FILTER REISSUES
Shine until tomorrow
The Minneapolis hellraisers’ wayward 1984 album; a career crossroads and the best of everything the original four had to give, says David Fricke.
The Replacements ★★★★
Let It Be (Deluxe Edition)
TWIN/TONE/RHINO. CD/DL/LP
ONE DAY in the winter of 1983, Paul Westerberg – singer, guitarist and songwriting leader of Minneapolis trouble boys The Replacements – phoned manager Peter Jesperson with hot news: “I just wrote the best song I’ve ever written, and we need to record it right away.” Jesperson said there was no rush; the band’s second album, Hootenanny, had just gone to the pressing plant.
Jesperson soon heard why Westerberg was so excited. During a gig at a local club, the singer, drummer Chris Mars, lead guitarist Bob Stinson and Bob’s teenage brother, bassist Tommy Stinson, lit into “a bouncy tune I didn’t recognise,” Jesperson writes in a reminiscence for this multi-disc return of the group’s next LP, the schizophrenic 1984 masterpiece and career crossroads, Let It Be. As The Replacements – who could be on point or off the rails depending on their alcohol and mischief levels that night – “slid into the super-hooky chorus, it dawned on me: this must be the song Paul called me about. Sounded like a hit record to me!”