by Bob Mehr
By 1984, the group subsisted on small salaries Jesperson cobbled together from gig proceeds. Westerberg, in particular, would rail about not having enough money (specifically Twin/Tone not giving him enough) but go out of his way to burn through what he had.
“There was a number of times we’d be in Madison, on our last date before going home from a tour, and Westerberg would be like, ‘Shit, we got three guitars left’—then he’d go out there and smash them,” said Jesperson. “That happened more than once. Not even onstage always.” About this time, Westerberg took to slapping a giant FIREWOOD sticker on his guitar. “We’d had enough for salaries for the next month—now that’s gone. And we have to get new guitars too.”
Still, with Gumprecht on board full-time, the label spent much of the spring and summer of 1984 setting up Let It Be, creating a foundation none of the band’s previous projects had received. “Twin/Tone didn’t know how to work records,” said Gumprecht. “My job from the get-go was to establish an aggressive campaign—putting together radio station lists and reviewer lists.”
Part of Let It Be’s advantage was its unusual amount of lead time: originally planned for a late spring release, the album was pushed to October. The delays actually caused the band to cancel a summer West Coast tour. “The wait for Let It Be was a long one, but for all the right reasons,” said Dave Ayers. “Still, the band was pretty miserable waiting for it to come out. I remember Tommy, in particular, being really depressed.”
The LP’s release was preceded by the September single “I Will Dare,” a major college-radio hit. The album hit number one on 55 campus stations across North America, from Berkeley to Brunswick, and made the top 10 of 161. “I Will Dare” also gained a toehold at some more adventurous commercial stations, like Chicago’s WXRT and Long Island’s WLIR.
This success only served to highlight a rather uncomfortable fact: the Replacements had yet to sign a contract with Twin/Tone. In the run-up to Let It Be, Stark again pushed to formalize the deal, though the band never did so.
CHAPTER 17
Between their first national outing in the spring of ’83 and the end of the Let It Be tour two years later, the Replacements would play some 200-plus shows in forty states, crisscrossing the country half a dozen times. “None of us had ever really traveled before we got on the road,” said Paul Westerberg. “We went from not having seen the world to suddenly getting more of it than we could digest.”
The band’s first vehicle—the Chevy van financed by Tom Carlson—quickly wore out. They replaced it with a beat-up Ford Econoline that they dubbed Otis, after the drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. It didn’t take long for the ’Mats to turn it into a second home, ripping out its seats and staining the interior with beer, trash, and urine. (The band was constantly pissing out of the step down to the side door, which came to be called “the trough.”) Its walls were soon marked with all manner of lewd graffiti and inside jokes. Westerberg insisted that an image of the van’s guts adorn the back cover of Let It Be: “To give people a sense of what life with us was like,” he said.
It might’ve been grungy and gross, but it was all theirs. “When we got in Otis, it was our sanctuary as well as our jail cell,” said Tommy Stinson. “There was constant chaos: anything you could imagine with four guys stuck in a van, driving across the country with copious amounts of booze and whatever else we could find; all together, loving and annoying each other at the same time.”
After a year of battling house soundmen, the band finally hired their own engineer in early ’84. Bill Mack was a nineteen-year-old South Minneapolis kid with a background in theatrical light and sound. He’d been trained by Minnesota Singers’ Theatre founder Mike Foreman—the same Foreman who’d booted the Replacements from the Bataclan in 1980. (An adolescent Mack was actually supposed to run sound for the gig.)
Impressing Jesperson with his work mixing the band at Duffy’s, Mack got a call to go on the road. “I was a brat. I cried and whined about everything,” said Mack. “But one of the reasons they put up with me is because I didn’t drink, so I could drive.” Joining a road crew that also included Carlson and Bill Sullivan, his initial impressions of the band were that “Bob was insane; Tommy was going to be a serious rock star, no matter what happened; Chris was an average blue-collar working guy with an interesting imagination; and Paul was an old man stuck in a young man’s body. Peter was the den mother/wrangler/psychologist trying to keep it all together.”
As Mack would discover, life on the road with the Replacements brought its own strange habits and superstitions. One of the band’s more peculiar touring talismans was a pair of “magic slacks”: a set of gaudy white-and-blue-striped hip-hugger flares that each of them would take turns wearing. Among other things, the slacks were doled out as a punishment if someone had gotten too wasted during the previous night’s gig. “You could either wear them proudly or in disgrace—or both,” said Tommy. “Proudly in disgrace was the more common way to wear them.”
The Replacements traveled to a constantly cranked soundtrack. Sometimes the van radio would be working; if not, a boombox would be blaring, with Westerberg generally manning the controls. “He was always spinning the dial; he was a real knob twister,” said Jesperson. “Especially at night; he didn’t lay down and go to sleep like other people did.” The ’Mats listened to mix tapes that Jesperson made, while certain records—by NRBQ, Big Star, and Robyn Hitchcock—were universally liked. Westerberg would fixate on other albums—like Jerry Lee Lewis’s Live at the Star Club, repeating it so often that everyone was soon sick of The Killer. “We actually had to physically stop him from playing that after a while,” said Jesperson.
Then there were the times when someone would pop in a tape of the DC hardcore band Bad Brains, which was a cue for the ’Mats to start going crazy. “People would be leaping around, having wrestling matches,” said Jesperson. “There was times when I was driving and the van would be shaking, nearly tipping . . . you could feel it lift off two tires. It still strikes terror into my heart hearing the Bad Brains.”
Driving a mosh pit on wheels was just one of many occupational hazards Jesperson endured working with the Replacements. If he zoomed past a highway patrol car in a speed trap, that was an invitation for the band to douse him in beer; if he’d picked up some valuable LP along the way, Tommy might toss it out the window. On one occasion, he smelled smoke and turned to find that the band had started a newspaper bonfire in the back of the van. He tried to put it out and nearly caught his pants on fire.
Usually, the bad behavior took the form of a competition between Tommy and Paul. “Paul would break something, and Tommy would laugh,” said Jesperson. “Then Tommy would try and outdo Paul and break something bigger.”
As much as he encouraged the free-for-all atmosphere, Westerberg could be dogmatic when it came to his view of proper rock-and-roll deportment on the road. His famous admonishment was: “We’re on tour; we’re not tourists.” “He’d get really mad if you ever did anything practical,” said Jesperson. “The first trip out east, Chris and I went to a museum, and he was furious.”
During those financially lean early touring years, the entire band—save for the always stout Bob—would transform into rail-thin figures. “There were times when we were living on $5 per diems,” said Jesperson. On the occasions when they did eat, Mars usually insisted on stopping at International House of Pancakes, while Westerberg—whether it was morning, noon, or night—would subsist mostly on clam chowder. Meanwhile, Bob almost never dined with the rest of the band. “One of his nicknames was Bob ‘To Go’ Stinson,” said Jesperson. “’Cause we’d all be eating and Bob would get his to go and save it for later.”
At night they would typically rent one cheap motel room that all of eight of them would cram into, unless anyone got lucky. “If you caught on with a girl, you might have a decent place to sleep,” said Tommy. Anything was generally preferable to snuggling up next to Bob. “I don’t think I ever saw him take a shower, and he
usually slept with his shoes on,” said Mack. “I recall him in bed, clothes or no clothes, it didn’t matter; his Converse All-Stars would be sticking out of the covers.”
Tommy and Paul would usually let the roadies have the beds, while they took to the floor. Chris would hole up in the closet most of the time, to avoid being stepped on when someone stumbled to the bathroom in the dark to piss. “Bad as it was, we didn’t care,” said Westerberg. “We were living the dream. It was camaraderie to the extreme.”
Late at night, long after the din of the amps and the clatter of the club had faded and everyone was drifting off or passing out, there would finally be a rare moment of silence. Mars would turn over in his closet and make like a salty John-Boy Walton. “Well,” he would say, “good night, fuckers.”
Though Westerberg quipped that the Replacements actually spilled more than they drank, their considerable level of consumption was becoming very real. Soundman Bill Mack recalled an occasion when Westerberg and Mars sat face to face, downing two dozen tequila poppers between them just before a gig. “Who can take ten, twelve shots of tequila and stand up, much less play a show?” said Mack. “Somehow they could shrug it off and play. Then they’d feel it the next day. But that’s what van rides are for: recovery time.”
By 1984, there were more substances around too. The band had graduated from cheap speed—ramping up with a few white crosses before a hardcore gig—to regularly indulging in cocaine. After a while it became an official expense; the ever-meticulous Jesperson would note their drug buys in his checkbook ledger, listing the purchases as “Bat Food” or “REF,” for Replacements Entertainment Fund.
The biggest effect that coke had was that it allowed the Replacements to drink even more. “There was a time where we’d get drunk twice a day,” said Westerberg. “We would be hammered by the afternoon, then probably take something to wake us up, and then start up again before the show and go till the wee hours.”
Backstage, preshow drinking sessions would come to serve as referendums on how the gig would go. “‘Let’s let ’em down’—that was another battle cry after a while,” said Westerberg. “It was like, ‘Do we rule tonight, or do we let ’em down?’”
The public perception was that the Replacements’ performances, particularly the train-wreck gigs, were the by-product of their consumption. But that wasn’t always the case. “There would be some nights where we couldn’t be that drunk onstage because we were hungover—there was no possible way we could get drunk,” said Chris Mars. “There would be some times where we wouldn’t be in sync. Paul would be really drunk and the rest of us would be sorta sober. Or I’d be drunk and everyone else would be sober. It became this ‘Who’s gonna screw up tonight?’ sort of thing. Then some nights we’d all be in the same boat, which was disastrous.
“But there was such a buzz about the band that people liked that part of it too; it became a sideshow. We were this band that could really rock and do really good, but on the other hand we were this circus act too.”
Fans and the press were beginning to lap up these displays, embracing the Replacements’ aesthetic and spinning their legend.
“One of the great mysteries of popular music is why so many bands that play very well are so bad, while some bands that play quite poorly manage to be undeniably great,” noted the Washington Post. “This Minneapolis quartet plays as though neatness didn’t count, with shuffles that seem more like stumbles and rave-ups that verge on mere raving. Yet everything fits, even the wrong notes, because the Replacements are careful not to let the details of proper playing get in the way of their real business: rock and roll.”
“They’re misfits, but they’re not misfits in any of the predictable rock musician ways,” suggested New York’s Newsday. “They’re not peroxide punks, or heavy-metal Hell’s Angels, or philistine folkies. Instead, they’re inspired dilettantes who play whatever they feel like.” Even The Gray Lady would offer validation. “The Replacements refuse to take themselves too seriously,” ran a review in the New York Times. “They’ve found the vital balance of yearning and rudeness, humor and defiance, melody and noise that makes brilliant rock and roll.”
For Mike Bosley, a 7th St Entry soundman who went on the road with the ’Mats for a spell in ’84, the Replacements never seemed in possession of what made them so compelling. “Whether the show was going to be good or bad was almost left up to fate,” said Bosley. “Their collective energy was a living breathing thing that they didn’t have control over. Maybe sometimes they wished they could control it. But having that kind of control would’ve taken away the magic.”
As their fame as a live act began to spread, the ’Mats started noticing groups of fans turning up repeatedly, coming to multiple gigs on every tour. “When the same ten people in front started showing up,” said Westerberg, “we really felt like we had to throw them curveballs.” He could be especially creative in this regard—like a show in Canada when he came onstage as Alfalfa from the Little Rascals, wearing fake freckles and suspenders, and sang the set in a cracking pubescent voice.
Frequently, the entertainment came in simply erasing the divisions between the band, the crew, and the crowd. Sometimes it meant letting the audience members get onstage and play or, more often, allowing roadie Bill Sullivan to take over vocals. A natural ham, Sullivan would enthusiastically warble “If I Only Had a Brain” from The Wizard of Oz and deliver Alice Cooper covers. (In between tours the other Replacements would sometimes back Sullivan in a Cooper tribute band called Spyder Byte, as well as dress up and play in the drag outfit Jefferson’s Cock.)
Generally, the tenor of the Replacements’ performances were a direct reflection of the crowd. “We would go out there, and if the audience was tepid or hostile, we would go with that: ‘Let’s see how hostile this can get,’” said Westerberg. “If they were behind us from the word go, we would give them what they wanted.”
That fall, Minneapolis musician John Freeman ran into the Replacements in Arizona while visiting family and hitched a ride back to the Twin Cities with the band. Catching a number of shows in the Southwest, Freeman marveled at how subtly the band shifted its presentation. “They would react to each situation a little differently,” said Freeman. “In Phoenix and Austin, they really went for it. In Houston, they didn’t give a damn, played country stuff for a whole set.”
By the time the band reached Oklahoma City for the last date of the tour, they were burned out and ready to blow the gig off entirely. They arrived at The Bowery—a former church turned gay disco turned indie rock venue—and were greeted by an enthusiastic staff. The club’s deejay, Ross Shoemaker, had borrowed a tape recorder to capture the concert. “I told Paul before the show I was gonna be recording them,” recalled Shoemaker. “He said, ‘Why? We suck.’”
By showtime there were only thirty or so scattered souls in the cavernous 1,200-capacity venue. “Paul started by asking them to pull up their tables and chairs closer to the stage,” recalled Freeman. “He screamed at me, ‘Go get them some beer.’ I grabbed a twelve-pack and started passing them out to the front row.” After a few attempts at playing their own material, the band shifted into an evening of covers that moved between the Carter Family and Mötley Crüe, Lynyrd Skynyrd and U2. “It was amazing how they would pull these things out of their hat,” said Freeman.
Unbeknownst to Shoemaker, toward the end of the set soundman Bill Mack had gone up to the deejay booth and snatched the tape from his recorder. The band listened to the concert all the way home, laughing. They would release the twenty-three-song set a few months later as an “official bootleg,” fittingly titled The Shit Hits the Fans.
With Paul, Tommy, and Bob generating most of the chaos, Chris Mars came across as the sensible, somewhat diffident figure in the band. In a way, he seemed oddly miscast to keep the beat for such a collection of torrid troublemakers. “I remember once, after the Replacements played Al’s Bar in LA, Chris was sitting reading a book,” recalled Gun Club guitarist Ward Dotson
. “Everyone else was out there trying to score drugs or get laid or whatever, and he was reading a book backstage. I thought that was pretty unusual.”
That sort of behavior led Mars to be labeled the “quiet one” in the ’Mats. “It’s easy to be the quiet one when you got a buncha loudmouths out front,” said Westerberg. “But Chris did his share of hooting and hollering.”
On occasion, Mars was given to fits of strangely theatrical behavior. This usually coincided with the appearance of his outré alter ego, “Pappy the Clown.” The first time Pappy appeared was during a gig at a punk club in Virginia Beach. “We did a sound check, and then Chris came back for the show made up like a clown, with no explanation,” recalled Westerberg. “And he wouldn’t say a word. It was all mime. It kinda startled us. We all thought this is pretty much genius . . . but weird as hell.”
“It was . . . God . . . it was funny,” said Tommy Stinson. “It was pretty disturbing at first too, because it was so out of the blue.”
Taking their cue from Mars—who’d developed a serious distaste for herd mentality punk crowds—the band delivered its “pussy set,” slowing all the songs to a crawl, playing country covers, and generally doing everything it could to antagonize the hardcore audience. The proud Southern punks took this as a serious act of disrespect. “I remember one guy saying, ‘Y’all wouldn’t pull this shit in New York,’” said Westerberg. “And I was thinking Oh yes we would. We were equal opportunity offenders, north or south of the Mason-Dixon Line.”
Over the years, Mars’s evil twin would pop up periodically to cause trouble. “I think by the second time Pappy came out, it was like, ‘Oh, no,’” said Westerberg. “The first time it was quizzical and exciting; the next time it was kind of like, ‘Well, somebody’s gonna get hit with a bottle tonight.’” He sometimes wondered if Pappy was a manifestation of some deeper disturbance in Mars. “How much of that was the schizophrenia that runs in his family? I don’t know.”
