Former Replacements guitarist Bob “Slim” Dunlap has died at the age of 73, 12 years after suffering a stroke that left him left him largely bedridden. The news was confirmed in a statement released by his family.
“Bob passed at home today at 12:48 p.m. surrounded by family,” read the statement. “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.”
Dunlap was invited to join The Replacements in 1987 by frontman Paul Westerberg. He took over from founding guitarist Bob Stinson, who’d left the band after failing to come to terms with his drug and alcohol problems, and went on to appear on the band’s final two albums, 1989’s Don’t Tell a Soul and the following year’s All Shook Down.
After the band split up in 1991, Dunlap released two solo albums, the first on Twin/Tone, the Minneapolis label responsible for the early Replacements albums. Thank You Dancers!, the live album recorded in 2002 at the 350-capacity Turf Club in St. Paul, MN, was finally released in 2020.
In the wake of Dunlap’s stroke, The Replacements recorded a four-track EP featuring Dunlap’s Busted Up alongside Everything’s Coming Up Roses from the Broadway musical Gypsy, Gordon Lightfoot’s I’m Not Sayin’, and Hank Willliams’ Lost Highway. The 10″ vinyl release was limited to just 250 copies, which were auctioned to raise funds for Dunlap’s medical treatment.
“He’s in rough shape,” said Paul Westerberg at the time. “He’s sort of paralysed, he can move his leg a little bit. When I mentioned this, it seemed like something he really wanted to happen. ‘You guys get together,’ he said in a whisper. ‘Go play a song.'”