If you were a fan of alternative rock in the ’80s, the Replacements were a source of many delights. There was the Minneapolis-based band’s impassioned music: Fast and loose with punk and power pop tropes, it also served as a platform for frontman Paul Westerberg’s withered yet hopeful romanticism. And there were the quartet’s drug-and-alcohol-fueled antics: An infamous 1987 tour stop in Portland resulted in a torn-down chandelier and a couch pushed out the window of the Pine Street Theater.
The full story is deeper and more nuanced. But it hadn’t been meaningfully revealed until the recent publication of Bob Mehr’s Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements.
Packing six years of research and over 200 interviews into 500 pages, Mehr reveals a group of young men driven to escape desperate circumstances through music, only to implode under the weight of industry expectations and their own self-aware yet self-destructive behavior.