Paul Westerberg Quotes

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 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.

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

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.

Stick with your heart and you'll be fine.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

The truth is overrated.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.