On Saturday night, in a dusty field, off a two-lane road,
across a vast expanse of time, I saw the greatest rock and roll show ever played. You might want to disagree, but you weren't there. You're going to
have to trust me.
Of course, you might also have to let me translate. If you
don't speak the language of The Replacements, you'll never understand.
* * *
8,143 days. That's how much time passed between when I last
saw The Replacements (June 6, 1991, Columbia, Missouri) and when I next did
(September 21, 2013, middle of nowhere). That might seem like an eternity, but
I could hardly have done better. The boys themselves took 8,088 days off.
In that span,
Bob Stinson died, and
Steve Foley
died, and
Alex Chilton
died, and
Slim Dunlap
suffered an incapacitating stroke, and
Chris Mars shut the door on a
career in music. I graduated law school, got married, had one kid, then
another, quit the practice, buried four grandparents and an aunt and an uncle,
wrote a couple of books (one of which features Replacements' leader Paul
Westerberg in a pivotal moment; if you're reading this, and I suspect you are,
you'll love it,
trust me),
saw my dad drink himself to divorce and near-death, watched my mom persevere
like a titan, welcomed three nieces to the family, became the PTA president,
and went to my law school twenty-year reunion.
I also listened to the music they left behind more times
than I could ever count.
For the uninitiated, a thumbnail sketch: Toward the end of
the Carter administration, four guttersnipes from Minneapolis formed a band
that was equal parts punk rock, cheap beer, A.M. radio and amphetamines. They
were Paul, the singer, songwriter, rhythm guitar player, and accidental genius;
Bob, the manic guitarist whose leads were "hotter than a urinary tract
infection," as Paul once described them; Bob's thirteen-year-old
bass-playing brother Tommy; and drummer Chris, the misfit elf who wanted to be
a painter.
They made a string of indie-label albums that culminated in
the classic Let It Be, then got
signed to a major and released the equally transcendent Tim. Then Bob got kicked out of The Replacements for excessive drunkenness
(which is akin to being booted from Duran Duran for excessive stylishness) and
the band recorded one last great album as a trio (Pleased To Meet Me), before the affable and understated Slim Dunlap
took Bob's place. After two more good-not-great records, they handed their gear
to roadies on a Chicago stage on July 4, 1991, and walked out of our lives
while the crew continued to play.
During those waning years of their existence, I felt closer
to The Replacements than any band before or since. To be honest, I felt closer
to them than I often felt to my family. It's not rational or reasonable, but
it's true. Paul's songs didn't just speak to me, they spoke for me,
articulating all the young-adult angst and anticipation that I felt but
couldn't say, and it all sat atop a Stones-meets-Pistols buzz that hit me where
I lived. "The words I thought I brought I left behind," he sang,
"so never mind, all over but the shouting, just a waste of time."
Even when he professed to be unable to say anything, he managed to say
everything.
And he said those things in the nuanced way of reality,
churning out songs that were, by turns, touching, terrifying, harrowing and
hilarious. But -- and this is the thing
-- no matter how often he evoked isolation or despair ("Within Your
Reach," "Unsatisfied," "Answering Machine"), the note
that always lingered was hope. I can't
hardly wait.
In January 1991, my friend Scott pried me out of the law
library and stuffed me into a car and drove us to St. Louis, where the band was
playing at the American Theater. We knew it was almost over. They were touring
on an album that had started as a Westerberg solo project before the label
intervened, and Chris had just been relieved of his post, replaced by Steve
Foley. The Iraq War was underway, and I was feeling unsettled. I am old enough
only to remember Vietnam as some vague thing that was happening when I was very
young. I thought there would only be peace in our time.
Inside the theater, I expected to be disappointed, but
proceeded to be amazed. They were like a champion athlete in twilight,
summoning one last great performance. Paul snarled like he hated Steve, hated
himself, hated everything, but he poured it all into the songs and gave them a
shimmering, lingering resonance that I can still feel. After they finished the
encore with a raging and poignant version of "I'm In Trouble," their
very first single, we walked into the cold night grateful to have been there.
We listened for echoes of that show when we saw them again, one last time, less
than six months later, but we couldn't hear them. The Replacements were done.
* * *
But it turns out that I wasn't done with The Replacements.
When I was twenty-two, I thought those songs were about what it was like to be
young. But as I got older, I realized that they were about what it was like to
be alive. Those feelings may diminish in intensity, may become less acute, but
they never go away. Two decades down the line, I have a life that's far better
than I deserve, with no good reason ever to be unhappy. But sometimes I still
am. Even though I'm loved, sometimes I feel alone. Even after a success, I fear
the next failure.
In late 1993, Paul appeared on
Saturday Night Live to promote his first solo album. And for
reasons I still don't understand, the second song he played wasn't from that
record, but instead was
"Can't
Hardly Wait," one of The Replacements' very best songs, achingly
gorgeous and wistful. Paul seemed triumphant, about to experience the kind of
success that he had managed to sabotage at every turn with the band. That night,
that song was a lifeline to me. I was newly married and beginning my career,
beginning my life as an adult, and I was overwhelmed. I felt down deep that
this was not the life for me (the professional one, that is; the personal life
still flourishes). The performance left me reeling for days, but I still felt
the hope implicit in it.
After that, I followed each of the band members for a while,
from albums that went from really good to not particularly, with a frequency
that went from every few months to every so often. And then, each of The
Replacements seemed to recede from my life. Nobody played those songs anymore.
It's like they ceased to exist.
But it turns out that those songs were just crammed into a
closet like precariously-stacked toys. And then a few weeks ago, someone opened
the door and they all came tumbling out along with Paul Westerberg, who
performed a perfectly-executed forward roll and stuck the landing on the
downbeat in front of the microphone just in time to sing "Stay right
there/Go no further/Don't call a doctor/Don't call my mother!"
* * *
And now, the show, with subtitles.
In their typical why-succeed-when-failure-is-an-option?
style, after years of turning down offers to reunite, Paul and Tommy decided
they would get back together for three shows only (at least to date),
headlining a low-key, predominantly punk rock festival with stops in Toronto,
Chicago and a place hilariously inaccurately billed as Denver. No New York or
Los Angeles, or even hometown Minneapolis. No Bonnaroo or Coachella or
Lollapalooza. Nope, just Riot Fest in god-forsaken Byers, Colorado, an hour
east of Denver, smack in the dusty, rusty pre-mountain flats (to the Chamber of
Commerce: I'm sure Byers has its charms; no need to write).
Scott, my companion at those 1991 shows, has lived in Denver
for two decades. This, friends, is what we call fate. We would attend the third
and final Replacements reunion show.
The rest of what happened on Saturday is largely irrelevant,
but just know that it was a hot, windy, dusty, grueling day. We had been there
for ten hours before our heroes took the stage, and we are, ahem, older than we used to be. We were going
to need the band to carry us to the finish. Little did we know.
Three stages were set up more or less in a row, and The
Replacements were set to cap the day on the far left. After the
Creed-meets-Cure outfit AFI finished playing there, and the crowd moved over to
the next stage to see Iggy and The Stooges (who I would have crawled to see on
any other day), we made our way down front, three bodies from the rail, just
off center, and held our ground for the next seventy minutes, chatting with
pilgrims who had traveled from as far as Eugene, Oregon and Seattle, Washington,
while waiting for The Stooges to wrap up their set.
This is what happened next, in roughly chronological order.
What happened: The
house lights fell, Frank Sinatra sang "That's Life," and Paul and
Tommy emerged from the wings with new members Josh Freese and David Minehan.
Each wore a day-glo orange cowboy hat and garish western shirt, with Paul and
Tommy sporting long pink skirts.
What this means:
(1) It's
on; and (2) the spirit of
Bob is in the house. Curious sartorial choices were a staple of the band at its
wild-eyed best, including the infamous 1986
Saturday Night
Live appearance in which the
four original members
exchanged
clothes between songs and earned a temporary ban from NBC for their
offstage behavior. Bob Stinson possessed an especially quirky sense of fashion,
sometimes performing in a dress or a diaper.
When Paul and Tommy show up in skirts, that's your cue to
hold on tight.
What happened: The
band launched into a thunderous, gnat's-ass-tight version of "Takin' A
Ride," a snot-caked slab of punk pop, and the first song on their first
album.
What this means:
We're going back to the beginning, back to when no one knew us or cared, to an
album no one bought, and you're going to love it. We did. In fact, four of the
first five tunes will come from their debut, Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash, including "Shiftless
When Idle," which they apparently had neither played nor practiced since
getting back together.
It certainly sounded like it, but in the best possible way.
What happened: Early
in the set, between songs, Paul looked at his bass player and said "Hey
Tommy, you know where you are? You're in the jungle, baby," eliciting a
laugh from the forty-six-year-old man who helped found the band as a
thirteen-year-old kid. Then Paul added "Far be it from me to give you shit
for being in Van Halen."
What this means:
The hatchet has been buried. Since 1998, Tommy has been Axl's chief lieutenant in
the current incarnation of Guns N' Roses. At one point, this appeared to cause some
friction between the two, as Paul publicly carped about Tommy's career choice
as hired gun in the Big Rock Machine. It may have been jealousy or insecurity
or lead-balloon humor, but it seemed to sour the relationship. That's over now.
As an aside, Paul, now fifty-three, looks better than he
ever has, handsome even. Sober, fit, refreshed. He has also clearly been
itching to plug in and turn up. These are all good things.
What happened: Ten
songs into the set, the band plays "Androgynous," and Paul forgets
some of the words.
What this means:
Sing-along! In truth, the whole show was a sing-along. I was astonished at how
all of those words poured out across the gulf of time, deeply imbedded memories
surging to the surface. On the quietest song of the night, it was especially
evident. This is the only video I shot (notice how close we were), and you can
hear it clearly. Those aren't just words going back to the stage. That's love.
What happened: The band played "Love You Till
Friday," interspersed with Chuck Berry's "Maybelline."
What this means:
There's nothing new here. This is some primal, primordial shit. This is the
Beatles in Hamburg, tapping into the most elemental, exciting thing that has
ever been created, making it scream like a symphony for chainsaws, and imbuing
it with a majesty that three chords should not possibly possess. "Love You
Till Friday" is the second least-consequential original song played all
night (only the outtake "Wake Up" will be more obscure), but, good
lord, is it spectacular.
What happened:
They did not play "Unsatisfied."
What this means:
They are no longer unsatisfied.
What happened: The
band hit the home stretch.
What this means:
The most undeniable string of songs any current band on the planet can play. It
starts with "Little Mascara," a gem from side two (remember sides?)
of Tim that hums like an American
muscle car. During this stretch, Paul will (among other things), try to sing
while eating, attempt to play guitar while holding a cigarette, and nearly
drown while holding a water bottle upside down in his teeth while trying to simultaneously
hydrate and play. Miraculously, he survives.
What happened: "Left
of the Dial," that's what happened.
What this means: I
didn't know how I was going to react to the show. When it was first announced,
I was excited but also wary. The Replacements were great, but that was a long
time ago. Might it not be better to just leave it alone? Then I thought I might
get overwhelmed. I am not a man prone to emotion, but when I saw YouTube clips
of the first reunion show in Toronto, I'll confess to a tear welling in the
eye. But from the first note of "Takin' A Ride," all I felt was joy
until we got to "Left of the Dial." If you want to hear one song that
represents The Replacements, this is it. It's loud, lovely, wistful, sad and
hopeful. But then comes the final verse, with Paul signing "pretty girl
keep growing up/playing makeup/wearing guitar/growing old in the bar/you grow
old in the bar," and it hits me just like it does every time, an arrow
through the heart. The song came out in 1985, but Paul saw the future. We did
grow old, and I know it, and I can feel the constriction in my chest and the
cold rush through my face, all of the stuff the band has represented to me over
time (and, let's face it, they have represented my life) comes to the surface.
I keep it together, but just barely.
What happened: "Can't
Hardly Wait."
What this means: I
was at a dinner party a few months back, and all the guests were asked to
provide three songs, one that represented childhood, one for the coming-of-age
years, and one for the married-with-kids period, and "Can't Hardly
Wait" was my coming-of-age tune. It was there for me in that crisis time
of transition to adulthood, it was there at the center of my novel, and it
showed up here again, just where it belonged.
What happened: The
set ended with "Bastards of Young."
What this means:
This is their "Born to Run," their full-throated, big-hearted anthem.
It opens with a guitar figure that is a musical battle cry, and a first line
that neatly encapsulates the band's career: "God, what a mess, on the
ladder of success." It is relentless and raging. Paul, again for reasons
unknown, decides to bang on his guitar with his shoe while Minehan plays the
solo (see below at 1:59), to Tommy's great delight. The song, as always, ends
in cacophony, and the band exits the stage.
What happened:
While the lights were down, I saw the flash of Paul's pink skirt dart behind
the drum kit.
What this means:
"Hootenanny" is coming.
Hootenanny, the
band's third album, was the great leap forward. It's not exactly professional,
but it's focused and brilliant. "Hootenanny," the song that gives the
album its name, is a glorious mess that features the members of the band
playing each other's instruments. Paul pounds the skins like a caveman and
shouts "it's a hootenanny!" over and over again. On this night, with
Paul behind the drums, drummer Josh Freese takes the bass, and bassist Tommy
Stinson takes Paul's guitar and then leans Paul's microphone stand across the
drum kit at an angle that results in Paul singing into his crotch.
It is magical.
What happened:
Well, it's hard to explain, but let's give it a shot, augmented by the video
below. When Josh Freese makes a move to retake his drum kit, Paul waves him off
so he can continue to sit. This is the segment of the show where they start
making stuff up. By the time I was old enough to see the band the first time
around, they were an intermittently professional unit. I never saw one of the
legendary drunken shows, but I've heard the recordings of several. This was a
little like that. Our pal Pete would call it shambolic, and he would be right.
As the band fumbles for something to play, Tommy fishes out the riff to
"Detroit Rock City" and the others join in. Sort of. And when that
falls apart, he plays the intro to The Who's "Substitute" (at least
one online recap lists them as playing "Ace of Spades" in between,
but that's more than a stretch; judge for yourself). Paul does a spastic Keith
Moon imitation and nearly falls off the stool, then jumps off the riser, grabs
his microphone from the stand, and attempts a Roger Daltrey mic-twirl. But on
the first spin, the microphone flies off the cord and slams into the stage,
Paul's big rock and roll move having gone appropriately, spectacularly wrong. Tommy
laughs uncontrollably, while a bemused Paul picks up the mic and tosses it into
the crowd. The band then walks off the stage, never to return. In Toronto and
Chicago, they wrapped up with "I.O.U.," but here they skip it, which
seems fitting. They owed us nothing.
Scott and I then walk out into the night like we did in St.
Louis more than twenty-two years ago, just as awestruck as then, but somehow
wiser and happier.
What this means:
The Replacements live on.
What this means to me:
More than you could ever know.
(Michael's novel XL
is available at
Amazon and all the familiar places)
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