The Replacements always felt like they were on the verge of self-destruction. Part of the band’s appeal was the strong possibility they’d crash and burn on stage.
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Some people enjoy getting close to the fire. Author/journalist Christopher Hitchens once talked about burning the candle at both ends because he “quite liked the glow.” The Replacements burned the candle, all right. And they lit the thing with a blow torch. The band was a portrait of volatility.
Formed in Minneapolis in 1979, The Replacements were a punk rock band with an instinct for pop melody. Despite their cult following, commercial success eluded three critically acclaimed albums.
But in 1985, they released one of the greatest American rock albums of the 1980s, Tim. “Bastards of Young” from Tim, the meaning of which we detail below, became a defining song and echoed a general feeling of alienation. The 2023 reissue—Tim: Let It Bleed Edition—includes an updated mix by Ed Stasium, bringing The Replacements’ legendary performance into clearer focus. The album was produced by Tommy Erdelyi, better known as Tommy Ramone.
[RELATED: The Replacements’ 1985 Classic ‘Tim’ Gets Expanded…And Remixed]
Tim’s original mix is distant. It’s like listening to The Replacements from the other side of the door. Stasium’s mix sounds like he moved the microphones inside the room. Tim finally has a mix that punches as hard as the band.
Feeling Out of Place
Paul Westerberg wrote “Bastards of Young” for the outcasts. Westerberg’s sister Mary left Minneapolis to pursue an acting career in New York City. The idea of going somewhere to “become someone” struck Westerberg. As a band, he felt like The Replacements felt the same way.
God, what a mess on the ladder of success
Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung
Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled
It beats picking cotton and waiting to be forgotten
Tim was the group’s major label debut. Westerberg wondered if his band of misfits belonged to the mainstream rock landscape. He worried The Replacements might be a tax write-off for Sire Records. A common practice with major labels was signing numerous bands, hoping a few stick, and using the others as tax deductions.
Income tax deduction, what a hell of a function
It beats picking cotton or waiting to be forgotten
Wait on the sons of no one, bastards of young
Wait on the sons of no one, bastards of young
According to Bob Mehr’s biography on the band, Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements, Westerberg’s mother induced labor on New Year’s Eve for a tax deduction. So using a newborn baby or a band for a tax break profoundly affected Westerberg—it was an exclamation point to feeling unwanted.
The opening riff is reminiscent of The Who, and Pete Townshend certainly wrote a defiant youth anthem in 1965. 20 years later, “Bastards of Young” echoed the sentiment of “My Generation.” Both songs are revolutionary in spirit. They are also equally well-crafted pop songs.
Major Label Anti-Promo
The Replacements had an aversion to promotion. Part of this had to do with the punk rock ethos of the band. The other side was the self-destructive tendencies of the group. “Bastards of Young” wasn’t an official single, then, but its music video is memorable. The camera slowly zooms from a speaker, ending with someone kicking a hole through it.
An infamous performance of “Bastards of Young” in 1986 on Saturday Night Live got them banned from the show. The band was intoxicated, and Westerberg forgot the song lyrics. Then he dropped an f-bomb on the air, and, for Lorne Michaels, that was all she wrote. Watching them plow through the out-of-tune performance was equal parts frustrating and endearing.
Founding guitarist Bob Stinson left the group in the summer of 1986, leaving Tim as a final snapshot of the original lineup. The album wasn’t the commercial breakthrough the record label hoped for, but it has endured as a cult classic.
An Anthem for Misfits
Westerberg had written a youth anthem for the outsiders. The song speaks to the false hopes of kids born into low-income families. However, even having released the anthem on a major record label, the band still refused to play along. They were so militantly defiant. The Replacements were one of the decade’s most honest and exciting bands.
What accompanied the excitement, though, was destruction. For The Replacements, the excitement and destruction were not mutually exclusive. The economic reality of “Bastards of Young” is objective and painful. Expecting the casualties of this system to mind their manners at the fancy dining table is a farce.
Institutions like Sire/Warner Bros., or Saturday Night Live for that matter, want the street cred for bringing punk rock to mainstream audiences. Then they become uncomfortable when the punk rockers act like punks.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
