RIP Laurie Lindeen
When Laurie Lindeen was a bored student at the University of Wisconsin, she decided to take her own, uncredited class in forming an all-girl punk band. College was getting her nowhere and so she formed that band and moved to Minneapolis where Prince was the resident superstar and where her favorite bands lived - Soul Asylum and The Replacements.
I’ll admit it. I wouldn’t be writing about Lindeen if she didn’t go on to marry Paul Westerberg, the leader of my fourth-favorite band, the afore-mentioned Replacements. I don’t have any of her music - as the leader of Zuzu’s Petals - in my collection. I hadn’t read any of her book, Petal Pusher: A Rock n’Roll Memoir from 2007, until now, after she passed away this week at age 62 from a brain aneurysm.
Zuzu’s Petals had some underground hits like “Cinderella’s Daydream” and “Jackals,” but Lindeen started to have her most success when she began a writing career, launched with Petal Pusher and columns and essays that appeared widely in places like The New York Times and Huffington Post.
When she got to Minneapolis, her band gang rented a room in - of all people - Soul Asylum leader Dave Pirner’s apartment. He was a “cute blonde stoner.” While I couldn’t find the book (other than the free sample on Kindle) available to fully read on any library apps, one of her most popular essays, “Johnny Goes to College,” is available at The New York Times.
It’s about taking Johnny, her son with ex-husband Westerberg to, um, college across the country in 2017. Her son doesn’t drive much and Westerberg does not drive at all and “has successfully made a living as a professional rebel.” And he smokes cigarettes in the back seat without asking. “I am a militant nonsmoker. No one has ever smoked in my car,” she writes.
After dropping off Johnny and tearfully saying their goodbyes, Lindeen tries out a pot gummy she has purchased and begins the adjustment back in Minneapolis to her empty nest. It’s a powerful little essay and makes me want to read her full memoir.