PW/Mats articles

[FreeRider]

Nice one, sivad!

[raccoon]

I only buy it for the articles I swear !!

[sivad]

Let The Bad Times Roll
Paul Westerberg talks about drinking, depressed fans, and finding a reason to live
Jim Walsh Wednesday, Oct 15 2003


Paul Westerberg has a cold. So does his wife, Laurie Lindeen, and so does their son, Johnny, and so does the interviewer. So all concerned cut their losses last week and, in order to discuss Westerberg's new movie, music, and life, talked for an hour over the phone.

City Pages: How's your dad?

Paul Westerberg: He's kind of going down slow. Yesterday, Johnny and Laura stayed away [from Westerberg's parents' house] because they had the cold, and I felt fine, and now this morning I've got it. If I gave him a cold he wouldn't bounce back from it. He's on oxygen and a nebulizer. He won't go in a hospital bed, he just lays in his own bed. You walk in there, and he weighs like 100 [pounds]. He hasn't eaten in 10 days. I made him a couple of shakes with some Ensure in it, and he kind of went for that. We watched the whole Twins game together, and he said maybe three words the whole time. It's emphysema. He's got one-fourth the use of one lung, so it's kind of weird.

CP: You said at the Guthrie [concert] that he's never seen you play, and that you love him to death for it. Is that true?

Westerberg: It is true. It would never be confused or misconstrued that [he] likes me because of what I do or what I've done. You know, he likes me because I'm his son. I have to go long and far to find someone who knows me just as me, rather than me the songwriter or whatever. And there's a song that sort of points to him, and unfortunately a couple of the ones that are about him on the Folker record [due this spring] will probably be out, I'm guessing, when he's in hell. So he's not gonna hear the "I love my dad" songs, but he knows it.

CP: What are some of your favorite rock movies?

Westerberg: [The Bob Dylan documentary] Don't Look Back. I've got a bootleg copy of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones. I like that better than Gimme Shelter, actually. I sat through Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones like three times at the Skyway when it came out [in 1974]. I don't know. I'm hard-pressed to think of a lot of great rock movies. Y'know, Blackboard Jungle [laughs].

CP: What do you like aboutDon't Look Back?

Westerberg: Everything. Just seeing Bob so pure and seeing him getting bitter already, where he really flies off the handle, and allows us to see him as a real creep, and then there's the other side of him that's thoughtful and creative and shit. For me, that movie sort of has everything. I like the Nico one [Nico-Icon], but that was sort of put together by her friends.

CP: I love the scene inDon't Look Back in that hotel room, where Donovan just gets destroyed by Bob, who kind of nods along to Donovan's song, and then does "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue."
Westerberg: Yeah [laughs]. And also, you can barely see it but--I've read books--Marianne Faithful's in the room waiting for Joan Baez to leave. Which never happens, and then Joan Baez leaves at the crack of dawn.

CP: At the beginning of [the Westerberg documentary]Come Feel Me Tremble, you talk a little bit about having ADD.

Westerberg: I did? I don't remember.

CP: Right. Watching it, I couldn't help but think, is it truly ADD? Or is it simply the workings of a creative mind, and you get bored with reality? Like the John Lennon thing about, "reality leaves a lot to the imagination."

Westerberg: Yeah. I don't know. It's brain damage of some sort. [ADD is] a medical/psychological viewpoint of it. And the other one would be the creative side. All creative people have it, and it makes us poor drivers or poor followers of directions, and we don't like to be told what to do, and information goes in one ear and out the other. But you sort of overcompensate with that imagination part of your brain that gets the muscles flexed.

CP: Listening to the soundtrack, I couldn't help but juxtapose two lyrics: "We're feeling good from the pills we took, aw baby don't gimme that look" [from "Talent Show," 1989] and "I'm drinking once again, just to make the pills kick in" [from "Knockin' Em Back," 2003]. Your thoughts, sir?

Westerberg: [Laughs] My thoughts? I have no thoughts about that line. Take it as you wish.

CP: But what about the drinking? Is it a big deal, or has it been a big deal, because you weren't for a long time.

Westerberg: Yeah, it's not a big deal. It's like, I'll probably stop again for 10 years and no one will know the difference. I mean, I could've been drinking for the last 15 [years] for all people know. It no longer plays a role in the creative process. I always write [songs] in the day, anyway.

CP: The cool thing that the documentary captures is the love your fans have for you. When I think of you, I think of you as a loner, and then we see you onstage on that couch surrounded by people, and at the in-stores, and talking with them by the tour bus. It's cool to see; it's more like you're a ringleader than a wallflower.

Westerberg: I definitely wanted to see who the fans were, because I'd been away long enough. And back when I was playing before [the Stereo/Mono tour, when the Come Feel Me Tremble footage was shot], I wouldn't hang around to meet them. Doing the in-stores was something new for me. It scared me, and it was dangerous, and it appealed to me.

CP: Does the intensity of some of your fans ever flip you out?

Westerberg: Well, some of them get pretty deep. I hear, "You got me through" as their opening line a lot. Usually when that starts, I sort of go on automatic listen. A lot of 'em will just say, "I've seen you 20 times and I think you're great, thank you," and move on. Occasionally someone will say, "I'd never heard of you, my friend just hipped me to you," and that's always fun, too. But, yeah. There's a little fistful of weirdos that are
looking for me to show them the way to life.

CP: What is the way, Paulie?

Westerberg: I don't know. I think it should be evident by now, but I'm as lost as anyone.

CP: Do you still hope to land on commercial radio?

Westerberg: I'm always slightly baffled when I get done with a record, because to my ear it sounds like what I would like to hear on the radio. But I guess it's just not meant to be. I went through the dog-and-pony shows with the major labels and did 500 interviews and meet-and-greets and all the shit you have to do to get on the radio, and they never found the song they wanted to ram home. It's like, it's up to the people to fall in love with
the song. The record company can only do so much.

CP: You could always go on American Idol.

Westerberg: True. What is that? I haven't seen it. What is that, like one person gets his choice of something? Somebody said to me the other day, and I took it as a direct insult, that [Come Feel Me Tremble] is like a reality TV show movie. God. It's different. It's not like any documentary I've ever seen. It's got bits that are like this or that [documentary], but it's got a soundtrack that has a whole bunch of songs that have nothing to do with the movie.

CP: Have you heard the Lucinda Williams song ["Real Live Bleeding Fingers," which Williams penned about Westerberg]?


Westerberg: Uh-huh. I've only heard it once. I saw her perform it on television once. All I'll say is that she's a true songwriter, and I am too, and you have to take these things with a grain of salt. The hack songwriter will write the absolute truth every single word, whether it makes a great song or not. And the good songwriter takes something as a springboard and then goes from there. There's no saying that verse two isn't about something else. You know, fuck, I think "Jumpin' Jack Flash" was written about me. I
put myself in all the songs I love. The singer's singing to me, y'know? I'm flattered, but it doesn't affect me, really.

People don't understand. People chase, to this day, "Who is the Mr. Tambourine Man?" Songs aren't really written that way. You take something that inspires you, and it might just be a roaring pack of lies.

CP: You cover "These Days" by Jackson Browne on the soundtrack. Still a Jackson fan?

Westerberg: Yeah. I went to see [Tom] Petty, and Jackson was opening. [Backstage] I walked past him and he looked at me and I looked at him, and it was like, "Here's my chance." And I couldn't open my mouth. Couldn't say it. Couldn't wink. Couldn't nothin'. So maybe he'll catch wind of it, though in all honesty, it's the Nico version [of "These Days"] that I heard for years and loved. I've never heard his.

CP: Tell me about the Sylvia Plath song ["Crackle and Drag," which lifts the last line from the suicidal poet's last poem, "Edge"]. What is it about her that you so empathize with?

Westerberg: I read “The Bell Jar”, and then I read her memoir and her diaries, and a third book, an outside opinion. Just the way she made the pillows so neat on the oven door. It just seems to be the opposite of, if you're going to take your life, in a horrible rage it happens. It isn't so well thought-out, like "make sure the kids don't smell any of the fumes." I always go back and forth: Would I have done that and saved the children, to
see their dead mother? Or would I have killed the kids with me?

I don't know. She's one of those that does break the mold of, well, you knew it was coming. Unlike, let's say [late Minneapolis musician] Katie O'Brienand where
nobody knew it was coming. I guess I'm attracted to both.

CP: What do you mean "attracted"?

Westerberg: I've had more people in my life take their lives than... I think it's out of proportion with most people. I think a lot of them gravitate towards me because of the music. I did an interview with a guy from England last week, and he was telling me about this Japanese fan who used to follow me around, and Alex [Chilton] and Peter Perrettand I were her three idols, and then he said she slit her throat. And I was like, "Ooh. Well, good day to you, too!"

CP: I guess I wonder about you and Sylvia Plath, and back to the idea of the creative mind, which can make for an exhausting endeavor, where your livelihood or your life in general is built around making something out of thin air. At some point, some part of you wants rest from that, you want that to stop. I wonder if you identify with her that way.

Westerberg: Yeah. I guess I would think that one wouldn't kill oneself during a dry spell. Although, my experience when I've been depressed, not only am I too depressed to sit down and write a song, I'm too depressed to pick up my feet. So if you can at least write about it, you're halfway away from it. It frightens me, the different people who have done it and the different people who have surprised us and done it. I could never do it, I don't think. I'm too chicken.

[Squaw]

Great article, Thanks!

[FreeRider]

nice addition, sivad.....I'm starting to look at foreign press interviews now. I just found this one:

Paul Westerberg: Completely irreplaceable

The Replacements were famous for their awfulness on stage, often forgetting the lyrics and attacking their fans. Yet, 10 years on, their singer-songwriter Paul Westerberg still draws a fervent crowd. Fiona Sturges finds out why
Friday, 24 May 2002

It's a rainy day in Philadelphia. Several hundred sodden individuals, most of them paunchy men in their late thirties, are crammed into a record shop in the centre of town. The show hasn't started yet, but the windows are already steamed up – the anticipation is palpable. Paul Westerberg, the man they've come to see, is sitting in the manager's office, having a final few puffs on his cigar. It's hardly the most glamorous setting for a former rebel icon, but this is just how the former singer and songwriter of the Eighties hellraisers the Replacements wants it. Small crowds, minimum fuss.

The hour-long acoustic show is typically shambolic, with Westerberg struggling to remember the words to his songs and playing the goofball in between tracks. But there are also moments of pure magic, when he focuses on the job in hand and sings with such feeling, it's as if the words have only just occurred to him. While it's tempting to attribute Westerberg's erratic performances to the years of hard drinking, the reality is that it's always been like that.

"I've never been one to remember my own songs," he tells me later in his measured, Jack Nicholson drawl. "I learned to over-compensate for not remembering the words by playing it in a different style or making up a line on the spot. It's dramatic because you don't know if I'm going to fall on my face or not."

After the show come the autographs, and we're not talking just three or four. The queue snakes in and out of the CD racks, down the stairs and out of the door. Over the course of two and a half hours, Westerberg talks to around 400 panting fans, each of them clutching old Replacements records to be signed. Some are rendered speechless in his presence while others talk incessantly, asking questions such as "Do you remember the time when you dropped your plectrum in the Bowery Ballroom in spring 1982?" without a trace of irony. Westerberg's patience is remarkable.

It's around 11pm when the last punter walks out of the shop cradling his signed record and the staff finally lock the doors. As Westerberg gets up creakily from his chair and lights another cigar, I ask him exactly what drives him to do this.

"The thought that each one could be the last," he whispers hoarsely.

An hour later, a dazed Westerberg is sitting in an armchair in his hotel room, cigar in hand, mulling over the last few hours.

"There's always a guy who thinks he's my brother because we had a beer 10 years ago," he says. "I'm sitting there saying goodbye to this one guy, and trying to look at the next. I look up at them all for a split second, and they lay all this heavy stuff on me – 'you've got me through this' and 'you changed my life'. I've almost turned my mind off from hearing that. You know, one man said to me, 'Would you wait in this line for anyone? I said, 'Absolutely not. Not for anyone.'"

Yet such is the adulation that Westerberg inspires that they keep on coming. Two-thirds of the way through his tour he estimates that he's already shaken hands with at least 4,000 fans, and there's plenty more to come. "Most of them want to hear about the Replacements rather than what I'm doing now," he says quietly. "During the shows they're shouting out for all these songs that I can't even begin to remember. I have to ask them what the words are."

The Replacements began life in Minneapolis in 1980, springing out of the same post-punk scene that spawned Hüsker Dü. That this rowdy bunch of delinquents became one of the most celebrated hardcore rock bands in the country, inspiring a whole generation of bands including Nirvana, Soul Asylum and the Goo Goo Dolls, can be attributed to Westerberg's peerless songwriting skills. Yet major success always managed to elude them. What went wrong?

"Well, we did suck most of the time," drawls Westerberg. "But we were also capable of being the best in the world, and that was the strange dichotomy. That we could go for it on stage without any kind of safety net, fall flat on our faces and still be brilliant."

It's true that when it came to live performance, the Replacements were famed for their awfulness. They were forever getting caught up in scuffles with disgruntled fans outside their own gigs. This was a band who lived the rock'n'roll lifestyle to the letter. But as their hard drinking turned into alcoholism and their drug-taking became routine, their musical output became increasingly erratic and the band slowly disintegrated. In 1991 they finally split; four years later the guitarist Bob Stinson died from a drug overdose.

At 42, Westerberg now lives a quiet life and hasn't had a drink in over a decade. Some things don't change, however. Just two weeks ago, at a San Francisco show , he got into a fracas with a man in the audience. "The guy was heckling me so I just jumped off the stage and waded in," he says with a quiet chuckle. "I grabbed him by his collar but, instead of punching him, I made out as if I was going to kiss him. I think that kinda threw him off balance."

Six years ago Westerberg vowed he would never play another show, "because it was too easy and it wasn't fun any more." He decided on this latest string of shows, he says, to put an end to rumours that he was drinking again, that he was sick and that he couldn't leave the house.

"It's true that I will stay indoors for a few days at a time," he reflects. "I also take a lot of medication. But don't get the idea that this is me facing my fear. I've put my head in the lion's mouth a hundred times before. I've never enjoyed the anxiety of being up there but I guess I needed to see human beings again."

It's at this point in the conversation that I realise that Westerberg has had nothing positive to say about his career. The tortured artist role may be a cliché, but in his case it's apt. Does he get any pleasure at all from what he does?

"I don't know," he ponders. "I suppose it's like being a junkie. Just before you actually do it the pleasure's there and once it goes in your arm it doesn't mean a thing. The moment a song's born in my head I'm happy to be alive, I have a reason to be here. The thought of re-doing it, marketing it, going out and playing it for people seems a little foreign to me."

Westerberg is about to release his fourth solo album, Stereo. His first two solo efforts were mauled by critics, and despite the fact that his last, Suicaine Gratifaction, was critically acclaimed, it did little commercially. "You get used to it after a while," he sighs. "Worse than hearing 'I didn't like your last record' is hearing 'When are you going to make a record?' – when you just released one. That really hurts."

Stereo is as raw and brilliant a piece of work as he's ever made. In parts, it even sounds as if he's enjoying himself ("Oh come on, let's not go that far," he cackles). On the sleeve notes he writes: "What you have here are songs written and recorded at home over a two-year period. Cut mostly live in the middle of the night, no effort was made to fix what some may deem as mistakes: tape running out, fluffed lyrics, flat notes, extraneous noises etc. Many were written as the tape rolled."

On the first part of Stereo, a double album, Westerberg is in intimate singer-songwriter mode. The second, Mono, brims with the kind of low-grade, scuzzy rock'n'roll not heard since, well, the Replacements.

Now, 11 years after they called it quits, there are rumours of a reunion. Can this be true?

"Probably not, I really don't know," says Westerberg. "I don't even know if I'd want to. I always said I would do it as soon as no one else wanted us to. The smartest move we ever made was to pull the plug. I think that maybe it's best to just let the legend grow."

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/paul-westerberg-completely-irreplaceable-652157.html

[eve8apple2]

Great articles!

[sivad]

A glimpse of the frame of mind he was in before the wheels fell off during the Memphis show in 2005

Memphis Flyer, March 11, 2005

According to Paul

Rocker Paul Westerberg talks about fame and his bad reputation.
by Andria Lisle


Paul Westerberg's not in the best of moods. The iconoclastic rocker -- who first rode to fame in the Replacements -- is tired of being called a drunk. "I've created a reputation," he mockingly moans. "I'm like Dean Martin when I walk out. You trip on a cord, and it's like 'Look at the idiot.'

"People have got the wrong impression," he continues, more seriously. "I actually hurt myself on the road recently. I've got a pulled hamstring, and I've had a slight concussion since Vancouver, where I banged my guitar on top of an amp. It came back and hit me in the head, so I was loopy for a couple of days. Other than that, I'm fine. But I don't like to go out onstage and drop my pants to show [the audience] my bandages and cuts and shit.

"To my recollection, the shows have been excellent, but there's a camp out there that has to pretend that Paul's too wasted to stand up. It could never be the fact that Paul's leg doesn't work," he says. "Don't worry. I'll probably be feeling fit as a fiddle by the time I get to Memphis."

"Situation Normal: All Fucked Up." It's an expression that Westerberg is all too familiar with.

Back in the early 1980s, the Replacements -- Westerberg on lead vocals, brothers Bob and Tommy Stinson (on guitar and bass, respectively), and drummer Chris Mars -- were one of the greatest bands to storm out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. From their hardcore debut, Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out the Trash (1981), on through brilliant, rock-based albums like Let It Be ('84) and Tim ('85), they established themselves at the forefront of that decade's burgeoning college music scene. Critics and fans alike raved about their straightforward approach, which combined equal parts cynicism, irreverence, and melancholy into a gloriously rambling, ramshackle sound.

They came to Memphis to record with Jim Dickinson at Ardent Studios in 1987. The chaotic sessions yielded a beauty of an album, Pleased To Meet Me, which provided the band's mainstream breakthrough. Two albums later, the band disbanded, and, in '95, Bob Stinson died of a drug overdose. Paul and Tommy parted ways to pursue solo careers, leaving a maelstrom of broken beer bottles and bad memories behind them.

While Westerberg hasn't exactly languished in obscurity, his career has suffered from bad promotion, label problems, and an occasional lack of focus. Yet he's continued to soldier on, self-producing his albums, recording under his own name and the "Grandpaboy" alias, and, most importantly, marrying and fathering a son. Having a family, he says, has changed everything. "For one thing, I'm not trying to kill myself anymore, even though some people are convinced I am," he says.

Apparently, he's had to endure plenty of drama over the last few decades -- some of it's self-inflicted, to be sure, but most problems arrive via overzealous fans and foes. "Someone's currently making a movie where the character comes to Minneapolis to find me, which is too close for fucking comfort," Westerberg says dispiritedly. "I come home with enough garbage in my mailbox, threatening evil crap.

"If I lived alone, I'd sit here with a .38," he adds ominously. "I try to tell my son that it's like you could be the hero of Chicago if you played baseball, but when you go to New York, they're gonna boo the hell out of you. That's all part of being famous."

That sounds like the stuff Memphis antihero Alex Chilton went through after Westerberg penned a song about him on Pleased To Meet Me. With lyrics like "Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round/They sing, 'I'm in love, what's that song? I'm in love with that song,'" it was a perfect power-pop paean to the former Big Star frontman. And after the Replacements released it, Chilton was launched into permanent cult fave status.

"I regret it," Westerberg says with a sigh. "I had no idea what it would do to him. In my naive way, I thought it would somehow help him make some money. I never thought it would last this long or that he'd become this stalkable figure because I used his name in a song. But originally the song was called 'George From Outer Space.' I didn't have any lyrics, and for a hoot one day we threw [Chilton's] name out.

"I haven't talked to him," Westerberg adds, "but I think he forgives me. I apologize for doing anything that may have interfered with his personal life. Other than that, I still admire him."

Then he lets loose a delicious laugh and lets me in on his current plan: "I think we're gonna play the Conan O'Brien show one of these nights, and I think I might have Jim [Boquist, his bassist] be the lead singer. No one's gonna know," he says gleefully. "The next day in the paper, it'll say, 'Did you see Paul last night? Man, was he drunk!'

"I can't live it down. I'm tired, tired to the point of frustration and saying 'I don't ever want to do this again,'" he admits. "I don't wanna be any more famous than I am. One more speck of fame, and I'm outta here."

So why the interview? "I want people to come to the show," Westerberg says firmly. "I like playing. It's obvious. If I get up there with the right guys, I still like the music as much as I've ever liked it. There's a feeling of doing something illegal, like you're 15 years old and you're getting away with stuff.

"If I'm there on the stage, even if it's a glorified sports bar, it's still fun," he claims. "Think what you want, it's gonna rock like murder."

Paul Westerberg and His Only Friends at the New Daisy Friday, March 11th, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20.

[sivad]

HIDE 'N' SEEK WITH PAUL WESTERBERG
By Seth Mnookin

The onetime leader of the legendary Replacements remains an enigma after all these years.

Despite what people who live there may say, Minneapolis not a big city. The downtown area is punctuated by a handful of modern skyscrapers and is situated within a couple of square blocks. One can get a decent sense of downtown Minneapolis in an afternoon; indeed, Minneapolis' most striking attribute is the proximity of all the major locations to one another. The Timberwolves' new stadium and the Twins' Metrodome are just blocks away. Downtown hotels, office buildings, strip bars, comic-book stores, and clubs huddle around each other. With good reason: it gets so cold in the winters here that most of the
buildings are connected by above-ground passageways, called skyways, so people won't need to walk outside.

Paul Westerberg grew up in downtown Minneapolis, playing at clubs like First Avenue (across the street from the basketball arena and up the block from the baseball stadium) with his band the Replacements. In the Replacements' song "Skyway," he talks about falling in love with an anonymous girl walking gracefully through the above-ground tunnels. It's an apt image for Westerberg and his relationship to his hometown: although he's considered moving to L.A. ("Rock stars don't live there because they want to be isolated," he explains. "They live there so they can feel normal..."), he's chosen to stay in Minneapolis, even if
he doesn't feel particularly attached to the city. "It's where I grew
up. I like it here. But I'd move if I had to." Westerberg doesn't
especially enjoy going downtown; one gets the sense that his attitude is, the less he goes out, the better. And he's not real big on opening up his world to outsiders-despite the fact that I flew down to Minneapolis specifically so I could talk to Westerberg in his native stomping grounds, it was clear that we weren't going to be spending any quality time in the city, per se: requests to interview him in his home were consistently ignored, and efforts to even meet up with him someplace he liked to hang out were unsuccessful. The interview was going to take place in my hotel, in the restaurant. Period.

THE SINGLES GUY

I like to think that I traffic in fairly musically-sophisticated circles. So I was somewhat surprised, not to mention disappointed, when a common reaction to the news that I was going out to Minneapolis to interview Paul Westerberg was: "Oh yeah. He wrote the soundtrack to Singles didn't he?"

With some prompting, Westerberg's involvement in the seminal '80s pop-punk band the Replacements generally rang a bell, and to be fair, for every person who associated Westerberg with Singles there was someone else who was ecstatic at the thought of my meeting a genuine indie/pop/punk hero.

But the more I think about it, the more this perverse dichotomy makes a certain amount of sense. The Replacements never became the world-conquering band many believed they had the potential for, and Westerberg, in his solo career, hasn't done much to bank on whatever star-potential he had when the Mats imploded in 1991 after the resoundingly unsatisfying All Shook Down.

I'm thinking these contradictions over when suddenly I realize that it's 1:28--two minutes before the scheduled interview time--huddled in the hotel lobby trying desperately to fix my assortment of broken appliances: the battery on my laptop has stopped working, the mic on my tape-recorder is stubbornly unresponsive, even my new portable CD player seems to have a grudge against me. I start to sweat. This hotel is too nice for me, the hotel staff are staring at me, and I'm going to fuck up the interview. Westerberg's a rock-star, even if he is a contradictory one...my only hope is that he'll be late.

At exactly 1:30, a bellhop opens the door to the hotel and Westerberg walks hurriedly in. Wearing baggy purple pants (this is, after all, Prince's hometown), a blazer, and shades, his dark hair hanging loosely above his shoulders, his eyes scan the lobby as he heads for the elevator. Shoving my useless appliances into my bag, I take out a notepad and stand up. "Seth? Heh, how you doing. Well, let's do it."

TRYING TO HIDE SOMETHING, OR JUST SHY?

Westerberg keeps his sunglasses on throughout the interview. His infamous restlessness seems to have abated some; instead of biting his nails, he chews on chocolate candies. And he doesn't even reach for a cigarette until after lunch. Every now and then, he squints a little through his sunglasses at me, as if he's trying to size me up. But for the most part, Westerberg acts like he's just doing his job, being a good boy and doing what he's told. There are a couple of moments of genuine surprise: when he sees I'm taking notes instead of taping. "You know, that's how they do it in Europe," he says. "It's more direct that way. I hate it when people just transcribe an interview and then print it. A lot of what's in there is just bullshit."

Another time when Westerberg seems genuinely concerned, if only for a moment, is towards the end of the meal. I had only ordered an appetizer, and as the waitress is clearing the dishes, Westerberg looks up: "Is that enough food for lunch?" Quickly, though, he disengages: "I guess you can have some dessert or something." He gets up. "Let's go over there where we can smoke."

For the most part, Westerberg doesn't express much emotion in
interviews. Not that he's affectless. It's just that interviews aren't a place where Westerberg chooses to emote. His feeling seems to be that there's nothing really important that's going to come out of an interview. And so we sit in a hotel restaurant, resolutely neutral territory in the middle of the city that Westerberg has spent most of his life in. And so there are to be no discussion of subjects that are touchy: Bob Stinson's death, I'm told in no uncertain terms by a record company exec before the interview starts, is off limits.

Paul Westerberg is a songwriter. That's his job, and that's how he chooses to express himself. Interviews are something that go along with the territory, but they aren't a place for soul-searching or grand revelations. When Bob Stinson was thrown out of the Replacements in 1990, article after article cited the reasons for his dismissal as being murky. They weren't murky. They were just none of your fucking business.

By now, the Replacements are, for many people, a part of rock 'n' roll lore. Which is fine with Westerberg. He waited three years after the Mats called it quits before putting out the mildly schizophrenic 14 Songs. Another three years lie between 14 Songs and the just released Eventually (which reached record stores on April 30).

"I can tell you one thing for sure," Westerberg says over chicken and Cokes. "The next album is either gonna come real soon or it's gonna be in five years or something. That's for sure."

ALL SHOOK DOWN

When the Replacements broke up in 1991, the band that produced some of the '80s best albums was on the verge of becoming a self-parody. While the Mats often had to be helped to the stage in the '80s, their hedonistic tendencies were becoming slightly grotesque by the time of their breakup. A magazine article at the time shows the band gleefully drinking "beer for breakfast" at 8:30 in the morning. The brother team of Bob and Tommy Stinson, the founders of the Replacements, had fallen apart: by the time of All Shook Down; Bob had been thrown out of the band because of his persistent heroin abuse. (The Stinson brothers were estranged from the time of Bob's departure from the band until his death last year as a result of a drug overdose. While Bob was known to place his continuing deterioration at the feet of the Replacements, by whom he reportedly felt abandoned, Westerberg, at the time of Stinson's death, retorted: "The same people who say that fail to mention that the band paid for Bob to go into rehab and that he was shooting up on the day he got out.")

All Shook Down was outrageous only in its mediocrity, another first for the Replacements. When they sucked, they did so spectacularly, and when they were great, they were truly marvelous...but mediocre? It seemed to be everything the Replacements had ranted against.

"That was a bad period," Westerberg says. "Everything was falling apart-the band, my marriage, my own life." So Westerberg killed the Mats, got a divorce, and stopped drinking. That's always been Westerberg's way. He's not big on fucking around.

Nor does he have much interest in false sentimentality. He doesn't have much contact with former Mats members. "Tommy and I talk maybe once a month or so," Westerberg says, as if that explains it all. Westerberg has little to no interest in the music scene, either in his native Minneapolis, where the Replacements and Hüsker Dü defined '80s midwestern punk sensibility (along with Prince--but that's a whole other story) or nationally. The night before my interview with Westerberg, Slim Dunlap and Stinson were playing at a benefit at First Avenue, a local club that Westerberg has played at more times than he can remember. It goes without saying that Westerberg didn't show up-the thought never even crossed his mind. "If they take that as disinterest in what they're doing, well, what can I do? I played with them for years. I know what they sound like.

RESIGNED TO LIFE AS A ROCK STAR. *sigh*

"What do you do when you go out? Drink and pick up chicks. It's not that much of a thrill for me to go out and listen to rock bands. If you think about it, I went out every night for like ten straight years of my life. Even if I never go out again that's still a pretty good average."

No fucking around. Westerberg's honesty was the mark of the
Replacements-countless numbers of kids growing up in the '80s have Replacements lyrics indelibly burned into their memories-and
Westerberg seems constitutionally incapable of bullshitting. He knows that interviews and videos can do nothing but help his solo career, and makes no effort to hide his general dislike of both.

In discussing the video for "Love Untold," Eventually's first single (which, Westerberg grants, isn't a bad video), he says, "When people see that and then say, 'Oh, now I get the song,' it makes me feel like I've fucking failed as a writer. What do they mean, they get the song. Didn't they get it when they listened to it? Didn't they have some sort of reaction then?

"One of the reasons I don't put lyrics in any of my albums is that
rock is supposed to have a visceral affect on people. I don't want people to get my songs once they've read the lyrics or seen the video. I want them to react to it when they hear it. That's what rock 'n' roll is about." Westerberg pokes around in his pocket and fishes out a chocolate candy. (Pieces of candy seem to have taken the place of nail-biting for Westerberg.) "Fuck," he mutters. "Now I'm gonna get in trouble with my record company again. They've already gotten mad at me once, for being myself. For telling the truth."

NOT THE PRODIGAL SON

A couple of years ago, right after Westerberg released 14 Songs, Spin threw him on their cover and declared him the embodiment of the soul of rock 'n' roll, a notion Westerberg snorts at. But in a perverse way, Spin, not known for being particularly on the mark, may have been right that time. Westerberg, despite years of attempts by various rock hacks to pigeon-hole him, is not the child prodigy nor the prodigal son, not the All-American guy nor the rebellious high-school drop-out, not the kick-ass and take-names-later drinker nor the quiet homebody. He's a little bit of all of these, and a lot of none of them: more than anything, Westerberg is his own person. He lives his life the way he wants to, and hopes the rest falls into place. If it does, great. If not, no regrets.

These days, living his life the way he wants to means spending most of his time when he's not on the road in a new house he just bought in St. Paul. Westerberg doesn't socialize all that much. "If I didn't tour, I'd probably develop another social life out of necessity. But as it is, I think of my time not touring as time off, time to be with myself." (As for touring, Westerberg doesn't mind a couple of weeks of it; he'll even do a couple of months if things are going well. But the six month tour of 14 Songs was a little much. But yes, Westerberg is going to tour for Eventually: "Once in every city in America, and probably in Europe too. After that, we'll see.")

Westerberg is unlikely to get invited to any block parties in the near future; he's wary of neighbors, because it seems that it always turns out that someone "has some cousin or something who wants my autograph." For the time being, the relative smallness of the Twin Cities suits him perfectly; if it ever came to the point where he was being recognized on the street, he'd probably move to an even smaller town.

And so he reads some, and writes music when he feels like it, and generally enjoys living a life that in many ways seems to be the polar opposite of the out-all-night, party-all-the-time, in-your-face punk image that's been built up around Westerberg and the Replacements. An image which, by the way, Westerberg thinks is primarily a crock of shit. "You know, if we hadn't quit, if we had kept on going, no-one would be saying that we were the great pop band of the '80s. I mean, at the time what we were doing was so antithetical to the whole seriousness of the punk movement. It's only because we broke up that we avoided becoming a parody of ourselves and now have this whole
folklore following us around." And indeed, the Replacements, due in large part to their underground mystique, have a much more potent mythology following them around then, say, R.E.M. or U2.

And so, in retrospect, Spin may have been more on the mark than they suspected. Westerberg doesn't have matinee idol good looks or a great voice. (He feels about the same way about both: "I don't love how I look, and I don't love how I sound, but I've come to accept it. I know it's mine.") He doesn't have grand pretensions about rock music being the art form for a new generation, or saving people's lives. But at the same time, he takes a unmistakable pride in being able to sing as well as he does- "I think I've become a much better singer, in that these days I think my singing voice is much closer to my speaking voice." Westerberg snorts. "Of course using that formula, Lou Reed would be the world's best singer..."

THAT WACKY WESTERBERG AND THOSE NUTTY REPLACEMENTS.

Westerberg doesn't take too much stock in those who claim he's a great rock poet; he likens writing songs more to writing stand-up than verse. "I collect one-liners," he says. "It's more like writing jokes. If I find a line that works I'll throw a couple of chords in and then try to write a melody around it. I usually write the chorus first, because that's easiest." And yet he obviously yearns for his music to be taken seriously. When he writes, he uses the "goose-bump method" to tell if what he's doing is good or not, and hopes that his songs produce the same effect in listeners. He takes stock in his craft--when he talks about Ray Davies still being a good singer at his age, it's obvious that this is a very real issue to him. He hopes people will like his new album, but doesn't pretend to know if they will. "I'd like to think it'll appeal to anyone who likes rock music. I'd sort of hope it would appeal to anyone who really listens but I know that won't be true. I really never think about who it'll appeal to."

Paul Westerberg, mid-thirties, rock musician, doing his job, which is to write good, honest songs, songs that are real and move people. And doing the bullshit that goes along with it: interviews like this one, video shoots, publicity tours. But doing it honestly. The soul of rock 'n' roll.

"IT'S PRETTY FUCKING EGOTISTICAL"

Eventually didn't start out exactly as planned. Westerberg had made it clear that he didn't feel like he got the support he deserved when promoting 14 Songs, and, he says, Reprise agreed. So Pearl Jam producer Brendan O'Brien was brought in to do the new album, and Westerberg went down to Memphis to record.

And guess what? It didn't work. "I was being asked to do things I didn't really want to do. Brendan wanted things one way, and I wanted them another. So I said, 'Fuck it, I'll do it on my own.' " Westerberg claims this is one of the problems of 14 Songs --that he and Matt Wallace co-produced it. "It's schizophrenic. Also, who the fuck wants to hear 14 songs by the same guy? I sure don't. It's pretty fucking egotistical to think anyone does."

Eventually's 12 songs are a mixture of rockers, ballads, and pop
ditties that sound, appropriately enough, like more grown-up
Replacements' songs. "Love Untold," a delicate ballad, is obviously a song Westerberg is proud of; when he talks about it, a flicker of doubt flashes across his sunglass-covered eyes: he knows it's a good song, and yes, he hopes other people appreciate it.

"Honestly, I have no idea who this record is going to appeal to. I mean, I just go in there and try to make an honest rock 'n' roll
record. And I did hat. I mean, I know this rocks harder than the Dave Matthews Band, but who knows what'll happen?

"Working on Eventually was a lot like collecting pebbles, which I
guess is how all my records are: I pick up this bit here, and then
this bit there, and soon I have a whole bunch of stuff. But the time right before the album comes out is always a little scary. There's this fear of, 'Oh my god, what if what I'm saying is crap?' But usually I'm a pretty good judge."

A large part of why the O'Brien/Westerberg collaboration was doomed to failure was that when it comes down to it, Westerberg doesn't believe in setting up a song to sound a certain way. "Usually you have one chance to capture something at it's purest and that's the first time. That's why so many of the songs on the album are first takes." And even the songs that weren't tended to be the first take on a new day, or a fresh take on a song after leaving it alone for awhile.

The more Westerberg gets to talking about Eventually, the more he invests himself in the conversation...which still amounts to little more than a slight raising of the intensity in his voice, a slight shift in his posture. (While Westerberg was never rude and sat patiently through questions he's surely heard more times than he'd like, he isn't a great liar; I have no illusions that this interview was as fun for him as it was for me.)

"I think a lot of the album is perfect in its imperfection. Like the
breakdown at the end of 'Love Untold,' it could have been redone to make it more dramatic or something, but that's really how it was. We just all sort of stopped playing. It was real. It was passionate.

"You know, you write music, you string together notes and sounds, and you're trying to capture a spirit, the essence of rock 'n' roll," he tells me. "And I think I did that pretty well on this album."

JUST AN OLD FASHIONED GUY

The more one talks with Westerberg, the more contradictions come out. He likes reading biographies about famous people-"It helps me understand what their work was all about. I like art made by people that I think I would like to go have a cup of coffee with." And yet he sees no need for people to interview him. "I take an old fashioned slant on things: just the act of talking about what I do makes it less interesting. It exists for what it is. Let's not put a bright light on it and dissect it. Fans don't even want to know what the words mean...that's why I never include the lyrics."

JUST DO IT.

Of course, this could be because Westerberg doesn't like to think about his own songs once he's written and recorded them. For all the dark humor, for all the morbid, sarcastic intensity that pours out of his songs, Westerberg doesn't go back and think about what he meant when he wrote a certain song. "[My lyrics] are something everyone analyzes but me. I guess it must be cathartic to admit things out loud, but I never go, 'Oh, now I need to express my fear.' I guess I don't really think about it all that much."

And the future? Westerberg would like to write more songs for other people. "I'd like to write an entire record for someone. I think it would be fun. It frees you, you can say things that you wouldn't normally have the courage to say."

Westerberg's written a couple of songs with other people in mind: "I wrote 'Sadly Beautiful' with Marianne Faithful in mind. And I wrote 'Star is Bored' for Nanci Griffith."

When asked what happened to those tunes, Westerberg smiles ruefully. "I don't know. I just write the songs and give them to the record company." Then he pauses and chuckles under his breath.

"I think they ended up on a "Melrose Place" compilation or something."

COFFEE, CIGARETTES, AND THE END OF THE INTERVIEW

At 3:15, Westerberg and I are having coffee and cigarettes off in a corner of the hotel restaurant. We've begun talking about books and movies, subjects that no longer have to do with Westerberg and his music per se, but more to do with him as a person. I begin taking slightly less copious notes. "I gotta go take a piss," Westerberg says. He comes back and sits back down, but it's clear that the interview is over. He looks around distractedly for a moment, and then says, "Well, I guess that does it. Nice meeting you."

By the time I put my notebook and pen away and get up and walk to the elevator, he's gone.

[sivad]

14 FUN FACTS ABOUT MINNEAPOLIS, PAUL WESTERBERG, AND ME
By Seth Mnookin

1) Some of Paul Westerberg's favorite Replacements' songs:
"Nobody"
"Color Me Impressed"
"Little Mascara"

2) Albums likely to be heard in the Westerberg abode:
Osmond Brothers
Marvin Gaye
Rolling Stones

3) Westerberg Husker Du story:
"It was always like the battle of the bands when we played, we always knew we were the two best bands around [in Minneapolis]. There was an old saying: Husker Du played with such intensity that you had to push them off the stage, and we played so drunk you had to push us on the stage."

4) Current Westerberg reading material:
How to Write, by Brenda Euland. "This woman who cut my hair recommended it to me. It was printed in 1938 and then reprinted in '83. It's really amazing; it's so incredibly straightforward."

5) Westerberg words to live by:
"I don't have a very regimented schedule. I need to be alone. I spend most of my time alone."

6) Westerberg Replacements' story:
"We never truly were part of the scene, even when we were at the pinnacle of the scene we were outsiders. We didn't rehearse, we didn't care, we made a mockery of bands that considered themselves important. We were famous for not caring, which didn't always make us popular. Nothing burns a musician more than a guy that comes into a room and falls over the amp."

7) Musician on Eventually that Westerberg conspicuously fails to
mention when discussing the album:
Tommy Stinson

8) Most conspicuous aspect of Minneapolis's landscape:
Skyways. Skyways are above-ground, enclosed passageways that connect the downtown business buildings so people don't need to go outside in the winter. At first I thought it was so business people didn't need to risk rubbing shoulders with the ruffians in the street.

9) Most conspicuous face in Minneapolis's downtown:
Kevin McHale's. The former Celtic forward and Minnesota Timberwolves' VP's face is staring out of seemingly every corner of downtown.

10) Best Minneapolis record store:
Let It Be

11) Worst day to plan on going to the world-famous Walker Art Center:
Monday. It's closed. Duh!

12) Do people really talk like those funny characters in "Fargo":
You betcha. But no, Paul Westerberg is not one of them. And yes, it's rude to laugh at the locals.

13) Story Whitney hotel staff likes to share with their younger,
'hipper' guests:
When the Stones were in town and Mick and Keith had two adjoining penthouse suites (replete with grand pianos and whirlpools) Mick went to another hotel across town because Keith was entertaining a bit loudly.

14) Misc.
Prince's former club, Glam Slam, has closed down. And Kirby Puckett's baseball career is over.

[sivad]

THE GROWN-UP OF GRUNGE (yuk!) (from `Mojo', May 1996.)


A story did the rounds late last year which claimed that Paul Westerberg had dismissed Brendan O'Brien as product of his second solo album by telling the Pearl Jam/Stone Temple Pilots knobsman: "If I wanted to sound like The Replacements I'd hire the fucking Replacements!". O'Brien is named a co- product (with Westerberg) on only three of the 12 tracks here, so Westerberg's statement might serve as a litmus test as to how you'll receive `Eventually'.

Westerberg COULD capitalize on The Replacements sound, if he wanted.
After all the Goo Goo Dolls took a lame carbon copy of it to the top of
the American charts, and if Westerberg had a dollar for every time his
ex-band's name was muttered - both on panels and in the `alternative'
clubs - during Austin, Texas' recent South By South-west Music Conference, he'd feel like a lot more than the hundred bucks he sang of in Alex Chilton. But those expecting songs like Alex Chilton or Left Of The Dial from the 1996 solo Paul may be disappointed... Which could account for the advance word on `Eventually' from pundits, aficionados, and even a few close to the legendary band who've called it "terrible" and "banal". One person even said he wished the now longtime clean `n' sober songwriter would start drinking again.

In 1996, Westerberg is producing `grown-up' rock (for lack of a better
term). Sure, the guy who wrote Bastards Of Young a decade ago was bound to end up somewhat cynical and even bitter, which accounts for the heavy-duty lyrics on Century, a song that merges Subterranean Homesick Blues with the imagery of Sweet Jane, and Trumpet Clip.

But there's still traces of romance (Love Untold), plenty of pure pop
(Ain't Got Me), and enough of that RAUNCHY, Stones-like rhythm guitar to make any `grown-up' rocker smile with glee. Anyone who can listen to the beautiful Good Day ("is any day that you're alive"), obviously written with recently- deceased 'Mats guitarist Bob Stinson in mind, and suggest that the lyrics are "banal"...well, I don't want to suggest that you can't be moved. But you probably can't.

(interview):

Is the ghost of The Replacements as much a curse as a blessing?

"It's not a curse anymore. I think people who still yearn for the band
yearn for something lost in themselves. Maybe they're yearning for a time when they were 15 years younger - and I can't supply that for them. If you want a soundtrack to your life for now, I can maybe fit the bill there. But I can't take you back. But I'm proud of it. I came from a great band".

As you get older are you trying to absorb other forms as music?

"I don't know that I'm absorbing it. I listen to other kinds and I always have. Generally, I listen to more old-timer song stuff these days. You know? The old fart radio station. Sinatra, Doris Day and shit. And I do like jazz. But I don't think it comes out in my music. I can be listening to Miles Davis, but what comes out still sounds pretty much like T.Rex with a dash of John Fogerty".

Any possibility of the remaining 'Mats reuniting?

"Tommy and I might get together again someday. When everyone in the world has forgotten us and no-one cares. Then it could be like us starting over, us against the world, and everybody would hate us. And we would thrive on that. It was too easy at the end when people loved us because that's not what we were about. We didn't know how to handle being loved".

- Bill Holdship

[sivad]

May 1996 issue of `Vanity Fair'. It's headlined `Saint Paul' and the text is as follows:

So far this decade Paul Westerberg has broken up his band, ended his marriage, quit drinking, left his manager, and attempted to get out of his recording deal. "I didn't have a master plan", the 36-year-old singer declares. "Each one was a matter of survival".

In his 10 years leading the much-loved Replacements, Westerberg stacked up the sorts of accolades associated with the lives of the saints - and the record sales to go with them. But despite ecstatic reviews, his first solo album, 1993's `14 Songs', got lost amid Warner Music's corporate civil war. Westerberg's poetic soul did not crowd out a punk's willingness to pick a fight with the big boys, but the label refused to let him go and promised to make it up to him next time.

Well, next time is here. Westerberg has recorded a collection of thoughtful songs called `Eventually', to be released this month. "I've made a folk-pop record. I'm very comfortable with that", he says. "I'm totally aware that people are going to say it isn't as raw as it used to be. Well, I'm not SUPPOSED to be. I would be embarrassed".

The length of the stretch limo Warner has provided to ferry the Minneapolis native around New York suggests that this CD must have the sort of promotion budget not seen since Caesar attempted to exercise his option on Cleopatra. "Now that I'm settled down they give me the big car", Westerberg says. "Where was it when I was young and wild
and could have filled it with floozies?".

- Bill Flanagan

[FreeRider]

Good stuff, sivad! The "Hide 'n Seek" interview was a good one and very revealing. The comment about being invited to neighborhood block parties, I kind of got that he just wants to be a regular guy, left alone to do his thing and not always be bothered with the fame aspect of some neighbor trying to get an autograph for a cousin.

[Squaw]

Jul 26, 2011 8:55:51 GMT -5 FreeRider said:

Good stuff, sivad! The "Hide 'n Seek" interview was a good one and very revealing. The comment about being invited to neighborhood block parties, I kind of got that he just wants to be a regular guy, left alone to do his thing and not always be bothered with the fame aspect of some neighbor trying to get an autograph for a cousin.

I got that too FreeRider. Additionally, he seems to be saying that interacting with people prevents him from ‘living in the now’. He is always being asked about his Mats days or what will be happening in the future. I can’t understand why people don’t seem to get that he doesn’t want to be defined solely on what he was or speculation on what he will be, because he is here now and he is just as viable. Imagine us regular people being asked how we were in the past and how we think we’re going to be next year. Must get tiresome.

[FreeRider]

Well, when you get down to it, he is a regular person with the same chores and mundane concerns as all of us; but it's just that he has an incredible talent, a way of expressing himself through music that we all enjoy. But he isn't that guy 24/7.

Also, I don't know if some of these interviewers are asking anything that he hasn't responded to a hundred different times. If they've done their research on him, they should already know his thoughts on a certain subject.

Let me pose a question to the board: If YOU were allowed the privilege of interviewing Paul, what questions would you ask him? What would you want to know from him that doesn't get addressed in any of these interviews by these journalists? What questions/subjects do you think would offend him?

[FreeRider]

LONESOME STRANGER; Reclusive rock antihero Paul Westerberg lets down his guard, excavating life, love and last chances for "Suicaine Gratifaction." It's the greatest album he never thought he'd make

Star Tribune, 2/21/1999, by Vickie Gilmer


Paul Westerberg is looking out the window of a downtown Minneapolis hotel room. He's rented a 16th-floor suite for a photo shoot and interview, but he seems more focused on the fat snowflakes slowly cascading outside than the events at hand.

He's here only out of necessity, to promote his new record. He's also exhausted. It's only 4 o'clock in the afternoon, but the Minneapolis singer/songwriter is suffering from a herniated disc, a condition that makes sitting and standing painful.

For once, Westerberg's physical and emotional pain are in sync. It's this pain that his new CD, "Suicaine Gratifaction," revels in. Personally, though, it's nothing he aspires to possess. He lights up when talk turns to his 9-month-old son, Johnny, and their walks around the neighborhood. He chuckles and shakes his head, saying that before they even make it to the corner Johnny is face-forward in his sled, fast asleep. The first time, he panicked and had to make sure that little Johnny wasn't frozen stiff.

As Westerberg continues chatting, slowly and skeptically, he begins to relax. Cracking a few jokes, letting fly with some punk-issue sarcasm and even laughing and smiling, it becomes apparent that this is a man who simply wants to be understood.

His guarded stance, he explains later, comes from a long line of people with agendas, false friends and fanatics who won't let him live in the here and now but would rather pigeonhole him in his punk-rock past with Minneapolis' fabled Replacements. "You have to be somebody's has-been to qualify as someone else's hero," he says.

"Suicaine Gratifaction," arriving in stores Tuesday, is the album that should make Westerberg a hero again. Easily the feather in his cap, it captures the itinerant struggle between hope and hopelessness. This interpersonal war is what has always made Westerberg's songs resonant with a hollowed emptiness that welcomes the lonely hearts, losers and leftovers - a space reserved only for the lonely.

"It's kind of sad," he says of the record. "I guess I'm proud that I followed the muse where it took me, which was a very solitary, dark place."

It's a territory defined by the kind of insecurity that, paired with their outrageous antics, made the Replacements an unforgettable cast of misfits who were more comfortable creating chaos than living without it. Now, Westerberg fights his own internal chaos by cutting to the bone with lyrics that question a man's prime of life, fate, love, final chances and lies.

A collection of thoughtful, spare ballads and three-chord rock songs, "Suicaine Gratifaction" proves that Westerberg's verve and venom are as potent as ever.

"He's an incredibly creative guy," says the record's producer, Don Was, who has collaborated with Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. "If I could've worked with John Lennon at his creative peak, that's what Paul reminds me of. He doesn't want to repeat anything anyone has done before; he makes sure the mikes in the studio are not set up the same way they were the week before. Nothing with him is rote."

Basement tapes

In keeping with his solitary nature, Westerberg recorded most of "Suicaine Gratifaction" in his basement.

"I didn't even know I was making a record," he says. Back home after a concert tour following the release of his last album three years ago, Westerberg started writing and recording. "After about two months I had six or seven songs and I thought, `Hey, I have a record here.' "

Bumped around on Capitol Records' release schedule - partly because of the departure of label head Gary Gersh, who signed Westerberg and is now acting as his manager - the album was initially slated for release last summer, and it seems a distant memory when Westerberg talks about it. But the record carries special import.

"This one, for whatever reason, is unique," he says. "From the beginning of making it, to this very moment, it doesn't ring like any of the other records. The closest it does is to the very first one I ever made. The difference is when I was done with that one I was so excited to go out and tell the world and play. That's not the case here."

He's adamant about not going on tour immediately - regardless of what his record label might want. The thrill of the spotlight has long faded, and Westerberg takes more comfort holing up at home with a book or his son, or in his studio.

"Last time out, it mentally exhausted me and I had become depressed halfway through because of expectations I had on myself or simply just chemical, clinical depression. Somehow being on stage playing rock music with guys that weren't in my band, per se, for the first time felt wrong, like `Gee, I've done this. This might be a waste of my talent to be known as a guitar-slinging performer.' A little voice told me that this was not what I was born to do. And going home and making the record, it was, `Now it's about time to see what I can do.' "

History lesson: Forget it

Westerberg knows all too well the importance that fans place on his history with the 1980s' most applauded punks, the Replacements, but he has no desire to go back.

"Minus all the bad stuff we did and took, the [Replacements'] performances were creative," he says. "We would reinvent songs, do things differently, wear odd clothing. Over the years it had gotten to the point where there was so much pressure to go up and play the songs well - like the records, like the people want to hear. We disintegrated."

This disintegration had many pointing the finger at Westerberg. He knows many blame him for being a "tyrant" and "ending the party." He says with resignation: "I've distanced myself from the Replacements, what they represent, what they are, so much that I barely know they exist."

His first two solo records, "14 Songs" and "Eventually," got a lukewarm greeting from critics and fans. But it's the thrill of the song that keeps him from worrying about commercial viability or mainstream stardom.

"I was probably 36 when I started recording this album and it dawned on me that I don't know what [kids] want - I'm a fool to even guess. So I have to do what I want at the risk of being considered a has-been, an old man or whatever. When they rediscover me when they're 25, they'll see that I was very cool."

His need to write and perform had him working with his wife, Laurie Lindeen, on her solo debut "Pregnant Pause," and he assumed an alter ego, Grandpa Boy, for a 7-inch single and an EP on the tiny Soundproof/Monolyth label. The Grandpa Boy tracks, which rail with a spittle familiar to Replacements fans, were an outlet for Westerberg, who says he's become "more fearless in my art," looking for personal satisfaction rather than mass endorsement.

Was became involved after Capitol sent him "a third-generation cassette [that] sounded like crap." Nonetheless, he says, "I knew they were great songs and if there was any plan, it was to stay out of the way of the songs."

Although he wasn't Westerberg's first choice as producer (Quincy Jones was), Westerberg admits that Was pushed him in the right direction, insisting that he include "Bookmark," a personal and delicate ballad that sounds like a last rite. Was enlisted Shawn Colvin to sing on the touching "Born for Me" and brought in pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz, drummer Jim Keltner and keyboardist Benmont Tench. Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner sings background on "Fugitive Kind," as does the studio's secretary.

"Someone at the label kept saying we need more female voices. I walked up to the secretary and said, `You - can you sing?' " Westerberg says, laughing.

As the conversation winds down, it's clear that music is still what makes him tick. He mentions a Bad Company CD he wants, says that he joked with Soul Asylum bassist Karl Mueller about putting together a band and that he enjoyed co-writing with Carole King (even though they didn't release anything) and is disappointed he couldn't contribute a song to Blondie's new album.

Then Westerberg eases himself off the couch, signaling the end of his duty.

"I don't feel like I have any answers," he says. "I feel like I've reached a new level where I do understand Bob Dylan a little bit now. And Picasso. It's like `Don't look back, don't explain, don't apologize.' You create this mystique. . . . People hate you, but it's not of your doing, it's of necessity to do what you do. And if you really believe in what you do, to dissect and talk about it, you can't. You don't know how."

He may not feel that he's well-liked or that he articulates his motives well enough. No matter. Because even if no one else understands, Westerberg knows that in the end, it's about the music.

Source Citation

[FreeRider]

Too fast to live, too old to die

The London Times
By Davis Sinclair

April 12, 1999

David Sinclair talks to rehabilitated rock'n'roller Paul Westerberg bout drugs, death, hellraising and the joys of a quiet evening in.

Rock stars do not often break down and cry in interviews with journalists they have never met before. And Paul Westerberg, one of the most noted hellraisers of his generation, is the last person you would imagine to be an exception.

Leader of the enormously influential and perpetually under-the-influence American group the Replacements from 1979 to 1990, Westerberg has lived the swaggering, staggering, rock'n'roll lifestyle to the hilt. Now, on the eve of the release of his second solo album, Eventually, he is a sober, 36-year-old man with a taste for nothing more life-threatening than French cigars. He is, however, still counting the cost of his former band's excesses, specifically the drug-related death in February 1995 of guitarist Bob Stinson.

``I knew this would happen sooner or later,'' he says, jaw quivering as he removes his shades for the first time during our interview, and wipes the tears from his eyes with the sleeve of his black suit. ``I've been able to keep the lid on it until now, but ...

``I go back and look at some of the press before he died and I remember a quote which said, `What's supposed to happen is that one of us dies because that's what they want' and that's what they did want. We all knew that Bob was on the highway to hell. Even before we split up, he was out of the band through drug abuse that was even beyond what the rest of us were doing. He was not a stable man. He needed help and he never really got what he needed.''

Westerberg has written a song for his lost friend, a desperately poignant ballad called Good Day with a chorus that goes, ``A good day is any day that you're alive''.

``I never thought I would make a statement like that, but we change. I don't look forward to playing it live,'' he says, recovering his composure at last, and even raising a wan smile.

Good Day is one of 12 new compositions on Eventually that confirm Westerberg's enduring status as one of the great, unrecognised heroes of rock'n'roll. His writing style combines poetic intimacy and humour with an authoritative, rhythmic cool in a way that recalls the work of greats such as Ray Davies and Keith Richards. The new album is a mellower and more rounded collection than his sensational debut, 14 Songs, released in 1993, although tracks such as Ain't Got Me and Had It With You recall the raucous spirit of old.

``I was very relaxed about the writing and the pace at which I recorded this album, and I think that's reflected in the songs. And I chose a batch of songs that all felt the same way. I wanted to make this album easier and more accessible than 14 Songs.''

If Westerberg is now actively looking for a taste of commercial success, you can hardly blame him. After all, he has been knocking on the door for 16 years. Born in the last few hours of 1959, and brought up in Minneapolis, he came from a large family that numbered both musicians and alcoholics among its ranks, which may explain the young Westerberg's passion for both music and booze. He was never pushed to be a high achiever, which he now believes made him try all the harder to make something special of his life.

The Replacements sprang out of the same Minneapolis hardcore punk scene that spawned Husker Du, another of the great, unsung influences on latterday American rock, and later, Soul Asylum. Taking their cue from the New York Dolls, the Mats (as the Replacements were known) became renowned for their raucous, ragged brand of garage-band rock and notorious for their royally drunken displays of craziness on and off stage. But thanks to Westerberg's exceptional ear for a tune which eventually produced gems such as Left of the Dial, I'll Be You, Skyway and Alex Chilton they always seemed to promise so much more.

``Around the time of the fourth album, Let It Be, things were really rolling. Everyone was saying we were headed for the top. For a while we were the coolest band in America. We thought, `We're going to be rich in a couple of years', and then two years later the crowds are thinning out and you suddenly realise that that was your heyday.''

In fact the Replacements' most successful album was Don't Tell a Soul, released in 1989, which sold about 350,000 copies. But by then the combination of hard slog and even harder partying over so many years had taken its toll.

``We could have been millionaires and we would still have been sick of each other. We played our last gig on July 4, and it just dawned on everyone. Yeah, I guess we're done, aren't we?''

It is a cautionary tale and one that Westerberg admits he is lucky to be around to tell. He lives quietly now and spends most of his evenings reading.

``Everyone knows it takes a lot to get me out. What do you do when you go to a club? If you're not going to pick up a girl or get drunk, it cuts down the fun, really.''

So is rock'n'roll as Ian Hunter so memorably expressed it in his valedictory song Ballad of Mott a losers' game?

``It depends what you want out of it. If you want people to admire you and you want to get laid and make money, you can do all that. But if you want to touch people, it's harder to do.

``Performing rock'n'roll is just vaudeville; they pay money and you play the fool. All my early life all I wanted to do was play rock'n'roll, but I've grown a little tired of it. Why can't you play rock'n'roll on Friday night and go out to dinner with your family on Saturday night? I can play the music but I don't have to live the lifestyle any more.''

Eventually is released by Warner Bros on April 29

Copyright (C) The Times, 1996

[sivad]

I think that Paul has been asked so many questions over the years that just about anything is going to offend him. Judging from these old interviews, he feels his opinion on any given subject is his own private business. He thinks we shouldn't look to him for answers even though many feel a bond to him because of his talent and that we have been listening to what he has to say through his lyrics for years. That is a heavy burden to him and makes him uncomfortable.

Not too many think of him as just a normal guy, like FreeRider mentioned, with the normal worries and responsibilities that any of us have.

Which leads to my questions for him: Are you happy? Is everything going OK? How's that garden coming along? How many baseball games did you catch this year? Can I buy you a cup of coffee?

I'm not sure if he would even like that line of questioning since he is obviously a very private man. My only concern would be for his well being.

[wecantgetanybetter]

Jul 27, 2011 10:12:32 GMT -5 FreeRider said:

he joked with Soul Asylum bassist Karl Mueller about putting together a band

Huh, mighta been fun ...

[Squaw]

Jul 27, 2011 10:53:42 GMT -5 sivad said:

I think that Paul has been asked so many questions over the years that just about anything is going to offend him. Judging from these old interviews, he feels his opinion on any given subject is his own private business. He thinks we shouldn't look to him for answers even though many feel a bond to him because of his talent and that we have been listening to what he has to say through his lyrics for years. That is a heavy burden to him and makes him uncomfortable.

Not too many think of him as just a normal guy, like FreeRider mentioned, with the normal worries and responsibilities that any of us have.

Which leads to my questions for him: Are you happy? Is everything going OK? How's that garden coming along? How many baseball games did you catch this year? Can I buy you a cup of coffee?

I'm not sure if he would even like that line of questioning since he is obviously a very private man. My only concern would be for his well being.

When you're right, you're right! ;D

[hudson99]

I'll play devil's advocate on this one, as I was the music editor of a local indie rag throughout the 80's. I'm not denying that some of the articles printed here are so-so, or the questions are not always the best. You do have to remember the obvious fact, though, that not everybody worships him like we do. Most of these articles appear to be advance promotion of a show, and the paper's staff music writer had the gig. These articles are attempts to convince people who aren't fans to attend the show; they're not deep discussions for hardcore fans to devour. Even if they are a fan, they don't necessarily have access to every article written around that time...and it is a bit nerve-shattering to talk to an artist you respect. There's also the reality that even when a writer knows they're asking a question that others have queried, they do have a desire to have their own quote.

Interviews aren't as easy as one would believe. Good writers are always attempting to create new ways to present an artist's comments. One of the main reasons that I put my podcast guests in charge of the playlist is to have other topics to talk about besides their own careers.