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John Michael Stipe |
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 "I've always felt that sexuality is a really slippery thing. In this day and age, it tends to get categorized and labeled, and I think labels are for food. Canned food. — Michael Stipe THE myth of the garage band that makes it big is as fundamental to our romantic understanding of rock and roll as the invention of the electric guitar. School chums get together to play the music they love, stick to their vision during years of sparsely attended gigs at roadhouses, bars, and pizza joints, and hope against hope that at the end of a very long road, they'll eventually top the charts. There is no finer example of this parable of hard-won success than R.E.M. Raised an army brat, former art major Michael Stipe met aspiring musicians Bill Berry, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills when they were all students at the University of Georgia. Influenced by the Byrds and American punk bands, and encouraged by the blossoming local music scene that was producing nationally recognized bands like the B-52s, the four dropped out of school in 1980 to pursue music full-time. As R.E.M. (the name is short for rapid eye movement, but was chosen at random), the quartet played a first live gig in April of 1980 at an abandoned church in Athens, performing indecipherable covers of such songs as the Searchers' "Needles and Pins" and the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen." In 1981, the band's first single, "Radio Free Europe"/"Sitting Still" (recorded for the small Atlanta-based Hib-Tone label), won critical raves and best-of-the-year recognition from the Village Voice. Word of R.E.M. began to infiltrate the underground, aided by the band's grueling touring schedule of southeastern college towns and clubs, which sometimes had them playing two or three sets a night, five days a week. On the strength of "Radio Free Europe," they managed to book enough gigs to fund the recording of the five-track E.P. Chronic Town, which in turn led to a contract with I.R.S. Records that secured high royalties, if a paltry advance, and, most importantly, a fair measure of artistic freedom. In 1982, R.E.M. entered Charlotte, North Carolina's Reflection Studios with producer Mitch Easter and sound engineer Don Dixon to record Murmur. Stipe's edgy, oblique lyrics, Buck's jangly, electrifying guitar, and Mills' melodic, McCartneyesque bass lines made the album a critical and commercial favorite upon its release in 1983. Though Murmur never charted very high, Rolling Stone critics acknowledged it as the year's best album, and R.E.M. as band of the year. (At decade's end, the magazine cited Murmur as the eighth most important album of the eighties.) An indisputable product of the post-punk era, yet unique in the subtlety of its various discernible influences, R.E.M. attracted a significant cult following in Europe, which was further consolidated with the release of 1984's Reckoning, another critical favorite. While the band's audience was growing Stateside as well, even with the release of its third album, 1985's folk-tinged Fables of the Reconstruction, R.E.M. remained musically deviant enough from its contemporaries to remain a cult phenomenon. Determined to see its music widely appreciated without yielding to commercial concessions, the band seemed caught in a catch-22 of trying to please its die-hard fans while still attracting new audiences. The transitional, harder-edged Life's Rich Pageant (1986) paid slight deference to accessibility considerations, in that the band enlisted the aid of John Cougar Mellencamp's producer, Don Gehman, who introduced a rock wallop to their subterranean sound with the incorporation of heavy drums and bass. The album had a crystalline sound compared to the somewhat murky Fables and the notoriously marble-mouthed Stipe made a concerted effort to enunciate the lyrics. R.E.M. crossed over in style, while still managing to retain its out-of-the-mainstream status, with 1987's LP Document and its Top 10 single, "The One I Love." On the ensuing tour, the band graduated from playing theaters and college gymnasiums to playing packed sports arenas. Document was also the last album owed to I.R.S. on the band's original contract, and, in 1988, the members of R.E.M. signed a $10-million deal with Warner Brothers that afforded them total artistic liberty. Their first Warners release, the platinum-seller Green, illustrated that it was possible for the underground darlings to achieve commercial success without losing sight of their artistic integrity. An interesting, if disjointed, mix of radio-friendly singles like "Pop Song 89," "Stand," and "Orange Crush," and Spartan, confessional tracks like "Hairshirt" and "The Wrong Child," Green firmly ensconced R.E.M. in the public imagination as alternative rock's leading authority. Declared the Best American Band by Rolling Stone in 1988 and on tour for most of 1989, R.E.M. followed a year of relative inactivity with the back-to-back releases of the eclectic Out of Time (1991) and the beautifully melancholic, heavily acoustic Automatic for the People (1992). Both albums yielded hit singles and elicited the requisite rock writers' raves, especially the now-classic Automatic for the People, which many consider to be R.E.M.'s finest album. In 1994, the band delivered a long-promised "rock" record, Monster, which quickly achieved multi-platinum status. The album, which Stipe aptly described as sounding "like punk rock, but loud," was dedicated to his close friend River Phoenix, who had died of a drug overdose the year before. Stipe's pluck was further tested by the 1994 death of another celebrity friend, Kurt Cobain (the haunting Monster cut "Let Me In" speaks directly to the frustration and sadness of his loss). Stipe commented on the dangers of the perils of fast-won superstardom that had figured so prominently in Cobain's suicide: "If Murmur or Reckoning had sold five million copies, I wouldn't be alive to tell the tale." Stipe was a source of emotional support for Cobain's widow, Courtney Love, who has insisted that Stipe and her husband once slept together. But for all his famous friends and celebrity, Stipe has steadfastly maintained his privacy. He has spoken out on rumors that he has AIDS (untrue) and on his sexuality (purposely ambiguous). "I think AIDS hysteria would obviously and naturally extend to people who are media figures and anybody of indecipherable sexuality. Or anybody who is associated, for whatever reason--whether it's a hat, or the way I carry myself--as being queer-friendly." He rocks the vote, the environment, and animal rights. He plans to make (but not act in) artistically viable independent films with his production company Single Cell Pictures. Speaking of single cells, Stipe says his "spirit animal" is Spirulina, a sea algae used for various green beverage concoctions. R.E.M.'s 1995 Monster tour was plagued by unexpected problems: only one member of the band, Peter Buck, did not undergo some sort of invasive surgery. Stipe required a hernia operation, drummer Bill Berry endured brain surgery after suffering an aneurysm onstage, and bassist Mike Mills underwent abdominal surgery. If the band members themselves were a little on the sickly side, their continued health as a group was most certainly in no danger: in 1996, they signed one of the biggest record deals in rock history, a renewed contract with Warner Bros. that netted them $80 million for five albums. The band's most recent release, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which was recorded during and in the wake of the disaster-ridden Monster tour, has been greeted with enough critical success to justify Warners' potentially benighted generosity, though it has sold slightly below the levels of recent efforts. One critic went so far as to call it "the best R.E.M. album you've never heard." New Adventures illustrates yet again the band's uniform dedication to experiment with novel textures and approaches: from the expansive "How the West Was Won and Where It Got Us" to the brooding "E-Bow the Letter" to the jarring "Wake-Up Bomb," the album settles at a happy medium somewhere between the ethereal Automatic for the People and the muscular Monster. Time magazine critic Christopher John Farley perhaps best articulated the perennial appeal of the now nearly-two-decade-year-old band: "The secret to R.E.M.'s success over the years has always been its ability to remain focused on the music, regardless of outside pressures. Good bands hit and fade. Great bands, like R.E.M. endure." As for Stipe, he too holds a high opinion of R.E.M.: "If I wasn't in the band, I'd be a big fan. I'd go see us live. I would be irritated by me every now and then, but I think I would like us a lot." But seventeen years is a long time for any career, and October 30, 1997, drummer Bill Berry opted for early retirement. The split was an amicable one, and although they had been quoted throughout the years as saying that if one member left R.E.M., they would call it a day, the remaining members decided to forge ahead without him. "Well," said Berry, when presented with this contradiction. "We also said, probably more often than that, that we would do this until it wasn't fun anymore. It's not as much fun for me, it's still fun for these guys." Berry didn't hang up his sticks right away, however; in December he played at an Atlanta benefit for Tourette's Syndrome, where he also put his drums up for auction. The remaining members of R.E.M. carried on, announcing that they were planning to record another album. In addition, all three continued work on various side projects. Peter Buck recorded an album and toured with his raga 'n' roll band Tuatara, a group that also features notable musicians from his hometown of Seattle. Mike Mills and Buck both lent their respective skills to Liz Phair's album Exile in Guyville, released in August 1998. And both Mills and Michael Stipe became more involved in the film industry: Mills signed on to compose the score for the film A Cool, Dry Place, while Stipe inked a two-year development deal with October Films for his film production company, Single Cell Pictures. The deal includes a joint venture between Single Cell, October, and R.E.M.'s label, Warner Bros., to produce and distribute soundtracks for Stipe's films. Single Cell already has two well-received films to its credit (with Stipe attached in a producing capacity): the glam-rock-inspired Velvet Goldmine, released in 1998; and the surreal Spike Jonze-directed Being John Malkovich, which hit theaters the following year. Other projects are in development, including American Psycho (based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel) and Powers That Be. In May 1998, Stipe teamed up with producer Gill Holland and Girlstown director Jim McKay to produce the indie film Spring Forward, starring Ned Beatty and Liev Schreiber. In 1999, the band released the soundtrack for the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, which director Milos Forman titled after R.E.M's 1992 tribute-in-song of the same name. An unconventional work, the soundtrack intermingled dialogue and the original Mighty Mouse theme (among other intesting aural snippets) with original pieces. The first live appearance by the Bill Berry-less R.E.M. was to be at the third annual Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, D.C., in June 1998, but a lightning storm halted the show before the band's set. A skirt-wearing Stipe took the stage and told the crowd that the rest of the show was off. "Go home in peace," the R.E.M. frontman said, "and know that we love you." They did get the chance to play the next day, debuting several new songs. R.E.M. also fulfilled a long-standing promise to perform at Neil Young's annual Bridge School benefit concert in October. For fans, the long wait between albums was over when, in October 1998, the band released Up, featuring the single "Daysleeper." Much to the distress of devotees, R.E.M. elected not to tour in support of the album, opting instead to tape a series of television appearances instead, at which lucky fan club members and radio contest winners were invited to be audience members. R.E.M.'s promotional blitz for Up — hitting the U.S., England, Sweden, Spain, Germany, and Austria — was scheduled to wrap up with an appearance on Sesame Street. |