Go While You Can: The Replacements

How to write about The Replacements without coming off like a rock critic, a star-struck fan or even without writing a personal essay (‘I am the fifth Replacement because….’)? And I don’t know how to do it without jamming all of these things together somehow. This is, after all, a band that smashed it all together: punk, country, blues, Dylan and the Beatles—into a drunken rambling rock ‘n roll sideshow. I want to avoid saying something that might annoy Paul Westerberg (singer, songwriter and guitarist of the band). Fat chance he’d ever hear it, but still he’s one of my favorite writers and I don’t want to pile on the superlatives. He is someone who, by all appearances, has worked hard his whole life not only to find and reveal his art, but also to aggressively avoid and sometimes kick down common notions of artistic greatness and rock stardom. So you’re an artist? he would seem to say, So what? Think you’re better than a truck driver? Think again. Oh shit, did I just put words in his mouth? Well, fuck me.

The Replacements are my favorite rock ‘n roll band, I can’t help that. They’re my folk  music. Some people, when they think of folk music, may have visions of Joan Baez and This Land is Your Land, and that’s fine. But for me it’s Highway 61 Revisited, it’s The Replacements. Folk music, for me, is down home music. It’s not that which expresses ideals and aspirations or that which evokes a higher plane of consciousness. It does not induce a meditative state that can transport the listener’s spirit to a better place, or even drive the body to swing in harmony to the cosmos. Folk music is down home where you live. It’s about what’s really going on, not what you may want or wish but what is. It’s not the $100 stone crab special occasion dinner, it’s the plate of sardines and spaghetti you had after a suck-ass day at work. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try…. Take the anthem Goddamn Job. No song could express more clearly the feeling: you go from one no-future minimum wage job to another, can’t last longer than six months or so in one of them before you’re ready to tear the place apart or put a gun to your mouth. The freedom of I quit! On the street, jobless, hands in empty pockets, free! But it can only last a couple of weeks. And you’ve got to get another one. And you’ll eat every drop off that plate.

Every year around July 4^th I think about Stuck in the Middle. This is American Independence Day and whatever else it means it’s a couple hundred million backyard barbeques. It’s burgers and potato salad and sparklers and beer and rock ‘n roll. Somebody gets too drunk, a baby’s crying from the noise, another worries that the boys are being reckless with the fireworks and nobody thinks about midnight rides, shoeless soldiers and freedom. Nobody thinks about American independence but everyone’s together. In that moment everyone knows implicitly that this is as good as it gets.

Like other listeners, I’ve always felt like Westerberg was singing about my life. I even identify with the name of the band, not ambiguous or ambivalent, but outright schizoid: Here we are, standing in for those blowhards you’ve come to expect. Who are we? Just the warm bodies here, where we are. The sarcasm, the rage, the selfish hurt, the insecurity and self-mockery, but also the empathy for the unknown and the unsung—these are the primary emotions at play on the eight disks made by The Replacements. As long as I’ve been writing poetry I’ve realized that my personality is a weird and disturbing mix of Ego and self-effacement. That’s why The Replacements are my band.

They’re the most famous unknown band in the world. I forget who said that. When Musician Magazine named them in 1989 the “last best band of the 80’s” (they formed in 1980 and split up in 1990) Jon Bon Jovi wrote the editor to say, “How can they be the best band of the 80’s when I’ve never heard of them?”* Six months after Don’t Tell a Soul was released it went to the cutout bins.

The demands made upon you are hard to live up to

It’s futile to try and deny

And the things you hold dearly are scoffed at and yearly

Judged once and then left aside

’Cause they’re blind

They hold you too close to the light

And I see what they only might if they’d learn

But they’re letting you burn ’cause they’re blind

To the brown-eyed beholder, see the chip on your shoulder

That fools everyone to believe

That you’re so hard to talk to and so easy to read through

Yet nobody looks past your sleeve, yeah

’Cause they’re blind

They hold you too close to the light

And I see what they only might if they’d learn

But they’re letting you burn ’cause they’re blind

—They’re Blind, Paul Westerberg

Supposedly there are financiers waving wads of cash in front of Tommy Stinson, Chris Mars (who’s a visual artist now) and Paul Westerberg, trying to entice them to get back together. I hope they never do, but either way my copy of Don’t Tell a Soul will always have a little notch cut out of the corner of it. Is that too precious? Yeah, I guess it is. As precious as the guitar solo at the end of Sixteen Blue, nothing but a held note and a la-di-da. The aura of The Replacements, or their mystique, if you will, lives in the hearts of their fans, but also, and more importantly, in the songs of Paul Westerberg. When Glen Campbell chose a Westerberg song to head up his final album and tour, the Mats persona of the left-behind became something new, poignant and frankly beautiful, and with the kind of polished sound only Campbell could bring: darlin’one, your time has come.

*The Replacements All over but the shouting: an oral history by Jim Walsh