“I had an epiphany”
The Replacements’ first manager Peter Jesperson on taking the wheel for the wayward rockers
Peter Jesperson (in Bowie T-shirt)with Paul Westerberg, Tommy Stinson and Chris Mars
GREGALLEN
“I DIDN’T know anybody who was more obsessed with music than I was,” says Peter Jesperson, former manager of The Replacements and co-founder of vital American indie label Twin/Tone, of his time as a pop-besotted youth growing up in Minneapolis. “It was kind of eerie how songs cast aspell over me. And Iwas very, very aware that that didn’t happen for everyone.”
Jesperson’s all-encompassing love of music runs through every page of
Euphoric Recall,
his recently published memoir. Rather than try his hand at songwriting or mastering an instrument, he preferred to stay an evangelist,
preaching the rock gospel starting as a teen delivering imported copies of
NME
to local record shops, and eventually working at one such store, Oar Folk jokeopus. There, he endorsed future classics by Big Star and REM and oversaw in-store appearances by the likes of Blondie and the Ramones. “We did three events with the Ramones, and by the third one, it was so crowded that people were spilling out into the street and down the block, so the police came. That was kind of cool.”