Photograph by Karla Moheno
It’s fair to say that 26 years into the 21st century, the pulse of rock and roll music often wobbles on life support. Between pop and hip-hop’s chart and cultural domination, the takeover of digital streaming, Ticketmaster’s monopoly, and guitars subsumed by synths and Autotune, rock music matters much less today than it once did in pop culture.
That’s why it’s so inspiring to hear from indie rock legend and lifer Tommy Stinson, an artist who’s barnstormed life and the road since the 1980s and still leads the way through DIY recording and touring. His current tour, Tommy Stinson & Friends, stops at the Woodward Theater in Over-the-Rhine on June 16.
Though Stinson has starred in many groups, he’s best known for playing bass in two of rock’s most raucous all-time bands, The Replacements and Guns N’ Roses. As a young teenager, while most of us were still figuring out puberty, he was attending junior high during the day and sneaking into clubs at night to play with The Replacements. At 59, he’s now the father of a teenage daughter, who does not play in a rock band.
Led by Paul Westerberg, The Replacements were a four-piece set of Minneapolis ravers who channeled punk, classic Rock, and AM radio gold in a raggedly glorious mix of melody, crunch, and heart. These feisty underdogs meant it, man, and you could feel their gritty, yearning magic in your soul whether on wax or on stage. Notoriously banned by Lorne Michaels from Saturday Night Live in 1986 for boozy mayhem, what else could four Midwestern boys do?
So many debauched tall tales have been ginned up about the post-punk pioneers over the years that there’s no need to rehash the band’s raw majesty more than necessary. But behind their seven seminal albums and uniquely anarchic, hell-raising live shows, the self-destructive foursome became legends in their own time—not a small feat for a gang of scrappy suburban punks who never graduated high school, including a blonde, teenage bass player with a fake ID.
After The Replacements broke up in 1991, Stinson started Bash & Pop; recorded a great, rollicking debut album, Friday Night Is Killing Me; and switched from bass to guitar and lead vocals. He will be playing songs from across his entire career at the Woodward Theater, revisiting Bash & Bop as well as Cowboys in the Campfire, a two-piece country/folk duo, and his new band, English Teeth. And let’s not forget his 16-year tenure in Guns N’ Roses as de facto music director, where he may or may not have learned how to pacify Axl Rose.
For the last decade, Rhino Records have been releasing Replacements boxset reissues with alternate cuts, covers, and live shows to rabid fan appreciation. Let It Be, their most recent reissue, offers a three-disc reappraisal of their pivotal third record in 1984, when Westerberg’s songwriting brilliance bloomed and eclipsed what came before. It’s also the first record of the band’s classic trilogy and career peak, followed by Tim and Pleased to Meet Me.
Like the Velvet Underground, the Ramones, and a few other cult bands more influential than commercial, The Replacements spawned maverick generations to follow. Without them, Nirvana’s grunge success may not have sparked the 1990s and changed alternative Rock, shooting it mainstream for better and worse.
Stinson and Westerberg reunited in middle age as The Replacements in 2014 with a few hired hands and reveled in beloved audience reactions to their surprise tour. I saw shows in Detroit and Louisville and had forgotten just how tight and ferocious they were on stage. Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong played guest guitar with a grin, seizing a chance to play with his heroes, which makes sense when you consider how much his band’s pop-punk lifted from The Replacements. Between Westerberg’s voice and charisma and Stinson’s scampish energy and charm, they dove into their unsurpassed, anthemic songbook of yore and showed all comers how it was done.
Cincinnati Magazine spoke by telephone with Stinson from his home in Hudson, New York, as he prepared for his upcoming tour. Cincinnati is the sixth stop on a 12-city swing this month through the Midwest from Minnesota to Ohio.
Can you talk about the band you’re playing with now and bringing to town?
I’ll be bringing my new band, English Teeth, some friends from Austin, Texas, I like playing with. I kind of play with who I want and do what I want. I’m pretty DIY right now, because there’s really nothing for me in the Ticketmaster-dominated big-club world. I can’t make a living at that. I do well playing smaller venues off the beaten path for fans who want to see me anywhere. It works out for me and for them, and I get to do my thing and make a modest living.
You also have toured quite a bit with your duo, Cowboys in the Campfire. After playing in two of the most raucous bands of all-time, how did you become a member of a country/folk outfit of all things?
After all the things I’ve done, my writing partner, Chip Roberts, and I have been touring around doing this duo thing and we finally made a record from the tunes we played. Chip is more of the country, Merle Haggard-ish type, and I’m the rock guy. Kind of a fun fit, but really not all that different from what I do anyway. That came up because Chip is my ex-wife’s uncle and we stayed in touch as friends through it all and started writing together.
For this tour, with so many former bands of yours to draw songs from, what kind of material will you be playing?
This gives me a chance to play some of all things I’ve done, from Guns N’ Roses, The Replacements, Bash & Pop, the Cowboys, some solo stuff, and the new record I’m working up now with English Teeth. We’ll probably put out a single every four to six weeks at the end of June or start of July with a full-length record to come soon after.
Are you playing guitar or bass on this tour, and how does that change your approach?
I’ll be playing guitar and singing. I use the guitar when I write, because there’s just more to work with than on a bass. You can play chords and inflections, and it’s just a different scenario. I tend to write much more on guitar more than bass.
I didn’t realize you were a member of Guns N’ Roses for such a long time. You also played on Chinese Democracy, their last record from 2008. Why did you leave?
I had some personal things going on, where I had to take care of my kiddo. I just couldn’t pull off being gone for four weeks on tour at that particular time with Guns N’ Roses. It was a hard decision to make, but I was in a corner. The courts were going to let my sister be the nanny while I was gone—this and that going on with a lot of turmoil—so I bailed on them. When that was happening, The Replacements decided to get back and do some festivals and see if we couldn’t have fun with it. That turned into a bigger scenario. But it was still a loose enough schedule that I could come and go between tour and home.
After your own wild youth, how strange is it to be dealing with your own teenager?
I’m counting the ways I’m lucky for how she’s turned out having not done what I did from an early age on. But I also got lucky as not a lot of people did what I did at an early age and had as much success and fun. I have to give credit where it’s due.
One of my favorite records of yours is the Bash & Pop debut, Friday Night Is Killing Me. How did that come about on the heels of The Replacements’ breakup in 1991?
Before we broke up, I was writing those Bash songs and a few of them almost made it on the last Replacements record or we took a stab at them. But a lot of that was built up, you know. On that last tour we did for All Shook Down, I think it was pretty apparent we were splitting up. I think Paul had growing pains and probably decided we were holding him back. And I was ready to go my own fucking way, you know. We left in kind of a good way. It wasn’t like we walked away from each other bitter—you know, Paul gave me a guitar and amp that I still have and it was a cool thing. So we thought we’d see if we could have fun again and got back together.
Did you learn about songwriting from Paul Westerberg? Had you been writing all along in the band?
You know, I got a little bit out of him from watching him. He helped me with a few things and was always very encouraging. I mean, through it all he always encouraged me. He wanted us to write our own shit if we felt like it and let it flower if it was to be. We couldn’t really keep up with him, though, because he started earlier.
In looking back at The Replacements’ records, do you have a favorite? And why?
All Shook Down is probably my favorite, a well-written, great record top to bottom. Every song shines on it. If you go back to Tim, there was some greatness in there and then some not greatness—just album tracks, you know. I thought Pleased to Meet Me was a really strong record all around. I’m not so sure Don’t Tell a Soul had anything on it I really think a whole lot about, except for “Rock n Roll Ghost” maybe.
With all the tales of drinking and general debauchery on stage and/or on tour with The Replacements, did you ever get frustrated with fans who didn’t want you to change or mature but just wanted more of the same chaos?
Well, it’s hard for me, because I’m constantly riddled with people who come to me and say, “You were so drunk, and Bob did this and that, and it was my favorite show ever.” Half the time I’m like, “Are you sure you don’t want your money back?” We played the way we felt and were a kind of “all over the place” band, and the drink amount involved often had something to do with it. But we couldn’t play the game, which at that particular time after we signed to Warner Brothers was all about videos and stuff like that. We couldn’t deal with the corporate game. Amongst our peers, we were the ones who didn’t want to do that and didn’t give a fuck.
In the 1980s The Replacements were often compared to R.E.M., a peer band as well as your friends, in both positive and negative connotations. What did you think of that parallel?
We felt like R.E.M. played the game and did the things you needed to—did a video and worked with the record company to get to the next level. We fought it and kind of shot ourselves in both feet and our head at the same time. That was just our honesty. I don’t think we knew how to play the game any better, and we couldn’t fake it. To our credit, we stayed true to that.
The most recent Replacements’ reissue was last year’s deluxe edition of Let It Be, your third record. What does that album mean to you, and what was happening at the time?
Let It Be was sort of our big booster. From that point on, we were playing much bigger venues and doing pretty good for ourselves and building on it. I think the proof was in the pudding before we even got signed to Warner Brothers—that we were a hard band to work with, because we wore it all on our sleeves at that moment.
That record was pivotal, and it took us everywhere. We’d been kind of lumped into the hardcore punk rock music scene if you will, and I was really the only person in the band who was into any of that stuff. I was the guy with the spiky hair and tartan trousers all the time, because The Clash were one of my favorite bands growing up. The guys in The Replacements were seven years older than me, but whatever. That record got us seen as being different, that we weren’t actually hardcore, we’re just The Replacements. That kind of solidified what our whole thing was about.
In 2014, you and Paul reunited as The Replacements for a sudden tour. Looking back now, what are your thoughts on the reunion and Paul?
We overstayed our welcome a little with that tour. We did it for a bit of fun at first, and then there became some haggling about management and money and things like that. It’s unfortunate that it happened, but it did, and it and kind of put the damper on things in a way. We probably shouldn’t have done that one last leg in Europe, it was just kind of too much.
As far as Paul, who knows? He’s probably writing a book. I ain’t talked to him in ages, so I have no idea what he’s up to. He’s awful quiet. I can’t imagine that would be your whole life until you go, but that’s just me.
I still enjoy the whole thing, the whole process. I’m still into it as much as I was when I was a kid. That’s where it’s at for me.
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