the Replacements and Big Star

Both Big Star and The Replacements have a similar rock n' roll trajectory, with a reputation that's beyond what they accomplished in their time. The lead singer of The Replacements, Paul Westerberg, was enamored of Alex Chilton, a lead singer of Big Star, so that their biographies would intersect was no surprise but Westerberg couldn't have planned it that way. Both bands were born to self destruct around the five year mark, and to never reach the potential they held for their fans, their failure as integral to their story as their success, and in both circumstances the failure made for a greater success than a number one record, the title of Big Star's first album, and what one member called a curse.

I just found a live Replacements record from '86 that came out recently, and it has really taken me back especially since I heard a bootleg of them from the mid-eighties doing Gimme Shelter by the Stones, and hearing from my friend about how they were the greatest live band because they could be the best or the worst depending on the night, and were down home enough to party at the bars where the older friends of my friend hung out. I was told they were the best rock band in the world and liked the Replacements enough to listen to a mixed tape, but my heart was in the Sixties. Listening to this live record makes me wish I was at the show in Hoboken. One of the fascinating things about the Replacements as a band is that their singer/songwriter Paul Westerberg, went on a John Lennon like journey from punk rocker to poet in a matter of years. If he didn't make this transition The Replacements would be thought of as a great band like The Dead Milkmen, but without the layer of genius Westerberg gave them. And like Lennon you could watch his songwriting emerge almost overnight, so much so it overwhelmed the band, stuck in their punk roots, and the combination made for great rock n' roll. Let it Be captures this tension the best but Tim is also great, though already giving into the Westerberg side of the group, and the last hurrah. Still, it's rare to watch a spirited youth become a majestic poet and always brings out the lover of Rimbaud in me.

Big Star had a different set up. Alex Chilton had recorded his chart topping hit The Letter at 17 (?) years old in the Box Tops, and enough other tracks to be a legend. Big Star was designed to be a super group, I think, with only one star, and made a defining record their first time out, that went nowhere on the charts. Chris Bell, the other songwriter, left the group for transsexual experimentation and religion, leaving Chilton and the other founding members to carry on, like Westerberg only did for one album, that produced a couple of classic tunes but is generally thought of as a waste of time. Big Star's two LP's without Bell are exceptionally brilliant, and highlight not only his absence but Chilton's ability to lead, and cementing his reputation in rock n' roll lore, but neither band received the acclaim they deserved in their life span, so that the death had to happen for them to survive.

I would've never discovered Big Star if it wasn't for my friend's love of the Replacements that lead him to Sister/Lover, the darkest of the Big Star trilogy, and what some consider the finest. We were attracted to that one because Westerberg hero worshiped Chilton, not Bell, and that was considered his masterwork, which it was. But Bell's life and sound were part of the Big Star mystique in the same way that Syd Barrett was to Pink Floyd, the leader who went mad, and the oeuvre was an homage to the missing. Everyone was present in the Replacements, and one of the things that makes them so compelling at least to me was how they defined Minneapolis, and its freedom. I only knew the city through the Vikings, Super Bowl losers, and the Mary Tyler Moore Show, a favorite. The Replacements became a place in the Country that was real to me, unlike L.A. where everything felt like a stage set.

My friend's favorite song by Big Star was Holocaust, because it was the most depressing, and it must've expressed all of the angst within him that lead him to a mod/punk sensibility that found its ultimate expression in the 'Mats, the band born to lose not to run, but he liked Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen too. I was reared on Dylan and Neil Young so was prepared for the gloomy cathedral piano sound of Holocaust. It became clear to me that my friend was finding himself through Paul Westerberg the same way I had through Dylan, both from Minnesota, and I envied that he was able to do it through a contemporary, because I had to go back in time to watch an evolution of songwriting that made me happy to be alive.