May 2, 2002
BY JIM DEROGATIS POP
MUSIC CRITIC
To say that former Replacements leader Paul Westerberg has been keeping a
low profile of late is a considerable understatement.
"It's hard to call it retiring, because I'm born and raised here, and
I've lived here all my life," Westerberg recently said by phone from his
home in Minneapolis.
"For a good 10 years, everyone here has just assumed that I lived
somewhere else because they didn't see me at the three nightclubs."
Westerberg has long since preferred the company of his wife and
4-year-old son to the bustle of the rock scene. But he has been recording in
his basement, and now he's sharing the results on the independent label
Vagrant Records.
The two-CD "Stereo" pairs a moving acoustic disc with a loud, sloppy rock
effort recorded under the guise of his alter ego Grandpa Boy. It's being
hailed by critics as his strongest solo offering to date.
"I'm tempted to bask in that glow, but I've long since distanced myself
from what y'all might have to say about my work," Westerberg said. "I can't
jump up and down and go, 'Ooh-wee! They like me again,' because when you
weren't liking me, I was still liking me. I'm once again satisfied with what
I did, so that's pretty cool."
Gone is the pretense that Westerberg is a singer-songwriter in the Randy
Newman vein. Instead, he's back to writing simple, direct, emotional rock
songs in the tradition of "Unsatisfied" and "Answering Machine."
"You sweep the band out from under me and what have you got left?" he now
says of his early Warner Bros. solo discs. "I wasn't that good-looking where
they could push me as a pop star, and I certainly wouldn't follow
directions. They couldn't mold me into a shiny model. They sort of had to
bank on my ability to be a tunesmith, and I've always sort of fancied myself
as just a funky guitar player who fits in the band and can't sing anyone
else's numbers so writes some to suit himself."
One of the most revered bands of the indie-rock '80s, the Replacements
famously broke up onstage at a free concert in Grant Park on July 4, 1991.
In recent years, the group has emerged as a celebrated influence for a new
generation of Midwestern rock groups, among them Vagrant labelmates
Dashboard Confessional and the Get Up Kids.
"I wonder if perhaps it took a generation of imposters to show them who
meant it and who didn't," Westerberg said. "The generation that came right
after me--Kurt Cobain, et al. --was not embracing what I did,
although they certainly were infuenced, whether they admitted it or not."
Notoriously inconsistent, the Replacements could deliver one of the best
rock shows you've ever seen or one of the worst, often on subsequent nights.
Apparently, Westerberg's low-key tour of free in-store appearances is
following the same model. A recent gig in San Francisco abruptly ended when
he tired of an obnoxious heckler, jumped into the crowd, slapped the guy in
the face and stormed off.
"It's odd for me, but it's just as disarming for an audience, because
there's no barrier, no lights, and they don't get to play the role of
audience if they don't have to pay any money," he said before the start of
this mini-tour.
"I don't know what to expect, and that's why I'm doing it. I'm just
starting to look at the notion of, 'Well, how many songs should I play?
They're not gonna let me get away with three; I'm gonna end up playing like
20.' I guess it doesn't really matter if I play new ones or old ones or mine
or someone else's, because someone's gonna be disappointed and wanna hear
something else, so I guess I'm just gonna have to woodshed and take
requests. Hopefully they'll know the words."
As for a full-fledged electric tour down the road, Westerberg is
noncommittal.
"I think we'll have to see how it goes. I've made a couple of stabs at
assembling a little unit, and each time we seem to have a weak link in the
bass department," he said, referring to former Replacement Tommy Stinson,
now a member of Guns 'N Roses.
Westerberg is also typically perverse about the oft-discussed idea of a
Replacements reunion.
"For us to come back and succeed would be to fail," he said. "It's a
strange dichotomy. I've already run all the notions through of like, 'Let's
play Madison Square Garden, show up and play cards--not play a goddamn note
and get paid for it!' That would be the crowning glory."
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