The Lasting Influence Of 'Tim'
Modern Guitar Pop Artists & Bob Mehr Discuss The Replacements Masterpiece
In June 1985, ramshackle Minneapolis quartet The Replacements entered the studio to record their break out album, Tim. To celebrate the upcoming 40th anniversary of this landmark release, we’re going all out with Tim love letters this week.
This essay, including interviews with many of my favorite modern guitar pop artists and Replacements biographer Bob Mehr, was originally published in Remember The Lightning—A Guitar Pop Journal, Vol. 2 in October, 23.
“The Lasting Influence Of The Replacements Tim”
By S.W. Lauden
If ‘80s college rock had a proper name it could only be Tim.
I still remember dropping the needle on opening track “Hold My Life” for the first time—the abruptness of The Replacements crashing in as if I’d joined the party a little late. There was an urgency to it, like Paul Westerberg, Bob Stinson, Tommy Stinson and Chris Mars had something important they needed to get it off their chests before they lost their train of thought…again.
And what a message it was: Hold my life until I’m ready to use it, because I just might lose it. If ever a band captured its own ethos in a lyric, that was it. The title promised pop thrills and the music was undeniably driving and hooky, but Westerberg’s self-deprecating lyrics swaggered and swooned like a maudlin drunk standing on a barstool to profess his love to somebody he just met.
I was already a Replacements fan when Tim was released in 1985—a sucker for Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash and Stink in particular, given my early teenage hardcore leanings—but “Color Me Impressed” from Hootennany, and “Unsatisfied” and “Sixteen Blue” from Let It Be drew me closer, hinting at hearts on sleeves under all the snotty snarling.
Tim delivered on that promise in a big way.
Salty sweet love songs like “Kiss Me on the Bus,” “Little Mascara” and “Left of the Dial” are balanced out by rock anthems like “Lay It Down Clown,” “Dose of Thunder” and “Bastards of Young.” Still, it’s the softer, self-reflective tracks like “Swingin Party” and “Here Comes a Regular” that make this a career-defining album.
But don’t take my word for it—let’s consult an expert, Bob Mehr, author of the definitive biography Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements.
“It’s an important record for a lot of reasons: it was the follow-up to an undeniable reputation making classic in Let It Be; it was their major label debut for Sire/Warner Brothers; and it was the last album the band recorded with founding guitarist Bob Stinson,” Mehr told me in an email interview. “In many ways it's their best album and a career high watermark, even though it was created just as the original lineup of the band was falling apart.”
“Part of what makes it powerful is I think you can hear that struggle and confusion in the record. The songs explore the anxiety and uncertainty about where the band was headed, the ambition and hope of what they might find when they got there, and also reflect a kind of nostalgia for where they’d started and where they’d been already.”
My high school bandmates and I couldn’t have agreed more (though I doubt we would’ve have put it so eloquently at the time). Almost overnight, we went from covering The Sex Pistols and The Clash to writing our own songs that were often pale imitations of our heroes in Minneapolis—but we certainly weren’t alone in our reverence. All across America, musicians embraced Tim’s combination of ramshackle rock and roll and heartfelt lyrics to help build a crucial bridge from ‘80s college rock to what became the alternative explosion of the ‘90s.
The irony is that a few of those bands went on to achieve levels of commercial success that The Replacements never knew, a fact that only adds to the band’s underdog allure. From Goo Goo Dolls, The Gin Blossoms and Guided By Voices, to Liz Phair, The Lemonheads and beyond, the ‘90s delivered a wave of Mats-tinged alternative music. That influence extended further into the late ‘90s and early 2000s with artists like Wilco, The Hold Steady, Beach Slang and The Gaslight Anthem, to name a few.
And it’s showing no signs of slowing 20-plus years into the new Millennium. Although The Replacements’ DNA can be found across the rock spectrum—from singer/songwriters and Americana acts to heartland punks—I often glimpse it in modern guitar pop bands from around the globe like Hurry, The Speedways, Best Bets, 2nd Grade and The Pretty Flowers.
I’ve been thinking about all of this because of the Tim: Let It Bleed Edition box set from Rhino Records.
The comprehensive collection features an Ed Stasium remix, previously unreleased studio and live recordings (including songs produced by Alex Chilton), a remastering of Tommy Erdelyi’s original 1985 mix, and liner notes by Mehr who co-produced the collection with Rhino’s Jason Jones.
“Tim is probably Westerberg’s greatest collection of songs, certainly the material upon which his and the band’s reputation rests most heavily. Whether it’s the power of generational anthems like ‘Bastards of Young’ and ‘Left of the Dial,’ the romantic strife detailed in ‘Little Mascara,’ or the existential feelings expressed in ‘Swingin Party’ and ‘Here Comes a Regular,’ Tim captures and reflects every part of the band’s complex psychology and musical persona,” Mehr said.
“That’s what I love about the record—you can hear and feel and know that the material is a direct connection to this group of guys. There’s something deeply intimate and remarkably powerful about that.”
In addition to Mehr, I asked some modern guitar pop bands who count The Replacements among their influences to discuss Tim’s importance almost 40 years after its release.
“Tim is still my favorite Replacements’ album and ‘Little Mascara’ has really crept up for me as a top-five song of theirs,” said Noah Green, front man for Los Angeles alternative guitar pop quartet The Pretty Flowers.
The Pretty Flowers’ latest album, A Company Sleeve (Double Helix Records), leans hard into ‘90s indie rock influences including Guided by Voices, Sloan and The Lemonheads, with The Replacements providing much of the foundation on which their hooky and literate sound is built.
“I think the reason The Replacements resonate with contemporary bands so much and have such a devoted cult following is because they have great songs which transcend whatever decade they were written in, and truly connect with artists and music fans who are on the outside of things. Their music never connected with the public at large because the general public has terrible taste, but also, they don’t necessarily relate to underdogs like Replacements fans do,” Green said.
Green first discovered “Bastards of Young” through local radio and MTV’s 120 Minutes thanks to that song’s infamous anti-video. Tim was already a decade old when he acquired his first copy of the CD from BMG Music Service, a choice he made based on the band’s growing reputation as underground alternative rock legends (The Replacements played their last pre-reunion show in Chicago in 1991 with local power pop legends Material Issue).
“‘Left of the Dial’ is the song that I listened to over and over that summer. There’s so much emotion in it,” Green said. “I love a song with some good yearning in it and Westerberg is the king of yearning.”
When asked to choose a song from The Pretty Flowers’ catalog where The Replacements’ influence is most obvious, Green opts for “Another Way to Lose” from their most recent release. Citing The Replacements as one of his band’s main influences, Green thinks this track “is probably the most direct line to The Replacements—and Tim specifically—in the song’s lyrical spirit and its riffs.”
Like Green, Matt Julian—front man for U.K. power poppers The Speedways—first discovered The Replacements thanks to “Bastards of Young.”
But Julian counts “Swingin Party” as his all-time favorite Tim track, followed closely by “Left of the Dial,” “Little Mascara” (“…reminds me of someone I used to know…”) and “Kiss Me on the Bus.”
“I bought the compilation Boink!! and Tim on the same day. 'Here Comes A Regular' and 'Swingin Party' stuck with me early, definitely up my street. 'Swingin Party' reminds me of 'I Don't Owe You Anything' by The Smiths. I love it,” Julian said. “My first impressions were how cool the contrast is between the 'noisy' ones and the 'pop' ones. There's loads going on influence-wise.”
The London-based Speedways impressive third album, Talk Of The Town (Snap!! Records/Hurrah! Musica/Beluga Records), features big choruses paired with wailing guitars on tracks like “Kiss Me Goodbye,” “Secret Secrets,” “Dead From The Heart Down,” “A Song Called Jayne & A Lie Called Love,” and “Shoulda Known.”
“Westerberg definitely influences me in a bunch of ways. I remember an interview with him once where he talked about how you can't be afraid of people laughing and calling you a wimp if you write ballads, and how The Replacements always wanted to be a pure pop band but weren't good enough so ended up in the punk scene,” Julian said. “That stuck with me because you do doubt yourself all the fucking time (well, I do anyway…).”
When asked which of his songs sound most like The Replacements to his own ears, Julian points to the solo demo EP’s he releases on Bandcamp and YouTube, including the tracks “I Remember How Close We Used to Be,” “Table for One” and “In the Cold Light of Christmas Day.”
From The Speedways’ catalog, he singles out “In a World Without Love It's Hard to Stay Young” (“It can get a bit Replacements-y live…”), “Just Another Regular Summer,” and “This Ain’t A Radio Sound,” among others.
“I love The Replacements’ guitar sound, too. You can hear the chords. They're not riff based, they're songs written in a traditional way and filtered through a dirty (but clean) amp sound. That hugely influences me,” Julian said. “Singing your life—honest words and real feelings…being a bit of a fuck-up—it's embarrassing at times. I need to be all of those otherwise I couldn't be in a band. I'm only in a band because I love writing songs.”
Back in the U.S., jangly Philly-based Hurry just released their fifth studio album, Don’t Look Back (Lame-o Records).
The new collection features timeless, well-crafted pop songs like “Beggin’ For You” and “Parallel Haunting” that tap into a wide range of influences including The Beach Boys, Blink-182 and, of course, The Replacements.
“Paul Westerberg is an amazing songwriter. Studying his work, learning his songs, and critically thinking about the craft is always helpful. I’ve definitely stolen some ideas and been inspired by his work,” said Hurry frontman Matt Scottoline.
“But I’ve also been inspired by the band in the way they found success their own way—how they really didn’t care what anyone thought of them, how they looked, how they played, or what kind of music they wrote. Sometimes it’s easy as an artist to overthink that stuff, or get in your head about what you should or shouldn’t do, and how it could affect your career. In those moments, I think about bands like The Replacements, and it brings a little comfort,” Scottoline said.
Scottoline first came to Tim during college in the early 2000s after having already devoured the band’s earlier Twin/Tone albums. His interest in exploring their post-indie catalog was sparked by the movie Adventureland, which featured “Bastards of Young.” He still counts “Here Comes a Regular” and “Left of the Dial” among his favorite tracks from Tim.
“Once I dove in, my overall impression was that Tim felt like The Replacements album most tailored to my tastes. It was a little less punk than what came before it, and to me, has some of the strongest melodies that Paul Westerberg has ever written,” Scottoline said.
Down in New Zealand where a tight-knit guitar pop scene is bubbling up, Best Bets released the fantastic power pop album On an Historic Night (Melted Ice Cream) in 2022, the follow up to their 2018 debut EP Life Under the Big Top.
Guitarist and vocalist James Harding is not shy about naming The Replacements as one of his band’s biggest influences.
“Tim was released the year I was born, and I came to it 20 years later,” Harding said.
“The songs that hit me in the gut straight away were ‘Hold My Life,’ ‘Bastards of Young’ and ‘Left of the Dial,’ which makes sense in hindsight given how anthemic they are,” Harding said, adding: “I think my favorites these days are ‘Little Mascara,’ ‘Swingin Party’ and ‘Here Comes a Regular.’”
Like many young Mats fans, Harding created plenty of blurry memories at “excessive all-day parties” where Tim spun side-by-side with albums by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. These days he says the mythology around the band—“…the bad behavior and drunken shows, the fact they had a kid in the band…”—adds to their continued influence coupled with the dose of comradery fans get from loving the music of these anti-hero posterchildren.
“For me there’s an aura about the band that’s hard to define, but any fan reading this probably knows what I mean,” Harding said. “Being into The Replacements kind of feels like being in a massive private club. There’s no membership card or secret handshake or anything dumb like that, but when you meet another ‘member’ there’s usually a smile and a knowing nod, and chances are you’re going to get along with them just fine.”
When asked which Best Bets songs display the most direct influence from The Replacements, Harding points to “King Cnut” and “April’s Fool.” As a songwriter, Harding is most drawn to Westerberg’s inimitable lyrical word play, but as a devoted fan he loves it all.
“The obsession has only grown over time. I have the records, I buy all the reissues and boxsets, I travelled to the Twin Cities for the reunion show at Midway Stadium—I've even had the privilege of hanging out with Peter Jesperson (former Replacements manager and co-founder of Twin/Tone Records). I'm grateful they existed and I'm grateful I found them when I did,” Harding said.
For my money, Tim is the album that crystalizes The Replacements’ many-faceted legacy (and I say that as a devoted, lifelong Sorry Ma fan).
So, there’s no doubt that the Tim: Let It Bleed Edition box set will give devoted Replacements fans like Green, Julian, Scottoline, Harding, and me even more reasons to debate the merits of Tim versus the rest of the band’s catalog.
“It’s a combination of reputation, place in history, coolness, and songwriting. For The Replacements, it all works together in a way that feels a bit more timeless to me. In my opinion, you need harmony between all of those factors to be timeless, and they have it,” Scottoline said.
In the end, Tim is really just another stunning example of why The Replacements are one of the greatest—and most influential—guitar pop bands of all time…and probably always will be.
“As with all truly great records and artists, The Replacements and Tim transcend their own moment and era. The way they did that is through the songs—both the writing and the performance. Westerberg’s genius was to create the most personal material but have it land in a way that audiences—in his time and in successive generations—could connect with it immediately. That is an ineffable gift that few people have on the level that he did,” Mehr said.
“Mostly that comes through in his ability to blend comedy and tragedy, cynicism and romanticism, to make things beautiful and cheeky all at once. It's what's most unique about the band and this record, and what continues to resonate with people nearly 40 years on.”
This could be my favorite week of the year!
Shark Week can suck it! I like that you have these bands name their own songs influenced by Tim. I’m an apostate, apparently, but I’ll be around for the Pleased To Meet Me gangbang. Always cool to read people who are passionate about music.