Husker Du: the Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock by Andrew Earles

Author:Andrew Earles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Voyageur Press
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

“I’m not happy with how that record sounds, no, not at all,” says Hart. “Now, it’s very possible that we wanted to get the fuck out of the studio by the time we were mixing. I remember a distinct ‘When is this guy going to get out of here?’ attitude towards Spot.”

Soundman Josiah McElheny was not around for the recording sessions but remembers that the studio situation merited discussion when he traveled with the band for the New Day Rising tour more than half a year later.

“I was not there but heard a good deal about it from the band while on that tour, especially from Bob,” he says. “My memory is that he was really frustrated in general with Spot, in part because he had such specific ideas about how things should be mixed. But at the time I remember being confused because Zen Arcade seemed to me to echo so well the band’s live sound, especially Bob’s guitar setup with the Fender on top of the Marshall. I think that it was less an issue of philosophic disagreement between Spot and the band and more of a transition period where the band wanted more control in general as well as a change in the kind of songs that both Grant and Bob wanted to write. This became really clear later—that they wanted to have a much clearer kind of sound for the songs, as opposed to the ‘wall of sound.’”

If Bob and Grant shared some solidarity against what was perceived as a common issue (Spot), it certainly wasn’t apparent to Hart. During the New Day Rising sessions and the simultaneous release hoopla surrounding Zen Arcade, the existing cracks in their relationship became chasms. While only the closest inner-circle colleagues like Katzman could occasionally pick up on this, it’s a safe assumption that Bob and Grant had reached the point of no return during (or even in the months leading up to) the New Day sessions. As Katzman puts it, this was “the beginning of the real creative, artistic struggle between the two of them.”

Hart claims that during the New Day sessions he was treated with an unprecedented degree of disdain by Bob and whomever Bob could rally in his corner, even Spot. Allegedly, Mould tilted the competitive edge in his favor by taking extra time to get his parts just right, leaving Hart in a position that differed very little from a time-sensitive session thousands of miles away at Total Access.

“Had there not been a piano to rehearse, there’s no way, for example, on ‘Books about UFOs,’ Bob would have tolerated me rehearsing the part on studio time,” Hart says. “I would have had to have done it when he was doing something else, or on my own time. On ‘The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill’ we have the notorious slide guitar. Bob and Spot erased the take after the rough mix had been made, which I cannot locate. It was one of the first and few times I can remember a ‘We need to have a band meeting’ kind of vibe.

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