After a music career of more than four decades, Bob Mould has earned a lot of titles – gay advocate, cult figure, punk-rock lifer, guitar hero, folk singer. Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, who, like The Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, Green Day and many other bands, cited Mould’s first group, Hüsker Dü, as an influence, called Mould “a real American icon”.
“If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be making music the way I do, or play guitar the way I do,” Grohl told a Los Angeles audience at a tribute show to Mould in 2011, at the time of the release of his autobiography Shine a Little Light.
Mould returns to play in New Zealand for a third time in November. It will be just him and his guitar as it has been on previous occasions, such as when, supported by Chris Knox and Martin Phillipps, he played at Auckland’s Gluepot in 1991 on the back of his first post-Hüsker Dü solo albums Workbook and Black Sheets of Rain. He rattled the windows at the Kings Arms a decade later.
In between, Mould enjoyed a mid-90s period of great commercial success as the leader of another power trio, Sugar, which lasted for two studio albums. Mould turned his back on guitar bands for a while, dabbling in electronica and starting a DJ-ing sideline. About the same time, Dog on Fire, a discarded instrumental track, became the theme to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and – after a couple of re-recordings by other artists – still is, and continues to pay him well.
But in the early 2000s, he went back to the old fretboard, regularly releasing solo albums. His latest, 2020′s Blue Hearts, was a politically charged set with songs titled American Crisis and Racing to the End.
Today, when Mould calls from his home in San Francisco, where he’s lived for 15 years, he sounds happier with the Democrat surge brought on by the nominations of Kamala Harris, who he’s voted for before in California ballots, and Minnesota governor Tim Walz, reportedly an old fan of the Minnesota-formed Hüsker Dü.
“With Blue Hearts, I was just so upset with the way things were and also a bit upset with myself thinking about the 80s, thinking about the ascent of Ronald Reagan, and the decimation of the gay community due to the negligence of the government at that time to address the HIV-Aids issue.
“Concurrent to that was sort of my reluctance to come out and be vocal and be active when I had a voice. With Blue Hearts, I was trying to make amends with my own soul and trying to do what I could with what little bit of talent I had. Four years later, we’ve just about got the thing beat into the ground, but it still takes a lot of effort.”
Including his two band eras, Mould’s catalogue now extends to two dozen studio albums. His solo sets got a lavish box-set treatment a few years ago. All that work must cast a long shadow.
“I think the thing that’s toughest for me is for most of my life, I have not been a sentimental kind of guy. I don’t look back; I don’t get nostalgic. I always moved forward as fast as I could, as if I was running away from stuff that I had just done, whether it was good, bad or anything.
“I think with the box, even more so than the book, I was feeling the physical weight and the emotional kilograms of what I do. I’m really proud of my work and I guess it takes those moments where I have to do the inventory to appreciate it.”
There’s another box of records pivotal to Mould’s musical make-up. The ex-jukebox singles he collected as a kid growing up near the Canadian border in New York State and which probably helped later to instil a sense of pop melody into Mould’s roaring songs. A few days earlier, he was invited to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to play music at an audio installation entitled The Art of Noise. Thinking he’d just stream something, he took along the singles.
“I was like a kid again. I’m on the floor, like, arranging my singles before I do my set. People are looking at me, like, ‘what is this guy doing?’ So, I sort of broke the fourth wall and jumped in front of the subwoofers and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to tell you my story before I do this …’”
Mould started DJing in the early 2000s. His “Blowoff” nights featured sets catering for the gay “bear” community.
“When I walked away from rock music in 1998, I really wanted to find my gay identity and find my place in the community and see if I could fit in and to learn from my elders.”
But these days, Mould, who turns 64 next month, is equally happy standing alone on stage behind a guitar, picking through his rock past and present.
“As I get older, I can feel my playing diminishing a touch. It’s just arthritis and getting older, stuff happens. But you do what you can. I’m just happy I can still get my hands around the guitar and make noise. I’m so happy that people still play guitars and make loud music and yell crazy shit. It still motivates the culture.”
Tour dates: Loons, Christchurch, November 21; San Fran Wellington, November 22; Powerstation, Auckland, November 23.
