1991 12 21 R.E.M. NME

ROCK OF AGES: CLASSIC NME INTERVIEWS REM, 1985

OUT OF ANOTHER TIME

• Who's been the most successful singles band in Britain this year? Answer (amazingly). . REM.
With the current charting of‘It's The End Of The World As We Know It', they've had no less than six top 40 hits. The global sales of their acclaimed 'Out Of Time' album have also confirmed them as one of the world's most commercially and artistically consistent stadium acts.
It wasn't always so. In the summer of 1985 they were largely ignored in their native US, while over here they enjoyed only cult status as the cutting edge of a wave of sincere and quasi-classic new American rock bands that included Husker Du and The Replacements.
Their just-released third album, 'Reconstruction Of The Fables/Fables Of The Reconstruction', had, however, somewhat muddied the waters, being regarded as both badly produced and without the sparkling songs of its predecessors.
ANDY GILL caught them in talkative mood backstage at a club gig in the north of England and got the last interview before they hit the big time and the even bigger bucks . . .

Among the litter of tins and towels on the table in REM's dressing room, backstage at Tiffany’s in Newcastle, are a little Walkman and two of the tiniest speakers you’ve ever seen.

Stacked in front is a pile of cassettes. Could you resist taking a peek?

Let’s see . . . there’s 'Swordfishtrombones', a David Thomas tape, 'Astral Weeks’, Peter Buck’s current fave Mojo Nixon, Georgia gospel outfit The Fantastic Violinaires . . and what’s this? Boh Dylan And The Hawks, live at the Albert Hail?

That figures. Every time I listen to REM lately - which is a lot of the time - something reminds me of Bob Dylan and The Band, or rather. The Band with Bob Dylan. Can you hear it?

Some people don’t even bother listening. They just hear Buck's arpeggiated Rickenbacker sound, the way he picks chords rather than strums them much of the time. and settle for the obvious Byrds comparison. Admittedly, the intro to 'S. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)’ does conjure up unavoidable memories of'Mr Tambourine Man’, but their repertoire of covers features everyone from The Velvet Underground to Buddy Holly; tonight, they did a gently rolling version of 'Rave On' before storming through Television’s 'See No Evil’. Earlier, they’d done a short Country number that sounded a lot like Roger Miller’s King Of The Road’.

Eclectic enough for you?

If it is not abundantly clear to you that the four most important groups to have emerged in America in the past few years are The Meat Puppets, The Replacements, Husker Du and REM, then, again, you simply haven't been bothered to listen.

Not, mind you, that they sound particularly similar. What they have in common is that of all the New American Rock Bands, there is nothing purely revivalist or formalist about these four: they each possess an independent spark of originality which can’t be located in the grid-lines of a map of influences, as with, say, The Long Ryders or Jason And The Scorchers. And if only because of their high profile and substantial sales, REM are the most important of the lot. And they’ve earned that position: at a time when MTV was ruler of the waves and band-breakers. REM sailed round the south doing an endless chain of gigs. Peter Buck estimates to date a total of approximately 500 gigs; to Michael Stipe, who likes arriving but hates getting there, it seems more like six million.

“I honestly don’t think that MTV does anything at all,” says Buck. "It’s no marketing tool at all, except in the case of someone who would be marketed that way anyway, only in magazines as opposed to TV. They sell images, and we’re not a band that takes to the selling of images.

“Also, frankly, I don’t give a shit about videos. I like playing.”

In Newcastle, they play to three or four hundred fiercely partisan fans: better the few who care than the many who couldn’t care less, I guess. REM play well; they’re tight, and the audience is tight with them. There are several anthemic moments in the set -‘Sitting Still’, ‘Catapult’, ‘(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville’ and, of course, ‘Talk About The Passion' - and they’re greeted rapturously.

Some bands - no names, no pack drill - attempt to cement their appeal with extra-musical mortar of some form, usually stylistic or ideological. They throw up barriers, over which their fellow travellers or dedicated followers must jump in order to approach the band: a dress code, a political dogma, or whatever. Once over this hurdle, the fan can then use the band as one of their own defining characteristics.

The odd thing about shared REM fandom is that nobody’s quite sure why they like them, other than their music. The group’s general style is Oxfam tatty, anything that comes to hand; and singer/frontman Michael Stipe has a charisma based on negation rather than assertion; tending towards the painfully shy, he changes his appearance constantly, as if afraid of being cast in just one mould, or petrified in one pose.

At the time of 'Murmur’, their first (and almost perfect) album, he had respectable short hair; by ‘Reckoning’, it had grown into a Byronic mane; now, with the release of Fables Of The Reconstruction/Reconstruction Of The Fables’, he’s had a very severe crop, from which his hair is just recovering.

His evasiveness of appearance mirrors the band’s songs. Not just his lyrics, justly famed for their oblique enigmatic nature, or his delivery - part whine, part mumble - but the actual melodies and textures. They are essentially elusive, and there is also something of the eternal about them. These songs, it seems, have always been there.

That’s part of what I mean when I say REM remind me of The Band with Bob Dylan: the lyrics allow -demand - a certain input on the part of the listener, as did Dylan’s classic work ('Bringing It All Back Home’/'Highway 61 Revisited’/'Blonde On Blonde’), and there’s a similar timelessness in much of The Band and Dylan's music.

Besides this, REM’s music is suffused with atmospheres of nostalgia and regret for something lost, for forgotten or discarded values - a staple of The Band’s repertoire, especially their landmark second album. Stipe admits that the prevalence of train imagery in his lyrics represents “a romanticism . . . that is somehow associated with that mythological America that never really existed except in people’s minds.”

Be that as it may, both Buck and Stipe derive a major part of their musical input from their native Georgia (originally a kind of repository for criminals and castaways, like Australia, claims Stipe: “a state settled by hooligans”), and especially hometown Athens. Both the earlier rock era of The B-52s, Method Actors, Pylon, etc (“their influence on us was strong, both negative and positive”), and more traditional forms of music have had their effect on the group.

“Peter goes to all the big outdoor tent black gospel shows near us,” says Michael. “450 50-year-old black people, and Peter and three friends of his. And they always point out, 'the brothers who are not of our race'!”

"I’m an atheist now,” explains Peter, “but I’d probably be a Christian if I was black, because the music is so exciting I would never have got past that. It’s full of exactly what you want from rock’n'roll: the passion, the involvement, the excitement. I see these bands, these guys with the big diamond rings, being real sexy on stage even though they’re talking about God and stuff, and I know it might be kinda sacreligious, but I can't help thinking: these guys get some on the side! They’re not real straight born-agains.

“That’s part of what religion, for that part of the culture, is for: it’s a reconciliation of a tough world with something that’s better - which is heaven, but it’s also things on earth, too. A lot of those preachers are fairly notorious for their improprieties . . .”

Originally weaned on The Velvet Underground, Iggy and that ilk, Peter came to broaden his tastes somewhat. “As I got older, I realised it didn’t have to have a heavy guitar to be cool. ’’ A stint working in a record shop (where he first met Michael) provided him with an encyclopaedic knowledge of rock’n’roll, and recently he’s been searching even further afield for musical fixes.

“Over the last few years I started listening to things through seeing bands, as opposed to learning about them. I've got a lot of excitement, or been interested in the music, in a way which is not intellectual. When it comes to traditional stuff, it’s all, like, local people: old hippies that play bluegrass, a group called the Norman Town Flyers, who play a sort of gutbucket Country music, these young black guys in my neighbourhood who play gospel, the New Grove Baptist Church . . . 1 don’t know about the history of it or anything, I just know what I like.”

The group’s empathy with native folk forms caused them to sign a publishing deal with BMI rather than ASCAP. The latter, synonymous with Tin Pan Alley, at one time had a publishing monopoly which gave them a stranglehold over radio play. BMI were formed because ASCAP refused to publish ‘nigger and hillbilly’ musics, dealing instead with serious artists, “fourth-rate Cole Porter imitators, the kinda guys who ended up writing for Elvis Presley at the end of his career- they’re all on ASCAP.”

Asked who he thinks of as the group's antecedents, Peter - who talks fast and long, as opposed to Michael’s slower, quieter drawl - launches into a torrent of rock'n'roll exposition.

“I feel we’re a real mainstream band, in a way which hasn’t been proved commercially - which is a polite way of saying we haven’t sold many records and everyone else has: say, Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters and The Rolling Stones and The Kinks and The Beach Boys and The Velvet Underground, and other things which when I was growing up had a direct relation to me - Big Star and The New York Dolls.

“These are all. and I feel we arc also, rock’n’roll bands as opposed to rock bands - the distinction coming, I suppose, in the late '60s, when it stopped being rock’n'roll and got arty, or whatever. When it comes down to it, Chuck Berry probably didn’t think about it a whole lot: he did it, and it was clear and neat. We re not artists, we're just working very hard to do the best we can do, and art doesn't come into it. No matter how we twist it and mutate it or tear it apart, we’re still a rock'n'roll band. As was someone like Nick Drake; he was a rock'n’roll artist. Rock’n'roll’s a matter of attitude and rhythm, and he had both.” 

Peter’s definition of rock'n’roll stretches to include even folkies like Woody Guthrie, and plenty more besides: “I started listening to this guy King Oliver, the guy who invented jazz. It sounds like rock’n’roll to me - big slamming drums, discordant horns improvising . . .it's popular music that's just made as a spur of the moment thing; it’s not made as art. It’s not John Cage, or Harry Partch - who I quite like.”

Asked about the atmosphere of nostalgia and regret in REM’s music, he puts the feeling of lost tradition down to Michael.

“He’d probably hate me saying this, but he had a fairly ideal childhood, and to be an adult looking back, for him, is important. It’s just a reflection on his personal past, coupled with the fact that, living in the South, you’re not unaware of tradition.”

“I gave my father a Clifton Chenier tape for Father’s Day,” says Michael Stipe. “Clifton Chenier, and Laurie Anderson, Vivaldi and Tom Waits. I think. He loved them. The last time I went to my parents’ house they were playing Laurie Anderson, then they took her off and put on Clifton Chenier for dinner. My mom said We thought this would be appropriate background music!’”

Michael’s something of a living embodiment of melting-pot America: though all his family live in Georgia, his bloodline encompasses American Indian, Scottish Irish and a dash of Yugoslav. The name Stipe is German, so it seems likely there's some of that in him too.

“I think I’m probably searching for some kind of background that is there, but is still kind of buried,” he admits when asked about the air of heritage in their songs. “That’s typical of the last century, especially in America. There’s no sense of ancestry there - for a good reason: they wiped out all the Indians. No-one wants to remember that. If you’re not, like, second or third generation Swedish, you really don’t have much idea where you come from; unlike Europe, there’s no long-standing tradition or heritage. That’s something really lacking in American culture.

“I think a lot of people have built up this mythological America, and are sapping off that, trying to pull something out of that to make up for the gap in their lives. You don’t really know what your grandparents did, or your great-grandparents.”

Michael dropped out of modern music in 1982, when there was nothing really new or exciting happening, and started to explore more traditional backwaters.

“The people that I’m more connected with now are acquaintances I go out and visit, older people,” he says. “One man, the Reverend Ruth from Philomath (the town in 'Can’t Get There From Here’), has a little K-Mart organ he puts on his kitchen table. He plays it, and his wife stands with her hand on the stove and sings gospel songs.

“It’s about the most amazing thing you’ve ever heard. It's much more influential on me than any rock music I’ve heard in the last five years. It really brings you down to earth when you think of digital recording and all that stuff, and you realise these people are so much better than all that.

"It’s the kind of thing you almost don't want to document, the kind of thing you see and immediately go ‘Where's my camera?’, but, if you had your camera there, you’d be looking at that thing completely differently. The character in that film The Year Of Living Dangerously, to me, really defined that idea of documentation, how it can be a really good thing, and dangerous at the same time. The kind of thing where your eyes are so much better cameras.”

His interest in photography has obviously influenced his lyric writing immensely. Some of his songs are like investigated images, non-narrative descriptions conjuring up emotional states, but, as he says, “I also have slow motion and stop action and black and white and colour. I always see it before I hear it.”

The acronym REM, of course, stands for Rapid Eye Movement, the means by which unconscious brain activity is measured during sleep.

It fits the band well, especially Michael’s words. His songs - what phrases are allowed to surface in a given song - proceed by slight suggestions, hints and murmurs, rather than by declamatory direct address. The listener is expected to complete the picture by him/herself. Some people find this task intensely annoying.

“The first single we ever recorded ('Radio Free Europe’), I purposely did not want any of the lyrics understood," Michael says. “The main reason for that was that I hadn’t written any of the words yet. So I just kind of blabbered over the whole single.

“I’ve never purposely tried to make any song indecipherable, or slur the words. I’ve been accused of that. I just sing a song the way I think it should be sung. 'S. Central Rain’, to me, is so clear. I couldn’t use better diction and be able to sing the song.

“Put that next to ’9-9’, a song about talking, about conversation and fear of conversation it's not supposed to be understood; the only thing you can really pick up on in is ‘conversation fear".

Even within the group, interpretations of particular songs sometimes vary.

'‘Peter always tells this story about how 'Perfect Circle' was inspired by young boys playing baseball,’ says Michael. "To me, it was about an ex-girlfriend. A lot of times, they won't see the words 'til we record the song; a lot of times, they won't want to."

"We're just like anyone else,” says Peter. "We try and interpret them personally. But we actually know Michael so, barring maybe three songs over our recording career, I know what they're about. I know the girl or the person, or the time and the place.

"But I think one would get the emotion anyway, whether or not one knew the particular circumstances. He writes in a pretty oblique manner, and that's OK. You can’t quote me any of the words from ‘Exile On Main Street'. I can’t, and I’ve been listening to that record for 13 years now.”

There are two basic types of bands involved in this beast wc call rock'n'roll: song bands, whose style changes to suit the specific song, and sound bands, whose every song is instantly recognisable as the band in question, whose sound defines the band and determines the shape of its songs.

There arc also a few fortunate groups who somehow straddle the two categories, who remain recognisably themselves even when playing in a different style. The Beatles were one such, and The Band another. So too. I think, are REM.

Their new album, though recognisably REM, contains several breaks with what might be considered their style. The opening track 'Feeling Gravity's Pull’, with its echoes of Tom Verlaine and Television, is structurally dissimilar to anything they’ve done before, and features strange string-section tinting in its colouration. Ditto the clipped funk guitar and horn punctuation on ‘Can’t Get There From Here’. What, I wondered, did they view as the essential element of their sound?

“If there is one essential element, it’s probably the vocals,” says Peter, “because Michael’s got a really distinctive voice. We’re kind of known as a guitar band, but to me the thing that’s interesting is the way the rhythm section works; the drums and bass are locked in, like Motown, but the bass is doing this melodic stuff against what I 'm doing.

But there’s no one thing. I think we could go in the studio and - having the given that Michael's going to sing - I’d like to make the next record with acoustic guitars and harpsichords and cellos and oboes, a real baroque record. We could make an REM record like that. Wc could make a real Sonic Youth-type REM record. There’s no one thing.

“I think the thing wc feel is best about us is the songs. I’m a shitty guitarist, I think; I’m more a songwriter than a musician.”

“I maintain, from a lead vocalist point of view,” says Michael, "that the background vocals really carry this band. Mike (Mills, melodic bassist) and Bill (Berry, heartbeat) both have this amazing harmonic idea about vocals. A lot of the time, I think the lead vocals take the place of the drums, and the drums are there providing some sort of rhythm along with the vocal, and Mike is providing melody with the bass, and Peter is doing this rhythm on top."

Certainly, the role Mike Mills plays in the group is crucial. Like Rick Danko in The Band (again!), he takes much of the melody chores off Peter Buck’s back, allowing the guitarist space to pick instead of simply strum, yet still keeps the beat pinned down.

“It’s more of a lead instrument," concurs Peter. “It’s really melodic and in and out of the beat. I play the beat more than he does. He plays against the beat, he does melodies, harmonies . . . the guitar goes more with the bass drum than the bass does, which is completely the opposite of what you should do in rock’n’roll.”

Why call the new album 'Fables Of The Reconstruction’ ?

“Ah, you see, no-one’s picked up on that," says Michael. “I maintain that the name of the record is ‘Reconstruction Of The Fables’, because everybody has decided it’s ‘Fables Of The Reconstruction', and that really bothers me . . .

“The cyclical title, to me, really defined the whole entity that the band was taking on at that time. It seemed to make a lot of sense. I guess it still does . . .

“‘Fables’ brings up the whole thing about storytelling, and that kinda ties in with lost heritage, the tradition of a story being passed on from generation to generation. A lot of people have picked up on the Reconstruction Politics thing, after the Civil Wars - especially since we’re supposed to be ‘a southern band’ - and that was not unintentional. The whole Reconstruction Politics thing was a pack of shit, and it’s kinda like politics today, so in a way that's a valid interpretation.

“For me, though. I was thinking of a reconstruction of something, tearing it apart and putting it together.”

Why did you move away from the Mitch Easter/Don Dixon production team that worked on your earlier records? And what prompted you to replace them with Joe Boyd? (Late ’60s/early '70s producer of such as Fairport Convention, Nick Drake and Richard Thompson.)

“Mitch and Don were busy,” says Peter, “and we fancied a change. You’re only in line for a certain amount of time, so you might as well try something different. You don’t want to eat hamburgers every day.”

“He's a very meticulous producer, especially when it comes to mixes,” says Michael. “He has this idea that there is The Perfect Mix for each song, and he’ll work and work to get that mix, and it drove me up the f----ing wall! But in the end. I’m really glad he was so meticulous."

“Joe is a bit of a stickler for getting. . I can’t think of a better word to describe it than sway," says Peter, “a really good rock'n’roll track must have this feeling of independent motion, this kind of weird organic, flowing feeling, whether it be fast or slow. He’d say, it sounded kinda good, but it sounded restrained: y’all got to sound loose. So we’d do another take and try to get that schlump sound.”

Schlump is a good word to describe Peter Buck's onstage demeanour. Swaying and flopping hither and thither, and with a pronounced final-split-second drag of the hand across the strings, he’s the closest thing to Keith Richard since Keef went missing in action. Watching him, you know you’re in the presence of a future guitar star. Does the prospect of imminent megastardom worry him? 

“I’m more famous now than I'd ever like to be. What I’m really looking for, ideally, is that ten years down the line people will think we did something really incredible. Even if it’s overlooked now, we will have done something that’s so strong it will cross all boundaries. So that in ten years people will listen to it like I listen to The Velvet Underground or The Doors or Muddy Waters.

“That would be ideal for me, to have a career like Muddy Waters had, who’s put out a body of work that’s so strong it’s undeniable. That's what I want. I want to be vindicated through time.

“I don’t mind making a few bucks, either ...”