The Replacements

There’s a great story about The Replacements concerning an early show they played at a punk club in Trenton, New Jersey. Frontman Paul Westerberg wanted to introduce a new song, a ballad, called “You’re Getting Married One Night.” Even the band wasn’t sure about it—guitarist Bob Stinson said Westerberg should save it for his solo album, because whatever it was, it didn’t belong in The Replacements. By the end of it, he had the punks eating out of his hand. They’d always had a knack for playing what the audience didn’t want to hear (Sinatra covers for the hardcore kids, hardcore sets to the college kids)—a tendency that, combined with perpetual drunkenness, made them one of the more antagonistic bands of the early ‘80s. But the flipside to their antagonism was a utopian, be-yourself attitude that went on to define indie and alternative rock. Punk preached a haven for the freaks, but The Replacements—from the punks to the classic-rock kids to the art-school students—made space for everyone. Including, it should be said, girls. From the beginning (1981’s Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, 1982’s Stink) they didn’t fit in: They were too self-deprecating, too classic (“Shiftless When Idle”), too interested in the minute details of the American experiment to get caught up in politics or concept. They wrote love songs about convenience-store checkout girls (“Customer”) and peans to technological alienation about how it’s hard to be real on an answering machine (“Answering Machine”). They never spared attitude (“Bastards of Young”) but weren’t macho enough to suggest that their swagger wasn’t just a mask for vulnerability (“Here Comes a Regular,” “Unsatisfied”). Let it Be and Tim, in particular, bridged the warmth of classic rock with the edge of the underground in ways no band had before, opening the door for everything from Green Day to Wilco. Even as they edged toward the mainstream (“Alex Chilton,” “I’ll Be You”) they made you feel like you were one of them—in the passenger seat, maybe, shouting along at the loud ones, looking out the window when things got quiet. They famously never quite made it—a story punctuated by a breakup in 1991, and the death of Bob Stinson a few years later, at 35. But listening to their music—the yearning, the disappointment, the bittersweet glory of the underdog—it’s hard to imagine it any other way.