The replacements
The
1980s gave rise to five outstanding US alternative bands: R.E.M,
The Pixies, Sonic
Youth, Hüsker Dü and The
Replacements.
 In common with Hüsker
Dü, The Replacements hailed from
Minneapolis and began life thrashing out basic punk rock. There
the similarities ended.
Where their peers wanted to intellectualise their music, there
was nothing cerebral about The Replacements. They were a great
band - no more, no less.
By their second full-length album, 1983's Hootenanny,
frontman Paul Westerberg's love of classic rock and his ear for
melody had marked the band out.
The follow-up, Let It Be (1984) was their masterpiece,
with Westerberg's rapidly evolving song writing firing off his
band's shambolic playing.
They were infamous for their hard drinking lifestyles and their
ragged stage performances, notorious for coming to shows too drunk
to play very well, or sometimes just performing entire sets of
covers.
The Replacements should have gone on to greater things after Let
It Be. They signed to a major label and delivered two further
fine albums, Tim and Pleased To Meet Me - albums
which are home to some of Westerberg's most assured songs, like
the world-weary lament Here Comes A Regular and the
punchy Left Of The Dial.
Firebrand guitarist Bob Stinson was dismissed from the band in
1986 for his substance-abuse problems. Although held in high
esteem for his reckless genius and sloppy guitar playing, Stinson
was also struggling with manic depression, for which he took
medication.
Pleased To Meet Me was the Nearly Album that, like
REM's Document (also released in 1987) threatened to
break The Replacements into the big time, but Westerberg's
best song, Alex Chilton - a tribute to the mercurial,
troubled leader of Big Star - also
summed up why mainstream success eluded them.
Like Chilton, Westerberg craved stardom, but his epic drinking
rendered The Replacements a chaotic proposition.
By 1989's soulless Don't Tell A Soul, the game was up.
Westerberg jettisoned the rest of the band for one last album, the
patchy All Shook Down, and then embarked upon a largely
inconsequential solo career.
Bob Stinson died on 18 February 1995 in Minneapolis of
complications brought on by a lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse.
He was 35.
Steve Foley died in 2008 from an accidental overdose of a
prescription medication.
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