Trouble Boys

by Bob Mehr

  Just as the furor over the issue was beginning to build nationally, the Replacements released “The Ledge”—a single that was unmistakably about teen suicide.

  Promoting the album that spring, Westerberg was forced in nearly every interview to defend the motivations behind “The Ledge.” “When everybody heard it, they said, ‘Oh, man, are you gonna get in trouble! Is this about the kids in New Jersey?’ No, no. I’m not trying to glorify that or jump on that bandwagon,” he said to Musician. He also told The Gavin Report: “It’s not a phase or fad or anything. It’s just happening, and I just wrote about it.”

  In April the Replacements reunited with “Bastards of Young” video director Bill Pope and producer Randy Skinner in Los Angeles to shoot a clip for “The Ledge.” The band had consented to be in the video this time, though they wouldn’t act or lip-synch.

  Improvising a setup at Television Center Studios, Skinner and Pope placed a couch and a couple of chairs in the middle of the soundstage and spent a few hours filming the band essentially doing nothing. The resulting video was a collection of static black-and-white images: Paul smoking, Tommy eating lunch, Chris and Slim casually talking. “Even then, you can see how uncomfortable they are being filmed,” said Skinner. “They’re twitching.”

  At least you could see their faces, which possibly meant getting MTV on board. Warner Bros. had already played advances of Pleased to Meet Me for several key MTV executives back in February, who’d responded positively to “The Ledge” in particular.

  Rick Krim, MTV’s music and talent department manager, was a fan, and also part of a small group that decided which videos were played. He worked directly with Michelle Vonfeld, who described herself as the network’s “one-person standards and practices department.” It was her duty to decide whether a video passed muster.

  Krim would sit with Vonfeld and go over each video frame by frame to remove profanity and offensive images: crotch shots, exposed nipples, drug logos on clothes or instruments. MTV claimed that fewer than 5 percent of submitted videos were sent back for editing. Even in the tits-and-ass-heavy hair metal era, videos could be made to conform to standards pretty easily. “Usually it was an edit here or an edit there,” said Krim. “It was rare for a video to be flat-out rejected.”

  The last week of May, “The Ledge” was submitted for review. The biggest quandary for Vonfeld in assessing “The Ledge” wasn’t the images in the video but the subject matter of the song. Warner Bros. sent over a copy of the lyrics. Looking over them, Krim and Vonfeld found it hard to see where any meaningful change could be made; there wasn’t a single word or line that could be easily excised. “It was really a situation where we thought, ‘We can’t play this,’” said Krim. MTV decided to reject the video outright owing to lyrical content.

  “MTV feels the lyrics are detrimental to the youth of America,” said Westerberg after the decision came down. “But for them to play Mötley Crüe and not play our video . . . if it had a bunch of sexist bullshit, they would’ve played it. But if it’s something deeper, if it’s emotions, it’s taboo.”

  High Noon was particularly angered by the decision: MTV’s rejection attached a stigma to the song. Soon many radio stations already spinning the track began to drop it from their playlists. “It all crumbled from there,” said Rieger.

  By late June, Warner Bros. quietly moved on to “Alex Chilton.” “We had no choice,” said Rieger. “But in terms of radio and general perception, you can’t just switch to the next single two days later. It would look like there’s no commitment to the band. . . . Internally, everyone knew the record was dead.”

  While the MTV decision played itself out, the Replacements prepared to play their first shows in nearly a year, and their first ever without Bob Stinson.

  Bob would never quite muster much animus toward Westerberg, though others in Minneapolis did. “There was a lot of people that didn’t even want Bob coming into their bar,” said Stinson’s friend Ray Reigstad. “But there was people on the other side of the fence who literally wanted to kick the shit out of Tommy and Paul. Anybody that knew them guys knew there was four fuck-ups in that band.”

  Bob himself was hurt that the coverage of his dismissal made him the convenient scapegoat for all the band’s failings. “But Westerberg’s still falling off the stage,” Bob noted.

  Bob and Paul, outwardly at least, seemed to reconcile. Restoring relations with Tommy was more complicated. For the benefit of their mother Anita, they remained cordial. “But it was very uncomfortable for Tommy whenever we had to go for holidays and family things,” said Daune Earle. “Tommy likes to make things better for everyone. In that case, he just couldn’t.”

  The press was certainly curious. “He doesn’t like me anymore,” Tommy would say of Bob, always eager to change the topic. “And that’s the end of that story.”

  Once the Replacements got on the road, there would be ugly, persistent reminders of the split. “There’s always that jerk in the front row who yells, ‘What’d you do with your brother?’” said Tommy. “Fuck you. We grew up and he didn’t.”

  After his firing, Bob would derisively refer to the band as “the Diet Replacements.” Yet, privately, he acknowledged that the ’Mats couldn’t have progressed any further with him involved. “The Replacements wanted to get to that next level,” said Reigstad. “Bob didn’t give a shit about that stuff. He didn’t have the discipline, but he didn’t have the desire either.”

  In truth, once he was out of the ’Mats, Bob felt a tremendous relief. By the end, the band had affected his new marriage and exacerbated his drinking even further. “He was happier,” said Reigstad. “For a while, anyway.”

  Stinson soon moved on from his janitor job at First Avenue and began washing dishes at Curly’s, an all-night café on Lake Street. He also started playing with Sonny Vincent.

  A New York City punk refugee, Vincent came to Minneapolis in 1980, after the breakup of his first-wave CBGB band the Testors. The Replacements and Vincent’s later outfit, the Extreme, had shared a bill at Goofy’s Upper Deck back in 1982. “After the show, Bob came up to me and said, ‘I want to join your band,’” recalled Vincent, who thought he was joking.

  In early 1987, Bob and Sonny reconnected, forming Model Prisoners, going through a couple different rhythm sections, touring the Midwest, and even recording a handful of tracks. It was an important step for Bob; Twin Cities musicians hadn’t exactly beaten a path to his door. “Sonny gave Bob a fair chance when no one else did,” said Reigstad. “He dealt with him, even though he knew Bob had problems.”

  Playing with Vincent restored some of Stinson’s creative self-confidence, which had all but vanished amid the ’Mats’ ruinous atmosphere. “I’d look at Sonny and say, ‘Let’s do it this way or that,’ and he’d let me go. I didn’t have to turn to Paul and ask [permission].”

  Seven years Stinson’s senior, Vincent tried to act as a big brother to Bob, doing his best to meter his alcohol consumption. “Bob . . . could unlock his immense talent only when he had the right amount of alcohol lubrication,” said Vincent. “If he drank too much, it was terrible. If he didn’t drink at all, it was worse. But with the right amount of drinks under his belt, he was doing brilliant stuff on the guitar.”

  But even Bob’s gifts couldn’t make up for his all faults. After a while, he was up to his old tricks: going directly to the promoters after shows, collecting the band’s gig money, and then disappearing for days. “Soon everyone wanted to kick Bob out of the band,” said Vincent. When it happened, Bob broke down crying. “I got off the phone and decided I would be a fool to kick out a brother who was crying tears because he loved music so much.”

  Instead, Vincent took the unusual step of taking the entire band to see a therapist together. “People thought that was pretty funny, a band going to therapy,” said Vincent. “But we tried it. It kept us together for a while, but still the crazy shit didn’t stop.”

  Model Prisoners broke up in 1988. Vincent would
eventually move to Europe, though he would enlist Bob for various projects in later years, including his band Shotgun Rationale—where Stinson formed a wild two-guitar attack with the Dead Boys’ Cheetah Chrome—and some overseas tours in the early nineties.

  CHAPTER 39

  The Replacements kicked off the Pleased to Meet Me tour in late April with a series of warm-up shows in Florida and elsewhere in the Southeast, making up the dates that had been canceled in the wake of Paul Westerberg’s hand injury the previous summer.

  Slim Dunlap had spent a couple months learning the ’Mats’ catalog—listening to live bootlegs and consulting with Bob Stinson on specific parts.

  His home debut, May 13 at First Avenue, was a fairly normal affair. The band stayed away from covers and focused on the new album, though on “Can’t Hardly Wait” Westerberg did attempt a violin solo—no doubt a cheeky tribute to Jim Dickinson’s string additions.

  The band’s return to First Avenue two weeks later sought to debunk any notion that they’d gone straight. Opening with a sour “Hello Dolly”—the first of multiple versions that night—they plowed through ten ragged covers, with Westerberg having to urge Mars on frequently (“Plaaaaaay!!!”) before delivering their first original tune.

  “We’re shit, we know it . . . thank you!” offered Westerberg in between songs.

  Westerberg was becoming ill at ease in his own backyard, and Minneapolis gigs often took queer turns as a result. “In other places, you don’t have the responsibility of being cordial to people you know,” he said. “But if you have to be nice to all your friends, you tend to be overly rude when you play.” The ’Mats would only play their hometown a handful more times.

  The concerts showcased their new look: clashing plaid-and-stripes suits, like a gang of burlesque comedians. (Paul pilfered much of it from his father’s golf outfits.) It was partly homage to Slade, partly an effort to ward off criticism that they’d gotten too serious. Mostly it was a way of violating expectations. They might have been the hippest rock band in America at that moment, but they’d be damned if they were going to look the part.

  The tour wound through the Midwest in May, then on to Europe in June. Though Dunlap grasped Westerberg’s depression and was sympathetic, living with him on the road yielded even more challenges. “Early in the morning, you’d know the kind of day you were in for,” said Dunlap. “Paul’s very mercurial. Some days he was funny and fun to be around. But there were horrible days where he would test your patience.”

  Without Bob around, Dunlap became the focus of Westerberg’s ire. “You’d play something he didn’t like and he’d glare at you,” said Dunlap. “That’s part of the deal—I was the foil that took it.”

  Some of Westerberg’s behavior was calculated. Curtiss A had advised him, “Slim can play really good, but ya gotta get him mad.” At one gig, Paul walked up while Dunlap was in mid-solo and unplugged his guitar. “He was so pissed he wanted to beat me up,” laughed Westerberg. “But it was true: to rile him up was to get the fire out of his guitar.”

  Westerberg might have messed with Dunlap onstage, but he also respected and relied on him. “He more or less said, ‘I’ll be damned if I’m gonna stand idly by and watch the Replacements go down the toilet,’” said Westerberg.

  On May 29, the Replacements flew into London’s Heathrow Airport to start an eighteen-day, fifteen-date tour that would take them from England to Germany, France, Spain, and back.

  Unlike their maiden voyage, when they were relative unknowns, the band’s 1987 arrival was met with far more interest. WEA international executive Phil Straight, who’d attended the Memphis playback, had laid the groundwork for Pleased to Meet Me, and Warner UK publicist Barb Charone had lined up a banquet of interviews.

  The band’s profile got a boost from a Melody Maker cover story timed for their London arrival. Writer Simon Reynolds had been to the United States and traveled with the band. Though more of a postpunk and dance-music aesthete, Reynolds was immediately converted: “The Replacements represent the complete antithesis of all my dreams for the future of pop,” he wrote. “And yet, I can’t help myself. I love them so much it hurts.”

  Dubbing the Replacements “America’s inebriate counterpart to the Smiths,” Reynolds was one of the few European journalists to grasp the peculiar alchemy that fueled the ’Mats: “At the heart of the Replacements lies fatigue, insecurity, a sense of wasted or denied possibilities, but this is a pain that comes out bursting and exuberant, a world weariness that’s positively, paradoxically boisterous.”

  A return feature in the NME—which Westerberg had tweaked with pro-Reagan comments during their first Euro tour—was far less flattering. The paper’s Michele Kirsch interviewed Paul and Tommy in London. The piece opened with the pair pissing on the roof of the WEA building: “Don’t put this part in the article, okay?” Westerberg had asked.

  Later, when questioned about Bob Stinson’s firing, Westerberg told her: “We loved Bob.” Then he shut off Kirsch’s tape recorder, adding confidentially, “But Bob is a drug addict.” When the story appeared in print, the whole exchange was published in full. “Hollywood tabloids can’t hold a candle to them English scumbags,” complained Westerberg. “They won’t respect a comment off the record.”

  The European shows themselves were solid and occasionally spectacular—Dunlap found his fire and his place within the songs. But outside of the two fairly riotous London dates bookending the tour, the gigs were pretty much the same as in ’86: the audiences weren’t very big or especially enthusiastic. “Everyone dressed in black, please leave,” bellowed Westerberg, opening a gig at Club Vera in Holland. “There’s no reason to be morose.”

  The ’Mats responded to the audiences’ indifference by ratcheting up their drinking. After just a few gigs, Westerberg’s voice was shot and remained so throughout the tour. “I like to drink, and I make no excuses for it,” Westerberg thundered to a Q magazine journo. “My father drinks, my grandfather drank—you look like you like to tip a few yourself!”

  Their own excess was acceptable—not so with the crew. In London, soundman Wilkes and crew member Bill Sullivan were supposed to go to the French consulate early one morning to sort out the band’s visas. Instead, they stayed up all night partying and blew the assignment. “We behaved like them,” said Wilkes. “I remember Bill saying, ‘They don’t like it when you hold up the mirror, man. They don’t like it one bit.’”

  After the tour, the band would all but abandon the idea of breaking in Europe. In the four years before they set foot on the continent again, a whole new wave of US alternative acts—Dinosaur Jr, the Pixies—managed to become major stars in England as interest in all things American peaked at the end of the eighties. The Replacements had come too late and left too early.

  Being a blood-and-guts American rock-and-roll band on a major label was a lonely proposition in 1987. “There wasn’t that many: Tom Petty was still trying to hold the banner up; the Del Fuegos were trying; the Del-Lords, the Scorchers, and we were trying,” said Georgia Satellites singer Dan Baird.

  The Atlanta-based Satellites were the Replacements’ gap-toothed country cousins. They carried on together for a few years, covering each other’s songs and turning up at each other’s gigs. “We were all fearless, all stubborn, with a core set of beliefs that may not have been obvious to anybody else,” said Baird.

  Baird wasn’t much of a drinker, but Satellites guitarist Rick Richards could party and play at the ’Mats level. “We approached things in the same way and didn’t take anything very seriously—plus, we were ready to have a good time at the drop of a hat,” said Richards, whose Southern fashion finery included bolo ties and stovepipe hats, leading Westerberg to quip that Richards resembled “Colonel Sanders on crack.”

  The Satellites had been around for years as the house band at the North Atlanta dive Hedgen’s, and in the fall of 1986 a refurbished version of the band featuring bassist Rick Price and drummer Mauro Magellan released a self-titled
debut. They played Minneapolis the following winter. A few songs in, a full cup of beer hit Baird square in the chest. “All right, who the fuck threw that beer on me?” shouted the angry singer. Westerberg elbowed his way to the front. “I hear this cackling on the right, and it’s [Tommy] Stinson in the wings, laughing his ass off,” recalled Richards. “I hadn’t even met them. Dan’s like, ‘Get your asses up here,’ and gave them the guitars. They ended up playing for, like, thirty minutes.”

  By Pleased to Meet Me, Baird could sense the Replacements were suffering through some serious growing pains. “That was their fight: how to be the band that got in trouble on Saturday Night Live and the band that could also write a song like ‘Unsatisfied.’ That dichotomy was always going to be there and was always the gasoline on the floor waiting for the right match.”

  The Satellites dealt with that struggle too, but they had a distinct advantage: a radio hit. The Baird-penned “Keep Your Hands to Yourself,” a holdover from the band’s first EP, was included on the group’s Elektra record almost as an afterthought. Surprising everyone, it shot to number two on Billboard’s singles chart in the spring of 1987. MTV treated it like a novelty—real rock-and-roll was a novelty on the network at the time—but the Satellites’ album went platinum and landed them opening gigs for Bob Seger and Tom Petty.

  The lack of a hit would become an albatross around Westerberg’s neck. “You don’t get to choose,” said Baird. “There are people who’ll tell me: ‘Oh, you wrote “Hands” . . . that is such a cute song.’ And they’ll come up to Paul, and talk about ten different songs: ‘That one broke my heart; this other one tore me up; that song hit me where I lived.’ Not many people get that kind of response.”