Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements by Bob Mehr

Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements

 By Bob Mehr

520 pages

Nearly a decade in the making Bob Mehr’s Trouble Boys is an all consuming biography of The Replacements, a Minneapolis based band whose hard drinking and rough and tumble lifestyle was as legendary as the groundbreaking albums they created.

Chronicling the exploits of the band is not an easy feat. They were a mess. For starters, their guitarist Bob Stinson died in 1995 and their vocalist Paul Westerberg has developed a reputation for being a tightlipped about his former band.

With that in mind Mojo Magazine writer Bob Mehr began his adventure by interviewing not only the band but also their, friends, family and business associates.  What he unearthed was a nefarious tale of love, hate, liquor, drugs and drama.

Mehr also dove into the archives of their first label Twin Tone Records as well as those of the one where they found their more commercial success, Warner Brothers,  enabling him to concisely analyze their music and its significance.

His research did not come as much of a shock to hardcore fans of the band, although sonically brilliant, they had copious drug and alcohol issues, fought often and had a proclivity for living on the edge. 

Mehr confirms what most of us already have surmised, that for The Replacements nothing was ever really easy. They rumbled…a lot and partied as equally hard. Yet somehow from these benders and fracases rose a band whose music just as vital as it did when they burst from the scene three and a half decades ago.

One of the book’s triumphs is getting the lowdown from the notoriously elusive Paul Westerberg whom has never really come clean in divulging details about his relationships with The Stinsons or how the band tore itself apart.

The power struggle between Westerberg and guitarist Bob Stinson was intense and ugly. Both had distinct visions for what they wanted the band to be. To make matters worse Stinson’s drug addiction affected his musical prowess and gradually drove a wedge between himself and Westerberg until things reached a critical mass and Stinson was ousted in 1986.

Although Bob Stinson’s story is the saddest catastrophe surrounding the band, Westerberg’s love of alcohol didn’t make things much better. Sadly, as the pages turn, the conflict between these two bandmates cements their eventually fate.  There is a slight upside here however, The Replacements made some really great records together that remain a revered component of contemporary music.

The main theme that Mehr punctuates in this biography is that throughout everything The Replacements were simultaneously a band that were essentially both euphoric and tragic during the course of their twelve years together. As he clearly articulates, one of the most distinctive and destructive bands of the late Twentieth century, had madness beneath their genius that hampered them from reaching the apex of their potential.