Paul always seem to bring out some interesting commentary from people (ie he's sober,
he sucks. Or he doesn't rock, he sucks).
Seriously though, I think this (long) article takes an interesting look at the Paul's
past as well as what drives him in the present. Basically, Paul hasn't been a
consistent .300 hitter throughout his career but he's always made the highlights.
Chaco
From the Dallas Observer
Bastard of middle age Paul Westerberg digs into a deep, dark place and
makes a brilliant, horrible record By Robert Wilonsky
"On those first two solo records, I needed to prove that I
could do what the Replacements did," Paul Westerberg says. "And maybe what I
did was prove that I couldn't." Photo by Len Irish
Bob Stinson died alone on February 18, 1995. He was discovered on the couch
of his Minneapolis home, a syringe laying next to his slumped-over corpse.
Nine years after being adiosed as the Replacements' guitarist, good ol' Bob
- dress-wearing Bob, fun guy Bob, crazy fuckin' Bob - kicked his drug habit
the real hard way, leaving his friends and former bandmates to ponder a life
well-lived but wasted nonetheless. His funeral a few days after the
35-year-old's overdose would reunite the Replacements one final time: Paul
Westerberg, Chris Mars, Bob's younger brother Tommy, and Bob all dressed up
with no place to go. So much for getting the band back together. In the
words of another famous Minnesota boy, the former Robert Zimmerman, "Death
can be the result of a most underrated pain." But as Westerberg sat there
looking at his old friend lying in a coffin, he couldn't focus on the task
at hand - grieving Bob, burying him in the hard ground. He was too busy
trying not to listen to the music blaring from the speakers Bob's mother had
set up - those old Replacements songs, especially the loud, fast, and sloppy
early ones from Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash and The Replacements
Stink, coming back to haunt the man who wrote them and barely sang them. As
Bob lay in his coffin - "stiff as a board," Westerberg recalls now, his
voice a deadpan drone bereft of sadness - it was all Paul could do to keep
from leaping from his seat and bolting from the funeral parlor. All
Westerberg could think about was: I sound like shit. He felt foolish,
selfish, like a real asshole. But still, Paul couldn't stop thinking it: I
sound like shit. "There is Bob, laying there, and then 'Fuck School' comes
blaring over the speakers," Westerberg recalls. "God love him, God rest his
soul. But I could only think, like, 'How could I have fucking sang like
this?' To me, I was in hell. There's a guy I loved who's dead, and to punish
me, they had to play my music, and that was really tough. If there's going
to be a movie ever about the Replacements, that has to be included. That was
one in a million, really. They played the entire catalog. I walked in as
they were playing 'Johnny's Gonna Die.' There was some irony for sure." And
then Westerberg lets out a sad little chuckle. "Please don't play my stuff
when I die," he says, almost begging. "I want nothing but John Coltrane."
Westerberg, now 38, would like nothing more than to leave the Replacements
behind him, a speck in the rear-view mirror. That band has been broken up
for almost the entirety of the 1990s; its final album, 1990's All Shook
Down, wasn't even a real Replacements record at all, more like a Westerberg
solo record with some special guests, among them bassist Tommy Stinson and
drummer Chris Mars, reduced to cameos where once they had been featured
attractions. He participated in the assembling of Warner Bros. Records' 1997
two-disc best-and-rest-of All For Nothing, Nothing For All, but only because
he was resigned to the fact that it would be done with or without his
assistance. Better to choose your own fate than leave it in the hands of the
label you abandoned when they couldn't sell your records. Westerberg is on
his third solo album now, Suicaine Gratifaction, due in stores February 23.
It is a disc full of home demos recorded on piano, fleshed out later in a
studio with old pro Don Was making things slick and shiny. The new album -
its lyrics ambiguous and poetic, sung in hushed tones by a man who used to
scream as though each performance were his next to last - is so far removed
from the Replacements or even Westerberg's first two solo albums, it might
as well have been made by someone else. And maybe it was.
Westerberg has no time or desire to look backward, to
consider his past
mistakes or his ancient triumphs. That's for other people to ponder - those
of us who came of age with Hootenanny, Let it Be, Tim, and Pleased to Meet
Me; those of us for whom songs such as "Unsatisfied" and "Within Your Reach"
and "I Will Dare" and "Bastards of Young" were title tracks to the college
years. No other 1980s band - save, perhaps, R.E.M., who stuck around too
long to become legendary - has been so romanticized by the
