Post by thosethingsilov on Jul 8, 2015 15:26:09 GMT -5
Happened on this PW interview article (not Q&A) from 1999 in a British paper. Really like the difference in the way Brits do journalism sometimes. www.andrewmueller.net/display.lasso?id=123
(oh, hi... I'm new)
Paul Westerberg interview
The Independent, April 1999
IT is commonly held that the spiritual base of modern American rock’n’roll is Seattle, the rainy north-western city that hosted the grunge renaissance of the early 90s. The unlikely truth, however, might be that the real heart of American music is Minneapolis, a medium-sized, nondescript city that seems to be comprised pretty well entirely of high-rise car parks. Without the influence of two bands that blossomed here in the 1980s, grunge and all that went with it would never have happened. A group called Hüsker Dü patented the sound - the souped-up electric guitar that sounded like an angrily revving bomber. Another group, The Replacements, invented the attitude - the integrity, commitment and long-term career sense of a kamikaze squadron.
“Oh, probably,” says Paul Westerberg, and fidgets with his coffee cup. Westerberg, a quiet and modest man who somehow gives the impression of being shorter than he actually is, was The Replacements’ singer and songwriter. “It was the irony of someone who is basically shy and elusive choosing a career that involves becoming a public figure. I was sure from the beginning that it was something I didn’t want to cultivate. It’s funny. . . there are people, like Greta Garbo, or Leonard Cohen, who become famous for not showing up, and that’s something to cultivate, if it suits your lifestyle, and it does mine. I sit at home, do my work, play with my little boy, do what I prefer to do, and it seems to enhance this supposed image. . . the reclusive elder statesman. Fine.”
Not for the first or last time, Westerberg is trying to explain to someone who thinks The Replacements were one of the greatest bands who ever existed and that Westerberg is one of the finest songwriters alive why he isn’t rich, famous, or at least regularly bracketed alongside the likes of Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson and Jimmy Webb. We’re talking about Westerberg’s third solo album, “Suicaine Gratifaction”, which is as good a record as he’s made, which is as high as praise gets.
“Thanks,” he says, at once clearly genuine and uncomfortable. “I appreciate that.”
Such was the commercial and critical disrepair into which Westerberg’s career had degenerated at one point that “Suicaine Gratifaction” - the title is symptomatic both of Westerberg’s dyslexia and restless linguistic playfulness - was nearly never made at all. After exhaustively touring his second solo album, 1996’s “Eventually” - a fierce, intelligent and shockingly under-rated record even by Westerberg’s standards - he suffered what he describes this afternoon as a full-scale breakdown.
“In a way,” he says, “‘Eventually’ was precursor to the breakdown. On this record, it’s already here, so it’s a question of whether I go the next step - kill myself, withdraw from music, or keep my wits together and work, which means write, even if it’s about death and suicide. But, you know, I’m still alive, I’m still going. So it couldn’t have got too bad.”
Westerberg mutters all this with the same deadpan self-mockery that has informed many of his best songs over the years, but there’s no doubt that he’s hauled “Suicaine Gratifaction” up from forbidding depths - spiritually and literally. The album was written and mostly recorded in Westerberg’s basement, and producer Don Was, to his eternal credit, seems hardly to have produced the songs at all. The result is that the upbeat numbers rock with a ferocity comparable with anything The Replacements managed, and the ballads - the gorgeous, wracked confessionals that Westerberg glibly dismisses as his “I’m-not-a-tough-guy songs” - sound like what they are: the lonely, late-night musings of a man approaching 40 and wondering if it’s a mark worth passing.
“That did fuel the urgency of these songs,” he agrees. “I’m 39, and I don’t have a skill. This is what I do, and if nobody wants it, I’m in trouble. I could go back to sweeping floors, I guess.”
Westerberg is pleased by the suggestion that his new record has a certain redemptive optimism, even if it is only in the sense of looking up from as low a point as a person can reach. He shares his chocolate-chip cookie and says he likes spending his days at home, wandering the house with his guitar around his neck and his 10-month-old son, Johnny-Paul, strapped to his back. He wants his new record “to sell as many as it can while doing as little as possible”, and refuses to begrudge anything of Green Day, Goo Goo Dolls or any of the dozens of other bands who have reworked the template provided by The Replacements into licenses to print money. He laughingly denies that the song on the new album with the chorus that goes “I was the last thing you ever wanted and the best thing you never had” is directed towards the record-buying public, and is kind enough to patiently deconstruct a few of his visitor’s favourite Replacements songs, when he can remember what he was getting at when he wrote them. He finally asks to leave the cafe because he thinks the staff have recognised him and might put on one of his old records.
“There’s a picture a lot of people paint that they want me to agree with,” he says, “but I can’t saddle up to the notion that I’m bitter and it should have been me. I’m glad it wasn’t me. I’m glad I don’t have to be one thing forever.”