THESE PHOTOS ALWAYS DESERVED BETTER. It’s been four and a half years since I ended my old blog, nearly nine years since I started it, and I’ve learned an awful lot about scanning and editing images since then. This shoot with The Replacements was done about a year after I bought my first camera; it’s pretty rudimentary work, but over the past near-decade old work like this has become more a historical document than I imagined it to be when I started going through my old photos.
I’ve already gone back and re-scanned and replaced the photos on the original post, but while I was doing that it seemed worthwhile to look at the balance of the shoot – about a dozen photos shot after what I’m told was a more-than-usually but not-quite-the-most chaotic show the band was capable of with their original lineup. I never bothered scanning the photo at the top of this post, mostly because it seemed a little too much on the nose, but I regret my timidity now, as it does a pretty good job summing up Westerberg and his band as they did their best establishing a reputation for being the born losers of pre-grunge indie rock.
I really wanted to revisit these old negatives for this frame alone. It was the one I liked the most, but I failed to nail the focus on Paul’s face for some reason. (Who am I kidding? I barely knew what I was doing, and would continue to muddle through my long apprenticeship as a photographer for at least another couple of years.) But since I made the original post there’s been an AI revolution in digital imaging, with a whole suite of “neural filters” appearing in Photoshop, one of which upgrades poor quality negatives and sharpens faces. Maybe somebody considers this cheating; I don’t, as I finally have a chance to see the photo I intended to take nearly forty years ago. I don’t need to tell you that this is a game changer.
Bob Stinson, Toronto, April 6, 1986
Replacements fans know that this would be the last tour before Bob Stinson was fired from the band. They were touring to support Tim, their major label debut record, and things were going badly. My original post included a shot of Bob that epitomized his “what, me worry?” attitude, but these shots capture something uneasy that seems more truthful to the moment. Once again – a document more than a record of my work.
In my original post I wrote how fans of the band, then and now, never understood why they were never a lot bigger. Fans of the band will also know that they were one of the most self-sabotaging bands in rock – a real achievement, in context. I had some idea how wasted they were when I took these photos after the show at Toronto’s Concert Hall – an achievement equivalent to the proverbial herding of cats. I showed up with big ambitions, scrapped any attempt to shoot the live show when I got a look at the band and the mosh pit in front of them, and settled on individual photos after it became obvious that a group photo definitely wasn’t happening.
Tommy Stinson, Toronto, April 6, 1986
When I wrote my original post Bob Mehr hadn’t yet published Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements – as definitive a history of the band as we’ll probably ever see, as I can’t imagine anyone trying to duplicate the work Mehr did for his book anytime soon. What I learned from reading the book was that Toronto was the start of a typically self-sabotaging incident by the band, when they stole a couple of cans of paint from the backstage area at the Concert Hall.
Their manager had wanted to rent an RV for the band to tour in, if only so they’d have somewhere to empty their saturated bladders while traveling to gigs. A sympathetic RV dealer in Elk River, MN agreed to rent them a vehicle with couches, a kitchenette, a lounge and a bathroom in the back – luxury for a band used to traveling in filthy vans and cars. He would regret his generosity.
Paul Westerberg, Toronto, April 6, 1986
The band had a rule: “Drunk for customs!” (A bad rule, to be sure.) So between Toronto and the Bond Court Hotel in Cleveland they got more than usually wasted and proceeded to completely trash the RV, starting with the purloined paint. “The toilet was ripped out and tossed through the back door while speeding down the highway,” writes Mehr. “Cabinets and fixtures were yanked out of the walls. All that was left were broken boards and lumber piled up in the back lounge.” Just another night in the saga of The Replacements. And without knowing it, I had captured the prologue to it all.
Rick McGinnis Photographs 