Drummer and songwriter with Hüsker Dü, whose music and ethic were hugely influential in the indie rock scene. American rock music of the past 30 years might have looked very different without the influence of the Minneapolis trio Hüsker Dü. Grant Hart, who has died from cancer aged 56, was the band’s drummer and also one of their chief songwriters, often locked in a creative tussle with the singer and guitarist, Bob Mould.
The group set a relentless pace between 1982 and 1987, undertaking gruelling months-long tours in which they played shows almost every night, and releasing six studio albums and the live collection Land Speed Record (1982).
Though their discs didn’t score highly on the mainstream charts, they were a hugely influential part of a new wave of independent American bands that was springing up across the US. These included fellow Minneapolitans Soul Asylum and the Replacements, and Georgia-based REM, while Boston’s Pixies and the grunge scene centring on Seattle would draw inspiration from Hüsker Dü’s music and independent ethic.
Hüsker Dü released Land Speed Record on the New Alliance label, and their first studio album, Everything Falls Apart (1983), on their own Reflex Records, but went up several gears when they signed to the prestigious California-based SST Records, formed by Black Flag’s guitarist, Greg Ginn.
The group moved far beyond their limiting hardcore-rock origins with the double-concept album Zen Arcade (1984), writing material that incorporated psychedelia, folk and rock’n’roll (the album had been preceded by the single release of Hüsker Dü’s scintillating cover of the Byrds’ acid-rock classic Eight Miles High). Hart wrote or co-wrote 11 of Zen Arcade’s 23 songs, including the peerless Pink Turns to Blue and Turn on the News. Rolling Stone magazine placed Zen Arcade at 33 in its greatest albums of the 1980s, and at 13 on its list of 40 greatest punk albums of all time.
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