With Bob Mould on tour and Grant Hart newly signed to Domino, what better time to revisit this 1985 Melody Maker encounter with Hüsker Dü, from Rock's Backpages , the home of classic music writing

"What kind of strings do you use on your axe, man?"

It pains me to report that the above poser was directed at major Dümo Bob Mould not at the inception of his career in the mid-70s, when that sort of thing was as routine as Zeppelin tours, but last Sunday, backstage at Hamburg's Markthalle.

I don't remember Mould's answer because the fan – a transplanted Minneapolis-ite attending the university in Hamburg – began to hold forth on the far more absorbing topic of the presumed faggotry of Graham Parker and Bruce Springsteen. It's something to do apparently with the straight-leg-trouser fashion affected by the pair. Honest. If pants-width is a criterion of sexuality, Bob Mould out-heteros Rod Stewart.

It's not that Bob and Hüskers bassist Greg Norton and drummer Grant Hart are deliberately retrogressive – Hüsker Dü's business is business, and clothes are merely functional, in the Dü ethos. Clothes cover the body while the band get down to the more essential business of perpetuating the myth that rock'n'roll is anything more than ephemeral fun and, sometimes, pretty good entertainment. Hüsker Dü are serious about their work, and as a manifestation of their gloomy determination, Bob Mould addresses the opposite wall when he speaks to me. Young glums go for it, anyone?

It's no wonder, really, that Hüsker Dü are the quintessential boys' band. It's boys who embrace the thrash aesthetic espoused by this trio and by the others – Black Flag, Swans, Sonic Youth spring most readily to mind – to whom they're compared. Girls appreciate visual distraction while boys make do with sticking their heads in the bass cabinets at the front of the stage. Everything I've seen in the press re Hüsker Dü has been written by men, and it's hardly coincidental.

Bob says: "We just sorta write songs for ourselves, regardless of gender. We haven't genderised our material. We get more boys, but that's a symptom, rather than a cause. Men are more into going out."

A friend – male, irrevocable Hüsker fan – says: "There's an element of cultural retardation in men."

Both theories are borne out by the Markthalle audience. Mostly male, 90% punk, for the most part they watch, bemused, as the band whip through 20 or 30 numbers from New Day Rising and the soon-come Flip Yer Wig. A frontal faction slam-dance, hurtling at each other with un-Teutonic vehemence. Apparently, neither is the reaction to which Hüsker Dü are accustomed.

"They came expecting hardcore, and they were sadly mistaken," Bob says. "We just play rock'n'roll."

Bob is messing around with semantics here. If the two poles of existence are order and chaos, Hüsker Dü create a fine tension, vinylly, by counter-balancing thrash with melody, and the appeal of their music is the listener's inability to determine which will prevail. At the Markthalle, the melodic element was lost through overloading the PA with uncontrolled distortion, the basis of hardcore.

Mould maintains: "Hardcore is your Suicidal Tendencies, your MIAs and MDCs and PUKs and other bands with three initials."

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Well, whatever. Do you think reducing the live distortion would enable an audience to relate to you better? Most of tonight's crowd clearly weren't enjoying the first, thrashy half of the set, although the more tuneful remainder snagged an encore (Ticket To Ride, a long time Hüsker favourite).

"Frankly, I don't care what the audience think. I like hearing our sound the way it comes out. That's our sound. It pleases me. It's very recognisable. I don't wanna tone it down. If I do, it's because it makes me happy to torn it down."

Surprisingly, he claims never to have heard the best-known Brit exponents of the Dü-esque sound.

"It's evolution to have two different events that coagulate at the same time in different places and explode in different areas. It's not unusual at all. I haven't heard the Jesus and Mary Chain, to tell the truth, so I wouldn't want to make a comparison. It happens though, bands having similar sounds in different areas. I guess I'll have to give them credit for hitting on the same theory that we did."

Do you consciously obscure the lyrics when you sing?

"No. When you're playing – I don't wanna make this sound pompous, but, sometimes, it transcends actual words. Sometimes the emotional state you can get yourself into is a lot more overpowering than the use of the English language. Sometimes I'd rather yell, or sometimes I'd rather mumble. We really don't have time to contrive anything. Sometimes I don't particularly feel like singing the words people wanna hear."

Hüsker's dual tenets of feedback/clouded lyrics have been the basis for some of the most hyperbolic features ever to appear in the British music press. "What is that feel of Husker Du? What is it?" I've read in an article that refers to their "ineffable power". Steady on, you guys – I mean "holistic"?

Bob displays far greater objectivity about his music as he explains this ineffable power. "I think we're a rock'n'roll band. Rock'n'roll is coming out of a garage with a guitar and saying: 'I'm gonna tell normal stories about being happy, being sad, being drunk.' Like folk music. It's not that we have any great insight. It's just that we tell sort of normal stories, about getting rejected or losing friends. I think our music is for very normal people. I'd like to think of us as friends, as opposed to some lofty pop stars, or something."

The iconoclastic level to which the more extravagant members of the rock press have elevated the group must seem weird?

"I always talk to papers, cos if I don't, I'll be misconstrued. I like to clarify the grey area so people know what we're doing. We'll definitely become a legend if we don't talk to the press."

I think of Morrissey, who met the press with the intention of creating a legend, even if that legend has turned out to be as capricious as shifting fashion, and the "messiah" tag once straight-facedly attributed to him by Johnny Marr.

"We're not messiahs. We never pretended to be, nor will we ever pretend to be. We're just three people playing music, that's all. I know that sounds boring, but that's the bottom line, and anybody else who gets up on the stage and pretends to be something they're not, well, that's their tough luck. They can go down with everything else."

I find his philosophy incredibly rejuvenating. Bob, though, says that they're reviled in certain sectors – press or fans? He wouldn't specify – for not playing along.

"A lot of people genuinely hate us because we're not everything we've been built up to be. They yell, 'Sell out, heavy metal fuck you, fucking pop stars' because we don't look like them. And it's all supposed to be political, too."

"We're completely apolitical. Now why? Cos I don't know anything about politics."

That's never stopped anyone from devoting reams of copy to the subject, Robert, especially in Britain.

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"I don't wanna get up there and tell people something I'm not sure of. Everybody is different. We don't get up there and preach. We don't have our sermon written out. We play what we feel like playing that night. We tell our stories, and pack up our equipment and go on our merry way."

"We get slagged 10 times a day for not holding some political rhetoric. I don't care. We get it from the kids: 'Why don't you sing about the government?' And it's like, well, 'I'm singing about myself, and if you don't understand that, you just go to fuckin' hell'. We're not out to please everyone."

It's not his lack of political awareness that's admirable, but, rather, his refusal to feign an interest. The second issue of the HiT (slogan: "Harder than the rest") features a summarisation of Handsworth on page four and an introduction to Hüsker Dü on page seven. The 15-to 19-year-old boys at whom the mag is aimed probably won't give a toss about the former, being far too absorbed in diversions like clothes and pop music. Love it or shove it, that's real life, and Bob Mould is far more honest than certain born again Socialists of the pop world. Like, he just doesn't care... he wants to play rock'n'roll.

Predictably, when I ask why the Hüskers dress although they've come directly from some Midwest truckstop (his shirt, in fact did), Mould says, "I just don't have time for fashion". A lack of time … it's a refrain he employs frequently, whether the subject is clothes, politics, MTV or any of the other forbidden fruit that might cause him to waver on his single-minded rock'n'roll path.

On clothes: "Everything that everyone wears is their uniform. This is my uniform, for better or worse. I picked this shirt up 'cos I need a new shirt. I'm a very pragmatic person. I don't put people down for the way they look, but I really don't have the time for it. I like to occupy myself with things that make me happy and interest me, and clothes are not high on the agenda. I wear what I wear 'cos it dries out quickly, and I can hang it on a hanger every night."

There are some who equate Hüsker Dü's singularity of purpose with genius. To a small faction, they're of enormous consequence, the pure embodiment of rock'n'roll. In 1974, Bad Company received similar accolades. After I finish this feature, I don't think I'll be listening to Hüsker Dü much. Nonetheless, it'll be interesting to watch their progress and to see how faithful they can remain to their manifesto.