Slim Dunlap, Guitarist For The Replacements, Passes at 73

Slim Dunlap, the guitarist for The Replacements, who joined the band in 1987 following original guitarist Bob Stinson’s departure, passed away yesterday (Dec. 18) at the age of 73 . The cause of death was attributed to a severe stroke he suffered in February 2012. Dunlap played on two of the beloved Minneapolis cult band’s acclaimed later albums: 1989’s Don’t Tell A Soul and 1990’s All Shook Down and was also an accomplished solo artist in his own right.

Dunlap’s family sent out a note yesterday confirming his passing published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Bob passed at home today at 12:48 p.m. surrounded by family. We played him his ‘Live at the Turf Club (’Thank You Dancers!)’ CD, and he left us shortly after listening to his version of ‘Hillbilly Heaven’ — quite poignant. It was a natural decline over the past week. Overall it was due to complications from his stroke.”

Tommy Stinson of the Replacements put out a statement on Facebook on Dec. 19: “Happy Holidays to all, it is with heavy heart that i have to report the passing of another sweet, and important Bob in our world. Our brother Slim Dunlap has passed away. Made more profoundly sad to happen the day after what would have been my natural brother Bob’s birthday. I use the words sweet and brother as they apply to both Bob’s! Slim was one of the sweetest humans i have known and was very much like a brother to me. Slim will be missed greatly. Much love me brother.”

Born Aug. 14, 1951, Bob “Slim” Dunlap grew up in Plainview, Minnesota, where his father was a lawyer, a state Senator and played piano. Influenced by Elvis’ guitarist Scotty Moore and the great Chet Atkins, Dunlap’s unique style of guitar playing utilized a thumb pick, something not often seen in punk rock circles.  

Dunlap was already an established Minneapolis musician when he joined The Replacements with the release of 1986’s Pleased To Meet Me, an album recorded as a trio and produced by the legendary Jim Dickinson at Memphis’ Ardent Studios.

“I feel like Slim Dunlap, a.k.a. Bob a.k.a. Slim, was really the most unlikely replacement for Bob Stinson,” Michael Hill, an A&R executive at Sire who worked closely with The Replacements, told Pollstar. “Yet, I think without Slim joining the band, we wouldn’t have had the band continue. He got on the program with everybody’s antics, but there was something about him, there was a little bit of an inner calmness there and an ease with which he got into the band. I really think it would’ve been over if he hadn’t been there.”

In “Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements,” author Bob Mehr describes Dunlap’s first band, Mrs. Frubbs, as a “Small Faces-styled mod outfit.” In 1976, Dunlap joined Thumbs Up led by a “wild White soul shouter” Curtis Almsted. Dunlap would later join Almsted in Curtiss A, considered part of the Twin Cities’ early punk scene. That band would change its name to The Spooks, then the Personals before Dunlap started his own group The Sentimentals.

In the relatively small Minneapolis scene of the 1980s, Dunlap came into regular contact with The Replacements and struck up a friendship with Bob Stinson. In “Trouble Boys” Mehr describes Dunlap being “taken aback” by the group’s live shows. “The Replacements right off the bat…it was like, ‘What the hell? Where did this come from,” Dunlap told the author. “What could they have been listening to, to have churned that out? But Paul (Westerberg) was always like that. He could take all these ideas and put them together in a way you hadn’t thought of.”  

Dunlap would work at Minneapolis’ famed First Avenue club as a janitor with Bob Stinson, who after being dismissed from The Replacements, encouraged Dunlap to try out to be his replacement. Simultaneously, Slim’s wife, Chrissie Dunlap, who worked as a booker First Avenue, also told The Replacements’ bassist Tommy Stinson, they should bring in her husband.

Paul Westerberg, The Replacements singer/songwriter and prime mover, in “Trouble Boys” compared the hiring of Dunlap to replace Bob Stinson to “The Rolling Stones deciding to replace Brian Jones, not with Mick Taylor but with Carl Perkins,” and that he “wanted someone bluesier, who was hip to country music, ‘cause that’s where I envisioned the band going.”

Dunlap joined the band on the “Pleased To Meet Me Tour,” which consisted mostly of theatre dates and large clubs, including plays at Chicago’s Riviera, The Ritz and The Beacon Theatre in New York City and two nights at First Avenue as well as an ill-fated European run.  The band’s often-shambolic live shows were infamous for inebriation and self-destruciton though at times they could be spot-on amazing.

The band’s former agent, Frank Riley, now of High Road Touring, told Pollstar he remembers “Slim (Bob) as a good human being, a super nice guy…a wonderful guitar player. He was the replacement Replacement, so that came with a lot of weight and baggage. And it was tragic when he suffered that severe stroke.  Those times feel like yesterday to me…so long ago…but they are long gone, some of the legacy lives on…and as we know, music never springs from a unique place, it is a process of building on those before. And The Replacements were essential in their time, adding to the continuum, even though a lot of times they were very disruptive.”

Frank Barselona of Premiere Talent would later became the band’s agent and booked The Replacements a one-off opening for The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards at Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, NJ .

The Replacements’ subsequent “Don’t Tell A Soul Tour” in 1989 included amphitheater plays at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, Jones Beach Theater on Long Island, Pine Knob in Clarkston Michigan and two nights at NYC’s Beacon Theatre (with the New York Dolls’ Johnny Thunders opening).  The group’s final “All Shook Down Tour” in 1991 and 1992 included 71 North American dates and 25 European dates.

Barselona also set the band up to open 40 shows for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ for 1989’s “Strange Behavior Tour” in support of the Full Moon Fever playing for much bigger audiences primarily at amphitheaters. That tour too, however, saw intentionally chaotic performances with the band unsuccessfully trying to get kicked off the tour.

After the band’s break-up in 1991, Dunlap toured with Dan Baird of the Georgia Satellites, and released his two lauded solo albums The Old New Me and Times Like This (whose numerous fans include Bruce Springsteen).

After Dunlap suffered his stroke, The Replacements in 2013 recorded “Songs For Slim,” a benefit EP, which was followed that same year by a double benefit album Songs for Slim: Rockin’ Here Tonight, which included songs by Jeff Tweedy, X’s John Doe, Frank Black, Lucinda Williams, Jakob Dylan, Soul Asylum, Craig Finn and others.

When The Replacements broke-up after the “All Shook Down Tour,” Dunlap told Bob Mehr that “I knew I’d never be at that level again, but I did everything I could to make that band as good as I could. And then I was done.”