Thanks to the fine folks at First Avenue I was lucky enough to attend Paul Westerberg’s performance as part of MGD’s “Craft” series last night. My “official” review will be up on Reveille tomorrow morning along with some ace concert pics, but for now I figured I would tide everyone over with some of the best quotes Paul offered up that night.

“Some bands are able to capture something spontaneous and great on the 27th take, we were never like that. We were usually pooped out by the third take because we gave it all we had the first time around.” - on the Replacements recording habits

“I fill every slot on the chart from completely schizophrenic to perfectly healthy.” - on how his Dr. would diagnose him

“That one physically hurt to perform at first. It was written from a 23 year-old’s point of view though, so it got to the point where I was kind of having to manufacture the angst, so I stopped performing it.” - on the Replacements classic anthem of adolescent angst “Unsatisfied”

“That song was really one of the first cracks in the armor of the group.” - on recording “Within Your Reach” without his Replacements bandmates

“I would sort of divide what we did between the songs that ache and the songs that rock. Sometimes they did both. But the ones that ached mattered a little more to me than say, ‘One Good Dose of Thunder’” - on the songs in the Replacements catalog

“It was more Catcher in the Slump than Catcher in the Rye” - responding to host Warren Zanes comparison between J.D. Salinger’s long period underground and Westerberg’s own retreat from the spotlight between 1999 and 2002

Other interesting tidbits:

Westerberg mentioned a period of divorce where he lived back home with his parents for 6 months and wrote constantly (first I’ve ever heard mention of this, no idea when it was chronologically)

Westerberg claims that the original version of the often maligned 1989 ‘Mats album Don’t Tell A Soul was quite rocking and that producer Matt Wallace’s thing was “to capture it live,” but that “A hotshot mixer came in and made it sound like the radio.”

He praised Ben Folds as a songwriter with “beautiful, clever melodies” while talking about writing using open chords (this is probably the first time I’ve ever heard/read of Westerberg praising a musician his jr. so it stuck out to me)

What did others at the gig make of the performance?