How The Replacements gave Tom Petty one of his best lyrics
It was make-or-break time for The Replacements in 1989. After having evolved past their initial punk rock sound by the mid-1980s, the ‘Mats were still hopeless alcoholics and drug addicts, with guitarist Bob Stinson getting kicked out of the band for his habits following 1985’s Tim. New guitarist Slim Dunlap provided some stability, but The Replacements had been dicking around the outskirts of popular music for nearly a decade. It was time to start seeing some returns.
Despite rumbling issues, there were some promising signs. The group managed to get on a major label, Sire Records, and were near a gold record when 1987’s Pleased to Meet Me sold about 300,000 copies. They pretty much blacklisted themselves from television after their disastrous and drunken appearance on Saturday Night Live, but they still had some show business connections that could help them break through.
One of those connections was Tom Petty, the legendary heartland rocker who asked The Replacements to join him on tour in 1989. Frontman Paul Westerberg was leery of supporting someone like Petty, especially as people around him kept encouraging him to do it. “They put it to me like, ‘Petty’s a singer-songwriter-frontman,'” Westerberg observed in the book Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements. “‘He’s a professional, and you can learn a thing or two.'”
It actually turned out to be Petty who would be the one watching from the wings. “Tom liked having the spark of this upstart new band on the road,” Dunlap claimed. “He watched Paul intently every night. I don’t think Paul realized how much”. Petty even gave Westerberg the top hat he wore in the video for ‘Won’t Back Down’. “I was like, ‘Oh, man, thank you,'” said Westerberg. “Then I turned around and gave it to a guy for some drugs the next night.”
Petty paid special attention to the song ‘I’ll Be You’. He might have had the bigger singles at the time, considering he was on tour supporting his massive debut solo record Full Moon Fever, but despite this, he was still touring with his longtime backing band, The Heartbreakers, most of whom appeared on the record. However, The Replacements were hot with one song of theirs. ‘I’ll Be You’ would be the ‘Mats only appearance on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 51 while the band were on tour with Petty.
One line from the song stuck in Petty’s mind: “A dream too tired to come true / Left a rebel without a clue / And I’m searching for somethin’ to do.” The “Rebel without a clue” part was borrowed by Petty for the song ‘Into the Great Wide Open’. When the song was eventually released as a single in September of 1991, The Replacements had already broken up.
Check out both ‘I’ll Be You’ and ‘Into the Great Wide Open’ down below.
