the basement of
Jamming in
Milk Studios,
January 25, 2008
Peter Buck
as 1982’s Chronic Town EP, 1983’s Murmur, and 1984’s
Reckoning are canonical American records; the band
continued to put out an album a year through 1988, their
intoxicating jangle shot through with Southern mystery
and post-punk smarts. In 1987, after several years as
college radio and critics’ darlings, they improbably hit
the Top 10 with “The One I Love”—penetrating the
mainstream while continuing to embody the political
righteousness, artistic integrity, and tireless DIY work
ethic of the indie nation.
Then came the megaplatinum peaks of 1991’s Out of
Time and 1992’s Automatic for the People. Every frat boy
in America was singing along to “Losing My Religion”
because he’d seen it a kajillion times on MTV. R.E.M.
were the only one of their peers—the Replacements,
Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, etc.—to wholly enjoy the fruits
of all their labor. They re-signed with Warner Bros. in
1996 to the tune of five albums and a reported $80
million. Only one other rock band that came up in the
’80s can claim that level of success.
“Not to name-drop,” says Buck, “but we were at Bono’s
house when we were in Dublin, and he raised a toast and
said, ‘Really, [you’re] the only other ones who know what
this is like. It’s like there’s eight of us in the world.’”
And their legacy is not lost on a new generation of
artists. “R.E.M. helped invent places for bands to play,
and they figured out a way to make records that appealed
to a broad bunch of people while still sounding real,”
says Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, who, along with the
National, will support the band on a U.S. tour this summer.
“I think that with the last few records, it’s gotten harder for
people to take them seriously. It’s a hard line for someone
to walk, to be really hugely successful and still remain
credible. But people are ready to pay attention again.”
The band began to sound a little less real, and
appeal to a smaller bunch of people, after drummer Bill
Berry suffered a brain aneurysm in 1995 and left amicably two years later to
harvest hay on his Georgia farm and enjoy life off the road. The three R.E.M.
albums that followed 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi were a samey string of mid-
tempo ballads, substituting studio wizardry for the ineffable chemistry the band
had once conjured simply by playing together in the same room. The first post-Berry
effort, 1998’s Up, was an underwhelming foray into Beck-ish electronica; 2001’s
Reveal, a quasi concept album about summer, filtered archetypal R.E.M. songwriting
through synthesizers, an unsuccessful clash of the raw and the microwaved.
Buck, Mills, and Stipe all defend Up and Reveal, but have little good to say
about Around the Sun. “It’s not until the last record that I felt the wheels were
starting to come off,” Buck says. (In the entire time we talk, he can’t even bring
himself to utter the title. It’s “the last record.”) Stipe had developed a habit of not
finishing lyrics before it was time to record, which meant the songs couldn’t be fully
arranged, which meant more time spent in the studio. Buck grew impatient while
Stipe and Mills obsessed over myriad different ways to record and mix the music.
“We got into this process where we would just book a huge amount of time in
the studio and go in and fiddle around,” Buck says. “And it drove me nuts. It was
kind of like the war in Iraq—we don’t know why we got in there, we don’t know
how to get out, and we don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish. If it had been
the best record we’d ever made and everyone said it was Pet Sounds, I could put
up with eight months in the studio and the frustration. But it wasn’t.”
Everything R.E.M. have done since has been a direct reaction to that frustration.
Focus has become a major buzzword—Buck says it 22 times in one hour. Stipe will
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