The Impediments capsized on their first ever voyage, a coffee-and-soft-drinks-affair at a Minneapolis church basement for a group of recovering alcoholics. They turned up drunk as rats, that's all. A 1000 or more vows range out to never let The Impediments play again so the band had but one option; change the name. To The Replacements of course. THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL.

REM's guitarist Peter Buck, about whose taste and judgement is unqualified, committed to paper that "Paul Westerburg's passionate vocals have all the energy and excitement of rock 'n' roll and none of the self-consciousness that has crept in over the last decade." To which I'll add that Buck's astute comment stands for The Replacements' music as well.

He goes on to add that "you wouldn't want to drown a band like this in tons of overdubs. They try and get it as loose and free as possible which embodies the whole rock 'n' roll feeling. The Replacements are the kind of band that you just have to capture: you can't expect to produce them."

The Replacements' first album carried the legendary line "FILE UNDER POWER TRASH".

I sit in a WEA interview room with Paul and the bassist Tommy Stinson. Tommy's 19. When the group started, he was 12. Tommy's older brother Bob, and drummer Chris Mars, currently off-the-sauce, just couldn't get out of bed this morning due to the night before. It must have been bad. Paul and Tommy are eating their free lunch as we talk; I get the sound of salt-and-vinegar and salami-and-lettuce wrapped around their tonsils. "Interviews are OK" they munch. Afterwards I have to ask my friend who runs the cafe round the corner to translate the interview. If this corners The Replacements' attitude, let me further it by quoting a line from their "Treatment Bound" which goes "THE LABEL WANTS A HIT BUT WE DON'T GIVE A SHIT".

So this is the real rock 'n' roll, right? Well, believers, The Replacements have come to save us. Over four albums — "Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash", "Hootenannie", "Let It Be" and their first for a major, "Tim", split by an EP "Stink", Paul Westerburg has developed into unquestionably America's finest new songwriter, tracing a musical map across his continent unlike any before him (possibly Alex Chilton's Big Star, but then Hardcore thrash didn't exist as such in 1972/3). Punk, hardcore, heavy metal, bar-room boogie, wracked Country & Western, soaring Top 40 pop songs, bittersweet ballads, blistering Rock 'n' Roll, all invested with a sharp, poignant ear for melody, rhythm and tradition. Their encore aren't simply jokes but signposts to The Replacements' youth — The Beach Boys, Alice Cooper, Edison Lighthouse, T. Rex, Kiss, Big Star, The Beatles, REM, Aerosmith, anything that has the right tune, anything could be heard on the radio.

More than one band member has been known to fall off stage. Bob has been known to wear a tutu or a nappy on stage, or just his underpants. He once caused a huge row by pissing on the speaker leads. They still get "shitfaced" drunk but not as much as they used to. Paul had a glitter 'n' eyeliner phase. If this all sounds like a wasted, irreverent, can't-grow-up bunch of boy's own crapsters, it's just half the truth. If a song carries a writer's story, then the frustration, depression, freedom, lust, fun and anger at the core of Westerburg's lyrics can stand for all of us. Like the first song he can remember, Paul just can't get no satisfaction.

How The Replacements play is a question of attitude, they don't play very well even after six years, but the spontaneity and reckless disobedience the group show to convention unearths a purist's rock 'n' roll: raucous, careless youth who can do damn near everything. But it's how they do it that counts, and these boys just want to have fun. And if rock 'n' roll means doing what you want — the clothes, to sing a folk song or use strings on an otherwise violent thrashing album of songs, being drunk-and-disorderly in possession of your songwriting pen — then The Replacements are it.

Yes, at this moment they're the best rock 'n' roll group I've ever heard, and this was the interview I got. It might clear up a couple of points.

I HATE MUSIC/IT'S GOT TOO MANY NOTES (A Paul Westerburg lyric)

How did your first gig in Britain go?

Paul: "It was a typical re-meeting of the band because we never really practice when we're at home so it was the first time we seriously picked up our instruments in three weeks. We're not much on rehearsals, so all in all I don't think it was kinda bad. We weren't comfortable but it was alright."

Tommy: "It was a tight stage, everyone crammed together, people with their hands on stage. We don't like to stand on people's hands.

Paul: "We're used to loud crowds, people who participate. We don't care if people get up on stage but we don't want anybody to get hurt, although I prefer people on stage to standing back with their arms folded."

When you feel it's a bad gig, does it show through the music?

Paul: "I think so. I guess it's that old feeling of satisfaction. It takes a couple of days for my voice to get wound up and then it's good for a couple of days and then it sort of deteriorates."

Do you ever take lessons?

Paul: "Naah! Isn't it obvious?"

Just my little joke. What's your attitude to rehearsing then?

Tommy: "It's too straight to go in try to rehearse. What do you rehearse? All your old songs. That gets so boring."

Paul: "We still can't play the songs even though we've been playing them for five years. We'll still go up there any given night and forget half the chords and stuff. It really doesn't pay for us to try and remember all the songs because we forget them the next day anyway."

Do you suffer bad memory loss?

Paul: "Probably. Live, we never complete a lot of the songs. You get to the point when it's almost there and we figure that's good enough. Another thing — we can kill a song by working on it too much. We whipped up one the other night and just improvised on stage and it sounded great, and then we tried it again the next night and it sounded good and the third night, we knew it and it sounded terrible. Once you know it, you can play with it to a point where you over-embellish it so we're better off when things are simple and we're still wondering what chords are coming next."

How does that attitude work when you go into the studio?

Tommy: "Sometimes it doesn't."

Paul: "That's true. I can't say we're terribly comfortable in the studio, to sit down and play music which we can do but that really isn't a whole lot of fun for us."

Has your method of recording changed as you've become more experienced?

Paul: "It hasn't changed a whole lot. We've never gotten seriously into doing the drums first and the bass together and stuff like that. We pretty much always play live and then whatever sounded really bad, we would do over again, which is generally the vocal and the lead guitar, which is Bob."

Why does "Tim" sound just that bit smoother?

Tommy: "We tried to do it differently, laying down the basic track and then the guitar and then the vocal over instead of doing it all live. We flopped."

Did the fact that you were with a major record company for the first time make the difference?

Paul: "They wanted it to be more radical, that was the irony. They wanted us to make it more powerful and wilder. That's what no-one understands."

Paul: "The songs didn't necessarily dictate the way we used to play, like bash 'em out. I prefer to lose some of the spirit so as to have the right chord changes which wouldn't be there if all four of us came in there, all tense and all. I think it's OK to take more time with the quieter ones to get them right."

How long does it take you to record an album?

Tommy: "About a couple of weeks to record."

Paul: "Three days, pretty much on 'Tim'. Tommy, Chris and I recorded most of the songs and then Bob came in later and did his guitar stuff in, like, one day or two. 'Stink' was done in two days and sounds like it. We mix very quickly. The producer Tommy Erdelyi (better known as the ex-Tommy Ramone) was very meticulous and I think he lost some of the spirit. We were saying 'turn this up, turn this up, do this, go now!' and he'd go 'OK' and then he'd do it 45 more times and then go 'OK, I'm ready' and by then he'd lost it. You need someone who has technical knowledge who's wild and can also make you feel comfortable. It's hard to get all three."

Who are your greatest influences?

Paul: "I would say The Ramones are probably the greatest influence in the way I play guitar because I can't play well. Johnny Ramone started the whole thing like that (hands move very fast perpendicular to the table). As for songwriting, I think Alex Chilton was probably bigger than I'll admit to myself because everybody mentions it and I just think 'oh fuck it' but I do love the first two Big Star albums. Loudon Wainwright actually. I like his style of lyrics where he puts something funny and also something tragic in the same song, twisting songs around."

Your manager said earlier that your, let's say, slapdash-reckless-carefree stage presence, is purely down to entertaining yourselves first and always.

Paul: "That's the way it's gotta be. This isn't showbiz, it's rock 'n' roll. We figure that we play it for ourselves and then people are going to like it if we like it. People can tell how falsely a band is playing to the crowd. People don't want to be played at, they want to be played for."

At Dingwalls, you changed instruments for 'Waitress In The Sky' off 'Tim'.

Tommy: "That's the only way that we can play it! It's more fun that way. Paul can't play drums and none of us can play our parts in the song."

Paul: "People are relieved from hearing Bob play the same lead. It's almost like a little break. Also the song has too much finesse. It's got acoustic guitars and stuff and we don't have any. It's like we cover our own song."

If the song falls apart, that's rock 'n roll for you as well?

Paul: "It's us, that's all I know."

Tommy: "The Mats rule! That's what they call us back home, The Mats. The Doormats, The Placemats, Shitmats."

The Mats because people walk all over you?

Paul: "Invite us to breakfast and lay us on the table."

That's rock 'n' roll, nudge nudge...

Paul: "Take us on the sink, Baby!"

Tell me your opinion about alcohol.

Paul: "What does this look like to you, buddy? (waves a can of Fanta Orangeade at me). We drink. We're not ashamed of it."

What's it like being sober when you're playing?

Paul: "God!"

Tommy: "We tried it yesterday for a TV show and it did not work!"

Paul: "Afterwards, we went next door to the pub and thought 'what did we do that for?' I did a whole tour sober once and I sang well and got extremely bored. I'd rather do a tour slightly numbed. I don't drink heavily when I'm at home. We have our girlfriends and our other lives but when you get on the road and you think about what you're doing, it's scary because you don't really want to know that you're real far from home qnd you don't know what the hell you're doing so it makes it more, like one of the boys, everybody having a drink."

Say something on behalf off Chris and Bob.

Paul: "Chris would ask you how far London is from England and Bob would ask you to lend him a couple of bucks."

Your instruments?

Paul: "We got some."

Tommy: "It looks more like furniture."

Paul: "We've got a black one that goes 'TOOOOONNN'."

Tommy: "I got a black one that resembles a sofa."

Paul: "Bob's got one that he breaks every week. Chris has got rented drums but I don't think we're going to be taking 'em back after we leave. We've broken two cymbals and I think we've invented something. I've never seen anybody go up for a ride on a hi-hat!"

Brand names please?

Paul: "Maybe then they'll send us some! I got a Les Paul 1955 Fretless Wonder."

Which you broke last week.

Paul: "I did! But not on purpose! My days of breaking things on purpose have come to a slow halt."

Strings.

Paul: "I use heavier strings but I don't know what gauge - medium or whatever. Bob plays the little strings so that he can go 'RING RING' and I play the fat ones so I can go 'RANG RANG'..."

Tommy: "I play Rickenbacker basses because they're easy to play, and I play tire big strings so that I can go 'RUNG RUNG'."

Paul: "My favourite guitar's a little cheap Gibson Challenger which cost about 200 bucks. It's great because it's light and I think it makes me look bigger. I feel a little taller when I play it."

Any hassles you want to air?

Paul: "The company we rented the amps from..."

Tommy: "Peter Webber, fuckin' horseshit company. Everything we got from them blew up. Lousy company. Write that. The first night, the Marshall amp blew up. The whole tour, my bass amp was just like shit, a piece of crap."

Paul: "Mine blew up the other night and the ones they brought to the studio the other night didn't work."

Tommy: "They rented us three other amps to try out 'cos these weren't working and they were all fucked too."

Paul: "Not that we're any connoisseurs."

Doesn't it all add to the charm? Different sounds from blow-ups?

Paul: "I actually like it during the middle of song because it gives you a chance to rest."

I still think "Tim" sounds like the best rock 'n roll album of '85.

Tommy: "Are you drunk? Did you have a few? Dipping in the gipper?

Why "Tim"? I have to ask.

Paul: "It's the smallest inside joke imaginable in the band."

What about calling your last album "Let It Be"?

Tommy: "'Cos we couldn't get sued for it and we didn't have any other ideas."

Paul: "It came on the radio once and somebody said 'let's call it that' and we laughed hysterically for about 15 minutes, so we had it."

Did you ever fight on stage?

Paul: "We never want to hurt each other but I did go at Tommy with a bottle the other night but it's all in fun... it's part of the game... how close we can come to hurting each other without hurting each other. I smashed a bottle on the amp and then went at him with the re-mains."

Tommy: "Like in the cowboy movies!"

Paul: "Have you ever done it? So many people have never seen it before and it's frightening, but you're laughing while you're doing it."

At Dingwalls Bob kept pushing you over.

Tommy: "That's what we like the best, to have fun. To goof off."

Paul: "Like we're trying to invent a new sport and can't quite get the hang of it. Also my balance is poor when I sing and I tend to fall over on one leg and people think I'm just bombed but that's the way I do it."

Tommy: "Yeh, drunk for us is not being able to play."

Paul: "Many times we're what someone else would call drunk but to us, you put on your guitar, you pick up a beer and you plug it in. You have to do those things together. Anyhow we get a kick out of it like the funniest thing is to knock Chris's drums over. He's the polite member of the band and he sort of has to go and pick 'em up (mass laughing... )..."

Tommy: "It's so funny to watch him play and watch one of his drums fall over."

At Dingwalls you came on like a Heavy Metal band.

Paul: "Our live performances and our records are two different things."

Tommy: "A lot of times we'll play a good fast set one night, real powerful, and then the next night play real goofy and start to get silly, changing instruments or jumping on someone's back."

You play more than one Kiss cover.

Paul: "We do 'Black Diamond' but we don't do it exactly like Kiss. We take the Jerry Lee Lewis approach which is, once you cover it, it's yours. We also do 'Rock 'N' Roll All Night And Party All Day' but we usually save that for a crowd that doesn't get it. It's a dumb, stupid song!"

Paul: "A lot of the live has to do with Bob. We can control him in the studio but live, he's like an animal out of the cage so we sorta lean toward the louder and heavier stuff 'cos that's his forte. If we're all in a good mood and want to play something quiet, Bob will come over and kick your amp over."

How do other groups take to you?

Tommy: "A lot of times we go talk to them."

Paul: "And give 'em drinks if they're good."

Tommy: "Other times we'll go on and say 'you fuckers suck.'"

Paul: "And go and bust up their dressing room and then run back to ours and go tell the owner. In fact, we wanna make it so big that we can hire people to break stuff for us. We're getting very lazy in our old age."

Any last requests?

Paul: "I wish they could make an amp that was loud that wouldn't make me deaf. My left ear..."

Is that Bob?

Paul: "Yeah, Bob's on my left. Six years of Bob!"

Tommy: "Six years of hell!"

That's a great title for this piece, "Six years with Bob".

Paul: "Yeah, do it. Make a point of sending a copy to his doorstep."

It's taken you a long time to get over here.

Paul: "We were waiting for the war with Libya to start. We came over as the secret weapon. We're here to save you, don't you know?"