Trouble Boys: The True Story Of The Replacements

Trouble Boys: The True Story Of The Replacements

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERBased on a decade of research and reporting--as well as access to the Replacements' key principals, Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson--author Bob Mehr has fashioned something far more compelling than a conventional band bio.Trouble Boys is a deeply intimate portrait, revealing the primal factors and forces that shaped one of the most brilliant and notoriously self-destructive rock 'n' roll bands of all time.Beginning with riveting revelations about the Replacements' troubled early years,Trouble Boys follows the group as they rise within the early '80s American underground. It uncovers the darker truths behind the band's legendary drinking, showing how their addictions first came to define them, and then nearly destroyed them.A roaring road adventure, a heartrending family drama, and a cautionary showbiz tale,Trouble Boys has deservedly been hailed as an instant classic of rock lit.Review?The destruction. The volume. The cruelty. The charm. The songs. The songs. The songs. To live close to Paul Westerberg's material was to be lifted?then bent by it. The songs were that good. Mehr shows us that no one, Westerberg included, knew quite what to do with it all. It was underrated, overrated, obsessed over, ignored?never anything in the middle. But somewhere between the Replacements' path of destruction, epic but ultimately empty, and the beauty and honesty of Westerberg's writing, there was a band, a band whose story has for too long remained unknown and unknowable. This book gets us closer than we've ever been. Mehr brings us one of the great American rock ?n' roll stories and all the hurt that came with it.??Warren Zanes, author ofPetty: The Biography andRevolutions in Sound: Warner Bros. Records?The First Fifty Years?The Replacements spent a decade of their lives making some of the most emotive rock music never to hit the mainstream. Bob Mehr has spent a decade of his life researching their story. Balancing a fan's enthusiasm with journalistic perspective, he now delivers it in richly detailed and powerfully unvarnished form. Finally, the 'Mats get the book they deserve.??Tony Fletcher, author ofMoon: The Life and Death of a Rock Legend andA Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the SmithsAmerican Way, March 2016?The best music book you'll read all year. More than just rockers will love this raucous read?It's a book about a band, but it's also the story of kids from damaged families who were saved?to a point?by rock 'n' roll. A must-read.?Chicago Tribune, 3/20/16?Thoroughly researched and eminently readable?The type of book any band would kill for.?Salon.com, 3/15/16?Your new Replacements bible?An unflinching, uncompromising look at the band and the legend.?CMJ.com, 3/15/16?Finally, the band gets the excellent, fully-formed biography it deserves?A breezy read that sometimes stops you cold for the depth of sadness the band often existed in.?Blurt, March 2016?Trouble Boys is a time trip back to the heady days when bands definitely mattered and record labels kinda sorta did?If there is a sadder tale in rock ?n' roll, after readingTrouble Boys, I could not call it to mind.?Record Collector, May 2016?WithTrouble Boys Mehr has delivered what will surely be the definitive book about the band at the first attempt.?Austin American-Statesman, 2/28/16?Easily the year's most anticipated music book.?Vulture, 2/29/16?A book full of revelations. Mehr fills his biography with little-known anecdotes, shocking quotes, and surprising accounts of interpersonal relations that will provide insight to even the most hard-core Replacements fans.?Creative Loafing, 3/2/16?The first proper biography of the group?For most Replacements fans, it will be as irresistible as catnip.?Paste, 3/3/16?A deep, dark look at the Replacements?Both a tragic and strangely comedic portrait of a rock ?n' roll band in the '80s?Powerfully written, densely res