Day After Day #123: Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely (1986)

When you think of bands that had great runs of albums, Husker Du has to be near the top of the list. The Minnesota punk trio had seven studio albums and they were all great, but their 1984-1986 run of Zen Arcade, New Day Rising, Flip Your Wig and Candy Apple Grey was nothing short of legendary. The key to any great band is the songwriting and Husker Du had two great songwriters in Bob Mould and Grant Hart.  

The band formed in 1979 when Mould, a college freshman and guitarist in Saint Paul, met Hart, a record store clerk and drummer, and they decided to form a band. They recruited Greg Norton to play bass (as well as a keyboardist who didn't last long) and started developing a blazing fast hardcore punk sound. They began touring heavily and eventually caught the ear of Greg Ginn of Black Flag, who signed them to his label SST. 

The band had no intentions of remaining stuck in the hardcore scene and started writing more melodic material on their October 1983 EP Metal Circus, with both Mould and Hart contributing songs that looked beyond the confines of hardcore. Their next release, Zen Arcade, was an epic double album that saw the band branching out their sound to include folk and psychedelic elements; it was a concept album about a young man who runs away to escape his life. It was critically acclaimed and sold well for an independent release. 

The next two albums, New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig, were both released in 1985 and continued Husker Du's move to slower, more melodic songs. While punk purists decried the band's more "commercial" sound, Husker Du was creating excellent music that stood on its own. By the time Flip Your Wig was released, the band had signed with major label Warner Brothers, who released their next album, Candy Apple Grey in 1986.

There were many great Husker songs throughout their career, but I'm going with the first single off Candy Apple Grey, "Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely." Written by Hart, the song is written from the point of view of someone who has broken up with a partner and isn't looking back.

"I'm curious to know exactly how you are/I keep my distance, but that distance is too far/It reassures me to know that you're okay/But I don't want you to go on needing me that way/And I don't want to know if you are lonely/Don't want to know if you are less than lonely/Don't want to know if you are lonely/Don't want to know, don't want to know."

The song rocks furiously as Hart assures the other person that the relationship is done, even if the other person is the one who did the breaking up is the one who's having second thoughts.

"The day you left me, left me feeling oh so bad/Baby, I'm not sure about all the doubts we had/From the beginning we both knew it wouldn't last/Decisions have been made, the die has been cast."

The song never charted, but it ended up in the movie Adventureland decades later. Green Day also recorded a decent cover as a B-side to their single "Warning" in 2000.

Candy Apple Grey reached #140 on the Billboard Top 200. Husker Du released one more album, 1987's Warehouse: Songs and Stories, before the tensions between Mould and Hart boiled over. The band toured for the album and did a lot of press, including an appearance on The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, but between Hart's heroin problem and the outside pressures each member faced, things were getting strained. Mould decided to break up the band in January 1988. 

Mould went on to a solo career, and then formed the band Sugar for several years before going back to his solo work. Hart also went solo and formed a new band called Nova Mob that ran from 1989-94 before resuming his solo work. Norton went into the restaurant business before getting back into music in 2006. Mould and Hart reunited in 2004 at a Minneapolis benefit show for Soul Asylum bassist Karl Mueller, playing two songs. That was the only reunion they would ever have, as Hart died of liver cancer in September 2017 at the age of 56.

Mould has continued his successful solo career and Norton joined the band Ultrabomb in 2022 but had to cancel appearances after a prostate cancer diagnosis. Two months after Hart died, Numero Group released Savage Young Du, a three-CD/four-record set that covers the band's first four years, with demos, studio and live recordings. It's too bad Husker Du never reunited because I never saw them when they were together, but I've seen Mould play several times with Sugar and solo and I caught Hart live right before he died.