Pitchfork magazine once called them the missing link between R.E.M. and Nirvana, so what is it about a band from Minnesota that were feted (at times) as one of the best, could so easily have been successful, and yet, most people will know little to nothing about them.
1978. Minneapolis. Bob Stinson gives his 11-year old brother Tommy a bass guitar, anything to keep him off the streets (it seems he has already been in police custody at least three times by this stage). They meet Chris Mars, who switches from guitar to drums, and Dogbreath is formed, playing a heady mix of covers by Aerosmith, Ted Nugent and their apparent standout, Roundabout by Yes. But they don't really have a singer.
Paul Westerberg is a janitor at the office of Senator Daniel Durenberger, and can hear the band practicing on his walk home. He knew Mars a little, having jammed with him. Dogbreath had recruited a singer by now, but Westerberg wanted that role. So one time, he pulls the singer to one side and lets him know that the band don't really like him, so he leaves. Dogbreath have a new singer. And Westerberg brings with him an expansion to their musical horizons. He is into British punk bands like The Clash, The Damned and Buzzcocks.
They are now the equally punk sounding, The Impediments, but that doesn't last long, because getting barred from one Minneapolis venue leads to another name change. Now, they are The Replacements, and in 1980 they bang out a four track demo in Mars' basement, and giving it to Peter Jesperson, the owner of punk record store Oar Folkjokeopus. He is also the co-founder of Twin/Tone Records with local studio engineer Paul Stark and Charley Hallman.
The band wanted to land a gig at local landmark, Jay's Longhorn Bar, a place where Jesperson also DJ'd some nights. It was all falling into place, with Jesperson later saying, "If I've ever had a magic moment in my life, it was popping that tape in."
The offer to sign to Twin/Tone is immediate and Jesperson offers to become their manager. It was his faith in the band that kept them going in those early days, as they were often playing to almost empty rooms.
Getting Trashed:
Westerberg rapidly pulled together enough materials for them to consider making their first album. They headed into Blackberry Way, an 8-track home studio, but being low on the pecking order for studio time, it takes them six months of part-time recording to get it done. And then, Twin/Tone didn't have enough money to release the record until August 1981.
Then the world (well little bits of it) got to hear and know about The Replacements with the arrival of Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash. The first single from it was I'm In Trouble, and it also included Something To Dü, a tribute to fellow Twin Cities band Husker Dü, and Johnny's Gonna Die, dedicated to New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders.
I'm In Trouble (Audio only)
They are initially influenced by Husker Dü and the harder, faster sound of the hardcore scene. Jesperson was convinced that Kids Don't Follow was going to be a hit and got funding for it, ending up hand stamping 10,000 record sleeves as a result. It would be the main track on the eight track Stink EP, released in June 1982.
An interesting aside on Kids Don't Follow - the audio at the start of it is of the police breaking up a party at the Harmony Building in Minneapolis. The person heard cursing at the police is believed to be Dave Pirner, later lead singer with Soul Asylum.
Westerberg was sometimes finding life at the front quite hard. He was writing the tunes, but the band were tough critics, as he would later note. "If it doesn't rock enough, Bob will scoff at it, and if it isn't catchy enough, Chris won't like it, and if it isn't modern enough, Tommy won't like it."
Kid's Don't Follow (fantastic and very rare footage of them at soundcheck at Merlyn's in Madison, WI, in 1983 - supporting the band X)
Hootenanny:
For the next record, they worked with engineer and label boss, Paul Stark, who was very meticulous in approach to recording, in contrast to The Replacements much more relaxed attitude to it. The result though, 1983's Hootenanny, was a more mature effort, with songs that were starting to get picked up by some radio stations.
Lovelines had lyrics lifted verbatim from the classifieds in the City Pages newspaper, while the instrumental Buck Hill got its name from a small skiing area in Burnsville, just south of the Twin Cities. The cover art for the record was provided by Grant Hart of Husker Dü, credited under the name Fake Name Graphx.
Color Me Impressed (also live on the X tour in 1983 - this time in Minneapolis)
The Guardian would later say that the album was "the first time the band displayed every facet of their personality." Jim Young, in Trouser Press, was more direct; "With all the delicacy of a garbage compactor.... their joyful noise shocks you, but it'll add excitement to your life."
There was enough momentum now for the boys to head out on their first national tour, even though that meant the still teenage Tommy Stinson had to drop out of tenth grade to do so! That was followed by a short tour supporting R.E.M., which included a number of unsuccessful shows for the band, leading to some low morale and various threats from members about leaving the band.
They Will Dare:
For the next record, it was time to slow things down a bit, as Westerberg explained; "playing that kind of noisy, fake hardcore rock [like Stink] was getting us nowhere, and it wasn't a lot of fun. This was the first time I had songs we arranged rather than just banging out riffs and giving them titles."
I Will Dare (audio only)
Let It Be, which came out in October 1984, featured themes of self-consciousness, rejection and the awkwardness of youth. The cover saw the band sitting on the roof of the Stinson brothers mum - it has become one of the iconic album cover shots of them all.
Peter Buck, who had been potentially in line to produce the album, does feature playing lead on I Will Dare. The stark beauty of Androgynous comes from Westerberg on the piano. There is even space for a Kiss cover, with a bit of glam coming from Black Diamond.
Favorite Thing (Live at their comeback gig, Toronto 2013 - everything you could want in a Replacements live show - one of the best songs there is, chaotic performance, forgotten lyrics etc.)
Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, when describing the album for the 33 1/3 series, said that Let It Be "seemed to encapsulate perfectly all of the feelings that were churning inside me." Lance Umble of Cumulus told Seattle Weekly that it was "an album without genre, by a band who was never afraid of what anyone thought about them. The Replacements redefined punk-rock music and I thank them for it."
The best description of what might be their (one of many) high points comes from Michael Hann, writing in The Guardian. "Let It Be's greatness lies in it being the perfect summation of the life of a young man who's not yet graduated to being grown up: most 'great' albums reduce life to one set of emotions, but Let It Be encompassed everything; reckless stupidity, sexual uncertainty, wild abandon, boredom, excitement. It sounded like all of late teenage life condensed into less than 40 minutes, by someone who seemed as confused as you, but was able to articulate that confusion."
Sixteen Blue (Live recording from Ritz, NYC, Feb 1986 - rough around the edges, yet so beautiful)
Tim and Tom(my)?
Despite a good reception for Let It Be, noted critic Robert Christgau of Village Voice gave it an A+, sales of the LP were poor. Some of the band were working other jobs still, to make ends meet, with Bob for example, working as a pizza chef.
Despite that, there was interest in them from some of the majors, but they seemed intent on sabotaging a deal, apparently going out of their way to perform extra badly when the need arose. Eventually, Sire (a subsidiary of Warner Brothers) got them on board, they liked them because of the work that Seymour Stein had done managing The Ramones.
Tommy Stinson would later reflect on these moments in an interview with Matt Mitchell in Paste. "The Warner Brothers people were sweet to us and tried their best to help. But I think we were all such social defects. When I look back and watch how our peers were able to glad hand and bridge the gap between the music and the f***ing commerce of it all, we really didn't give a f**k. We f***ing shat on it any turn, rather than try to conform. And really, we did that not out of spite; we did it out of our own ineptitude."
Stein actually brought in Tommy Erdelyi (a.k.a. Tommy Ramone) to produce this first major label record. On Tim, you can start to see those influences broadening again, with various pop sensibilities like Big Star (Hold My Life), Nick Lowe (Kiss Me On The Bus) and even Duane Eddy (Swingin' Party) being weaved in.
Left Of The Dial (Official promo video)
Left Of The Dial was their love letter to the alternative music scene and the college radio stations that played that sort of music (usually found to the left of the dial on an old fashioned radio), while Swingin' Party was an ode to the vulnerable (and was later covered by Lorde). Here Comes A Regular meanwhile, was all about the CC Club in south Minneapolis, one of their favourite haunts.
Matt Mitchell, in Paste, calls it "an untouchable assemblage of tracks... a real halcyon affair, brimming with golden, catchy rock cuts." But there was a problem...
Kiss Me On The Bus (Live on the Old Grey Whistle Test, 1986)
Erdelyi was supposed to come as a double act, with him producing and Ed Stasium doing the mixes. But Stasium never turned up, leaving Erdelyi to handle both duties, something which Tommy Stinson later explained to Mitchell wasn't the best solution - (Jack Hamilton, in Slate, called it one of the most poorly mixed albums of the 1980s..
"I think, going in, everyone thought Ed would be there to mix it and it ended up not being that way and I think Tommy [Erdelyi] really thought he could do it. The unfortunate side to that is that no one really spoke up about it sounding weird... [Tommy's ears] were shot when we met him [from being the Ramones drummer all those years].... I don't really think anyone thought he was going to mix the record until it came down to the fact that he kind of had to mix the record."
Oh....
Next up was one of their more infamous episodes, which for a band that built a reputation for shambolic unpredictability, is quite something. It is probably worth a whole feature by itself, but here is the abridged version.
In early 1986, the Pointer Sisters unexpectedly pulled out of playing on Saturday Night Live, and somehow the Replacements got the call to, well, replace them. On 18 January they showed up and did a competent rehearsal run through. Unfortunately, between then and show time, they found themselves in the dressing room of host, Harry Dean Stanton, consuming a smorgasbord of drugs and alcohol. This meant that when their time came, firstly to play Bastards Of Young, they were a shambles! That first song was played out of tune - Westerberg was heard cursing at Bob Stinson - and they were even further gone by the time it came to play Kiss Me On The Bus. Lorne Michaels (the SNL supremo) was less than pleased, and the Replacements were black-balled from ever appearing again (although Paul did later crop up as a solo artist).
By August of that year, Bob Stinson was gone. Did he leave voluntarily, or was he pushed out? There has been a fair bit written on both sides of this one - many believe his drug habit had gotten so bad, it was the only way to save the band - while others say that he and Paul were creatively divided. He was a big loss either way. Manager, Peter Jesperson was also fired that year.
Pleased To Meet Me?
They carried on as a trio to lay down the next record. Westerberg was definitely taking a more melodic route now, and they got to record this one at the legendary Ardent Studios. Jim Dickinson was producing, and he added some higher production values and also a little more soulfulness.
That last bit came from the fact that he had worked with a lot of the legendary Atlantic Records soul acts in the 1970s, like Aretha Franklin, Sam & Dave and Dion. Crucially, he had also produced Big Star's Third, in 1974, meaning he had worked with band fave Alex Chilton.
And this LP, Pleased To Meet Me, became something of the Alex Chilton record. Chilton hung around the studio quite a bit during the sessions, and plays guitar on Can't Hardly Wait, one of their finest moments - and he is the subject of another of their greatest 'hits', their homage to him in Alex Chilton. Westerberg said of him, "His aura is different than the average person's. He could be from another planet."
Can't Hardly Wait (Official music video - glorious!)
It was another well received record. David Fricke, in Rolling Stone, said that it was "an album alive with the crackle of conflicting emotions and kamikaze rock n roll fire." Despite that, it was only moderately successful, selling around 300,000 copies, but failing to break into the Top 100 US album chart.
Alex Chilton (Live on comeback tour - on my, what a song)
Rock n Roll Ghosts:
The trio was back to a quarter for the subsequent tour, with the addition of another Minneapolis musician, Slim Dunlap on guitar (who sadly died at the end of 2024 after a long illness).
I'll Be You (Official music video)
Sixth album, Don't Tell A Soul (1989), got a more radio friendly sound courtesy of the mix done by Chris Lord-Alge, but this lost them some of their more hardcore fans. Westerberg later admitted that by now he was trying too hard to write anthems. However, it did spawn two of their later classics, a pair of beauties in Achin' To Be and I'll Be You. That last one actually got them somewhere close to chart success, hitting the top spot in the US Modern Rock chart, and even as high as 51 on the main Billboard chart. Nonetheless, Ira Robbins said in Rolling Stone that it was "full of his sharp-tongued wordplay and idiosyncratic musical structures."
Achin' To Be (Official music video)
This was followed by an apparently dreadful tour supporting Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.
The seventh and it would seem, final, album, All Shook Down, started out as a potential Paul Westerberg solo record. Chris Mars appeared on a few bits before he decided to quit, frustrated at Westerberg's constant rejection of his song ideas. Tommy Stinson only came back on the scene quite late in the day, showing up a week after recording had started. The liner notes are not crystal clear, but it seems that Paul played quite a bit of it himself, and there was a number of session players - including John Cale (viola on Sadly Beautiful), some organ from Benmont Tench and vocals from Johnette Napolitano (Concrete Blonde) on My Little Problem.
Merry Go Round (Official music video)
Slight Return and Legacy:
Steve Foley came onboard in November 1990, to replace Mars, and they were out supporting Elvis Costello in June 1991, ending up at Madison Square Garden. The end was nigh though, and after a bit of a farewell tour, they ended up by playing at Grants Park in Chicago on 4 July 1991 - their last show for more than two decades....
It took a tragedy to move things along a bit.
There had been one tragedy already; Bob Stinson had finally succumbed to his myriad drug and alcohol abuses in 1995. Brother Tommy formed alt-rock band Bash & Pop, and also perhaps surprisingly got the bass gig with Guns n Roses for eighteen years, replacing Duff McKagan. Paul went solo.
It was Slim Dunlap that changed things when he suffered a massive stroke in 2012. Tommy and Paul rallied round, and got back in the studio to make the limited edition covers Songs For Slim EP, to raise funds for their former bandmate.
Then in 2013, the Replacements were properly back on stage, playing at Riot Fest in Toronto in August and then Denver in September. Paul and Tommy were joined by renowned session drummer (and now Foo Fighter) Josh Freese and Dave Minehan (of The Neighborhoods) for the shows.
There were further sporadic shows in 2014, mainly at festivals, before they launched a wider tour of the US in 2015, which then extended into Europe. There were hints that another record may come into fruition, but alas that didn't work out. And then on 5 June 2015, while on stage at Primavera Sound in Porto, Westerberg announced that this was going to be the last show.
Johnny Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls said that the Replacements were an "obvious influence" on him and his band. But they made their mark on a wide range of acts, from The Cribs, The Hold Steady and Gaslight Anthem, even through to They Might Be Giants (who even wrote the song, We're The Replacements).
Pitchfork, in 2013, described them as, "a bi-polar band, capable of infamously inebriated indulgence one moment and disarmingly empathetic balladry the next.... Their triumph was more ideological, their disavowal of prevailing pop trends (and the music industry machinations used to prop them up)." This, they said, was encapsulated in the song Seen Your Video, with its line -
"Seen your video / That phony rock n roll / We don't wanna know."
The article also discusses author Bob Mehr's portrait of the band, from his biography, The Trouble Boys. Their paraphrasing of his assessment is that, "Westerberg begins as a paranoid snot and emerges as one of the greatest living songwriters. Tommy Stinson joins the Replacements right as he's hitting puberty and matures into a bona-fide rock star. The tragedy of Bob Stinson, whose abusive childhood predicted a tough life that ultimately led to an awkward departure from the band and an early death is rendered in painful detail."
Here is something from that final tour in 2015 - their cover of Another Girl, Another Planet at the Roundhouse, London.
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