A FRESH VISION OF HARDCORE-AND-MORE THRIVES IN THE HEARTLAND

Sitting in a large empty room backstage at UCLA's Ackerman Ballroom, Hüsker Dü's Bob Mould looks like anything but a rocker. In his jeans and long sleeve American Wrestling Association Cage Match T-shirt, the beefy, moon-faced guitarist/singer resembles a furloughed construction worker. He looks amused when asked about his burgeoning commercial fortune

"Well, let me get out my wallet and see whose card I got this week," he says in a low, road-raw voice. He fishes out a card embossed with the Warner Brothers shields. "Nah, nobody," he comments with a wry grin. "That was for the other deal -- for cartoons."

Mould is kidding, of course. Hüsker Dü (the name, without umlauts, is Danish and Norwegian for "do you remember?") is presently being wooed by just about every major label in the country -- all the biggies except CBS, the guitarist notes in a more serious moment. But their sudden success has clearly left Mould, drummer Grant Hart and bassist Greg Norton a little dazed. It's been a starting leap toward the big-time for a band known mainly to the punk cognoscenti only a year ago.

The Hüsker's rapid rise may have taken the band members by surprise, but few who have followed the group's progress during their six-year history would raise an eyebrow. The fervent trio expressed the anger and angst of the American hardcore punk sector to explosive perfection in their early singles and albums. But last year, in their magnum opus Zen Arcade, they brought a breadth of artistic invention, a stylistic versatility, and a heatedly intense technical execution to a form too often straight-jacketed by pared-down structures and thematic myopia. Hüsker Dü vaulted from the hardcore aggro ranks by offering something that the style delivers far too infrequently: a fresh vision.

Zen Arcade is sprawling, surging 'core tempered by strains of neo-psychedelia and folkish acoustic touches. Along with the single that preceded it-- a devastating revision of the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" -- the album served notice to the press that the band's heady style was worth shouting about. The St. Paul, Minnesota-based group has moved to consolidate last year's advances. The single-disc New Day Rising, a speedy follow-up to Zen Arcade, came out this January. They also extended an ongoing tour, playing over a hundred gigs in the last eight months. All the activity and attention has made Hüsker Dü the rulers of the roost in the Twin Cities music scene (discounting, of course, Prince's nation-wide purple reign). But it wasn't always so. According to dapper, mustachioed Norton, far blander music held sway in the band's hometown in 1978: "Practically anything that you went out to hear was pop bands with the cute haircuts. That was the alternative."

Back then, the future members of Hüsker Dü were bedroom musicians of resolutely amateur status. Hart was a closet Al Jolson fan who worked with Norton in a St. Paul record store. Mould, a musician and songwriter from the age of 9, joined the pair after he was drawn into the shop by the punk rock Hart blasted from the sidewalk P.A. system. "The three of us got together in my basement one Friday afternoon and played a bunch of Ramones covers," Norton says. "A week later, on March 30, 1979 we were onstage at Ron's Randolph Inn in St. Paul." Mould adds, we figured if the Ramones could do it, anybody could do it."

"It was a real nihilistic experience," Mould recalls. "I found a two-gallon tank of blue paint and threw it up in the air. It hit the dance floor and blew up everywhere. This girl picked up one of Grant's cymbals, scooped up a bunch of paint and went to pour it on his drums. Grant picked her up and power-slammed her into the paint, and (Black Flag producer) Spot and (then-singer) Dez (Cadena) picked her up and started bouncing her off the wall. It was like a Busby Berkeley musical gone to hell."

Impressed by the Minnesotans' lashing music and colorful behavior, Black Flag offered the band assistance. Black Flag's SST label nixed a live tape as a first LP from Hüsker Dü, but suggested that New Alliance, the even smaller label run by SST label-mates The Minutemen might be interested. The result Land Speed Record, offered the first hint of the raging neo-psychedelic hardcore Hüsker Dü would refine over the years. "Land Speed's like the bad part of the acid," Mould comments.

A demonic single on New Alliance, "In A Free Land," and the Reflex album Everything Falls Apart followed. Hüsker Dü finally joined the SST fold with the EP Metal Circus in 1983, but emerged from the 'core underground only with last year's two-disc opus.

Zen Arcade grew out of an experience familiar to ex-hippies everywhere: drugs. "In the months before we left to record Zen Arcade, I tripped probably twenty-eight times," Hart admits. "It was the acid bender of my life." It also helped that he was living communally in a church with members of four different bands. That lifestyle had a marked impact on the record's expansiveness.

"People would do like three-hour versions of (the instrumental) 'Reoccuring Dreams'," Mould says. "You'd watch people get pinned to the wall. Grant and I were practising just about every day, just jamming and getting into more weirdness and sitting around hyperventilating over lyrics and stuff."

The lunatic methodology involved in creating Zen Arcade carried over into its recording.: The entire record was made in one marathon eighty-five-hour session, mixing included. Most of the songs are first takes. Mould and Hart describe them as "a cross between Tommy, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Sound of Music and Evita." Whatever its pedigree, Zen Arcade struck an immediate chord with critics across the country. In the Village Voice's year-end poll of over 200 rock writers, the album placed eighth among the year's best records - an unprecedented showing by this largely ignored trio of heartland rockers.

The follow-up, New Day Rising, is a finely crafted, even rawer distillation of the musical inroads made in Zen Arcade. The more detailed sound displays Mould and Hart's songwriting abilities to even greater effect. "We weren't under a deadline this time," Mould says. "All the other records we recorded in the middle of tours, so it wasn't a very comfortable situation. Doing Metal Circus, for example, the power company came and shut the power off, 'cause the studio hadn't paid their electric bill. We were trying to jump power from other parts of the building. Stuff like that freaks everybody out."

On just about every level, Minneapolis/St. Paul suits Hüsker Dü just fine. In spite of their present notoriety, they're perfectly satisfied to continue recording and playing in their Midwestern base, off the beaten record company path. "In the Twin Cities, you're not as directly affected by all the crap that goes on in the business -- all the cut-throat booking and managing, all that stuff," Mould says. "I think that people are basically into good music up there, and not just the trappings."

Yet things aren't as comfy as they used to be in the frozen north. The great acclaim accorded Hüsker Dü in the wake of Zen Arcade, and the band's highly visibility, combined with the concurrent success of Minneapolis' Replacements, has turned the Twin Cities into a focus of interest for the musical in crowd -- a development Mould views with dread. "The town is hip now, unfortunately," he says with a sour face, "so it's sorta weird. I'm afraid it's gonna become another Boston or Atlanta."

In spite of their obvious affection for the Twin Cities, Hüsker Dü hasn't ruled out big-label bucks. They make it clear, though, that they will have to dictate the terms. "We're very demanding individuals," Mould says. "We have an idea that things should be done our way. What am I supposed to do -- go in and say, 'Well, golly gee, that's really nice'? I'm gonna go in and say, 'Look, man, I've got a real good idea that it's easy for us to get screwed around. Now either play it straight or don't bother us.' We would have to pick the producer and engineer and do the artwork, and we would stay self-managed.

"The first time that one of the major label reps called, he asked, "Well, how many records do you think you can sell?' I was really messed up at the time -- like the first time in three years I'd been messed up -- and I said, 'Man I don't care if we sell two million records or two! If I have to play to a wall, I'll play!"

The band members laugh at this tale, and Mould turns the conversation into a discussion on the relative merits of Verne Gagne, Nick Bockwinkle, and Hulk Hogan as mat champions. For their part, the three-man tag team known as Hüsker Dü have issued their own challenge to the major U.S. labels. Tune in next week for the battle royale.

How The Hüskers Dü It.

Bob Mould owns two identical 1975 Ibanez Flying V copies. He runs these through a Yamaha G-100 solid state head and a Marshall slant 4 X 12 cabinet; that signal runs parallel into a British Fender Twin Junior "with about a 25-pound JBL speaker in it." He also utilizes an MXR Distortion Plus, Ibanez Stereo Chorus, and an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone Mini-Chorus. His strings are GHS Boomer Extra Lights; he favors Jim Dunlop picks.

Greg Norton plays an Ibanez Roadstar Series II medium-scale bass through a Peavey Mark IV Series III head and an Ampeg V2 4X12 bottom. He's a fan of GHS Super Steel and Boomer strings and Jim Dunlop picks.

Grant Hart is a Slingerland man, preferably Radio Kings. His kit features a 26-inch bass drum, 13-inch ride, and a 16-inch rack. He outfits these with heads by Pinstripe (toms and bass) and Remo (for the snare). His cymbals are Zildjian Impulses, "the Ford Falcon of cymbals-- they last longer under the conditions that I play them under." He plays with the butt ends of Regaltip Rock sticks.