Dispatches from the ledge

How do you recount the history of a band that likely spent much of its prime deep in the hazy throes of alcohol and drug abuse? Faulty memories (and utter blackouts) aside, that’s what Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements (Da Capo Press, $27.50) aims to do. Writer Bob Mehr has written a biography nearly unpredictable as the band that always seemed on the brink of total self-destruction. Unlike most other stories about the Minneapolis quartet, this one is authorized and built upon new interviews with Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, as well as family of the late Bob Stinson. As such, it gets into the nitty-gritty, including the story behind the ’Mats’ legendary 1986 train wreck of an appearance on Saturday Night Live. That gig, in case you haven’t watched the YouTube clips, was a three-ring circus of drunken and drug-fueled insanity that got them—and nearly every other band on Warner Bros., their label at the time—banned from the show.