Bob Stinson (Tommy's brother)
Adams Apple:
Sonny Vincent - My Times With Bobby Stinson- Part 2
It was a double bill with my band and The Replacements. After the show Bob came up to me and said ?I want to join your band?. He said he would leave his band and him and I could make a band together. Bob seemed sincere but I had to consider a few things?Bob was in a band that had done a lot of work, they had a very cool album out and just that week they had a fantastic review in my favorite ?New York? newspaper the ?Village Voice?. I figured Bob was probably pretty drunk and I told him ?Hey Bob at this point I?m pretty much screwing around business wise and to me it looks like something is ready to break and go good for you guys, why the hell would you want to quit now?? Bob said, ?Because I want to play your music? - well of course I didn?t go for it and I didn?t encourage Bob to quit his band. I thought the Replacements were a fantastic band, and they deserved everything they were working for. So of course I didn?t take Bobby?s offer and just said ?You?re nuts!!? That was the start of our long friendship...
Later the Replacements kicked Bob out of the band and at that point me and Bob started talking seriously about putting something together. Bob was in various band ?formations? with me (as well as playing and jamming with other Mn. outfits such as ?Static Taxi? and ?The Bleeding Hearts?). In all the formations we put together the dynamic between our playing was usually the same. I was the singer and also played guitar, Bob was the lead guitarist. I would play the basic root chords while Bob would play most of the leads and fills as well as cranking on the chords. His playing was amazing, often genius. But there is a whole story to his playing. To say it in a short form -when he was on- it was unbelievable. Stuff you never heard before. But when he was off he would often not even hit the notes in the right key! This being said, I have to make it clear again that Bob was a guitar genius and a major ?shredder?. Although sometimes inconsistent he played in a way that was magical and ?transcendental?. Big words, but true. The main thing was his feeling and realness within the song. He also played with a ferocious amount of concentrated energy, that would more often than not send a song right over the top.
And another thing that set him apart was his natural kind of ?symphonic? approach when structuring his parts. This set him apart from most players, although his other side of ?chaos? and unpredictability probably alienated people who wanted a more classic conservative approach in their guitar heroes. Playing with Bob was a kind of ?schizo? experience because sometimes it would really be great and other times it could be pretty awfull. A lot of this had to do with alcohol and some of it was just classic ?Bobby??. This legacy of ?Savant-ness? as we called it, and the behavior involved of course existed when he was in The Replacements. Bob told me one story about them playing New Orleans and on this occasion he somehow separated from the group and went to a bar. He got very drunk and then was lost. He didn?t know the name or address of the venue and had to call his girlfriend all the way in Minnesota and say ?Baby, I?m separated from the band and I don?t know where the club is?. So she looks at her copy of the tour schedule and says ?Bob get a taxi right NOW!! You are VERY late for the show!! Get in a taxi and go to number 125 Bourbon Street!!? So Bob does that. He gets in a taxi and the taxi drives him two blocks (a couple hundred meters at the most) and Bob gets out, walks into the club/concert hall where the band is already playing. The audience sees Bob and goes completely crazy, clapping their hands and cheering. He gets up onstage and the audience is ecstatic as Bob plays his incredible killer guitar magic. But people were unaware that the band hated him for this kind of shit. Anyway, this is the baggage I inherited and we formed a band, my adventure with Bob was about to begin! Challenging to say the least.
We formed the group ?Model Prisoners? that went through two lineups. The first thing I noticed was that when Bob was way drunk he often played guitar like he was a beginner so I convinced and even forbid him from drinking before a show. Bob was kinda looking up to me like a sort of big brother figure and he liked it when I laid out rules for him. The problem with Bob not drinking was that when he was completely sober and straight he played even worse!!! I soon found out that Bob was one of these special types of geniuses that could unlock his immense talent only when he had the right amount of alcohol ?lubrication?. If he drank too much it was terrible , if he didn?t drink at all is was worse , but with the right amount of drinks under his belt he was doing brilliant stuff on the guitar that was never heard before. Like as if he was wandering around in the cosmos and bumping into new planets. The second formation of ?Model Prisoners? was myself, Eric Magistad and Jeff Rogers (Jeff had also been in Sonny Vincent and The Extreme with me). Eric was a kid from Minnesota who was totally thrilled to be playing in the band. He was a huge Replacement fan and even carved up his desk in High School with a knife writing-?The Replacements? ?so you can imagine he was on cloud nine when we asked him to play bass! But soon he was becoming very disillusioned... Bob like I said was brilliant and bringing a special element to my music but at the same time he was also showing up drunk to rehearsals. We usually had to drive to his place and wake him up to get him to the rehearsal room. The routine would go like this. I would drive and pick up Eric first, then Jeff and we would drive to Bobs place. Then we would send Eric up to Bob?s apartment. Bob was usually sleeping off a hang over or watching TV and at first he would tell Eric to ?Fuck Off!!?. He knew if he didn?t come downstairs Eric would have to get me and I would go up there and motivate Bob by either giving him cold coffee or making some action that would irritate him so much that he would figure its easier to get up than be tortured. So usually rather then let Eric get me, Bob would yell at Eric for a few minutes, even sometimes punch him, but he would finally come downstairs. This was always the best scenario because when Bob showed up on his own he was usually pretty tanked.
We played a number of shows together, mostly in the Midwest areas like Minnesota, Wisconsin and places like Chicago. Normally after a show Bob would stay for hours in the girls bathroom (toilet). At first I would say ?Hey, where?s Bob??? Then I would see him later and say ?Hey man, where were you all night?? and he would reply ?In the girls bathroom, that?s were they all go?. That was one of Bobs ?cracked? methods of meeting a girl. Unusual for mankind - but perfect for Bob. Hanging around in the girl?s room saying whacky things! And if he met a girl in the main social area of the club, more often that not he would say as a first sentence of introduction ?Could you lift up your shirt?? Although this never really got much response from women other than disbelief or disgust, sometimes Bob would hit the jackpot and I would observe him from across the room with a wild girl in front of him lifting up her shirt and showing him her tits!! Amazing!!! Something I want to make clear at this point is that I am telling you stories about my friend Bob and being forthright and accurate in order to give you a little glimpse of this man. But in no way am I trying to put him in a bad light or try to make him seem unattractive to his fans or people reading this. I Loved Bob dearly in my heart and I miss him so very much? To be honest you have to know that he was like so many other damaged people in this world?but for all his mistakes and screw ups I can tell you he had a golden soul and a quality of innocence that you rarely find.
Anyway, that being said... Bob also had many juvenile tricks. In the begining, directly after shows he would go to the promoters of the show we and collect the money ?Yeah, Sonny told me to get the cash??before any of us knew what he was doing, he would run off with our gig money and we wouldn?t be able to find him for a week!!! Soon everyone wanted to kick Bob out of the band (Not me but mostly Eric!). I finally had to call Bob and tell him the sad news that the other guys wanted to kick him out. Bob started crying on the telephone saying that we can?t kick him out. He said he loved playing the music and he was sorry for everything... ?But please don?t kick me out?. I got off the phone and decided I would be a fool to kick out a brother who was literally crying tears because he loved music so much. I called everyone in the band and I made a plan for us to go to a therapist together to try to get Bob more healthy and easier to work with. People thought that was pretty funny... a band going to therapy together! But we tried it? It kept us together for a while but still the crazy shit didn?t stop - in fact it got worse. One night after a show in Milwaukee we all took some L.S.D called ?Rambo?; of course suddenly Bob was missing and we had to drive around for 3 hours to find him. Finally we did and started our journey back to Minnesota. It was the most bizarre drive you can imagine. Bob was grabbing his throat the whole time screaming ?My Adams Apple is in the wrong place but my Mom will fix that with the Devil!!!?. While we were driving through the vast farmland areas of Wisconson we bagan to calm down a bit. Bob said: ?Sonny if you can write a song that farmers will listen to while milking cows, it will be a big hit!!?. We started getting crazy again and came up with a lot of perfect ?Cow Milking Songs? as well as all singing every Elvis Presley song for hours. Completely nuts and over the top. We arrived home in Mpls at ?Lyle?s? bar just in time to drink all day. The whole band was BECOMING Bob!!
Adams Apple:
Sonny Vincent - My Times With Bobby Stinson- Part 3
Eventually we simply stopped rehearsing as it was becoming more and more difficult to get Bob out of bed and Eric had become a shattered person. Instead of practicing me and Eric just started hangin around as pals for a few months going out to clubs and stuff. Then I put together a new line up called ?Shotgun Rationale? as well as joining Moe Tuckers band as her guitarist. My band ?Shotgun Rationale? was doing a lot of tours in the U.S., Canada and Europe and at that point I had given up on the ?Band? concept and we had a ?rotating? line?up ( Bob, Cheetah, Greg Norton, Mort, and many others). I liked it this way because I could invite people into it without any long-term expectations. Later I moved to Europe but still recruited various musicians from New York and Minnesota to join me on Euro tours with ? Shotgun Rationale?. At the time I also did U.S. tours and sometimes visited Minnesota from time to time. Whenever I went to Minnesota I would contact Bob and we would hang out together. He always said ?Hey Sonny you bring all these guys with you to tour Europe but you never ask me!! Come on I wanna tour with ya?!? Finally I invited Bob. We did a tour of Europe together somewhere in the mid 90?s and sure enough it was totally insane. To Bobs credit he really practiced the music hard before the tour, he wanted it to be great..and it was?but it came complete with every sort of crazy madness imaginable!
There are so many examples and I can only name a few here. Everything from Bob copping drugs from an audience member while on stage during our show, to him going into a whorehouse to drink because he would be out of our reach and control in there. Police, puking, broken guitars, blood, nakedness, tears and insane shows. I often get together with friends from those times and I even have to double check with them to see if I am imagining some of the preposterous things.
A mutual friend of mine and Bob?s was Jamie Garner. Jamie actually at one time lived in the same apartment with Bob and years later and I found myself asking Jamie questions like ?Hey Jamie do you remember Bob always ate his meals with two chairs, one chair to sit on and one to put his plate on?? Jamie said ?yeah he did that all the time? you see I often have to recheck these memories because sometimes they seem too bizarre. Bobby never ate his meals at a table, it was ALWAYS two chairs!!! Bob also had the ability to pull many beers out of his pockets at the best moments. In fact the first day I went out drinking with Bob he even pulled a fried chicken leg out of his pocket and ate it. That?s not so strange but in Bobs case there was always a twist. He pulled an UNWRAPPED fried chicken leg out of his trouser pocket. It was just in there next to his keys and stuff... I guess he was saving it for the perfect moment. There he sat at the bar with me, chomping on that chicken leg. It had pocket fuzz and old tissue on it! Bob was a strange Motherfucker and I guess to an extent so am I, so we got along fine. He was a rare person and I miss him. Sometimes I?m doing something fun and I often think of him and wish he could be there with me. We did many things together, we had side jobs painting houses, we were constantly being pulled over for speeding in my ?59 Cadillac and we were ALWAYS in trouble with the police, but throughout all of this Bob would crack very funny dry jokes.
When Bob first started playing with me he didn't have a guitar. After the Replacements told him he was out,, he sold his guitar and he got a job washing dishes at a dinner on Lake Street. Eventually Tommy his brother lent him a vintage Gibson SG but after a month or so Tommy needed it back. So for the remainder of our playing together Bob used my second guitar which was a vintage 1970 Les Paul Black beauty, the one I played was a 1969 ( also a black beauty ?Fretless Wonder?). Bob used Dean Markley Strings and I used Ernie Ball. For amps we both had a MARSHALLS (100 WATTS). One time back then I called an old pal, Cheetah Chrome, in New York. I told him about the band I had with Stinson in Minnesota and invited Cheetah to come out and join. I knew it would be a short lived line-up, because both of those guys were on a kind of short fuse at the time, but I also knew it would be a real unique ?once in a lifetime? event getting those two playing in the same band for a while.
So Cheetah came out to Minnesota from N.Y.. He brought a strange white guitar. I don?t remember but I think it was maybe a modified strat. I could also write a book about Cheetah in Minneapolis, what a crazy mixture that was. In personal matters Cheetah was always a sweetheart but when he went out he would get completely ?off the hook? and cause all kinds of trouble, I stopped letting him borrow my clothes after a while because he would come home to my place after a night of debauchery with my fine ?threads? all chewed up and destroyed!!! Anyway, the rotating line- up of ?Shotgun Rational? rotated it?s way into including both Cheetah from the ?Dead Boys? AND Bob from the ?Replacements?. You can only imagine the mayhem. I remember way before Cheetah arrived in Mpls. Bobby was constantly calling me and asking me ?shop? questions. Bob- ?Oh! What kind of guitar will he bring?? ?Oh, what gauge strings does he use?? Oh, what kind of plectrums does he use?? Finally Cheetah arrived in Minnesota at the rehearsal studio where he stood in front of Bob for the first time, I said ? Bobby Stinson here is Cheetah Chrome?. The first thing Bobby said to Cheetah was ?Bend over!!!? Cheetah really liked that kind of humor and they got along famously. At shows they would reach over each others guitars and then play on each others guitars. What I mean is that they would reach over and would be fingering the chords on the others guitar -while kissing each other on the lips! No lie!! Very funny stuff and quite a sight to behold!
There isn?t much mentioned in the various writings on the Minnesota music scene about the collaboration between Bob and I. Bob always attributed this to the fact that I was from New York and thus designated as an outsider. To me this is simply another case of journalists trying to re-write history to suit themselves somehow. I guess they are probably boxed inside their own heads and want to write their own version of things. Also at the time I didn?t wear those plaid shirts that everyone and their mothers uncle were wearing in Seattle and Minnesota (Hee! Hee! Now the bands in Minnesota dress like I do!). Anyway, it?s the music that speaks the loudest. Here it is after years in the closet! Certainly it doesn?t feel good to know that without this album release perhaps people would never know of our times together. Bobby and me were really close ?brothers? and he opened his heart to me. I knew for sure how much he loved music because he always expressed that. He once asked me ?Sonny would you die for music?? I didn't know exactly what he meant but from my point of view I said ?no?. Bob then looked at me with a very deep, soulful, yet sarcastic look and said ?Yeha, well I would?. And in some universe where that would be required I knew that Bobby would have died for music. Bobs playing had and will always have a profound effect on music fans and musicians. Whenever and wherever there are young musicians who are looking for real role models of the true RocknRoll feeling and spirit...Bobby will be right there for them to discover and be inspired by.
The last time I saw Bobby was in a club in Minneapolis called First Avenue. I was on tour as Moe Tucker?s (Velvet Underground) guitarist and I put Bobby on the guest list. A few months before that I had been on tour with Bobby in Europe with one of our ?Shotgun Rationale? line-ups. The last show of our European tour was in a place called Enger, Germany. At this show Bobby was singing with me, together on my microphone, which he knew from past shows was something I didn't prefer. The main reason is that sometimes the singing he was doing didn?t have much to do with the song we were playing. Once in Chicago I warned Bob to never do that again ...and now here he was again, bellowing? like crazy in Enger, Germany. Anyway I swung at him and connected to his neck (later some audience members said they thought that was part of our act, fighting). After I slugged him Bob stayed away from my microphone. But shortly after a few more songs Paul (Paul Smith - Guitar) came up to me and said ?Bobbys naked again!? I looked over to Bob?s side of the stage just in time to see him running naked into the audience. Madness all around but a high octane show never the less.
Adams Apple:
Sonny Vincent - My Times With Bobby Stinson- Part 4
Anyway, back to our last meeting at First Avenue. For some strange reason when we saw each other we ran to each other like a friggin Hallmark greeting card commercial. We embraced and I gave Bob a kiss on the side of his neck (coincidentally right on the same spot where I punched him in Germany!). Then Bob said ??Hey, when is the next round in Europe?? (?round? as in boxing, and ?round? as in touring- the dry humor always), Meaning he was ready for another tour even though the last one was grueling and crap for money. After that show at ?First Avenue? with Moe and Sterling I said goodbye to Bobby, I didn?t know it would be the last time I would see him. Sometimes I get the idea that there must be an Angel up there somewhere that made sure that the last encounter I had with Bob was sweet. It?s so strange that that my kiss landed right where I had previously punched him onstage! Bob was really unique and special, I have tons and tons of sweet, funny and wild of stories about him, he was special and I?m sure all his fans and anyone who knew him as a friend always miss him. God bless you, Bobby.
- Sonny Vincent
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