Peter Buck on Life After R.E.M.: ‘I Hate the Business’
But we were doing the last record, [2011’s] Collapse Into Now. We hadn’t made an announcement or anything. We got together, and Michael said, “I think you guys will understand. I need to be away from this for a long time.” And I said, “How about forever?” Michael looked at Mike, and Mike said, “Sounds right to me.” That’s how it was decided.
You were extraordinarily calm about deciding something so final.
We felt like we made a great last record. The last two records we made — I’m really proud of them. Accelerate [2008] is in my top five. But we got to the point where we wanted to go our own ways. We didn’t want to keep doing 20-year-old songs. One thing you might notice about the three of us: None of us has done anything to put us in the public eye. We do stuff, but we haven’t gone on talk shows, done reality TV or put together a supergroup. Collapse Into Now was our last record with a major label. I never want to be on a major label again.
Have any of them asked?
Bertis [Downes, R.E.M.‘s manager] — his job is to keep people away from me, so I have no idea. I’m on Mississippi Records, and I signed myself to them.
They have a great store in Portland.
You’ve seen the records Eric [Isaacson, co-founder] puts out: African and psychedelic music; old gospel and blues. I said, “Hey, Eric, I’m making a solo album — you want to put it out?” He said, “What do you expect in the way of promotion?” I said, “None.” “Do you want to do CDs or downloads?” “No.” I just wanted to do vinyl. He was quite relieved. He told me later that he had this fear that it would be the guitar player from band X, sounding exactly like band X except with the worst singer. He was quite happy that the records were quite fucked up and weird.
How would you describe your average working day as a musician now?
I don’t have an average day — ever. I play guitar pretty much every day. It tends to come in flows if I want to write. Sometimes I’ll commit myself to something I’m not really prepared for, so I’ll spend hours and hours coming up with stuff so it looks like I’m prepared. “I’ve got a studio day on Saturday — I’ll see what I come up with.” But working and living are pretty much the same thing for me.
In the past, they were two separate things. The world stopped for me to work. Then it would start up again when I wasn’t working. Now I work at home. I do a lot of recording in Portland. I haven’t done that much touring. I may do one tour as lead-singer guy — one more before I get too old. But I’m comfortable being the guitar player in the Jayhawks if they’re one man short.