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All Of It with Alison Stewart
R.E.M. Ascend (Full Bio)
00:34:36
Author Peter Ames Carlin joins us to discuss his book The Name of This Band is R.E.M.
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Listener
Listener support WNYC Studios.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it from wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Full Bio is our book series where we spend a few days with the author of a deeply researched biography to get a fuller understanding of the subject. Today we are discussing the name of this band is R.E.M. a biography by Peter Ames Carlin R.E.M. has sold more than 85 million albums. The new Yorker called them the band that created alternative rock. The magazine said, quote, REM has emerged with their sound in place, a self assured combination of sparseness and warmth, of New wave and folk rock that was influenced by the New York bands of the 70s, but was unambiguously their own. They had a rhythm section, Mike Mills and Bill Barry, who'd been playing together since high school. Peter Buck on guitar was a perfectionist. And Michael Stipe was confident in his vocals and style. REM Started playing gigs in Athens, Georgia, like other bands at the time, the B52s, pylon and love Tractor. And they started touring and caught the attention of IRS Records, founded by Miles Copeland. Here's Peter Ames Carlin. The author of the name of this band is R.E.M.
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Michael Stipe
Put that Foot there. Put that up. You want that? This is a country at all.
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Alison Stewart
REM Is often credited with being one of the founding bands that were considered alternative rock. What qualities did alt rock have, at least in the beginning? And then how did REM Fulfill those qualities?
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Listener
Well, when we talk about alternative rock or independent rock or, you know, the music of the 70s and into the 80s that was more sort of artistic or fantastic or less concerned with mainstream expectations, you know, a lot of that, you know, sort of the explosion point. It seems to be the start of punk, you know, in New York and, and then in London in the mid-70s. I mean, people talk about the Ramones and the Sex Pistols and the Clash and, and all those great bands. And at that time, I mean, as a response to sort of the increased professionalism and slickness of mainstream, this was music that was far more raw, far less studied, far more, you know, in some ways elemental, but it really, you know, in some ways it harkened back to the earliest rock and roll of the 50s. But in other ways it was, you know, modern to the nth degree by being that more, you know, plain spoken and emotionally raw and often sort of taking on, you know, really dark and disturbing ideas and imagery. And so R.E.M. you know, you know, that was kind of more the sort of the punk rock thing. But then with other bands like Talking Heads and then the early Blondie. There's a kind of more sort of art yeast. You know, there was a sense of, of the artistic avant garde coming in as well. And so what REM did was somehow find their own particular combination of those things. You know, they sort of proud of the fact that they weren't very accomplished, you know, musicians. Though of course, Mike Mills was, was extraordinarily accomplished. Peter liked to talk about, you know, he would say that he hadn't even learned how to play guitar really until the band came together, which was an exaggeration. But in Athens at the time, I mean, the idea of, of, of. Of. Of being anti professional as a sort of artistic feature was, you know, was really prevalent. And a lot of bands like from the B52s, who were the first really, you know, big breakthrough band out of Athens in the late 70s and Pylon, who are more of a sort of an arty cult band. And then R.E.M. you know, you know, and Love Tractor and a lot of these other bands came together where, you know, it was kids that were largely from the art school who, who would get together and say, well, let's make a rock and roll band, but first we have to figure out which instruments we're all going to learn how to play. Like, literally these guys would get together and they'd be like, okay, you know, like the guy, Michael Lehuski, who was like one of the central founders of Pylon, a very, very influential sort of art rock band of the early 80s. Like he and the guitar player Randy Buley decided to form this band. And then they decided, you know, Michael said, well, I'd like to play bass because it has two fewer strings and, and that's, that's less to learn. And you know, and that's how their band came together. And so R.E.M. in some ways, like to sort of feel like they were following in that, you know, in that, in that example as well. Because in a sense there's, you know, if you don't really know what you do, what you're doing, if you don't know what the rules are, then you make up all your own rules and you can create your own sounds and text that don't conform to what everyone else is doing. And that was a real key ingredient in how they began to formulate their shared identity. And you know, and the aesthetic of what this band was going to be was the idea that whatever the rules are in how to be a rock, you know, how to be a rock musician and how to be a rock band, we're going to do the opposite of all those things.
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Alison Stewart
We actually have a clip of Michael Stipe describing how he developed his vocal style. Let's listen.
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Peter Buck
What became my vocal style probably had to do with Mike's love of the Ramones and rem's penchant for writing really fast, really frenetic songs. I thought they were too fast and I wanted to slow them down and they wouldn't play slower. We were all speed freaks at the time. So I just started singing slower and I started stretching out my vowels and I. I slowed the songs down by making my part much, much slower. And that served me well. You know, it kind of evolved into a vocal style, I guess.
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Alison Stewart
Initially, they had a lot of support from college radio. What was the role of college radio in the early 80s?
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Listener
It was super important because, you know, when we look back at that time, the, you know, mainstream commercial radio and what people were beginning to see on MTV was incredibly conformist. There was just this very, you know, there was a kind of slickness and sleekness that had sort of. That had come to dominate popular music and popular culture and this almost rigid sense of, you know, what was required, particularly when it came to making videos and. Or, you know, for the types of songs that were going to appear on mainstream radio. There was a very rigid sense of what songs should be constructed like, what they should sound like, what the instrumentation should be. And. And so there was this undercurrent of bands, the sort of subculture of. Of more sort of avant garde bands and bands that just, you know, and. And some of them were very punky and some of them were, you know, wrote much more elaborate music. But the idea was that you would work in opposition to the mainstream sort of sleek sort of sound. In the earliest days, when they first signed with IRS Records, which was an independent label in the early 80s, the guy that was the executive they were working with encouraged them to work with a producer who was very well thought of and, you know, and artistic and, you know, had made a lot of cool records. But his sound was much more sort of keyboard centric, which, you know, with those sort of synthesizers and that kind of sort of sleeker tone. And the idea, in a sense, was you can still write really quirky, interesting songs, but if. As long as we have these textures in there, it'll get much more radio play. But the guys in REM could not abide the idea of. Of compromising their music in any way, even if it was just this light layer of sort of keyboard twinkle that this guy wanted to add. And so they were just like, no, no, no, no, no, this is not. You know, they did the session with the guy and kind of gave it a shot, but what they heard was just, no, we're not doing this. Unfortunately, you know, the people at IRS were, you know, smart enough to understand that, like, when you, you know, if you sign an artist, you should let that artist make the art that they want to make and then let the chips fall where they may. So they didn't, you know, even though they probably would have gotten more significant radio airplay and a bigger shot from the beginning, they decided that rather than, you know, leapfrog into the mainstream, they were going to stick to what they felt like doing and, you know, and build an audience in a much, you know, in a slower but more kind of substantial way.
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Alison Stewart
The name of the book is the Name of This band is R.E.M. a Biography. It's by Peter Ames Carlin. He's our guest. It's our choice for full bio. R.E.M. chose to credit all the songs to all 4 Buck, Barry Mills and Stipe. Why did they decide to do this?
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Listener
That goes back to Peter Buck's reading of all the literature about rock bands and the music industry and the fact that he had paid such close attention and really internalized those lessons of what helps a band become successful and then what breaks up bands, particularly the successful ones. And one of the things that he figured out was that the two things that most consistently destroy rock bands are fights over royalties and fights over credit. So he thought, you know, even before they had really written anything significant, before they had even recorded a note of their music, so well, before there was anything to fight over, he said, we are going to resolve all these fights before they start by crediting everything equally so all their names on all the songs, no matter who wrote them, and all of them getting equal share of the, you know, whatever profits came from it equally, no matter who seemed to be more prevalent in any given, you know, song or album or. Or, you know, tour. And really, in some ways, the acid test for this came very early because Mike Mills had written every note and word of the song called Don't Go Back to Rockville. Very early on, I think within the first couple months of the band being together, and that eventually became one of their more popular early songs. But when it came time to, you know, to dish out the credit and then figure out who was going to get the royalties, he had no problem saying, sure, yeah, it's, you know, all.
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Alison Stewart
Of us, you know, what's Also interesting about that is early on they learned something about the business in terms of owning their masters. I think the story goes that Johnny Hibbert owned the right to their first couple of songs, the masters of their first couple of songs, like the Radio Free Europe. Is that correct?
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Listener
Yes, because he was the first person. He was a former musician from Atlanta who was in law school at the time and thought that, you know, it was. Had sort of lost his taste for performing, but decided he still thought it'd be fun to be in the music industry. And so he started this small record company or, or at least had the idea to do it. And when he was looking for a record to release or a band who could record for him, a friend or somebody clued him into this band from Athens. So he went to check them out. And then eventually they, they decided to work together and they put out this, this, this, this record. But as part of the exchange of, of, of, you know, what he was going to pay them and what he was going to get and all this in order to front all the capital to, you know, to, to make this record and then get it, you know, duplicated and sent out and promoted and everything that he would get, he would own the publishing two songs and. But at the same time that they were forming this relationship with Hibbert, they were also becoming close to a couple guys who they had met. One from North Carolina named Jefferson Holt, who was their road manager and then becoming their manager, a very smart guy who understood business. And another guy who was then finishing up a law degree at the University of Georgia named Burtis Downs. And Burtis was, I think, just had a. Had an interest in music and the music industry. Wasn't really studying entertainment law, but knew enough general law and had sort of picked up enough about entertainment law to be able to tell them early on, listen, the one thing you should never sell is your publishing, because that's what, that's what matters the most. That's what's the most valuable thing at the end of the day is this stuff that, you know, the rights to the stuff that you write. And so they, you know, eventually though, they had already signed this deal with Hibbert and the record came out and made enough of a splash that they were given this opportunity to sign with irs, you know, much more established independent label. And. But they had to sort of work a settlement with Hibbert to get the rights back to their. The publishing of those two songs and everything. And so eventually they did do that, and they also continued these relationships with Jefferson Holt, who became their manager and a very crucial member of their sort of artistic musical business cooperative.
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Alison Stewart
But we'll talk about what happens to him later. We're gonna hold on to that. You know, it's interesting.
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Listener
And also with Burtis, who was their lawyer throughout the early years and then after Jefferson left, sort of became. They don't call him a manager. I think they call him an advisor.
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Alison Stewart
So when they signed on to irs, they took a smaller amount of money to have control over their own music and their own image. What did REM want to control?
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Listener
They wanted to control everything about their artistic expression. And that included, you know, not just the songs that they wrote and recorded, but the way the song sounded, the way. And the way they would be presented in album form. So, you know, especially given Michael Stipes training and interest as a visual artist, he wanted to be able to control the packaging of the records and, you know, the look, the feel, the sort of, you know, the aesthetic really going from the initial spark of creation all the way through, you know, the release and promotion of their music. And they were very rigid about certain things that they would and wouldn't do. And early on, you know, again, even though at the time the definitive marketing platform and for popular music had become mtv, you know, and music videos and all that and the idea that this guy's also a visual artist would seem to, would seem to, you know, indicate that they were going to make, you know, from the, from the beginning they were going to make videos that were going to be both artistic and, and, and, and, you know, and accessible. Michael and, and they really resisted a lot of the sort of standard tropes of videos like lip syncing, for instance. I mean, it's hard to imagine, you know, music performance videos that don't include the artist lip syncing to the recorded song. But they, you know, Michael absolutely refused to do that for the first 10 or so years of the band's career. And when he took over making the, the videos for the band, you know, would submit these things to MTV that were less like music videos and more just like avant garde art projects. You know, I mean, famously, the video for Fall On Me, which is one of the first songs of theirs that really began to get airplay on mainstream radio, you know, on FM radio, was not just sort of abstract footage of a, of a quarry that he had shot in Indiana, but was projected upside down, which is hard to watch for any period of time, let alone three and a half or four minutes while you're trying to get something out of a song.
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Alison Stewart
You're listening to our full bio conversation about rem. We'll be right back with a look at the producers who helped REM find and evolve their sound.
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Scott Litt
WNYC Studios is supported by GiveWell. When you make a big purchase, say a car or a new mattress, how do you make sure that you're making the right choice? GiveWell provides an independent resource for a different kind of purchase, a donation. Over 100,000 donors have used GiveWell to donate. First time using GiveWell. When you go to givewell.org and pick podcast and enter WNYC at checkout, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds. Last.
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Peter Buck
This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, the situation in Gaza and a discussion about the term settler colonialism.
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Listener
The early Zionists understood that they were colonizing Palestine. That's not some anti Semitic slur, that's the description they gave themselves.
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Peter Buck
Historian Rashid Khalidi joins me on the.
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Listener
New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart and you are listening to Full Bio. We are discussing Peter Aim Carlin's book. The name of this band is REM. REM's first EP was called Chronic Town in 1982 and was the precursor to their debut album Murm, produced by Mitch Easter. They later moved on to Don Gaiman, a more mainstream producer, and then worked with Scott Litt for their biggest record, out of Time, which won three Grammys. Let's get into it with Peter Ames Carlin.
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Michael Stipe
She could stop, stop it wor.
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Listener
We.
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Michael Stipe
Could find it in the system. We could gather, throw up in up to 5k bars of kitchen size. But not me Sitting shop of the big hill Waste of time sitting still I'm the sun and you can read I'm the son and you're not here.
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Alison Stewart
REM's debut album, Murmur came out on April 12, 1983. What Music World was it being released into?
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Listener
Well, it was one that was being defined by Michael Jackson, say, whose album, you know, whose album Thriller came out the same year. You know, it's a very again, it, you know, we're talking about a time when really modern soul music, rhythm and blues and very, you know, was really predominant, as was this kind of sleek sort of, you know, hair metal type of music. You know, so much of the aesthetic was governed by that very sort of shiny look of mtv, you know, which is all lasers and shining lights and people in skin tight spandex and, you know, a lot of heavily processed hair. Everybody looked like movie stars, you know, and these, and these videos were coming, you know, when you think about, like Duran Duran videos from 1983, or you think about, you know, all the things that were really defining what was happening in, in pop music, it was very cinematic, very produced, very, you know, you know, very sophisticated, but in a kind of artificial way. And R.E.M. was, was heavily opposed to everything about what I just said at the time. And so, you know, what they were trying to present was music that was. As opposed to being something that could be, you know, songs that could be boiled down into these little short, sort of spectacular films that looked like Hollywood adventure movies. They were these murky little tales that had lyrics that, you know, that were gnomic really, you know, that. That sounded like a series of riddles being presented by someone that, that were very difficult to even comprehend because they were mixed so, you know, the vocals were mixed so low compared to the other instruments. You know, they, they thought of the vocals then and the lyrics as just another texture in among all the other instruments. And whereas other songs on the radio or anywhere else, you know, the vocal always far out front and you know exactly what they're saying. In rem, the, the aesthetic was, no, no, no, no, you know, you're going to have to. First of all, it's going to be lower, you're going to have to work harder to even hear what's being said. And then once you do hear what's being said, the chances of your really being able to understand it on an intellectual level are slim to none. And the idea was more like what needs to be absorbed will come through the texture of the words and in the feelings, the emotions that are sort of implicit in the texture and in these odd words and riddles that are being stated.
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Alison Stewart
That's largely the role of the producer, what the record sounds like. That was Mitch Easter on Murmur. What song did Mitch Easter do his best work for rem?
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Listener
Well, it sort of depends who you, you know, who you ask. I mean, a lot of the REM's serious, you know, most serious and earliest fans, the ones who really came on board at the very beginning are, you know, they'll tell you to this day that REM's best album by far is the first record, Murmur, you know, which came a year after the release of their first ep, which was Chronic Town. And Murmur was very sort of layered in ways. There was a lot of kind of purposeful murk in there and textures that are kind of take, you know, that are. That are happening almost more to be felt than heard, in a sense. They spent a lot of time kind of like this. I think the sound of pool balls, you know, billiard balls rattling across a table is in one of the songs. And there's other, you know, other ways of modifying sounds and kind of making things feel more dreamlike in a sense, than an actual waking consciousness.
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Alison Stewart
That's a good example of that.
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Listener
Well, if you listen to like say, for instance on Radio Free Europe, their first big single, you know, it wasn't even that big of. I mean, when we talk about big single, we're talking about it in relative terms. I mean, it was the single that got played on left of the dial radio and on college radio. You know, it was what appealed to people. And it was kind of, in a way, it was sort of oddly anthemic. But it begins with these weird kind of electronic sounds that sound like, you know, a radio signal kind of drifting out of the clouds. And. And there are other songs, you know, I mean, it's just. It's a very kind of distinctive sound and feel, which in some ways is, you know, sort of defines a sort of new wave of early 80s art rock, but also was a function of the fact that they weren't really that great at making records yet. And so as they worked further into their career and made, you know, different records with different producers, you know, you begin to see how their, you know, their sense of not just record making, but also songwriting grows more sophisticated and they're able to sort of play with pop music forms both in terms of, you know, the sound of the records and also the structure of the songs themselves, the compositions and turn pop formats kind of inside out in weird ways that. That are very distinctive and yet still kind of come out of the radio and sound accessible to people who aren't necessarily edgy alternative people.
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Alison Stewart
They moved on to Don Gaiman as a producer now. He was like rock and roll. Like he did Hurt so Good and Jack and Diane for John Cougar Mellencamp seems sort of like the opposite of what REM Was about. Whose idea was it to work together? And actually Don Gaiman had concerns. What were they?
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Listener
Well, they were. It was. In some ways, it seems like an odd pairing because on one hand, REM Is kind of, you know, sort of the very model of an anti commercial band of. Of the mid-80s by this point, and. And Gaiman is working with, you know, John Cougar Mellencamp who is a very, you know, one of the most popular, kind of popular rock and roll artists of the moment. But at the same time, I mean, Mellencamp songs, even if they were as kind of just straight ahead rock and roll is a song like Rock in the usa. I mean, it doesn't get much more mainstream rock in the 80s than that. Also was, was really beginning to add a lot of. Of unexpected instruments into, you know, what was essentially pop music. So he was having like top 10 hits with songs that featured mandolins and fiddles and other kind of. Of natural acoustic folk instruments that he would combine with rock instruments and create a sound that was actually pretty distinctive and I still think sounds really good, you know, today, nearly 40 years later. And I think that's what they picked up on because by the time they started working on Life's Rich Pageant, which was a record they made with Gaiman, they were beginning, you know, Peter was spending less time with his guitar and more time trying to figure out how to play, you know, mandolins and, and, you know, and, and Mike Mills was, was experimenting with different kinds of keyboards and sounds and Bill Barry was, was, you know, the drummer was, was also playing acoustic instruments and figuring out other types of things to play. So they had this idea that they wanted to create records that had different textures and unexpected textures, but still could conceivably work on mainstream radio and that, you know. And so when they paired together with Gaiman, you know, it made. It seemed like a common sense leap for them to make. And Gaiman coming from the other side of, you know, of the ledger, from a more sort of pop rock world. I think he was interested in getting involved with a kind of arty band, though he was less sure about whether he wanted to work with a band that was just kind of of, you know, just, just purposefully non conformist and purposefully anti commercial, you know, just to be stubborn, you know. So he really pushed Michael to, to sing more clearly to boot, you know, to get his vocals higher in the mix and also to write lyrics that, you know, that you. That, that. That parsed on the page, you know, that went beyond these kind of elliptical sort of emotional allusions that he would make in the earlier songs to be more direct and speak in more direct language. And, you know, Michael sort of resisted it a little bit at first or bristled with the suggestions. But then, you know, as, as Gaiman said, he kept coming back with sharper, you know, more clearly written versions of his lyrics. And Pageant was their first record to go gold so it was a big, you know, I think it was a. Both an artistic and a commercial success for them. And it was a, you know, it was, it was a stepping stone toward the sound that would take them, you know, into really the, the upper reaches of the charts in the next couple years.
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Alison Stewart
Let's listen to Gaiman and rem's version of Fall on Me.
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Michael Stipe
There's a problem Feather Zion Bargain buildings waves and pulleys Feathers hit the ground before the weight can leave the air by the sky and tell the sky until sky and tell the sky Go find me Fall me.
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Alison Stewart
After working with Gaiman, they went to work with Scott Litt, who would be there, I think, for the next six records. First of all, was there disappointment that they didn't return to Gaiman?
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Listener
Sure, certainly on the part of Gaiman, but he. They needed to produce a single, or not a single, but a single song for a movie soundtrack and were hoping to. That Don would be able to produce that too. But when they needed to do it, he wasn't available. He was on a different project. And so he suggested that they work with this guy, Scott Litt, who he had come to know a little bit, who was a younger, less established producer and engineer. And so they said, okay, great. And they got into the studio with Scott and then very quickly realized, like, oh, this guy really gets it. Like, he really understands us. And they, they made a song. I think it was a romance that, that just really worked for them and they really enjoyed their relationship with Scott and there was just sort of a meeting of the minds and they just felt comfortable together and they went forward from that point working with Scott, who was kind of like, you know, if you think of Jefferson Holt, you know, then their manager in very, very close working companion, as the fifth member of the band. Then Scott Litt really became like the sixth member because he was so crucial in how, you know, their, Their conception of what their. How their sound was going to evolve and in creating the sound that would allow them to both continue to be as independently minded and as unique as they had always been, but in a. In a way, sort of in a framework that also kind of really came through, you know, the static on the radio dial and allowed them to be just as, you know, still express something distinctive and unique that came from their particular chemistry while at the same time resonating on the, you know, in the middle of mainstream radio. And, you know, for instance, the first really significant hit they had was the one I love off of Document, which was the first full record that Scott did with them. And, you know, it's a great, crunchy, dark rock and roll song that seems to present as a love song, but is actually a really mean spirited breakup song, you know, and, and it's got just a really fiery guitar riff. It's got a great, you know, drug or excuse me drum part and Michael's vocal is just astounding on it. And, and it was a great breakthrough song. And when they, you know, I think, you know, from what Scott told me, from the moment they, they had it in the can, they would listen to it. You know, whenever anyone from the record company or anyone else who was interested came to listen to what they were doing, they would play the one I love and he's, you know, and everyone would just go like, that's it. That's.
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Michael Stipe
This one goes out to the one I love this one goes out to the one I've left behind A simple prop to occupy my time One goes out to the one I love.
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Listener
Fire.
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Alison Stewart
Tomorrow on Full Bio, we'll hear about REM's touring schedule, problems with the band, and a manager who had to be removed.
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Scott Litt
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