A conversation with Paul Westerberg from 2002

Revisiting the Replacement's emo-crossover era

THE OPENERS

• Thank you for subscribing to stübermania, or for considering a subscription to stübermania, or for reading over the shoulder of someone who’s either subscribed or considering a subscription. In case you missed it, you can read up on what this newsletter is all about here. (This is a free newsletter, but if you really like what you see, please pay a visit to my PWYC tip jar!) Before we get to this week’s featured interview, I’ll be using this space—a.k.a. The Openers—to update you on recent writings, new tracks I’m enjoying, and other random music musings when the mood strikes.

• Last weekend at Pitchfork, I wrote about Paul McCartney and Wings’ One Hand Clapping, the fabled “lost” live album documenting their August ‘74 sessions at Abbey Road, with a shit-hot line-up that only lasted a few short months. (Geoff Britton-era Wings is best Wings.) And I quote: “You can understand why McCartney opted to scrap One Hand Clapping back in the day: It showcased an already outdated iteration of the group, and its loose, anything-goes spirit must’ve felt at odds with Wings’ growing reputation as an arena-rock powerhouse in the mid ’70s. But its reappearance in 2024 aligns perfectly with the current Macca moment, when younger generations of fans have reclaimed him as the patron saint of oddball indie auteurism.”

• For music actually released this century—or this year, to be more precise—check out my regularly updated playlist of current 2024 favourites, including the beautifully languid new single from Nova Scotian indie-rock raconteurs Nap Eyes, who are playing around with piano and beats this time out, but nonetheless retain their essential Maritime Lou Reeditude. Also check out a new Godspeed/Big Brave supergroup—WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN—worthy of its all-caps billing, and This Is Lorelei (a.k.a. Nate Amos of Water From Your Eyes) with “I’m All Fucked Up” (a.k.a. the existential-crisis anthem of the summer).

(And here’s the Apple Music version, which doesn’t appear to be in the mood to auto-generate a fancy embedded player.)

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THE HEADLINER
A conversation with Paul Westerberg

Date: July 2002

Location: Paul was in Minneapolis, I was calling him from the old Eye Weekly office at 471 Adelaide St. W. (now home to Body Blitz)

Publication: Eye Weekly

Album being promoted: The two-for-one combo Stereo/Mono, which were respectively credited to Paul Westerberg and his lo-fi garage alter-ego Grandpaboy. 

The context: Stereo/Mono marked Westerberg’s return to the indie trenches, after 1999’s underrated but underperforming Suicaine Gratification spelled the end of his brief one-album tenure on Capitol Records (which followed a slightly longer two-album tenure on Reprise). The albums were recorded on the cheap at home and released via Vagrant Records, which was establishing itself as an emo epicentre in the early 2000s with artists like Dashboard Confessional and Saves the Day—not the most logical label bedfellows for Westerberg, though I suppose they could all be bundled together under an expansive “punk rockers have feelings, too” umbrella. Alas, the Vagrant association did not result in a sudden stampede of emo kids at Paul Westerberg shows, and the albums did little to change his commercial fortunes, but Mono does have the distinction of featuring his best post-Replacements song:

I was a bit nervous to talk to Westerberg, not simply because he’s one of my all-time favourite songwriters, but because I had assumed he would be like his favourite songwriter, Alex Chilton—i.e., someone who had likewise been chewed up and spit out by the music industry and seemed completely disinterested in reflecting on his legacy with any affection. So I was relieved to find Paul perfectly gregarious, reflective, self-deprecating, and even a little humbled to get another kick at the can. Toward the end of our 20-minute conversation, right before getting the “time’s up” signal from the publicist, we started talking a bit about obsessive fandom and the mental-health issues underpinning it, and I make a glib comment about suicide that makes me wince reading it today, so I’m extra-grateful for the honesty and empathy Paul shared in his response.

This interview took place a few weeks before he performed at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in August 2002.

Where are you at today?

Home. Where are you? 

Toronto. I thought your tour had started already....

Well, it sort of started and never ended.

When the record came out, you said you were only doing in-stores...

Yeah, you can't promise the world, because then when you don't deliver it, they call you a liar. So better to do it one step at a time.

So this is just a solo tour—no band?

Yeah. It's actually more difficult. You think it'd be easier, but it's hard to turn around and not know what to play, and there's no one behind you to, like, shrug their shoulders.

And no one to make noise over the mistakes.

Oh, I'm requiring the audience to do that!

I was reading reviews of your shows in Minneapolis last month, and it sounded like there was a lot of love in the room... 

Yeah, you know, I didn't read any of those. But I was wondering if somebody would be truthful, because, not to be sappy, it did feel that way. And if they said it was anything less than great then they were lying, because it was fun, it was fucking great. I can't imagine it's gonna be different elsewhere. I mean, at least from the solo in-stores everywhere, it felt the same way too. So, let it continue.

Are you thinking of putting a band together eventually?

No, I'm not putting one together anymore. I tried doing that. I tried, with [drummer] Michael Bland, and then three or four or five other guys... I tried different guitar players and bass players, and kept coming back to it sounding better with just me and a drummer. And then I thought, "well, what the hell do I need this big, bad drummer for? I might as well just cut him free and stomp my foot." That’s how I really started in the first place. Every one of those Replacement songs were written with me stomping my foot in the basement. So you get a glimpse of how they were written.

And you get the best rhythm out of your foot anyways.... 

Sure. It fluctuates. I can follow myself pretty good.

So you had three years off, and now we have 23 new songs on Stereo/Mono. Have you always been that prolific and productive?

I never thought of it that way or anything. I'm not very good at division, but that's like one [song] a month or something? That's about par for the course. Although they don't come that way, they usually come at 12 at a time, and then there's nothing for, like, most of a year.

Are there days when you just feel more like Grandpaboy, and you decide that's the mood you're in, so you bash out a bunch of those?

Yeah, oftentimes it comes as the reaction of laboring over a ballad or playing a song that's very slow and sort of honing new lyrics. And then after I've sort of grown tired of listening to it, and I got it out of my system, then the next thing I want to do is just go on rock a little bit.

After the Capitol deal fell through, did you ever just think of saying, "fuck it?" On Suicaine Gratifaction, you had the big producer [Don Was], you were pouring your heart out—it was your most honest, naked set of songs. And the label didn't know what the hell to do with it. When things are going the worst for you, does that tend to bring out your best?

When were they going good? [laughs]. It's not in the cards for me to sell trillions of records in one fell swoop. Over the course of years, decades, even, I've managed to sell records, but I've come to the conclusion that I'm not going to have a blockbuster hit. I'm not that kind of person. [Suiciaine] was sort of a last ditch attempt at doing what I wanted, and yet trying to get the best producer I could, who was actually a really good producer and let me do what I wanted to do. We spent a lot of money just sort of hanging out, talking to each other. That one left me with a little bit of "I'm glad I did," and it taught me a lesson that I could make that good of a record by myself.

Well, it's ironic: with Suicaine, you had the big budget version of stripped-down production, and now you've got the real lo-fi experience with Stereo/Mono. 

I mean, half of that record [Suicaine], I ended up taking it home and we used the original tapes. I just had Jim Keltner and Don [Was] overdub some stuff on some of the tunes. And I just bought a shitty drum set and taught myself to play the drums. Sooner or later, I'm going to have it all done. Get my law degree... [laughs]. Then I can sue myself. 

The chorus on "AAA" on Mono sounds a bit like a retirement speech. Is that what you were thinking when you wrote it?

A lot of times, the electric, hit-the-riff [approach] will bring out your gut feeling, whatever it may be, even if you want to write a song about nuclear waste. Once you really start, you can't hide what you're honestly feeling at the moment, and that's exactly it: “I don't have anything to say to anyone anymore.”

You've never really done topical songwriting anyway…

No, I never have. And even the fact that we're doing an interview now, at the time of writing that song, I couldn't even conceive of ever talking on the phone again with a journalist or let alone an audience. But that was two years ago, and on that day, I felt like that. Now I'm perfectly happy talking to you and looking forward to playing again, a month's worth of gigs. I can do that. I've done it before.

The perception people seem to have of musicians is they're either millionaires or starving. Do you find you can maintain a nice little cottage industry, and make a decent middle-class living?

That's me: a starving millionaire. [laughs] I'm probably closer to starving than I am a millionaire, but it's like, who knows? I never have worried about money. And for some reason, it's always sort of been like, just when I run out, the phone rings and somebody says, "hey, they used your song in a movie, here's a cheque," and it gets me through the next time. There's no steady income, that's for sure.

But doing these albums on your own, on your own coin, do you ever look back and go, "why the hell didn't I do this sooner?"

Oh yeah. I mean, that's the biggest thing. You can't regret that. I mean, The Replacements spent and wasted more money than I'll ever make, hand over fist. We were so naive at the time, and dare I say we were ripped off by pretty much everybody that worked with us on a small level, not a big level, but that was all part of the game. That's how we garnered our reputation, I suppose.

Well even back on "Treatment Bound," you were kind of taking shots at indie labels, let alone majors.

Yeah, I mean an indie label is just a huge label that ain't blossomed yet [laughs]. I don't fall for that shit. Say what they want, they all want to be Jerry Wexler in the end, it's just that they're younger and they're more naive. I mean, people have good hearts, and do it for the music, but sooner or later, they hook up with somebody who has money, who sees the business side. And I'm in a very good position, because I'm with a label [Vagrant] that lets me do what I want to do, and has paid me. I just handed them the record and said, "here it is," and they gave me some money. 

Were you even aware of the Vagrant scene?

No. I mean, I was hip to the fact there were a slew of independent labels out there, but I didn't know their roster, or [Vagrant founder] Rich Egan personally. That came from Darren [Hill], who was acting as my manager, he suggested Rich. It turned out that I actually met Rich when he was working at a management firm. He was the guy who made the coffee and stuff. This was 10 years ago, or whatever, and I'm in a meeting with these highfalutin managers, and I'm like, "well, am I going to go with these guys? Am I going to go with those guys?" And at the end of the meeting, they said, "we have somebody who's dying to meet you," and it was Rich. And I, of course, have no memory of this, but it's funny and ironic that 10 years later, the guy who brought me the coffee is the guy who now owns his label and manages five bands and is moving up in the world. And it's cool: the coffeemakers of once-upon-atime are the movers and shakers today.

I guess that's what happened in the early '90s: the college radio DJs and interns from the '80s became A&R guys.

Yeah, god love 'em, I think it's kept my career at least alive. There's enough people there who I don't think saw The Replacements, but there's enough people there who know of The Replacements and maybe heard the records or seen me. They've certainly heard our influence through the bands... you know, you can make the list. I don't want to talk about 'em!

We're kind of hitting the 20-year landmark point for The Replacements, so there must be box-set plans afoot....

We've hit it! It's the 22-year anniversary, I think. 

Is there a lot of stuff kicking around in the vaults that we haven't heard?

I'm honestly not sure what’s in the possession of Restless—they've got the early stuff. I would love to see it all in one place, that's the only way it could work. And then I do have stuff at home that's on cassette, that's very raw, you know, rehearsal stuff, and me writing songs and real archival stuff that I wouldn't be adverse to releasing had I the other stuff to go with it. I wouldn't think it'd be of a quality that normal people would want to hear. Maybe just your wild fanatic might want to hear it for a little bit.

Well, they did put out a Pet Sounds box set that basically has a bunch of dog-barking on a whole disc...

I wonder if Brian Wilson wanted that out or if Capitol Records wanted it. That's the kind of thing you fear. That's why I'd love to be able to get my hands on all the stuff. Then I would go in and I'd love to hear some of the tapes and mix some of the old songs—that'd be fun, maybe.

That book Our Band, Could Be Your Life came out last year, and it feels like there's a lot of romanticism of the early-'80s happening right now. But you lived through it, and it wasn't always a good time for you. How do you feel about people romanticizing that time now? 

I mean, I was probably romanticizing the Rolling Stones of 1968 when it was 1984 for us. So it makes sense. I have no answer other than I didn't really read the book, but it's come to my attention numerous times, and people quoted me bits of it, and it's like, "okay, whatever."

Do you remember being interviewed for it at least?

No, I didn't talk to the guy. The problem that people don't understand... say, this interview I do with you—someone can take this interview, in 10 years, and use part of it out of context for a book, and the people who buy the book won't know that. So anything that he took could have been from some fanzine interview that was done at four in the morning, you know? So I myself wasn't interviewed for the book at all. So what you got there is someone else's version.

You were talking about having all these old raw demos from The Replacements years. That's sort of the same approach you took for Mono pretty much, right? 

Yep. I'm setting the pace to start all over again. 

In a way, does the way you’re working now almost feel like return to "Within Your Reach," which you did on your own?

Very much. Yeah, exactly, because the Suicaine record was the beginning of the end. It was the last time I was going to make one of those [studio] records. And then it showed me that the most potent stuff that I ever do is always the first-take, naked stuff at home... that's not to say that I'll never enter a studio again with a different concept. I'd probably go in and play with someone else's band. I would enjoy doing that more than I would going in with a band to make another record unless it was those specific guys. I mean, The Replacements are the only band that could read my mind. And we fit so well together that it doesn't make sense to try to find that. It was a mistake that we found each other. So a mistake will bring us together again, if anything.

As opposed to working with someone like Jim Keltner, who can probably do any drum beat at the drop of a hat.

The beauty of Jim, though, is he did a different one every time. And that's very close to [Chris] Mars and the rest of us. Me, for sure, I would sing different words every time. And a certain kind of musician like that is someone I can play with, who isn't trapped into like one exact thing every time. He likes to make it fresh each round. And that's why I feel that my first go is usually the correct one, and then the second time it's different. Someone might like it better, but the first one is usually what I really mean.

How long have you had your own studio at home?

Since that one record with "These Are the Days," whatever that was.

Eventually.

Yeah, that's when I started recording at home. And then eight years after that, it got updated. Matt Wallace, the one producer buddy of mine, came out and set it up for me. I still don't know what I'm doing. Part of the sound that I get, it's all improper and wrong, and everything's broken, and that's why sounds like it does.

Do ever play back tapes and go, "Shit! How did I do that?"

Yeah, exactly. The next day, it's like, "why does this one sound so terrible and that one sounds so good?" It's like, "I don't know." Maybe the compressors were off, or the microphone was on the floor. I set it up and I knocked it over on my way over to play the drums. It's dumb mistakes like that you can't make happen.

Or maybe there are rock 'n' roll ghosts in the room fucking with the cosmos.

I think so. I'm a firm believer of that. I think I could record a band if they would put the faith in me, but I don't know if I could find anyone crazy enough to believe that the whole record could be done in, like, two hours.

So are you feeling more inspired these days overall than before?

I'm trying to keep it at bay. I've had the urge to write lately. I've been sort of just leaving it bubble, because I'm going into performing mode, and it's a different sort of creative outlet to go and perform because I have to use a part of my brain that requires memory, which doesn't work as good for me. It's never been good. From the beginning, I've been like, "how the hell does 'I Will Dare' go"—I always blow the second chord anyway. But the creative part is something I have to let fester and rest for a while, and you'll get the showman part that comes out and has a good time

So you're not a staring-out-the-van-window kind of songwriter?

No. I write in bits and pieces. I've probably got a hundred lines written on everything from envelopes to books to papers laying around in this room that, one day, when I'm feeling energetic and I have to clean the room, I'll collect them all and read them again and throw some away and put some others in an envelope and not look at them for five years. That's what I do. Some of these songs, when I was stuck for a lyric, I would reach in my big bag of tricks that I've been saving for years. I can't think of a specific example, but some of them are lines that have been laying around for eight or 10 years. I probably used them before... I get to a point where I can't remember... "I've got this new song called 'Unsatisfied'—oh man, you should hear it!"

So are you seeing any Vagrant punker kids at your shows? Is the crossover happening?

I'm not seeing anyone. I'm not looking at anyone.

You've got sunglasses with the mirrors on the inside.

Pretty much. I'm blind in the left eye, so I can't see the neck of my guitar. You can't see the audience anyway, unless you go in 'em, especially the venues I'm playing. I don't know how big the Toronto show is…

You're playing a 1,000-capacity club.

I just assume that they're there in all walks and forms. I figure most of them are my age or way younger. And then there's the occasional older person who's seen me every time and who has frightening horror stories and pictures of me when I'm, like, 21.

Do you run into many obsessive fans?

There's a couple people that scare me that are like that, that the FBI is monitoring. [laughs] It does cross my mind, but I don't think I'm the kind of person one would want to kill. 

Maybe they're the sort of fans who'd kill themselves first. 

Well, that has indeed come too close to home, where people who are on the edge look to me for an answer, and I can't help them, and I wish I could, and I don't want to become a poster boy for people who are thinking of it and such. But that upsets and depresses me. It's hard when people come to you and you don't know what to do. I just let them know that I feel the same way sometimes, and if they can draw comfort from that, then hopefully that's good. 

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ENCORES

Grandpaboy’s Mono features a fanatstic hidden no-fi cover of “Postcards From Paradise,” the 1987 single from glossy goths Flesh for Lulu:

And here’s Paul doing a streeter for a Minneapolis TV station after getting some Christmas shopping done at his local Walgreen’s:

Next week’s headliner: Robert Pollard

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