First, the obvious thing. This song is not about Paul McCartney. It’s a little bit about how Baby Boomers view everything in the world only through the lens of their own experiences. Doesn’t matter what it is or who did what, what matters is how it affected them, and this is never more true than when discussing art and music. Unfortunately for the rest of us, The Beatles represent a cultural milestone that does actually belong to their generation. Like so many other things, this is a fact of which they have never been too tired to remind us.
Let me start again.
Rolling Stone Magazine was an insufferable mess by the mid-1980s. It oozed with a nostalgia that its readers would never acknowledge (here is where I point out that even now a Boomer would never admit to listening to oldies. Their half-century-plus-old music is “classic rock”). Their writers clearly felt an obligation to translate current trends into something that would make sense to the thirty-somethings who were their main advertising targets, and who, thanks to their embrace of the emperor-with-no-clothes Ronald Reagan, were finding themselves with plenty of social services funding cuts money to spend.
Welp. Take 3.
There was an album review in RS that referred to the Replacements as The Rolling Stones for Gen X, and pitted them against REM as their/our Beatles. This made no sense to anyone who understood anything about these bands, or music (although, to be fair, the Mats probably gave the Stones a run for their money on the substance abuse front). I was ironically delighted by this article, as it seemed to reinforce all of my personal gripes about how Gen X youth culture was covered, so I wrote this song to bookmark the moment. It does all of the following:
- It casts Paul Westerberg as McCartney. This is fine, actually
- It flips the Rolling Stone narrative and makes the Replacements into the Beatles. No one else in the world would care about this except me
- It rips off the premise of the Mats song “Alex Chilton”. I assume Paul would despise it, but in my defense, The Posies did this already with “Grant Hart” so I feel like I’m on solid ground here
- Circular references! Why would they “start hanging ‘round with Big Stars” if not Alex Chilton in the first place?
- The rhythm guitar parts might was well be Keith and Ronnie, so we’re ripping off the Stones while all this is going on
- Easter Eggs! That mandolin bit might be from “I Will Dare”, I dunno
We played this song at our live shows for years and it was always fun, even if no one had any idea what I was going on about. I’m thrilled to have it finally available. If anyone out there can find a link to the Rolling Stone review that caused this mess in the first place, please message me. I need to know that this isn’t all a decades-old hallucination.
