If you know only one thing about Drew Magary, it is that he went on the Food Network show Chopped and won. If you know just two things, that additional knowledge probably involves one of his many acclaimed books or his long and successful writing career. But if you know a third thing about Drew it is that Bob Mould is his favorite musician. It's a good choice, and in my opinion one that tells you something about a person. Mould is a one-of-one, a trailblazer and a punk rock legend who has continued to make ambitious, socially conscious, and extremely loud music over the course of five decades in a business with a short memory and narrow margins. I like his music a lot, too, but the person I just described is someone that I would, just given my own deep-seated sense of suburban uncoolness, be inclined to admire from afar. Drew, who is different, has not just set out to Meet His Hero but to have him on the podcast. And so, for a second time, we welcomed back one of the coolest and most admirable Americans of his era onto the podcast where we otherwise say "pee pee" and "poo poo" back and forth to each other.
This was Bob's second visit to the pod, and while I wouldn't say I was much less starstruck this time around—that is another thing that is an issue for me but not so much for Drew—I did at least know that Bob was delightful company. It is unfair to judge anyone by their conversational chops circa October of 2020, which was when Bob first joined us, but he was charming, game, and open to talking about whatever at that moment of dire national crisis, and was equally willing to do so during this visit, and this moment of dire national et cetera.
I had fun during the recording, to the point where I remember thinking "I am enjoying this conversation" during the call, and that's usually a good sign. What was striking to me in listening back to it, though, was that despite having on someone that Drew and I both admire a lot, it is from one beat to the next not really dissimilar from an episode that we'd do with one of our co-workers or multi-time guests. Mould was that good at putting us at ease, and seemingly that at ease himself, that the conversation moved with the same brisk and bewildering sense of direction from his recent marriage and the bad old days of mandatory syphilis testing into a detailed conversation about where songs come from, for him and in general, and how writing works, for all three of us. I did my best to ask remedial questions—"is songwriting magic" was one, and "is it actually fun to make a record" was another—and received some fascinating answers.
As with his previous visit, Bob was happy to unpack both the inspiration and the nuts-and-bolts work of recording his new record, Here We Go Crazy. He broke down where the song "Here We Go Crazy" came from, revealed the only sort of surprising origins of the phrase "Fur Mink Augurs" and the much more surprising anatomy of how a song ends with an extended drum solo. We talked, too, about the challenge of making a life in this business, musicians as freelancers, and why Bob always buys the best possible health insurance. And we talked about the bad times that we're in, what Bob's time in Germany taught him about the United States, the difference between adult freedom and the degraded version of it that Americans are after instead, and what made America lose its shit and the crisis of emotional regulation in the country. Again, this moved more or less the way that a conversation with a friend might. It just happened to be the two of us talking to fucking Bob Mould.
The extent to which this Very Special Episode wound up oddly normal extended to the very end. Though Drew declined to subject Bob to any Funbag questions, the last chunk of the show was classic end-of-episode nonsense speedrun, from Bob's take on the state of pro wrestling and fond memories of Nick Bockwinkel and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan and the lost art of "the smart, arrogant, erudite heel" to a conversation about Only Murders In The Building in which I confessed to skulking around The Pickle Diner set in my neighborhood trying to spot Steve Martin. Bob, an avid fan of the show, talked about not bothering Selena Gomez on The Tonight Show set and revealed his personal best practices in acknowledging a famous person without actually bothering them. One of the last things you'll hear in the episode is Bob talking about beard oils called Lumberyard or Daddy's Leather Jacket. It wouldn't have been any different, and couldn't have been any better, if we had been talking to someone we goof around with all day on Slack, instead of a rock-and-roll icon.
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