Interview w/ former wcw writer bob mould

[Guest areacode212]

This is a mildly interesting interview from today's New York Times Magazine, and since you need to register at the site to read it, I figured I'd post it here. Hopefully non-wrestling fans will stop saying, "Ah, those are just blood pellets".

 

QUESTIONS FOR BOB MOULD

Lord of the Ring

By HUGO LINDGREN

 

Starting next month you're putting out the first of three records this year, but it's been a while since we've heard from you. What do ex-punk rockers do in their downtime?

 

I always dreamed of working in the professional wrestling business, and that's what I did.

 

You look a little underfed to be mixing it up in the ring.

 

No, no -- as a writer. I've been a lifelong fan. I just love the theatrics. When I was in Minneapolis and playing in Husker Du in the early 1980's, I got to be friends with people in the business and occasionally worked at spot shows as the ring announcer or timekeeper.

 

Were a lot of punk rockers into wrestling, or was that your own thing?

 

Back then, all the bands were into wrestling. Minneapolis was a real hotbed. Jesse Ventura was the No. 1 bad guy and Hulk Hogan came in, and that was where Hulk Hogan got his character together in the early 80's as the No. 1 good guy in the territory. Jesse used to hang out with us at the punk rock club. In those days, he was looking so punk rock.

 

Really? Governor Ventura went to Husker Du shows?

 

All the time. We were pretty tight with Jess, actually. Used to go to his gym. Fast-forward up through the late 80's -- I wrote for a wrestling fanzine and got to know some people down in Atlanta when Ted Turner bought a wrestling organization and made it the flagship for TBS. On and off for 10 years I would feed ideas to them. Finally they called me and asked me to work there full time as a script consultant. It was the best offer anyone ever made me.

 

So you just packed up your music career and turned to wrestling?

 

Pretty much. The first afternoon I was there, they sat me down in a room with Hulk Hogan and he was like, ''Nice to meet you, brother -- what you got?''

 

And what did you have?

 

It's like my whole life was waiting for this moment, so I knew what to say. I said: ''Here's how I want to open the show tonight. We've got Sting, who beat you last night. Controversial -- Sting is now a freshly turned heel. I want to send him out with his buddy Lex Luger. He's going to cut a heel promo on the fans. We're in the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill. He's going to call it a dump, and that's going to get the entire crowd going bananas.''

 

Heel is the technical term?

 

For the bad guy. Babyface is the good guy. I ran through the whole scenario for Hulk: ''Lex Luger's going to have a bat, like he's batting. Sting's down like a catcher saying, Come on, bring it, we're going to put you out of the park. You get up on the ropes, outnumbered. Then Bret Hart's music starts up and Bret comes down the ramp.'' Anyway, I went on, and at the end Hogan's like: ''That's pretty good, brother. Couple of holes in it, but pretty good.''

 

A lot of people consider pro wrestling the phoniest thing in the world, as far away as you can get from the sincere, heartfelt work you're known for. Was it difficult to switch gears?

 

Well, the closer you get to it, the less phony it is. Wrestling is the most dangerous thing I've ever been around in my life. Every night, invariably, somebody would get clobbered with a chair and it's like, get the Novocain, shoot him in the head, 25 stitches and he's good as new in the morning. There is real blood out there. The guys cut themselves. They take a piece of a straight razor and clip off a triangular corner and wrap it up in a piece of gauze, put it in the wristband. The moment they get ready to bleed, usually the bad guy's got the chair and the ref's struggling with him to get the chair out of his hands; the big guy takes the thing out of his wristband, the bad guy hits him, guy goes down, and as he's going down he takes a razor blade and drags it across his forehead.

 

Why don't they use blood pellets?

 

I don't know. Pride, maybe. It's weird. I've never seen anything like that in my life. Not in the music business. The music business is a bunch of wimps. And the drug and alcohol thing in wrestling -- I was not prepared for that. They're 300 pounds; they can absorb twice the drugs and alcohol that skinny rock guys can. It's frightening.

 

So it must be nice to return to the relative calm of the music business.

 

Oh, yeah, sure, although it's got its own headaches. A lot has changed since I've been away.

 

Like what?

 

The Internet, MP3's, digital theft. I'm afraid that the value of music is going down. And that's a hard thing to combat because new artists are so desperate they'll give everything away just to get attention.

 

Do you have any new ideas about how to get people to pay?

 

Not really. But now I have my own record company, and I hope they can figure out that this one's on the honor system. If people like Bob's work, guess what? Bob's paying for all the advertising, Bob's paying for the artwork, the mastering, the manufacturing -- everything. You want to steal my work, you're affecting me directly. Please pay for it.

 

Of course, you can always go back to wrestling.

 

Yeah, that's true, and it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

[Guest Tony149]

Pretty cool interview. So this guy had something to do with the horrible Sting heel turn. Seems like he's a little too old school, but interesting interview.

[Guest The Masked Yodeler]

Cool, a member of Husker Du wrote for WCW.  I didn't know that.  I'll have file that for the next time wrestling comes up when I'm talking to one of Indie Rock kid friends.