Interview with REM’s MIchael StipeBy stevenl154

Interview with REM’s MIchael StipeBy stevenl154
Christopher Bollen/ Interview

Earlier this year, Michael Stipe turned 51, and his band, R.E.M., released its 15th full-length album, Collapse Into Now (Warner Bros.). I highly doubt that there was ever a time in American culture when youth wasn’t worshiped and the new preferred. But Stipe might be the American independent culture’s only certifiable rock legend-so original and imitable that no similar career comparison can be found in the arts-who is actually still in the process of defining what that legend is. Of course, Stipe has always been about eliding genres and confounding expectations. Along with his band members Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry (who retired from the group in 1997), Stipe has built an American band with an American sound that has arguably been one of the most successful among American audiences in the past 30 years, seemingly by inventing a new type of music from scratch: It’s poetic; it ranges from manic melancholy to post-apocalyptic hope; the lyrics and choruses (when there are any) resist glib, sentimental, or cloyingly defiant clichés and yet remain in the head for decades.

R.E.M. - Every Body Hurts

interview with R.E.M.

R.E.M.

"In the past 10 years, we had figured out how to completely lose focus in the studio-- with no one to blame but ourselves."

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by Stephen M. Deusner, posted March 24, 2008

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R.E.M. have become so embedded in our popular culture that it's easy to forget that those three letters once referred to something other than the quartet from Athens, Georgia. As alt-rock nerds and sleep therapists know, the acronym derives from the term rapid eye movement, the period of sleep during which dreams occur. This is, it turns out, pretty crucial to Michael Stipe's songwriting. Speaking by phone from Austin, where the band later would play a late-night set at South by Southwest and tape an episode of "Austin City Limits", Stipe explained the significance of dreams on R.E.M.'s new album. Emphasizing short, sharp songs, Accelerate updates the band's old sounds-- Peter Buck's Byrds riffs, Michael Stipe's speaking voice, Mike Mills' high-flying harmonies, and drums that mimic Bill Berry's punchy rhythms-- from the 1980s and 90s to the late 00s, from Reagan and Bush I to Bush II, from dreams to the real world.

Pitchfork: What made you go with Irish producer Jacknife Lee for this album?

MS: It was Edge actually who kind of pushed us toward Jacknife. He had worked with U2 and Edge thought it would be a great marriage of minds for us and Jacknife to go into the studio together. I was really thrilled with the work he had done on Snow Patrol and Bloc Party. When we met him, he was really good and straight talking, so we were excited. Smart guy. It seemed like it would be a good mix.

Pitchfork: What exactly did he bring to the studio?

R.E.M. - Losing My Religion

R.E.M.

Biography

R.E.M. is an alternative rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, United States in 1980. The band originally consisted of Michael Stipe (vocals), Peter Buck (guitar, mandolin), Mike Mills (bass, keyboards, vocals) and Bill Berry (drums). Berry retired from the band in October 1997 after having suffered a brain aneurysm on the ‘95 Monster tour. He is now a farmer.

Although “R.E.M.” can stand for “Rapid Eye Movement”, which is a certain stage during a person’s nightly sleep, it does not have special significance with respect to the band, for they have stated that they got the term at random out of a dictionary. Their first show together had been performed under the name Twisted Kites.

Throughout the 1980s, the band worked relentlessly, releasing records every year from their debut album Murmur in 1983 through Green in 1988. Alongside this hectic recording schedule, R.E.M. toured constantly, playing both theaters and backwoods dives. Along the way, they inspired countless bands, from the legions of jangle pop groups in the mid-1980s to scores of alternative pop groups in the 1990s, who admired their slow climb to stardom and were instrumental in the rise of college radio. The band’s politics, aesthetics, and hardworking ethos - largely inspired by the early punk and art rock movements of the 1970s - enabled the group to establish itself quickly as one of the pillars of the U.S.’s burgeoningalternative rock scene. Toward the mid-1990s, R.E.M. was an institution, as its influence was felt in new generations of bands. Throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, while commercially less significant, R.E.M. have continued to create challenging records, releasing four as a three-piece.