It’s happening: a long-awaited career-mapping biography on The Replacements is set for release early next year.
The tome, Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements, runs to 520 pages and is slated for release March 1 via Da Capo Press. It’s billed as the first-ever narrative biography from the band, a one-time gang of four Minneapolis misfits who went on to achieve greatness in underground post-punk circles and became a rare example of a celebrated indie band who managed a successful leap into the major label world.
Trouble Boys’ author Bob Mehr, a Mojo journalist, enlisted the support of the rockers’ key members, including singer-songwriter Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson, guitarist Slim Dunlap, and the family of late band founder Bob Stinson.
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The book, details for which are announced today, was nearly 10 years in the making and it promises to explore “the primal factors and forces — addiction, abuse, fear — that would shape one of the most brilliant and notoriously self-destructive groups of all-time,” according to a press statement.
It’ll drill into the band members’ friendship, collaboration and longstanding rivalry with R.E.M. and Hüsker Dü, their signing to Sire/Warner Bros, its post-band experiences, and much more.
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“After years of work, hopefully this story comes across as passionately and powerfully as their music,” says Mehr, who has launched a website for the project. Trouble Boys coincides with the 35th anniversary of the cacophonous Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, the Replacements’ debut album.