Bob Mehr

This compelling, well written book about my favorite band shows how, honestly, they were all a bunch of assholes. (I still love their music though!) Slim Dunlap says something about in store band appearances that applies to this book, too: "The more the fans met the Replacements, the more the band was rude, the less they liked them." Numerous interviewees describe the musicians as having a feral gang mentality that sometimes felt charming, unstudied, and authentic but was more often cruel and stupid. For example, was burning dollar bills and destroying tour bus/hotel room furniture a sly criticism of capitalism--or were they just a bunch of jerks? They grew up with so little opportunity and education, coupled with so much neglect or outright abuse, and that damaged them yet certainly made them fascinating.

The best parts of this book are the stories behind the music; they really bring the songs to life and demonstrate the musical brilliance of this band. Recommended for all readers and especially for fans--despite the guarantee that you will like them less (as people, not artists) after reading their story.… (altro)

If you haven't heard any Replacement songs, you'll wonder from the start why anyone would voluntarily burden themselves with the company of Paul Westerberg, who made a kind of religion out of willfully stupid behavior, despite high native intelligence and a capacity for empathy that showed itself most tellingly in the universal longing expressed in those songs. Sooner or later, Westerberg treated all of his friends like shit, and he treated the rest of the world, however friendly and willing to help him, with the contempt normally reserved for a hated vice principal. He wrote songs like a grief-struck angel, and for every occasion on which he performed them with love and attention, there were more when he blew them off in deliberately poor performances. He was a drunk, but he was conscious and responsible for all of it. He met the Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson when Stimson was twelve, and became his most formative influence.

We all have our demons, but Paul fed his and made them pets. Still, the songs spilled out and were amazing: by turns exuberant, angry, funny, tender, cathartic, and sad. Rock fans will forgive almost any behavior in those who can take the music to its full potential, and the Replacements were dragged toward fame despite literally countless gaffes and offenses that would have stopped the career of a lesser band cold. Eventually, reaching that point where self-sabotage could no longer be transcended, they fizzled, burned, and fell to earth. "Trouble Boys" is the story of the rocket's flight.

Bob Mehr, a career music journalist, spent ten years talking to everyone who could tell him anything about the life of the band, including Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson. The sad life of the Replacements' lead guitarist, Tommy's older brother Bob Stinson, bookends the story; an early chapter about Bob's childhood is so heartbreaking I set the book aside for a while. When the story of the band starts, "Trouble Boys" becomes compulsively readable, a book you might recommend to someone who doesn't know what rock'n'roll is about.… (altro)