SLIM DUNLAP, 1951-2024

Bob “Slim” Dunlap, the guitarist who joined the legendary Minneapolis band The Replacements for their final two albums, died Wednesday. He was 73. According to a statement from his family, the cause of death was complications from a stroke he suffered in 2012.

Dunlap took the place of founding guitarist Bob Stinson, whose behavior had become too erratic even for the notoriously erratic Replacements. Dunlap toured with the band, led by singer-songwriter Paul Westerberg and featuring Bob’s younger brother, Tommy Stinson, on bass, in support of its 1987 Sire album, Pleased to Meet Me, and then played on 1989’s Don’t Tell a Soul and '91’s All Shook Down.

Don’t Tell a Soul is home to “I’ll Be You,” one of the more enduring Replacements songs. Its lyric about a “rebel without a clue” was referenced by Tom Petty on his “Into the Great Wide Open.”

Dunlap had been a fixture of the Minneapolis punk scene in the mid-to-late '70s, gigging with early Twin/Tone artist Curtiss A. Between shows, Dunlap worked as a taxi driver and as a janitor at the First Avenue nightclub, where his dad was the talent booker (Bob Stinson, too, worked as a janitor before the Replacements took off).

Following the dissolution of the Replacements, in 1991, Dunlap toured with Dan Baird of The Georgia Satellites and released a pair of solo albums, 1993’s The Old New Me and '96’s Times Like This, that drew praise from none other than Bruce Springsteen, who called them “beautiful rock & roll records.”

A 2013 series of tribute singles, titled Songs for Slim, released to raise money for his recovery from the stroke and later gathered into a double album, featured Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, among others.

Bob Mehr, author of the acclaimed Replacements biography Trouble Boys, wrote on Facebook that Dunlap “was the superglue for the Replacements when they could’ve easily come apart.” The guitarist is memorialized with a star on the mural outside First Avenue.

Dunlap is survived by his wife, Chrissie; children Emily Boigenzahn, Delia Dunlap and Louie Dunlap; sisters Mary Dunlap, Jane Hanson and Elizabeth Todd-Brown; and six grandchildren.

According to the Minnesota Star-Tribune, contributions can be made via Paypal to the Slim Dunlap Fund.