(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Paul Westerberg was perhaps the most important voice in 1980s rock, the equivalent of what Bob Dylan had been in the 1960s. The songs of his Replacements had captured the spirit of the era and galvanized an entire generation.

After the breakup of the Replacements, Paul Westerberg’s first solo album, 14 Songs (Sire, 1993), is a concentrate of all the lyrical and musical neuroses of the artist, but musically it is yet another bitter disappointment. Much of the album is over the top: his intense lyrics are shouted by a maniac who has surrounded himself with a cowboy band. It starts with a frenzied honky-tonk (Knockin On Mine) and ends with deafening power-pop (Down Love), passing through a loud, crude southern boogie (Something Is Me) with burning guitar riffs in the foreground. At times Westerberg seems to imitate Bob Seger (Silver Naked Ladies, a piano-driven boogie with a hoarse-shouter yell) and Bruce Springsteen (World Class Fad, the first single). The only moment when Westerberg pauses to reflect is the romantic ballad Runaway Wind, but even there he seems to be drawing inspiration from Soul Asylum, the best of his disciples.

Westerberg also wrote Backlash for Joan Jett in 1991 and We Are The Normal for the Goo Goo Dolls in 1993, perhaps his best song of the last five years. On a 1995 soundtrack he performs Let’s Do It again with Jett.

Only three songs save Eventually (Reprise, 1996) from complete failure: These Are The Days, a bittersweet ballad, Good Day, a melancholic piano lament, and Ain’t Got Me, the most immediately catchy track. Century borrows from the Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz, Mama Daddy Did recalls Little Mascara, and You’ve Had It With You blatantly copies Down Love from his first album. Still, this is a classic rock and roll record. Having abandoned punk ambitions, Westerberg has accepted his place among the many Pettys, Mellencamps, and Springsteens who beat out honest, pure hearts across America’s highways and suburbs.

Just when everyone had written him off, Westerberg reinvents and redeems himself. Suicaine Gratifaction (Capitol, 1999) presents an artist who has matured enormously. The album is even more autobiographical than usual. It is arranged in a direct, classic style, and indeed echoes many of the artists who shaped Westerberg the musician and the man, above all Bob Dylan: It’s A Wonderful Lie, Best Thing That Never Happene, and Tears Rolling Up Our Sleeves. Lookin’ Out Forever delivers the epic and pathetic rock and roll in which he has always excelled, a son of Neil Young; so does the electric boogie of Final Hurrah. There are echoes of Tom Petty in the long, mournful Fugitive Kind, and even of Cat Stevens in the tender serenade Born For Me. A sign of his regained peace with himself is a simple ballad like Whatever Makes You Happy. As always, Westerberg exposes his inner self in stark yet trembling piano ballads: Self-Defense and Bookmark. It had been since the days of Pleased To Tell Me that Westerberg had written songs like these.

The author of Customer, Johnny’s Gonna Die, Kids Don’t Follow, Treatment Bound, Willpower, Within Your Reach, I Will Dare, Unsatisfied, Answering Machine, Bastards Of Young, Here Comes A Regular, Left Of The Dial, I.O.U., Nightclub Jitters, I Don’t Know seems to be going through an almost unprecedented artistic crisis. His sudden and unexpected decline remains one of the great mysteries in rock history.

He also released