Advertisement
To celebrate their excellent new album Accelerate, R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck look back on their nearly three decades as one of America's great modern rock bands.
MURMUR (1983)
[Listen]
[Review]
Buck: The most enduring thing is the writing. We
had been a bar band for three years. But our songs had become
deeper, emotionally and musically.
Mills: I still don't know all the words. But with
a voice as emotive as Michael's, it didn't matter.
Advertisement
DOCUMENT (1987)
[Listen]
[Review]
Mills: We thought of it as Peter's record. It's
very guitar-driven.
Buck: When it was done, there was a feeling:
"Something's changed." We finally made a record people would hear.
And it is so 1987. It captured what America was like at the
time.
Advertisement
GREEN (1988)
[Listen]
[Review]
Stipe: For me, the big moment is "World Leader
Pretend." It's a tribute to Leonard Cohen, using military terms to
describe a battle within. I was so proud of the lyrics and my vocal
take that I refused to sing it a second time. I did it once. That
was it.
Advertisement
OUT OF TIME (1991)
[Listen]
[Review]
Buck: Folk music with a mandolin - we thought,
"Oh, that will be real popular." But this is where we wanted to go.
We had been playing 130-200 shows a year. There was more we could
do with our lives now. "Country Feedback" - I thought that was a
demo. Michael just sang it once. It was a letter he wrote to
someone but didn't send. He just sang it.
Advertisement
MONSTER (1994)
[Listen]
[Review]
Buck: I talk to fans all the time who love that
record. It was a bit monochromatic. But we wanted to switch around
again.
Stipe: We had radio's attention. So we decided to
put out the most fucked-up song - "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?"
- as the first single.
Advertisement
NEW ADVENTURES IN
HI-FI (1996)
[Listen]
[Review]
Buck: As crazy as the 1995 tour was - Bill's
aneurysms, Mike in the hospital, so much weird stuff going on -
that album was recorded onstage, at sound check or in a dressing
room. If I had to pick just four records of ours that people should
hear, that would be one.
[From Issue 1022 — March 22, 2007]
Advertisement
ACCELERATE (2008)
[Review]
Buck: "We got into a bad habit of spending months
in the studio. My feeling was, 'We are a great live band. Let's do
a great live-band record in the studio.'"
Mills: "We needed faster, shorter guitar-oriented
songs. I feel that the people are ready to like R.E.M. again. Part
of me feels like it's 1985 and we're a brand-new band again."