Replacements - The epic of the kid generation

In the late 1970s, Minneapolis was set to become one of pop music's nerve centers. The scene saw the emergence of versatile artists destined to turn into world-class stars (chief among them, of course, Prince); but above all, the city was about to become an incredible and unexpected breeding ground for hardcore bands destined to leave an indelible mark on the history of American underground rock: foremost among them Husker Du, the (until the early 90s) overlooked Soul Asylum, and Paul Westerberg's Replacements.

Power-pop (or hardcore-pop), a recovery of certain traditional musical forms, an intimate dimension that prevails (at least in the long run) over the public militancy that had characterized almost all hardcore bands, especially Californian ones, of the early 80s: these, in short, are the defining traits of the Minneapolis hardcore scene.

But if I had to pick which of the bands mentioned managed to most incisively express the mood of a certain generational fringe, to dig deep into its own era, to probe the limits, weaknesses and most hidden desires of the American teenager (and ultimately to rise to the role of symbol of a generation), I would without a doubt choose the Replacements.

Bolder, more extreme and more aggressive than their Huskers cousins, the Replacements (originally "Impediments", then "Mats" to their many fans) embodied, early in their career, and not only musically, the quintessence of the young punk/hardcorer. Their sound was raw, violent: as in the best hardcore tradition, it was an angry outburst, far from any academic pretension, "adolescent" to the core (after all, all hardcore "smells like teen spirit"...). Their live shows were excessive, extreme, deafening and passionate.

What sets the band apart is that, within just a few years, they managed to go beyond the (rather narrow, truth be told) canons of hardcore and reclaim, in a thoroughly original way, the American tradition of country-folk, blues and pop, of which the Mats established themselves as both interpreters and torchbearers.

In his mature masterpieces, Westerberg would reveal a melodic gift with few equals, proving to be one of the most talented songwriters of his generation. His compositions, extremely varied and encyclopedic in their sources of inspiration, played a decisive role in opening new horizons for American rock, creating a reference genre for numerous bands in the second half of the 80s (just think of cow-punk) and throughout the entire 90s.

But let's go back for a moment to the beginnings; Minneapolis, as we said. Late 1970s. This is where a band of kids (the youngest not yet 15, the oldest in his twenties) began sketching out and slowly refining their own peculiar brand of hardcore/punk, drawing on the masters who at the time were turning California into the promised land of American alternative rock.

The band's line-up, besides leader Paul Westerberg (songwriter, singer and guitarist), included Bob Stinson (guitar), Tommy Stinson (bass) and Chris Mars (drums).

Preceded by the clearly punk-leaning single and EP I'm In Trouble, the band's debut album, Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash, was released in 1981 on Twin/Tone: a mini-LP of 18 songs in under 28 minutes that achieved modest commercial success, selling around 30,000 copies.

Despite the extremely young average age (even for a hardcore band), this is a dazzling debut, already mature in all its immaturity. The group shows it has fully absorbed the lesson of bands like Ramones and Germs, and knows how to reinterpret it in a unique and original way.

You can sense that creative urgency typical of the finest, noblest rock "vomit" that hits right the first time. Chaotic thrash-punk numbers proliferate ("Customer" and "Shut up" above all), but the heterogeneity of musical sources is already perceptible, as shown by the ante-litteram cow-punk of "Love You Till Friday" and the irresistible rock'n'roll of "More Cigarettes".

The most original (and longest) track on the record is probably the bluesy "Johnny's Gonna Die", Westerberg's tribute to one of his idols and foremost inspirations, Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls.

In 1982 the band's second mini-album hit the stores (eight tracks in barely a quarter of an hour), titled Stink (which over the course of the decade would be reissued several times, always with different covers).

This is the natural continuation of the path so brilliantly laid out on the debut album. The sound, if anything, is even more aggressive.

Side one, in fact, unloads on the stunned listener four hardcore seizures worthy of the best Black Flag or the earliest Husker Du. Four short tracks hurled at breakneck speed, propelled by Stinson's savage guitar and a Westerberg vocal still close to the average hardcore shriek.

The raw, adrenaline-charged 2'50" of "Kids Don't Follow" opens the dance, followed in rapid succession by three devastating anthems: "Fuck School" (1'26"), "Stuck In The Middle" (1'46"), "God Damn Job" (1'19").

The lyrics are still a bit green, but already markedly autobiographical and, ultimately, representative of the mood, anger and deepest fears of the average teenager: Westerberg sharpens his songwriting, showing a remarkable improvement over the band's earliest days. The album carries on with the scorching "White And Lazy" and "Dope Smokin' Moron", before granting a moment's pause with the first genuine ballad in the Replacements' catalogue ("Go"), and closing in style with the barely two minutes of "Gimmie Noise", yet another furious dash across the rubble of hardcore.

We've reached 1983, and the band now seems mature enough to take a further leap in quality, which materializes with the release, again on Twin/Tone, of what this writer considers the first genuine Replacements masterpiece, Hootenanny (which would also enjoy modest success, selling 38,000 copies).

If the thrash fury of the early records fades somewhat, the band's true intentions, along with their leader's melodic gift, begin to emerge more clearly.

The Replacements leave a certain amount of naivety behind and start working out a musically more complex, rich and extremely eclectic approach, marked by an original reclaiming of sounds and genres typical of American popular music.

The album, in fact, comes across as an exhilarating blend of hardcore, pop, Byrds, Rolling Stones, 70s hard rock, and roots influences. A blend that gives birth to a string of memorable songs.

The introduction is handed to the slightly off-kilter blues of the title track, followed by a dynamite, thoroughly gripping number like "Run It". The gorgeous "Color Me Impressed" is perhaps Westerberg's first "fatalistic" masterpiece: the hardcore of the early days dissolves into a memorable folk ballad, graced by an irresistible melody, touching, simple and perfect. "Willpower" marks the debut of that emphatic, desperate tone that would make the fortune of the masterpieces to come, while "Take Me Down To The Hospital" is a surprisingly driving, incisive rockabilly number.

The rest of the album is split between blues landscapes ("Treatment Bound"), sparkling splashes of surf ("Buck Hill") and ballads in which Westerberg shows further progress as a songwriter ("Within You Reach", arranged with surprising keyboards that lend it an epic tone).

We've arrived at the annus mirabilis of 1984, which the band decided to brand for good by releasing the album many consider their absolute masterpiece, the classic that earns a band a place in the narrow circle of groups who make music history.

The record in question is called Let It Be (still on Twin/Tone), and the opening track, the gorgeous "I Will Dare", sets things straight right away: Westerberg and co. have clearly matured, developing the ideas already sketched out on Hootenanny, and, ultimately, the frantic punk-rock of their early days appears ever more distant, or at least channeled into musically richer, more refined and complex structures. "I Will Dare" is an energetic power-pop number with country-folk shadings; Westerberg carves out the album's first unforgettable melody (the kind that lodges in your head for a good while), while recounting the difficulties of his coming of age ("How young are you?.. How old am I?"), confirming that his typically adolescent restlessness has given way to a pressing maturity, to new problems, to new needs. "I Will Dare" is the emblem of the new course charted by the Mats: the sound has become irreversibly more reflective and more "serious", yet deep down it's still red-blooded and irreverent, and perhaps it's exactly in this balance between energy and melody, between punk rebellion and maturity, that the secret of the masterpiece lies.

And while "Favourite Things" highlights all the creative urgency of 80s alternative rock, "We're Comin' Out" is an explosive, adrenaline-fueled track, in which Westerberg's screams are backed by a hysterical, almost hard rock-inflected solo; Westerberg's voice has grown more epic, more pained, insistent and desperate... in short: one of the most expressive voices in the history of rock.

"Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out" is another frontal assault, as devastating as it is "measured". Two ballads follow that confirm Paul's compositional skills: the first is "Androgynous", carried solely by his conversational voice and a piano. The mood is melancholy, and once again fatally torn between unblemished youth and maturity. The gorgeous "Black Diamond" is a Kiss cover, the quintessence of every generation's rock'n'roll, an introspective hybrid of anger and regret; it remains one of the band's masterpieces. "Seen Your Video" is an almost entirely instrumental hard rock piece, an inner tremor that never resolves and leaves the guitars' irresistible pulse stuck to your skin.

"Gary's Got A Boner" confirms that the band's rebellious soul somehow survives in a frantic punk still sublime in its simplicity. "Sixteen Blue" is perhaps the best song Westerberg ever wrote. A folk-tinged ballad in which the band's leader paints yet another unforgettable melody and calls us together in memory of the specter of adolescence, perhaps irretrievably lost; he tells us of his "sad 16 years", of that mix of regret, anger and frustration that only at a certain age you feel as your own, that only at a certain age sink into your bones... an unsuppressible, unbearable feeling. That's it, a feeling: perhaps all the unease of adolescence is contained in a feeling that a song like this (in Westerberg's voice, in that simple opening riff) expresses in a way that is unmistakably true, direct. The album closes instead with "Answering Machine", an adrenaline-charged piece for voice and pre-recorded guitar.

Let It Be (which would go on to break every sales record for an independent label) is in its own way an epochal record, one that holds its own alongside contemporary masterpieces like Husker Du's (“Zen Arcade“) and Minutemen's (“Double Nickels On The Dime“) in celebrating and reinventing, albeit in very different ways, the American tradition under the banner of the punk spirit.

For the Mats, 1984-85 must have been a magical couple of years: just a few months after releasing Let It Be, the Minneapolis band unleashed their creativity in the studio, recording their most mature record and, in this writer's opinion, their true masterpiece: Tim (Sire, 1985).

This is the most complete album of their career, the one where Paul's genius churns out an impressive quantity of top-tier songs, and the band shows further improvement in composition and arrangement (the rawness of their early days is almost entirely gone): it's no coincidence that this is the least hardcore record they'd made up to that point, and the closest to folk and pop tradition.

The opening “Hold My Life” is nothing less than one of the many absolute gems to come from Westerberg's pen: a good four minutes in which to surrender to its infectious rhythm, to guitars that have become softer and more linear, to the emphatic singing. The following, fizzy “I’ll Buy” quickly gives way to the propulsive “Kiss Me On The Bus”, which, propelled by incisive guitar work and tight cadences, paints a vivid portrait of everyday life, recounting the hopes of an ordinary teenager.

The following “Dose Of Thunder” is a sparkling example of their by-now almost classic boogie sound. “Waitress In The Sky”, on the other hand, brings in a more relaxed, easygoing dimension, reminiscent of the Kinks.

“Swinging Party” is the record's second masterpiece; it's the moving, swing-tempo chronicle of an ordinary, grey evening of loneliness, during a “party down the light”; the melodic crescendo gives you chills, and Paul's delivery is, as ever, perfect, anguished, sublime. In the end, you just have to picture the scene, perhaps take a dive back into the past, relive memories and moments as intense as they are now distant. With “Bastards Of Young” the pace rises again: the guitars once more shine with immediate, visceral riffs, the vocal launches into a full-throated invective that captures both rage and fear: a superb generational anthem.

“Lay It Down Town” and “Little Mascara” are two more unrestrained boogie numbers that pave the way for the record's final two masterpieces: “Left Of The Dial” and, above all, “Here Comes A Regular”, a moving acoustic ballad embellished by a melancholy string accompaniment and a brief piano interlude, in which the decisive power of Westerberg's interpretive abilities comes through; it's impossible not to be lulled by the melody, as tender as it is sad; impossible not to let a tear slip.

Tim closes out the brightest phase of the Mats' career; before breaking up, the band would release, in addition to a live album recorded only on cassette and titled The Shit Hits The Fans, three more records, at least one of which (Pleased To Meet Me, Sire, 1987) is of a very high standard. The incendiary fury of the decade's early years is now channeled into a series of refined, meticulously arranged power-pop songs in a notably varied style (keyboards and sax make their appearance). And while the opening “I.O.U.” is an anthem worthy of their finest moments and close to certain Stones material, the hard-folk ballads “Alex Chilton“, “Night Club Jitters” and “The Ledge” mark the definitive move away from hardcore and introduce a more composed, measured, mature sound.

Westerberg had become a grown-up songwriter, and the sound had grown less raw and aggressive. The canonical power-pop of “Never Mind” and “Valentine”, along with the acoustic ballad (a classic of their catalogue) “Skyway”, are the other standout tracks on a more-than-decent album, though one that doesn't match the melodic genius and terrifying emotional charge of the two records that preceded it. “Pleased To Meet Me” is to the Replacements what “Wharehouse: Songs And Stories” is to Husker Du: it represents the consecration of their classic sound, the record of maturity, as well as their last work of real significance.

The following Don’t Tell A Soul (Sire, 1989), in fact, definitively abandons the wild, irresistible rock'n'roll of the mid-decade masterpieces, and marks a further step toward what would become the hallmarks of the frontman's solo career. Though full of impeccable, meticulously arranged songs (just listen to “Achin’ To Be”, the ballad “They’re Blind”, or the classic power-pop of “Back To Back”), the album lacks the bite, the energy, ultimately the magic that can turn a solid album into something greater.

The band's final effort, by then more than close to breaking up, All Shook Down (Sire, 1990) is the record closest to Westerberg's subsequent singer-songwriter sensibility. In fact, many consider it not the last work credited to the group, but the true first step of the frontman's solo career.

He's the one pulling the band's strings, bringing in a never-ending string of guests, and rehearsing for his own distinctive songwriting. Rock'n'roll's tough hide still occasionally pokes through, but what increasingly dominates is a taste for polished, careful arrangements; the sound turns classic, acoustic guitars and piano step in: the result is an enjoyable pop-rock record, musically close to the work of Tom Petty and John Mellencamp, though with a personality all its own. Telling in this sense are “Merry Go Round”, “Someone Take A Wheel”, “When It Began” and “Happy Town”, perfect distillations of this final direction. Alongside them sit openly introspective pieces, the last small gems to come from Westerberg's pen, such as “Sadly Beautiful”, “All Shook Down” and “The Last”, while the grime of punk only surfaces here and there, in “Bent Out of Shape” and “My Little Problem”, sung as a duet with Jonette Napolitano.

Thus ends, at the dawn of the 1990s, the career of one of the most influential and original bands not only of the Minneapolis underground scene but of all 1980s rock. The way the Replacements managed to revitalize a genre without betraying its essential character (better: its spirit) is nothing short of prodigious; just as prodigious is the number of memorable songs Paul Westerberg managed to write within the span of a few years. After all, the whole story of the Mats ultimately revolves around the personality of this cursed, introverted songwriter, himself a symbol of the poetic streak and the "loser-ism" of the singer-songwriters of his generation (among others Mould, who was Paul's friend and with whom he would compare notes on his songs, Mascis, and later Cobain): his unforgettable melodies, his intense voice, capable of outstanding performances both on the most violent hardcore tracks and on the ballads, is perhaps the true crown jewel of all their records, the classic ingredient that allows a seemingly simple song to turn into a masterpiece.

Over the years the Replacements have earned ever greater recognition, unanimously regarded as among the most brilliant exponents of American indie-rock in the 1980s. In 2023, one of their best-loved works, Tim, was also given new life thanks to a new remix by Ed Stasium, the expert producer who had previously worked with Ramones, Talking Heads and Motorhead. Stasium's remix not only succeeds in making every instrument sound punchier and finally rendering the sound clear, vigorous and contemporary, but even pulls off the "miracle" of bringing previously unheard parts to light. Just listen to the revelatory "Little Mascara", extended by about a minute to reveal an electric guitar solo by Bob Stinson that had vanished in the original mix, at the time the work of Tommy Ramone. The "Let It Bleed edition" - as it has been dubbed - of Tim is a celebratory box set that also includes fifteen demos and alternative versions, most of them never released before, some of them belonging precisely to the sessions recorded with Alex Chilton.

Among these, "Can't Hardly Wait" appears no fewer than four times, in an evolution ranging from the anguished acoustic demo to the energetic (dare I say Springsteen-esque) electric version, on which Westerberg was never able to find quite the right balance: it would end up on the subsequent "Pleased To Meet Me" with strings added (here an acoustic version is included with cello played by Michelle Kinney). The box set is rounded out by a booklet full of rare photographs and a contribution from Bob Mehr, already the author of the biography "Trouble Boys", plus the complete recording of the concert held in January 1986, just a few weeks after the release of Tim, at Chicago's Cabaret Metro. It's a hyper-vitaminic snapshot of the Replacements caught on one of those nights when they knew how to tear the world apart, just a moment before embarking on the downward arc that would produce three more decent albums. The inevitable break-up would follow, along with Westerberg's subsequent solo career, but the peaks of the Replacements' famous trio of records - one of the most self-destructive outfits in twentieth-century music history - would never be reached again.

We'll leave the final word to a statement from Westerberg himself, a perfect summation of a certain way of looking not just at music, but at life: “My songwriting is made of melody and honesty. If I notice I'm a bit short on one of the two, I try to focus on the other, and vice versa.”

Contributions by Claudio Lancia (“Tim – Let It Bleed edition”)

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