Really? Governor Ventura went to Husker Du shows?

All the time. We were pretty tight with Jess, actually. Used to go to his gym. Fast-forward up through the late 80's -- I wrote for a wrestling fanzine and got to know some people down in Atlanta when Ted Turner bought a wrestling organization and made it the flagship for TBS. On and off for 10 years I would feed ideas to them. Finally they called me and asked me to work there full time as a script consultant. It was the best offer anyone ever made me.

So you just packed up your music career and turned to wrestling?

Pretty much. The first afternoon I was there, they sat me down in a room with Hulk Hogan and he was like, ''Nice to meet you, brother -- what you got?''

And what did you have?

It's like my whole life was waiting for this moment, so I knew what to say. I said: ''Here's how I want to open the show tonight. We've got Sting, who beat you last night. Controversial -- Sting is now a freshly turned heel. I want to send him out with his buddy Lex Luger. He's going to cut a heel promo on the fans. We're in the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill. He's going to call it a dump, and that's going to get the entire crowd going bananas.''

Heel is the technical term?

For the bad guy. Babyface is the good guy. I ran through the whole scenario for Hulk: ''Lex Luger's going to have a bat, like he's batting. Sting's down like a catcher saying, Come on, bring it, we're going to put you out of the park. You get up on the ropes, outnumbered. Then Bret Hart's music starts up and Bret comes down the ramp.'' Anyway, I went on, and at the end Hogan's like: ''That's pretty good, brother. Couple of holes in it, but pretty good.''

A lot of people consider pro wrestling the phoniest thing in the world, as far away as you can get from the sincere, heartfelt work you're known for. Was it difficult to switch gears?