As close to perfection as the studio version may be, this slightly slower all-acoustic performance by R.E.M. of “Losing My Religion” at the Capital Plaza Theater in Charleston WV in April 1992, replete with melancholy solo violin, may be my favorite version, thanks to the Mountain Stage series from West Virginia Public Radio. This tasty take on “Losing My Religion” is another appetizer for Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills’ visit here for R.E.M. Out of Time thirty-fifth anniversary. –Redbeard
In spite of the March 1991 album’s title Out of Time to the contrary, R.E.M.’s release is now seen to have been timed perfectly between the waning days of Pop Metal hair bands and the vanguard of Grunge. R.E.M.’s seventh album already, Out of Time tunestack included one of the greatest songs of the Nineties, “Losing My Religion”. It is clear on the thirtieth-fifth anniversary of R.E.M.’s Out of Time album that the song from it, “Losing My Religion”, has weathered the time in between exceedingly well. “Pop culture, particularly in the US, everything comes and goes in cycles, as things do,” points out R.E.M. singer/ lyricist Michael Stipe, “which we all realize as we all grow older and wiser, whether it’s politics or music or pop culture…I always wanted to have a song that would be considered ‘the song of the Summer’. As it was, that song kind of became the song of the year,” he chuckled. Ten million copies sold and three Grammy Awards later, nobody could argue the case.
If you were fortunate in 1983 to discover the first full-length album Murmur from Athens GA-based R.E.M., you probably realized that it sounded unlike anything else at the time and precious little ever since, except maybe their followupReckoning. Over the next four years and five albums on indie label IRS, Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills,and Bill Berry made some of the smartest, quirky, angular rock of any American band.
Largely on the popularity of “The One I Love” from 1987’s Document, R.E.M. jumped ship to Warner Bros Records and recorded the top-notch rockerGreen in 1988. But for 1991’s Out of Time, the band did a re-think, returning in many ways to the more intimate approach of instrumentation and arrangements of those two earliest albums, but utilizing strings on several.
Any serious list of “songs of the decade”, those universally acclaimed recordings which at once define the times in which they were written and released yet are timeless in their never-ending appeal, has to include Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” for the Seventies,”Every Breath You Take” by The Police for the Eighties, and for the 1990s, R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” from 1991’s Out of Time. In my classic rock interview, Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills share thoughtful and eerily prescient insights. –Redbeard
After defining a neo-folk rock sound on their first full-length album Murmur in 1983, and refining that jangly style further with Reckoning a year later, indie band R.E.M. spun Fables of the Reconstruction in 1985, which put us on notice that all styles and lyrical subjects were fair game in R.E.M.’s rapidly-evolving future. “It’s a significant time-stamp within the band’s 14-album catalog,” writes Charles Moss in Spin, “a record about the American South, and what it means to be Southern at that time…” forty years ago.
You will hear “Driver 8”, “Can’t Get There from Here”, and a rare live performance of “Maps and Legends” recorded in 1987 at McCabe’s Guitar Shop. With R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe and lead guitarist Peter Buck in my classic rock interview recalling playing for the door admission in clubs during their rice and beans days. Matthew Perpetua writing in Pitchfork described Fables of the Reconstruction (#28 on the Billboard sales chart) aesthetic as “evoking images of railroads, small towns, eccentric locals, oppressive humidity, and a vague sense of time slowing to a crawl.” In other words, rural Georgia and the Carolinas.
My interview with Peter Buck and Michael Stipe of R.E.M. includes the earliest days of the Athens GA band, with songs from their first four full albums Murmur, Reckoning, the transitional Fables of the Reconstruction, & Life’s Rich Pageant. -Redbeard
Us R.E.M. completists had to mow lawns, recycle cans, run for Congress, and other side hustles in order to save up for the “kitchen sink” collections of rare goodies from the prolific but now defunct foursome, Complete Rarities 1982-1987 (25 songs) and Complete Rarities 1988-2011 (a whopping 131 tracks). The band, along with several others, gave a benefit performance in May 1987 at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica CA that included “Maps and Legends”, a song which singer/co-writer Michael Stipe claimed to be one of his favorite R.E.M. compositions. – Redbeard
Already the alterna-band’s ninth (!), when R.E.M.’s Monster album came out in September 1994, most casual rock fans didn’t know that lead singer Michael Stipe was friends with actor River Phoenix and Nirvana singer/songwriter Kurt Cobain, both of whom died while R.E.M. was making Monster. Also it was unknown at the time that R.E.M. had actually broken up and some members walked out at one point during recording it. All we knew when we heard Monster was that, unlike its predecessors Out of Time and Automatic for the People, Monster really rocked, and it felt right.
Not since Green more than five years earlier had R.E.M. come out so unself-consciously swingin’ as on September 1994’s Monster . “We were touring for the first time in five years. We wanted something arena- and festival-ready”, says R.E.M. lead singer and lyricist Michael Stipe in Newsweek about the overall sound of the album Monster. My guests here In the Studio are Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills, looking back with the soundtrack provided by “What’s the Frequency Kenneth?”, “Crush with Eyeliner”, “Bang and Blame”, and “Strange Currencies” bottled up in an emotional and popular blockbuster which became a sales Monster for R.E.M., debuting at #1 on Billboard, ditto in the UK, eventually going quadruple platinum. Of note is the fact that the Fall 1994 tour turned out to be their last with drummer Bill Berry, who suffered a life-threatening aneurysm in Germany while on the subsequent Monster European leg and was advised by doctors to retire from the road. Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills all join me here In the Studio on Monster’s thirtieth anniversary. -Redbeard
“We were touring for the first time in five years. We wanted something arena and festival ready”, says R.E.M. lead singer and lyricist Michael Stipe in Newsweek about the overall sound of the Fall 1994 release Monster. The proof of the pudding was served up in a spectacular way the following July when R.E.M. headlined the massive Milton Keynes Bowl north of London and opened with “What’s the Frequency Kenneth”. –Redbeard
Largely on the popularity of “The One I Love” from 1987’s Document, R.E.M. would jump ship to Warner Bros Records and release the top-notch rocker Green in Novemer 1988, scoring their first US #1 single “Orange Crush”, another Top Ten in “Stand”, “Pop Song ’89”, and the Bill Berry slamfest “Turn You Inside Out”, while eventually selling over four million copies of Green worldwide. If you were fortunate in 1983 to discover the first full-length album Murmur from Athens GA-based R.E.M., you probably realize that it sounded unlike anything else at the time, and precious little ever since (except maybe their followupReckoning). Over the next four years and five albums on indie label IRS, Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry made some of the smartest, quirkiest, angular rock of any American band.
Stipe, Buck, and Mills guest here In the Studio for R.E.M.’s Green. –Redbeard
My conversations with R.E.M. lead singer/songwriter Michael Stipe and lead guitarist/co-writer Peter Buck about their first two full length albums, Murmur and Reckoning, reveal a band remarkably cohesive and certain about its vision from the start. My interviews include the earliest days of the Athens, GA R.E.M. with songs from their first three full albums, Murmur (a perennial “desert island disc” for me, released April 1983); Reckoning a year later and peaking at #27 on Billboard; and then Fables of the Reconstruction.
“We played for $40 a night for years,” R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck says matter-of-factly. “There were many $8 nights. Yet we never lost money on a tour. We’d always start in Athens GA, and make $800. And then we’d go to North Carolina and make $300. Then when we got out of that area, we’d open for somebody and they’d give us $50 or $100 to open for Bow Wow Wow in Detroit.” R.E.M. Murmur quietly emerged April 12, 1983 and has never left my essential music list, along with its follow-up Reckoning over forty years ago. Songs here include “Radio Free Europe”,”Pilgrimmage”, “Talk About the Passion”, “South Central Rain”, “Pretty Persuasion”, “Can’t Get There from Here”,”Driver 8″, and an ultra-rare live acoustic performance of “Maps and Legends” from McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. Murmur peaked on Billboard sales chart at #36 initially, but has only grown in esteem ever since. Rolling Stone magazine declared it their pick for Best Album in 1983; then #8 on their 100 Greatest Albums of the Eighties; #18 on the 100 Best Debut Albums; and on Rolling Stone‘s most recent 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, Murmur by R.E.M. sits at an impressive #165. This edition of In the Studio lovingly dedicated to the memory of Barney Kilpatrick, who tirelessly promoted all of these early albums for R.E.M.- Redbeard
“Automatic for the Peopledidn’t sell as many as Out of Time,” R.E.M. guitarist/songwriter Peter Buck reminds us. “Out of Time sold ten million copies and Automatic… only sold eight million.”
Only?
“It was substantially an uncommercial record,” Buck insists here In the Studio regarding 1992’s Automatic for the People. “Except for the fact that it was us, if that had been a band’s first record, it wouldn’t have gotten on the radio at all.”
Point taken. Yet at the time of the October 1992 release of R.E.M.’s eighth studio album, three songs from Automatic… WEREon the radio, a lot, and deservedly so, including “Drive”, “Man on the Moon”, and the tender yet powerful international hit, “Everybody Hurts”. The original four-piece was climbing rapidly to be one of the most popular bands in the world, and the stats are unequivocal: peaking at #2 Billboard Albums Sales in the US, #1 in the UK; third on the Village Voice year-end critics poll; nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards in 1994; ranked at #18 by Rolling Stone on its “100 Greatest Albums of the ’90s” list, and an impressive #96 on their latest “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”.
R.E.M. singer/lyricist Michael Stipe, multi-instrumentalist/singer Mike Mills, and guitarist/songwriter Peter Buck all convene with me here In the Studio marking the thirtieth anniversary of Automatic for the People by R.E.M., estimated now to have sold 18,000,000 copies worldwide. –Redbeard
After a storied five album run in America in the Eighties with indie label IRS Records,R.E.M. jumped ship to music industry leader Warner Bros in order to do exactly this: fill England’s massive Milton Keynes Bowl in late July 1995 with enough star power, and hits, to prompt a multi-continent trans-Atlantic live radio broadcast. , Enjoy “Strange Currencies” from that day, and don’t miss the interview about Automatic for the People, celebrating its thirtieth anniversary here next week. –Redbeard
As close to perfection as the studio version may be, this slightly slower all-acoustic performance by R.E.M. of “Losing My Religion” at the Capital Plaza Theater in Charleston WV in April 1992, replete with melancholy solo violin, may be my favorite version, thanks to the Mountain Stage series from West Virginia Public Radio. This tasty take on “Losing My Religion” is another appetizer for Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills’ visit here for R.E.M. Out of Time thirty-fifth anniversary. –Redbeard
