Grant Hart
Ecce Homo

«Ecce homo».

Behold the man, here is finally Grant, once again alone, naked, ready to start anew, ready to face his inner demons, his fears.

It is October 13, 1994, we are in Seattle, Washington state, at the small Crocodile Café club; it is a concert already scheduled for the promotional tour of the new album with Nova Mob, his group founded in the late eighties after the dramatic end of the relationship, first of friendship and then musical, with Bob Mould and Greg Norton (I write Husker Du for those few, I hope, who do not know this story in huge Music).
But Nova Mob practically no longer exists, even though officially the word end to their career will only be marked in 1997; precisely for contractual reasons, I believe, Grant is "forced" to attend alone, to take the stage, and he invents an acoustic set, voice, and guitar with minimal amplification.

And indeed the quality of the recording is not the best, very raw and deliberately rough, like the fourteen songs that will compose the album released in January 1996: it doesn't even reach forty minutes in length.

But Grant doesn't need to linger to capture the attention of the sparse audience present, drying the sound of all the tracks that follow one another without a pause, with an imposing emotional intensity. The voice, that desperate, scratchy voice of his that comes from his deepest soul and penetrates into the soul of those who have the utmost pleasure, like me, of having this album and loving it for what it represents for the author: Grant throws at you everything he feels, everything he experiences in yet another enormously difficult, terrible passage of his existence.

It's a concert so homogeneous in its at times suffocating emotional search, that it doesn't seem right to me to cite the individual songs; tracks drawn from his first solo work «Intolerance», from the Nova Mob repertoire and above all, he could not renounce it in the most absolute way, from episodes written by his hand in Husker Du.

But one track I still want to point out: we are almost at the end of the concert and the epic, simple notes of that precious gem of immense value called «Never talking to you again» from that sonic monolith that was, and still is, «Zen arcade» begin. A minute and a half is the duration. «There are things that I'd like to say, but I never talking to you again … I never talking to you». And with every new listen, I rejoice and cry, cry and rejoice, as is happening now because the track ends on my faithful stereo system.

It is «The main» that closes a short but intense evening like very few times I've heard in my life; I close my eyes and see him pose his guitar, greet the few present and exit the stage, finally stepping down with his head held high.

Thank you so much, Grant!!! You have won your battle and are ready to restart as you have always done; the beginning of a new musical career with the release of other works, using this time only your name. Alone but at peace with yourself. Rarely have I experienced so much envy towards the audience who could enjoy this important evening, which ends with a sort of rebirth; I would have been willing to any crazy amount of money to be there with the brotherly friend, a companion for thirty years of wonders in Music.

I have concluded, I can lay down pen and paper; because as always I had to use this "technique" so dear to me first.

Then I will calmly transfer everything to the cold computer. Now I have to step out of the house for a moment on this cold November afternoon; and I will observe the white and proud peaks surrounding my Ossola, already whitened by a thick blanket of snow. The snow, the white, the purity, the silence … This is «Ecce homo» for me …

I started my writing with two Latin words; never before is it justified to conclude with the usual greeting.

Ad maiora.

And anyway, just to stretch it out … Who among you does not remember what they were doing on that fateful afternoon of July 6, 1980? And almost two years later, on July 5, 1982, where were you and with whom? And shall we put July 1, 1979?

Just to say that there are moments from childhood and adolescence that remain etched in memory, like the favorite scene from the favorite movie, watched and rewatched hundreds of times, until you even learn the lines by heart. And I don't even know why.

A bit like when you buy the famous “records of life”.

I am no reference, but I remember in detail that day in the winter of 1985 when I bought «The Clash» squandering my monthly allowance, and also that I was wearing a very dark blue coat, tending to black, which made me look surprisingly like Deniz Tek on the cover of a Radio Birdman bootleg, so I wore it 365 days a year and I felt super cool; even if I would have preferred to look like Johnny Ramone, but in place of hair, I have boar bristles, so I never managed to do the Ramone haircut, neither I nor the barber.

I don’t remember what I was wearing when I bought «Candy apple grey» but I remember how the story went. Summer 1986 (surely I must have worn a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, and canvas shoes), wandering with the family through the streets of Rome; my parents stop in a tiny bookstore that also sells records; they are looking for something I don't know, I start to browse through the vinyl; my eye falls on the cover of «Candy apple grey», all colorful as to seem an abstract artwork; I buy it, decided so, I like the cover; I give puppy eyes to mom and dad, who fork out a nice ten thousand lire, and the album is mine.

I knew nothing of Husker Du, apart from having read a mini-review of one of their singles a few weeks before, which more or less said: don't buy this, save your money and get «Candy apple grey» and live happily. Read, done.

We go back home, have lunch, and after clearing everything, I put the vinyl on the turntable.

It starts with «Crystal»: mess, noise that calling it music takes effort, a monster screaming like a possessed man: «Million tiny pieces ... CRYSTALLLLL!» and, for the first time during our musical disputes, my brother comes out with the historic statement: «You listen to really messed up music».

Followed by three very nice songs and one deeply depressing; so ends side one.

I postpone listening to side two to the next day but, before going for a swim in the lake, I look a bit at the inner sleeve, curious about the fact that there are two singers: for me this is a novelty. Joe Strummer sings in the Clash, Johnny Rotten in the Pistols, Jake Burns in Stiff Little Fingers, how is it explained that there are two here? I investigate their names: Bob Mould and Grant Hart, who also play a bunch of instruments and compose the songs; then there's a third, who only plays the bass and doesn't even sing, surely the loser of the trio.

That fateful day I listened to 5 songs, summing up: two very boring, three nice; of the nice ones, two are Grant Hart's brainchildren, one from Bob Mould; the very boring ones are both from Bob Mould. I draw the conclusions: Grant is a clever guy, Bob probably doesn't know much, Greg (the unlucky bassist) it's unclear what he's doing in the group.

So I got to know Husker Du and Grant Hart. But at that time, I would never have imagined that «Candy apple grey» would become one of the “records of life”, nor that shortly thereafter, listening to «These important years» would change my life in a definitive way.

Shortly after, I come across an official photo of the group, and I learn to recognize Grant, Bob, and Greg: all three smiling cheerfully; Bob and Greg looking at the lens, Grant not, his eyes closed and his forehead resting on Greg's chest. It's a beautiful photo, on par with the even more famous one, in which the three, shot from above, look at the photographer opening their arms as if to embrace the entire world. Those photos, in my imagination, have always symbolized how wonderful it is to play rock'n'roll with a group of friends.

But then the imagination has to deal with the harsh reality and Grant's smile wasn't enough to immunize him from suffering and loneliness, worsened by a fragile and precarious sexual identity and the oldest clichés of the genre.

Sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll: all sadly familiar.

And the end is known too. Because playing rock'n'roll in a group is thrilling until the wind is at your back; but when the boat sinks, everyone for themselves and women and children can remain behind. Johnny stole the girl from Joey and when Dee Dee decided to leave, no one stopped him; Topper fared even worse than Dee Dee and was kicked out, and Mick was kicked out too, even though he never did anything.

The story of Grant, Bob, and Greg ended in the worst way. The press throws dirt between Bob and Grant: “Addiction made him unreliable, can’t go on like this”; “I don’t want to stay in a group where I’d just be a cog in Bob’s mechanism.” The two ignore each other with acrimony, and some insinuate that the acrimony is resentment over a failed romantic relationship.

Everything ends in 1987.

Grant, for some years, is the one who fares the worst: suffering and loneliness are all he has left after having dominated the world, and it must be hard to hang tough in his situation, and perhaps more than once, he must have envied Greg's low profile. Bob Dylan sings that if you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose; Grant in 1987 has a lot and loses everything.

Someone understood the essential of this album and made me understand it too simply by quoting «Never talking to you again» and describing Grant's frame of mind that autumn evening when he took the stage of a small Seattle venue, armed with only a guitar and no one to accompany him.

I didn't know the album until a couple of weeks ago when the same someone proposed it on DeBaser. For me, I listened to it just once in streaming, and that single listen was enough to convince me that that concert, for Grant, is a necessary exorcism to cast out every evil; I imagine he doesn't even realize he’s on a stage, in front of an audience.

I'm not very good with words, so I often cling to quoting those who know more than me. A few days after listening to «Ecce homo», this quote by Orhan Pamuk came to my mind: «As it turns out, you can't discover the secret of things without having had a broken heart». I think it fits perfectly.

And to conclude …

It is likely some of you in 1979 were but a thought in mom and dad’s minds, so:

• on July 1, 1979 Gilles Villeneuve and René Arnoux duel on the Dijon circuit in the French Grand Prix of Formula One;

• on July 6, 1980 Bjorn Borg and John Patrick McEnroe face off in the final for Wimbledon tournament victory;

• on July 5, 1982 Italy and Brazil compete to conquer the World Cup semi-final.