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It is the story of a great friendship broken... even before an artistic collaboration prematurely interrupted.
Robert Arthur (Bob) Mould and Grantzberg Vernon (Grant) Hart met in St. Paul, a suburb of Minneapolis, thanks to marijuana and the records the latter sold to the former. The mutual love for the Ramones firmly ties the days of the young bourgeois from New York with those of the beleaguered proletarian from the Minnesota town. Greg Norton is (and will forever be in this story) the glue that pushes the two to form a band and write songs. Grant inherits the drums from the premature demise of his older brother, who was hit by a car driven by a drunk. The quartet (the lineup also included the keyboardist Charlie Pine, who was fired before the first gig) scoured all foreign languages in search of an acronym that would be the perfect business card... after discarding the initial idea of Qu'est-ce Que C'est, taken from "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads. A famous board game popular in the seventies in America comes to their aid... Husker Du? (do you remember? in Danish and Swedish), from which they will remove the question mark and add the umlauts (to make it appear more "metallic") becomes the trademark of the greatest American indie band ever.
Eight years, a live debut, an EP, and six albums.
The blind fury of the primordial hardcore sculpted with blood and sweat into the grooves of that sublime unlistenable monolith that is "Land Speed Record" is replicated live in the studio on "Everything Falls Apart" as an enduring testament to how Mould and Hart's unity of intent (modern-day Lennon-McCartney and/or Jagger-Richards) is almost perfectly fused in unison. With the mini "Metal Circus" the nervous hypertension finds in the noisy anxiety the rock to crash upon... so it can sublimate into the absolute masterpiece "Zen Arcade", one of the Ten Commandments of Rock. It is a time of arrivals and (re)departures, "New Day Rising" and "Flip Your Wig" are the two volumes in which the golden rules of indie to come are impressed, the textbooks on which all the best minds of American underground music will study. Meanwhile, distribution problems and unpaid royalties with the "small" SST and a timid interest from the majors in the phenomenal trio, move the Huskers to Warner Brothers, which, besides its infernal industrial machine, guarantees Grant and Bob complete freedom and total control over their work... certainly, not even "Candy Apple Grey" grants them fame, although, as it happened for the Velvet Underground, anyone who bought one of their records at the time would then try to form a band. We are in the dreadful year of 1987... "Warehouse Songs And Stories" is their double artistic epitaph and denotes, even more markedly than the previous one, a splendid artistic maturity in composing, often accused of being weariness or even a lack of ideas and loss of inspiration. The misunderstandings between Mould and Hart are exaggerated to the extreme by the latter's heavy heroin addiction and are, by their own admission, at the center of the problems that lead to the suicide of their manager David Savoy; a fatal blow that leads to their dissolution during the promotional tour of "Warehouse".
The magic is over, forever.
Seven years later Warner Bros. gifts us this live (Mould claims he never listened to it) that captures 24 tracks taken from various dates of their final (interrupted and never resumed) tour, perhaps one of the many sordid commercial moves concocted by the white collars of the record companies, but which allows the music that the three managed to unleash on stage to be heard in all its splendor, even for those who at the time were objectively too young and clueless to see them. Certainly, it is painful to hear the chasm of tension that separated the two (ex)friends, for example, Grant shouting to Bob "It's Not Funny Anymore" who immediately returns with "Hardly Getting Over It", or Mould's inadvertent prophecy predicting the future in "Friend, You've Got To Fall" and immediately Hart pointing out that the magic has flown away... "She Floated Away". Incredibly compact and cohesive, it is a record that cannot be judged, whatever the judgment, "The Living End" is simply to be lived, loved and abandoned; just as they did in that damned space-time wrinkle twenty-two years ago... remembering the words of music critic David Fricke "There was a time when Hüsker Dü was the fastest band on Planet Earth."
Dü You Believe In Magic...?
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill (03:08)
There's a girl who lives on Heaven Hill
I go up to her cabin still
She keeps a lantern lit for me
And a bottle up on her mantelpiece
She's the girl who lives on Heaven Hill
She's got a big room and it's always a mess
Worn out shoes and a worn out dress
A worn out smile that she'll wear some more
And a worn out welcome mat by her door
I'd trade big mountains and rooms full of gold
For just one look at the beauty of this woman's soul
Up on Heaven Hill is where I wanna be
That girl, that bottle, that mattress, and me
03 Standing in the Rain (03:35)
Looking outside my window
And all I see is grey
I'm watching the clouds roll by every day
And we make a reservation
You say you'll be on time
I say, "I might be a little late"
Well, I pull it together and brush my teeth
And comb my hair
I stop to think and I can see you there
I think of the times you've waited
Just for me to care
I care about you
Checking the clock inside
The room we call our own
I see that I'm late, I should be going
Hop on a local transit
Spending all my change
And I can still hear the telephone
I wanna go back, but I'm halfway to
The place where we will meet
And I'm half dead on my feet
And once I get there, I see
Everything's the same
Here comes the rain
You left me standing
I should have guessed that you'd stand me up
Why did I even go, now
And I guess it goes to show
The snow may well thaw out
But it goes right down the train
You left me
You left me
You left me
You left me
You left me standing in the rain
04 Back From Somewhere (02:25)
Now, you look like you just got back from somewhere
Somewhere, yeah, you know that it's true
Together we went nearly to nowhere
Nowhere really worth going to
Standing at the City Center
In the middle of the winter
I was waiting for you
And you were due
When I got back, you said you were leaving
Leaving, you said right away
And coming back for the sake of retrieving
Things you'd forgotten on that day
Still now my eyes are burning
With the sight of your returning
Everywhere I look, I'm finding you
I remember you
Familiar places that we turned into gardens
Somewhere, yeah, you know that it's true
I'm begging you now a thousand pardons
For all of the wastelands we've been through
I remember asking whether
Or where we could be together
You smiled at me, and you said "Soon"
05 Ice Cold Ice (04:19)
Barren lands and barren minds
In another place and time
I feel I've never known myself
Frozen in the sand again
See the blank expressions waiting for progression
They're standing still in place and time
And no one's moving, they're only
Standing still in ice cold ice cold ice
All machines and all are one
Catching up on what's been done
Stealing glimpses from the past
These impressions always last
Never penetrating, always contemplating
We sit and count the blessings but we're blessed by icons
No one else could
Trust in ice cold ice cold ice
We'll stay together till the end
Thinking you might be a friend
We sit and pray together that they might change the weather
My love for you will never die
If I sound distant, that's because
You shouldn't see me crying ice cold ice
08 She Floated Away (03:30)
With her grandmother's face and her father's brown eyes
Her own force of will to her mother's surprise
A whole look about her that says that she may
She lifted her arms and she floated away
She floated away, she floated away
She lifted her arms and she floated away
She don't give a damn what the other girls say
She lifted her arms and she floated away
"Let me talk to you Mother," she tried to confess
"Go ahead, honey, and wear the white dress
Don't let traditions go stand in your way"
She lifted her arms and she floated away
She floated away, she floated away
She lifted her arms and she floated away
She don't give a damn what the other girls say
She lifted her arms and she floated away
Well, a man has two reasons for things that he does
The first one is pride and the second one is love
All understandings must come by this way
She lifted her arms and she floated away
She floated away, she floated away
She lifted her arms and she floated away
She don't give a damn what the other girls say
She lifted her arms and she floated away
09 From the Gut (01:33)
The gut From the gut
It hurts Hurts so much
The same Quite the same
You know Know too much
It's yours Yours no more
It's mine For the time
That I'm Without you
10 Target (01:46)
You've seen it all before
You think it's passe
But you listen to the same fucking records
Every single day
You don't like the people who caught on late
If they're having fun,
Don't participate, be lethargic
You're a hypocrite, you're the target
12 Hardly Getting Over It (05:54)
Twenty years ago, saw a friend was walking by
And I stopped him on the street to ask him
How it went, and all he did was cry
I looked him in the face, but I couldn't see past his eyes
Asked him what the problem was, he says
"Here is your disguise"
Now he's hardly getting over it
Hardly getting used to getting by
Old man lays down by the railroad tracks
Got no paper in his pocket, got no paper on his back
I asked him what the time was, he says
"Hit the road now, Jack"
Went back to see him next week
He died of a heart attack and died away
Now he's hardly getting over it
Hardly getting used to getting by
Grandma, she got sick, she is going to die
And Grandpa had a seizure, moved into a hotel cell and died away
My parents, they just wonder when they both are going to die
And what do I do when they die?
Now I'm hardly getting over it
Hardly getting used to getting by
13 Terms of Psychic Warfare (02:01)
Well, I see you walking down the road
And the thoughts within my mind explode
But having to hold back taught me a lot about control
And letting all loose at once when it was time to let you know
You occupied my space and you occupied your mind
By jumping off the roof to the first conclusion you can find
Now all the silver you can steal
Can't buy a piece of what I feel
It's sad, but the means, they just don't justify the ends
To be forever haunted by the ghosts of all your friends
Painful, yeah, that's the way you've chosen it to be
C'mon, babe, can't you think of anyone besides me?
These are the terms!
Now don't think you're the only who has harboured a self-hate
I'm just as guilty of selling what my own sweet soul creates
And don't feel bad the next time my memory comes creepin'
You've got your own bed now, I suggest that's the one you sleep in
14 Powerline (02:27)
What's this humming in my head
Was it something that someone said
It's connecting us with them
Electric wires turned on again
It aggravates, and it pacifies
Hear the power in the lines
Strung high on every pole
How can this power be bought and sold?
Trying to harness solar rays
Making minutes seem like days
It captivates, and it hypnotizes
Hear the power in the lines
Powerline
16 Divide and Conquer (02:56)
Well, they divided up all the land
We've got states and cities
Cities have their neighborhoods
And more subdivisions
There's countries divided by walls
Oceans and latitude
And longitude, longing to find out
Just what they're missing
There's lots of area codes
And nine digit zip codes
Secret decoder ring codes
Arteries, shopping nodes
We'll invent some new computers
Link up the global village
And get AP, UPI, Reuters
To tell everybody the news
We'll be one happy neighborhood
Spread out across the world
Who's going to stop that burglar
From breaking into my house
If he lives that far away
We'll be just like old friends
No means to your ends
The police state is too busy
And the neighborhood's getting out of hand
Big Brother on every wall
Muzak plays in all the halls
Empires see the rise and fall
They divide, conquer
It's not about my politics
Something happened way too quick
Bunch of men who played it sick
They divide, conquer
It's all here before your eyes
Safety is a big disguise
That hides among the other lies
They divide, conquer
Well, I expect I won't be heard
'Cause my silence is assured
Never a discouraging word
They divide and conquer
They divide and conquer
17 Keep Hanging On (03:23)
Only angels have wings, girl
And poets have all the words
The earth belongs to the two of us
And the sky belongs to the birds
You've given me so much happiness
That I'll wrap up and give you this song
You gotta grab it with both hands
You gotta keep hanging on...
The cat walks to the window
And I hear the key turn in the door
Know one knows and anything goes
And everything falls on the floor
The apartment starts shaking
And the roof opens up to the sun
The crows flying in parallel lines
And golly, isn't this great fun?
Laying in each other's arms
We're sleepy, begin to nod
And we start to dream of grandiose things
Oh god, oh god, oh god
You gotta keep hanging on
18 Celebrated Summer (04:36)
Love and hate was in the air, like pollen from a flower
Somewhere in April time, they add another hour
I guess I better think up a way to spend my time
Just when I'm ready to sit inside, it's summertime
Should I go swimming or get a friend to hang around
It's back to summer, it's back to basics, hang around
Getting drunk out on the beach, or playing in a band
And getting out of school meant getting out of hand
Was this your celebrated summer? Was that your celebrated summer?
Then the sun disintegrates between a wall of clouds
I summer where I winter at, and no one is allowed there
Do you remember when the first snowfall fell?
When summer barely had a snowball's chance in hell?
21 What's Going On (03:21)
I was talking
When I should have been listening
I didn't hear a word that anyone said
It must not have been so very important
'Cause I was concerned about instead
What's going on
What's going on
What's going on inside my head
22 Data Control (05:09)
A nine digit number
For every living soul
That is all they talk about
At Data Control
They know everything about you
Keeping secrets is too hard
Your life is all recorded for you
In holes punched in computer cards
Data Control (digital readout)
Data Control (perforated feedout)
Data Control (microfilm files)
Data Control (1984 style)
A multinational corporation
A stockholder's dream
A nightmare of diversity
A defense system so supreme
Too technical to talk about
Too complex for layman's brains
It's enough to make you paranoid
Or drive you crazy losers sane
23 In a Free Land (03:35)
Government authorize education
[Don't mean a thing]
They'll teach you what they want you to think
[Don't mean a thing]
Saturation of stars and stripes
[Don't mean a thing]
The only freedom worth fighting for is for what you think
Why bother spending time
Reading up on things
Everybody's an authority
In a free land
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