12. Bob Mould, Hüsker Dü
“That was one of those records where the instant I’d heard it, by the end of side one I was like, ‘This is it, this is what we’re gonna do with music now.’ It was very different; the Germs were a little bit later, but again hearing the depth in the words and how the music created this frame – and it was a real different kind of framework: bass carrying a lot of the melodies, organic drums, synthetic drums, really interesting measures, vocals back – you gotta fight to hear the words, ’cause you wanna know the words and then the words are deep. Then you’re stuck and you can’t get out of it. I take that lesson and I put it on my own stuff.
“We were going to play with them but on the eve of the tour Ian took his life. That put a period at the end of the sentence as it was being written. Of course the music stays, and as time has gone on and we’ve learned more, there are all these different facets to what he was about. There are so many different stories and the truth is somewhere in the middle. And then his kitchen table turns up on eBay. It just turns into nuttiness.”
