Grant Hart, a drummer and vocalist for Hüsker Dü, the
Minnesota rock band, has died. He was 56.
His death was confirmed by the band’s publicist, Ken
Weinstein. The cause of death was cancer, Mr. Weinstein said.
Hüsker Dü was formed by Mr. Hart, the guitarist Bob Mould
and the bassist Greg Norton in the late 1970s in St. Paul, Minn., and the trio
soon became known for high-volume blasts of heart-quickening rock that could
not quite disguise the hooks buried beneath the noise.
An early member of the hardcore movement, Hüsker Dü was a
prolific presence in the 1980s, releasing six albums in fewer than six years.
The band’s 1984 double album, “Zen Arcade,” was lauded by The New York Times,
which said it was arguably the best record “to have emerged from the hardcore
scene.”
Challenging punk orthodoxy with experimental takes on genre
and ambitious narrative elements, “Zen Arcade” introduced the band to a wider
audience and reimagined the boundaries of the hardcore genre.
Mr. Hart and Mr. Mould met in a record store in 1978 and
soon began to play together, along with Mr. Norton, whom Mr. Mould had known
previously. The group bonded over their love for major punk bands of the decade
including the Ramones and the Sex Pistols.
Though Mr. Hart and Mr. Mould were both gay, their sexual
orientation was not a major part of the band’s identity.
“Really, it didn’t define much about the band,” Mr.
Hart told the A.V.
Clubin 2000. “If anything, it would have been just another question mark,
because we were so unlike the stereotype du jour.”
Mr. Hart and Mr. Mould, both independent-minded musicians
and artists, frequently clashed over the band’s direction, and the group’s
contentious breakup, late in 1987, came in the wake of substance abuse accusations.
“I didn’t enjoy playing hardcore,” Mr. Hart said in the A.V.
Club interview. “At the time, while I was drummer for Hüsker Dü even though I
played other instruments, it was just such a damn boring job for a drummer.”
He said that even as he began to infuse the band’s albums
with more of his ideas, Mr. Mould pushed back in what Mr. Hart characterized as
a “showdown,” saying that the group would never be an even-split of their
ideas.
Mr. Mould said in a
Facebook post that Mr. Hart’s death was not unexpected. He
acknowledged their occasional differences in his post.
“We (almost) always agreed on how to present our collective
work to the world,” he said. “When we fought about the details, it was because
we both cared.”
As with many bands, Mr. Hart’s contributions as a drummer
were not as visible as Mr. Mould’s, the more obvious bandleader. But Mr. Hart
had plenty of devotees, as evidenced by the song the Washington band the
Posies wrote and
dedicated to him.
Grant Hart was born in 1961 and started playing music
professionally at age 13. He had been in several bands before joining Hüsker
Dü. After their breakup, he continued to record, forming several other bands
and releasing his own music intermittently. An accomplished visual artist who
designed Hüsker Dü’s album art, he continued to draw and to read poetry in the
last several years.
Mr. Hart’s fourth and final album, 2013’s “The Argument,”
was a much-praised testament to his ambition, drawing as it did on Milton’s
“Paradise Lost.” A Hüsker Dü box set collecting many unissued songs from the
band’s early years is set to be released in November.
Source : Times
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