No success like failure: New book explores the troubled history of The Replacements

Self-destruction and musical immortality go hand in hand. That sad story is as old as Robert Johnson, Janis Joplin, or Kurt Cobain, and as new as

Amy

, Asif Kapadia's film about Brit soul-pop singer Amy Winehouse that won best documentary last week at the Oscars.

The "Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young" route to eternal fame, espoused in a 1955 country hit by Faron Young (who lived to be 64) worked pretty well for the famously 27-year-old icons named above. Not to mention Hank Williams (who made it to 29); Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., gunned down at the ages of 24 and 25, respectively; or Jeff Buckley, who was swallowed by the Mississippi River at 31 in 1997, yet who still has a new album coming out this week.

But when it came to achieving tragic-hero status through premature demise, the subjects of Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements (Da Capo, $25.99), Bob Mehr's biography of the much-loved Minneapolis rock band that's the standout music book of the young year, couldn't manage even that. As Mehr makes plain over 400-plus pages, in their 1980s heyday, members of the brilliant Paul Westerberg-led band were dangerous to themselves and their career.

And yet the 'Mats - short for Placemats, a self-deprecating nickname for a band initially known as The Impediments - neither achieve the breakout commercial success of competitors like R.E.M. (whose guitarist Peter Buck played lead on "I Will Dare," one of Westerberg's greatest songs) or go down in flames like post-punk contemporaries The Minutemen, whose singer D. Boon died in a tour-van accident in 1985 when he was, yep, 27.

The Replacements - who with Westerberg included drummer Chris Mars, guitarist Bob Stinson, and, on bass, his younger brother Tommy, who was 12 when the band was formed - may have been spared a death-by-auto fate only because nobody had a driver's license. With a hired, and aghast, driver, they were free to concentrate on turning whatever vehicle they were careering down the road in into a "mosh pit on wheels."

Indeed, Mehr points out that although The Replacements played a crucial role in the 1980s DIY scene chronicled so well in Michael Azerrad's 2001 book, Our Band Could Be Your Life, there, in fact, was nothing DIY about this band of Midwestern misfits. The painfully self-conscious, cripplingly drunk crew relied on various helpmates, such as discoverer Peter Jesperson, for pretty much everything. They were incapable of doing anything by themselves.

Except get wasted and write great songs.

There are plenty of examples of the former in Trouble Boys, and the excessive indulgence more than took its toll. One of the many strengths of Mehr's book is his reporting on the troubles of Bob Stinson, who was physically and sexually abused as a child. And nearly a decade after either being forced out or leaving The Replacements voluntarily, depending on whose version of events you believe, the elder brother did die of natural causes, in 1995, tragically young at 35.

While ingesting copious amounts of alcohol, the other members were able to function for the band's decadelong run, with a prodigious capacity for self-sabotage mixed with life-threatening stupidity. (Instead of dodge ball, a favorite pastime, Mehr reports, was "dodge knife.")

Things tended to go wrong at Replacements shows, sometimes through no fault of their own. I remember great nights at the Houston Hall Auditorium and the Chestnut Cabaret when the band was on, and a show at the Ripley on South Street that got shut down due to noise complaints, as well as a gig in Manchester, England, felled by bizarre sound problems that descended into uninspired chaos.

Mehr describes a band so allergic to success that, whenever they knew a high-profile gig was happening - like a 1986 Saturday Night Live big break, in which Westerberg dropped an on-air f-bomb - they were sure to undercut themselves. The next night, when no one "important" was watching, they would be fabulous.

The author tells of one 1985 gig at City Gardens in Trenton, where Jon Stewart tended bar and the band played frequently. Mehr calls the show "disastrous," but my friend Luke says it was "mesmerizing," with the whole gamut of Replacements performance art, including Bob in a dress, a cover of "Cat-Scratch Fever," and band members' spitting on each other.

The next day, promoter Randy "Now" Ellis called up Princeton radio station WPRB-FM (103.3) to bad-mouth the band, who heard it in their van. Westerberg had the driver pull over and called in from a pay phone to give Ellis an earful. The incident inspired "Shooting Dirty Pool" on the band's 1987 LP, Pleased to Meet Me.

That album, produced in Memphis by Rolling Stones associate Jim Dickinson, was the Replacements' third straight - and last - masterwork, a streak that included 1984's Let It Be and the next year's Tim. Hootenanny, which came out in 1983, is nearly as good.

Pleased was notable for including "Alex Chilton," a song named for the leader of 1970s Memphis cult heroes Big Star, whose degree of fame was similar to what The Replacements ultimately achieved: as big as The Beatles to those they reached at the deepest level; unknown to almost everybody else.

At their best, the 'Mats delivered a haphazard frenzy of aggression on big, bruising anthems for screw-ups like "Bastards of Young" and "We're Coming Out," with Westerberg occasionally getting up the courage to slay his listeners emotionally with vulnerable ballads like "Here Comes a Regular" and "Skyway."

It's that tenderness, and tremendous talent, that leads people to cut them so much slack in Trouble Boys, at least until the magic ran out on last-gasp albums like Don't Tell a Soul in 1989 and the depressive 1990 All Shook Down. (Those two albums, plus Tim and Pleased to Meet Me, will be reissued on vinyl this month by Rhino.)

Mehr's book puts a capstone on a Replacements story that has come back to life this decade. There's a new project out this year with the very noncommittal, Replacements-esque name The I Don't Cares, that teams Westerberg with fellow aging alt-rock heartthrob Juliana Hatfield. It's not half-bad.

And in 2012, there was a 'Mats reunion featuring Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, originally occasioned as a fund-raiser for the medical bills of guitarist Slim Dunlap, who replaced Bob Stinson in the 1980s.

That reunion eventually arrived in Philadelphia in May for a rousing, terrific show at Festival Pier. It gave old heads, who are going to geek out on Mehr's book, and younger fans a chance to finally see the now presumably mature 'Mats in the flesh. Rumors at the time had it that Westerberg and Stinson were recording, with a new album on the way. The stage was set for a fresh start, with the band, at last, finally getting their due.

But that would have made too much sense. Instead, Westerberg announced a month later that a show in Spain would be their last. What the reunion had really offered, as Westerberg had sung on "We're Coming Out," was "one more night to get it half-right." With the Replacements, that's the best you could hope for.

ddeluca@phillynews.com

215-854-5628 @delucadan

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