Paul Westerberg
Paul Westerberg
Paul Harold Westerbergis an American musician, best known as the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter in The Replacements, one of the seminal alternative rock bands of the 1980s. He launched a solo career after the dissolution of that band. In recent years, he has cultivated a more independent-minded approach, primarily recording his music at home in his basement...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth31 December 1959
CityEdina, MN
CountryUnited States of America
We [The Replacements] never made any money on tour. None of us came out of the school of economics. We took it for granted that a rock and roll band gets ripped off. We've tried to shake that tree a couple of times, but what can we do? You look back, when you're sort of idle in your middle years, and think, we should have made some money.
I think it should be evident by now, but I'm as lost as anyone.
There is that unpredictability of the seasons that I enjoy. I like the threat of a tornado. I like the threat of four feet of snow.
Reading music is like listening to flowers. I don't understand the concept.
I'm constantly recording and playing down in the basement, and my voice is starting to sound really good. There's cracks and scratches in my voice that have been there since I was 19. It hasn't changed that much.
The best I can say is that it's better for me to write about despair and darkness than to be incapable of getting off the sofa. It's better to write about suicide than to contemplate it too heavily.
I've had more people in my life take their lives than... I think it's out of proportion with most people. I think a lot of them gravitate towards me because of the music.
The truth is overrated.
I'm not dissatisfied with my place in it rock 'n' roll.
It's like, it's up to the people to fall in love with the song. The record company can only do so much.
Although, my experience when I've been depressed, not only am I too depressed to sit down and write a song, I'm too depressed to pick up my feet. So if you can at least write about it, you're halfway away from it.
I forever felt that I've fallen right between the crack of way too young for the first generation of classic rock 'n' roll and too old to be brand-new. It's hard.
Actually, I've done it the other way so many times where you rehearse the band and you do the whole thing with lights, the show and the crew - everything. Then you see what happens and you're already committed to dates. I'm just sort of putting out feelers this way.
By the fourth or fifth record there was not a lot of time to sit around. We [The Replacements] stopped rehearsing. We stopped getting together and rehearsing. We'd perform, and that would take it all out of us. Then we'd be done touring and we'd be sick of each other. We'd never call each other up and hang out.