Only 37, Tommy Stinson has spent nearly 25 years in the music business, seeing and doing more than most rockers who’ve been around much longer. Growing up as Paul Westerberg’s bass-playing teen sidekick in the Replacements, Stinson has helmed two short-lived post-Mats bands—Bash & Pop and Perfect (whose excellent, unreleased 1998 album Seven Days A Week, now titled Once, Twice, Three Times A Maybe, will finally hit stores this year)—and is now toiling, however improbably, in the reconstituted Guns N’ Roses. Though stylistically varied—slight traces of hip hop and folk blend with plenty of garage-rock swagger—Stinson’s first solo outing is rather cohesive. On the new Village Gorilla Head (Sanctuary), spare strings and a drum machine infuse striking opener “Without A View” with melancholy; later, the Stonesy grit of “Motivation,” the acoustic, Faces-esque jaunt of “Hey You” and the treacle-free ballad “Lonely Day” are more traditional but no less exciting. Closer “Someday,” with its sorrowful riff and hopeful refrain (“Something of use will come”), ends the record on a nifty happy/sad note of which Westerberg would be proud. After a number of false starts, Village Gorilla Head is the sound of an older, wiser Stinson reaching musical maturity without aping his past.

MAGNET talked to Stinson upon his return from a vacation in the Bahamas with his mother.

So you’re in Minneapolis right now?
Yeah, I just stopped back here on my way to and from the Bahamas. I went with my mom for her early birthday/retirement present.

How was that?
It wasn’t rough, dude. [Laughs]

You’re what, 36, 37 years old?
Right, 37.

You’re young, but you’ve been in the business for so long, close to 25 years. Do you ever sit back and reflect on how long you’ve been doing this?
You know, I have. Not so much at any one point, but as time rolls on, I look at it and think, “I’m only 37, but I’ve been doing this shit for 25 years.” On one hand it’s cool, since I’m proud of it all and I still dig it. I love making music, but it’s just a weird thought that most of my life I’ve been fucking doing this. It makes me feel not so bad about being 37—that I’ve been doing this and been successful enough at it to make a living.

Have you ever thought about doing anything else as your career has gone on?
Not really. Right around the time I turned 30, I thought about doing something else in addition to music, just because I’d been kind of spinning my wheels for a little bit. I actually did get a telemarketing job for a while, which was good. I had started to feel like I wasn’t making a true kind of music. I was relying so heavily on it to make my living that it started to get bastardized a little bit. Having a day job for a while got me back to going, “Wow, I can make money doing other shit and do what I like to do for the reasons I like doing it.” Suddenly, I started writing songs that I liked.

So you went through a period where you were writing songs you were unhappy with?
I went through a period more where I was writing for commerce rather than art. As soon as you do that, you’re fucked. No one’s ever done it well as far as I know, and the ones that have done it well are crap. I’ve been doing this for so long, I’ve always respected the critical element of what I’ve done and tried to maintain some credibility. I’ve sort of grown up that way, listening to music that was more credible and being involved in music that was more credible. Not to fucking pat my own back—because I’m the last to do that—but I just try to maintain that respect. I want to stay on that path of credibility. Not that I look at myself as some fucking hoity-toity artist, but I’d rather be on a path of artistic credibility than in a fleeting money pit.

When you had the telemarketing job, what were you selling?
Toner. I was selling fucking ink cartridges and stuff. I was strapped for cash for a while, and I just decided, “Fuck it, I want to make some money, this is getting kind of stupid.” So I learned to sell toner over the phone to people who didn’t want any. The best thing about it was that I learned a whole lot about myself as far as wanting to get back to writing music that came from inside rather than music that went into someone’s back pocket. I also learned how to sell myself a little bit. With the Replacements, we never got to the point where we were confident and able to exude any strength—you know, where from a listener’s standpoint or a crowd standpoint, they’d go, “Wow, these guys are really on top of their game.” We instead fell apart in our game, which I guess is part of the fun of it all and the good part of it. It was good to get confidence in what I was doing and also be able to say, “I don’t fucking care about all of this extraneous, peripheral nonsense.” I like what I do and if I can get two people to buy it or if my daughter likes it, I’m stoked.

So were you good at selling toner?
I was. [Laughs] I got good at it really quick and, hence, made money so that I could go back to writing songs. Honest to god, the day I got good at selling toner, my entire life did a 180. It really was a pivotal moment, and I’ve been doing great since.

How far back do the songs on the new record go?
A couple of them have been works in progress for a good 10 years. “Someday,” in particular, started out as a couple of lines a long time ago, and I just worked with it for a while. I liked where it was going, but I never knew exactly where to let it go. It’s literally taken me 10 years to finish the stupid song. Over the last four or five years, I’ve been working stuff up slowly, coming up with what I felt was right. It took me a little while to get back into writing after the last Perfect record (that was shelved in 1998) that is finally getting released. After that whole thing got screwed up, I kind of wanted to be in a band, and the Guns N’ Roses thing obviously came along at the right time. After that, I didn’t really write anything for like a year. I just regrouped, listened to music and kind of kicked it. The five years that followed that period is where a lot of these songs came from.

What does your mom think of the record?
I don’t know if I’ve given her a completed copy. I played her stuff a long time ago and she really liked it. The best part is that my daughter Ruby said she really likes it. That’s awesome.

How old is she?
Fourteen. She’s a good kid. When your daughter confirms that you’ve done something good, you just go, “OK, cool. I can move on now. I’m good.”

One of the things I really like about the record is that it sounds different than what you’ve done before, yet is still similar stylistically. There’s a lot going on, but it doesn’t sound scattered. Was that something you focused on?
The amazing thing that happened—and I think it really happened in the mixing process—is that all of these different songs ended up sounding somewhat cohesive. When I was making the record, I wanted each song to be its own thing because that’s how I like listening to records. I like artists and bands that can captivate me with more than one thing. My biggest pet peeve about the way record companies work with new artists these days is that they just want 10 of the same fucking song. I like making records the other way. I wanted each song to be its own thing and sound different. All of the drum sounds, all of the guitar sounds, I change them up pretty good from song to song, and somehow in the mix, all the parts sound good together.

Some of the lyrics are fairly pointed and caustic, perhaps aimed at someone specific. Do you write about specific people or do you adopt a persona and write from that perspective?
I rarely write about any one person. In fact, I think the only song I’ve ever written about anyone in particular is “Light Of Day,” which is about a really good girlfriend of mine. We go out and have our nights out every once in a while, and we laugh our asses off. She’s married to one of my dear friends, and we have a great bond. Other than that, every one of these songs is a composite. I take bits of information from different character flaws or what have you and try to make something interesting out of it. It kind of includes everyone’s peccadilloes at once, so to speak.

Where does the title of the record come from?
It comes from [the title track]. I was trying to think of what to call the record. I had all of these ideas, and none of them were really sticking. My manager said, “Why don’t you call it Village Gorilla Head?” And we started laughing our asses off. I thought, “You know, I kind of like that.” When I was creating the song, I had these three parts, one of which is a bridge that’s no longer there. One part was reminding me of a Gorillas song. One of the parts was reminding me of the Village People, kind of going down that road. And the bridge was kind of Motörhead-like. It has this distorted bass and was all fucked up. I didn’t have any lyrics for it yet, so I just called it “Village Gorilla Head.” If that makes any sense at all, I’ll sell you a pound of it.

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