MyLaunch's Mac Randal

 

REM recording Up

The title of R.E.M.'s latest album, Up, must have been meant as something of a jest. After all, a less "up" album would be hard to find on the 1998 release schedule. Most of the 15 songs (14 official plus one hidden track) have a somber, autumnal quality, and Michael Stipe's lyrics are sometimes questing, sometimes mysterious, but rarely high-spirited. Then again, can you blame Stipe and his colleagues Peter Buck and Mike Mills for being a little down? If your band had just lost its drummer after nearly two decades together, you'd probably be depressed too.No doubt about it, the most significant news of recent times in R.E.M. land has been the departure of drummer Bill Berry in October 1997. Following the onset of a near-fatal brain aneurysm during the band's last tour, Berry had been seriously questioning whether he should continue with the group. And just before they were due to go into the studio and begin recording the successor to 1996's New Adventures In Hi-Fi, he reached a decision, telling Stipe, Buck and Mills that he would not be joining them. "It was as if someone pulled the floor out from under us," Stipe recalls. "The way we responded to it was, the worst thing we could do was to pretend as though nothing [had] changed, to hire a fake Bill. It wasn't that kind of record anyway. Basically we took everything we had that was familiar to us in the studio--the different things you do over the course of 10 records--we threw them out and started on a really grand experiment that was not altogether easy. In fact, I would suppose it was the most difficult record we ever made."

Although the band did recruit two notable drummers, Joey Waronker (ex-Beck) and Barrett Martin (of Screaming Trees and Buck's instrumental side project, Tuatara), to sit in on the Up sessions, there is very little standard drumming to be heard on the finished album. (Martin stayed away from the kit entirely, playing vibes and sundry percussion instead.) Most of the tracks feature either a drum machine or no drums at all, a major change indeed for R.E.M. But the lack of drums wasn't the only aspect of the band that was markedly different due to Bill's absence. "The first thing that went out the window was starting work on time," says Buck. In the past, Berry and Buck, the more punctual members of R.E.M., "would arrive at one [o'clock] and get to work, and the other guys would just sort of wander in. I get a lot of reading done now," Peter quips.

Stipe's confessed inability to finish songs certainly didn't cut down on Buck's reading time. "Every record is challenging and hard to write," Michael explains. "I always get writers' block, and that's that. I expect it. I know how to get over it, how long it will take, what I have to do. If it happens once or twice on the usual record, it happened four or five times on this album. I wasn't an easy person to be around."

Adding to the challenge, says Mills, was the fact that "we couldn't track the way we normally do. That was not an option because we didn't have a drummer and we didn't have time to rehearse. It changed everything and opened a new way of recording. On a functional level, Bill's quitting led to the freedom to go in all these weird directions we would never go otherwise, but that we wanted to go in anyway, from the machine-driven sounds of 'Hope' to the Beach Boys sounds of 'At My Most Beautiful.' Every door was opened, so we tried to go through as many of them as we could." For much of the album, Mills played keyboards and Buck played bass; with typical humor, Peter describes himself as "a different bass player than Mike. Much worse."

The result of all this experimentation is an album whose overall mood the band finds hard to pin down. Buck calls it "kind of psychedelic. It doesn't sound like anything specific, but it's got that '67 Summer anything-goes feel." Stipe has a little more to say on this question. "I couldn't say this record has one particular mood. To me it's kind of calming. Somebody said early on that it's the kind of record you could put on repeat, and it just could play all day long while you're doing all your stuff. There's no big shocking rock number that comes roaring out. It feels like a complete kind of journey. That's totally by mistake; the songs don't correlate one to the other, it's no attempt at rock opera or anything like that. But they do have a similar type of feeling.

"The one thing I really wanted from this record," he continues, "was that the feeling feel real. What I get from our early work--Murmur,

Reckoning--is that, although there might have been words that were utter nonsense, you get a feeling from those records that is the same feeling I get from the records that I consider are the best in my record collection. Marquee Moon by Television...I can't tell you 20 years later what those songs are about, but I can sing every word. I know what they feel like. And they just feel really real." Beyond feeling real, how close are R.E.M.'s new songs to their real lives? Stipe says not very. "Probably the greatest misconception is that all the songs, or many of the songs, despite my denials, are autobiographical. I've laid the sidewalks to say that's not the case. I couldn't possibly be all the characters I've written songs about. I'd be utterly schizophrenic and a lot more interesting than I am. But I do think about things, and I guess I've developed the ability to put that into a character or into the mood of a song and try to raise a question or comment on something." However deeply (or not) Stipe's lyrics delve into his own psyche, though, one thing is certain; his singing on Up is the best of his career, demonstrating his highly tuned skill as a sort of musical character actor, grunting one moment, soaring the next.

Some of the songs on Up were first aired publicly during the band's premiere appearance without Berry, at the 1998 Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, D.C. (Waronker subbed on drums). Of that show, Stipe says, "It was weird getting up there without Bill. He called us right before we went on, wished us the best of luck, and asked us to tell Joey not to play too well and make him look bad. We'd rehearsed and everything. I guess in retrospect, though, we didn't do what was expected of us. We opened with 'Airport Man,' which is a slow, quiet song, even though everyone was in rah-rah mode. We walked out and did what we do. It's not the Beastie Boys."

Buck's take on the band's performance is almost defiantly proud. "We got a whole lot of confusion from the audience, which I think is great. We've been around so long that if we can still confuse our fans, that's great. Starting off with a five-minute one-chord drone improv thing probably wasn't the best way to start a stadium show, but I feel really good about it." To which Mills adds, "It was great. Nobody threw anything. They applauded even if they didn't know why."

The show may have been a success, but don't expect a tour for a while. Stipe, Buck, and Mills have considered the possibilities, but are in no hurry to rush out on the road. "We spent the '80s on the road," says Buck. "I hate to sound like The Last Waltz, but we went from playing in tiny little bars to 10 people to huge fields. There isn't anywhere else to go with it. Short of playing on a space station or something, we've done all the earthly touring we can do. As fun as it is to play live, it's not as important as it used to be. I know we'll go out and tour again, maybe next Summer, but to me, it's just not important." Mills seconds that emotion. "Even if we were to play small places, it's such a big project. You have to plan it so far in advance, and get everybody together and get this whole group of people ready to go, and we just weren't ready for that after all we've been through and the changes we've had. Better to regroup and reassess where we are and go out later when we're more comfortable with our new position as a three-piece."

Far from breaking up, the remaining three members of R.E.M. seem quite content to continue working with each other into the next century. Stipe admits that it's still "odd to think of ourselves as a three-piece. It's so weird in the studio to go, 'Well, what do you think of this? Good?' Then you look around, you go over [to the drums] and no one's sitting there." But all three seem to agree with Mills's belief that Berry's departure "forced us to draw on some inner strength, whether we knew we had it or not. It's good to be here looking good, feeling good. It's interesting what adversity brings out in people." Or as Buck puts it, "It's nice to be confused, especially after all this time."

So what's next for the "new" R.E.M.? It's anyone's guess. Buck and Mills have expressed some interest in working with strings and horns or doing a more traditional folk-oriented album, but Buck is the first to say, "This is not a rigorously thought-out thing. We don't know what we're doing."

"We have an internal barometer that instinctually leads us the way we should go," Stipe comments in conclusion. "We've also been profoundly lucky, and we're mildly talented. That combination has put us where we are, and we're really happy to be here."

11/18/98