So having listened to the new Westerberg song about four times I have come up with a theory that he is mad at Tommy Stinson for something. Have you heard the song yet? Here it is:
Here are the lyrics as best as I can get them:
. . . won’t eat the carrots that I throw from a jar like orange demerits
when he screams tonight to save his life (obvious reference to Tommy still on the road performing, right?)
with a hawk ripping at his throat, I don’t know him
He ran when I went back in
Deliberately hid the very second I tried to dress him in a vest I made from a bicycle chain (maybe a reference to the reunion and the failure to keep it going?)
Now there’s a hawk ripping at his throat (Because I recently finished reading Trouble Boys I’m kind of on the side of Bob Mehr being the hawk, but am open to other theories re: Axl Rose or Pete Jesperson)
He had a chance to be my heir
My offer was more than fair
But it didn’t care (Someone’s mad that Tommy hasn’t followed directly in his footsteps. Maybe something to do with royalties? Maybe that’s why the reunion didn’t continue?)
Hawk ripping at his throat
Why’s he afraid of me? I don’t know. (This line just seems to reinforce my someone just finished reading Trouble Boys idea and that Bob Mehr is perhaps the hawk)
He could have shared my pile of boards when it was cold
But he didn’t have the decency to look me in the eye.
He never said a word, until now with a hawk ripping at his throat. . . didn’t know him at all. (Again, feels very much like a reaction to stuff Stinson said in Trouble Boys. I’m convinced of this, because maybe like me Westerberg couldn’t get throught the book until it was read to him by Mary Lucia — P.S. The audiobook is amazing!)
You’re a bad ungrateful bunny. (Fighting words, obvs)
This is how #fakenews starts. Nice attempt at armchair analysis but pegging Mehr as a hawk is a major reach; PW cooperated with Bob for Trouble Boys. He may have had a case of buyers remorse after reading the book but that’s typical for him and AFAIK they’re still on good terms. Plus, just because this song was just “released” doesn’t necessarily indicate it’s new, or even recent. PW has an extensive collection of “basement tapes” and this could easily be 20 years for all we know.
What’s funnier than a Westernerd puffing out his chest in the comments?
Um. It sounds like a song about a bunny in his back yard that he tried to feed.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
At the risk of being a dreaded Westernerd, haha, see the lyrics for Once Around The Weekend:
I watch myself fall apart
I watch the rabbits in my yard
There goes another round the bend
I gotta sweep this floor again
I’m a Westernerd. It’s okay. This is just a fun theory. It has no basis in anything other than my own speculative imagination. You disagree. That’s the fun of it, you know?
This sounds more like a father having trouble with a teenage son than it does anything about Tommy Stinson.