Many Minnesota rock musicians knew ‘Cheers’ star George Wendt’s name

Just like when he walked into that bar in Boston, “Cheers” star George Wendt was cheerfully welcomed whenever he went to see Minnesota rock bands perform — which was often.

Lots of Twin Cities band members and their fans posted memories this week of concert-related encounters with the actor best known as Norm on NBC’s hit 1980s TV series, following Wendt’s death Tuesday at 76.

The Chicago-rooted, Wisconsin-educated actor was an avid fan of several of Minnesota’s best-known indie-rock bands that frequently toured down Interstate 94, including the Replacements, Hüsker Dü and Soul Asylum, the latter of which even got him to star in one of its MTV-rotated music videos.

“A funny, kind, humble man who loved music and came to many a show back in the day,” ex-Soul Asylum guitarist and co-vocalist Dan Murphy said of Wendt in a post featuring footage from the band’s 1992 video for “Black Gold.”

In the video, Wendt winds up pushing Soul Asylum frontman Dave Pirner in a vintage convertible that ostensibly has run out of gas. The footage could be a metaphor for the extra push these hardworking bands felt whenever Wendt showed his love for them.

Soul Asylum drummer Michael Bland remembered Wendt coming out to see them perform shortly after he joined the band in 2006, this time at the Troubadour in Los Angeles.

“George came through to say hey to Dave and Danny,” Bland remembered. “He was as nice a guy as I‘ve ever met.”

Wendt himself pledged his love for the Replacements in the 2011 documentary “Color Me Obsessed: A Film About the Replacements,” which spotlights the cultish fan base that still adores the Minneapolis rockers with the very Norm-like experience in the music business. In the movie, he theorized that frontman Paul Westerberg may have written his CC Club-inspired 1985 bar anthem “Here Comes a Regular” with Wendt’s “Cheers” character in mind. (Westerberg never publicly addressed that theory.)

“I know it’s about a very specific club in Minneapolis with his buddies,” Wendt said, “but I thought the line, ‘Here comes a regular/ Call out [his] name,’ I told him that might’ve been subliminally from ‘Cheers,’ from Norm.”

Wendt was a ‘Mats fan right up until the end, too. Photos circulated Tuesday on a Replacements fan page of him wearing a T-shirt from the band’s final tour in 1991. One of those posts also points to his fandom of Hüsker Dü and its singer/guitarist Bob Mould’s post-Hüskers band Sugar.

“I was in a pit at the Hollywood Palladium with him when [Sugar’s] ‘Copper Blue’ record came out,“ one fan wrote. ”Man, could that vato SWEAT!”

The longtime bassist in Mould’s current, eponymous band, Jason Narducy, remembered Wendt reached out to him via Facebook in 2015 and wanted to meet up. When they finally did hang out three years later around a Hollywood gig with Superchunk, the bassist also got to meet Wendt’s wife of 47 years, Bernadette Birkett.

“The two of them drove me back to the hotel,” the bassist said. “They were funny together. It sounded like they were trying to entertain me at first, but I think they just had a joyous energy.”