But going back, you can sort of see what the meanings were, what the situations were. You can sit down and try to write a song, and sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s not, and a lot of times the inspiration hits you when you least expect it, and you’re not really sure, in the moment, what provokes it. You even go back and explain how you think what happened to you in life was reflected in your music. And yet you’re here writing about your ex-boyfriends, drug use, being molested, your parents - everything. You’ve always been so protective of your privacy. Carl Swanson spoke with Mould for a New York Magazine feature, but here is the largely unedited transcript of their wide-ranging conversation. In addition to being a detailed document of punk going mainstream, the book is an unsparing self-examination. He’s just released a memoir, called See a Little Light, which he wrote with journalist Michael Azerrad (Little, Brown & Co., $24.99). who throws an itinerant party called Blowoff that appeals to unabashedly manly gay men - bears. The front man for the eighties’ Minneapolis-based hardcore band Hüsker Dü, Bob Mould made meaningful, noisy music out of a very punk spirit of “despair meets resignation.” The band ended in 1987, and Mould went on to have more success with Sugar in the early nineties, and remains on the festival circuit today.