Dreams, unfulfilledWhen I first heard The Replacements, I thought Paul Westerberg yowled like a hungry cat with a pack a day habit and the guitars sounded like razor wire being yanked through a drain pipe. I hated it then; I love it now, though my shorthand assessment hasn't changed a bit. They formed young (bassist Tommy Stinson was 12 at the time), played youth centers, got drunk, played all over Minneapolis, got drunk, toured the Midwest, got drunk, etc. The erratic nature of the Replacements' live show was so legendary that the band nicknamed themselves The Placemats on nights they were too fucked up to/didn't give a shit about performing well. They managed a contract with Minneapolis independent Twin/Tone after playing only a handful of gigs at a time when not everyone was running a noise imprint out of their Williamsburg loft (earning them the enmity of then-better known scene contemporaries/friendly rivals Husker Du). In their time, the band cut three formative records plagued by obvious growing pains (Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, the "Stink" EP, and Hootenany!), one masterpiece (Let It Be), one near-masterpiece major label debut (Tim), one great-yet-flawed last grasp for pop stardom (Pleased to Meet Me), and two decline-and-fall-of records (Don't Tell a Soul and All Shook Down).
Either The Replacements had a prolonged adolescence or none at all; drinking, drugging, and the fact that they were in rock band seemed to both shove them into maturity while retarding their transition into adulthood. Westerberg's best songs, especially those from the Let It Be/Tim era of 1984-85, are delivered with a teenager's overblown emotional intensity, but they read like letters from a future self: "I Will Dare", perhaps the band's most famous tune, starts off with the lines "How young are you?/How old am I?/Let's count the rings/Around my eyes." Sure, Westerberg was 24 when he wrote that, the same age as Dylan was when he recorded "Like a Rolling Stone"; the difference is that while Dylan sounds preternaturally ageless, Westerberg sounds about sixteen.
Rockers in the '50s idealized teenhood (some might say they helped invent it); in the '60s they tried to outrun it; in the '70s they ignored it. The Replacements, like other seminal '80s groups such as Black Flag and Minor Threat, embraced it, shaking off the fashionable adult obliqueness of the new wave with a directness that stemmed from their personal experiences and those of their audience. Ever since Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" (and likely before), the frustrations of being a teen had been fodder for pop music; instead of making light of these attendant frustrations, The Replacements and their ilk infused them with a sense of desperation. In effect, Alice Cooper's "School's Out" became Paul Westerberg's "Fuck School".
No one stays a teen forever though: Black Flag imploded when Greg Ginn and Henry Rollins got tired of sleeping in vans and couldn't agree on a new direction; Minor Threat outgrew Ian MacKaye's straight-edge self-righteousness, and MacKaye outgrew Minor Threat's willingness to compromise its sound; The Replacements signed with Warner Bros' Sire imprint and decided to go for the big time. 1985's Tim, their first major label effort, was still a great album, nearly standing shoulder to shoulder with Let It Be, but Westerberg's songwriting had perceptibly shifted into a more adult tone. Though the album still teemed with teen standards like "Kiss Me On the Bus" and "Bastards of Young", regret began to seep in where rage had been, and telltale diversions like "Gary's Got a Boner" and "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out" (sample lyric: "Let's get this over with/I tee off in an hour") were replaced with the bizarre stewardess put-down "Waitress In The Sky." By 1987's Pleased to Meet Me, guitarist Bob Stinson was out of the band, and Westerberg's Big Star fixation took center stage: the record even featured a direct homage to his inspiration, "Alex Chilton." Though he had finally banished the messiness from the instrumentation, Westerberg could never rub it out of his own voice; for all its pop ambition, Pleased to Meet Me - a fine record in its own right - failed to break the 'Mats commercially. The rest is denouement.
The Replacements - "Bastards of Young" from Tim (1985)
Either The Replacements had a prolonged adolescence or none at all; drinking, drugging, and the fact that they were in rock band seemed to both shove them into maturity while retarding their transition into adulthood. Westerberg's best songs, especially those from the Let It Be/Tim era of 1984-85, are delivered with a teenager's overblown emotional intensity, but they read like letters from a future self: "I Will Dare", perhaps the band's most famous tune, starts off with the lines "How young are you?/How old am I?/Let's count the rings/Around my eyes." Sure, Westerberg was 24 when he wrote that, the same age as Dylan was when he recorded "Like a Rolling Stone"; the difference is that while Dylan sounds preternaturally ageless, Westerberg sounds about sixteen.
Rockers in the '50s idealized teenhood (some might say they helped invent it); in the '60s they tried to outrun it; in the '70s they ignored it. The Replacements, like other seminal '80s groups such as Black Flag and Minor Threat, embraced it, shaking off the fashionable adult obliqueness of the new wave with a directness that stemmed from their personal experiences and those of their audience. Ever since Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" (and likely before), the frustrations of being a teen had been fodder for pop music; instead of making light of these attendant frustrations, The Replacements and their ilk infused them with a sense of desperation. In effect, Alice Cooper's "School's Out" became Paul Westerberg's "Fuck School".
No one stays a teen forever though: Black Flag imploded when Greg Ginn and Henry Rollins got tired of sleeping in vans and couldn't agree on a new direction; Minor Threat outgrew Ian MacKaye's straight-edge self-righteousness, and MacKaye outgrew Minor Threat's willingness to compromise its sound; The Replacements signed with Warner Bros' Sire imprint and decided to go for the big time. 1985's Tim, their first major label effort, was still a great album, nearly standing shoulder to shoulder with Let It Be, but Westerberg's songwriting had perceptibly shifted into a more adult tone. Though the album still teemed with teen standards like "Kiss Me On the Bus" and "Bastards of Young", regret began to seep in where rage had been, and telltale diversions like "Gary's Got a Boner" and "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out" (sample lyric: "Let's get this over with/I tee off in an hour") were replaced with the bizarre stewardess put-down "Waitress In The Sky." By 1987's Pleased to Meet Me, guitarist Bob Stinson was out of the band, and Westerberg's Big Star fixation took center stage: the record even featured a direct homage to his inspiration, "Alex Chilton." Though he had finally banished the messiness from the instrumentation, Westerberg could never rub it out of his own voice; for all its pop ambition, Pleased to Meet Me - a fine record in its own right - failed to break the 'Mats commercially. The rest is denouement.
The Replacements - "Bastards of Young" from Tim (1985)
