Trouble Boys

by Bob Mehr

  Over time these types of performances would evolve into what became known as the Replacements’ “pussy set”—a weapon of mass frustration that would be wielded against unfriendly audiences, hardcore or otherwise, that the band encountered.

  Though the Hüsker Dü–Replacements rivalry would largely peter out by 1983—the point at which each band was big enough to headline the Twin Cities on its own—the public continued the debate over who were the kings of the scene.

  “There were distinct factions in town. You were either a ’Mats person or a Hüskers person,” said local critic P. D. Larson. “There would be very heated arguments at parties over the keg—‘Fuck you.’ ‘No, fuck you.’ ‘They’re better.’ ‘No, they’re better.’ In the end, it was totally junior high playground stuff.”

  The most significant development to come out of the Replacements’ hardcore phase was the rush recording of the band’s second record.

  The impetus for the album came in mid-January ’82, when the ’Mats borrowed the Suburbs’ van and drove to Chicago. Opening for Hüsker Dü at O’Bannion’s, the band premiered a new song called “Kids Don’t Follow.”

  Westerberg would remember penning it as a rejoinder to U2’s dogged anthem of devotion “I Will Follow” (“If you walk away, walk away / I walk away, walk away—I will follow”). He’d seen the fledgling Irish band perform in April 1981 at Sam’s, where they actually played the song twice in their set.

  Ever the reactive writer, Westerberg noted that “if I hear something I like, I steal it, and if I hear something I don’t like, I write about that.” While he dug the clarion quality of “I Will Follow,” he balked at what he considered its unrealistic message. The kids he knew weren’t going blindly forth, their faith steadfast, their belief unwavering in the face of adversity.

  Propelled by Bob Stinson’s keening, hurtling riffs, Westerberg’s response took the form of a howling dissent: “Kids won’t listen / What you’re sayin’ / Kids ain’t workin’ / Kids ain’t playin’” (though it was decidedly hardcore, the song would namecheck the ’Mats’ bar band favorites, NRBQ, in the opening verses: “Who says worry? / Who says tolerate? / Who says NRBQ?”).

  Driving back home through Wisconsin after the O’Bannion’s show, the band popped in a boombox recording they’d made of the gig. Upon hearing “Kids Don’t Follow,” Jesperson had a revelation. “I thought: We have to record this, we have to make another record right away.” At the time, Sorry Ma was only four months old. Twin/Tone hadn’t gotten a chance to recoup on the project yet. Selling Paul Stark and Charley Hallman on the idea of paying for another Replacements record so soon was going to be a challenge.

  Jesperson met with his label partners at the Lincoln Del and laid out his case. He told them “Kids Don’t Follow” was an important song, a potential game-changer for the band and the label, and insisted they had to get it on tape. Driving all this was his awareness of Westerberg’s proclivity to quickly grow bored with certain songs after a while and toss them aside.

  Jesperson told them the band had a handful of other new tracks to record as well, though he conceded there probably wasn’t enough grade-A material for a full album. They could do a mini-LP, an EP—whatever—but they had to put “Kids” out into the world right away. “Listen,” pleaded Jesperson, “we’ll do it cheap—we’ll cut the whole thing in one day. I’ll fucking hand-stamp jackets if I have to.”

  That was enough to sway the cost-conscious Stark, who was rarely able to resist Jesperson’s infectious enthusiasm. “Okay, okay—I’ll pay for the recording, and I’ll buy blank jackets for you to stamp,” said Stark. “That’s the deal.”

  Lost in the excitement surrounding Westerberg’s new song was the fact that the Replacements and Twin/Tone had never drawn up a contract. With sessions for a second record suddenly in the offing, the issue came to a head.

  In hindsight it seems strange that it had taken so long to make their relationship formal, but at the time Twin/Tone was still a fairly loose operation. The label had handshake agreements with most of its artists—though Paul Stark would make a point of getting the Suburbs’ signatures down on paper before they departed for major label Mercury in 1983.

  Starting with Tommy’s guardianship agreement, Peter Jesperson had begun efforts to put the band’s affairs in some kind of order. In early ’82, he helped Westerberg establish a publishing company, NAH Music. The name, noted Paul, was a pessimistic acronym: Nothing Always Happens.

  Representing both the band and Twin/Tone, Jesperson often had difficulty determining where his loyalties lay. “During the whole phase of making the first record, the band and the label were all for one, one for all,” he said. “But when Paul Stark had to put his foot down about a few things, Westerberg got a little hot about that and it became a little issue.”

  Westerberg had waited restlessly for six months after Sorry Ma was completed for the label to have the funds to release the album. Once it was out, he was itching to get the band on the road nationally. But the reality—despite all the good reviews for their debut—was that there was little demand for them outside the region. Beyond that, they had no van and no money to buy one, or any other means, to tour. Westerberg felt that Twin/Tone should be giving them support. But the label simply didn’t have the funds to fully bankroll the Replacements’ ambitions. Stark’s refusal to “pony up,” as Westerberg put it, created a further tension. “Paul needed to hate me,” said Stark, “in terms of seeing me as the guy who never gave him money for an extra beer or to buy the new van or whatever it was he wanted.”

  In the first week of March, in this somewhat strained atmosphere, Twin/Tone decided to draw up a deal memo for the Replacements. The terms were fairly standard, if not particularly favorable, for an indie label contract at the time. The proposed agreement granted Twin/Tone “full, exclusive, and perpetual rights” to the band’s albums for which they would pay “a royalty of twenty percent . . . from sales of your product which we manufacture and sell” and “fifty percent on sales of your product in cases where we lease your tapes and art work to another company.” It was an album-by-album contract, though technically it required the band to give at least a one-record notice before leaving the company and forced them to pay back any outstanding advances.

  Jesperson had found a young Minneapolis entertainment lawyer, Dan Satorious, to help set up Westerberg’s publishing company. Satorious also began representing the band in their contract talks with Twin/Tone. “We went round and round with several drafts and eventually came up with something to which Dan said, ‘Okay, this will do,’” recalled Stark. “So we typed it up and sent it to the band to sign.”

  But the band—effectively Westerberg—rejected the contract. “I don’t think it was the agreement he didn’t like,” said Stark. “He just didn’t want to sign, period.”

  Westerberg’s version of events was slightly different than Stark’s. He would recall that Satorious “told me not to sign. Stark was saying, ‘Oh, come on . . . he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s a standard form. Just sign it.’” Stark’s insistence immediately made him suspicious. “We met a couple times, and the lawyer says don’t sign it. So I just rested on that and never signed it.”

  While Satorious had advised Westerberg against signing the first draft of the contract, after making changes to the deal, he was satisfied with the new terms. Westerberg simply ignored his later recommendation, held fast to Satorious’s original advice, and refused to put his signature down.

  At the same time, the band also balked at signing a management deal with Jesperson. It was a complicated ten-year agreement—with an out if they signed with a major label—that would effectively pay Jesperson between 12.5 percent and 15 percent of their gross income to serve as their adviser, manager, and producer.

  Again, Westerberg wouldn’t sign. “Suddenly, the band was in a feisty mood,” said Jesperson. “It was like, ‘Do we push the issue or just move on?’”

  While Jesperson was sat
isfied to let the management deal drop—the band would go on to honor his commission terms anyway—Stark hunkered down. “I just said, ‘Well, this band’s not going to see any money from us until they sign a contract,’” said Stark. “‘We’ll pay for the records . . . we’ll give them tour support once we can, but if they expect anything beyond that, they’re not going to see anything.’”

  Of course, as it stood, there was nothing to see; the Replacements were already in debt to the label and would grow more so with each album. It would take several more years—and not until they were well away from Twin/Tone—before their records would actually recoup and royalties come due.

  By then, the lack of a contract would become a major point of contention. The band’s fight with Stark became a pitched battle that would rage for years, playing out in lawyers’ offices and district court and eventually reaching the bottom of the Mississippi River.

  Even with the contract matter unsettled, on March 13 the Replacements returned to Blackberry Way to record. They’d booked the session under a fake name, the Amps. Blackberry had a public calendar on the wall, and to avoid being nagged by public questions about what they were doing and when the album would be out, the band elected to work in secret.

  The Replacements set up for a daylong session that would result in a record Westerberg pointedly wanted to title Too Poor to Tour—though the eight-song effort would ultimately be called Stink, subtitled “Kids Don’t Follow” Plus Seven.

  In contrast to Sorry Ma’s prolonged gestation, Stink was, by necessity, a quickie affair. Reuniting with engineer Steve Fjelstad—who also got coproduction credit along with Peter Jesperson—the band was focused, having sharpened up the songs onstage in the weeks preceding the session.

  Much of Stink was filled with reductive punk numbers: “I couldn’t write hardcore worth a shit,” admitted Westerberg, “but I certainly tried to sound as tough as I could.” There was a pothead diss (“Dope Smokin Moron”), a life-in-the-Midwest lament (“Stuck in the Middle”: “I got a headful of dreams, I got a pocket full of nothing”), and a brilliantly inane response to his father’s onetime admonition to find work (“God Damn Job”). “I knew it was very stupid, but I thought that’s okay . . . we can get mileage out of this,” Westerberg said. “There’s certain kinds of songs that absolutely require being innocent or dumb, and you play up to that sometimes.”

  Where the opening track “Kids” was a response to U2, the album’s bookend, “Gimme Noise,” served as a rebuke of the Suburbs. The Chan Poling–led outfit had undergone a dramatic stylistic change over the previous year, ditching its arty, elemental punk rock in favor of what he called “underground disco music” with the single “Music for Boys” and their Credit in Heaven LP. “It was a decision to make this insistent kind of music that could move people, and make them dance,” said Poling. “Going for the dance floor was onerous to [Westerberg], and he let me know that.”

  “I can’t figure out Music for Boys. . . . Don’t gimme that noise,” wailed Westerberg. “I’ll give you my jacket, if you gimme your glamour. / Gimme that racket / Gimme that clamor.” It was a song rife with not-so-subtle jabs at the Suburbs’ new direction. “That kind of hurt my feelings,” admitted Poling.

  “I was jealous of them, certainly,” said Westerberg. “But I could say a ton of nice stuff about the Suburbs. They tolerated us when they didn’t have to. They let us open and knock over their amps. We couldn’t outplay them, and they had a thousand people cheering and girls throwing underwear. It was like, ‘What are we gonna do? We’ll be louder and ruder.’ That’s what that was about.”

  The distorted blues shuffle “White and Lazy” harkened back to Westerberg’s earliest roots. “I used to listen to Sonny Boy and Little Walter for years and years, then I heard the Sex Pistols and everything changed, but I still had that blues shit in me.” Having learned to play harp from an instructional manual by Minneapolis bluesman Tony Glover, Westerberg gamely blew through another self-deprecating account of his own indolence—before breaking into a mock-hardcore chant: “White! Lazy! Ashamed of nothing!” “That was probably as political as Paul ever got,” chided Tommy Stinson.

  The album’s real outlier—and a truer indication of where Westerberg’s musical ambitions were heading—was the lovelorn warning “Go,” which sounded more like an early mood piece by Blue Oyster Cult than anything by Black Flag.

  Overall, the record was the most democratic of the ’Mats’ career: half its songs were four-way band cowrites, and given the fast, hard, riff-heavy nature of the material, Stink served as a showcase for Bob Stinson’s lacerating guitar work.

  Having finished tracking on a Saturday, the plan was to do the mixing on Sunday. But unlike Sorry Ma, the whole band showed up for the mix and little work got done. “Fjelstad finally had to kick them out,” said Jesperson. “Paul couldn’t be serious when the rest of the band was around. He would be like, ‘Let’s do something stupid to the guitar effect on this one.’ It just became a Monkees episode.”

  However, one inspired touch did get added to “Kids Don’t Follow” during the mix. In late January, the Replacements had played downtown’s Harmony Building, a rent-party for visual artist Don Holzschuh, opening for the Warheads and L7–3. It was a massive multi-keg affair attended by an array of local scenesters and underage kids. The Replacements’ noise levels drew a visit and warning from the local constabulary. Not long after they’d finished their set, Minneapolis’s finest decided to end the fun entirely.

  As he watched a uniformed officer take the microphone to disperse the crowd, Replacements’ soundman Terry Katzman pressed record on his tape player. “This is the Minneapolis Police . . . the party is o-ver,” he announced, to a collection of groans and boos. Hiding back by the soundboard, a group of kids, including future Soul Asylum singer Dave Pirner, were cursing out the cops. “We were yelling as loud as we could, ’cause they couldn’t figure out who was saying it,” recalled Pirner, who claimed to have delivered the moment’s distinctive “Hey, fuck you, maaaan!” Katzman’s recording of the incident would lead off the ’Mats new record, serving as an atmospheric intro to “Kids.”

  Final work on the record was completed, sans Replacements, a few days later. As promised, Paul Stark delivered several thousand blank record jackets. The band and various friends spent a couple Grain Belt-fueled evenings hand stamping the covers (often with distinctive, drunken results).

  Catching the public by surprise, just as the ’Mats had intended, the record was released in June to glowing reviews. In Sweet Potato, music editor Marty Keller—who’d been somewhat on the fence about the band—raved that “[Stink] has everything” and pointed to “Kids Don’t Follow” as “Westerberg’s ‘My Generation.’” “It’s his best work to date and may rank with some of the best songs to come out of the land of 10,000 guitars.” Even Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould was impressed: “I think the sound and fury of the band was at its most focused on Stink,” he said. “‘Kids Don’t Follow’ was a true anthem.”

  Robert Christgau of the Village Voice weighed in again, giving the record an “A plus” and calling it “a fierce funny cataclysmic slab of summer vinyl . . . better than the young marauders’ memorable debut LP.” The record would also place at number eight in his year-end “Pazz and Jop” ballot.

  Despite the praise, in later years Westerberg would look back on Stink as the Replacements’ record that “rang falsest of them all.”

  “That was our first mistake. Our first stumble. Trying to play up to what we thought was going to keep us in sync with what was going on. . . . That was us trying to stand with Black Flag and the Effigies and saying, ‘Yeah, we can do this too.’ . . . ’Cause right off we did not feel like we fit in the scene as a ‘punk’ band. We were sorta acting like a punk band.”

  “[Stink] was about as close as it was going to get,” noted Tommy Stinson. “It wasn’t in the cards for us to be hardcore. It wasn’t like we could suddenly be that all the time. The inability of us e
ver being any one thing all the time was pretty evident early on.”

  With Sorry Ma and Stink, the ’Mats had firmly established a musical identity, but Westerberg sensed it was time to try something different. “After the first rush of being loud and snotty, we realized the next thing is to keep moving,” he said. “They can hit you with a bottle if you stand still.”

  CHAPTER 13

  As was so often the case, the Replacements’ career fortunes got a crucial boost from a true believer. Raised near Minneapolis’s Lake Harriet, Tom Carlson had been a scrappy wrestler and football player at Southwest High. Burdened by a heavy depressive streak (mental illness and suicide would leave a tragic mark on his family), in the late 1970s Carlson became a fan of confrontational Brit-punk bands like the Sex Pistols and Wire. In 1981 he was working night security at the Walker Art Center and checking out gigs at the Longhorn, where he saw the Replacements and felt an immediate connection.

  After the show, an excited Carlson approached Peter Jesperson to tell him he loved the band and would do anything to help them. Carlson had a car and started shuttling the ’Mats to and from gigs, joining their retinue as a volunteer roadie (just as Lou Santacroce was leaving the fold to focus on his singer-songwriter career). Later, while riding his bike around Lake Street, Carlson was hit by a motorist and ended up with a hefty insurance settlement. He used $6,000 of the money to buy the Replacements their first vehicle—a rough-looking but otherwise well-functioning former electrical company van.

  Thanks to Carlson—variously nicknamed Carton or Huck—making regular weekend road trips was finally a viable proposition. For much of 1982 the band solidified itself playing venues across the upper Midwest: the Atwood Student Center in St. Cloud, the St. Croix Boom Company in Stillwater, the Showcase in Duluth, and the Revolution in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.