George Wendt didn’t only hang out at a bar when he was playing Norm on Cheers, the sitcom star, who died May 20 at the age of 76, frequented nightspots in real life to see live music and was a huge fan of the Replacements.
Wendt was so into the Minneapolis-based band that he appeared in the 2011 documentary about the group and its fans called Color Me Obsessed: A Film About the Replacements, the title of which is a play on one of the band’s songs, “Color Me Impressed.”
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In the film, Wendt shares his theory that singer/songwriter Paul Westerberg’s mournful drinking ballad “Here Comes a Regular,” from the band’s 1985 album Tim, may have been slightly influenced by his Cheers character Norm.
“ Not that I suspected somebody like Paul would watch prime-time television sitcoms, but I was thinking ‘Here Comes a Regular,’ might’ve somehow–I know it was about a very specific club in Minneapolis [he drank at] with his buddies—but I thought like the line ‘here comes a regular call out his name,’ I told him that might’ve been subliminally from Cheers, from Norm.”
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Following the news of Wendt’s death, the makers of the film took to Facebook to share their experience with the popular actor.
“We were so thrilled when George Wendt agreed to be part of Color Me Obsessed and today are saddened by the news of his passing. CMO supervising producer Jan Radder shared his thoughts earlier and it seems fitting we share them here,” they wrote.
“We interviewed him for our documentary about the Replacements, Color Me Obsessed. In setting up the interview I spent over an hour with him on the phone just talking about Twin Cities bands and the music scene here. He was a super nice guy and really, really, really wanted to be in the film (so much so that because our schedules wouldn’t align for an in-person interview and technology wasn’t cooperating, he called us by phone and had a family member film him while he answered questions just so he could be in it).”
