Paul Westerberg picks the bands that The Replacements couldn’t compete with
Throughout the crowded punk scene of the American Midwest during the 1980s, no band was quite like The Replacements.
Featuring the cracked voice and melodic sensibilities of lead singer Paul Westerberg, The Replacements initially attempted to be a straight-ahead Twin Cities snot-punk act, cranking out songs like ‘God Damn Job’ and ‘More Cigarettes’ at a rapid pace. But once Westerberg found his unique songwriting voice, The Replacements shifted to something softer and more interesting.
“I guess Hootenanny is the one where we came to the decision — or, I did, at least — that this loud/fast stuff is not going to get us anywhere,” Westerberg explained to Billboard in 2008. “That was the height of the hardcore movement, and we were on tour, and we were not the loudest, and the fastest, and I figured, ‘Well, we can’t win that way, so we’ve got to go the other direction, and tap the other vein of our influences and stuff.'”
Featuring a mix of punk, classic rock, power pop, country, and even jazz, Hootenanny gave The Replacements the opportunity to loosen up and experiment with their sound for the first time. The album’s title track featured the band members playing instruments outside their regular roles, while ‘Mr. Whirly’ is a snide Beatles parody. It all added up to something singular for The Replacements, even if Westerberg wasn’t completely satisfied with the results.
“Not that Hootenanny is my favourite record, but Hootenanny was probably the one where we first started to become unafraid to do things,” he explained. “There’s a lot of posing on Stink, I think. I mean, it’s good for what it is, but, you know, the first record was pure, and the follow-up there was trying to kind of write songs for the live show, and by then we were tired and decided to … You know, we listened to all kinds of different music. It wasn’t like we listened to hardcore in the van. I mean, we listened to all kinds of pop music, and folk and Dylan and Hank Williams, and a little bit of jazz came later. So we just started playing the stuff we liked.”
The eternal struggle between adhering to the standard punk image and sound became a pronounced issue for the band during their early years. It wasn’t just Westerberg either: the entire band struggled with whether they were truly punks or not.
“Once punk rock became a thing, bands conformed to punk rock dress and action, and we certainly still, I mean, Bob [Stinson] wore flares until Captain Sensible told him to get out of ’em, and I think that’s when he started wearing dresses and tutu,” Westerberg added. “But we just wanted to be what we were. Those early pictures of us wearing like baseball jerseys and running shoes and stuff … we had no pretence that we needed to look like the Ramones. We were hip to that. We knew the Ramones looked like the Ramones, and we loved them, but we had to be sort of individual if we were gonna get anywhere.”
Ultimately, Westerberg had to look at two contemporary bands and compare The Replacements to them. When they didn’t stack up, Westerberg decided it was time for the band to go in a different direction away from punk. “If we couldn’t be as scary and loud and fast as Black Flag, then we had to be funny,” Westerberg claimed. “If we couldn’t be as funny as Flipper, then we had to be wistful, so we did what we had to do to stand out.”
Check out ‘Bastards of Young’ down below.
