Juan Thompson spent
his earliest years playing
under the table while his
legendary father, Hunter,
held court at the Hotel
Jerome Bar in Aspen,
Colorado. After Hunter
committed suicide in
2005, his outlaw myth
only grew. But the idolisation didn’t sit
well with his only child. “I love my dad,
but that doesn’t mean I was blind to his
shortcomings,” says Juan. Now, at 51,
he’s writtenStories I Tell Myself,a book
that sheds light on Hunter’s life from a
fresh, intimate perspective.
Juan, who lives in Denver and has a
successful career in IT, follows Hunter
from upstart Louisville bad boy to
fame at ROLLINGSTONEto later years
as his mind and body began to fail
him. “Hunter would have appreci-
ated the book,” says Paul Scanlon, a
longtime ROLLINGSTONEeditor. “Heknew he was trapped by the parody
of himself.”
The image that emerges isn’t that
of a hero or a villain but what Juan
calls “a mix”. There are some bizarre
moments; as a boy, he was sent by his
parents on a boating trip with Jimmy
Bufett so he wouldn’t be around for
their fights. Juan and Hunter’s relation-
ship improved as Juan built a stable
family life for himself, and working on
his own book gave him a new appre-
ciation for his dad’s genius. “When he
got something right – when it flowed,
when it hit the target – he was so
happy,” Juan says. “I can better unde-
stand that now.” ELISABETH GARBER-PAULGROWING UP (AND
MAKING PEACE)
WITH HUNTER
S. THOMPSONA renegade writer’s son
reckons with the pastHunter S. Thompson with Juan in
2003: “When it flowed, he was happy.”LET IT BLEED
The Replacements
in 1985.BOOKS
ROCK&ROLL
16 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com May, 2016
FROM TOP: MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF JUAN THOMPSONT
he replacements’ career
began as it ended: in total di-
saster. Playing their first show
as the Impediments at a sober
club hosted by a teen rehab centre in St.
Paul, Minnesota, they took the stage with
12-year-old bassist Tommy Stinson dis-
playing a cannabis leaf on his instrument;
they were caught drinking, ejected and
threatened with blacklisting. Sensibly,
they changed their name, and the most ex-
citing, self-destructive indie-rock heroes of
the Eighties were born.
This sort of tragicomedy defi ned a band
that could be thrilling and poignant on
a good night – and on a bad one, a train
wreck nearly as awesome. Memphis jour-
nalist Bob Mehr vividly charts its bumpy
arc through a recent reunion, delivering
mythic battle tales like a barroom his-
torian: the vandalised tour vehicles, the
couch hurled from a club win-
dow, the studio window smashed
with a gin bottle while Metallica
worked quietly nearby, the end-
less pranks on music-biz stooges
and other cases of self-sabotage,
onstage and on-air. It’s hilarious,
for a while. Less funny are the his-
tories informing the chaos: Mo-lested by his mother’s boyfriend, guitar-
ist Bob Stinson spent a childhood in and
out of state juvenile facilities; frontman
Paul Westerberg had his first vodka at
13 and attempted suicide with pills at 15.
Both men came from families marked by
alcoholism, a struggle they inherited and
worked out through music that also fu-
elled it.
The ’Mats story has been told many
times, but Mehr got unprecedented ac-
cess (particularly with the famously can-
tankerous Westerberg), and his reporting
gives their hard-luck tales chilling depth:
The latter part of Bob Stinson’s short life,
and the death of his son, is beyond heart-
breaking; how Stinson’s brother Tommy
and Westerberg repeat their own mis-
takes, echoing the dramas of countless
dysfunctional families, is nearly as rough.
It certainly makes the band’s underdog
triumphs feel earned. What Mehr has
a harder time capturing are the songs –
ache and desperation channelled through,
in Westerberg’s words, “bubblegum ga-
rage music sung by a guy who couldn’t
sing”. It’s a typical understate-
ment. But “Answering Machine”,
“I Will Dare”, “Bastards of Young”,
“Here Comes a Regular” (record-
ed in a dark studio w ith colleag ues
“blinking back tears”) and many
more document what the fuss is
about. This detailed backstory
makes them burn anew. WILL HERMESThe Glorious Chaos
of the Replacements
A new biography dives deep
into the Eighties punk
underdogs’ epic, tragic story