Chicago Tribune
Husker Du: Even if you took away Bob Mould’s songs and just kept Grant Hart’s, you’d still have a great band — one of the most important and influential of the last 40 years.
Hart, who died Thursday at 56 of cancer, was Husker Du’s protean drummer and shared lead vocals and songwriting with Mould. After the band’s bitter late-'80s breakup, Mould went on to enjoy a celebrated solo career that is still in high gear. In contrast, Hart recorded and toured only sporadically, and in recent years his illness kept him off the road completely. But his legacy towers over indie music. It began with the band he co-founded with Mould in St. Paul, Minn., in 1979.
Mould paid tribute to his former bandmate with a lengthy farewell note on social media. “Grant Hart was a gifted visual artist, a wonderful story teller, and a frighteningly talented musician,” he wrote.
Green Day covered one of Husker Du’s Hart-written songs, “Don’t Want to Know if You are Lonely,” and Billie Joe Armstrong once said, “I wanted to be Husker Du when I started Green Day.”
Husker Du formed soon after Mould met Hart at a record store a block away from Mould’s Macalester College dormitory. Hart was blasting punk rock on the store speakers, and the two started a friendship and soon after a band.
With the addition of bassist Greg Norton, the trio became one of the most punishing hardcore bands on the nascent punk circuit.
Husker Du's classic single written by Grant Hart from the album Candy Apple Grey was released in 1986.
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