Warner Bros. A&R wanted the Replacements to record a video before they made what is arguably their most infamous and disastrous public performance on “Saturday Night Live.” Around the time of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” MTV was in its heyday. The four-piece Minneapolis band, which was frantic and boisterous, was unimpressed.
The collective readership of any music biography, including superfans, gearheads, record nerds, and gossips, finds it to be fascinating reading. The author, however, seems at a loss in the more difficult sequences, where Anita Stinson’s accusations that Bob was sexually assaulted as a child by her boyfriend immediately after Bob’s funeral.
The story stumbles at this point, internalizes the shock, and continues without properly registering the emotional impact.
Did Paul Westerberg date Winona Ryder?
Here’s a Winona cameo; speculations about Ryder and Westerberg circulated when she was linked to Johnny Depp; “Everyone thinks we had this thing. Why didn’t we just have it?” Paul said.
A mysterious conversation with Minneapolis royalty (Westerberg met Prince at a urinal); a sarcastic run-in with Bob Dylan.
The Replacements’ producer, the largely sober Alex Chilton (previously of Big Star), gives them instructions on when they can start using cocaine when they enter the studio.
