The Replacements Stop Caring and Start Growing Up: Let It Be at 40

There was always a lot more Alex Chilton than Johnny Rotten in Paul Westerberg. The closest the Replacements ever came to making a straight-ahead punk rock album was 1982’s Stink EP, an effort drummer Chris Mars admits left the band feeling confused about their identity. Its full-length predecessor, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, often gets filed away in the punk rock bin as well, a label that, while not totally inaccurate, sadly discounts a debut sloshed with emerging musical ideas, self-deprecating humor and the irrepressible melodic cadences in Westerberg’s singing. By 1983, it was time for a change. It’s not that the band felt above the punk scene—or anyone else, for that matter. After all, their own name came from an in-joke about being down the depth chart as a band, and their eventual nickname, the ‘Mats, derived from lopping off the beginning of “Placemats.” No, the rebellious punk scene ironically just proved too rigid in its rules for a janitor (Westerberg), two high school dropouts (guitarist Bob Stinson and Mars) and a kid brother (bassist Tommy Stinson) dead set on avoiding rules, getting hammered and, as Westerberg once put it, “writing songs, not riffs with statements.”

The Replacements weren’t unique in this stepping stone. Punk rock proved to be the path of least resistance for a number of Midwest indie bands cutting their chops in the early 1980s. “I figured if they could do it, anybody could,” recalled Hüsker Dü frontman Bob Mould upon first hearing the Ramones. Fellow Minneapolitans and Twin/Tone labelmates Soul Asylum, as well as friendly St. Paul rivals the Hüskers, focused on playing as fast and loud as possible before eventually landing on the fuller sounds that came to define them beyond the punk realm. Hootenanny, the 1983 follow-up to Stink, can similarly be heard as a musical declaration of independence—the moment the Replacements ripped free from their punk roots and stopped caring about what anyone outside the band thought. From the opening title track, which finds the guys dicking around on each other’s instruments, to the twangy, lo-fi country strum of closer “Treatment Bound,” it’s clear that the ‘Mats gave zero shits about any expectations placed on them. Songs like the effortlessly catchy “Color Me Impressed” and the beat-driven ballad “Within Your Reach” also hinted at just how broad a musical palette and deep an emotional well Westerberg might draw from as a songwriter if given the chance.

As if answering that dare, Let It Be showed up in record stores in October of the following year, and we’re still talking about it four decades on. Critics have long-discussed the album as a post-punk, coming-of-age masterpiece—and we’ll get to that—but it’s also worth noting that growing up doesn’t necessarily mean maturing. This was still the same band as notorious for showing up blitzed and completely sabotaging their own shows as well, turning up even more smashed another night and convincing an audience they were the best rock band on the planet. And, yes, there’s a song on Let It Be called “Gary’s Got a Boner.” It’s about… never mind. Oh, and a KISS cover, because why the fuck not? Depending on who you ask, the idea for cribbing the album title from the Beatles came from a little “next song” radio serendipity, a joke on manager and Fab Four fan Peter Jesperson—or maybe just the idea that none of this rock ‘n’ roll stuff should be taken quite that seriously. And yet, four misfits from Minneapolis somehow created this little, half-hour record that, at least on some Midwestern rooftops, proved just as life-changing and monumental as that other Let It Be by that other foursome.

If Hootenanny began with a head scratch, Let It Be starts with a bluesy, poppy middle finger to anyone hoping the Replacements might retreat back to their Sorry Ma… or Stink days. “I Will Dare” bounces through the gym doors like a denim-jacketed hoodlum with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth crashing a high school dance. Holding its breath during a guitar solo from R.E.M.’s own Peter Buck and exhaling to Westerberg’s plucky mandolin, the song musters up the courage to be romantic, rebellious, self-effacing and unabashedly willing to fall on its face in the name of its pursuits, not unlike the band themselves. Vulnerability is quietly, awkwardly hip on Let It Be, and any snottiness gets cut with a near-equal dose of sincerity. To that end, the record’s second song, “Favorite Thing,” tries to play it cool as it blazes along smoking, drinking and being misunderstood but can’t help but cut the Brando act and brush away at the cigarette smoke long enough to admit, “You’re my favorite thing … bar nothing.”

There’s definitely a delicate balancing act going on on Let It Be whether by design or chance. In an interview, Westerberg once said that while Bob always wanted to play faster and Tommy wanted to play louder for the “loudmouths” pressed up against the stage, he reminded himself that there were also more introverted types at the back of the room eager to hear the quieter numbers. We hear those types of competing dynamics across Let It Be. In the middle of “We’re Comin’ Out,” during the highest-velocity thrashing on the album, the band slow the proceedings down to snaps and a naked, jazzy vocal before the build to a final barrage. It’s a tension that wouldn’t always be there on later ‘Mats albums—where the more introspective, heart-on-his-sleeve side of Westerberg no longer had to jockey for his favorite moments on what had become de facto solo projects. Maybe the smell of smoke as the singer rudimentarily plinks away at a barroom piano on “Androgynous” curls around our nostrils a bit different if we haven’t just tormented Tommy with a tonsillectomy the song before. Or perhaps the universal sexual confusion of “Sixteen Blue” feels all the more complicated because we can’t get out of our own heads and crassly just “stick it to her” like Gary a track earlier.

Our Band Could Be Your Life author Michael Azerrad wrote that “The Replacements made a career out of a prolonged adolescence” and dubbed Westerberg “the poet laureate of the American teenage wasteland.” It’s not as if Westerberg and the Replacements were the first to sing about the disillusionment of adolescence. That’s been the stuff of rock ‘n’ roll since its inception. But Let It Be does so in a way that steps into those timid teenage sneakers and actually takes all the fragile, frustrating shit of those formative years seriously. On “Androgynous,” we get a gender-fluid love story (in the ‘80s, no less) that reminds us that it’s normal to be figuring oneself out and that things will eventually fall into place. A line like “Wanna be something / Wanna be anything” from “Favorite Thing” rings utterly sincere when we recall how those years feel like one never-ending holding pattern. And the big, dumb, jangly “Unsatisfied” finds Westerberg stumbling and screaming to express the ineffable adolescent feelings of being emotionally gagged by not knowing what to do next. The Replacements may not have any concrete answers, but they sure as hell make us feel like we’re not alone while we search for our own.

The final two songs of Let It Be combine for one of the finest closing notes of any album you’ll ever listen to. It should be mandatory to listen to “Sixteen Blue” slouched, hands buried deep in one’s pockets and kicking at the rocks at one’s feet. “Your age is the hardest age,” Westerberg achingly growls. “Everything drags and drags.” It’s such a timeless rock song—one that every teenager needs to spin or stream at least once. A song that rather than glorifying those teenage years and exploits, as most rock songs do, actually acknowledges the confusion, shame and hopelessness of being 16 and feeling utterly uncool and stuck. Westerberg gets that you can’t tell someone that age that it’s all going to be alright; all you can really do is let them know it’s not only them. Similarly, “Answering Machine”—even if the technology may feel dated to those a bit younger—speaks to the frustration of building up that late-night courage to get something off your chest and you end up talking to a goddamn beep. It’s a song about emotional isolation and disconnection, and Westerberg perfectly projects the helplessness of desperately needing to say something to someone but having nobody to listen.

Many critics and fans view Let It Be as not only the pinnacle for the band but also their last true recording. There were still some classic ‘Mats songs (and some would argue great albums) after the band left Twin/Tone and signed a major label deal with Sire Records, but it never quite felt the same. 1985’s Tim, produced by Tommy Ramone, has garnered serious accolades, but if Ramone’s account holds accurate, an increasingly boozing Bob Stinson contributed a mere day to the project. He’d be out of the band altogether the following year. Chris Mars would step out from behind his kit a few years later due to creative differences with Westerberg. By the time the band first broke up in 1991, the original lineup was down to Tommy Stinson playing in what appeared to be, for all intents and purposes, The Paul Westerberg Band.

None of that is meant to vilify Westerberg or diminish the latter years of a band that still means so much to so many, including myself. When I look at the now-iconic album cover of Let It Be—the bandmates sitting on the roof of Bob and Tommy’s mom’s house—I see four very different young men, who, on the right night, could manage to all pull in the same direction and make you a believer in all those words Westerberg sang about growing up. Like in an ‘80s coming-of-age movie, I half-expect them to start climbing down from the roof one by one, as a narrator tells us how it all turned out for each of them. Last sitting there, of course, would be Paul Westerberg, who, at least as a songwriter, never came down from that rooftop. And the lonely, frustrated teenager still awkwardly slouching in all our hearts remains forever thankful and, dare I say, surprisingly satisfied.