“Trouble Boys,” Bob Mehr's thoroughly researched and eminently readable biography of The Replacements, is the type of book any band (or any artist of any kind, for that matter) would kill for. Assembled over a decade from some 230 interviews, it gives the ragged Minneapolis rockers a fairer shake than even they themselves might've thought they deserved. It's a monumental tribute to a group that never quite made it. The reasons for that is the central question and subject of this book.

Mehr begins by tracing the childhoods of Bob and Tommy Stinson, Paul Westerberg and Chris Mars. Alcoholism, mental illness and child abuse abounds. The Stinsons' chaotic, vagabond early years are particularly disturbing. Their mother, Anita, goes through a series of broken, violent men who each scar Bob, in particular, for his entire life. Playing the guitar is his one link to sanity and self-worth. He forces an 11-year-old Tommy to learn to play bass because he needs him for his band, thus robbing the younger boy of any chance for a normal adolescence. Westerberg is similarly obsessed with music from an early age and sees it as his salvation. When these damaged kids come together, the results are a beautiful and unique sort of disaster.

The alchemy required to make art rather than craft is a difficult thing to articulate, especially about music. How can a barely competent guitarist have a direct line to the gods with every strum, while a diligent and talented student of the instrument's every elaborate effort sound tired and stillborn? The tension between skill and feeling is at the root of understanding the music of this band. The book makes clear that vacillating unpredictably between chaos and order was their modus operandi.

Mehr makes as nearly complete a picture of their formation and eventual disintegration as is possible. It is even more of an achievement, since their entire reputation was built on defiance and lack of interest in cooperating with anyone. Still, for all their orneriness, the band always had its champions and protectors.

Pete Jesperson, co-founder of Twin/Tone Records, was their first and biggest fan. He put out their first records, turned them onto obscure music, became their manager, protector and apologist, and was eventually fired for his trouble. The path of destruction the band left in their wake included friends, business partners, girlfriends, wives and eventually one another. Westerberg, in particular, seemed temperamentally unable to stomach coexistence when he felt there was even a tinge of inauthenticity. During a tour opening for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, after coming off stage following yet another lackluster performance, a roadie asks him, “I don't get it, man. You guys are, like, brilliant if you want to be. Why don't you want to be?” He can't come up with an answer.

Some of their inability or unwillingness to succeed can be attributed to alcoholism. As record producer Jim Dickinson observes, “Every day they were like a sine wave. They wouldn't be drunk enough early on in the day to get anything. Then they'd be good and drunk, and it would be great. And then they'd get too drunk, and they'd get useless.”

The demons each of them battled could be drowned in booze for a time, but eventually no substance could prevent them from turning on one another. After Tommy sided with Westerberg and kicked his own older brother out of the band, The Replacements were never quite the same. Though they would continue to record and tour, something died once Bob was no longer in the band. The rest of their history is Westerberg's gradual assumption of complete control. By calling all the shots he made the band disappear.

The Replacements were one of the great could've-beens in rock history. But by asking all the conceivable questions of anyone involved, Mehr paints a more complex picture than that of a band that just didn't live up to expectations. When he was a kid, Westerberg scoured the library for books about show biz. He was especially taken by the story of P.T. Barnum. So when it was his turn in the limelight, he made sure it was a circus. The fact that it made some of the crowd happy and some of it horrified was all part of the show.

Dmitry Samarov is a freelancer.