#241 - The Replacements - Let It Be (1984)
MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:
BACKGROUND – THE REPLACEMENTS
The Replacements formed in Minneapolis in 1979. The band was composed of the guitarist and vocalist Paul Westerberg, guitarist Bob Stinson, bass guitarist Tommy Stinson and drummer Chris Mars for most of its existence. Fans affectionately refer to the band as The 'Mats, a nickname that originated as a truncation of "The Placemats," a mispronunciation of their name. The Replacements' music was influenced by artists such as the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Faces, Big Star as well as punk rock bands such as the Ramones, the New York Dolls, the Buzzcocks, and the Sex Pistols. Unlike many of their underground contemporaries, the Replacements played "heart-on-the-sleeve" rock songs that combined Westerberg's "raw-throated adolescent howl" with self-deprecating lyrics. The Replacements were a notoriously wayward live act, often performing under the influence of alcohol and playing fragments of covers instead of their own material.
The Replacements' began in Minneapolis in 1978, when nineteen-year-old Bob Stinson gave his eleven-year-old brother Tommy Stinson a bass guitar to keep him off the streets That year Bob met Mars, a high school dropout. With Mars playing guitar and then switching to drums, the trio called themselves "Dogbreath" and began covering songs by Aerosmith, Ted Nugent and Yes without a singer. One day as Westerberg, a janitor in a U.S. Senator's office, was walking home from work,and heard the band playing in the Stinsons' house. After being impressed by the band's performance, Westerberg regularly listened in after work. Mars knew Westerberg and invited him over to jam. Westerberg was unaware Mars drummed in Dogbreath. Dogbreath auditioned several vocalists, and eventually found one, but Westerberg wanted to be the singer and took him aside one day to say, "The band doesn't like you." The vocalist soon left and Westerberg replaced him. Before Westerberg joined the band, Dogbreath often drank and took various drugs during rehearsals, playing songs as an afterthought. In contrast to the rest of the band, the relatively disciplined Westerberg appeared at rehearsals in neat clothes and insisted on practicing songs until he was happy with them. "They didn't even know what punk was. They didn't like punk. Chris had hair down to his shoulders," Westerberg told an interviewer But after the band members discovered first-generation English punk bands like the Clash, and the Damned, Dogbreath changed its name to the Impediments and played a drunken performance without Tommy Stinson at a church hall gig in June 1980. After being banned from the venue for disorderly behavior, they changed the name to the Replacements. In an unpublished memoir, Mars later explained the band's choice of name: "Like maybe the main act doesn't show, and instead the crowd has to settle for an earful of us dirtbags....It seemed to sit just right with us, accurately describing our collective 'secondary' social esteem"
After recording a demo tape, they made connections with a manager of a local punk record store in town who also founded a record label with a local recording engineer named Peter Jesperson. At many gigs to almost empty rooms, when they finished a song, apart from the low hum of conversation, the band would hear Jesperson's loud whistle and fast clapping. "His enthusiasm kept us going at times, definitely," Mars later said. "His vision, his faith in the band was a binding force." It took 6 months to record their first album "Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash" The album contained the band's first single, "I'm in Trouble". It also included the song "Somethin to Dü", a homage to another Minneapolis punk band, Hüsker Dü. The Replacements had a friendly rivalry with the band, which started when the Twin/Tone label chose the Replacements over Hüsker Dü, and Hüsker Dü landed an opening slot at a Johnny Thunders gig that the Replacements had wanted. Hüsker Dü also influenced the band's music, and the Replacements began playing faster and becoming more influenced by hardcore punk. Despite this, the band did not feel part of the hardcore scene. As Mars later stated, "We were confused about what we were.
Sometime in late 1981, the Replacements played a song called "Kids Don't Follow". Jesperson was convinced the song sounded like a hit, which led to their first EP release "Stink" in 1982. The Replacements began to distance themselves from the hardcore punk scene after the release of that. "We write songs rather than riffs with statements," Westerberg later stated. Inspired by other rock subgenres, he had been writing songs that incorporated a wide range of musical styles. Hootenanny, the band's second studio album, was released in April 1983. Hootenanny was played on over two hundred radio stations across the country, with critics acclaiming the album.
By Hootenanny's release, the Replacements had begun to attract a following outside of Minneapolis. The band embarked on its first tour of the United States in April 1983. Tommy Stinson dropped out of the tenth grade to join the rest of the band on tour. By this time, the Replacements had grown tired of playing loud and fast exclusively; Westerberg stated, "Now we're softening a little where we can do something that's a little more sincere without being afraid that someone's not going to like it or the punks aren't going to be able to dance to it." The new material placed more of a focus on songwriting, which leads us to today's album
Let It Be attracted the attention of major record labels, and by late 1984 several had expressed an interest in signing the Replacements. Financially, the band was not doing well; they were not selling enough records to recoup their expenses, and money from shows went to recording costs, hotels, travel, food and instrument repairs. Bob Stinson worked a day job as a pizza chef. The sales of Let It Be were not high enough to justify extra promotion. It was time for a major label to take over," but any time the band was close to a major-label contract, they would alienate label representatives by intentionally performing badly in concert. A Warner Bros. Records subsidiary Sire Records, eventually signed the Replacements. The band admired the label head, Seymour Stein, who had managed the Ramones, and Stein recruited Tommy Ramone as producer for their first major-label album, Tim, released in October 1985. The band spent the remainder of 1985 and the first half of 1986 touring before either firing Bob Stinson from the band which he had founded, or he chose to leave, or a little of both. In either case, it was due to creative and personal differences between Stinson and the remainder of the band, aggravated by Stinson's alcohol and drug abuse issues. Bob Stinson preferred the louder, faster style of the band's early music, while Westerberg was exploring new territory in ballads like "Here Comes a Regular" and "Swingin' Party". They also fired Jesperson the same year. "It was like being thrown out of a club that you helped start," Jesperson later commented. "Everybody was drinking and doing more drugs than they needed to." The remaining Replacements carried on as a trio for Pleased to Meet Me (1987), recorded in Memphis with Big Star producer Jim Dickinson. Minneapolis guitarist Slim Dunlap took over on lead guitar for the subsequent tour and soon became a full member of the band. The band's next album, Don't Tell a Soul, was a quieter, less punky affair, largely considered an attempt at mainstream success. While the move cost the Replacements the appreciation of some hardcore fans, the album had some notable songs, such as "Achin' to Be" and "I'll Be You", the latter of which topped the Billboard Modern Rock chart.
The band appeared on the cover of Musician magazine in February 1989, in which it was described as "the last, best band of the 80s". But there was trouble within the band following a disastrous tour opening for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Westerberg recorded a new album largely with session musicians but was persuaded to release it as a Replacements album. All Shook Down won critical praise and more mainstream attention and its debut single "Merry Go Round" again topped the Modern Rock charts. However, the album's many guest players and Mars's quick departure from the band following the album's release led many to wonder about the band's future. They also received a nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. Steve Foley was recruited as Mars's replacement in 1990, and the band then embarked on a long farewell tour, which lasted into the summer of 1991. On July 4, 1991, the band played their last show for 22 years. This show is referred to by fans as "It Ain't Over 'Til the Fat Roadie Plays", because each member disappeared during the set, their respective roadies taking their places. In 2013, the band started performing sporadically over the next years, touring again in 2015.
The band has been honored with a star on the outside mural of the Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue, recognizing performers that have played sold-out shows or have otherwise demonstrated a major contribution to the culture at the iconic venue. Receiving a star "might be the most prestigious public honor an artist can receive in Minneapolis," according to a local journalist Westerberg also has a star for his solo work, making him one of the few musicians to be honored with multiple stars on the mural. They were nominated for the RnR HOF in 2014 but were not inducted.
The Goo Goo Dolls' vocalist and guitarist Johnny Rzeznik (Rez-nik) cites Paul Westerberg as an "obvious influence" on his music. The Goo Goo Dolls toured in support for The Replacements' final tour. They also co-wrote the song "We Are the Normal" with Westerberg for their 1993 album Superstar Car Wash. Members of The Cribs have cited The Replacements as a key influence, and Brian Fallon of Gaslight Anthem said in a 2009 interview that "without The Replacements, there would be no Gaslight Anthem" and that they were inspired by the song "Left of the Dial" The band They Might Be Giants made a tribute song to them called "We're The Replacements". Green Day, Wilco, Nirvana are other major bands that have cited The Replacements as an influence.
ALBUM BACKGROUND – LET IT BE
Let It Be is the third studio album by The Replacements, and was was released in October 1984. It has been described as a post-punk album with coming-of-age themes, and was recorded by the band after they had grown tired of playing loud and fast exclusively as on their 1983 Hootenanny album. The group decided to write songs that were, according to vocalist Paul Westerberg, "a little more sincere. This was the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs and giving them titles.."Let It Be was acclaimed by music critics and later ranked among the greatest albums of the 1980s, and is now considered a classic. The album didn't chart but was more successful than the band's previous efforts and a leap forward artistically. This was always the blessing and the curse of the Replacements, to be lauded by industry insiders but underappreciated by the masses.
Despite the album's (relative) success, it opened a schism in the band. Westerberg had taken greater control of songwriting, and the label brought in outside musicians. The aforementioned Peter Buck played the guitar solo on "I Will Dare" in place of Replacements co-founder Bob Stinson. These choices created rifts between the band of brothers, and those rifts eventually broke the band apart.
The album's title is a reference to the 1970 album Let It Be by The Beatles; Westerberg recalled: We were going to call it Whistler's Mammy, and then we were going to call it Stunk. And then we decided that the next song that came on the radio was going to be the album title. The next thing you know, "When I find myself in times of trouble..." comes on the radio. The reference was partially intended as a joke on the Replacements' manager, Peter Jesperson, who was a huge Beatles fan. Westerberg has stated the name was "our way of saying that nothing is sacred, that the Beatles were just a fine rock & roll band. We were seriously gonna call the next record Let It Bleed.