Two Breakups
And then finally, mercifully, she broke up with me. I sat with my forehead pressed up against the bureau, bemoaning this awful (if inevitable) turn of events, the phone suddenly a foreign object in my hand. Typical stuff.
No music was going to help in this situation. Maybe Leonard Cohen could have helped, but I’d never heard him at that point. Instead, I listened to nothing. I was afraid that I would forever associate whatever I might have listened to with the breakup. This went on for a couple of weeks.
Then, out of nowhere, came word that Hüsker Dü had broken up. In addition to being, along with R.E.M. and The Replacements, one of the three brightest lights in my teenage music-dreams sky, Hüsker Dü held an especially important place in my world as the creators of the album (Warehouse: Songs and Stories) that had soundtracked the initial burst of what I would come to know as the Best Time Of My Teenage Life. That album’s songs seemed to bounce off of and react to the events of Spring 1987, coloring, even provoking them to the extent that, for instance, Prom Night and “She Floated Away” seemed like the same seamless thing.
Throughout 1987 I’d collected the back catalogue and read everything I could find on the band, marveling at their DIY ethic and dirty, down-to-earth approach to making music. Their songs were dense with sound and fury, with fuzzy, roaring guitars and bubblegum melodies mixing together to create a kaleidoscopic vortex of sound. Through the years the Hüskers stayed true to that vortex, stretching it only to the point that they found room for acoustic guitars and the occasional sea chantey, never feeling the need to go all Clash-like and expand into more exotic sonic territories. And the lyrics kept a firm dedication to the personal - relationships, depression, elation, everyday frustration. That sense of consistency and dedication represented to me a future worth living, a code to abide by.
So when Max strolled into my house in the Spring of 1988, shortly after Maggie and I had split, and somberly handed me the Rolling Stone article that broke the news of the Hüsker Dü split to non-plugged-in middle-Americans like us, it was an extra-harsh blow to the system. The Hüskers had broken the unspoken vow we'd had between us as hard-working band and dedicated fan. This awful news ended my music-listening drought. I went to the stereo, despairing, and put on Flip Your Wig. Maybe it’s kind of cheesy or melodramatic to have keyed in on this particular song, but Grant Hart’s “Keep Hangin’ On” especially resonated in a new way at this point. After all, they didn’t hang on. They let go.
Is this how life works? Does everyone eventually have to let go of everything?
Time heals, of course, and I eventually got over the breakup with Maggie.
I’m not sure whether I ever really got over the breakup of Hüsker Dü.
