AVC: It seems like you've gotten significantly healthier, mentally and physically. Was that part of your mission in '98?
BM: Yeah, in '98, I was filling a notebook on how to change my life. A lot of the ideas would really not have been so good, and those were sort of shelved. But a couple of those that really stuck was to get myself physically in shape. I'd always been a big guy, I'd always been a generally athletic guy, but I'd never really tuned into my diet. I'd never really tuned into a workout routine. In '99, I got a trainer, started going to the gym every day, and dropped 55 pounds in four months, doing tons of cardio. I was working out two hours a day. I think the beauty of that—I didn't know at the time, but I see it now—is just that discipline and that routine and that exertion and getting whatever was into my body. It's also having an amazing effect on combating whatever depression problems I've had, because I don't take medication for anything. It's made a real big help.
AVC: Some people write more when something's bothering them, which seems to be the case for you as well. Could a side effect of being a healthier person mean you have less to write about?
BM: It might change the overall tone of the work at hand, but there's enough drama in my life whether I want it or not. [Laughs.] There's enough going on right now to keep my head spinning all the time.
AVC: How are you making the travel part work?
BM: I haven't started yet, so I don't know what we're going to do. First, it's a limited amount of touring. There are shows in Europe; there's 17 shows here. It all fits into five and a half weeks, so it's not going to be that bad. Brendan has kids, Jason [Narducy, touring bassist] has kids, so it's all broken up so they're not away for more than two weeks. I think it'll be okay. I think it's just the time between point to point that really can be frustrating. Sitting in the car, the windshield is the hourglass; you're looking at it, and time is slipping away. The older I get, the less I have, and sitting in the car is sort of crazy. But we'll make it work. Diet goes out the window. I lose my workouts, my hearing gets fucked up, my throat gets screwed—that stuff I can work with. The dieting stuff is hard.
AVC: How did you decide it'd be okay to play Hüsker Dü songs with a full band?
BM: As I get older and I have limited time, and there'll be limited interest as the years go by, I can say with absolute certainty there will not be a Hüsker Dü reunion. Given the amount of bullshit that I've had to tolerate from the other guys as far as what a taskmaster, what a world leader I was—everybody's able to buy a house and have a comfortable life, so I can't wait to hear about the shitty parts. [Laughs.] Yeah, so they're my songs, and I'm going to take ownership of performing them however I damn well please this tour. I'm really excited about the Sugar stuff more than anything else, you know, Copper Blue and so on. It's such a cool record, they're such fun songs to play live, I think that's gonna really be a blast... There are a lot of great songs in that stretch of my songbook, so that's the focal point. The new record is the focal point. I think Hüsker hits are a focal point. You know, a lot of the Workbook stuff is so great in the acoustic setting; I might just leave it where it works best. It's rock time.
AVC: Do you think you'll ever reach a place where you're completely at peace with everything that happened with Hüsker Dü?
BM: Well, with the Hüsker Dü stuff, I really left it where it was. As soon as I walked away from that thing, I said, "You know, I've just gotta get on with my life, and I don't want to talk about it." I tried really hard to avoid... you know, that was a lot of why I didn't talk about that stuff, because Grant [Hart, Hüsker Dü drummer] in particular, his big mouth, his list of gripes. It's just like, "Look, man, what was keeping you there? Was it fear? Was it jealousy? What is the motivation there? Why, with all the shit that you talked for the last 18 months of that band—which has never really been talked about, at least for me—you revised all this shit, and you tried to make everybody else look like shit to try and give yourself a little more glory? Fuck you. Do something with your life. You dropped the ball in the ninth inning. Sorry, man. High school's not forever. Let go and do something." So will I ever be at peace completely? I don't know, probably when I write a book about it, and I tell my side of the story, then maybe I'll be at peace with it, because that'll sort of amend the tune. It's a sad thing, and it always happens when I put a record out, too—it always resurfaces. I'm surprised there's not another Hüsker Dü live record next week. They stacked so many releases on that band, and I'm cool with it, 'cause I get a little money too. That was a great band. The last 18 months sucked ass—not in a good way.
AVC: Have you given up on trying to re-issue the albums?
BM: In 1991, Grant's attorney took over all that stuff, and I capitulated because I had to deal with my other stuff from Sugar. I let this guy—and he's like a court attorney, and he knew a couple of people in the music business. When Sugar took off, it was an easy sell to do a live album and the re-releases from Rhino and so on. But all that sort of fizzled out in the late '90s, and I had my attorney sort of step in and remove my approval off any future projects. I've been hoping after 14 years that the guys in that band would sort of see that I have a career, and I've been really successful, and I have a really good lawyer, and people will still do business with me, but they don't want to see any kind of influence [from me].
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