David Spade (17:09)

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Jake Brennan (17:48)

January 18, 1986 One week after the replacement's manager, Peter Jesperson, received that fateful phone call, the one that sent the band to New York City to, well, replace the Pointer Sisters on Saturday Night Live, Tommy Stinson was sitting in a cramped dressing room on the 18th floor of 30 Rock Festivals Feller Plaza. He picked out some notes on his base while listening to veteran actor Harry Dean Stanton, host of tonight's show, talk about road tripping with Bob Dylan from Mexico to Leon Russell's house in Oklahoma while they were filming the Excellent movie. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Tommy didn't really know who the hell Harry Dean Stanton was, and he didn't even know who the hell Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid were either. But damn, Tommy had to admit, this old fart told some pretty great stories, especially after he'd had a few drinks to loosen him up. Tommy, of course, is having a few as well, even though he shouldn't have been drinking, not just because he was underage. Technically, none of them should have been drinking. That's because by 1986, the wild and crazy SNL of the 1970s was long gone. The cocaine so prevalent in the days of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd had been replaced with trays of fruit and muffins. Drugs and alcohol were strictly forbidden on set. Which, okay, fine, there are rules. But after their early afternoon sound check, the Replacements found out they couldn't leave the building until the show was over. That meant for the next 10 hours, this cramped dressing room was going to be their home. With no drugs, no booze, no way. Tommy knew how his big brother Bob felt about tight spaces. This is going to be a problem. And sure enough, Bob was freaking out, pacing back and forth, wearing out a path in the dressing room's carpet. Mercifully, one of the band's sound engineers loaded up a road case with bottles of booze and stuck the contraband backstage. After a few drinks, Bob finally quit pacing and settled down, and by the time Harry Dean Stanton popped by for a visit, there was a swinging party underway inside the replacement's dressing room. Tommy was glad he invited Harry in for a drink. He was glad to spread a little mayhem. This was Saturday Night Live, right? Wasn't it supposed to be a little wild? Bob plopped down on the sofa next to Tommy, and Tommy kept noodling away on the bass. Bob listened for a second, and then he looked up at Harry Dean Stanton. Plays pretty good, doesn't he? He said with a proud grin. Taught him everything he knows. 197819 year old Bob Stinson lay on his bed and closed his eyes. The song Roundabout by Yes blared from the speakers. Bob was indulging in one of the most basic of American teenage privileges, kicking back and listening to a record. He savored this moment because he knew what it was like to have this kind of thing taken away. Bob had spent the last four years in one boy's home after another, including two long years at Red Wing, a place Minnesotans called the San Quentin of juvie, a place where he couldn't find, eat what he wanted. He couldn't do what he wanted. Worst of all, he couldn't listen to music when he wanted. And it was all because of his stepdad. Bob was only six when the guy hooked up with Bob's mom. He beat Bob with a belt, with his fists. He yelled at Bob and told him that he was no good. And he did these things out in the open. But when they were alone, he did things that were even worse. Things that still gave Bob nightmares. Sometimes it felt like those nightmares would drown him. And in a way they did. Bob found himself getting into fights and breaking windows. And by the time he was 15, his mom was desperate and his stepdad was fed up. And that's when they sent Bob to a boy's home and then to Red Wing. He told the counselors at Red Wings Wing that he wanted to be a musician. They said music was a distraction they didn't understand. Music was the only thing that got Bob out of bed. Besides drinking and drugs. It was the only thing he was any good at. It was the only thing that made him feel any good. Like the galloping riff of the song Roundabout, which right now, back home with his mom and her new boyfriend was blowing his impressionable 19 year old mind. His fingers moved in time with Steve Howe's guitar licks. He was soaring through space, completely surrounded by the music. Suddenly a rustling sound brought him hurtling back to earth. His eyes snapped open and he looked down. His 11 year old half brother Tommy was pulling something out from under the bed. Little fucker. With the music blaring, Bob never even heard him come in. Bob was worried about Tommy. Not even a teenager yet and already a little hoodlum. Stealing bikes, going to juvenile court. Bob knew what lay down that path. And he wasn't going to let Tommy go there, even if he had to drag him in a different direction. So Bob was excited to see his brother dragging out an instrument case from under his bed. Tommy's eyes got wide when he flipped open the latches on the case to reveal an old silver tone electric base inside. Tommy reached down and plucked one of the strings. Hey, Bob asked. Want me to show you a few things on that? Tommy shrugged, halfway interested. Bob pulled out the bass and gave him a rundown of a basic blues and E. And he pushed the bass into Tommy's hands and Tommy tried to mimic the pattern that Bob just showed him. It was clumsy, awkward, but the little fucker had a good sense of rhythm, that's for sure. Bob could already tell that Tommy put the bass down and Bob told him to play it again. Tommy looked at the instrument for a long second. Nah, this sucks, Tommy said. My fingers hurt. And then Tommy ran outside to play in the backyard. The next day when Bob came home from work, he had a candy bar in his pocket. When he saw Tommy, Bob waved it in front of his face. Tommy reached out for the candy bar, but Bob pulled it back. You gotta play a little bit first, Bob said. Tommy didn't look happy, so Bob held up a fist like he was gonna punch Tommy in the shoulder. Tommy flinched and then got out the base. An hour later, Bob watched him eat the candy bar. Same deal tomorrow? He asked. Tommy looked up at him with a smirk. Tomorrow I want a candy bar and a Coke. Harry Dean Stanton shook his head in amazement as Bob Stinson finished his story about about using candy bars and the threat of violence to get his little brother to learn the bass guitar. Tommy told the actor he was a veteran performer too. He'd been doing this playing in a professional band for half his young life. All three of them were laughing when the door flew open. A distressed looking production assistant made a beeline for Harry, pulled the drink out of his hand and led him out of the room. Tommy couldn't quite figure out what was going on, but he could hear hear someone say, Lauren is going to be furious when they left the room. Oh well, let him be furious. What was he gonna do? A few minutes later, sufficiently sauced, the band went out and nailed their dress rehearsal performance. The only hiccup was Bob coming in late on the guitar solo. Tommy and Paul locked eyes when they heard it. They were on the same wavelength. There was no way they were gonna let Bob make the same mistake tonight. We'll be right back after this.

David Spade (25:44)

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Jake Brennan (27:22)

Paul Westerberg counted off and the band thrashed into the opening chord right away. Something was off. They sounded like a semi truck grinding its gears for a few beats before finally everyone stopped. For a second the room was dead silent except for the buzzing coming from the amplifiers. Paul stared out into the sea of angry and confused faces and yelled into the microphone, this is our last fucking performance ever. Then he cackled with laughter and the band kicked into a ramshackle cover of Elvis Presley's Due to the the Clam. After a few minutes, they stumbled to a stop. Paul stared at the floor and tuned his guitar for what felt like an hour before switching gears again and trying to make it through Led Zeppelin's Misty Mountain hop. It was January 1985, and the replacements were on stage at CBGB in New York City, playing an unannounced performance that was supposed to be their east coast major label showcase. The hype around the Replacements was growing fast in the industry, especially after the Village Voice ran a cover story that called them the most exciting band in America. At the band's west coast showcase, Bob and Chris found a way to undercut that hype by letting off a pocket full of stink bombs just as the band hit the stage, and that cleared the room pretty quickly. Tonight they didn't have literal stink bombs, but they found another way to clear the room. They kicked off the set with you're a mean one, Mr. Grinch, and things even got weirder from there. Paul started maybe 50 songs that night, but the band made it through less than five. They tried their hand at Dolly Parton and then the theme from the Andy Griffith Show. What they didn't play were songs by the Replacements. As the crowd streamed out of the club, Paul started started playing a U2 song. These label stiffs couldn't take a joke. Then one year later, memories of shows like that one at CBGB kept Replacements manager Peter Jesperson on the edge of his seat. The SNL cast was in the middle of some lame skit about a Wild west gunfighter when Peter checked his watch. It was 11:50pm the band was supposed to hit the stage in 15 minutes. He looked around him at the huge crowd of people there from the label, the band's new management team, and more than a dozen friends and family. Everyone was excited. They knew this could be momentous, but Peter was worried. He knew it could also be another cbgb. Peter kept replaying a scene in his mind from earlier that day. After the band finished their soundcheck, he watched new business managers Russ Rieger, strut up to Paul wearing leather pants and snakeskin boots. Peter cringed when he heard Russ matter of factly tell Paul that for camera blocking, the band had to stay exactly where they were told to stand. The sneer on Paul's face said it all. It was a bad idea to tell the Replacements what they should and shouldn't do. Back inside the dressing room, Paul was sprawled on a couch. An empty whiskey bottle dangled from his hand. His chest was tight. His heart was hammering. All he could think of was bombing in front of 8 million people. There was a knock at the door. A small army of production assistants swarmed inside. It was time. Paul pulled himself up from the couch and he slapped hands with Tommy, who was practically bouncing up and down with excitement. Chris Mars was coolly twirling his drumsticks and the bathroom door flew open and out stepped Bob, decked out in a purple and black skin, tight women's bodysuit. He looked high as hell, but at least he was awake and in the building, which was good enough for Paul. The wave of activity carried them out of the dressing room. The hallway was a blur of motion, with dozens of staffers rushing in all directions. Someone called out three minutes to air. Just behind the steps leading up to the stage, Paul and his bandmates huddled for a brief moment while crew members rechecked the microphones. Paul told Bob that he better not be late on the solo. Bob understood. They all understood. They were going to go out there live on national television in front of the biggest audience of their career. Millions of Americans watching at home, and they were going to crush it. They were going to prove why they were one of the most beloved independent bands in the country and why they were one of the few indie rock bands who did not compromise their sound when they made the leap to a major label. Paul, Bob, Tommy and Chris made a collective beeline for the Saturday Night Live stage. Then Bob, in the lead, surged forward and missed the whole first rung. He fell face forward onto the stage with his guitar still strapped to his chest. The guitar's neck snapped like a toothpick. At first, the band was shocked into silence. Then they all began to laugh. Fucking up, blowing it. That kind of shit was funny to the replacements. SNL's production assistant seemed less amused by the idea of finding Bob a new guitar in the next 90 seconds. But G.E. smith hustled and came through, handing Bob a substitute. With just seconds to spare, Paul looked straight ahead into the camera. Somewhere, a voice was counting down from commercial break. 3, 2. The red light on the camera blinked. They were live. Harry Dean Stanton introduced the band, and they launched into the opening notes of Bastards of Young, one of the hardest rocking songs from their new album, Tim. The song lurched sideways, and for a second it sounded like everything might collapse. Paul wondered if he might collapse, but Chris Mars kept pounding the backbeat and Tommy's bass line locked in. Even playing a strange guitar, Bob was holding his own. And by the time they hit the first verse, Paul could feel it. They're gonna pull this thing on. He was surrounded by the music, soaring through space. There was no studio audience. There were no no label reps, no management team, no people watching at home. Just the four of them and the song. A great song. They blasted through the chorus, and Paul knew they were going to make it. He pulled back from the mic and leaned towards Bob. Come on, fucker. He yelled, just off mic, not a diss, but urging Bob into the solo at the right time. Bob came in right on time as Tommy and Paul bashed the instruments along beside him, destroying any hopes for clean camera blocking. But when the song came to its cathartic close, the crowd of friends, family and supporters roared in approval. Paul collapsed to the ground in a sarcastic bow. The performance was ragged but right. It had almost flown off the rails more than once. But somehow, in that shambolic, chaotic, don't give a fuck way of theirs, the Replacements pulled it off. They had delivered a performance for the ages. Paul of the boys figured that from here there was nowhere to go but up. In reality, they were about to hit the skids and go all the way down to the bott. Russ Rieger pushed his way through the crowded hallway at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and into the dressing room. Backstage, he was walking on air. He knew that the performance the Replacements had just given would push their album Tim onto the charts. Russ had been a Replacements fan ever since a publicist slipped him an advance copy of Here Comes a Regular, the acoustic ballad that would eventually be Tim's closing song. It made him realize that the Replacements were more than just a dysfunctional punk band. Unsatisfied answering machine. These songs were so simple yet so deceptively deep. Midwestern angst and alienation, written like a William Carlos Williams poem. Even when Paul flubbed a line, like he may have done when he sang Pretty Girl, keep growing up playing makeup wearing guitar on the song Left at the Dial. Somehow that fuck up made the words more poetic. Paul Westerberg was a hell of a songwriter. Russ could already see it the glowing reviews, the chart traction. Soon the Replacements would be as big as the Rolling Stones, or at the very least, REM So when someone tapped him on the shoulder and said Lorne Michaels wanted to see him right away, Russ thought, ah, Lorne wants to commend me and the band on a job well done. Thank us for saving SNL's ass. After the Pointer Sisters backed out at last minute, Russ stepped away from the party happening in the dressing room and out into the hallway. Across from him stood Lorne Michaels. His arms were crossed and his face was frozen in a scowl. Do you realize what you've just done? Lorne screamed. Fucker. Your band said fucker. On live television. Russ thought back to the performance, specifically to the moment before Bob's guitar solo, when Paul looked over and yelled, come on, fucker. Just off mic, apparently, though not off mic enough for a show that was already on thin ice. Apparently this was a bridge too far. Lauren ended the conversation with a promise. This band will never, ever, I repeat, never play Saturday Night Live again. Russ returned to the dressing room, where we took a deep breath and shared the news with the boys. The Replacements were banned not just from Saturday Night Live but from the entire NBC network for life. It was almost 10 years later when Bob Stinson laid back on his bed and dropped the needle on the turntable one last time. The familiar opening riff to Roundabout rang out. Bob closed his eyes and let the music surround him. Music still provided him solace, but it had been a hard decade. Months after the SNL debacle, he was kicked out of the band that he founded. Even worse, he was kicked out by his own brother. His little brother. That stung. Bob kept playing in bands around Minneapolis, and he watched his former bandmate soldier on with a new guitarist. They put out three more albums, including 1987's Pleased to Meet Me, whose second single, Alex Chilton, was an homage to the frontman of Big Star One of the Replacement's major inspirations, both in terms of music and glorious self sabotage. But despite the strength of that song, the album Pleased To Meet Me and the records that followed all failed to find the elusive hit that would catapult the Replacements into the mainstream. And that failure was not the result of integrity in the face of commercialism, by the way. That failure was because the Replacements couldn't help be fuck ups. Just look at the music video they made for Bastards of Young. It's just a single shot of a stereo speaker that slowly zooms out to reveal a faceless dude listening and smoking a cigarette on the couch. He kicks in the speaker when the song's over. It was like a metaphor for the band's entire career. By the time they hung it up in 1991, they still hadn't scored a single Top 40 song. Their drunken Saturday Night Live set might have doomed the band's short term prospects, but a decade on, many were starting to call it one of the most legendary performances in the show's history. Right up there with Elvis Costello changing songs at the last minute, which also got him banned from the show. But I'm digressing. As alternative rock surged in popularity through the 1990s, new bands were constantly name checking the Replacements as an inspiration. They were loose limbed, shambling, always teetering on the edge of destruction. In short, they were rock and roll at its best. But all that came too late for Bob Stinson. He was mired deep in the throes of a heroin addiction and diagnosed with bipolar disorder, likely stemming from the childhood abuse that he suffered. Bob tried to get on medication, tried to clean up his act, but he was tired and the only thing that kept him going was music. As Roundabout kicked into the familiar galloping rift that Bob had heard so many times before, he let the music send him soaring into space. And this time there would be nothing to bring him back to earth. Just the music calling him on, higher and higher as he drifted skyward. And then Bob Stinson was gone. Organ failure from all those years of drug abuse, dead at 35 years old, just four years after the band he founded and kicked him out called it quits. So much promise unfulfilled. Such a bummer. Such a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. All right, hope you dug this episode. Apple podcast listeners get the those auto downloads turned on so you never miss an episode. This week's Question of the week is which band or artist never made it big, but should have, but should have Was it the replacements? Well, yeah, there's certainly one of them, but who else? Who else do you know of that could have been huge but never was? There's an endless number of great artists who never dominated the charts but probably should have? Let me know who your picks are. 61790 Leave me a voicemail or send me a text and be part of the show we play and read some of your answers on the afterparty bonus episode coming up right after this new feed. And I can also be reached on Instagram, Facebook, X TikTok, Disgracelandpod, and over@gracelandpodgmail.com Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and you might win some free merch. All right, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in the partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com subscribe follow like Rate and review the Disgraceland Podcast wherever you get your podcast, because the Disgraceland Podcast is now available everywhere. If you love Disgraceland, tell someone, Tell everyone. Shout us out on social, Spread the word and follow us to find out how you can cop some free merch for spreading that word. Follow Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla.

David Spade (42:48)

He's a bad, bad man.