Trouble Boys

by Bob Mehr

  The album’s singles “Loose Ends” and “Never Aim to Please” struggled on radio, and the record quickly slipped from the buzz bin to the cutout bin. “It was partially the label, and partially the timing,” said Stinson. “I made a real rock-and-roll-y record, and it wasn’t the time for that. Grunge was exploding.”

  While Tommy labored over his album and Westerberg tended to his garden, Nirvana had conquered the world. The Seattle band, led by singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain, had released its major-label debut for Geffen in the fall of 1991, just a few months after the Replacements called it quits. The ’Mats’ biggest album had sold 300,000 copies total. By early 1992, Nevermind was selling 300,000 copies a week. In a blink, Nirvana had minted grunge as a genre, launched alt-rock into the commercial mainstream, and effected a sea change in popular music.

  Pundits would suggest Nirvana had picked up the proverbial torch that the Replacements had fumbled away. “Cobain sings and writes about romantic complexities and youthful apathy with much of the intensity and insight of . . . Paul Westerberg,” wrote Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times. “Cobain, indeed, could be the Paul Westerberg of the ’90s.” But Westerberg thought they had little in common: “I guess I wore a plaid shirt, and yes, I played real loud,” he said, “but Nirvana sounds to me like Boston with a hair up its ass.”

  Cobain and Westerberg would cross paths just once, in late 1992, in San Francisco. Westerberg was in town recording, Cobain was there producing an album for the Melvins, and they were both staying at the Triton Hotel. One evening they rode up an elevator together in awkward silence, exited on the same floor, walked to neighboring rooms, then shut their doors without acknowledging one another.

  Days later, Westerberg would dash out a song called “World Class Fad” (“You wax poetic about things pathetic, as long as you look so cute / Don’t be sad, you’re a world class fad”) that many, including Cobain, interpreted as a diss. “I never respected Kurt Cobain enough to write something about him,” said Westerberg. “Maybe he felt he was a world class fad.”

  Ultimately, if indirectly, Westerberg would benefit from the success of Nirvana when he was asked to contribute to the soundtrack of director Cameron Crowe’s Singles, a grunge-centric rom-com set in Seattle. Westerberg had been in Warner Bros. president Lenny Waronker’s office playing him some new demos, including a song called “Dyslexic Heart.” Waronker thought the tune had potential for Crowe’s Warners-distributed movie and quickly got on the phone with his film people. “Lenny told them, ‘I got a song here that’s hit-ish’—that was his term, ‘hit-ish,’” chuckled Westerberg. “I think that’s Yiddish for shit.”

  With Scott Litt producing, Westerberg cut “Dyslexic Heart” and “Waiting for Somebody”—tracks that would anchor the otherwise exclusively Seattle-oriented Singles soundtrack. Crowe also asked Westerberg to score the picture; he spent a couple of weeks at a studio in LA screening the film and composing a selection of instrumentals for it.

  Released in the summer of 1992, Singles was a modest success at the box office (earning $18 million on a budget roughly half that). But the soundtrack was a monster. Riding the grunge explosion, it sold over 2 million copies. Westerberg—whose “Dyslexic Heart” became a number-four hit on the alternative chart—earned his first and only platinum album. “I didn’t feel one bit of pride over that,” he said, noting that “there’s ten [other] bands on the thing.”

  A twenty-one-year-old native of Edina, Minnesota, Mike Leonard was the guitarist and front man for a fledgling Twin Cities band called the Bleeding Hearts. “We were admittedly influenced by the Replacements,” said Leonard. “So I figured, why not get Bob Stinson to play guitar?” Stinson and Leonard had become friendly hanging out, drinking at the Uptown Bar. They’d jammed a bit around 1991, but Bob had begged off the project and recommended another guitarist. The following year, with Static Taxi over and his reputation in local circles further damaged, Stinson was eager for an opportunity to play with the band.

  Leonard invited Stinson to join the Bleeding Hearts and come live with him. “The only way I’d be able to keep him in check, and keep some of the unseemlier people away, was if he moved in with me,” said Leonard. “He still had problems with substances, for sure, but he was happy to be in the band and playing around again.”

  In the fall of 1992—just as the Bleeding Hearts were prepping their first album for California-based indie Fiasco Records—Bob’s health took a strange, nearly grave turn. At the end of October, he’d been complaining to his mother about an extremely painful toothache. He went into Hennepin County Medical Center for what he figured might be an abscess but turned out to be a severe bacterial infection.

  The staff, noting the track marks on his arms, thought he might have AIDS or hepatitis. He was held overnight for tests, but the bacteria quickly spread to his head, neck, and, critically, his brain. “He had a golf ball–size swelling protruding from both temples,” recalled Carleen Krietler. “His neck was like a funnel cloud shape.” Bob was rushed into surgery to relieve the pressure and was told that the swelling had to go down within forty-eight hours or he would die.

  After a difficult waiting period, the infection finally began to clear. Bob spent ten days in the hospital recuperating.

  “Bob shouldn’t have lived through that,” said his sister Lonnie. “I remember thinking, Well, maybe this will be the thing that changes him.” But even the near-death experience didn’t curb his habits. “Pretty soon,” said Ray Reigstad, “he slid back with the beer and coke and then the heroin again.”

  Reuniting with producer Matt Wallace, Paul Westerberg began work on his solo debut in the fall of ’92. Despite his relief at being free of the Replacements, the record mostly found Westerberg in search of a band. He cut with various combinations of musicians—including members of the Georgia Satellites and Wire Train, Ian McLagan from the Faces, even Alex Chilton—as the project carried on in fits and starts for four months at studios in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis.

  Released in the summer of 1993, the resulting disc, 14 Songs—named in homage to J. D. Salinger’s Nine Stories—saw Warner Bros. create an elaborate promotional campaign and fund a high-dollar video for the eventual first single, “World Class Fad” (directed by future Superman helmer Zack Snyder). “They dumped a lot of money into the setup of that record,” said Westerberg manager Gary Hobbib.

  Industry confidence in Westerberg was high, and he also signed a lucrative publishing pact with Warner-Chappell, reportedly worth seven figures. “I was a millionaire for one whole day,” he said, “and then came the manager, the taxman, and I bought a house. The money was gone in an afternoon, literally.”

  To promote 14 Songs, Westerberg would put together a solo band (his “paid companions,” as he called them): Boston-based guitarist Dave Minehan of the Neighborhoods and Raindogs/Red Rockers bassist Darren Hill. On drums was twenty-year-old Josh Freese, a member of the SoCal pop punks the Vandals and a Replacements die-hard who’d played on a couple of 14 Songs tracks.

  For once, Westerberg was determined to play the shows straight and serious. The ’93 tour was his most focused and consistent ever. “I definitely felt like I owed it to people,” he said. “For every time I’d gone out there before and sucked, this time I was going out there with a band that knows the songs . . . [they’re] gonna get them as best as I can play them.”

  Though he’d been offered opening spots with U2 and Peter Gabriel, Westerberg started out headlining a US club and college tour instead. It was a strategic underplay, to sell out the shows and build a buzz, with plans to jump to theaters on the next leg as “World Class Fad” rose up the charts. The problem was that it never really did. While the song did spend a couple of months in rotation on alternative radio, peaking at number four, and 14 Songs managed to get up to number forty-four on the album charts, neither developed real legs. “Once again, I was curiously disappointed that it didn’t fly,” said Westerberg. “But at that point, who co
uld I blame but myself?”

  Taping an appearance on MTV’s flagship alternative music show 120 Minutes, Westerberg played just one of several planned songs, said he was going out for a pack of smokes, and then didn’t return. Gary Hobbib found him several hours later back at his hotel room, looking deeply distressed. “I think I’d been in the closet praying,” said Westerberg. “I definitely had some sort of breakdown there, like a severe anxiety attack or something.”

  Although he’d stopped drinking, Westerberg had not dealt with his alcoholism or depression issues. Back on the road, he was white-knuckling his way through his promotional obligations, through concerts, through his life. “He’s not drinking. He’s trying to behave in a new relationship. And at the end of the day he was all alone,” said Hobbib. “There was no Tommy anymore. He didn’t have Tommy to bounce his discontent off of. Now it’s all on him, and it started to eat him up.”

  With 14 Songs increasingly looking like a bust—it would cap out at 150,000 copies sold—Westerberg began searching for scapegoats and seized on Hobbib. After eight years together, the relationship was growing stale and becoming strained.

  On the road, Westerberg was being seen to by Warner Bros. artist relations rep Larry White. He began asking White about other managers. White knew Lindy Goetz, a former musician and MCA promo man, who’d gone on to success managing the career of the multi-platinum Warners act the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Goetz was halfway toward retiring, but said he’d take on Westerberg if White quit the label and joined his firm as part of the package.

  In mid-August, Westerberg decided to make a change and go with Goetz and White. The following day he rang up Hobbib and fired him. “That call was actually more of an intimate moment than any other we had,” said Hobbib, “where we kinda got into expressing some feelings for each other.”

  White would take over day-to-day management of what was proving to be an increasingly fraying situation with Westerberg on tour. In Columbia, Missouri, Westerberg played to barely 150 people in the 1,800-capacity Jesse Auditorium. In the middle of the set, he went down on the ground, singing flat on his back. The band thought he was fooling around until bassist Darren Hill walked by and Westerberg grabbed his ankle and began groaning for help. The show was halted, and Westerberg, who’d thrown his back out severely, was carried off by the band to the dressing room. “It was like the moment in Spinal Tap when Nigel Tufnel can’t get off the floor and the roadies come out to pick him up,” recalled Josh Freese.

  Westerberg was insisting on scrapping the remaining dates on the tour—though everyone knew that would be the death knell for Warner Bros.’s promotion of the record. “I’m not saying the back injury was psychosomatic, but his mental state played a part,” said White. “He definitely wanted that tour canceled.” (White soon became another casualty himself—fired after just a few months, as his relationship with Westerberg quickly soured.)

  Westerberg did return to the road begrudgingly in December to play out a few remaining obligations, including an appearance on Saturday Night Live. During rehearsals, A&R man Michael Hill told Westerberg’s band members to keep quiet about the fact that he’d been in the Replacements; no one wanted to risk SNL producer Lorne Michaels’s wrath if he realized Paul’s involvement with the ’Mats’ ’86 fiasco.

  The show, hosted by actor Charlton Heston, was relatively uneventful as Westerberg did “Knockin on Mine” and a version of the Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait” with a full horn section. After the credits had rolled, a stern-looking Michaels made a beeline for Westerberg, who held his breath. “But Lorne was nice to me,” said Westerberg. “I told him, ‘See, I didn’t break anything, I didn’t swear.’ And he patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘You grew up, you learned.’ I guess I did. But it sure wasn’t as much fun as the first time.”

  Given the indifference to Bash & Pop’s debut, keeping a band together proved a challenge. Tommy Stinson’s main partner in the project, Steve Foley, decided to leave. Soon after, Tommy asked for a release from his Warner Bros. contract.

  Before Stinson could put together a new lineup or look for a new record deal, however, financial reality intervened. “I was fucking dead broke,” said Tommy, whose girlfriend Kelly Spencer had been supporting him for months. “I was in arrears for child support.” Aside from his one-day stint as a dishwasher during high school, his only job had been playing in a rock-and-roll band. Now, at twenty-seven, he had “no other options” but to look for work.

  Reading the back page of the LA Weekly, he spotted an ad for a telemarketing job. It paid seven bucks an hour and didn’t require any of the things he was lacking: experience or a high school diploma. With no car—he still hadn’t learned to drive—Stinson would rise at dawn and catch a series of buses across town to his new job: selling printer toner over the phone.

  Though he’d sworn himself to rock-and-roll as a kid, Tommy’s greatest triumph wouldn’t come playing onstage or in a studio, but rather in a drab cubicle making cold calls to sell office supplies. “In the process, I learned how to sell myself. And I got out of the Replacements mind-set—that self-sabotage, self-defeating shit,” he said. “I got to a point where I got more confident as a person. What I found out was that people are attracted to confidence, rather than guys who are sitting with a tear in their beer all bummed out. That’s when I finally fuckin’ grew up.”

  Part II

  To those outside of the Twin Cities, Bob Stinson had become a mystery. After being booted from the Replacements in 1986, he’d all but vanished as far as the rock public was concerned. There would be the occasional mention of his activities in ’Mats articles—that he was playing with some local group or that he’d started a family—but few knew where life had really taken him in the seven years since leaving the band.

  Charles Aaron was a thirty-year-old writer from North Carolina, working freelance for SPIN magazine in New York City. He’d been a Replacements fan in college, seen the band play with Bob, and wondered what had become of him. In early 1993, Aaron’s editor at SPIN encouraged him to go to Minneapolis, find out, and come back with the story.

  A hungry but still relatively inexperienced reporter, Aaron took on the task. Through some Minneapolis contacts, he got Bob’s number and rang him up with a pitch for the piece. Stinson was playing with the Bleeding Hearts, and the band was readying its debut LP, so a story in SPIN was a major opportunity. On the phone at least, Bob seemed relatively together. “People think, ‘Oh, you found the guy, the saddest man in music, and hopped a plane to go suck his blood,’” said Aaron. “But honestly, I had no idea. I talked to him and he sounded like good old goofy Bob.”

  When Aaron arrived, it was clear that this would not be a redemption story. Stinson had aged dramatically, clearly abusing himself with drugs and alcohol, and his mental state was confused. “It was really kind of overwhelming to meet Bob,” said Aaron. “He was one of those force-of-nature people that no matter how much he was weakened or not thinking clearly, he swept you up in this bear hug of activity, stage-managing everything, and being honest in a disarming way.”

  Aaron would drink and hang out with Stinson all around Minneapolis. He would talk to Bob’s old friends like Terry Katzman and Chris Mars and his ex-wife Carleen Krietler. The article would tell the story of Bob’s firing from the Replacements and his subsequent travails, including his son Joey Stinson’s medical condition and his own issues with addiction. What came out was a bleak picture that still only hinted at the entire truth:

  [Stinson] is offhandedly brutal about his risks and disappointments. “You know, I’d really like to meet myself sometime. I’d probably beat the shit out of myself for letting opportunities go by,” he says, adding, “I guess you could say I’m never pleased, or in Paul’s words, I’m unsatisfied.” More problematically, he rambles on about his life’s almost-clownish misery. “It’s like trying to commit suicide. The bigger the gun, the less likely you are to make it happen. I mean, I put a gun to my head, but I’m still alive
. I don’t have a problem with that.”

  “If I walked into that situation now, I wouldn’t continue with the story,” said Aaron. “I would’ve said, this person needs some help. The last thing he needs is somebody writing a magazine story about how much trouble his life has been. But at the time I didn’t know any better, and I just kept going with it.”

  Aaron witnessed a reunion between Bob and Tommy Stinson and their mother Anita as the Bleeding Hearts opened for Bash & Pop at the 7th St Entry. “Playing that show and having me there I guess must have brought up a lot of stuff,” said Aaron. “He was trying to figure out his place in the world, and in music, and even in his family.”

  “He started opening up about all of the regrets about his whole life. He said stuff about his [childhood] that I didn’t even feel comfortable printing. He was trying to make sense of a situation that there was no sense to it. And there was a lot of reminiscing about the Replacements. He had never gotten over leaving the band.”

  After a week in Minneapolis, Aaron was drained, ready to go home. “I felt like this is one of the saddest experiences I’ve ever had. But I really admired the guy; he was such a completely original figure.”

  Before Aaron left, he and Stinson were trooping around a frozen Lake Harriet.

  “Have you ever done heroin?” Bob asked him suddenly. “Ever use a needle?” Aaron shook his head no. “You can really get some good, cheap stuff around here. I don’t really do it, but if you wanted to, we could get some and do it, you know, later, if you wanted.” The exchange ended up as part of the disturbing conclusion to Aaron’s published piece.

  “The moment where he asked me about doing drugs, the tragic thing is that he trusted me,” said Aaron. “We were hanging out, becoming buddies a little bit. He wanted to share what, at that point, his life was. As I wrote more features I learned that’s the stuff that you really don’t put in. But that’s the part that people still remember.”