By Bob Mehr
After 2009's incredibly disappointing All Over but the Shouting, which was 300 pages of fans nobody knows or cares about gushing "OMG I saw them live one time and they were so wasssssssssted!!!", Trouble Boys is an incredibly thorough and definitive work, probably due to the author having unprecedented access to the members themselves, including the famously reclusive Paul Westerberg. The book goes deep with the group's teen years (answering a footnote question I'd asked!) and details their entire career, including tons of actual details about the music, how songs were written and how they recorded everything.
Shocking even to someone who long knew of their alcoholic antics as myself was how much they really drank. I'd always assumed it was the usual pre-show drinking that got out of hand, but they pretty much woke up and started drinking throughout the entire day, whether they had a show or a recording session or anything at all. They even had shows before which they'd drank, sobered up, and then got wasted again by the time they hit the stage. All this sounds fun in a "yeah, rock!" way until you really peel away at the layers of Bob Stinson and Paul Westerberg's mental illnesses - Bob was the victim of every kind of abuse as a child and Westerberg suffered from severe depression that despite being worshiped by an entire generation of musicians and fans sent him into deep despair throughout his entire career amidst suicidal thoughts. All this perhaps is an insight to their repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot when it came to being successful; Westerberg was incapable of trusting anybody with his music on any project, therein being determined to make it as difficult as possible for anybody to help them. As much fun as it's always been hearing stories of them being impulsive imps, it's also pretty clear re: how much they were complete dicks to people who tried to help them.
Again, thoroughly useful and almost OCD-ishly thorough and insightful. A must-read for Replacements fans, if only to read Westerberg and Tommy Stinson look back and own up to some of their many, many fuck-ups.
On the other hand, unlike the tons of punk rock posers, this was one band that did. not. give. a fuck.
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