Former Guns N’ Roses bassist playing a solo Lexington gig to honor ‘Harry Dean’

Walter Tunis

July 9, 2024 at 5:55 PM·6 min read

After four-plus decades of living almost every degree of intensity and mischievousness rock ‘n’ roll could offer — from the reckless heyday of The Replacements to the stadium-sized pageantry of Guns N’ Roses — Tommy Stinson is more interested in exploring life and music at his own pace and by his own rules

“I’ve been so lucky, dude. I’ve been able to do so many things. I’ve been all over the world. I’ve seen things most people don’t get a chance to see a quarter of, if they’re lucky. And I appreciate that. I’ve gotten to a place in my life where I just feel pretty grateful. I’m sitting here going, ‘Wow. I can still go out and play shows and pay my bills and do it on my own terms and have fun.’

Tommy Stinson, guitarist for The Replacements and Guns N’ Roses, will play a solo acoustic performance at The Green Lantern as part of the Harry Dean Stanton Fest. Stinson’s connection to Kentucky’s Stanton was through music.

“There are all the trappings of adulthood in there, too, but for the most part, I still get to seek and discover new music, whether it comes from me or others. It’s a cool lifestyle that way. It’s just gratifying.”

What brings Stinson to Lexington this week is something altogether more intimate than the groundbreaking, punk-abandon he forged with The Replacements during the 1980s and early ’90s or the anthemic arena rock he later commanded during a 16-year run as bass guitarist for Guns N’ Roses that concluded in 2014. He will be playing a solo acoustic performance at The Green Lantern as part of the Harry Dean Stanton Fest, the annual weekend salute to the film career of the late West Irvine-born, Lexington-educated actor.

Harry Dean Stanton Fest highlights films with fellow Kentuckians, Hollywood’s Brat Pack

Friendship with Harry Dean Stanton

“What I got from Harry was that he was just really a cool, one-of-us kind of dude,” Stinson said. “There was no star thing about him. He would just start talking about stuff and asking stuff. Strangely enough, it wasn’t any different for me than talking to Bob Dylan or David Bowie. I’ve talked to both of them and they just go ‘What’s going on out there, man? How’re you doing?’ They were very engaging and great gentlemen.

“You got that from Harry, as well. He just wanted to know how things were going for you. He had an interest in that stuff. He was a cool guy.”

Harry Dean Stanton has a cigarette prior to a screening of “Dillinger” at the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington, Ky., June 15, 2014. Photo by Matt Goins

Harry Dean Stanton enjoys the moment as the audience gives him a standing ovation at the fourth annual Harry Dean Stanton Fest as organizer Lucy Jones, left, and Mayor Jim Gray look on in 2014. It was Stanton’s only visit to the festival.

Stanton would cross paths with Stanton after moving to Los Angeles from his native Minneapolis in 1993. Stanton held court with makeshift jam and music outings at various clubs including the Pico Boulevard haunt known as Jack’s Sugar Shack.

“A friend of a friend owned that place. Harry Dean would have a band he would play with on Wednesday nights. It just became like Harry Dean Stanton Night or whatever. He played a lot of harmonica and sang. It was kind of a boozy throwdown, if you will. It got very festive quick, but it was always fun and well revered for the longest time while he was in town and able to do such things. I ran into him a few times down there and had a few drinks.”

How they met: That notorious SNL episode

While Stinson was never part of Stanton’s film career, a high-profile collaboration from several years earlier helped earn him an invite to this weekend’s festival. The date was Jan. 16, 1986. The Replacements were touring behind one of their most celebrated albums, the brawling but stylistically broad-minded “Tim,” which had been released the previous September. The band’s mounting popularity earned a guest spot on Saturday Night Live, which, on that evening, Stanton hosted.

Then things went off the tracks as both Stanton and the band had a passion for, shall we say, distilled spirits.

“Well, we got in trouble for him getting drunk,” Stinson said. “That was the problem with that show. We didn’t know that he wasn’t supposed to be drinking. We weren’t supposed to have booze in the dressing room, but we did. And Harry Dean found his way to our dressing room where the booze was. We ended up getting taken in for that. Unbeknownst to us, they tried to make it look like we swore, that Paul (Westerberg, the Replacements’ chief songwriter and vocalist) swore in the tunes we played (“Bastards of Young” and “Kiss Me on the Bus.”) But it really came down more to the fact we snuck booze in and got Harry drunk.

“But again, we didn’t know. We didn’t know the deal with him. We never would have done that if we had known. But we did it and hence, The Replacements getting into all kinds of trouble because of our booze. It happens.”

The Replacements and the Minneapolis music scene

The Replacements grew out of a rough and restless Minneapolis upbringing that placed Stinson onstage at an early age. He was 14 when the band’s debut album, “Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash” was released in August 1981.

“It was not for the faint of heart, at that,” Stinson said. “I had to grow up quick. A young kid thrown into the adult world, and that adult world was even more haphazard than the adult world my family was going through, my mom and siblings. On the one hand, I sort of grew up too quick and on the other, maybe I didn’t enough grow up quick enough.

“All the tales of woe of the Replacements days really come from the fact we were all pretty broken kids. We had relatively standard upbringings in some ways compared to the national average, I guess. But family dysfunction ran through every one of us. Some of us more so than others, and that stuff comes out in the music. You can hear it. You can feel it in every aspect.

“Mind you, Minneapolis had, and still does to this day, probably the most vibrant music scene I’ve witnessed, and I’ve been everywhere. You had all these punk rock, modern pop and hardcore scenes, all these different musical scenes converging, all at the same time Prince was lighting everything up. There was a real camaraderie, but also a kind of a war, if you will, of everyone challenging each other to a dual in their songs. It was a cool thing. There was a lot of camaraderie, but also a lot of little battles.”

Today, life is considerably quieter. Stinson tours in a folk-Americana rooted unit called Cowboys in the Campfire, but also devotes considerable time to solo concerts. He will perform on his own at The Green Lantern for the Stanton fest, although the bill also includes the longstanding punk-infused Texas band Mydolls (which performed in one of Stanton’s most celebrated movies, the 1984 Wim Wenders-directed “Paris, Texas.”) Does this mean one of the country’s prime punk veterans might mix it up with some of his electric contemporaries?

“You never know. It depends on how I feel about stuff. I’ve got to call the Mydolls up. It could be that I roust them to do a couple of songs just for fun. I’m uniquely in a position in life now where I just do it as I want to in a whatever-floats-my-boat kind-of-way. That sounds kind of selfish, I know, but I’m lucky like that.”