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"On the road," says Bill Sullivan, "somebody was always looking at your stuff and wanted to steal it."

That might have been the single constant in an otherwise rollicking, unpredictable life on the road with The Replacements, one of rock's most notorious bands in the 1980s. 


Sullivan saw it all and participated in a lot of it as the Minnesota-based band's roadie. Now, he's written some of it down in a new book, "Lemon Jail: On the Road with The Replacements."

Remembering the young, wild Replacements


He decided to write his own book after turning down interviews with other authors. Sullivan said he wanted to see if he could write a book himself — and maybe make a few thousand bucks.


The book offers an inside perspective on the drunken chaos, pointless destruction and great music that The Replacements created. Even diehard fans may learn a few things from Sullivan's stories about how The Replacements rolled.


That's the name Westerberg gave his van, the first the band used on tour. The "lemon" referred to the quality of the vehicle and "jail" to the amount of time they spent in it. 

Sullivan was usually at the wheel as the band crisscrossed the country for gigs. The van's interior was squalid and hacked to meet their needs. The seats in back had been removed. The band sat on the amps, cases and cabinets that were laid on the floor with patio chair cushions as padding. 


Since stopping at rest stops took too much time, the "lemon jail" also served as a rolling urinal.


When the band was in a particular frame of mind they would bring Sullivan up on stage to take over as lead singer. He would never sing Replacement songs. Show tunes like "If I Only Had a Brain" and "Do the Clam" were some of his favorites as was "Eighteen by Alice Cooper. 


When they toured with Tom Petty, Sullivan was told by the band's new managers to stay off the stage. When Westerberg heard about that, he took it as a challenge and invited Sullivan to sing right away.

Were The Replacements trying to sabotage their own career?


"If there were record label people (at a show) or fancy hat people, Paul might throw them a clinker," Sullivan said. "Or if you open for Social Distortion and all the tough punkers in L.A. that think they're special are there, Paul would play everything country just to piss 'em off. 

Read Jay Gabler's review of 'Lemon Jail'

"But when we got to Tuscaloosa and when we go to Columbus where the people were, when it wasn't just guest list, he killed it for those people."

Picks were an essential tool for a guitar band like The Replacements, but Westerberg was fussy about where to find them.

Westerberg "didn't want his picks taped to the mic stand like people would do, the extra picks taped on the mic stand," Sullivan said. 


Sullivan was perpetually hacked off by the hangers-on who tried to lift stuff from the band, and it was a point of pride to stop it.

"Whether that's what they do professionally, whether they're a junkie or whether they're just a fan that thinks that one of your pedals would make a good souvenir, you know," he said. 

"People may think I'm exaggerating, but one hundred percent of the time somebody was trying to steal your stuff. So, I prevented things like that."

Sullivan's book was true enough to the reality of The Replacements that drummer Chris Mars wrote a promotional blurb for the book. 


It reads in part: "Bill Sullivan captures the spirit and chaos of the earliest and best years of the band because he lived it right alongside us. A true kindred spirit, a fifth member if you will, Bill got what we were about from the git-go, to the point where it would not have been the same journey without him."

Jim Bickal

Author

Bill Sullivan had a front row seat to all the action and occasional self-destruction. His new book "Lemon Jail: On the Road with The Replacements" offers a fresh view on one of rock's most notorious bands.

Drunken chaos, pointless destruction, great music: The Replacements roadie talks

Paul Westerberg and Bill Sullivan on stage. 

Drunken chaos, pointless destruction, great music: The Replacements roadie talks

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