Trouble Boys

by Bob Mehr

  As a teenager, Sally went to live with her older brother Andy in Colorado. Her parents eventually followed them out, and her father ran a little Italian restaurant in a tourist town outside Rocky Mountain National Park. In 1981 Schneidkraut enrolled at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where she majored in fine art.

  Her brother Andy was a massive rock-and-roll fan—he founded Boulder’s long-running record store Albums on the Hill—and Sally began doing production for a local concert company. “I started with stage production for small clubs and venues and quickly wound up working 18,000-seat arenas,” she said. She moved to Minneapolis and began a career in broadcast production. There, she met Mars, who, despite his boyish good looks, was painfully shy and had never really had a girlfriend before. They’d both lost parents in 1988; Sally’s mother died not long after Chris’s father, and they bonded in their grief.

  Schneidkraut gave Mars a confidence he’d always lacked, encouraging his visual art. From the start, the Replacements saw her as an interloper. Paul and Tommy, who tended to view women in simplistic rock-and-roll terms, viewed Schneidkraut as a groupie. She’d glommed on to Chris and was soon meddling in the band’s affairs.

  Mars had become increasingly passive within the group; after their marriage, Sally began speaking for him. Their coupling may have accelerated the process, but Mars had already been questioning his place within the band. As the Pleased to Meet Me circus rolled on, Mars spent more and more time with his pastels and sketchpads. “We’d dump him off at his hotel room, and he’d go in there and draw all night long,” said Dunlap. “The rest of us would go out and party and hang around somebody’s kitchen until four in the morning.”

  For Mars, the only remaining joy he took in the band was helping shape the music. But with Westerberg cutting demos on his own, that was being closed off as well. On Pleased to Meet Me, Westerberg had given the group four cowrites for their input and inspiration—but writing and arranging songs on his own also meant that the band would share fewer credits and less publishing money.

  CHAPTER 43

  Sire had budgeted nearly $300,000 for the next Replacements album, but who the hell was going to produce it? Michael Hill racked his brain for a solution that would satisfy everyone. The first impulse was to reunite with Jim Dickinson. Russ Rieger, always the loudest voice in the room, wouldn’t have objected, especially if they brought in a hotshot mixer to give the singles an extra polish (as he had on “Can’t Hardly Wait,” hiring Jimmy Iovine to give the single a radio friendly luster). However, Rieger claimed, there was lingering ill will about the string overdubs and postproduction tinkering on Pleased. “There was a lot of bad blood after the fact,” said Rieger. “Paul felt Dickinson had done things behind their backs.”

  Counters Westerberg, “I didn’t have a bad feeling towards Dickinson. It was more, ‘That producer didn’t get us a hit, so we gotta find one that can.’”

  Scott Litt’s name inevitably came up again, but the last thing the ’Mats wanted at that point was to look like they were riding R.E.M.’s coattails. (Besides, Litt was already booked for Stipe and company’s Warner Bros. debut.) Suggestions from Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison to Pat Benatar guitarist Neil Giraldo to Bon Jovi/Aerosmith man Bob Rock went nowhere with the band. Neither did guitarist and Warner artist Ry Cooder. “The feeling was that maybe Westerberg and Cooder could work together—you know, curmudgeon to curmudgeon,” said Hill. “But thankfully, we thought better of it.”

  By April they’d gotten nowhere. Then Warner VP Michael Ostin (Mo’s son) called Hill and suggested that he look up someone who hadn’t been on anyone’s radar: Tony Berg.

  Born in 1954, Tony Berg had been raised in a house of Hollywood intellectuals. His father, Dick Berg, was a writer and dramatist who’d created the made-for-TV-movie format. Eldest brother Jeff would eventually be the powerful chairman of the International Creative Management talent agency; youngest brother Richard would become a film and TV producer; and middle sibling Scott would write biographies of Charles Lindbergh and Sam Goldwyn, among others, and win a Pulitzer Prize.

  A preternaturally talented guitarist, at nineteen Tony became the music director at the Mark Taper Forum, before serving in the band for the original production of The Rocky Horror Show. Later he became Bette Midler’s musical director. In 1976 Berg began several years as guitarist, arranger, and right hand to madman producer Jack Nitzsche. In the early ’80s, he was in the ill-fated major-label acts the Coyote Sisters and Channel. “But what I had always wanted to do was produce records,” he said.

  Berg began recording demos in his Brentwood garage, leading to major-label deals for Michael Penn and Eric Johnson. In 1987 he got his first proper production job, helming the debut by MCA baby band Broken Homes. MCA A&R man Michael Goldstone was so impressed with Berg’s work that he enlisted him as coproducer, with veteran engineer Bob Clearmountain, of Charlie Sexton’s sophomore album. Berg was at Bearsville Studios in upstate New York working on the project when Michael Hill called.

  Michael Ostin recommended Berg for the Replacements gig largely on the basis that they shared a manager. It was a favor—Berg had hardly any credits. He did, however, have an abundance of charm. “Tony was very erudite about music,” said Hill. Berg and Westerberg talked on the phone, and Paul suggested Tony send a postcard listing his ten favorite records. “I said, ‘These records mean a lot to me; I hope you respond to them,’” recalled Berg. “I added, ‘But if you don’t, you can go fuck yourself.’ I got a call immediately—he said to come to New York and meet.”

  Berg sold the production as an effort to find the delicate balance between a great songwriter and a great rock band. “He said everything that you wanted him to say,” said Gary Hobbib. “We all went, ‘Wow, this guy’s really good.’” Eventually Westerberg mentioned that they’d tossed the Replacements’ master tapes in the Mississippi: “As if to tell me, ‘This is who we are and what we do,’” said Berg.

  Suddenly, Westerberg grabbed Berg’s leg, pulled off his boot, and poured a beer in it. “He drank out of my shoe, slammed it down, and said, ‘You’re our man!’”

  Hill was relieved, but Rieger wasn’t: he’d wanted an established hit-maker. He was also suspicious about the band’s reasons for agreeing to the youngest, least experienced candidate. “I think they felt like they could manipulate Berg,” said Rieger. “But I wasn’t going to win the argument. And the record had to be made.”

  Berg, the band, and the label brass—including Seymour Stein—went out for a celebratory dinner. During the meal, Stein began his usual playful flirtations with Tommy. But soon his attentions took on a belittling edge. Tommy “was being picked on and picked up on,” said one witness to the scene. “It was very uncomfortable.”

  Sensing this, Westerberg threw a possessive arm around Stinson and half-jokingly hissed at Stein: “Fuck off, faggot . . . he’s my bitch.” Berg was “impressed by how fiercely protective Paul was of Tommy,” he said. He would eventually discover just how protective.

  Berg had an unexpected opening in his schedule; the Replacements could be squeezed into the break. They’d have ten days up in Bearsville to record. “Management was very aggressive about starting immediately,” said Berg. “So instead of rehearsing or doing any real preproduction, we were thrust into the recording.”

  Bearsville had a peculiar setup. A studio complex founded by Bob Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman in 1969, it was nestled in the woods just west of Woodstock, its bucolic grounds dotted by residences, including a series of small cabins, for the bands to stay in. Working there wasn’t unlike being sent away to summer camp. Bars were hard enough to find, much less women, drugs, or excitement. But there was no time to argue. The boys were heading to the country.

  CHAPTER 44

  In the months leading up to the Bearsville sessions, Paul Westerberg had evinced an unusual degree of pride, even optimism, about his new songs. But as the session date grew closer, his spirit darkened. “Paul built up this incre
dible anxiety about making that record,” said Slim Dunlap.

  Arriving from Minneapolis in early June, the band stopped in New York City en route to Bearsville, meeting Michael Hill, Julie Panebianco, and a group of friends gathered at Paul’s Lounge, a West Village bar, for a send-off. Westerberg’s mood was anything but celebratory. “He was being so negative about the label, about recording. At one point, I got up from the table crying,” said Panebianco. “He was already in the knock-it-down phase, before he’d even created it.”

  “They started to get really drunk and I got the whole earful: ‘Warner Brothers hates us. You don’t like us. No one likes us,’” said Hill. “They were at a point in their drinking lives where, after a certain amount, it would really turn ugly.”

  Tim Perell, a twenty-one-year-old former High Noon intern, was hired to babysit the band. He drove them upstate, doled out per diems, and called Russ Rieger and Gary Hobbib with daily status reports. “I don’t think anybody was under the illusion I could keep them out of trouble,” said Perell. “I had to bring beer when I picked them up. We got stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway, and they were all peeing in the well of the van. That was my inauguration. They’d asked me what I’d done, and I told them I’d just graduated college. So for the first few days they called me ‘Einstein.’”

  The Replacements arrived at Bearsville with a chip on their shoulders. The studio’s Scottish manager, Ian Kimmet, politely informed the band that their producer was in the middle of a catered family dinner. Berg had brought his wife, children, and young sister-in-law for a visit. The ’Mats were undeterred. “They all barged past me up to the private quarters like punks, real yobbo types,” said Kimmet. “They spread out round the table and Tony’s party. They had it in for him—it was obvious from the very first moments.”

  Tony Berg would come to view his brief time with the Replacements philosophically. Today Berg is a respected industry veteran with over 100 productions to his credit. In 1988, however, “I was not prepared for the chaos of the Replacements,” he admitted.

  For the first couple of days, Berg managed to keep their gang dynamic at bay. He settled in with Westerberg to go over songs, rehearsing in Bearsville’s barn studio. “Paul and I would sit down with two acoustic guitars and dig in, and it didn’t include the band that much initially,” said Berg.

  Berg had flown out his new Sony digital multi-track recorder and his trusted engineer Dan Bates. His plan was to track the band live, keeping the spontaneous performances, and later adding a smattering of overdubs. “To produce much beyond that would be false,” noted Berg. “I felt the work that needed to be done was mostly arrangemental.

  “Paul was responding very well to the dialogue—that there would be real discussion of parts and choices. We talked about guitar parts. And then, more profoundly, we discussed lyrics. That was the strength of the relationship. How it proved the relationship’s undoing, in my opinion, is that the band had never witnessed that before. And Tommy in particular—it was profoundly unsettling for him.”

  In Memphis, Jim Dickinson had encouraged Tommy’s songwriting. In Bearsville, Berg relegated Stinson to the role of sideman. “The star is the guy you have to please and court,” said Slim Dunlap. “If you’re smart, you do it very subtly. If you’re not smart, you do it overtly and create tension and alienation. And Tony just played it terribly.”

  In Berg’s mind, Westerberg was seeking to push further in the direction his new songs were headed, even if that meant making something like a solo record. “Tommy was being very careful of the Replacements—more than Paul, in a way,” said Berg. But the trust they established was fleeting. “He was a little heavy-handed when it came to changing the songs around, which I wasn’t really into,” said Westerberg, who also cringed at Berg’s “flashy riffs” on guitar: “He was too good a musician.”

  Berg was also dealing with a group that was simultaneously congealing—this was Dunlap’s first time in the studio with them—and falling apart, with Bearsville another step in Chris Mars’s growing estrangement from music. “Drumming wasn’t the most important thing to him,” said Berg. “He had moved on.”

  At least Mars was docile. Dunlap, on the other hand, held Berg in open contempt; the producer compared the guitarist to Lil’ Abner’s Pappy Yokum: “It felt like they’d brought their country uncle. He could play. But he was extremely ornery.”

  “Tony had declared that it was his job to ‘bring the Replacements into the 1980s,’” recalled Westerberg. “Of course, it was almost 1989.”

  Despite the mistrust, the band recorded for twelve-hour stretches each day, beginning around 11:00 AM with a meal—burgers, typically—then proceeding to drink and play. “We had a regimen,” said Stinson. “It wasn’t like we were always total raging alcoholic assholes. We’d loosen up and get to the place it’s got to be.”

  The band got even looser after they were involved in a small fender-bender driving to the studio one day. “Some guy pulled out of a driveway and hit us,” said Tim Perell. Dunlap immediately began complaining of back pain and after a quick stop at a nearby doctor’s office, came back with a large prescription bottle of the muscle relaxer Flexeril. The rest of the band were soon gobbling the pills and chasing them with liquor—with a narcotic effect audible on a number of the Bearsville tracks.

  In addition to cutting eleven new Westerberg songs, Dunlap led the band on a languid reading of James Burton’s 1965 instrumental “Love’s Lost.” The group also worked up an untitled rockabilly number and cut a track for a covers compilation of classic Disney songs for A&M Records, including “Cruella de Vil” from 101 Dalmatians—though the band’s initial version was unusable given Westerberg’s improvised lyrics (“I’ll fuck ya in the face, Cruella de Vil”).

  The gem was “Portland,” an apologia for the Pine Street Theatre debacle the previous winter. A spiritual sequel to 1983’s “Treatment Bound,” “Portland” finds Westerberg looking around at a gang of fading souls (“Sitting in between a ghost and a walking bowl of punch”) as the band’s shine starts to dim (“Bring in the next little bunch”).

  “They were not what I would call a tight band, but they were a spirited band,” said Berg. “Paul’s talent was clear from his writing, but the surprise to me was Tommy.”

  Stinson’s instincts would elevate “Portland” in particular. Tommy had requested a classical bass for the track and was given a gorgeous German model from a rental company in New York City. Although he’d never played upright before, he proceeded to work the instrument with a cellist’s grace—before jumping on and destroying it, at a cost of some $4,000. After hearing the playback, Tommy decided the track also needed bongos. “Which was funny to me, because ‘Portland’ was essentially a country song,” said Berg. “But he was absolutely right.”

  One of the only full-tilt rockers they recorded was “Wake Up.” Berg came up with a countermelody—answering the guitar riff with a flourish of synth strings. It was an incongruous but inspired addition that the band loved.

  Yet a cloud still hung over Westerberg. Seymour Stein had paid a lot of money for the record, and Berg was trying to cultivate a crossover hit. For all his conflicts about success, Westerberg still feared failure more. “If this one don’t fly,” he said, “then it’s back to the brooms.”

  In the studio, Berg was a taskmaster when it came to tempo and pitch, concepts the Replacements were only loosely familiar with. They reacted as they always did: with passive and not-so-passive aggression.

  Stinson spent much of the session unnerving Berg by brandishing a giant blade and playing Five Finger Fillet, jabbing between his digits. One evening, driving with Berg during a break, Stinson was in the backseat when a Bon Jovi song came on the radio. As Berg went to change the station, “Tommy kicked the radio as hard as he could with his boots and got my hand instead,” said Berg, who spent the rest of the session with his fingers bandaged.

  Berg had also brought a collection of beautiful guitars, including h
is prized Gibson ES-335, for the band to play. Dunlap had an identical 335, but a beater, way past real use. In the midst of a take, Westerberg began smashing Dunlap’s guitar behind a baffle and then hollered to Berg: “Do you wanna see your guitar? Come on in here!” Berg saw the shattered 335 and “went into shock,” said Dunlap. “We finally managed to calm him down. But even the thought that Paul would destroy a guitar was just scary to him.”

  “Tony had such reverence for the instruments, and Paul said, ‘It’s just a piece of fucking wood,’” recalled Perell. “That illustrated so perfectly the difference between them.”

  Another night, the band coerced Berg, who was borderline teetotal, into imbibing with them. “We got him dead drunk,” said Westerberg, who plied the producer with pain pills. “Somebody held his arms, and we put a bunch in his mouth and made him drink a couple Singapore slings.” Berg figured, “I was being initiated. You had to go through it.”

  The stifling environment at Bearsville only exacerbated the ill will between Berg and the band. Within a week the Replacements had come down with cabin fever, à la The Shining. “In each of our cottages there was a little kitchenette with knives,” said Stinson. “Every night we’d go to one of the cottages and start playing ‘Dodge Knife.’ That’s like dodgeball but with knives. It got very . . . troubling.”

  One night Dunlap drunkenly spread cream cheese all over the raw pine walls of his cottage. According to Berg, “They had car accidents. They trashed the studio. They trashed the living quarters. They were on medication that you would normally prescribe for horses and bears. They were just a mess.”

  On day seven, the Replacements had been cutting live for a particularly inspired stretch when the producer realized his Sony digital recorder had been using an unformatted reel. The entire section had been lost. Berg made a show of firing engineer Dan Bates for the oversight, but, said Perell, “that really infuriated the band.”