One foot in the door, the other one in the gutter: The Replacements, America’s Wasted Greatest Band

The Replacements should have never left the small town circuit; they didn’t try to sell records, they didn’t have aspirations to play Wembley Stadium (I guess the American equivalent is Madison Square Gardens?) and yet they were somehow able to leave behind a legacy, albeit one that was patchy and inconsistent. If they were around today they’d probably be considered an ironic drunken joke band like Towers of London. In fact they would almost certainly get beaten down by a heavy rain of blogosphere bile.

It was this inconsistency that eventually destroyed the band, collectively and individually The Replacements made mistake after mistake, some of them contributed towards the myth of the band, others came at a cost, but that’s the cost you pay when you live your life with a devil may care attitude.

Let’s get some history out of the way. Three quarters of the band – The Stinson brothers Bob and his younger sibling Tommy (who lived the childhood fantasy of quitting high school and growing up in a rock band), and drummer Chris Mars were jamming together one day. Fate would have it that Paul Westerberg would walk past the garage where the trio was playing, he listened in to the practice session and liked what he heard, knowing Mars got Westerberg’s foot in the door, deceiving another vocalist who had auditioned for the band got him into the fold. Back then the group were known as Dogbreath before changing their name to The Replacements, after leaning briefly towards less striking name The Impediments. The Replacements described how the band saw themselves, the nearly men, the guys who were slouched on the side, waiting in the wings.

The band put together a demo which Westerberg passed on to Peter Jesperson (yes, back then you couldn’t email mp3s or send links to your MySpace page) he was impressed and immediately signed them to his co-founded independent label Twin/Tone Records. Jesperson also deserves credit for turning the band onto more refined melodic influences such as the Beatles and Big Star, and away from the showy stadium rock bands and English punk bands they adored. What he saw in The Replacements was something no one, not even the band themselves did – potential.

The Twin/Tone years begin with Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash (1981) - a rough, and ready collection of short energetic bursts, though strangely it retains a indefinable magnetism. Sorry Ma displayed Westerberg’s trademark adolescent howl (arguably imitated and packaged to radio friendly unit shifting effect by Kurt Cobain nearly a decade later) and other trademarks of the ‘Mats sound were also already evident, from the frantic energy of the Stinson brothers to Chris Mars smashing the drums like a Ritalin-starved Neanderthal. If you listen hard you can hear the beer bottles being placed down on the speakers; you can almost imagine the Johnny Thunders and Joe Strummer impressions. Next they released the Stink EP (1982), the band dabbled in the faster hardcore sound that was sweeping the States thanks to the likes of Black Flag, the Circle Jerks and The Misfits, this was exemplified by ‘Kids Don’t Follow’, the EP itself was more a less that single backed with an assortment of rushed, half baked material.

Then came Hootenanny (1983) a, real mish mash of melody and madness. The band even swapped instruments for the title track, and cheekily played Beatles songs with their own lyric replacing the words of Lennon and McCartney; again it looked as though the band was just messing around, they were of course, but importantly they had slowed the pace down and moved away from their scene contemporaries who dealt in aimless hardcore sloganeering. Even in the early years of the band there was certainly a divide growing between Westerberg and the rest; he was comfortable writing ballads, the others wanted to live fast and party hard. A compromise was reached on Hootenanny with some more structured songs, and better arrangements.

Let It Be (1984) is arguably the band’s crowning moment, the unspoken philosophy of play softly, softly, catchy cult status eventually paid off. Westerberg’s songwriting reached new heights. Commercially the record didn’t sell, but critically it was praised across the broad. Ears pricked up, including celebrated critic Robert Christgau (Moses to Lester Bangs’ Jesus?) who championed the four plucky guys from Minneapolis. The band were also getting steady college radio play and beginning to tour nationwide.

Why is Let It Be held in such regard? I think it’s because the album is relatable. A moment in time that we can all acknowledge, you can say “Yeah, I’ve been there”. It combines hormonal feelings (’I Will Dare’, ‘Answering Machine’), angst (’Unsatisfied’), immaturity (’Gary’s Got a Boner’) and uncertainty (’Sixteen Blue’). Never has an album summed up adolescence so well. ‘We’re Comin’ Out’ brought the rock, so the band was still able to appease their old fans that were unsure of the new direction.

Following fellow Minnesotans, and sometime local rivals Hüsker Dü who had released the seminal Zen Arcade a few months earlier, Let It Be seemed to be in some ways a response record.  In truth both bands reached the crossroads, one turned left, the other went right, and their paths were unlikely to cross again in the big leagues. Labels began to sniff around Minneapolis, and alongside the unusual feeling of getting acclaim, and the potentially life-changing offer from a major label, The Replacements became unsettled. Remember this was a band that notoriously set their sights low, an in-joke was that the band wanted to go all the way “To the Middle”, guarding themselves against the odds of failure, attempting to cushion the likely fall if they decided to climb the ladder.

It was during a showcase gig at CBGB’s in front of a gathering of record exec types that things got shaky again, the band played a stinker, the set descended into a cover show farce; deliberately antagonistic and juvenile, just like in the old days when they would play Johnny Cash and Dusty Springfield songs to piss off the hardcore scenesters. Despite this Sire Records, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers took a punt on the band and offered them a deal that they quickly accepted. The fallout of this was the sacking of manager, and number one fan Peter Jesperson, it was a sign that the wheels were slowly starting to come off.

Tim (1985) is my favourite Replacements album. There is a lot to say about the pros and cons of major labels, but it appears that Tommy Ramone who produced the album was able to get the best out of the band by more or less telling the band to keep it simple and do what they do best, and yes I can concede that the production is not completely up to scratch but that is mainly to do with the fact that the Ramone was going deaf. The rhythm section of Mars and Tommy Stinson is tight, the guitars are cleaner and Westerberg’s voice is assured. The record conjures up the same feelings I had when I heard the Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape; Tim is an album chocked full of commercial-orientated anthems (’Bastards of Young’, ‘Left of the Dial’). The band continued their anti-music video stance by releasing an arty promo for ‘Left of the Dial’ which consisted of a single black and white shot of a stereo speaker.

Bob Stinson departed soon after the release of Tim; drink and drugs had messed him up, tragically he was unable to turn his life around and died in 1995 when he body finally succumbed to the toil he inflicted upon it.

Now a major label act The Replacements were now minnows operating on the margins of an industry dominated by heavyweights such as Prince, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen. 1987’s Pleased to Meet Me really had no chance up against Sign O’ The Times, Bad and Tunnel of Love. The remaining trio ploughed onwards nonetheless, seemingly oblivious of new responsibilities, the excess continued, though not quite at the levels of Mötley Crüe they were shambolic enough. Mars and Stinson were distant; Westerberg was left to do a lot of studio work with the replacement of The Replacement Slim Dunlap.

Legendary musician and producer Jim Dickinson took care of production duties, the songs recorded struggled to compare to the previous two ‘great’ releases. Making the most of studio technology the album was a digital recording, in structure the album is an awful lot like Hootenanny with strange out of the place songs like ‘Nightclub Jitters’ in between fine ballads (’Skyway’) and rockers (’I.O.U’, ‘Alex Chilton’, ‘The Ledge’, ‘Red Red Wine’).

Don’t Tell a Soul (1989) had a bigger sound, but is a poor effort veering on mediocre, it sounds like a tired eighties record, from what now had become a tired eighties band, it included synths for God’s sake. All Shook Down (1990) was made up of predominantly acoustic songs, preparing Westerberg for life as a solo artist, samey and mellow, the album contained only a few good un’s (’Merry Go Round’, ‘Sadly Beautiful’). The Replacements ran out of steam, Paul Westerberg sounded like a broken man.

Post Replacements Tommy Stinson ended up as one of Axel Roses’ hired hands in his new version of Guns N’Roses, Chris Mars turned his hand to art and the mercurial Westerberg went on to have a hit or miss solo career, somewhat out of the blue last year’s self-released 49:00 was well received.

The Replacements were unique in the sense that if you were in a band today and you tried to imitate their career path you wouldn’t get two steps out of the local pub gig circuit. Live they were extremely schizophrenic, you were never sure what band would turn up. They were real, they weren’t posers, and simply put they were just a bunch of ordinary guys who had a good time. The rebellion and defiance wasn’t an act, hell, it didn’t even mean anything. They were nihilists without even understanding the concept of nihilism. They couldn’t care less. Yet they inspired devotion from a very patient fan base that they continually let down.

If we can learn anything from The Replacements, we can say that they were the end of an era, a band with commercial appeal that never fell into the trap of careerism, or worse professionalism. They embodied the clichéd idea of Rock and Roll spirit. But was that what they were intending? Has their history become a façade of myths and half truths? Did a good story get in the way of a band helmed by a focused songwriter whose talent got dragged down by the bottle and a strange sense of brotherhood with three fellow Minnesotan misfits?

There is also the question of What If? Undoubtedly The Replacements were an unlucky band, the planets were not aligned, and their music didn’t fall into the world’s hearts. Let It Be had the songs to be a Never Mind the Bollocks or a Nevermind but label backing came a year too late. The shame is that this could actually be a defence of major labels, without marketing and publicity, without quality songs getting on radio playlists a potentially bona fide classic album remains a lost classic.

Sixteen Blue: My ‘Mats Playlist (click here to open Spotify playlist)

1. ‘Knock Your Door Down’ -  Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash

2. ‘Shiftless When Idle’ – Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out The Trash

3. ‘White and Lazy’ – Stink EP

4. ‘Take Me Down to the Hospital’ – Hootenanny

5. ‘Buck Hill’ – Hootenanny

6. ‘Androgynous’ – Let it Be

7. ‘Unsatisfied’ – Let it Be

8. ‘Sixteen Blue’ – Let it Be

9. ‘Bastards of Young’ – Tim

10. ‘Left of the Dial’ – Tim

11. ‘Here Comes A Regular’ - Tim

12. ’I.O.U’ – Pleased to Meet Me

13. ‘The Ledge’ – Pleased to Meet Me

14. ’Can’t Hardly Wait’ – Pleased to Meet Me

15. ‘I Won’t’ – Don’t Tell a Soul

16. ‘The Last’ – All Shook Down