Grant Hart, Drummer, CoLead Singer at Husker Du Band Dies at 51

Variety has confirmed that Grant Hart, drummer and co-lead singer of influential American indie band Husker Du, has died. He was 56 and had been battling cancer.

Around 11 p.m. Pacific Time, the official Husker Du Facebook page posted a photo of Grant with no caption. The Minneapolis band, which Hart formed with fellow singer-songwriter Bob Mould and bassist Greg Norton in 1979, was one of the leading lights of the American independent-rock movement of the 1980s. While strongly influenced by punk and the then-burgeoning West Coast hardcore scene, the band’s melodic leanings increasingly came to the fore on its later releases. As part of an unexpectedly strong local rock scene that also included the Replacements and Soul Asylum, the group had signed with Warner Bros. and were at the peak of their popularity when they split acrimoniously in early 1988. Mould went on to a successful solo career that included solo albums, a stint leading the band Sugar and even as a creative consultant for World Championship Wrestling; Hart released several albums and EPs over the years both solo and as leader of the band Nova Mob.

While the Huskers’ split was so bitter that the bandmembers only recently began communicating regularly — around the forthcoming release of “Savage Young Du,” a sprawling three-disc compilation of much of the band’s earliest material. Yet  the prolific and hard-touring Huskers cast a wide shadow over American rock of the ’80s and ’90s and beyond, influencing untold thousands of fans and musicians, not least Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl.

Hart, speaking with NPR recently, said of “Savage Young Du”:”Hearing this stuff for the first time in a couple of decades, I [was] realizing the historical significance of what we were doing at the time. Of course, at the time, we were a bunch of kids playing rock ‘n’ roll in the basement. But the potential that Hüsker had showed right out of the gate.”