1993 12 25 R.E.M. NME

THE ONES I LOVE

• REM’s PETER BUCK, a former assistant at Wuxtry Records store in Athens, Georgia, is one of rock’s most obsessive and broad-minded music fans. So instead of sitting him down for a regular interview, we played name-that-tune with the guitarist and let him free-associate about the record, the artist and anything to do current activities of REM... EMMANUEL TELLIER cues ’em up.. Pictures: RENAUD MONFOURNY

RECORD 1: Neil Young - Tell Me Why’ (from the 1970 LP ‘After The Goldrush’)

"I LOVE Neil Young. I think that he's a kind of role model. Even though I'm sure Michael's never really listened to Neil Young, and I know that Bill and Mike don't a whole lot, but just the idea that here's a guy who's gone his own way in the music business and you never really look at him and think. 'Well, here's a guy who success means everything to’.

"And we’ve always felt that way. It just so happens that all our records have been fairly successful, but it's not as if we spend our lives worrying about that. I like that fact that he can do a folk song and then do a real noisy, crazy rock song, he can encompass that."

Do you remember the first Neil Young music that you heard?

"Probably ‘After The Gold Rush', 'cos when I was about 13 I had just started to be a bad teenager, you know, drinking beer and smoking pot and stuff — one of my best friends had an older brother who was 16 and he was just insane. He was crazy. If he was a year younger he would have been in the Manson Family. It was in Los Angeles that he knew those people. So we'd go over to his house and smoke pot and listen to records. He was way into Black Sabbath but he had that Neil Young record, so that was the first Neil Young I ever heard. I think. I didn't have a lot of money, so I bought the single from that, 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' and 'Birds' and then I bought the album. So, yeah, that was the first one, and then I kind of just kept up.”

What did you feel was special about this record?

“I don't know. It's like a lot of things I heard that year when I was just 13. it was just things that were different. I’d heard the radio. I’d heard The Beatles and the Stones and The Supremes, and Rare Earth was that year, about 1970 or '71. But it was just really different, it was the kind of thing you didn’t hear on the radio. You felt like it was your own little private thing, you know. I mean, I bought the Black Sabbath record, too. But that didn't really have much of an effect on me."

RECORD 2: De La Soul - ‘I Be Blowin” (from the 1993 LP Buhloone Mind state’)

"IT SOUNDS like Maceo Parker (ace James Brown horn player) might be on that, I wasn't sure. Maceo’s great. I’ve got all his records. I saw him with Van Morrison a year ago last Christmas. On every song Van would go, 'Give it to Maceo’, and each horn player would take a five minute solo.”

Do you listen to rap a lot?

“I listen to it a fair amount, yeah. The actual rapping itself I don’t have any interest in whatsoever. I like the assembling of the background stuff. I tend to like it when it’s political. I hate the gangsta stuff, I think it’s garbage, sorry. It’s just, you know, I don’t really want to hear that.

“I think you have a right to do it, I just think it’s boring to talk about guns and whores and bitches and it's stupid, you know. I don’t listen to that stuff from white people; why should I listen to it from black people? But musically, I think it’s really fascinating the way it kind of turns - well, first of all it puts ownership of music into perspective. What’s worse about sampling than, say. playing a Chuck Berry riff? Chuck Berry doesn’t get paid if you do a Chuck Berry solo. And I like the idea that you can assemble all these pieces and make your own statement.”

Has rap music gone mainstream?

“Yeah, it's pretty mainstream. I think it’s lost a lot of energy, too. It’s not as exciting as it was even three years ago, you know. It’s more show-biz. And a lot of it’s just like an act now. A lot of guys - again, the gangsta thing - I think that’s kind of ruinous for rap in that it’s not that original, that exciting. There are certain beats you use and certain slogans you use and then you wave a gun around, and white teenagers in the Mid-West buy the record and think it’s really groovy. But I still buy rap records. I’m still excited by them.”

RECORD 3: The Walkabouts -‘Satisfied Mind’ (from the 1993 Sub Pop LP ’Satisfied Mind’)

“YEAH, I actually played with them last Wednesday. We did a benefit show in Seattle for this Artists For A Hate-Free America. It was a benefit that I got involved in, and I’d played on The Walkabouts record.”

Did you play on that track?

“No, I played on the Robert Forster song The River People’, and I played on the traditional ‘Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone’ and the Nick Cave song ‘Loom Of The Land’. The Walkabouts are a great band, great songwriters.” 

Are they from Seattle?

“I think they’re from Eastern Washington, but, yeah, they live in Seattle.”

Do you like it there?

“Yeah, I do. It’s a good town. I’m staying there now, kind of, it’s a great place to be. I’ve lived in Athens a really long time and I really like it and I’m still going to go back there to work, but I thought it was time to change.”

If you weren’t so busy with REM, would you have time for more musical collaborations?

“REM are fixing to start working in January and I’ll be busy for almost two years, the way it’s going to work out. I’m just in Seattle and I wasn’t doing anything and bumped into them and The Walkabouts said they were making a record and they were having some of their friends play on it and I’d just met them, and I said, 'Well, sure I’ll come down,’ and brought my mandolin and my dulcimer. I really like their records a bunch, so it was really nice to get to play with them.”

But you’ve done other things, you’ve done production, you’ve played with a few bands. Is it because there are some things you can’t fulfil with REM?

"I’m a lazy person and I would just sit around the house and read and play guitar and take long walks if I didn’t do other projects. And it’s nice for me to have something else to do. I love playing music. I mean I really just enjoy playing. And production, I kind of enjoy that, 'cos with my band we all kind of co-produce, but no-one’s in charge, so I kind of like to be in charge of other people’s records sometimes.”

Would you like to be in charge with REM sometimes?

“No. That’s what the collaboration is - it’s four of us pushing and pulling this material back and forth and finding out what it means to make a record.”

RECORD 4: John Cole - Tear Is A Man’s Best Friend’ (from the 1974 LP 'Fear')

"YEAH, I’M a big John Cale fan. Of course, I loved The Velvet Underground. It was funny, ’cos I started getting obsessed with rock’n’roll when I was about 12 - I’d read reviews and go buy records.

“And I read this one review of the first John Cale record and a review of The Nazz record - I mean Todd Rundgren’s first solo record was already out, but it mentioned The Nazz and The Stooges, and that was before ‘Raw Power’ came out, and there was a neighbour of my parents who had been a DJ and he was selling these records and they were 50 cents each. And I went up and they had the second Velvet Underground album, the promo copy, which was pretty great and The Nazz record, the second one, and the first John Cale record. And he had a lot of other stuff, too, that I bought - but those, the Velvets, the John Cale, The Nazz and The Stooges record, it was just like, ‘Wow! This is amazing stuff.” 

What do you think of The Velvet Underground’s status now?

“Well, I think it’s pretty deserved. I think their songwriting was great and they kind of redefined the way a rock band could approach playing rock’n’roll. One of the reasons I liked them is that they were relatively intellectual or - their songs were about ideas, and not about ‘I want to love you’ and so on.

“We probably took them as an example or something like that. The whole idea that you can approach being a rock’n’roll band in a non-traditional way. You can play rock’n’roll, have electric guitars, bass and drums, and not be like a rock dude, you know. There are a million ways to tell a story, and there are a million ways to be in a band and I just think it’s kind of amazing how many people just buy the cliches.”

RECORD 5: The Walker Brothers -The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ (1966 single on Phillips) 

“YEAH, I love Scott Walker. I discovered him really late. I don't think I had one of his records until about four years ago. Well, no, actually, I had one of the ones he did in the '80s and I didn’t really get it.”

What got you interested in him?

“Everyone in England that I kind of liked, that was kind of wacky, was like, ‘Oh, Scott Walker’. People like Julian Cope.”

Do you like his ambition, those big arrangements?

“Yeah, it really does speak of ambition, I guess. Yeah, I just like the idea that they were so massive, that this guy was - it was like Phil Spector - he’s building this huge confection that he’s trying to sell to 16-year-old girls, basically, and yet he was trying to show that he had read existential philosophers and stuff. I mean, in a way it's kind of silly, but on the other hand it was really moving, too, and when it was good it was good, and I think he’s got a beautiful voice."

RECORD 6: Leadbelly - Tackin' Trunk Blues' (from 1990's ‘The Slide Guitar', Columbia's Roots 'n' Blues series, and a dozen other compilations)

“IS THIS Blind Lemon Jefferson? Oh, this is Leadbelly? Doesn’t Blind Lemon Jefferson do this song? These lyrics, anyway, the ‘Matchbox’ lyrics. Yeah, that’s great. I’m not that familiar with Leadbelly. I mean, I’ve got a bunch of Leadbelly records, but...”

Kurt Cobain has been namechecking Leadbelly recently.

“Yeah, he’s way into it. He was talking to me - somebody’s trying to sell him Leadbelly’s guitar. Actually, it’s funny, ’cos Courtney..."

Yeah, I think he bought the guitar...

“Courtney was talking - she borrowed some of my guitars and she wanted to see whether I thought Kurt was insane, and I said, ‘I don’t know - if he really wants it, I think that’s great. It would be great to have in your house - but, you know...

“I like Leadbelly. I’m not as familiar with him as I am with some other country blues artists. I have no idea what he was like before he became the toast of cafe society, and of course, I didn’t get to see him play. It’s kind of interesting. I love to listen to Blind Lemon Jefferson records, or the old country blues stuff, it’s just amazing.

“You can’t understand what their world was like. You’ll never understand. It’s just that they’re more fundamentally religious, that they thought they were going to hell for doing a lot of stuff. Some of them hadn’t been in cars, and I know most of them hadn’t been in airplanes. Even the Robert Johnson records, which were pretty late, actually, about 1937 - that’s a world we’ll never see.

“We’ve always talked about doing a kind of a blues record. But, you know, I love blues so much and I am a honky and I haven’t studied all my life like someone like Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was really good at it. So I’d feel really bad approaching it.”

Don’t you think that ’Automatic For The People’ is a blues record?

“Yeah, you know, it kind of has that pervasive feel. And I was thinking about that - it’s kind of like one of those old folk or blues records - you know, half the songs were about death and mystery - and they’re very spare records and emotionally kind of direct even if lyrically they’re not really direct.

“I like to think that somehow you pull in some of the ideas and get the feel for it without actually ever doing It. I mean, I listen to lots of jazz and I think somehow that works its way into some of what I play, but I’m certainly not at any stretch a jazz musician.

“‘Automatic...’ was kind of a look back, I think. I don’t know why - it just seemed lyrically to look back over the past decade, maybe because it was the end of... elections were coming, and friends were dying. I don’t look back at the past and think it’s a great place or anything, but a lot of people have died along the way, and AIDS is a big thing, and it just kind of makes you think a little bit about times that are past, and the things that we’ve gone through as a group. I know that all that stuff was on Michael’s mind.

“Nothing that you could say is really personally about him so much as just kind of observations of things. ‘Everybody Hurts’ is kind of for teenagers, basically.”

But it still feels like a personal expression.

“It’s really funny, because all the AIDS rumours about Michael started up right around that time and everyone was saying, ‘Oh, the record proves that it’s true.’ We’ve all denied it a bunch. I don’t even care what people say - ten years down the line we’ll still be making records.”

But in the future don't you think maybe you should try to quash the rumours? If, say, Michael did an interview every six months or so?

“Well, all everyone ever wants to talk to Michael about is his childhood or his past. They ask me about songs and how you put them together and guitar chords or whatever and with Michael, he’s the lyricist, and everyone thinks, ‘OK, the songs are about him; we have to find out about him’. And I wouldn’t go through the interview process either. We’ll tour again in the future and people will see that we’re all healthy. When we did the MTV awards we were doing interviews and some guy - a big fat guy sitting in the front row - he said, ‘Michael, how’s your health?’ and Michael said, ‘I’m fine, but you look like you could do with losing a few pounds’."

RECORD 7: Nirvana - ‘Heart-Shaped Box' (from the 1993 LP ‘In Utero')

“IT’S AMAZING how layered that actually is. The rumours were that it was going to be a mono recording, and there are four or five guitars doing different stuff. I think it’s a pretty great record."

How do you think Nirvana have dealt with fame, compared to REM?

‘Well, ours was very gradual. If it had happened to us when we were 26,1 think it would have been mind-boggling. Yeah, I vaguely know those guys and I think they’re all handling it as well as it can be handled. I don’t know Kurt by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s not out of control or anything. He’s a nice guy who feels a little put-upon at times. I actually see Chris and Dave fairly regularly. They are just normal people.”

What’s the difference between the people in Nirvana and the public perception?

“Weil, I think certainly with Kurt the public perception is that he’s a strange, out of control, heroin addict punk rocker, and — like I said, I don’t know him by any stretch of the imagination -we’ve met several times and he was always kind of the straightest person in the room. He’s kind of quiet. He gets a lot of it out on stage, and I think his main problem is he’s too honest about his life when people ask him questions. Basically, it’s OK to say this is none of your business. That stops a whole lot of talk. I don’t really have anything to hide, but I don’t talk about my personal life at all — it is nobody's business but my own.

“It’s easy to get really caught up and worn out in this stuff. If I had any advice to give Kurt, particularly, I’d say, ‘Listen, don’t take it too seriously’. I remember the first time I got bad reviews and people wrote bad things about me, it kind of hurt my feelings. And I've been doing this now for 13 or 14 years, and just don’t really give a shit. I think it’s funny. When people write bad things about me, I just don’t care.

“But it must be tough to be that young. You’re right there in the open, and you get slammed and yelled at and attacked and called a junkie and people denigrate your wife - it can’t be easy. You got to just take it with a sense of humour, as awful as some of it might be. I went to dinner with them out in LA and it was a soul food joint - and that was the week the record came out, the new record - and it was a big deal.”

RECORD 8: Morrissey - ‘Every Day Is Like Sunday' (from the 1988 LP ‘Viva Hate’)

“I LIKE him, I do. I think that he’s got a better sense of humour than people give him credit for. His public perception is this guy who mopes around his apartment and complains, and I think his lyrics are very funny, and I think he’d probably agree. And I think he sometimes mocks himself a lot more than people give him credit for. I really like his records a lot.

“It took me a while to get into The Smiths. I didn't like the first Smiths records at all. I thought it was very flatsounding and I didn’t think there were a lot of great songs on it. And then I heard ‘How Soon Is Now’ and I thought that was one of the greatest songs ever. And each record I liked kind of progressively more."

Has Morrissey got anything in common with Michael Stipe?

“Oh, yeah. You know, Michael is kind of goofy on occasion. And he and Morrissey are actually friends. They used to fax each other all the time. And they probably have some similarities as far as the way they approach stuff. Neither one of them are real rock’n’roll guys, and neither am I, for that matter. And they had some kind of friendship where they just corresponded and talked to one another.”

Is that still going on now?

“I don’t know. Michael has lots of friends he keeps in touch with."

Morrissey comes over like a poseur; do you think Michael's like that too?

“Sure. I think that when you have to deal with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people looking at you and imagining things about you and all that, you make up a kind of armour for yourself, and if that's a character costume you use onstage or... I get the feeling, without knowing him at all, that Morrissey in his interviews probably puts on a little bit more of a character than he is.

“And I think he’s genuinely witty and funny. I don’t see anything wrong with that. You certainly don’t want to give your heart and soul to someone who’s interviewing you and then they’re going to splash it on the cover of a magazine. I just think that's a big mistake, to show the whole world exactly what goes on in your heart. Because all they can do is kind of laugh at you.

"What you have to do - the way we’re doing it - you just do what you do in the public eye, and you try to do it as close to yourself as you can be, but you have to adopt certain characteristics. I know I tend to be more kind of friendly if I’m in groups of people, I tend to be like more of a ‘Hail, fellow, well met’-type person. I stay at home a lot by myself, and just read and play guitar. I’m not really social. But I go out and the only way I can deal with big crowds is to be social and introduce myself to everyone and shake hands, and have 30 drinks, then go home. Otherwise I'll just sit in a comer all night.

“But for me, that’s how I deal with it. And Michael doesn't want to deal with it on that level.”

Did Michael tell you what was the attraction between Morrissey and himself?

“Well, I think they both felt there were some similarities as far as the kind of bands they're in and the lyrics they write - and their view of the modern world, that’s for sure, or at least what passes for the modern world and progress. 1 don’t think Michael has a real strong feel of him being an American and I think Morrissey probably has a strong feeling of him English."

Do you worry that success finds you reaching new, weirder people?

“I talk to a lot of people and I can understand what kind of people they are, sometimes. But sometimes I just talk to these people and just don’t have a clue why they like us.”

Kurt Cobain makes a big thing of that. He says he doesn’t want his musk to be listened to by truck drivers.

"I like to think that it’s good for people with closed minds to listen to a record like ours. I certainly want our records to be played at Klan meetings. But I don't think that happens...”

Thanks to Les Inrockuptibles for their help in putting this article together. In our next issue, Peter Buck talks about the possibility of an REM split, plus their new recording projects and the plans for an REM world tour in 1994!