SHIT AND BONES

Touring in a band for the past 10 years, I kept meeting people who comingled with the Replacements. I’d hear stories like “I was working at their label when they came in and stole their master reels,” or “Those guys hung me outside of a window by my ankles in 1987.” Tales of their gigs ranged from “The worst band I’ve ever seen—I saw their guitarist play drunk off his ass inside a trash can” to “Their live show was a spiritual experience."

The band’s legendary manager Peter Jesperson chronicled it all in his book Euphoric Recall, starting with singer-guitarist Paul Westerberg coming into Jesperson’s record store with the Replacements demo tape. After reading it, I realized I’m as much a fan of Jesperson’s as I am of the band. He agreed to let me come over to his house and punish him with questions.

Those guys [pointing at a picture of Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens from Big Star] stayed at your house a bunch, right?

Jody’s stayed here many times, yeah. Alex stayed at my place in Minneapolis after we met. He’d come through town; I didn’t know if he was going to be there for a day or a week. I’d wake up in the morning, my dog would be gone and Alex would be out with the dog.

What was it like, having these bands that you thought were super cool, and then they’re in your home?

It’s been amazing to get to know some people. Like you mentioned, Alex Chilton. Hanging around with him, I mean, Paul and I just couldn’t believe it. He had kinda disappeared and was living in New Orleans, working at a dive bar, washing dishes and stuff. He really wanted to get out of the music business. He was fed up with it, and he got screwed so many times, and probably screwed himself many times as well. But then our booking agent called me one night and said, “I just got a call from Alex Chilton, he wants to come out of retirement, he wants me to book him some shows,” and we were like, “Oh my God! We gotta try to finagle a way to do shows with him.” But it didn’t really work out. We ended up doing one show with him at CBGB, and then a month later he came to Minneapolis to work with the Replacements a little bit in the studio. We worked on four songs, including “Left of the Dial” and “Can’t Hardly Wait." That’s when I said, “I can put you up.”

The same thing happened with Lucinda Williams. Steve McClellan, the head honcho at First Ave., came to me and said, “I want to book something that’s gonna kick people’s ass here in the Twin Cities,” and that was right when I’d gotten Lucinda’s 1988 self-titled record. I remember waving it in his face, going, “Steve, you’ve got to book this woman. She’s going to be bigger than Bonnie Raitt!” He said, “Peter, if you can find her, I'll buy her a plane ticket." I just tracked her down and I said, “If you do want to come, we can get you a hotel downtown,” and she said, “Well, you got a couch at your house there?” That was a fun time.

Minneapolis is a major city, but sometimes when I’m in Minneapolis I can see myself living there and feeling a little bit disconnected. It probably feels insane to meet those people.

Yeah, when I first started at the record store, we started having artists in. The first in-store we did was with Mick Ronson and Ian Hunter, who were complete gentlemen. We couldn’t believe that they were in our store. I felt just as excited as I could be, to be able to talk to these people, because there’s that whole thing where, sometimes, meeting your heroes, they’re not cool, good people. Or they’re not friendly to you, or they just don’t have their shit together and it’s disappointing.

One of the funniest things in the book, I thought, was the time when you stopped in the middle of nowhere to wait out a storm and found Gene Clark [of the Byrds] and Rick Danko [of the Band] shitfaced in a hotel bar.

Yeah, it was on the way from L.A. to Phoenix or Tempe or Tucson or something. It's a little embarrassing because I didn’t recognize them from across the room, and they were being rude to the piano bar guy, and I was really angry, and then suddenly I realized who they were, suddenly I’m a kiss-ass, you know? What happened to my spine? They were wasted, slurring their words and just practically cross-eyed. I quickly realized that any conversation would be pointless. And then they tried to run out on their check.

Early on, you were tour-managing and came off of a Replacements tour that was pretty small, and then right after that you did arenas with R.E.M. opening up for the Police.

We did clubs and small theaters the month before I did the seven dates with the Police. I left Minneapolis with the Replacements and drove east to Boston, where they played with R.E.M., and then, at the end of the night, I helped load out the Replacements. I took my bag out of their van and threw it in the R.E.M. van. I didn’t feel equipped to do it. As a manager and road manager, I didn’t have that kind of experience, but they were just looking for somebody. They needed somebody fairly quick and asked if I would do it. I never fucked up or anything, but I do think they wanted a tougher guy, and I’m just not that. I don’t have that personality. Even advancing the dates I was intimidated because, suddenly, I’m talking to some guy, a road manager in England, who had probably been in the business for 30 years and worked with Black Sabbath or whatever.

What did R.E.M. think about the Replacements?

In those early days, one of the things I really loved about R.E.M. was that there was an amateur element to what they did. They were like a bunch of guys who really didn’t have stage presence or whatever and willed themselves into being a rock band. I mean, they were just such hard workers, and they took it really seriously. The Replacements were abrasive for a lot of the R.E.M. fans. [R.E.M.] were very wellmannered; they kissed babies and shook hands and did all the right things, and that made Westerberg mad. Camaraderie was not a big thing, you know, in the Replacements world. They were just kind of eternal outsiders, even with the people in their own circles. There’s that whole thing where they just couldn’t play the game. I sort of admired them for that because they never kissed ass.

I noticed in your book that you have a lot of patience for people.

I feel like I’m a little impatient in a lot of ways. But I think with artists that I've worked with, if I'm committed to them, then I found it was necessary to be patient. [Replacements bassist] Tommy Stinson and I recently did a bunch of book events in different cities, and I talked with a journalist who was asking questions. We were kicking around a lot of stuff, and it made me think about some of the things that Tommy didn’t know. He didn’t understand the dynamic between Paul and me in some ways, even though he and Paul were super tight and especially as Tommy got older, they became even tighter. I was patient with Paul, maybe to a fault at times, and I think there were times I should have stood up to him when I didn’t.

One time, we were playing in Detroit. There was nobody in the room except our two roadies and a couple guys from this band that we were opening for called the Neats. And so I went up to the side of the stage, waited for a song to end, and Paul realized I had something to say and said, ‘What’s up?’’ I said, “Paul, there’s nobody in the room. It’s so loud, it’s painful. The guy who’s running sound said he’s going to walk away from the board if you don’t turn it down,” and Paul just looked down at the floor for a second—there was the mic stand and his drink next to it—he took the drink and kicked it. It sprayed in my face, and he turned around, walked back to his amp, and turned it up, and they kicked into the next song and they played for nobody. If I had called Paul on that and said, “I want an apology,” or whatever, he would have bitten off his nose to spite his face. In a way, I took a lot of shit, because what an incredible band they were, and what potential they had. The van was in my name. I could have just driven away with the van and left them someplace.

Another funny story was you waking up in the middle of the night next to Tommy Stinson with two complete strangers in the hotel room with you.

Yeah, prostitutes.

Bob [Stinson, Replacements lead guitarist] had sent them in as a gag on you guys.

Yeah. We were kids from the Midwest and we’re in big bad Chicago. And we were in this big hotel, right on Lake Shore Drive. It might have been a Holiday Inn. We ended up staying there quite a bit.

I remember there was a place that had some kind of restaurant that had great ribs. We used to go there because it was open after hours, and we got these buckets of ribs. After we were done eating, Bob took one of the buckets, which was filled with old bones and barbecue sauce, and he took a dump in it. He took it out to the elevator, and when the doors opened, he put the bucket in there and pushed LOBBY.

We never heard what happened, but at some point, you know, somebody got in the elevator and went, “Hmmm. Shit and bones.”