Hüsker Dü's final meeting was over the kitchen table with Grant Hart's parents. Mould says Hart's mom likened her son's drug problems to a cold, and she suggested the band play only on weekends. He writes: "I push away from the kitchen table, begin to rise, and say, 'I think I'm done here.' ... That was it. It was over."
Mould almost went to work at a state park after the breakup. He applied for a gift-shop job at a park near the farm by Pine City where he (later) wrote the songs for "Workbook." He explained by phone: "I was so despondent and confused, I wrote them this letter saying I've got all this experience, three years at Macalester, blah blah blah. I got a rejection letter back, which left me even more confused [laughs]."
He has never heard the Hüskers' live album "The Living End." When sent a copy for approval, he gave it to his guitar tech. "If Dewitt [Burton] liked it, it was good enough for me," he writes.
Kurt Cobain's suicide soured him on Sugar. It happened during beleaguered sessions for Sugar's last album, three years after touring with Nirvana. Mould and "alt-rock" were at their commercial peak: "Once you become successful, the business won't let you stop to catch your breath."
He tried to retract his 1994 "coming out" article just before Spin magazine published it. "I figured most people know," he writes, "but now it has become a big thing." In the end, he admits: "When Hüsker Dü signed to a major, I thought the repercussions would hurt us. I was wrong -- it hardly mattered. And the same thing with the Spin piece."
