Indie rock godfather Bob Mould: "I have music in my head 24/7"

One of the godfathers of indie rock, Bob Mould at 55 may be more prolific than ever as a songwriter. He's described songwriting as like putting out a rain bucket.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm just running around catching the rain as it falls," Mould told "CBS This Morning: Saturday" co-host Anthony Mason.

He said he's still driven to write.

"I have music in my head 24/7. Yeah, it just goes and goes. I mean that's all I hear is music," Mould said.

Mould, whose song "Dogs on Fire" has long been the theme for "The Daily Show," first envisioned a life in music while growing up in the farming town of Malone, New York. That's where he first laid hands on the debut album of the Ramones.

"It's like 'Wow, they look like a gang.' It looked so authentic compared to the sparkle and glitz of heavy metal. And then when I heard the music, it was so elemental. And I was like, 'I could probably do this,'" Mould said.

At 17, he went to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and formed a punk band called Hüsker Dü with Grant Hart and Greg Norton.

"The three of us were very driven," Mould said.

"Driven to do what?" Mason asked.

"Just to make music. ... Sculpting this sound that became very fast, very abrasive -- blurry punk rock sort of taken to an extreme," Mould described.

The band cut its teeth at Minneapolis' famed First Avenue club, where Prince also played. By the mid '80s, Hüsker Dü was making noise with critics too and landed a deal with Warner Brothers, becoming the first punk band to sign with a major label.

"People were elevating the band's cause and putting us alongside R.E.M. or U2, people like that. Then I thought, 'Hell, yeah, I could do this for a while. And I'm pretty sure I can do it better than any of them,'" Mould recalled.

But Mould was also keeping a secret in the '80s: his sexuality.

"It had to be difficult, going into the music business when you did, and knowing you were gay," Mason said.

"When I look back on it and people look at my work in Hüsker Dü and they were like, 'What were you so angry about?' I'm like, 'Well, put yourself back in the middle of 1983, when the leader of the free world can't even bring himself to name the disease that's killing his friends. You'd be upset too,'" Mould said.

Mould would have his greatest commercial success with his second band, Sugar, in the '90s before going solo. His recent work, including his latest album, "Patch the Sky," is considered something of a career renaissance.

"Did you ever expect that, in your 50s, you'd have one of your most creative and critically lauded periods?" Mason asked.

"Absolutely not," Mould said. "When I started, punk rock, it had a certain strain of nihilism. You know, that touched back to 'hope I die before I get old.' I didn't think I was gonna make it to 30 the way that I was living."

Asked why he has had a lot of chapters in his musical life, Mould said, "I have no idea."

"Maybe it's like that AM radio where I keep changing the channel," Mould said. "All the static in between is equally as interesting. I don't know, I'm a bit of a wanderer."

"So how would you describe this chapter?" Mason asked.

"Bonus round," Mould said, laughing.

Last weekend, Mould held a series of special concerts at the club that launched his career -- Minneapolis's First Avenue, the same club where Prince shot "Purple Rain." The performance "CBS This Morning: Saturday" filmed was the venue's first big rock show since Prince's passing.