How the West Was Won and Where It Got
Us:
Features
Buck on bass, guitar, mandolin, and bozouki (a Greek stringed instrument).
Says Buck, "I doubled it with the guitars. It's supposed to sound Ennio
Morricone-ish."
This
is one of REM's most cinematic tracks, containing a suitably atonal modern-jazz
piano solo from Mike Mills, and all four members of the band nominated
this song as their favourite. Buck explains, "We wanted to structure the
album so that you'd get a little taste of everything that was on it within
the first five songs. So you're like, Well, what is this record? Is it
a rock record or a folk record or what?'. And then you get Leave."
The Wake-Up Bomb
Another 5 minutes plus track, this is a real love it sor hate it song.
It is one of the loudest on the album, and would have fitted in well on
Monster. Rumour has it that the song is about the band Oasis,
(lines such as "see ya, don't wanna be ya, lunch meat, pond scum,) but
R.E.M. deny this.
Buck says, "It was kind of about the glam rock scene. Michael was kind
of looking at the whole 'Dress like we do' [scene] when we were teenagers.
All that said, it is kind of a joyous pop song, too." Mills calls it "a
big, loud, stupid rock song."
New Test Leper
"It's about a person on a talk show," says Buck. "It's kind of a weird
folk-rock thing with surf guitar."
E-Bow the Letter
A slow, brooding song which features Patti Smith on backing vocals and
Buck using a guitar gadget called an E-bow, it is a somewhat confrontational
choice as a single. Buck concedes, "I would never consider it a commercial
song. It's five and a half minutes long. It doesn't have a melody except
in the chorus, when someone who isn't even in the band sings. But then
we never really have big hits anyway. There's two ways to go. The first
way is to go for the surefire hit single and make the
video to fit it, which we've
never really done. The other way is to pick something that represents the
record, knowing that not having had a record out in almost two years, it's
going to get played anyway. I'm sure it will puzzle people. I can't wait
to see what the alternative
stations in America do with
it."
Leave:
The band's original idea was to open the album with Leave, a startling
sonic departure. Written by Bill Berry and lasting almost seven minutes,
it features a continuous car alarm noise obtained on an ARP Odyssey synthesiser.
Buck says, "When we wrote Leave, Patti Smith was visiting. She and Michael
Stipe were sitting in the next room while we were really rocking out with
these tiny little amps. Patti came in and went, 'Wow...', while Michael
said, 'Hey, you guys are doing some weird shit over there'."
The song ended up as song nmuber 6, and How the West Was Won and Where
It Got Us was put as the opening track instead. Leave starts
with a quiet acoustic passage before exploding into a rocker with a persistent
siren-like sound. "Scott's holding down a key and moving the octave switch
back and forth through the whole song," says Buck. "We could only play
it once every other sound check, because Scott's wrist would be numb by
the end of it."
Departure
"It's literary a road song," says Buck. "Michael wrote the Iyrics on a
plane flight from Singapore to San Sebastian, Spain," he says. Stipe
said on tour that the song was about life, and death.
Bittersweet Me
The second single from the album. Buck said "For me, it's all snapshots.
I remember coming up with the initial riff at the Shoreline Amphitheatre
in San Francisco. It was the first show when Bill came back from his aneurysm."
Be Mine:
R.E.M. attempted to record Be Mine on Mike Mills's tour bus as it
was being driven from Dallas to St. Louis in the early hours of the morning.
Buck recalls, "At least two of the people who were involved in the recording
don't remember making it. But with the miracle of computer technology,
we had these bits of the song, slung them together and overdubbed it. But
it sounded too sterile, so we just cut the track live in Seattle in one
take."
Binky the Doormat
The title comes from the Bobcat Goldthwait movie 'Shakes The Clown,'" says
Buck. "For some reason, Michael got really obsessed with that movie when
we were making this record."
Zither
Instrumental. Says Mills, "It was recorded in a dressing room. I think
Scott was actually in the bathroom with the autoharp. We like to do instrumentals."
So Fast, So Numb
Buck saysL "Someone said, 'Is that a drug song?' and I never have thought
about that. That is something that doesn't occur around us a whole lot,
but it seems like it is a warning to someone for behavior, maybe just emotional
behavior."
Low Desert
Buck says: "Definitely a road song... It was called 'Swamp,' and toward
the end of the tour, Michael said, 'It wasn't a swamp song, I wrote the
words and said it was a desert song'"
Electrolite
The third single from the album. Mills says, "It was written on piano,
so it has a different feel." Adds Buck, "It's hard to drive over Mulholland
[Drive in L.A.] and not feel like a movie star, but I don't know what you
feel like when you hit bottom and go down the bottom of the hill." |
E-Bow the Letter
Bittersweet Me
Elecrolite
