Former Drummer Finds Asylum Away From Rock

Former Soul Asylum drummer Grant Young (lower right) sits with wife Cathy, daughter Emma, and friends at Northernair Lodge. Scenes like this are much more common now that Young is no longer in the band.

A few weeks later the reporter drives down a winding dirt road through a forest in remote northeastern Minnesota, pulls into the driveway of Young's Northernair Lodge resort, sees him shoveling dirt a few yards away, and hears him ask, "What do you think of my garden?" At that moment the reporter realizes that Grant Young does not need a stage, his old friends, or even a drum set to make him happy.

"It seems logical to me," Young, 34, says. "It seemed like the perfect next step for me. Being in a rock band in your 20s, buy a resort and live on a lake in your 30s? What the hell, that seems totally right on to me." From where he's sitting at that moment, it's hard to argue with him. He's reclining on the wooden deck of his house, which also serves as the office of Northernair Lodge, a 13-cabin resort on the shore of Mitchell Lake, just a few miles south of Ely, Minnesota. He's still sweating from his garden work on this warm, sunny day, his curly hair looking unruly -- but not rock-star unruly. It's way too short for that.

On one side of Young are the woods, on the other the lake. A paddleboat rests next to his dock, available for times whenever Young, his wife Cathy, and their two-year-old daughter Emma feel like taking a slow ride to nowhere special. "This is more what I had in my mind," Young says. "When we came and looked at the place, it was obvious. Log cabins, overlooking a lake, quiet."

This is the start of Young's third summer season at the resort. It also happens to be three days before the release of Soul Asylum's new album, Candy From a Stranger, though that doesn't come up until after the interview officially ends. Young, his drumming apparently not up to Soul Asylum's standards, was fired from the band in 1994.

Young and the three other members of Soul Asylum -- lead singer Dave Pirner, guitarist Dan Murphy, and bassist Karl Mueller -- met in in Minneapolis in high school. They started out as a punk band, struggling through the mid- and late-1980s. Hard work, the alternative music revolution in the early 1990s, and a more accessible, acoustic sound helped to sweep Soul Asylum into the mainstream. Its 1992 album, Grave Dancers Union, was a multi-platinum smash, propelled by the hit single, "Runaway Train," which made it to number five on the Billboard charts.

"That was a huge hit. It changed the world," Young says, cigar in hand, a bottle of Summit beer on the white round table in front of him. "That's when all the money started rolling in, and that was great. We'd been working a long time for it. It's not like it was instant gratification. And that was a fun time."

For years critics had touted Soul Asylum, especially their live sound. Now they had the accompanying acceptance from the general public. The commercial success, as it does for many bands, both fed a monster, and devoured like one -- and Young ended up on both sides. "Egos just went nuts when the popularity first finally came in," Young says. "They were already big to begin with because we were the critical darlings for six or seven years."

On the other hand, when Young was fired, the money he received in the settlement (which was quite hefty since it came at the height of the band's popularity) helped finance the purchase of his family's resort. After a frenetic lifestyle, in which he was gone nine months out of the year, Young has not only settled, but settled in a place about as far removed from a rock 'n' roll lifestyle as you can get.

"It just seems more interesting to move around and do different things, but I guess I can say that because I'm here. It's awfully convenient for me to say," Young says, breaking into a laugh.

Being a rock star, much like being a professional athlete or a Hollywood star, is one of the more enviable jobs in America, a fact not lost on Young. For a decade he was able to help create something he loved, and then funnel it out to packed auditoriums and arenas, not to mention to gather the money and acclaim that were starting to be heaped on the band.

"If you can [stay in it], you would, but it's not sustainable for most people," Young says. He found that out the hard way.

"When I joined the band it was a collaborative effort. It was really fun, and we were young and stupid and we were in it for all the right reasons," Young says. "And then you do it for a long time, and you develop a pecking order and you get hard feelings between people, and some people feel like they're doing more work than others, and it gets convoluted and stupid -- through nobody's fault. It had gotten really stupid, and the egos had gotten out of hand. So in a way I was glad to be gone. I was tired of fighting this fucking ego tornado." He laughs again.

That said, Young doesn't pretend that his firing was like a prison parole, freeing him from the gulag of rock 'n' roll. "I was really bummed when I got fired. It really sucked," Young says. "Getting fired from any job sucks. Even if it's the shittiest job you've ever had, it sucks to get fired -- but I had a great job and I loved it."

The beginning of the end for Young's Soul Asylum career actually started during the recording sessions for Grave Dancers Union. Producer Michael Beinhorn, unhappy with Young's performance, removed him during recording and replaced him with Sterling Campbell. Young says that he plays on only five or six songs on the album. Though he played it countless times on tour, he is not the drummer on the studio version of "Runaway Train."

"After that, they basically decided they wanted someone else," Young says, turning to the left and gazing out at the lake. "They got a taste of someone else, and they wanted someone else." It sounds like it was a simple process, but in reality it was drawn-out, rancorous, and for Young, ultimately destructive.

"First, they started complaining to managers and record people about me instead of talking to me -- about any issue," he says. "It's like they stopped talking to me about shit." Later the band went to New York to shoot a video for the movieClerks -- without Young. He found out about the trip from the band's manager, and, in a show of defiance, flew to New York anyway.

"I kept bugging Dave and Dan about this, what the fuck is going on, what they're thinking," Young says. "And they wouldn't talk to me -- about anything." It was there that he found out that Campbell was playing with the band.

"It was so infantile and juvenile," Young says, putting his cigar back in so he talks out of only the side of his mouth. "It's like your worst fucking fourth-grade, preadolescent nightmare.

"So I kept pressing the issue, and pretty soon after we got back from New York they told me I was fired." He laughs again. After Young's dismissal, his former bandmates tried to sound as contrite as possible when talking about it.

"There are misconceptions about a lot of things this band does, but we agonized about Grant's situation," Mueller told the St. Petersburg Times in 1995. "But in the end we did what we had to do to keep ourselves going."

Pirner, the band's tempestuous songwriter and lead singer, spoke to the Star Tribune as though he lost a family member. "It's hard for an outsider to understand. Emotionally, it was an extremely painful period for everyone," he said. "For me, it was the shattering of a dream and the shattering of a myth all at the same time. It broke my heart."

Says Young: "Dave was my friend for a long time. We worked together on so many levels really well. He was my roommate on the road. Then that all changed. Mostly when the popularity came around. I'm not going to say why we stopped being friends. There wasn't any incident. I can't be inside Dave's head to see what his logic is. Maybe I pissed him off one too many times."

In the middle was Bill Sullivan, the group's tour manager. He's still friends with Soul Asylum, and still occasionally visits the Young family at Northernair Lodge. "For me, it was a business," Sullivan says. "They were all my friends, and they're still my friends. When you're in that business, lots of times people leave bands, record labels drop bands, shit just happens."

Of course, it was easier for Pirner and Mueller to play nice since they likely had some sympathy for their longtime bandmate. Likewise, it's not surprising that Young would lash out at the former friends who canned him. Vindication for Young came in the form of Soul Asylum's first album without him, Let Your Dim Light Shine, in 1995. It was neither critically nor commercially as well received as Grave Dancers Union.

"I hit a slump. I recovered from it as far as I was concerned, but they felt that I didn't," Young says. "The next record was a testimony that it wasn't me. It didn't have anything to do with me. They didn't have any more feeling because they were playing with a new drummer. I demoed all the songs, and they were basically all my parts, so it wasn't any different."

Young abruptly mentions that he has to stop the interview in 15 minutes, at 5 o'clock. To get back to the garden? "No, I've gotta cook dinner," he says, going for another beer that's protected by the shade. "I'm going fishing after. Because it's Saturday, hee, hee, hee, and I can," he cackles.

A few minutes later, Young is discussing the rock band Metallica and how its decision-making hierarchy is clearly defined -- something he felt was absent in his last few years with Soul Asylum -- when Cathy and Emma step outside. Emma, her blond hair poking out from beneath a blue, denim-looking hat, sits on Young's lap.

"This is a beer," Young says to her, his voice raised an octave. Then he says to the interviewer, "She should know what her dad is doing."

After listening to Young's sometimes vitriolic comments about his ex-bandmates and ex-friends, scenes like this make his dismissal look like a blessing. He's now in a place where people, even if they know that he used to be in a famous rock band, still leave him alone. Sometimes, almost too alone.

"A lot of people are still stand-offish," Young says. "But that's OK. I don't need everyone to be my best friend. Everyone's been nice to us. I don't think anyone's been mean." The cold, deep winters in northern Minnesota can also feel longer than an extended tour of Midwestern VFW clubs. "You can get a little stir-crazy up here," Young says.

In another month, he won't have quite this much time at his disposal for family portrait moments like this. The resort will be almost filled to capacity. Plus, he's overseeing other projects, such as the demolition of old cabins, the construction of new ones, and the building of a new septic system. But at least he's here.

He and Cathy, a former caterer who has been in the restaurant business nearly all her life, have been married for over five years. Marriage made Young reluctant to tour, and the birth of Emma pretty much sealed it. "Having a family, having a baby, I would not want to be away from my child," Young says. "Some people can do it, but I just love being around her."

Emma is still on his knee shortly thereafter when Young talks about how he's really not that bitter about his rock 'n' roll fate, how he's perfectly happy where he is. "I don't hate the world because I disagree with the actions of a few people," he says.

At that moment, Emma blurts out in wonderment, "Butterfly!" Young sets her down and off she goes, starting off on a chase after a beautiful prize.

"Butterflies. That's what she likes. And that's the world," Young says, smiling. "This is my world."