Paul Westerberg Quotations

I'm beyond caring what anyone expects of me anymore.

A rock'n'roll band needs to be able to get under people's skin. You should be able to clear the room at the drop of a hat.

I think it should be evident by now, but I'm as lost as anyone.

I read The Bell Jar, and then I read her memoir and her diaries, and a third book, an outside opinion. Just the way she made the pillows so neat on the oven door. It just seems to be the opposite of, if you're going to take your life, in a horrible rage it happens.

I have my own language and it's high time I put a little of it out there.

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.

The hack songwriter will write the absolute truth every single word, whether it makes a great song or not.

I didn't wake up one morning and not be in the Replacements. We're all that forever, and I've just grown older. I mean, I haven't lost anything. I've gained a few things.

Reading music is like listening to flowers. I don't understand the concept.

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.

Any musician who can stop may be a musician, but they're no artist. If it's in your blood, it can't stop flowing.

Stick with your heart and you'll be fine.

It's my first record since my son is old enough to understand and I can't even show it to him. Yes, it's affected me, probably in the opposite of how anyone would have thought.

It's like, it's up to the people to fall in love with the song. The record company can only do so much.

Then again, I think about high school every day and I think about being a little kid every day too.

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.

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 don't think there's anything that will make me stop doing it. There may be a time when it's not available to anyone. You may have to come listen at my basement window... but I can't stop.

I think of the Replacements only when they're brought up to me. For two years, I'm at home, they don't really cross my mind. I still hear them on the radio. I'm not ashamed of anything we did.

Right now, it hasn't affected my music other than the fact that I don't have time to write any of it. That's no different from when I first started and I lived at home. I would play the guitar in the afternoon and then my mom or my dad would come home and I'd have to quit.

So I figured in keeping with the record, I'd do something off the wall which is show up for free and wing it... I don't know, I'm just going to play some songs. I think it'll be fun.

You know, he likes me because I'm his son. I have to go long and far to find someone who knows me just as me, rather than me the songwriter or whatever.

It's fun, but the fun is where it always was. I mean, it's still fun to strap on my Les Paul in the basement and turn up the Marshall amp. I'm still 15. I still enjoy that as much as I ever did.

I sat through Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones like three times at the Skyway when it came out.

I'm hard-pressed to think of a lot of great rock movies.

I'm not dissatisfied with my place in it rock 'n' roll.

Oddly, when I started to make the record, I wasn't aware I was making a record. I just was sort of disgusted with the whole thing and sequestered myself in the basement and started playing the piano just for something to do.

I used to write things that might have sounded better coming out of an older person's voice or vision. Hence, "grandpa-boy." I'm an old man, but I'm a boy. A really old boy!

Some records are timeless, and some absolutely sound of their day.

We [The Replacements] formed as a rock and roll band, and that was the path we chose to take. Whenever we deviated from it we felt, unless everybody was into it, there was tension.

Each album we [The Replacements] made was the one we were capable of making and wanted to make at the time. Each one was a progression or, depending on your opinion, a sidestep or tumble forward. I don't know what.

People like to see human error when it’s honest. When people see you swing and miss, they start to root for you.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nobody gets married to a clever song, let alone falls in love to one.

I'd been through crappy day jobs and stupid garage bands. I was determined to make it as a musician.

Having a diverse sense of taste - or lack of taste - I loved so many different things. I was drawn to the stupidity and excitement of glam, I had a thorough upbringing in rhythm and blues.

I try to write for highest common denominator. I don't write for dumb people. I figure if everybody doesn't get it, that's OK. Someone bright enough will get it, and that's who I write for. It's probably not the way to make million-sellers. What can I say? I won't apologize for trying to write for smart people.

The sheer volumes of songs have come from the hours of cold and darkness that one spends inside with the lights on.

The ones that love us least, are the ones we'll die to please

Nobody can miss you unless you go away.

I listen back, and I hear what's there, and I know in my heart, in my gut, that we [The Replacements] were the real deal. No one can take that away. You can call us buffoons, or clowns or whatever. But when we wanted to, we were as good as anybody.

The soul of rock 'n' roll is mistakes, and making mistakes work for you. The people who shy away from mistakes and play it safe have no business playing rock 'n' roll.