But some of singer/guitarist Bob Mould’s best music occurred after Hüsker Dü – as evidenced by his work with Sugar and as a solo artist throughout the ’90s. And he continues to offer up memorable and inspired music to this day, as evidenced by his 15th solo effort overall, Here We Go Crazy.
Mould spoke with AllMusic a month before the March 7, 2025 release of Here We Go Crazy, and was up for taking a look back throughout his career, as well as the story behind his latest solo effort.
It’s been four years between Here We Go Crazy and your last release, Blue Hearts. Why so long?
“I think, like most of the world, I got a little knocked off my normal cycle. Typically, my cycles for my entire adult life, give or take a few months here and there, is months of writing a record, then a period of time to record a record, then, that a weird period of time where I’ve turned in my homework, but nobody gets to look at it. And that’s the period that you and I are in currently – the press and the all that stuff. And then there’s the release, and then there’s a tour. So, Blue Hearts had a plan that was built exactly that way, but without touring, everything sort of froze in place.”
“I am the kind of musician who really appreciates performing and getting feedback on new material, and I sort of lost that part of my MO for what, about a year and a half. I don’t think I was able to get out and do shows until the fall of ’21. So, spending a lifetime in that kind of repetitive cycle and having it broken, I was a little bit little bit lost with, ‘I wonder if this stuff’s any good?’ That last little bit of feedback was missing. I was writing through ’20 and ’21 with some mixed results. I was a bit preoccupied with other stuff. Y’know, staying alive I guess being the main one. So I think that’s part of the drag in time.”
“I mean, I think the stuff that I was writing during that period wasn’t…I had a couple good songs – ‘Breathing Room’ was an early song, ‘When Your Heart Is Broken’ was a pretty early song. But it wasn’t high quality output all the way around. Just in a time like that, I’ve learned from experience, if you rush it, it’s probably not going to be your best work. So, just wait. Just keep working and it’ll all come into focus. And through ’22 and through ’23, I was out doing a lot of solo electric work and trying out new stuff.”
“Sort of rebuilding that connection with the audience and getting a good sense of how Blue Hearts hit them, how the new material that I was playing was fitting next to the catalog. And that was the kind of stuff that was missing. So when I was getting that, then everything starts to line up a little bit better. I know that’s a super long answer to a very simple question, but it was a long break. I was super busy with touring in ’22/’23, and a fair bit of ’24. It’s just now that it feels like the cycles are back. The cycle, so to speak, is back in place.”
Let’s discuss the track “Here We Go Crazy” and its video.
“The video was shot and directed by a gentleman named Gus Black. And the new record company, well, the new parent company, BMG, had worked with Gus in the past. I saw a bunch of his work and really connected with it. And Gus and I talked for like an hour and said, ‘Yeah, let’s try to make this video. Let’s do this, and do this, and maybe do that if we have a little extra time.’ We shot everything in the different desert locations in Southern California. And I think Gus did an amazing job. It’s a very cool video. I had a lot of fun working with him.”
“The song itself, well, it’s the title track. And much like the title track from Sunshine Rock, or the title track from Sgt. Pepper, it was…as the recording was wrapping up, it became pretty clear to me that that would be the opening for the record. I had other songs in mind to be the opener, but that one turned out really great, and it felt like the best way to introduce people to the rest of the album. To sort of set a time and a place and a location and a sentiment. It’s just like that, ‘We hope you will enjoy the show’ kind of thing.”
“When Your Heart Is Broken” I thought is a standout track on the album, too.
“That’s a good one. That’s an instant classic for me, right? Mid-tempo, super-pop catchy guitars with super-depressing lyrics. [Laughs] That’s sort of my specialty, I guess. But ‘Here We Go Crazy’ is interesting, because it’s a lot of like, small snapshots of what I’ve been up to the past few years, and things that I’m just trying to sort of set this vast open space for people. And just showing people physical locations, particular objects that come to mind, recurring themes.”
“The title is, gosh, maybe I should put a slogan mark on ‘Here We Go Crazy,’ so that some chain restaurant doesn’t steal it. [Laughs] But it’s one of those titles, right? It’s a good one and who knew by putting out the track on January 8th, that it would be somewhat timely in a general sense. I didn’t see that coming.”
I’ve always found the ’90s to be a very interesting part of your career, including Sugar and your solo work. What do you recall about that era in particular?
“If I look at ’89/’90 – Workbook and Black Sheets of Rain –Workbook was definitely a statement of intent. ‘I am not just the guy from Hüsker Dü.’ Black Sheets to me was sort of a reimagining of what [bassist] Tony Maimone and the late [drummer] Anton Fier brought to Workbook, and what all the touring from Workbook got us to this heavier, louder version. And that was Black Sheets. And after that record ran its course and I parted ways with Virgin Records, the goal in 1991 to me was to just start writing what I was hoping would be the best record I could possibly write.”
“I was on the road, constantly doing solo acoustic shows. I would play for three weeks and try out new material. I’d go home for a couple weeks, write more stuff. I’d go back out for another three weeks. And this was all sort of planting seeds for what was to come. This is the working out the material in front of the people to gauge what’s good and what’s not. And then by the end of ’91 it became clear to me which record companies would be interested, what kind of structure would work.”
“And January ’92 is me and David Barbe and Malcolm Travis – the three of us rehearsing and learning 30 songs in the back of a tire shop in Downtown Athens, Georgia, with the intent of making the third Bob Mould solo album. And we got asked to do a show at 40 Watt the night before we started heading up to suburban Boston, to record the album. And decided we should give it a band name, and we came up with the name Sugar. That’s sort of how that all started.”
“The next three years was a whirlwind. I knew Copper Blue and Beaster were really good records. I did not foresee being the beneficiary of, y’know, I guess the wave of grunge that really picked up steam when Nevermind came out. And I think, sort of ‘reverse engineering’ why that record was successful – it would take you to the Pixies, that would take you to Hüsker Dü. As like, just a small percentage of what made that record great. I think the roads were already paved in a way.”
“I did not see the instant success of Sugar as it was happening. I mean, the moment I guess I knew, was we did a couple shows in London in late July/early August of ’92, and one of them was at ULU – the University of London Student Union Building. And it was just a completely unhinged, insane show. Parts of the PA falling into the crowd, nutty stage diving – just madness that I hadn’t seen in years. And I could sort of feel it – ‘This is taking off, and we haven’t even put the record out.’ So that was pretty exciting.”
“We ran hard and fast. In ’94, the recording of File Under Easy Listening, I was running so fast that I didn’t have a completely amazing record written. But, we went with what we had. And then by the end of ’94, the band was wrapping up. And I think our last show was in Sendai, Japan in January of ’95. And then I retreated quietly, knowing that that project was done. I kept writing music. Recorded an album – some of it at home, some of it in a small studio in Austin – and that became the eponymous album that a lot of us call Hubcap.”
“I did not intend to tour on that record. The ask from Pete Townshend to open a couple shows of his in New York in the spring of ’96 got me thinking about getting out and working again, and went out and did a lot of solo touring. And then ’98 was The Last Dog and Pony Show, and by the time I got there, I was starting to get restless for something new in my own life. Not my professional life, but my personal life. I had moved back to New York City and was integrating with the LGBTQ community more than I ever had. So I was enriching my life in that direction, and thought, ‘Maybe this would be a good time to stop being only the rock guy who’s on the road in a van for his whole life.'”
“And so that that notion of stepping away from rock touring with that record, that was 100% in earnest, that I just felt like, ‘I’m gonna take a break here, and I’m gonna build this other life that I never really took the time to build.’ I think that’s it in a nutshell. There’s the pro wrestling stuff in the fall of ’99 through spring of 2000 – that sort of ran parallel to my gay life in New York, my interest in electronic music. A lot of things were shifting. To go write pro wrestling [music] and start writing electronic music, that eventually led me to DJing for most of the aughts. I knew I wanted to change, I didn’t know what form it would exactly take, but it all came together pretty well. Naturally, I think.”
The Sugar song “Your Favorite Thing” is a ’90s alt-rock classic. What do you recall about writing that song?
“Real super riff, super catchy. I don’t think that one took long to write. That might have been like, a half hour song. Which, a lot of the good ones are. But I just thought it was a really cool signature riff. It’s sort of in that classic ‘Sugar tempo’ – y’know, the 120s to 130s. Just those sort of hard driving four on the floor pop songs. The lyrics, there’s nothing revelatory in the words. But hopefully the way that they were constructed is interesting. Good song, though.”
Before you said something that I totally agree with: “The roads were already paved” before Nirvana’s Nevermind hit. Because I’ve always felt that bands such as the Pixies, REM, Hüsker Dü, and several others from the 80s definitely helped set the stage for alternative rock’s big breakthrough in the early ’90s. Do you see that at the time?
“I think I saw it when Sugar got really big. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, we did this.’ [Laughs] At the risk of the sound of me patting myself on the back being louder than my voice. And I mean Mudhoney, Meat Puppets…there’s so many things that got into Nevermind, right? But yeah, I think I knew, by the time Sugar was blowing up that if I had any doubts about what maybe had happened in the past, then I think that was sort of like, ‘Oh yeah. That’s right.‘”
What were your impressions of hearing Nevermind for the first time?
“Well, I had the demos because I was in contention for producing the record. I did not have the demo of ‘Teen Spirit’ – I don’t know if there was one, and I don’t know if anybody got it, if there was. But I remember sitting with Gary Gersh at Geffen, and it came up. History went the way it did, and it was absolutely the right way. Butch Vig was somebody that I worked with back in ’84. Butch is amazing. And it was a perfect fit for what the songs on Nevermind were. And everything went exactly as it should. [Laughs] Y’know, Butch does that, they blow up, and then it’s sort of like, ‘Oh, now I’ve got this E-ZPass for the toll road I may have had a hand in building.'” [Laughs]
How important was MTV and 120 Minutes for alt-rock artists in the ’90s?
“MTV, in general – and Matt Pinfield and 120 Minutes, specifically – did so much to elevate all of us that were making that kind of guitar-driven music in the early ’90s. It was so important. There were other shows before it – a show back in the ’80s, The Cutting Edge. I remember that because there was one episode, it was the first time the Smiths were on TV in America, I think. There was something with Morrissey talking.
I remember going to see Stone Temple Pilots in 2000 or something with a friend. And after like, the thirteenth song, I looked at my friend like, ‘These are all Stone Temple Pilots songs?’ I had heard all of these songs forever, but I didn’t know who they were.
“And that same episode, Hüsker Dü was on, as well. There was sort of a trampoline or foundation being set already before 120 Minutes. But yeah, 120 Minutes was the place that all of us wanted to be. It was the place where everyone found out about new music. It was the way to get there. No question about it.”
“There were a lot of radio stations that had been around. College stations, and then stations like WLIR in New York. So, that was all part of building the firmament, as well. It was a long process. It didn’t just happen out of thin air. And WBCN, and Matt was DJing down in South Jersey. So, that late ’80s through ’91/’92, all of that was critical infrastructure, as well. It’s just funny – you know this and I know this – but there’s sort of a ‘mainstream history,’ like, ‘There was all this hair metal, and then Nevermind came, and it changed.’ There was a lot of people who did a lot of work to get to that point.”
Who are some of your favorite ’90s alt-rock artists?
“Not many. [Laughs] I mean, I have a lot of respect for Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I remember going to see Stone Temple Pilots in 2000 or something with a friend. And after like, the thirteenth song, I looked at my friend like, ‘These are all Stone Temple Pilots songs?’ I had heard all of these songs forever, but I didn’t know who they were.”
“During the ‘Sugar years,’ the bands that jumped out to me would have been my UK label mates, like Swervedriver. Or the Boo Radleys, who came over and toured with Sugar. But the biggest one to me was My Bloody Valentine. I keep waiting for somebody to top Loveless. There have been records since then that have gotten close to that level…but that was like a beacon of light of what can be done with this form. So, that would be the one that I would always go to.”
“Swervedriver being up there at the top, as well. The way that Adam [Franklin] and Jimmy [Hartridge] approach songwriting and putting stuff together and the sounds of their records was really brilliant, as well. It was just the guitar interplay, Adam’s voice, the songwriting was really complex…but it stayed really catchy. And I knew about those guys from like, ’88, when they were called Shake Appeal – because they sent me the demos that became Son of Mustang Ford. I go way back with them, and I’m a huge fan. I always sing their praises. And they got new stuff – the new stuff is pretty cool, too. There’s a track that came out maybe three weeks ago. It’s still got all of the earmarks. So, it’s great.”
What can fans expect from the upcoming tour?
“The touring for ‘Here We Go Crazy’ in the US, it’s exactly what you’d expect. It’s me, and me and the rhythm section that have been on the last six records. It’s just going to be a nice celebration of this record. I would suggest that it will be a celebration of all six records that we recorded together. I’d like to put the spotlight on that – which the three of us did together, and just really focus into that. I mean, I’ve got a deep catalog – solo, Sugar, Hüsker Dü. I think the meat and potatoes of the tour will be the six records that we made. And I think everything else will probably…don’t quote me on this! [Laughs] Just kidding – I think those other components of my songbook, that’ll be the spice, not the meat of it.”
