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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
May 23, 2020
i love my boys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 16, 2023
A great, heartbreaking biography of a great, heartbreaking band.
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.
July 27, 2016
With apologies to the Wrens, the 'Mats remain the most quizzically under-appreciated American rock 'n' roll band, and so run—don't walk—to your nearest bricks-&-mortar record shop and scarf up Hootenanny, Let It Be, Tim and Pleased to Meet Me, for starters. Still doesn't make this meticulously researched 457-page dirge any more endurable, but then again it sucks when someone comes along and offers unarguable evidence that your heroes were a bunch of borderline sociopaths and assholes, so what can you do? With apologies to another Minnesota blackout drunk, F. Scott FitzBoozebag: "They were careless people, Tom and [Paul] — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their [booze and drugs] or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
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.
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.
May 25, 2018
As a casual Replacements fan, I read this hoping to get a handle on the band - I feel like it did that, but even though I feel like I get them, I don’t necessarily love them still. It’s so clearly well researched, but sometimes I felt like Mehr yielded too much to Paul’s version of the story, or excused some shitty behavior when he should have been more critical. I’m down with the fuck-you of refusing to play nice for record executives, for example, but I think this book kind of equates that with the fuck-you of spitting beer on a fan or harassing sound guys. I know the book doesn’t make them out to be angels, but I did think it bought into the mythos a bit too much.
December 29, 2023
Favourite band and favourite book of the year.
May 30, 2018
good rock doc book. Instead of the whole “woah these guys sure were nuts!” It actually gets behind that to the not so cool punk guy aspects of being an off the rails musician. Very through (long) at times getting into the family history of the third manager they hired or whatever but although sometimes trying, the thoroughness is what makes this ‘deep dive’ such an interesting read.
Oh and yeah um good band! Rock on
Oh and yeah um good band! Rock on
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