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Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERBased on a decade of research and reporting--as well as access to the Replacements' key principals, Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson--author Bob Mehr has fashioned something far more compelling than a conventional band bio. Trouble Boys is a deeply intimate portrait, revealing the primal factors and forces that shaped one of the most brilliant and notoriously self-destructive rock 'n' roll bands of all time.Beginning with riveting revelations about the Replacements' troubled early years, Trouble Boys follows the group as they rise within the early '80s American underground. It uncovers the darker truths behind the band's legendary drinking, showing how their addictions first came to define them, and then nearly destroyed them.A roaring road adventure, a heartrending family drama, and a cautionary showbiz tale, Trouble Boys has deservedly been hailed as an instant classic of rock lit.
488 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2016
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May 11, 2016
I met the Replacements (well, two of them) after one of their shows when I was a young teen. My friend and I were lingering in a hallway, killing time before my father arrived to collect us when suddenly, a door opened and out stepped Tommy and Paul, chatting and laughing. When they spotted us they didn’t even hesitate to walk over, say hello and thank us for attending their show. They both hugged me, and Tommy sweetly kissed my cheek. They were utterly charming and acted as if they couldn’t have been happier to be in our company. We talked for a few minutes (about what, I don’t remember, I was so overwhelmed) before they continued down the hallway. The two of them immediately picked up the conversation they’d been having before greeting us, and Paul draped his arm around Tommy’s shoulders as they rounded the corner.
They seemed like great guys and the best of friends. That was the only time I saw them live, and that last image of them is what’s lingered in my mind for the past few decades when I think of the ‘Mats.
I’ll admit, I was a little nervous about reading this book. I had such a high opinion of these guys, and they provided the soundtrack for almost a decade of my life. Still, I rationalized that I already knew most of the bad news. I’d read reviews of some terrible concerts, skimmed a few interviews with Westerberg where he was less than charming, and of course I’d heard that the band really liked to drink. I figured I’d be reading a fleshing-out of what I already knew, and all would be well.
Well, I was wrong. I had absolutely no idea who the ‘Mats really were, or just how deeply troubled they were. I’d read that Bob Stinton had a lot of problems, but I had no idea how horrifying his childhood was or how much heartbreak he suffered throughout his life. Nor did I realize just how addicted the band was, or how many intoxicants they consumed on a regular basis. Seriously, it’s breathtaking. By all rights, all these guys should be long dead.
Even harder to read about were the band’s (and especially Westerberg’s) self-destructive tendencies. So many opportunities were lost or deliberately squandered. They didn’t just burn bridges, they gleefully bombed them and celebrated by rolling around in the ashes. It’s impossible to read about all the people they alienated without wondering how differently things might had turned out for the ‘Mats had they been willing to play the game even a little bit.
And as much as I would have loved for them to have become international stars, I’m not sure Westerberg would have been any happier if that had happened. Even modest stardom seemed to send him spiraling downwards into self-loathing self-destruction. As the man himself explained, Westerberg doesn’t cherish the things he loves, he destroys them.
It’s heartbreaking to read, and even more heartbreaking to imagine how much pain Westerberg must have been in to systematically destroy so many good things in his life, including the future of his own band.
I can’t really comment much about this as a rock biography, as this is the first I’ve read. As a book, it’s highly entertaining, well-written, fascinating, but deeply sad. Even while reading the hilarious tales of the band’s wildest antics, I felt a sense of sorrow lurking just beneath the surface, and there was never a time while reading that I didn’t feel a heavy sense of loss. Part of that was dreading the inevitable split — not of the band so much, but of the friendship between Paul and Tommy. I found myself taking long breaks in reading, because I really didn’t want to tarnish my own final image of the Gutter Twins. In my mind, they’re still young and happy, laughing as they walk down that hallway together.
They seemed like great guys and the best of friends. That was the only time I saw them live, and that last image of them is what’s lingered in my mind for the past few decades when I think of the ‘Mats.
I’ll admit, I was a little nervous about reading this book. I had such a high opinion of these guys, and they provided the soundtrack for almost a decade of my life. Still, I rationalized that I already knew most of the bad news. I’d read reviews of some terrible concerts, skimmed a few interviews with Westerberg where he was less than charming, and of course I’d heard that the band really liked to drink. I figured I’d be reading a fleshing-out of what I already knew, and all would be well.
Well, I was wrong. I had absolutely no idea who the ‘Mats really were, or just how deeply troubled they were. I’d read that Bob Stinton had a lot of problems, but I had no idea how horrifying his childhood was or how much heartbreak he suffered throughout his life. Nor did I realize just how addicted the band was, or how many intoxicants they consumed on a regular basis. Seriously, it’s breathtaking. By all rights, all these guys should be long dead.
Even harder to read about were the band’s (and especially Westerberg’s) self-destructive tendencies. So many opportunities were lost or deliberately squandered. They didn’t just burn bridges, they gleefully bombed them and celebrated by rolling around in the ashes. It’s impossible to read about all the people they alienated without wondering how differently things might had turned out for the ‘Mats had they been willing to play the game even a little bit.
And as much as I would have loved for them to have become international stars, I’m not sure Westerberg would have been any happier if that had happened. Even modest stardom seemed to send him spiraling downwards into self-loathing self-destruction. As the man himself explained, Westerberg doesn’t cherish the things he loves, he destroys them.
It’s heartbreaking to read, and even more heartbreaking to imagine how much pain Westerberg must have been in to systematically destroy so many good things in his life, including the future of his own band.
I can’t really comment much about this as a rock biography, as this is the first I’ve read. As a book, it’s highly entertaining, well-written, fascinating, but deeply sad. Even while reading the hilarious tales of the band’s wildest antics, I felt a sense of sorrow lurking just beneath the surface, and there was never a time while reading that I didn’t feel a heavy sense of loss. Part of that was dreading the inevitable split — not of the band so much, but of the friendship between Paul and Tommy. I found myself taking long breaks in reading, because I really didn’t want to tarnish my own final image of the Gutter Twins. In my mind, they’re still young and happy, laughing as they walk down that hallway together.
March 25, 2025
From a Creem magazine article, September 1986:
"They sound “awful” – sloppy, hitting wrong notes everywhere, missing cues – and positively, absolutely wonderful. (...) On this particular night, the Replacements are one of the greatest rock’n’roll bands in the universe."
Fair warning: this might be more of a crazed fangirl raving than a proper review, but if you’ve known me a while, that’s what I tend to do with books about music and bands. If you don’t mind, read on. If that annoys you, skip to the final paragraph, just before the quotes.
My husband and I are both music nerds; it was one of the first things we bonded over when we first met, and finding new music and introducing it to each other is still something we love to do. We get all excited and make each other playlists, like teenage dorks. There have been hits (Geoff Berner and Full Bush are household favorites) and misses (he still doesn’t get Laura Stevenson, and I’ll never love Helmet; c’est la vie), but last fall, Jason listened to the No Dogs in Space podcast (if you are a music nerd, especially an alternative and punk nerd, you should be listening to No Dogs in Space) series about the Replacements and he almost lost his mind. It was obvious that he'd run into something very, very special. He made me a playlist, we binged the podcast during our Christmas Montreal-Rochester drive, and I immediately became equally obsessed with this weird, and inexplicably not world-famous band from Minnesota. Late to the party is sort of my M.O., and in my defence, I was born the year they released "Let It Be"...
But I have to say, I am borderline furious that this music was out there literally my entire life, and I just found out about it, like… a few months ago! The only people I knew who had heard of them were my Gen X music nerd friends, and not even all of them! As the band Art Brut so eloquently put it in their song ‘The Replacements’:
“I can't believe I've only just discovered the Replacements
How have I only just found out about the Replacements?
Some of them are nearly as old as my parents
How have I only just found out about the Replacements?”
In all my books on the history of punk (and I have a lot of those!), I have only found one that bothers to mention the Replacements and I was wondering why that was. Until I read this book... Now, it makes a little bit more sense. Still, kudos to Brian Cogan for having an (albeit small) entry about them in his “Punk Encyclopedia”.
The Replacements came to be in Minneapolis in 1978, when Paul Westerberg somehow took over the Stinson brothers’ band Dogbreath, installed himself as the lead singer, changed the band’s name and influenced the sound and feel of the music by giving the rest of the band some punk records. So while they started out as a punk band, they quickly felt limited by the scene’s ‘standards’ and their sound quickly evolved into something very stylistically diverse and nuanced – but their reputation as a loose cannon live act soon preceded them: they would either be unbelievably brilliant on stage, or too wasted to play properly – and they sometimes deliberately ruined their own sets to antagonize the crowd if they didn’t like their vibe. They were contemporaries of Hüsker Dü and R.E.M. but never managed to get anywhere near their level of fame and success because they were too dysfunctional as a band to do what needed to be done for their careers to truly take off (my favorite description of them is 'the little engine that could but didn't fucking feel like it') – while simultaneously/accidentally cultivating a rabid fanbase who adored them for their antics almost as much as for their music. Their way of doing things was unsustainable, and after many ups, downs, firing, re-hiring and re-firing, the band called it quits in 1991 and eventually did a brief reunion tour around 2013 before parting ways yet again. They are now the stuff of underground music legends, a band of incredible talent that got in its own way at every turn, which has given them a powerful and enduring mystique.
I have read a ton of rock biographies in my life, and very often, what happens with those books is that they are either hagiographies written by devoted fans who won’t address the dark or weird sides of the artists they write about, or the pacing is terrible because they get mired in irrelevant details and make you feel like you are reading an extremely long and badly written Wikipedia article. Both of those kinds of rock bios drive me nuts, and I was a bit nervous about this one, but I shouldn’t have fretted: Bob Mehr is a fan, but he is also a great music journalist (and talented writer, I might add), and he talked with the former/surviving band members themselves (except Chris Mars, who declined to be involved in the project), as well as over 200 people who had known them or worked with them in some capacity. I'll join the chorus of people who say this is the best rock bio they have ever read: there wasn't a page of this door-stopper that didn't knock me on my ass.
Reading this book, one quickly learns that to love the Replacements means you have to be willing to embrace chaos and the fucked-up sides of these four contrarian weirdos. And yes, there are descriptions of some pretty epically dickish behavior in this book, but I have long stopped expecting musicians to behave much differently, especially when there is booze or drugs involved, so it didn’t really spoil my enjoyment of the book – or taint my opinion of the guys themselves. You are telling me that Paul Westerberg, who might be the most brilliant songwriter of his generation, is a jerk? Color me shocked… If anything, the generalized messiness makes the story of the band even more compelling than it would have been, had those guys not been fucked up contrarians of the finest kind.
Since the podcast used this book as one of its primary sources, a lot of the stories here were familiar, but it was wonderful to revisit them and get more details about the greatest rock band who ever failed at making it big. Their story is equal parts hilarious ("I'm not complaining, Jim, but I'm just curious: how DID they get the vomit on the ceiling?") and tragic, so it’s an interesting experience to go from one extreme emotion to another while learning about their lives. If the band had been less wasted and more willing to compromise even a little bit, I am convinced that they would have been huge, because their talent is mind-blowing – even when they were trashed out of their minds – but that didn’t happen both because of their behavior and because of some truly shit luck.
If there is any real takeaway from their story, it’s that nothing is quite as simple as just playing the game or sticking to your principles while navigating the treacherous waters of the recording industry. I read an article that describes Paul Westerberg as someone who skipped being a star on his way to becoming a legend, and I seriously can’t think of a better way to put it. Whether that was by design or not is an interesting question, given that the band refused to pander to anyone – the audience, record label people, anyone who could have helped, really! The self-sabotage is truly impressive, in a shattering sort of way, but I am quite certain that fame and fortune would not have exorcised any of those men’s demons. In fact, I am shocked at how brutal and bleak their pre-band lives were, and I have come to believe that their music was their literal salvation – I am not sure any of them would have made it past thirty if they hadn’t taken this road. Not that it ended well for everyone… One could argue that the story of the Replacements is also a really upsetting case study about of how toxic masculinity hurts men.
In fact, this is something very special about this particular rock bio: most books like this describe their subjects’ horrible behavior, sure, but few bother to tell the readers where this behavior comes from. And these guys had it rough from the get-go. Bob Stinson suffered horrific abuse at his stepfather’s hands on top of untreated mental illness, and his entire adult life was heart-breaking. All four of the band members suffered head injuries in their early years and there was generational alcoholism and untreated trauma, depression, and anxiety disorders all over their backgrounds. It doesn’t really excuse things, of course, but at least there is some context to make sense of the deviant behaviors and reckless shenanigans that made them famous and simultaneously tanked their rock star dreams.
I think that this may be why people who love them feel so passionately about them: their music is not the only thing about them that indicates that they felt alienation in such a visceral way, and anyone who has ever felt that in their own lives gets tremendous comfort from their art, but also, simply, from their existence. I know I’m very new here, in the Replacements fan demographic, but I totally get why people who love this band are as rabidly obsessed as they are. Reading about all the adversity and madness they endured actually made me admire them even more than I would have just from listening to the records - especially since I now have the stories behind every song, making them even more impactful when I listen to them.
I will not repeat every insane anecdote documented here, but this is almost 500 pages of delightful and often horrifying stories (including the best groupie story I have ever read), and I can’t help but admire the pure panache with which these guys did their thing. It was snotty, irresponsible, and unhealthy, but I wanted to clap enthusiastically at their antics all the time. They might have stopped playing punk, but they never stopped being punk, and I love them for it so fucking much.
Discovering them and falling in love with their music so long after their active years is an interesting process. In some ways, it feels like I accidentally joined a weird underground cult. I will always be mad I wasn’t the right age (or, you know, born) when bands like the Clash, the Cramps and Black Flag were at their zenith, and now we can add the Replacements to the list of bands I’d catch live if I ever get access to a time machine (please ping me if you have a time machine). It's often stunning to listen to their records, look at the dates and then realize that without the Replacements, there would be no Pixies, and no Nirvana... Actually, one could even argue that plenty of rockers who came to fame in the 90s worked decently hard at sounding, looking and behaving a bit (or a lot!) like Paul Westerberg. I have been looking through my music collection and I see the influence of the 'Mats in general, and of Westerberg specifically, on some of my favorite albums and tracks and it makes me laugh (I also found out I had been listening to one of his songs, ‘Stain Yer Blood’, since grade school – long story – and I had no idea who he was this whole time!). I might have just discovered them a few months ago, but in a weird way, they sounded familiar because they were… kind of everywhere, albeit indirectly (for instance, I just realized my Thomas Ligotti short story collection’s cover art was made by Chris Mars, WTF!).
If you like the band, read this book. If you enjoy rock bios, read this book - it’s truly a masterclass on writing about musicians. If you have never heard of the Replacements before, get a copy of "Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out the Trash", "Stink", “Hootenanny”, “Let It Be”, “Tim” and “Pleased to Meet Me” (I actually recommend getting the entire discography, but those records are the core classics) and read this book. Preferably while wearing your rattiest flannel shirt. This book reconnected me to the feeling that made me want to make music in the first place, and that's a treasure of a feeling.
A few quotes:
“Replacements partisans were, on the whole, literate, dark-humored, and a bit confused about their place in the world. They weren’t the go-getters or yuppie types, but they weren’t hopeless wastrels either. They were, Tommy Stinson would note, ‘more like us than they fuckin’ knew. They didn’t really fit anywhere. They probably didn’t aspire to a whole lot, but they also didn’t aspire to doing nothing either. That’s the kind of fan we probably appealed to most: the people that were in the gray area. Just like us.’”
“Still, Westerberg never took the power of his songs, his ability to connect with listeners, for granted. ‘People always come up and say, “You wrote this just for me,” he noted. ‘And I say, “Yeah, I did. I don’t know you, but I knew you were out there.”’
"'He [Bob Dylan] just walked in and started talking to the band,' recalled engineer Cliff Norrell. 'He was saying, "My kid loves you; my son's really into your band." You could see their eyes light up, and then Dylan goes, "You're R.E.M., right?"'"
"Davino [touring sound technician] gamely battled the band's ridiculous volume. "You always heard that Motorhead was the loudest band ever, and I used to say bullshit. Motorhead was pussies compared to dese (sic) guys.""
"Tommy would tell reporters he found it far easier to work with his current bandmate in Guns N' Roses than his old Replacements partner. "He keeps pulling out the 'Paul Westerberg's more difficult to deal with than Axl Rose' line," said Westerberg. "And I think, 'Yeah, of course. Wouldn't Van Gogh be more difficult than Norman Rockwell?'"
"They sound “awful” – sloppy, hitting wrong notes everywhere, missing cues – and positively, absolutely wonderful. (...) On this particular night, the Replacements are one of the greatest rock’n’roll bands in the universe."
Fair warning: this might be more of a crazed fangirl raving than a proper review, but if you’ve known me a while, that’s what I tend to do with books about music and bands. If you don’t mind, read on. If that annoys you, skip to the final paragraph, just before the quotes.
My husband and I are both music nerds; it was one of the first things we bonded over when we first met, and finding new music and introducing it to each other is still something we love to do. We get all excited and make each other playlists, like teenage dorks. There have been hits (Geoff Berner and Full Bush are household favorites) and misses (he still doesn’t get Laura Stevenson, and I’ll never love Helmet; c’est la vie), but last fall, Jason listened to the No Dogs in Space podcast (if you are a music nerd, especially an alternative and punk nerd, you should be listening to No Dogs in Space) series about the Replacements and he almost lost his mind. It was obvious that he'd run into something very, very special. He made me a playlist, we binged the podcast during our Christmas Montreal-Rochester drive, and I immediately became equally obsessed with this weird, and inexplicably not world-famous band from Minnesota. Late to the party is sort of my M.O., and in my defence, I was born the year they released "Let It Be"...
But I have to say, I am borderline furious that this music was out there literally my entire life, and I just found out about it, like… a few months ago! The only people I knew who had heard of them were my Gen X music nerd friends, and not even all of them! As the band Art Brut so eloquently put it in their song ‘The Replacements’:
“I can't believe I've only just discovered the Replacements
How have I only just found out about the Replacements?
Some of them are nearly as old as my parents
How have I only just found out about the Replacements?”
In all my books on the history of punk (and I have a lot of those!), I have only found one that bothers to mention the Replacements and I was wondering why that was. Until I read this book... Now, it makes a little bit more sense. Still, kudos to Brian Cogan for having an (albeit small) entry about them in his “Punk Encyclopedia”.
The Replacements came to be in Minneapolis in 1978, when Paul Westerberg somehow took over the Stinson brothers’ band Dogbreath, installed himself as the lead singer, changed the band’s name and influenced the sound and feel of the music by giving the rest of the band some punk records. So while they started out as a punk band, they quickly felt limited by the scene’s ‘standards’ and their sound quickly evolved into something very stylistically diverse and nuanced – but their reputation as a loose cannon live act soon preceded them: they would either be unbelievably brilliant on stage, or too wasted to play properly – and they sometimes deliberately ruined their own sets to antagonize the crowd if they didn’t like their vibe. They were contemporaries of Hüsker Dü and R.E.M. but never managed to get anywhere near their level of fame and success because they were too dysfunctional as a band to do what needed to be done for their careers to truly take off (my favorite description of them is 'the little engine that could but didn't fucking feel like it') – while simultaneously/accidentally cultivating a rabid fanbase who adored them for their antics almost as much as for their music. Their way of doing things was unsustainable, and after many ups, downs, firing, re-hiring and re-firing, the band called it quits in 1991 and eventually did a brief reunion tour around 2013 before parting ways yet again. They are now the stuff of underground music legends, a band of incredible talent that got in its own way at every turn, which has given them a powerful and enduring mystique.
I have read a ton of rock biographies in my life, and very often, what happens with those books is that they are either hagiographies written by devoted fans who won’t address the dark or weird sides of the artists they write about, or the pacing is terrible because they get mired in irrelevant details and make you feel like you are reading an extremely long and badly written Wikipedia article. Both of those kinds of rock bios drive me nuts, and I was a bit nervous about this one, but I shouldn’t have fretted: Bob Mehr is a fan, but he is also a great music journalist (and talented writer, I might add), and he talked with the former/surviving band members themselves (except Chris Mars, who declined to be involved in the project), as well as over 200 people who had known them or worked with them in some capacity. I'll join the chorus of people who say this is the best rock bio they have ever read: there wasn't a page of this door-stopper that didn't knock me on my ass.
Reading this book, one quickly learns that to love the Replacements means you have to be willing to embrace chaos and the fucked-up sides of these four contrarian weirdos. And yes, there are descriptions of some pretty epically dickish behavior in this book, but I have long stopped expecting musicians to behave much differently, especially when there is booze or drugs involved, so it didn’t really spoil my enjoyment of the book – or taint my opinion of the guys themselves. You are telling me that Paul Westerberg, who might be the most brilliant songwriter of his generation, is a jerk? Color me shocked… If anything, the generalized messiness makes the story of the band even more compelling than it would have been, had those guys not been fucked up contrarians of the finest kind.
Since the podcast used this book as one of its primary sources, a lot of the stories here were familiar, but it was wonderful to revisit them and get more details about the greatest rock band who ever failed at making it big. Their story is equal parts hilarious ("I'm not complaining, Jim, but I'm just curious: how DID they get the vomit on the ceiling?") and tragic, so it’s an interesting experience to go from one extreme emotion to another while learning about their lives. If the band had been less wasted and more willing to compromise even a little bit, I am convinced that they would have been huge, because their talent is mind-blowing – even when they were trashed out of their minds – but that didn’t happen both because of their behavior and because of some truly shit luck.
If there is any real takeaway from their story, it’s that nothing is quite as simple as just playing the game or sticking to your principles while navigating the treacherous waters of the recording industry. I read an article that describes Paul Westerberg as someone who skipped being a star on his way to becoming a legend, and I seriously can’t think of a better way to put it. Whether that was by design or not is an interesting question, given that the band refused to pander to anyone – the audience, record label people, anyone who could have helped, really! The self-sabotage is truly impressive, in a shattering sort of way, but I am quite certain that fame and fortune would not have exorcised any of those men’s demons. In fact, I am shocked at how brutal and bleak their pre-band lives were, and I have come to believe that their music was their literal salvation – I am not sure any of them would have made it past thirty if they hadn’t taken this road. Not that it ended well for everyone… One could argue that the story of the Replacements is also a really upsetting case study about of how toxic masculinity hurts men.
In fact, this is something very special about this particular rock bio: most books like this describe their subjects’ horrible behavior, sure, but few bother to tell the readers where this behavior comes from. And these guys had it rough from the get-go. Bob Stinson suffered horrific abuse at his stepfather’s hands on top of untreated mental illness, and his entire adult life was heart-breaking. All four of the band members suffered head injuries in their early years and there was generational alcoholism and untreated trauma, depression, and anxiety disorders all over their backgrounds. It doesn’t really excuse things, of course, but at least there is some context to make sense of the deviant behaviors and reckless shenanigans that made them famous and simultaneously tanked their rock star dreams.
I think that this may be why people who love them feel so passionately about them: their music is not the only thing about them that indicates that they felt alienation in such a visceral way, and anyone who has ever felt that in their own lives gets tremendous comfort from their art, but also, simply, from their existence. I know I’m very new here, in the Replacements fan demographic, but I totally get why people who love this band are as rabidly obsessed as they are. Reading about all the adversity and madness they endured actually made me admire them even more than I would have just from listening to the records - especially since I now have the stories behind every song, making them even more impactful when I listen to them.
I will not repeat every insane anecdote documented here, but this is almost 500 pages of delightful and often horrifying stories (including the best groupie story I have ever read), and I can’t help but admire the pure panache with which these guys did their thing. It was snotty, irresponsible, and unhealthy, but I wanted to clap enthusiastically at their antics all the time. They might have stopped playing punk, but they never stopped being punk, and I love them for it so fucking much.
Discovering them and falling in love with their music so long after their active years is an interesting process. In some ways, it feels like I accidentally joined a weird underground cult. I will always be mad I wasn’t the right age (or, you know, born) when bands like the Clash, the Cramps and Black Flag were at their zenith, and now we can add the Replacements to the list of bands I’d catch live if I ever get access to a time machine (please ping me if you have a time machine). It's often stunning to listen to their records, look at the dates and then realize that without the Replacements, there would be no Pixies, and no Nirvana... Actually, one could even argue that plenty of rockers who came to fame in the 90s worked decently hard at sounding, looking and behaving a bit (or a lot!) like Paul Westerberg. I have been looking through my music collection and I see the influence of the 'Mats in general, and of Westerberg specifically, on some of my favorite albums and tracks and it makes me laugh (I also found out I had been listening to one of his songs, ‘Stain Yer Blood’, since grade school – long story – and I had no idea who he was this whole time!). I might have just discovered them a few months ago, but in a weird way, they sounded familiar because they were… kind of everywhere, albeit indirectly (for instance, I just realized my Thomas Ligotti short story collection’s cover art was made by Chris Mars, WTF!).
If you like the band, read this book. If you enjoy rock bios, read this book - it’s truly a masterclass on writing about musicians. If you have never heard of the Replacements before, get a copy of "Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out the Trash", "Stink", “Hootenanny”, “Let It Be”, “Tim” and “Pleased to Meet Me” (I actually recommend getting the entire discography, but those records are the core classics) and read this book. Preferably while wearing your rattiest flannel shirt. This book reconnected me to the feeling that made me want to make music in the first place, and that's a treasure of a feeling.
A few quotes:
“Replacements partisans were, on the whole, literate, dark-humored, and a bit confused about their place in the world. They weren’t the go-getters or yuppie types, but they weren’t hopeless wastrels either. They were, Tommy Stinson would note, ‘more like us than they fuckin’ knew. They didn’t really fit anywhere. They probably didn’t aspire to a whole lot, but they also didn’t aspire to doing nothing either. That’s the kind of fan we probably appealed to most: the people that were in the gray area. Just like us.’”
“Still, Westerberg never took the power of his songs, his ability to connect with listeners, for granted. ‘People always come up and say, “You wrote this just for me,” he noted. ‘And I say, “Yeah, I did. I don’t know you, but I knew you were out there.”’
"'He [Bob Dylan] just walked in and started talking to the band,' recalled engineer Cliff Norrell. 'He was saying, "My kid loves you; my son's really into your band." You could see their eyes light up, and then Dylan goes, "You're R.E.M., right?"'"
"Davino [touring sound technician] gamely battled the band's ridiculous volume. "You always heard that Motorhead was the loudest band ever, and I used to say bullshit. Motorhead was pussies compared to dese (sic) guys.""
"Tommy would tell reporters he found it far easier to work with his current bandmate in Guns N' Roses than his old Replacements partner. "He keeps pulling out the 'Paul Westerberg's more difficult to deal with than Axl Rose' line," said Westerberg. "And I think, 'Yeah, of course. Wouldn't Van Gogh be more difficult than Norman Rockwell?'"
February 29, 2016
Wow, I have never read a musical biography so well written and documented. This book was like the music of The Replacements themselves, full of emotion and never boring. This book made me feel. I ran the full gamut of emotions from elation to anger to gut wrenching sorrow. Bob Mehr, you've done well.
I savored this account of the rise and fall of the band. The personalities of the 'Mats came through, and the music itself is somehow more understandable. The work is meaty and full of anecdotes.
The story of Bob Stinson was particularly poignant. His undiagnosed mental health issues, childhood abandonment and abuse; as well as a myriad of substance abuse problems plaguing him until the end of his life. We also read of the relationship between Tommy Stinson and Paul Westerberg. A relationship both tumultuous, loving and at times seemingly codependent.
The stories behind the songs were very enlightening to a fan such as myself. The people along for the ride recording and producing, attending shows, buying records all share a common denominator with this band and consequently through this book. I am lucky that this band and this book have touched my life.
I savored this account of the rise and fall of the band. The personalities of the 'Mats came through, and the music itself is somehow more understandable. The work is meaty and full of anecdotes.
The story of Bob Stinson was particularly poignant. His undiagnosed mental health issues, childhood abandonment and abuse; as well as a myriad of substance abuse problems plaguing him until the end of his life. We also read of the relationship between Tommy Stinson and Paul Westerberg. A relationship both tumultuous, loving and at times seemingly codependent.
The stories behind the songs were very enlightening to a fan such as myself. The people along for the ride recording and producing, attending shows, buying records all share a common denominator with this band and consequently through this book. I am lucky that this band and this book have touched my life.
February 27, 2016
The Replacements are my favorite band, so this review is not objective. I don't know how it'll read to neophytes, but this is the book die hard fans have been waiting for. Mehr should be commended for the decade he put into it.
Given the group is made up of typically cagey Midwesterners, this is probably the most revealing portrait of them we'll ever get. I finished it with a greater appreciation of their music, and a more thorough understanding of the dynamics within the group. Mehr also made made me rethink some commonly held views of the band.
At a certain point, I felt myself growing tired of stories of drugged and drunken antics, but I understand they were necessary to provide an accurate portrait. Mehr doesn't shy away from the ugly side of their personalities, but his tone is always empathetic.
Given the group is made up of typically cagey Midwesterners, this is probably the most revealing portrait of them we'll ever get. I finished it with a greater appreciation of their music, and a more thorough understanding of the dynamics within the group. Mehr also made made me rethink some commonly held views of the band.
At a certain point, I felt myself growing tired of stories of drugged and drunken antics, but I understand they were necessary to provide an accurate portrait. Mehr doesn't shy away from the ugly side of their personalities, but his tone is always empathetic.
Read
March 14, 2016 The line between drunken shenanigans and dickishness can be a blurry one, especially depending on which side of the bottle you're on, but damn, what a bunch of dicks.
Bob Stinson, the guy who had more of an excuse than the others (all sorts of terrible childhood stuff, including molestation) was less of a dick than the others and seemed like an amiable, if troubled guy, with the other three (although mostly Paul and Tommy) rotating between King Asshole.
And for a band that really only had 3 1/2 good records and loved self-sabatoging and intentionally going out of their way to fuck things up for themselves, they really had a whiny attitude about REM's success, as well as bands who were influenced by the Replacements who enjoyed success in the '90s and '00s.
So yeah, a handful of great songs, but just terrible, terrible people. At least it's written well, with interviews from just about every living person involved, even if the author does occasionally refer to them as 'the 'Mats,' which has always grated on me for some reason.
Bob Stinson, the guy who had more of an excuse than the others (all sorts of terrible childhood stuff, including molestation) was less of a dick than the others and seemed like an amiable, if troubled guy, with the other three (although mostly Paul and Tommy) rotating between King Asshole.
And for a band that really only had 3 1/2 good records and loved self-sabatoging and intentionally going out of their way to fuck things up for themselves, they really had a whiny attitude about REM's success, as well as bands who were influenced by the Replacements who enjoyed success in the '90s and '00s.
So yeah, a handful of great songs, but just terrible, terrible people. At least it's written well, with interviews from just about every living person involved, even if the author does occasionally refer to them as 'the 'Mats,' which has always grated on me for some reason.
April 5, 2016
I am a Minneapolis native who discovered the Replacements when I was 14, and the first time I saw them perform is actually mentioned in these pages: an all-ages show with Slim at First Avenue on May 27, 1987 (yes, I am that obsessive 'Mats nut who remembers the day and still has her ticket stub in a box in the attic). When I was in junior high, burning through all the Twin/Tone vinyl I could get my hands on, I wanted a book like this, but I'm glad Bob Mehr didn't write it until I was a gray-haired, sober grown-up. It's honest, it's painful, it's riveting.
February 17, 2017
It took me a long time to suss this, but Paul Westerberg is a great songwriter. My way in was an odd one: Through his cover of an old folk song called "Mr. Rabbit." Which is a great old folk song and an amazing cover. Then I spent a month playing almost nothing but Westerberg's melancholy, turn-of-the-millennium solo album "In Stereo," which includes his cover of "Mr. Rabbit." From there, I began to check out the Replacements' back catalog. I always knew the band had some good songs. But I've come to believe their albums would be almost all you'd need to put in a time capsule to know about the state of the world, circa 1987, or at least my little part of it. I Will Dare, Can't Hardly Wait, Bastards of Young, Sadly Beautiful, Unsatisfied, Androgynous, We're Coming Out, Shiftless When Idle, Treatment Bound, Left of the Dial: These are a handful of favorites. And they just touch the surface.
Whew! This might be the best rock biography I've ever read (and I've read my share). Bob Mehr is a fan-boy, but also an excellent journalist, one who went the extra mile to interview literally hundreds of sources for the book. The result is a decade-long labor of love by a writer convinced of the importance of his subject and willing to look under every rock and shrub to uncover the facts as they may stand.
The band's story is a captivating one, a seemingly never ending series of high jinks and defiance, all of which mask an underlying sadness, this bunch of high school dropouts, fighting their addictions and their own worst intentions, a gig away from going back to work mopping floors or washing dishes. Not that this got them to behave themselves. They are probably the only band in the history of the music industry who burned the per diem money the record label gave them when on tour. Not once or twice. But all the time. For years. As a matter of habit. Why? I'm still not quite sure. To build camaraderie within the band? To tell the record label and all its money to go screw itself? To prove they didn't need to be responsible about anything? I'm really not sure. But for over 400 pages, I was simultaneously appalled by and applauded what they were doing. Reading this book is like watching the wreck of a really beautiful train, one filled with candy, hospital patients, and fortune-cookie obscenities.
The entire band seems to have been born under a bad sign. But even in their worst moments, they knew they could look proudly on this one thing, as Bob Stinson said just before his death, years after he was kicked out of the band, that redeemed their otherwise tragic life: "I am a Replacement!" And that to me is rock 'n roll, back in whatever time when it still mattered for something: That amidst all the dross and the B.S., after the latest kick in the ass that life has in store, you can still shout your yawp to the world with bluster, soul, and defiance.
It takes a worthy subject to tease the best out of a writer. And Mehr has written a doozy.
Whew! This might be the best rock biography I've ever read (and I've read my share). Bob Mehr is a fan-boy, but also an excellent journalist, one who went the extra mile to interview literally hundreds of sources for the book. The result is a decade-long labor of love by a writer convinced of the importance of his subject and willing to look under every rock and shrub to uncover the facts as they may stand.
The band's story is a captivating one, a seemingly never ending series of high jinks and defiance, all of which mask an underlying sadness, this bunch of high school dropouts, fighting their addictions and their own worst intentions, a gig away from going back to work mopping floors or washing dishes. Not that this got them to behave themselves. They are probably the only band in the history of the music industry who burned the per diem money the record label gave them when on tour. Not once or twice. But all the time. For years. As a matter of habit. Why? I'm still not quite sure. To build camaraderie within the band? To tell the record label and all its money to go screw itself? To prove they didn't need to be responsible about anything? I'm really not sure. But for over 400 pages, I was simultaneously appalled by and applauded what they were doing. Reading this book is like watching the wreck of a really beautiful train, one filled with candy, hospital patients, and fortune-cookie obscenities.
The entire band seems to have been born under a bad sign. But even in their worst moments, they knew they could look proudly on this one thing, as Bob Stinson said just before his death, years after he was kicked out of the band, that redeemed their otherwise tragic life: "I am a Replacement!" And that to me is rock 'n roll, back in whatever time when it still mattered for something: That amidst all the dross and the B.S., after the latest kick in the ass that life has in store, you can still shout your yawp to the world with bluster, soul, and defiance.
It takes a worthy subject to tease the best out of a writer. And Mehr has written a doozy.
April 30, 2016
It has been hard for me to put into words just how much reading this book meant to me. The Replacements have long been one of my favorite bands (if not my all-time favorite) for as long as I can remember, and I read this during an intense week dealing with doctors and solitary travel, so much of my time with this book saw me in waiting rooms, hotels, trains, and cafes alone, anxious over my own personal battles, which may have heightened my connection to the tumultuous times recounted here. Second, it has been quite a while since a book sank its hooks into me so deeply, as I could hardly put it down, and being a huge Mats fan, it was like re-living the catalogue of albums I've come to love, but with SO MUCH depth. The personal demons and struggles of each member of the band, be it with themselves or with each other, add so many layers and insights to the songs and legends of the Mats. It was hard seeing them act so confoundingly self-defeating at times, to be so cruel to one another, to see them fall short over and over, but the balance of brotherly trust, creative development, and personal triumphs are there too. As Paul Westerberg says in one of his last Mats songs, this book is "sadly beautiful" and I highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in The Replacements.
July 12, 2016
Look, I read a lot of these rock biographies. They don't have to be particularly well-written to be enjoyable. Trouble Boys is special. It's better than good. It's great. Bob Mehr indulges in no flashy prose. He disseminates information gleaned from 230 interviewees and a decade of full-access research, forms it into one of the tightest, most cohesive and entertaining biographical narratives I’ve ever read. He doesn’t mythologize the band or glorify the endless boozy exploits. He simply tells The Replacements' devastating story.
March 24, 2016
First of all, that cover photo of Tommy Stinson... am I right? Heartbreaker. Secondly, poor Bob never had a chance. I am talking out-of-the-gate, he deserved better. This is a great read, Westerberg has some great stuff, and he can come across as an ass (human?!). This book is as close as you're going to get to drinking beer at the Uptown with the boys themselves.
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June 15, 2016A pertinent excerpt from my novel, Banned for Life, which was published seven years ago (as hard as I find that to believe) and is set (part of it anyway) in the underground music scene of 1980s New York City:
"But for me the greatest band of their time was, hands down, the Replacements. They’d take the stage drunk off their asses, and they didn’t give one fuck what you or anybody else thought; they were going to do things their way. Peewee considered them a so-so bar band at best, but I still say Paul Westerberg wrote some of the best songs of the eighties: “I Will Dare,” “Skyway,” “Unsatisfied,” to name but a few. I just wish he’d been a nicer guy. I tried to talk to him once before a show, and let’s just say he was no Ian MacKaye. Bob Stinson, on the other hand, was one of the nicest people I ever met. But I continued to like the Replacements even after Westerberg shitcanned Bob and released those later big-label records written off by most as 40-proof crap."
The narrator isn't me, but his sentiments about the Replacements are mine, and Trouble Boys vindicates my views of Stinson and Westerberg. Poor Bob! He was practically Job, with one misfortune piled on another, from sexual abuse by his stepfather at age seven to the heart-rending medical woes of his infant son; and while Paul may not have been as accommodating as Ian MacKaye (who wasn't, incidentally, always so accommodating), his Replacements records have aged better than Ian's with Minor Threat and, for that matter, the more sophisticated Fugazi. As the leader of the Replacements (once he had supplanted Bob), Paul gets more coverage than anybody in Bob Mehr's page-turning account, yet the roots of his maddeningly fractious personality (at times he seems a case study in oppositional defiant disorder) remain a mystery. There's a missing "Rosebud" here, some Westerberg family dynamic that eluded Mehr, despite his careful research and sensitivity to detail, or possibly he grasped and chose to omit it as hurtful or reductive speculation. But that's a minor quibble. Somewhere around page 300 I lost my copy of this doorstopper, a luxury buy in the first place, but I immediately ordered a second copy, which I mention by way of joining the chorus in praising Trouble Boys as the best rock & roll biography in recent memory. In fact, there will likely never be another nearly so good, now that rock & roll is effectively dead. I know, I know, there are plenty of new bands out there, but people don't give a shit in sufficient numbers, and indifference equals death in my book.
"But for me the greatest band of their time was, hands down, the Replacements. They’d take the stage drunk off their asses, and they didn’t give one fuck what you or anybody else thought; they were going to do things their way. Peewee considered them a so-so bar band at best, but I still say Paul Westerberg wrote some of the best songs of the eighties: “I Will Dare,” “Skyway,” “Unsatisfied,” to name but a few. I just wish he’d been a nicer guy. I tried to talk to him once before a show, and let’s just say he was no Ian MacKaye. Bob Stinson, on the other hand, was one of the nicest people I ever met. But I continued to like the Replacements even after Westerberg shitcanned Bob and released those later big-label records written off by most as 40-proof crap."
The narrator isn't me, but his sentiments about the Replacements are mine, and Trouble Boys vindicates my views of Stinson and Westerberg. Poor Bob! He was practically Job, with one misfortune piled on another, from sexual abuse by his stepfather at age seven to the heart-rending medical woes of his infant son; and while Paul may not have been as accommodating as Ian MacKaye (who wasn't, incidentally, always so accommodating), his Replacements records have aged better than Ian's with Minor Threat and, for that matter, the more sophisticated Fugazi. As the leader of the Replacements (once he had supplanted Bob), Paul gets more coverage than anybody in Bob Mehr's page-turning account, yet the roots of his maddeningly fractious personality (at times he seems a case study in oppositional defiant disorder) remain a mystery. There's a missing "Rosebud" here, some Westerberg family dynamic that eluded Mehr, despite his careful research and sensitivity to detail, or possibly he grasped and chose to omit it as hurtful or reductive speculation. But that's a minor quibble. Somewhere around page 300 I lost my copy of this doorstopper, a luxury buy in the first place, but I immediately ordered a second copy, which I mention by way of joining the chorus in praising Trouble Boys as the best rock & roll biography in recent memory. In fact, there will likely never be another nearly so good, now that rock & roll is effectively dead. I know, I know, there are plenty of new bands out there, but people don't give a shit in sufficient numbers, and indifference equals death in my book.
October 23, 2016
Incredible. One of the most engrossing and heartbreaking books I've ever read. Mehr has not only written THE book on The Replacements, but has also written a painstaking meditation on the intersection of creativity, artistic expression, substance abuse, and mental illness.
Darn near perfect.
Darn near perfect.
December 6, 2021
As a Replacements fan I thought this audiobook was really well done. Despite her inability to pronounce sanguine properly, the narrator did a great job. I liked this a lot better than the other Replacements book I read, All Over but the Shouting. This book was comprehensive and very good.
June 24, 2017
So . . . nearly a year after getting the book in hardcover and like nine days after downloading the audiobook read by Mary Lucia, I’ve finished Trouble Boys. I have, as the kids say, so many feels. All the feels. Oceans and galaxies of feels. Unmeasurable and unmentionable feels. I have feels as a writer & reader, a fan, and a cranky 45-year-old feminist killjoy. That’s a bunch of feels, don’t you agree? read more.
April 17, 2016
Bittersweet like a movie where you knew the characters were not going to live happily ever after, they were just going to keep on. I found my myself listening to whole albums of The Replacements between chapters with different ears. Knowing the daily struggles the band went through just to make it through a day, the making of an album was a monumental lesson in futility for everyone involved. If you love this band, or even just like this band, this book is a must-read.
May 9, 2016
Anyone who listens to college radio and indie rock and pop in general is going to know who the Replacements are. These listeners probably revere the records Let It Be, Tim and Pleased to Meet Me as classics of indie rock (which hilarious since two of them were on a major label) and yet if you try to talk to the non-initiated about the Replacements, you are bound to get strange looks. And yet, when you consider the success of R.E.M. and the fact they were contemporaries of the Replacements and from the same indie rock scene, a Replacements fan might be left scratching their head as to why the success that R.E.M. capitalized upon at the beginning of the "alt-rock" fad of the early 90s eluded the Replacements. They were obviously brilliant-- why were they ignored?
That question is the driving force behind Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements. The answer is not simple either, as one discovers when picking up the book and finding out that Bob Mehr has written a 435 page tome about the band. A casual reader would wonder if an obscure band is deserving of such a treatment, but of course, the Replacements is exactly the sort of band that is good for such a telling. R.E.M. "made it" and that story is boring. The Replacements were early to the party, missed the good part, and did everything in their power to piss off everyone that could have helped them along the way. That's a good story.
In some ways Trouble Boys is a cautionary tale. Steve Albini of the bands Big Black and Shellac is well known for his diatribes against the soulless corporate music machine, and the machine certainly did a number on the Replacements. But as heartless as the industry is, the Replacements did have allies like Seymour Stein (I couldn't help but think of the Belle and Sebastian song every time I saw his name) but often times the Replacements couldn't get out of their own way. Were such nihilist impulses intentional on the part of the Replacements? Again, the answer isn't a simple one--each of the Replacements came to the band damaged and their abuse of drugs and alcohol played a part in their self-destructive behavior so it's difficult to hold them accountable when you hear the whole story.
And it is worth reading the whole story. Paul Westerberg should be lauded as one of the great songwriters of his generation, but ultimately he is obscured for reasons both of his own making and fate intervening. He isn't blameless in facilitating his own obscurity but again, the story isn't that simple. Neither is the tragic life of Bob Stinson, who appeared to never have a chance, or the story of Tommy Stinson, born to be nothing but a rock star, and forced into a difficult choice between his family (Bob) and his hero (Paul). And then there is drummer Chris Mars, the original leader of the band and pushed to the back of the pack by Paul Westerberg and bearing a grudge for the rest of the time he was in the band. Had the Replacements "made it" this story wouldn't be worth the time. That in itself is tragic, but allows us to explore the fertile ground that was the inspiration for most of their songs. For the uninitiated, I recommend checking out the Replacements and then reading this book. It's one of the better band biographies out there.
That question is the driving force behind Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements. The answer is not simple either, as one discovers when picking up the book and finding out that Bob Mehr has written a 435 page tome about the band. A casual reader would wonder if an obscure band is deserving of such a treatment, but of course, the Replacements is exactly the sort of band that is good for such a telling. R.E.M. "made it" and that story is boring. The Replacements were early to the party, missed the good part, and did everything in their power to piss off everyone that could have helped them along the way. That's a good story.
In some ways Trouble Boys is a cautionary tale. Steve Albini of the bands Big Black and Shellac is well known for his diatribes against the soulless corporate music machine, and the machine certainly did a number on the Replacements. But as heartless as the industry is, the Replacements did have allies like Seymour Stein (I couldn't help but think of the Belle and Sebastian song every time I saw his name) but often times the Replacements couldn't get out of their own way. Were such nihilist impulses intentional on the part of the Replacements? Again, the answer isn't a simple one--each of the Replacements came to the band damaged and their abuse of drugs and alcohol played a part in their self-destructive behavior so it's difficult to hold them accountable when you hear the whole story.
And it is worth reading the whole story. Paul Westerberg should be lauded as one of the great songwriters of his generation, but ultimately he is obscured for reasons both of his own making and fate intervening. He isn't blameless in facilitating his own obscurity but again, the story isn't that simple. Neither is the tragic life of Bob Stinson, who appeared to never have a chance, or the story of Tommy Stinson, born to be nothing but a rock star, and forced into a difficult choice between his family (Bob) and his hero (Paul). And then there is drummer Chris Mars, the original leader of the band and pushed to the back of the pack by Paul Westerberg and bearing a grudge for the rest of the time he was in the band. Had the Replacements "made it" this story wouldn't be worth the time. That in itself is tragic, but allows us to explore the fertile ground that was the inspiration for most of their songs. For the uninitiated, I recommend checking out the Replacements and then reading this book. It's one of the better band biographies out there.
December 18, 2016
Terrific 'Mats details and anecdotes and stories and such. Definitely worth reading if you're a big fan.
But am I the only one who feels - notices, realises - that the writing is sort of..... shit.....? I mean the actual writing. The prose. If I have to read one more god damn formulaic segue from describing a need for a fucking minor A&R man or roadie or person they meet on the street for two seconds and who's never mentioned again like
". . . And just when it seemed the least likely that the 'Mats would ever find a 15th assistant to the notary of the secretary of an indie record label's janitor, they struck up a conversation with a stranger at the Bob's Rotisserie Bar on 49th Street on a cold windy night in Minneapolis.
"[b]Born[/b] in Minneapolis in 1935, the son of bohemian parents, Bob Smith, the fifth of nine children, had a knack for assisting notaries since a young age. . . ."
Christ!! Stop it with the god damn "Born in . . ." paragraphs!! FUCK!!! THERE ARE LIKE 50 IN THE BOOK!!!
Anyway, surprisingly, the rest of the writing is bad too. But nothing special-bad - it's just standard nauseous music critic shit. Like that writing super seriously and earnestly, while somehow simultaneously sounding superior and condescending to what you're reviewing, shit. Mehr does it 24-7 here.
And WORST and most unforgivable of all - he does that (also standard nauseous music critic) shit where people just blithely and matter-of-factly insert completely subjective and unsupported opinions as objective truth. In a throwaway sentence, Mehr just refers to [i]Heathers[/i] as something like "the best of the 80s teen movies". What? What the fuck? Why is an ostensibly objective music critic/Replacements biographer just inserting opinions about which 80s teen movies he prefers as fucking obvious factual truths? The same when he summarily refers to the first Bash & Pop album as something like "the best of the post-Replacements albums by any of the members". Huh? Is that an opinion that anyone has ever stated or heard before? (Is that an album that anyone's heard?)
So that stuff is pretty weird. It's like he thought "well I'm the biographer and I'm doing this whole book, so I deserve to throw in a few of my pet opinions and no one can stop me" - which is fine and all, but obviously unprofessional and god damn unappreciated!
Anyway, what everyone else says: worthwhile book, shows how little you actually knew about how the members were horrible human beings, teaches you more about the band while also making you want to stop listening to them ever again because of how black their souls were (not without some good reason sometimes, but still, horrible people), etc
3/5
But am I the only one who feels - notices, realises - that the writing is sort of..... shit.....? I mean the actual writing. The prose. If I have to read one more god damn formulaic segue from describing a need for a fucking minor A&R man or roadie or person they meet on the street for two seconds and who's never mentioned again like
". . . And just when it seemed the least likely that the 'Mats would ever find a 15th assistant to the notary of the secretary of an indie record label's janitor, they struck up a conversation with a stranger at the Bob's Rotisserie Bar on 49th Street on a cold windy night in Minneapolis.
"[b]Born[/b] in Minneapolis in 1935, the son of bohemian parents, Bob Smith, the fifth of nine children, had a knack for assisting notaries since a young age. . . ."
Christ!! Stop it with the god damn "Born in . . ." paragraphs!! FUCK!!! THERE ARE LIKE 50 IN THE BOOK!!!
Anyway, surprisingly, the rest of the writing is bad too. But nothing special-bad - it's just standard nauseous music critic shit. Like that writing super seriously and earnestly, while somehow simultaneously sounding superior and condescending to what you're reviewing, shit. Mehr does it 24-7 here.
And WORST and most unforgivable of all - he does that (also standard nauseous music critic) shit where people just blithely and matter-of-factly insert completely subjective and unsupported opinions as objective truth. In a throwaway sentence, Mehr just refers to [i]Heathers[/i] as something like "the best of the 80s teen movies". What? What the fuck? Why is an ostensibly objective music critic/Replacements biographer just inserting opinions about which 80s teen movies he prefers as fucking obvious factual truths? The same when he summarily refers to the first Bash & Pop album as something like "the best of the post-Replacements albums by any of the members". Huh? Is that an opinion that anyone has ever stated or heard before? (Is that an album that anyone's heard?)
So that stuff is pretty weird. It's like he thought "well I'm the biographer and I'm doing this whole book, so I deserve to throw in a few of my pet opinions and no one can stop me" - which is fine and all, but obviously unprofessional and god damn unappreciated!
Anyway, what everyone else says: worthwhile book, shows how little you actually knew about how the members were horrible human beings, teaches you more about the band while also making you want to stop listening to them ever again because of how black their souls were (not without some good reason sometimes, but still, horrible people), etc
3/5
April 13, 2024
This book was a journey if any book ever was. Usually I dismiss the comments on the back cover but this time, shit, they told the truth. I don't remember the last time a book made me feel so many emotions so intensively, it's narrative style grabbed me in the very first chapter (first couple of pages, even) and kept the hold of me right through the end. I laughed, I cried, I was living the story. It was the perfect insight into the lives of the Replacements, a biography and a novel in one. Yeah, it's safe to say that this book stole my heart just as much as Replacements' music had. Thank you, Bob Mehr.
February 27, 2016
I've been waiting for this book since I first heard "I Will Dare" in college. Like the band itself, it can be all over the place and rough, but it ultimately delivers in a very special way.
June 15, 2018
I started to read Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” at the same time I began Bob Mehr’s “Trouble Boys,” the biography of the legendary but ill-starred Minneapolis rock band the Replacements. At some point, the two stories seemed to merge with each other, with parallel tales of alcohol abuse, fraternal conflict, patricidal impulses, crippling professional indecision, and existential confusion. Not to mention that both feature pivotal scenes on locations named Lake Street, one south Minneapolis’ prominent east-west thoroughfare, the other a desultory road in Dostoyevsky’s fictional provincial Russian town.
At nearly 500 pages, “Trouble Boys” has the physical heft of a Russian classic, and I was first hesitant to read more about a band that I followed closely during their 80s heyday. The Replacements were my first concert experience at First Avenue in Minneapolis in early 1986, and I listened often to their classic mid-career albums “Let it Be,” “Tim” and “Pleased to Meet Me” in my late teens and twenties. Those albums remain favorites, and are an unexpected source of mature enjoyment; their angst-ridden anthems have retained enough soulful gravitas to satisfy middle-aged sensibilities.
Even in the Replacements’ high period, when I was working in a record store and digesting scores of music magazines, from the homespun (Bob, Maximum Rock and Roll) to the commercial (Spin and Rolling Stone), there was something unsettling about the band’s legend. According to reputation, they might show up in your town to play a concert of either unmatched sublimity or drunken incompetence, if they showed up at all. Their behavior was so extreme in its self-destructive anti-authoritarianism that it seemed to be an improbable theatrical pose. But this is a rare case where the truth is more desperate (and saddening) than the legend. If Tom Waits thinks you're "broken," you probably have issues, and even the most jaundiced mental health and chemical dependency professionals will find much distressing in this dysfunctional tale. But like many tragedies, "Trouble Boys" offers cathartic redemption along with bedlam and shattered dreams.
The band’s original lineup formed in South Minneapolis in the late 70s, led by Paul Westerberg on guitar and vocals, Bob Stinson on lead guitar, Stinson’s thirteen-year-old brother Tommy on bass and Chris Mars on drums. Their music, a distinctive combination of classic 70s rock, punk aggression and Westerberg’s introspective, confessional songwriting caught the ear of Peter Jesperson, a founder of Twin Tone records when a teenage Westerberg unceremoniously handed him a demo tape at his record store day job. Jesperson became one of many patient handlers who guided the chaotic, heavy-drinking and drugging band through four Twin Tone releases, including the 1984 classic “Let it Be” and several shambolic tours, culminating in a contract with Warner Brothers in 1985.
The band’s major label period produced two classics, 1985’s “Tim” and 1987’s “Pleased to Meet Me,” but neither matched the label’s sales lofty expectations in an era when the industry hoped to turn raw indie stars into hit-making properties. The faint promise of a commercial payoff, as well as the brilliance of Westerberg’s songwriting, sustained the band through disastrous tours and recording sessions as an army of professionals struggled to turn the intoxicated quartet into disciplined performers and recording artists. Bob Stinson was the first casualty of this war of attrition, fired in 1985 for excessive drinking and drug use. Desperately, Warners steered the band in an increasingly slick and low-key musical direction, resulting in 1989’s “Don’t Tell a Soul” and the minor hit “I’ll Be You.” The desultory “All Shook Down” followed a year later, but the album departed radically from the band’s fiery style and was a Westerberg solo project in all but name. The band dissolved in a dissipated, acrimonious haze in 1991.
Like a clown who never takes off his makeup, Westerberg often cuts a bleak, dispiriting figure: frequently drunk, obnoxious, unpredictable and contrary as his personal and professional life crumbles. While REM skillfully managed to navigate the recording industry, playing the game without radically changing their music, the Replacements severed the trust of their closest allies, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory while a nascent indie grab by major labels offered an unrepeatable opportunity to expand their audience. In 25 years, that industry, with its cash flow and support network, would be nearly dead as streaming services, slowing sales and diminishing cultural interest changed music's commercial landscape. Today, there would be little target for Westerberg’s intractable ire.
“Trouble Boys” is a superior rock bio, and Mehr tells an anecdote-rich, compelling story, capably dissecting the band’s music without resorting to indie rock journalism’s frequent hyperbole and unshakable obsession with cultural under-appreciation and critical acclaim. Even a strong entry in the genre like Michael Azerrad’s 80s underground survey “Our Band Could Be Your Life” suffers from the repeated, aggrieved claim that a world of mindless pop music could have been redeemed if just enough Mission of Burma, Pere Ubu or Hüsker Dü albums had reached a philistine public.
Mehr is more realistic about indie rock’s hopes for record-breaking sales, and “Trouble Boys” is an evocative, jaundiced account of a music industry struggling to accommodate a growing interest in independent rock. Major labels eventually were able to turn grunge into commercial gold in the 1990s, but the Replacements’ music was too raw and intense in their first two major label releases and too polished and restrained in their final two albums to align with emerging tastes. Bob Stinson’s more earthbound replacement, Minneapolis veteran Slim Dunlap, finally acknowledged that “not all music is for all ears.”
“Trouble Boys” is finally a tale of redemption, but it’s a pyrrhic victory for Westerberg, Tommy Stinson and Mars, who all leave drugs and alcohol behind for moderate post-Replacements success but are unable to shed the “beautiful loser” aura of their almost-ran reputation. Mars is now an accomplished, successful painter. Westerberg and Stinson continue to record and perform, and reunited briefly as the Replacements for a variety of projects in 2012-15, including a tribute to Slim Dunlap, sadly incapacitated by a stroke in 2012. Bob Stinson, the story’s most tragic and abject figure, died in 1995 after decades of drug and alcohol abuse. All share a legacy as one of rock’s great bands. But "Trouble Boys" suggests that a longer, even more brilliant career was squandered in a haze of boozy unprofessionalism, not to mention ineffable cultural tides that a classical tragedian might have described as the capricious will of the gods.
At nearly 500 pages, “Trouble Boys” has the physical heft of a Russian classic, and I was first hesitant to read more about a band that I followed closely during their 80s heyday. The Replacements were my first concert experience at First Avenue in Minneapolis in early 1986, and I listened often to their classic mid-career albums “Let it Be,” “Tim” and “Pleased to Meet Me” in my late teens and twenties. Those albums remain favorites, and are an unexpected source of mature enjoyment; their angst-ridden anthems have retained enough soulful gravitas to satisfy middle-aged sensibilities.
Even in the Replacements’ high period, when I was working in a record store and digesting scores of music magazines, from the homespun (Bob, Maximum Rock and Roll) to the commercial (Spin and Rolling Stone), there was something unsettling about the band’s legend. According to reputation, they might show up in your town to play a concert of either unmatched sublimity or drunken incompetence, if they showed up at all. Their behavior was so extreme in its self-destructive anti-authoritarianism that it seemed to be an improbable theatrical pose. But this is a rare case where the truth is more desperate (and saddening) than the legend. If Tom Waits thinks you're "broken," you probably have issues, and even the most jaundiced mental health and chemical dependency professionals will find much distressing in this dysfunctional tale. But like many tragedies, "Trouble Boys" offers cathartic redemption along with bedlam and shattered dreams.
The band’s original lineup formed in South Minneapolis in the late 70s, led by Paul Westerberg on guitar and vocals, Bob Stinson on lead guitar, Stinson’s thirteen-year-old brother Tommy on bass and Chris Mars on drums. Their music, a distinctive combination of classic 70s rock, punk aggression and Westerberg’s introspective, confessional songwriting caught the ear of Peter Jesperson, a founder of Twin Tone records when a teenage Westerberg unceremoniously handed him a demo tape at his record store day job. Jesperson became one of many patient handlers who guided the chaotic, heavy-drinking and drugging band through four Twin Tone releases, including the 1984 classic “Let it Be” and several shambolic tours, culminating in a contract with Warner Brothers in 1985.
The band’s major label period produced two classics, 1985’s “Tim” and 1987’s “Pleased to Meet Me,” but neither matched the label’s sales lofty expectations in an era when the industry hoped to turn raw indie stars into hit-making properties. The faint promise of a commercial payoff, as well as the brilliance of Westerberg’s songwriting, sustained the band through disastrous tours and recording sessions as an army of professionals struggled to turn the intoxicated quartet into disciplined performers and recording artists. Bob Stinson was the first casualty of this war of attrition, fired in 1985 for excessive drinking and drug use. Desperately, Warners steered the band in an increasingly slick and low-key musical direction, resulting in 1989’s “Don’t Tell a Soul” and the minor hit “I’ll Be You.” The desultory “All Shook Down” followed a year later, but the album departed radically from the band’s fiery style and was a Westerberg solo project in all but name. The band dissolved in a dissipated, acrimonious haze in 1991.
Like a clown who never takes off his makeup, Westerberg often cuts a bleak, dispiriting figure: frequently drunk, obnoxious, unpredictable and contrary as his personal and professional life crumbles. While REM skillfully managed to navigate the recording industry, playing the game without radically changing their music, the Replacements severed the trust of their closest allies, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory while a nascent indie grab by major labels offered an unrepeatable opportunity to expand their audience. In 25 years, that industry, with its cash flow and support network, would be nearly dead as streaming services, slowing sales and diminishing cultural interest changed music's commercial landscape. Today, there would be little target for Westerberg’s intractable ire.
“Trouble Boys” is a superior rock bio, and Mehr tells an anecdote-rich, compelling story, capably dissecting the band’s music without resorting to indie rock journalism’s frequent hyperbole and unshakable obsession with cultural under-appreciation and critical acclaim. Even a strong entry in the genre like Michael Azerrad’s 80s underground survey “Our Band Could Be Your Life” suffers from the repeated, aggrieved claim that a world of mindless pop music could have been redeemed if just enough Mission of Burma, Pere Ubu or Hüsker Dü albums had reached a philistine public.
Mehr is more realistic about indie rock’s hopes for record-breaking sales, and “Trouble Boys” is an evocative, jaundiced account of a music industry struggling to accommodate a growing interest in independent rock. Major labels eventually were able to turn grunge into commercial gold in the 1990s, but the Replacements’ music was too raw and intense in their first two major label releases and too polished and restrained in their final two albums to align with emerging tastes. Bob Stinson’s more earthbound replacement, Minneapolis veteran Slim Dunlap, finally acknowledged that “not all music is for all ears.”
“Trouble Boys” is finally a tale of redemption, but it’s a pyrrhic victory for Westerberg, Tommy Stinson and Mars, who all leave drugs and alcohol behind for moderate post-Replacements success but are unable to shed the “beautiful loser” aura of their almost-ran reputation. Mars is now an accomplished, successful painter. Westerberg and Stinson continue to record and perform, and reunited briefly as the Replacements for a variety of projects in 2012-15, including a tribute to Slim Dunlap, sadly incapacitated by a stroke in 2012. Bob Stinson, the story’s most tragic and abject figure, died in 1995 after decades of drug and alcohol abuse. All share a legacy as one of rock’s great bands. But "Trouble Boys" suggests that a longer, even more brilliant career was squandered in a haze of boozy unprofessionalism, not to mention ineffable cultural tides that a classical tragedian might have described as the capricious will of the gods.
January 9, 2021
Trouble Boys is an enthralling rock biography for anyone interested in alternative rock music, rowdy tour tales, personal and professional failures, or the Minneapolis music scene. If you can check all of those boxes, this is probably one of the best books about music that you will ever read. With the full participation of many members in and around the band, particularly the mercurial and self-sabotaging visionary Paul Westerberg, Mehr exhaustively details the band's pre-band youth all the way through the solo projects of its members after the band dissolved. Aside from the expected details of studio sessions, the creative process, and infighting, Mehr unearths a highly entertaining trove of anecdotes about the band's no-fucks-given non-approach to anyone or anything serious that they ever encountered. While the band's drunkenly irreverent reputation precedes them at all turns, even to this day, the accounts in this book are staggering and will probably surprise younger fans like myself who weren't around to actually see them in action in the 80s.
Amidst the antics of drunkenly destroying just about every room they walked into, completely stripping out the furniture and peeing in tour buses, deliberately ruining random shows to piss off unappreciative crowds, dropping f-bombs on national television, and firing pretty much everyone in sight, this book reveals things far more important and far beyond the world of music. Through the songwriting and actions of Paul Westerberg, there is much to be learned about other people and perhaps even oneself. Westerberg wrote about the things that frustrated him in life, and as the years wore on these frustrated expressions exceeded the youthful fixation of girls and aimlessness, maturing and cohering around more life-defining concepts of failure and rejection. A portrait emerges of a man more willing to sabotage himself repeatedly than risking the potential failures and rejections that may be the result of openness, stability, and success. Westerberg, like many of us who are frustrated about various things, was not willing to take on the risks they entailed—for better or worse.
In the alternative music world there is a recurring lament that the Replacements never truly fulfilled their potential, never made it as big as they could have. 'If only they had just went along with the industry game a little bit,' people say wistfully. In this particular case I don't appreciate this yearning for success for a band one likes, this wishing that more people could've experienced their music. That mindset is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Replacements were, what their lives were like, and what their music has always been about. While Westerberg dreamed of making it big, Mehr details how he rejected every opportunity when he came to any bridge to that success, determining through his own impetuous ways that the risks were too high both for what their music would be forced to sound like and what it would do to the band as people.
The Replacements were a bunch of dropouts making rock 'n' roll in their basements in Minneapolis, variously addicted to drugs and alcohol, plagued by traumatic childhoods, and hoping to avoid lives of petty crime and dead-end jobs. Rock 'n' roll, not fame, was always their way out of their plights. Insecure, frustrated, and self-destructive from beginning to end, they, like their frontman Paul Westerberg, were exactly the band they wanted to be, and we should cherish their music and be thankful they didn't try to play the game like R.E.M.—it was irreconcilable with who the Replacements were. In the end, as Westerberg says, they were 'a great little band.' And after reading Mehr's fascinating biography, this great little band has cemented itself as one of my very favorite bands of all time.
Amidst the antics of drunkenly destroying just about every room they walked into, completely stripping out the furniture and peeing in tour buses, deliberately ruining random shows to piss off unappreciative crowds, dropping f-bombs on national television, and firing pretty much everyone in sight, this book reveals things far more important and far beyond the world of music. Through the songwriting and actions of Paul Westerberg, there is much to be learned about other people and perhaps even oneself. Westerberg wrote about the things that frustrated him in life, and as the years wore on these frustrated expressions exceeded the youthful fixation of girls and aimlessness, maturing and cohering around more life-defining concepts of failure and rejection. A portrait emerges of a man more willing to sabotage himself repeatedly than risking the potential failures and rejections that may be the result of openness, stability, and success. Westerberg, like many of us who are frustrated about various things, was not willing to take on the risks they entailed—for better or worse.
In the alternative music world there is a recurring lament that the Replacements never truly fulfilled their potential, never made it as big as they could have. 'If only they had just went along with the industry game a little bit,' people say wistfully. In this particular case I don't appreciate this yearning for success for a band one likes, this wishing that more people could've experienced their music. That mindset is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Replacements were, what their lives were like, and what their music has always been about. While Westerberg dreamed of making it big, Mehr details how he rejected every opportunity when he came to any bridge to that success, determining through his own impetuous ways that the risks were too high both for what their music would be forced to sound like and what it would do to the band as people.
The Replacements were a bunch of dropouts making rock 'n' roll in their basements in Minneapolis, variously addicted to drugs and alcohol, plagued by traumatic childhoods, and hoping to avoid lives of petty crime and dead-end jobs. Rock 'n' roll, not fame, was always their way out of their plights. Insecure, frustrated, and self-destructive from beginning to end, they, like their frontman Paul Westerberg, were exactly the band they wanted to be, and we should cherish their music and be thankful they didn't try to play the game like R.E.M.—it was irreconcilable with who the Replacements were. In the end, as Westerberg says, they were 'a great little band.' And after reading Mehr's fascinating biography, this great little band has cemented itself as one of my very favorite bands of all time.
April 19, 2016
A must read book for any fan of the band...any fan of rock biographies/histories, really. Mehr's work in this book is extremely impressive. Key among his contributions, is that he interviewed the members of the band, which is a rare feat. Beyond, that, though, he speaks to scores of others who knew the band: other musicians, family members, record company people...literally scores of individuals. The result is a great read that manages to walk the line between fan boy critic and journalist. The book has its share of rah-rah for the Mats, but also does little to gloss over the excess and self destructive behavior. The tension exhibited by Westerberg and bandmates between making it big and remaining true to their "craft" is clear. They had an uncanny knack for undermining success at every turn. While a lot of that was intentional (which makes it sad and frustrating), some of it was not. The story that sums it up is when they met Ray Charles's daughter and told her how they'd love to have her father sing with them on a particular song...unfortunately, they didn't think that request through at all when they played her the song in question: "They're Blind." That was an unintentional screw up that simply serves as a prime example of all the others.
The other thing that really comes through is how destructive their excess really was, their drinking in particular. In a number of regards, we're lucky still to have most of them with us.
Ultimately, though, the book also clearly conveys how unique, talented, and influential the band really was. True to their fate, they seemed to appear at a time that was both too early and too late to have the success they really deserved. With the recent reunion tour along with this book, it appears they may be experiencing a renaissance of sorts, introducing their music to a new generation.
I can't recommend this book strongly enough. If you love the Replacements or if you enjoy rock biographies/histories, this one sets a high bar.
The other thing that really comes through is how destructive their excess really was, their drinking in particular. In a number of regards, we're lucky still to have most of them with us.
Ultimately, though, the book also clearly conveys how unique, talented, and influential the band really was. True to their fate, they seemed to appear at a time that was both too early and too late to have the success they really deserved. With the recent reunion tour along with this book, it appears they may be experiencing a renaissance of sorts, introducing their music to a new generation.
I can't recommend this book strongly enough. If you love the Replacements or if you enjoy rock biographies/histories, this one sets a high bar.
September 3, 2016
I always knew '80s band the Replacements were a bunch of self-saboteurs. I never knew the full extent of it. Bob Mehr has written a "band biography" that elevates the genre with its detail and its straightforwardness. You can tell Mehr has a fondness for the band. He still pulls no punches. Surprisingly, all the living members cooperated with the writing of the book, as did many of their family members and ex-wives and girlfriends. The tales of debauchery and redemption -- and more debauchery -- do feel overwhelming and depressing in parts, but there's so much information here that I'd never known before. Mehr's remarkable access and meticulous reporting allows him to paint an insightful picture of a very flawed group of individuals, who, together, made some amazing music.
December 25, 2023
Regarding this: it's fantastic, and anyone with an interest in the band should read it. Meanwhile, do not expect to think of the band as lovable scamps or simply troublemakers with self-defeating tendencies any longer after reading it. They were a very dysfunctional group of people with terrible coping skills, tons of conflicting anxieties about their career, and all of their untreated social and emotional problems (including deep, generational alcoholism) were covered over with a gang mentality and constant testing/abusing everyone around them, including each other. It's incredible how candid they are with the author, because they come out much less sympathetic than they start. And it happens pretty fast.
February 17, 2017
An incredibly well-written, well-researched book with a gut punch of a prologue and epilogue, both. Steve Albini steals the narrative show, as he is wont to do.
I understand the colloquial, familiar use of 'Mats as a shorthand for The Replacements between fans, but also loathe its presence in this book and wish I could have done a find-and-replace for all instances because what an annoying nickname to read over and over and over and over and over. (184 times in the book)
The epilogue has affected me profoundly as a reader and an artist. The book in general raises a lot of interesting questions about accountability.
I understand the colloquial, familiar use of 'Mats as a shorthand for The Replacements between fans, but also loathe its presence in this book and wish I could have done a find-and-replace for all instances because what an annoying nickname to read over and over and over and over and over. (184 times in the book)
The epilogue has affected me profoundly as a reader and an artist. The book in general raises a lot of interesting questions about accountability.
February 9, 2019
Compelling, well-written, and extensively documented. If you're a fan, it's hard to put down, but it's not necessarily a fun read. It gets tiring to see the band continually shoot themselves in the foot (and the head and heart) and be dicks to everyone who tries to help. If Paul Westerberg isn't the least sympathetic figure in rock history, he's in the team photo.
May 23, 2020
i love my boys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 16, 2023
A great, heartbreaking biography of a great, heartbreaking band.
December 14, 2016
The epilogue of Bob Mehr's tremendous history of the Replacements, "Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements," quotes lead singer, writer and guitar player Paul Westerberg: "We were pioneers and the pioneers don’t get it. Somebody’s got to start it and somebody’s got to pick it up, and maybe water it down, crank it up, do something to it and make it work. We were five years ahead of our time, we were ten years behind."
Perhaps the last, great rock band of the 1980s, the Replacements' heyday was after the explosion of punk and before the revolution of grunge. Misfits offstage and on, the Replacements made jetting punk snarl, Rolling Stones style rock, and ballads that took your breath away during an era of hair bands, MTV, Flock of Seagulls, Michael Jackson, clattery digital drums, synth-centric bands.
The Stinson brothers, Chris Mars, and Paul Westerberg. Full of rage, full of doubt, bonded by their backgrounds growing up in Minnesota poor, overlooked, abused. Having grown up on punk, they were incredibly tight. Drinking and drugging to keep the demons away, their concerts were legendarily loose - one night the greatest show on earth, the next night a drunken brawl full of half-baked covers, smashed guitars, bandmates falling off the stage.
Bob Mehr's book is brilliant. Why 650 pages about a band that never had a hit? Because it is about the way rock and roll can change and save lives. Bob Stinson, the lead guitarist, survivor of unspeakable physical, mental and sexual abuse at the hands of his stepfather, survived by grasping onto the liferaft of his guitar, obsessively studying Steve Howe's (Yes) guitar solos. In Paul Westerberg's words, "[We were] miscreants who had no other choice, had no other road out. We were one of the few, the chosen, you know? It’s either this or . . . jail, death, or janitor."
Trouble Boys is also about the families that form us as children, and the families that we choose as adults.
Why didn't the Replacements "make it?" For a bunch of reasons - not playing the music business game, substance abuse, equal doses of hubris, cynicism, naivete, and obnoxiousness. While reading this book, I found an old audio recording of their interview with Chicago DJ Johnny Mars of the great midwestern flagship WXRT radio, and frankly I found them to be drunken and boorish.
But their songs! Full of riotous joy, joyous riot. If they'd somehow found their way to having a hit, perhaps they would not have the legendary stature that has survived to this day. The band that inspired a thousand other bands. Oh those songs!
Perhaps the last, great rock band of the 1980s, the Replacements' heyday was after the explosion of punk and before the revolution of grunge. Misfits offstage and on, the Replacements made jetting punk snarl, Rolling Stones style rock, and ballads that took your breath away during an era of hair bands, MTV, Flock of Seagulls, Michael Jackson, clattery digital drums, synth-centric bands.
The Stinson brothers, Chris Mars, and Paul Westerberg. Full of rage, full of doubt, bonded by their backgrounds growing up in Minnesota poor, overlooked, abused. Having grown up on punk, they were incredibly tight. Drinking and drugging to keep the demons away, their concerts were legendarily loose - one night the greatest show on earth, the next night a drunken brawl full of half-baked covers, smashed guitars, bandmates falling off the stage.
Bob Mehr's book is brilliant. Why 650 pages about a band that never had a hit? Because it is about the way rock and roll can change and save lives. Bob Stinson, the lead guitarist, survivor of unspeakable physical, mental and sexual abuse at the hands of his stepfather, survived by grasping onto the liferaft of his guitar, obsessively studying Steve Howe's (Yes) guitar solos. In Paul Westerberg's words, "[We were] miscreants who had no other choice, had no other road out. We were one of the few, the chosen, you know? It’s either this or . . . jail, death, or janitor."
Trouble Boys is also about the families that form us as children, and the families that we choose as adults.
Why didn't the Replacements "make it?" For a bunch of reasons - not playing the music business game, substance abuse, equal doses of hubris, cynicism, naivete, and obnoxiousness. While reading this book, I found an old audio recording of their interview with Chicago DJ Johnny Mars of the great midwestern flagship WXRT radio, and frankly I found them to be drunken and boorish.
But their songs! Full of riotous joy, joyous riot. If they'd somehow found their way to having a hit, perhaps they would not have the legendary stature that has survived to this day. The band that inspired a thousand other bands. Oh those songs!
August 17, 2016
"God, What A Mess." Individually -- to a man -- every member of this band was a mess. (As were most of their associates.) And collectively -- at every opportunity -- they made a mess. Of everything.
And here is their story. Meticulously researched. Authoritatively sourced. Magnificently told.
Bob Mehr's "Trouble Boys" is the story one of the greatest American rock and roll bands of all time. And it is nothing less than one of the greatest rock and roll books ever written.
That said, this is not a happy tale. The trouble begins early. And the damage is severe.
By the time Paul meets Chris, Tommy and Bob at the Stinson family home and joins their band a dark cloud already hangs over each of them. And that never changes. In ways small and large the bad luck never relents.
The band is ferocious. The songs are brilliant. The performances are transcendent.
And yet they never reach the summit.
Most of the failures are attributable to the band members themselves. The recklessness of youth and untreated mental illness often play a role. But it's the tsunami of alcohol that dictates the course of events. And readers unfamiliar with the band will likely be repulsed by their behavior. Debauchery? You have no idea.
Readers who love the band (there's no middle ground here, you either do or you don't) will likely be shocked anyone lived to tell the tale. But they'll have a better understanding of why the albums turned out the way they did and why the band never had that illusive "hit record". They'll also have an informed appreciation for each band member, where they were coming from and where they ended up going. And those are some of the great gifts of this book.
But the greatest gift is the book itself. Bob Mehr gives the band its due. That's something that was long overdue. But here it is. Finally. And that's something fans of the band should celebrate and give thanks for.
"God, What A Mess." Yes indeed they were. Individually and collectively. And here is their story.
Here also is a song I wrote about Bob Stinson in 2009. I hope you will listen/watch and enjoy it.
REMEMBER BOB STINSON
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiJ_J...
And here is their story. Meticulously researched. Authoritatively sourced. Magnificently told.
Bob Mehr's "Trouble Boys" is the story one of the greatest American rock and roll bands of all time. And it is nothing less than one of the greatest rock and roll books ever written.
That said, this is not a happy tale. The trouble begins early. And the damage is severe.
By the time Paul meets Chris, Tommy and Bob at the Stinson family home and joins their band a dark cloud already hangs over each of them. And that never changes. In ways small and large the bad luck never relents.
The band is ferocious. The songs are brilliant. The performances are transcendent.
And yet they never reach the summit.
Most of the failures are attributable to the band members themselves. The recklessness of youth and untreated mental illness often play a role. But it's the tsunami of alcohol that dictates the course of events. And readers unfamiliar with the band will likely be repulsed by their behavior. Debauchery? You have no idea.
Readers who love the band (there's no middle ground here, you either do or you don't) will likely be shocked anyone lived to tell the tale. But they'll have a better understanding of why the albums turned out the way they did and why the band never had that illusive "hit record". They'll also have an informed appreciation for each band member, where they were coming from and where they ended up going. And those are some of the great gifts of this book.
But the greatest gift is the book itself. Bob Mehr gives the band its due. That's something that was long overdue. But here it is. Finally. And that's something fans of the band should celebrate and give thanks for.
"God, What A Mess." Yes indeed they were. Individually and collectively. And here is their story.
Here also is a song I wrote about Bob Stinson in 2009. I hope you will listen/watch and enjoy it.
REMEMBER BOB STINSON
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiJ_J...
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