, soul-searching, lyrics at times and not sound all doom and gloomy like the goth rock. This is guitar god Bob Mould, delivering some intense feelings.
BM: That’s the juxtaposition of it all.
JH: Well, when I was 15-16, my girlfriend at the time and I were listening to “Workbook” together, and when it ended 7 years later, man it was just like what you are singing these days, it’s all kinda full circle now. I remember feeling like “I can’t even go out, she broke my heart”. But she saw you on Workbook opening for the Pixies, and she talked to you that night.
BM: Oh wow.
JH: SO, let’s talk about the song “Here We Go Crazy”, that was easy to understand in the video, was that a prison, or an air traffic control tower in there?
BM: Well, what difference is there between them these days right? (laughing) That’s an airport tower.
JH: I know you’re a great storyteller, but your words on this one, paint a very vivid picture “Airplanes in formation, there’s a conflict in the sky, modern constellations choosing who can live or die. This ugly new astronomy lost on a mountain no one can find me, fall from a tower in the middle of the sky, I can hear the chatter of a broken bowl of ivory.” there is so much going on here, the micro vs the macro conflicts. DAMN BOB, how long have you been doing this, and STILL coming up with such great words? That’s one of your best poetic pieces.
BM: Thanks, it was a good enough song to become the album title and the title track. But when I write a record, and the songs are good, but then they become GREAT, it’s through no real intent of mine, and towards the end of the process this song rose to that status. And I love it when there is a title song, SGT Pepper is a great example of ending up with a track, that sets the stage for the remainder of the record, almost a welcoming type of song. “Here is where we are, here is the philosophy, observations, here is the character or two, and some situations”.
JH: Can I ask you, being a gay punk musician, who inspired so many for so long, can you give me an introspective of it, looking back on where you started to where you are now?
BM: Lemme try it this way, I am a musician, who happens to be gay, which is different than being a gay musician, and they are equal, but I chose to be a musician who was gay, as opposed to making music about my gayness. I don’t think I was hiding anything, I just wasn’t highlighting that part of me.
As far as the punk scene, it was misfits compared to mainstream America in the ’80s, which was not so wonderful, and certainly the politics of the 80s were not good for gay folk, and HIV was and still is a terrible situation, that through the wonders of modern science, we have mitigated a lot of the early damage, and hopefully whatever stigma that was attached to me and whoever back then has gone away.
The punk scene, where it felt like “Don’t advertise/don’t worry” or you could be out and queer and punk, and you would have a different place, neither better nor worse, just different. It’s funny with Teen Spirit, and Kurt, and the way that he took people to task with his words and music, was a logical extension of what the scene was. I think his thoughts and words went a long way to further sexual identity tolerance. There was Tom Robinson and Jimmy Sommerville.
JH: Well all that and the shift that you were witness to and part of and one of the most successful punk musicians, definitely one of the longest that’s standing (and playing), I would put you right in front of the young queer community as a role model.
BM: There’s so much progress that’s been made, despite the recent political shifts, where people have been freed of their stereotypes, and they can be who they want to be. As the really old guy in the 4th quarter, I try to be careful about highlighting plague, and massive loss of community, because that was MY experience.
I don’t know if kids in their 20s want to hear about it, because in your 20s you should be free, you should be having the time of your lives, becoming an adult, and that’s a good time to party. My 20s were professionally great, but personally, it was a real bummer, how much of a plague and loss of an entire community should I be bringing it up? Some days that no one wants to hear about? But not for nothing we just came out of a plague, and we are going to experience in ways loss of a community.
JH: Let’s tie this up, on the new record “You Need to Shine”, open chords reminded me of Mark Knopfler (Another guitar god, from Dire Straits)
BM: Oh wow.
JH: Well, I consider you his equal as far as guitarists go.
BM: Well thank you.
JH: I loved the message of this song, it has a message of hope, I feel like you are saying to young people saying “LOOK WHAT IS COMING FOR YOU, SO MUCH GOOD”.
BM: It’s the beginning of act 3, that’s what turns the corner.
JH: Bob, thanks for your time, and all the best on this tour, and with the new album.
#bobmould #herewegocrazy #oldschoolpunk #huskerdu #gaysingers #guitargod
A had a good friend in San Francisco who was very into Husker Du (which I definitely was not, although I could go for some My Blood Valentine instead), so good on Instinct for covering some non-disco, non-pop gay music for those into it.
He used to DJ for a regular (national/touring) ‘club’ type night primarily for bears that I went to with a free comp to in SF about a decade plus ago and he seemed to enjoy doing that as a change of pace from performance, even though the music was not at all ‘punk,’ so good for Bob that he’s still around. I’m not the audience for this interview, but good (as well) on this site for expanding.