Homegrown punk-rock legend gets honorary doctorate and tells Macalester graduates: ‘Go to the chorus’

Using song structure as a metaphor for life and his old band Hüsker Dü as proof that hard work and community building can pay off, punk rock legend Bob Mould returned to Macalester College on Saturday to offer 525 new graduates something his old music did not have a lot of: Hope.

“Are you ready for the future?” Mould asked students during his keynote speech at the St. Paul liberal arts college’s commencement. “Are you ready to change the world? Are you ready to protect our democracy?”

Mould received an honorary doctorate Saturday from Macalester, which he quit in his senior year in 1982 to go on tour with his fledgling punk trio. Maybe not the best message to send to current students, but dropping out worked out well for him.

At 64, Mould is now in the fifth decade of his music career. He played to a sold-out crowd at St. Paul’s Palace Theatre and several other large venues on tour this spring. He’s been cited by the likes of Nirvana, the Pixies and Green Day as a major influence, including for his solo work and that of his 1990s band Sugar.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who delivered an unannounced speech at the ceremony — which was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters in the audience — cited Hüsker Dü as “a major part of why the Twin Cities has become an epicenter of alternative music.”

In her introduction, Macalester President Suzanne Rivera also praised Mould for using his “voice and platform to fiercely advocate for social justice, for the LGBTQ-plus community and for human rights.”

Mould paused and visibly choked up near the start of his 15-minute speech, recounting why he chose to go to Macalester in 1978 after growing up in a violent home in a small town on the Canadian border in upstate New York.

“I knew I was different; I knew I was queer,” he said. “I needed to find a place that could nurture my heart and soul and spirit. I needed to move to a place where I might find my community, a place I could sing my chorus.”

Mould kept referring to choruses, verses and bridges — the main components of most rock songs — as a motif in his speech. Verses represent the students’ story-setting backgrounds, he said, and choruses are “the mantra, the part of the song we all sing together. If it’s good, it’ll stick with you the rest of your life.”

“Leaving school is like the bridge of the song,” Mould continued. “It’s the surprise, the departure, a challenge, a twist of the melody, a shift in the rhyme. It can be scary, or it can be a great opportunity.”

Before giving his speech, Mould received a diploma and white sash signifying his honorary degree. He then nodded his head to the music as a student band, She’s in Shambles, performed his 1985 Hüsker Dü staple “Makes No Sense at All.” Some of the parents in the crowd, old enough to have heard the song when it first came out, also quietly sang along.

Mould’s speech was one of two big Hüsker Dü-related to-dos in the band’s hometown this weekend. On Friday night, the trio’s other surviving member, bassist Greg Norton, led a large cast of younger Twin Cities musicians dubbed Büddies through a marathon of Hüskers songs on a packed patio at Palmer’s Bar in Minneapolis, including many tunes written by late drummer/co-vocalist Grant Hart.

Mould first met Hart and Norton during his first year at Macalester, at the original Cheapo Records store a couple of blocks from the school. They soon formed the band.

Recounting how the Hüsker Dü trio slept in abandoned buildings, dealt with a lot of van trouble and were even held at gunpoint by a club owner during their first few tours, Mould said that “Macalester prepared me for all that adversity.”

Citing the climate crisis and “the rise in authoritarianism” as the kind of adversity this year’s Macalester grads will have to face in coming years, Mould concluded: “At times like this, we go to the chorus.”