When Bruce Springsteen turned 60 earlier this year, it was a bit of a milestone on the one hand – but still just a tad removed from me. As much as Bruce’s music has always affected me, he was still a singer from an earlier generation; a little closer to me than the Who or the Kinks, but still someone from that great cloud of Those Who Came Before.
But hearing that today is Paul Westerberg’s 50th birthday?
That’s different. Westerberg was one of the first great post-baby-boom songwriters; his music with and since the Replacements had only the most incidental reference to baby-boom era music.
Was he an original? No – and nobody in rock and roll ever really is, at least musically speaking – everybody borrows and synthesizes and rips off Those Who Came Before – so shaddap already.
But Westerberg combined punk’s snotty snarl with a nuance and depth that evaded most of his thrashy contemporaries.
- The Replacements – Chris Mars, Bob Stinson, Westerberg, Tommy Stinson – at an early protest against the Midtown Greenway
And so Westerberg – in his Replacements-era career and ever since – has occupied a much larger space in my memory of the era than most other writers of his or any other generation. Westerberg’s music grew up, just like we did – but still kept a foot back in the garage.
Just like many of us like to think we do, in a little corner in the back of our minds that never quite turned 22.
Happy birthday, Paul Westerberg!
Don’t you think thier a little Androgenus?
Mitch any idea where I could find some Suburbs material? I have been looking off and on for a few years and haven’t had any luck.