R.E.M. SONGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

Rip It Up, Issue 86, 1 September 1984, Page 16

R.E.M. SONGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

STORY BY RUSSELL BROWN

There have always been great American bands and many people will tell you most of the best bands of the past few years have been American. But it seems a while since America had someone everybody could embrace. I mean, could you see Rolling Stone magazine plucking up the gumption to get behind glorious deviates like the Cramps, Flipper and the Gun Club? The very idea would have ’em reaching for the 'ludes ...

But the “ Playboy of the cocaine generation” had R.E.M. as its critics' best new band of last year and their debut album, Murmur. as best album overall. R.E.M. a band from Athens, Georgia that's hip in Dunedin ...

Guitarist Peter Buck is in Los Angeles, but only to begin a national tour he doesn’t really like LA much. For a man who helps make records full of mystery and imagination, he’s ironically down-home and friendly over the phone.

This tour will be the second on which they've played songs from this year’s Reckoning LP and the new material, although written in the studio, is working well live. “On Reckoning the sound was pared down, it was more like our live sound, so the songs were easier to play live than the ones from Murmur,” he explains. But the songs themselves are more complex in structure than those on the first album they do more. “Yeah. We’ve been concentrating most on songwriting recently. You’d laugh ... we want to be great songwriters. We’ve really been writing a lot, trying different styles, breaking boundaries a bit. I was much more pieased with the songs on Reckoning than with the ones on Murmur.” Yes, it was interesting that the album sounded somehow mysterious, even though those songs were simple in essence. “It was simple arrangements and stuff on Murmur, yeah. There was a lot of texturing on it to make one chord ring out but by and large it was a fairly simple album to make. Reckoning is also, though. We played tl.r songs live in the studio, with maybe one take or two and then overdubbed maybe one guitar and vocals. So by and large Reckoning was a very simple record too. The songs

less so, but the production certainly.” Reckoning is obviously more diverse too even in terms of, say, the range of guitar sounds and styles you used. “Yeah. When we did Murmur we kind of wanted to make a record that was monochromatic, the same all the way through, just because we wanted to make a first album that was different. But with Reckoning I thought ‘Okay, gosh, everyone thinks I can do just one thing on guitar, we’re this band that only has one thing to say‘. That kind of surprised me, so we pushed our boundaries a little bit in songwriting, we wanted to play stylistically different stuff. Guitarwise I was trying to find different sounds as often as possible.” In its variety the record also seemed to hint more strongly of a group of record listeners.

“That’s great. Because we’re fans first and musicians second. I personally am probably a musician third or fourth behind, I don’t know, being an eater or something ... but we really are fans. And I’m glad that shows through because what we want to do, there’s a lot of stuff we like, there’s a lot we can approach stylistically and add to the little catalogue of things we can do.” ‘Don’t Go Back To Rockville’, for instance, sounds like fairly respectful pilfering of a couple of someone’s favourite country songs. “It is. Well, maybe not so respectful (laughter). We’re certainly not going to claim to be country musicians but we grew up around it and it kind of comes out. We sit in our dressing rooms all the time and play country songs and sing and I sing horribly off key. So with that it was just a matter of all of a sudden doing it and it making sense. If you're going to approach country and western you approach it in a much, straighter way than we do rock ’n’ roll so it really is a pretty much linear song there’s a place called Rockville, Maryland, and there really was a girl who went back there. She did go back.” Can you see the band developing in that way on future albums? Experimenting with different styles? “Yeah, there's a lot of things we want to try. Most of the band listens to black music a whole lot and that doesn’t come through I think at all. I don’t mean we’re going to put out a rap record -or anything, but that’s another vein of influence that could be passed onto the next record or the one after that.” Well there’s the little funky jam between tracks on Side Two for a start. Is that how the songs themselves were written, from jams? “Pretty much exactly like that. We just get together and start making noise, then have a little rest, we’ll play along till it gets tired and add something else on it. Those two little added-on things on the second side are things that basically could have turned into songs if we’d bothered.” The production on Reckoning exposed the band members’ individual roles more were you conscious of that? “Yeah - that’s a good point because although Murmur was the way we wanted it, it did kind of tend to bland out in the long run. All the tracks did kind of sound the same and everyone’s role was ill-defined. This one’s a sharper, cleaner record, but the songwriting called for that. We didn’t feel like we needed a whole lot of tonal camouflage and texture to we ended up just leaving the bare bones.”

Part of the Rolling Stone review of Reckoning read: “With skill and daring like theirs, the tiniest commercial concessions -- some accessible lyrics from (vocalist Michael Stipe) and a major-league drum sound could win this band a massive audience.’ What did you think of that? “I think the hell with it! I don’t understand about the drums because the drums sound

as massive as they need to sound. But the reason we got into this is because we like rock ’n’ roll and we like to be creative and express ourselves in a way that’s personal. And if we start doing things like that then we might as well start hiring another band to make the record. When we were going to sign our record contract we talked to a lot of labels. And IRS was the only label that didn’t say ‘Gee, if you guys would dress better and we could understand the words you could be just like the Go-Gos.’ We don’t want to be like the Go-Gos, we want to be like R.E.M. and work at a unique level. For ourselves I mean, we’re not the most original band in the world but we’re trying to express ourselves and make records and play live in a manner that isn’t going to be confused with Duran Duran or any of these dozens of bands that all sound the same to us. Commercial concessions? I don’t think I’d even know how to do that.” But you’re meeting with a fair degree of success now has there been pressure to compromise from any quarter? “No, our record company understand we know what’s best for us. Every once in a while you get some guy who comes up to you at a radio station, fat, about eight chains on his chest, and says something like ‘Why don’t you have a dance thing to it, y’know, like ‘Dancing With Myself'? Then we’d really play your record! 1 .1 always just want to tell them to drop dead. My favourite music has always been individual and really heartfelt and if it was never a commercial success, tough. We're confident enough in our ability that we think that if we continue to make the records we want to make and make what is close to our hearts, then we’ll eventually be found by the masses. We sold a quarter of a million of this one and the last one, which is pretty good but when Michael Jackson has sold 35 million here you realise there’s a big audience out there.” Can you see a point where you’re going to run into all those marketing people and have a ceiling put on it because you’re not what they want to hear? “Y’know, .1 don’t think that’s going to happen. I might be overly optimistic but the whole time we’ve been a band, working, touring, playing, the whole idea has been to make ourselves the greatest band we possibly can. We’re not anywhere near that yet. I think five years down the line, if we work really hard and don’t screw up and become stupid cocaine heads or something, we could very well be a band so undeniably good that they have to play our records. Bruce Springsteen never got played until a couple of years ago. It might take longer but we’re willing to stick it for the long run and do it our way and wake up and look in the mirror in the morning and feel good about it.”

A friend suggested that if they’d really wanted to represent American culture at the Olympic Games closing ceremony they’d

have been better off with R.E.M. than Lionel Ritchie. "I see what you mean. Someone like Muddy Waters would have been a far better representative if that was what they wanted (Muddy, unfortunately, has been indisposed of late RB). I don’t feel like we’re apologists or representatives of America but we live here and I think most of our musical inspirations come from here." r^SBH6PBBBSSBi You’re a very American band. ‘Yeah it’s,funny, we didn’t plan it that way. I mean, I listen to a lot of English music and African music for that matter ” Some critics have been comparing you to the new English big guitar groups like U2 and Big Country. What do you think of those groups? . "Umm ... I ... like U2. Big Country, y’know, I don’t know enough about them. I sometimes have my doubts about the new optimistic or whatever bands with their preaching lyrics but I’d rather be lumped in with them than Journey or Styx.” Was the finished sound on Murmur a happy accident or did you know specifically what you wanted? “We knew what we wanted when we went in. We weren’tsure whether we were capable of it it was the first time we’d been able to record in a studio where we could, sit for more than three hours. But I think at that point the band had a focus we knew what we wanted to do, we had the songs and we knew we wanted to short-circuit the typical

rock ’n’ roll thing of having the first album sound like the live show, we didn't want to present a jigsaw puzzle. It didn’t come out nearly as good as it should have. If we’d had another week in the studio it would have been about 10 times better, but ...” Was there ever a problem playing those songs to audiences who had only heard the record? “No. Basically the energy level when we play is pretty high. You lose some of the subtleties, it’s more of a rock ‘n’ roll celebration. I know it shocked some people because it was that much rowdier but the songs translate well and extra energy is good for a live show. We basically built our reputation live and the records came out later. We’re real comfortable on stage, as far as taking chances, trying new things, being a good band.” The Reverend Howard Finster designed the cover of Reckoning and the video for ‘Radio Free Europe’ was filmed at his place. From what I’ve read he sounds a pretty amazing character. ‘‘Well I’m an aetheist, so it’s nothing to do with God, he’s an amazing man, he almost makes me believe him. He’s an 65-year-old, self-ordained minister who had a vision of the Virgin Mary or something that told him to make holy folk art to bring God into the world. He only sleeps about 15 minutes a day, in catnaps, and he paints, draws and sculpts almost round the clock. And if a kid comes by his house with a broken bicycle he’ll fix the bicycle because he thinks that bringing any good

thing into this troubled world will bring God closer to the Earth. Some of his ideas are hard to stomach, like he believes he’s from another planet and he was sent here to heal the Earth. But you almost believe him, he’s such a wonderful man. He’s actually building a church himself, by hand. He’s just an interesting person and if nothing else we felt an affinity towards him because he’s an eccentric Southern guy who’s on his own and being successful.” How did you meet him? Through Michael’s art connections? "We’ve all met him because he gives speeches around Athens, at his exhibitions and so on even in New York and Europe. We met him through seeing his shows and it came about that we thought we should go down to his place and shoot a video there. We did it and got to know him and he did the record cover and designed one of our TShirts.” He’s got a couple of records of his own, hasn’t he? "Yeah. It’s a really neat kind of country thing, where he plays the banjo and sings these songs that come to him in dreams.” The Reckoning artwork could be seen as bloody-minded. For instance, nowhere are the songs listed in their correct running order, not even on the insert. "Yeah, sometimes we maybe bend over a little too far backwards but I’m just tired of seeing these records with covers that look like they’ve been made by a corporation in Los Angeles, like every other cover. The idea is that when you listen to one of our records

it’s like opening a door to a place you’ve never been before, normal rules don’t apply. We get away with it with the record company. Sometimes it makes it confusing for people to figure out what the hell the song’s called, who plays on what, but that’s okay, the music should sell the record.” You’re still based in Athens. Do you see a day when you’ll have to move to somewhere like New York? "Not really. I don’t like big cities, except for business. I think if I was living in a big city it would make it too hard for us to sit around and play, do what we do. I prefer to stay in a real small, quiet town, a kind of backwater. It gives you time to create, to live. It’s pretty ideal for us.”

For all he loves the small town life Buck also enjoys touring and he professes a keen desire to visit this part of the world as soon as possible which looks as if it’s not going to be until around January next year. If the two live tracks I’ve heard from a British EP are anything to go by the performances will be worth waiting for -- the blistering, careering half-intelligible version of ‘9-9’ in particular adds a new dimension. If some of what Buck says reads a little naively then that’s not the way it strikes the ear. He’s confident, intelligent sounding - sounds like the sort of man whose judgement you’d trust. In fact, R.E.M. sound like a band you can trust. Russell Brown