When you talk about the Replacements’ early years, the myths and outrageous anecdotes quickly pile up like empties around a trash bin. But for all the tales of drunkenness, “SNL” bans, and cross-dressing that define the band’s legacy, no transgression encapsulates their prankster personality better than the decision to christen their 1984 breakthrough album Let It Be. As frontman Paul Westerberg has famously quipped, the heretical act of shoplifting an album title from the Beatles was their simple way of saying “nothing is sacred.” And for the Replacements, that maxim went beyond an isolated title swipe—during their first half-decade of existence, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy that took root every time they stumbled onto a stage.
While the Let It Be buzz would yield a major-label deal with Sire Records at a time when bands like R.E.M. were burrowing a path from the underground to the mainstream, the Replacements harbored no ambitions for big-budget MTV videos, Grammy Award galas, or establishment acceptance. For them, playing rock’n’roll was seemingly no more meaningful than doing a shot of tequila: It’s invigorating and disposable in equal measure—something that’s downed quickly and messily, courses through your veins, and makes you do things you regret before you piss it out of your system. But as much as their live history houses a junkyard’s worth of booze-fueled train-wrecks, the true legend of the Replacements hinges on the fact that their messiest moments could immediately be followed by triumphant, transcendent displays of rock’n’roll valor. And on this pristinely preserved live document, the entire underdog-comeback narrative of a Rocky movie plays out and repeats itself in recurring five-minute intervals.
If the Replacements story is one of anarchic inebriation gradually giving way to more sobering introspection, then For Sale: Live at Maxwell’s 1986 is like that last college bender before entering the working world. This oft-bootlegged, now greatly enhanced 29-song recording finds the band on the brink of a crucial turning point, mere months after the release of their Sire debut Tim, and a few more before they ousted wild-card guitarist Bob Stinson. Fortuitously captured on a 24-track mobile studio set up at the venerable Hoboken venue, it’s a crisp, broadcast-ready portrait of the moment when the tug-of-war between the Replacements’ split personalities—the perma-blotto garage band vs. the refined rock craftsmen—had escalated into a bloody battle.
Even as they found themselves headlining clubs and crashing network soundstages, the Replacements approached live performance with a determined lack of ceremony. Traditional set-list rules—like making a grand introduction, establishing a natural flow, saving the best for last, etc.—got tossed out the window. From the opening rip through “Hayday” onward, the Replacements rifle through their back catalog as if randomly clicking on songs in a jukebox. Four tunes in, they’re already attempting the sort of sloppy covers most bands trot out in the encore (in this case, an aborted one-minute romp through Sweet’s “Fox on the Run”). Less than a half hour in, they’ve already dispensed with their two most emotionally wrenching songs back-to-back, “Unsatisfied” and—in embryonic form—“Can’t Hardly Wait” (with Stinson’s swirling leads subbing in for the horn section that would eventually appear on the Pleased to Meet Me version). And in lieu of rousing stage banter, Westerberg inexplicably shouts out “murder!” periodically, while the overzealous crowd shouts out requests for Big Star covers as if pelting the band with ice.
But even if you’re not nearly as soused as the Replacements obviously were at this show, listening to this set will still leave you feeling delightfully off-balance—because on a song-to-song basis, you’re never quite sure which Replacements will show up. By Tim, the ratio of juvenile rockers to savvy pop songs on a given Replacements record had tilted toward the latter. But here, the band still have one foot planted firmly in their basement-punk roots, taking raucous rave-ups like “Otto” and “Fuck School” out for some empty-parking-lot donuts. And along the way, they recast classics by T. Rex (“Baby Strange”) and the Beatles (“Nowhere Man”) in their own roughshod image.
But if the aforementioned “Fox on the Run” flub plays right into the Replacements’ drunk-punk reputation, it’s instantly answered by an absolutely heroic “Hold My Life.” And if cutting off “Left of the Dial” right before its anthemic outro seemingly reaffirms Westerberg’s nothing-is-sacred credo, then the full-band blitz on “Answering Machine” transforms Let It Be’s closing song sketch into the fist-pumping salvo we always imagined it to be. The punked-up pillaging of Kiss’ “Black Diamond,” meanwhile, shows how The Replacements could redeem cock-rock posturing with a genuinely unbridled intensity.
The latter song is also but one of countless moments here where Stinson’s frenzied fret-work squirts extra kerosene all over this fiery performance. More than just provide a rare, radiant snapshot of a legendary live band previously enshrined on an infamously crude cassette, For Sale is a long-overdue concert-album commemoration of the Replacements’ resident Ace Frehley-in-a-tutu, whose playing personified both the band’s cheeky charm and wounded soul. (Sadly, he never found his way after getting fired from the band; he died of organ failure—spurred by years of substance abuse—in 1995 at age 35.) Stinson was the band’s wobbly kneed but fleet-footed running back, sneaking his way through every open space, forever on the verge of toppling over but always managing to dance his way into the end zone. He tricks out the driving roar of “Color Me Impressed” in little six-string ringlets, casually dropping off-the-cuff solos underneath Westerberg’s verses; on the countrified ballad “If Only You Were Lonely,” he playfully punctuates each line as if drawing a moustache on the Mona Lisa. He was the difference between the Replacements being merely a great rock’n’roll band and an ecstatically unpredictable, brilliantly absurd one.
The Replacements would go on to make more classic songs without him. But from this point, they would swiftly mature into the sort of steady, semi-professional rock outfit that gets invited to open Tom Petty tours and makes it through televised appearances without swapping clothes. With For Sale, we get the bastards forever young.
