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Personality crisis
The two sides of Paul Westerberg
BY MATT ASHARE

There have always been two very different sides to Paul Westerberg’s musical personality. Dating all the way back to the Replacements, that infamous ’80s band who put him on the cultural radar as a songwriter possessing that special intangible something that only a few artists of each generation are blessed (or, in some cases, cursed) with — the innate and often unwitting ability to speak to and for that generation as it comes of age — Westerberg has played two distinct and at times conflicting roles in the public eye. On stage with the Replacements, for example, you never quite knew what you were going to get. Some nights the Minneapolis foursome would hit the stage confidently and rip through an hour or so of tight, punkishly raucous yet occasionally sensitive rock and roll without stopping to catch their breath between tunes. Other nights the Replacements’ alter ego, the ’Mats, would stumble on stage one at a time until someone realized guitarist Bob Stinson was missing and drunkenly demanded his presence, after which Bob, who might be wearing green tights sans underwear or a full nurse’s uniform, and the rest of the band would try to play a dozen or so cover tunes they didn’t really know. One such night was captured on the cassette-only release When the Shit Hits the Fans.

Even in the studio, Westerberg and his Replacements were a two-sided beast. The band’s first single, "I’m in Trouble" backed with "You’re Only Lonely," was an electrified blast of serrated guitar punk on one side and a melancholy acoustic lament on the other. It was a strategy that remained in place throughout their 10-year career. The ’Mats side came out to play on stoopid rawk-and-roll tunes like "Fuck School," "Gary’s Got a Boner," "Shootin’ Dirty Pool," "I Hate Music," and "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out." Westerberg’s sensitive, often romantic side revealed itself through more thoughtful fare like "Go," "Johnny’s Gonna Die," "Within Your Reach," "Sixteen Blue," "Unsatisfied," "Kiss Me on the Bus," and "Achin’ To Be." Some of the best Replacement songs were those in which Westerberg integrated his split personality — the drinker and the thinker — as the "rebel without a clue" who starred in tracks like "Bastards of Young" and "I’ll Be You." Perhaps it’s not surprising that when Reprise decided to scavenge its vaults for a Replacements retrospective, it came up with a two-disc compilation in which All for Nothing, the title CD, showcased one side of the band and the "Nothing for All" disc of outtakes and rarities featured a very different bunch of guys.

By the end of the Replacements, which was the beginning of the ’90s, Westerberg and bassist Tommy Stinson were the only original members left (Tommy’s brother Bob was the first to go; drummer Chris Mars stayed up until the swan song), and the band had pretty much become the beginning of Westerberg’s solo career. And as the Replacements faded into the drunken background, they took the ’Mats — the unpredictable, loud, obnoxious, fun-loving, hard-hitting, booze-soaked side of the band — with them. For the most part, Westerberg didn’t seem interested in integrating that element of the Replacements’ legacy into the persona he adopted for his solo career. So though he continued to thrive as a songwriter, something was missing from the two CDs he released on Reprise and the one he subsequently put out on Capitol. Songs like "Runaway Wind," one of the singles from 1993’s 14 Songs (Sire/Reprise), bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the kind of radio-fodder middle of the road that rockers like Bob Seger made a living from. But if Westerberg was selling out, well, nobody was really buying.

There was some evidence that the old Paul Westerberg was still alive and kicking. The pair of tracks he penned for the Singles soundtrack had some grit in ’em, and in 1997 someone named Grandpa Boy who sounded suspiciously like Paul Westerberg released a two-fisted blast of noisy guitar rock on the "I Want My Money Back"/"Undone" single, which was released by the Boston indie Monolyth. But in the wake of that single and the one album he released on Capitol, and with nary a word about his future intentions, Westerberg just drifted off into that purgatory where artists who are too young to quit and too old to drive from coast to coast in the back of a beat-up Econoline van go — the "where are they now?" file.

Well, after almost four years away, Westerberg is back. And so is Grandpa Boy. Both have new CDs, and if all goes as planned, Westerberg’s new label, the punk-leaning Vagrant, will be packaging his new Stereo and Grandpa Boy’s new Mono together. As you might expect, Stereo showcases the mellower, more songwriterly side of Westerberg. Mono is devoted to rocking out with guitars on overdrive, with Westerberg’s throaty rasp in full force.

But the equation isn’t quite as simple as that. Westerberg seems relieved to be back on an indie label where he doesn’t have any bean counters looking over his shoulder and there’s no pressure to apply a heavy coat of studio polish. So even Stereo has plenty of rough edges. What distinguishes it from Mono is that most of tunes are stripped down to little more than Westerberg’s voice and a guitar or two, whereas Mono is a full guitar/bass/drums band affair. And though Mono has its share of loud and stoopid three-chord rockers à la "Gary’s Got a Boner," it’s also got plenty of clever, melody-laced pop numbers that just happen to sound good with overdriven guitars. No matter how you slice it, Mono and Stereo represent the most promising and satisfying work Westerberg has committed to tape since the Replacements disbanded, so it seems clear he’s had a breakthrough of some kind.

"I didn’t say to myself or anyone else that I was going to walk away from everything for four years and fire everybody and not answer my phone," he recounts over the phone from his home in Minneapolis. "It’s just what I did. I needed to get away and do it. And I was fully aware that I was going away to lose myself and get back to where I could hear the little tiny voice that made me start playing music in the first place. My last record for Capitol felt like the end of something, and this is the beginning . . . this is how I’m going to do it from now on. I’ve learned from the best, and I’ve also learned that I know myself better than anyone else. So if I’m going to do it, then I’m going to do it by myself. I can do it fast, easy, and cheap and make it sound as good as records that cost 10 times more."

Looking back over the past decade, Westerberg is also prepared to admit that his career didn’t go in the direction he’d hoped when he left the Replacements. "I had to compromise myself so much that I reached a point where I was no longer enjoying anything. I wasn’t selling any records, I wasn’t hip anymore, and yet I was still compromising myself. I finally figured that I might as well just do exactly what I want to do. If nobody buys it, it’s irrelevant, because at least then I’ve done something that I wanted to do. I mean, working with producers like Don Was, I realized that in the end none of that matters because succeeding in music is just dumb luck. It ends up being a matter of whether they like you or not, or whether your song accidentally gets played at the right time or not. All I know is that right now I feel like I’ve got the most control I’ve ever had in my life over the thing that I do. And whether I’m truly happy or not, I’ve convinced myself that I am."

Of all of Westerberg’s solo recordings, Mono and Stereo are the ones that most bring to mind the Replacements, in terms of both sound and spirit. But one thing he’s not likely to re-create is the camaraderie that made the Replacements what they were. "I think I know that more now than I ever have in the past because you don’t realize it when it’s happening, and after it’s over you think for a while that you’re going to find that chemistry again. But I pretty much know that that’s not going to happen again."

One part of the Replacements equation that’s been eliminated for Westerberg, who’s married and has a four-year-old kid named Johnny Paul, and for the rest of the surviving Replacements (drummer Chris Mars and bassist Tommy Stinson; guitarist Bob Stinson died several years ago) is drinking, which Paul admits was a big part of what fueled their antics. "The drinking was a guise to hide what we were really after, which is we wanted to invent something new. We would consciously make a decision about whether we should throw a show away a couple of minutes before we went on. And then we’d down a bottle and have a great laugh for 30 seconds in the hallway and pay for it the rest of our lives. There was theater to our intoxication."

But even without alcohol to fuel the mischievous Grandpa Boy side of his personality, Westerberg remains something of a loose cannon. Earlier this year he actually considered asking Vagrant to rush the release of Mono so that he could put together a band, pile into a van, and finish the tour that Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper were on when they went down in that plane crash back in 1959. "We were going to play on February 3 in Minnesota and then follow the rest of the route that Buddy Holly and those guys were on. That was going to be Grandpa Boy’s vengeance — Grandpa Boy was going to avenge the death of the Big Bopper. So I called Tommy [Stinson] and told him, ‘Here’s the deal, here’s what we’re going to do.’ He was one of the only people I could think of who would jump in a van and follow through with a hare-brained idea like that. Sure enough, he said ‘I’ll do it.’ But it ended up being too complicate to pull off."

Well, there’s always next February . . .

Issue Date: May 2 - 9, 2002
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