Tommy Stinson is best known as the spiky-haired charismatic bass player of legendary garage punkers
the Replacements.
Stinson had barely hit puberty in 1979 when his 20-year-old brother, guitarist
Bob Stinson, and drummer
Chris Mars coerced him into learning bass and joining their fledgling group in the basement of the
Stinson household. Soon, defining member
Paul Westerberg would join and
the Replacements would be born. In the boozy dynamics of the group, the youthful
Stinson would play a sort of Hal to
Westerberg's Falstaff. (
Tommy's brother
Bob was forced to leave the group in 1986 because of his debilitating addictions, and
Bob died in 1995, his health worn down from years of drug and alcohol abuse.) After the demise of the group in 1991,
Tommy went on to form the group
Bash & Pop, releasing
Friday Night Is Killing Me in February 1993. After that group folded,
Stinson formed Perfect, which released the
When Squirrels Play Chicken EP in 1996. In 1997,
Tommy was featured on the rock remix of
Puff Daddy's "It's All About the Benjamins." That same year, Perfect recorded a full-length album, Seven Days a Week, with producer
Jim Dickinson, but record company snafus prevented it from being released. (It was belatedly issued by Rykodisc in 2004 under the title
Once, Twice, Three Times a Maybe.) In 1998, the former
Replacements bassist joined
Axl Rose's revamped
Guns N' Roses, but during the band's frequent time off,
Stinson continued to work on solo projects, and in 2004 he released his first proper solo album,
Village Gorilla Head. Seven years later in 2011, a second solo album,
One Man Mutiny, appeared on
Stinson's own Done to Death imprint, this time featuring background vocals from his fiancée,
Emily Roberts. ~ Erik Hage