1. On Thursday, hardcore music fans learned some very sad news: Grant Hart had died (of cancer) at the age of 56. For those who don't know his music, he was the drummer for Hüsker Dü, which was one of the most important and influential hardcore/post-hardcore bands in/from the United States during the early-mid 1980s. I don't want to spend a ton of time analyzing their place in the underground-rock pantheon, but without Husker Dü, you don't have the Pixies or Nirvana and ten thousand other great bands who followed in their wake. Grant Hart wrote and sang lead on (probably) around forty percent of the band's songs, with the rest being handled by Bob Mould, the band's guitarist. Like Lennon/McCartney, to whom they often get compared in the post-hardcore context, they both wrote an astounding number of brilliant, timeless songs, which melded seamlessly together on their albums (and they're all great: my favorite changes depending on what day you ask). Unlike Lennon/McCartney, both Grant Hart and Bob Mould were/are gay, although Grant Hart may have later identified as "bisexual"; the important thing being that he wasn't straight and, though he wasn't exactly "on the record" about it, he wasn't "in the closet" either. (Bob Mould didn't "officially" come out until the 90s.) 
2. I remember the exact moment I learned that Grant Hart and Bob Mould were (probably) gay. I was in my room at college (in the fall of 1989) listening to records with the older brother of one of my best friends, who (the older brother) was visiting from Minneapolis (hometown of Hüsker Dü), where he was involved in the "music scene." I don't remember exactly how the topic arose -- being very deep in the closet myself, I tended to be circumspect to the point of paranoia about anything gay-related, but was also equally desperate to allude to the idea -- but I probably said something very veiled to the effect that I believed Bob Mould and Grant Hart were gay, based on three years of constant, obsessive listening to their records (and figuring out to the best of my ability Bob Mould's insane/awesome/searing guitar parts), analyzing their lyrics, and looking at the band photographs that adorned the records. (The irony about these photographs being that the one member of the band who's straight -- bass player Greg Norton -- wore a "gay clone" mustache, so he "looked" the most gay.) What I should have said, of course, is that I HOPED/PRAYED they were gay because their songs meant everything to me at that point of my life (not an easy time, in the usual closeted ways), but it was enough just to broach the idea. So when my friend's brother said, "oh yeah, they're gay -- everyone in Minneapolis knows it, they used to play AIDS benefits all the time," I felt crushed with redemption. Redeemed because I was right, crushed because I knew I was so far away from being out myself. But for a few seconds, the cave in which I had been living was illuminated with possibility. Outwardly, of course, I was like "Really? that's cool." 
3. The reason I mention all of this is because, over the past few days, I haven't read a single eulogy or tribute to Grant Hart (and there are many) that mentioned his being gay in a manner that approaches the importance it held for me and (I have no doubt) many of the band's fans. I'm not saying you have to be gay to love Grant Hart's music, but it certainly adds an important dimension to the relationship between audience and artist, and is one that should be acknowledged for reasons that are specific to Grant Hart and are general to the extent that our culture has a shameful heritage of "straightwashing" artists, either by ignoring or downplaying the artist's (nonhetero)sexuality and its impact on his/her/their art. I won't quote the many articles that didn't mention it at all, but here's the NYT obit, which falls into the "downplaying" category: "Though Mr. Hart was bisexual and Mr. Mould was 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 The A.V. Club in 2000. 'If anything, it would have been just another question mark, because we were so unlike the stereotype du jour.'" But if you actually read the interview, what Grant Hart says is far more nuanced: "One of the biggest frustrations I ended up having as I continued with that band was the mandatory-identity part. It went from that to 'the barefoot drummer.' And from there, it was, 'Oh, he's the longhaired drummer now.' I'd have people coming up to me at concerts and saying, 'I know how it is, man. My girlfriend doesn't want me to cut mine off, either.' Sorry, guys, it's got nothing to do with no girlfriend. [Laughs.] Particularly with the way the media in general need to describe something, or classify it point-blank really quickly, I looked upon all these little categorizations as being real negative. Not so much frustrating, but it was certainly, 'How shallow do people want to get?'" And then he goes on to say this: "I had toured with male companions. When you went to the Longhorn, the original punk palace in town, it was three doors away from a bar that for 50 years has been called 'The Gay '90s.' It became a gay bar conveniently. Especially in the early days of the pre-hardcore American punk thing, there was pretty consistent gayness coming through there. I'm the first one to use that word in the conversation, and it's not one that I really like the identity of, especially the way homosexual culture has moved in the post-AIDS days. I think it's more about making money and wearing the right clothes. But I had toured with male companions very early on, and my partner at the time was posed with the question, 'What does it feel like being the boyfriend of this famous man, blah, blah, blah?' And my friend was pretty unsophisticated, and he told her something that was rather crude, but it never seemed to be . . . You know, when you're dealing with a very small orbit, it doesn't seem like such a big thing. Then, by the time it would be a big thing, the people you're dealing with have dealt with it. Take Joan Rivers: Here's a person who's no stranger to gay people, and by the time we were appearing with her [on her TV show in 1987], it wouldn't be the kind of question or topic that the big industry moves you to discuss. You know what I mean? They accept it, they're cool behind it, and they're doing it themselves, but we can't let the people down in Topeka think that's the case. And really, it didn't define much about the band. If anything, it would have been just another question mark, because we were so unlike the stereotype du jour." My point here is that while Grant Hart clearly had reservations about labels and stereotypes, I'm not sure it's accurate to say that sexual orientation was not a big part of the band's identity. If 'identity' means 'public persona,' yes, fine, but if it means self-perception, than the answer is clearly no. Word choice is important, and the NYT does Grant Hart (and his fans) a disservice with their dismissive use of 'identity.' (It's not the first time.)
4. Here's another example from Rolling Stone, in which the writer does a marginally better job of acknowledging Grant Hart's sexual orientation but struggles to make any connection to his songs. "At the time, Hüsker Dü fans (even ardent ones) had no idea about drug issues in the band, or that both the singer-songwriters were gay. [Ed note: highly debatable proposition, as per the above.] As my old grad-school pal used to lament in the early 1990s, 'High school would have been so different if I'd known Hüsker Dü were gay and Depeche Mode weren't.' But from the beginning, they aimed higher than other bands – on Everything Falls Apart, their first real studio album, Hart broke with punk orthodoxy by singing Donovan's 'Sunshine Superman.' The Hüskers stretched into taboo Sixties turf with astounding feedback desecrations of the Byrds' 'Eight Miles High' and the Beatles' 'Ticket to Ride.' Their 1983 Metal Circus had not one but two explicit anti-rape songs (Hart's "Diane" and Mould's "Real World"), not a topic that other male bands addressed at the time." What's sort of astounding (in a depressing way) is how this critic cannot bring himself to explicitly speculate that one of the big reasons Husker Dü "aimed higher" (by which he really means to say "bent/exploded genres") is because the two primary singer-songerwriters were gay, which -- as every gay person knows -- is pretty much an invitation to say "no" to restrictive genres and labels. Somewhat incredibly, earlier in the review the writer even mentions a Grant Hart song ("The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill") and says, "There weren't a lot of girls like this in hardcore songs – but there was only one Grant Hart, and in his songs, he turned himself into a lens and noticed things nobody else did." Hmmm, I wonder why? Do you think that mayybbbeee it had something do with the fact that Grant Hart wasn't interested in girls in the way most straight guys were/are? And that mayybee this was part of the reason he "brought a skewed pop sensibility and deep emotional resonance to the band's glorious racket" and "changed punk rock"? I know which side of this argument I would rather argue. 
5. The problem with many critics -- and particularly those working in fields (like rock music) that are not (stereo)typically associated with gays -- is that they view homosexuality as an obstacle to be overcome, as opposed to an asset that implicitly informs an artist's creation in a good way, whether it's a painting or a photograph or a song. What they should be saying about Grant Hart and Bob Mould is something like this: "That both songwriters were gay during the early-to-mid 1980s, which was a terrifying time (via AIDS and ongoing prejudice) for gay people, not only explains some of the extreme anger, pathos, and isolation that listeners confront on the band's records, but also helps to explain their refusal to adhere to any genre, which resulted in such innovative, monumental, and influential works of art." See, it's not that hard to do! And yet, apparently it is, because I've read nothing along these lines from any (rock) music critic, ever. 
6. Another example is the Grant Hart song "When Pink Turns to Blue." While the lyrics literally describe the drug overdose of a girl (her skin changes from pink to blue), one of the things I love about this song (lyrically; the music is also blistering) is that it also works as a metaphor for (male) homosexuality, so that the singer is (also) describing the transition of his attraction for "blue" (boy) instead of "pink" (girl). Did Grant Hart intend for his listeners to interpret the song on this level? I'm not sure and I don't think it matters. To release artwork into the world is to open it up to interpretation, some of which the artist might not have anticipated, at least consciously. That's the deal: the artist creates, and the audience reacts. One does not control the other. 
7. For me, Grant Hart (and Bob Mould) will always be two of the (gay) musicians who meant more to me than just about anyone else during some very lonely years. Their songs, by expressing the bleak anger and (occasional) hope I felt -- and with a kind of unprecedented combination of adrenaline and melody, and in both literal and symbolic ways -- were the maps that allowed me to navigate my own life (in the way music that touches us will do). 
8. That Grant Hart is gone -- and at such a young age -- is a tragic marker on our collective lives, but we should all take care to remember him in way that that honors everyone who loved his music.
