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All Of It with Alison Stewart
The Foundation of R.E.M. (Full Bio)
00:31:26
We kick off this month's Full Bio about 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 book. The Name of This band is R.E.M. a biography by Pete Peter Ames Carlin R.E.M. has sold more than 85 million albums and changed the definition of a rock band. The New Yorker called R.E.M. the band that created alternative rock. Artie, socially minded, metaphor driven. The quartet of Michael Stipe on vocals, Peter Buck on guitar, Mike Mills on bass and Bill Barry on drums got their start in the college town of Athens, Georgia. They came of age when calls radio, not record companies, could make a band. When REM Was inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame in 2007, Michael Stipe had this to say.
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Michael Stipe
We'd like to thank the fans who have stuck with us for 27 years, the new fans, the old fans worldwide who have brought us such incredible lives and allowed us to continue with our love of music. I would like to personally thank Peter, Mike and Bill for providing me with the least likely candidate to have a place in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame with a gang who not only accepted me at face value in 1979, but allowed a frankly fantastical teenage dream to become an adult and lifetime reality. Thank you guys.
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Peter Ames Carlin
And that is a good place to start. With the beginnings of the four men who made up R.E.M. here's Peter Carlin. Peter Ames Carlin, author of the name of this band is R.E.M.
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Unknown Speaker
The time to Rise has been engaged with better best to rearrange. I'm talking here to me alone. I listen to the finest work song, the finest hour.
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Alison Stewart
Michael Stipe was born on January 4, 1960, to John and Marianne in Decatur, Georgia. His father was a, quote, rising star in the US army, which meant they moved a lot. Where did they live?
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Listener
They lived in a bunch of different places and spent quite a bit of time, I think, in Germany. The family did, while the father, Lieutenant Colonel, I believe, John Stipe, was serving as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. So there was quite a few years in there when Michael was young, when his dad was off at war, which I think was probably pretty unsettling for the family to some degree. But happily, even though he. He had rather hazardous duty flying these little recon helicopters over the enemy encampments where they often got shot at and there was a lot of action in the skies, he did come home safe and sound and the family eventually moved to just outside St. Louis, Missouri, where Michael spent most of his formative childhood years in his, you know, his early pre adolescence, through adolescence and through high school.
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Alison Stewart
When you think about Michael Stipe, what kind of personality traits could you attribute to him being an army brat?
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Listener
Well, I think he's very self sufficient in a lot of ways. And I think he also had a very supportive family. I think that they got used to being one another's closest companions and best friends. He and his sisters and their mom were very tight. And when his dad got back from the war, he was also, you know, for all that, he was a kind of, in some ways a sort of blustery military guy. I mean, one of Michael's childhood friends says that he couldn't recall ever seeing Mr. Stipe not wearing a flight suit, you know, and that he wore a cavalry hat like the character Robert Duvall plays in Apocalypse Now. And he said that he thought that Lt. Col. Stipe might have been the model for. Is it Col. Kilgore, Robert Duvall's character? But he was much more quiet than that, though. He sort of presented as this very sort of macho military guy. He was very soft spoken and very accepting of his family and his kids. I mean, there's a great anecdote where Michael, who got into going to see the Rocky Horror Picture show as, you know, as, you know, as a high schooler, and we all, you know, people of a certain age will remember those Rocky Horror Picture show screenings where people would dress up in costumes as the various characters and, you know, yell and dance and sing along and throw things at the screen. And Michael liked to go as Frank N. Furter, who wore drag, you know, lace stockings and like a leather bustier and that sort of thing. And so he and his friends were getting dressed up in his bedroom and getting ready to go out. And as they were walking across the living room, Michael in full Frankenfurter, drag past his father who's reading the newspaper. His dad looked up and said, are you going out like that? You know, and you think this is, this is the beginning of a story about a huge fight between a, you know, a military dad and his young avant garde son. And, and Michael just looked at him and said, yeah, I am. And his dad shrugged and said, oh, well, have a nice night. And, you know, so it was that level, I think, of just of unconditional love and acceptance that really, you know, was key to the development of Michael's personality and his ability to be so, you know, in so many ways outrageous and experimental without fear of, you know, some sort of existential, you know, struggle.
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Alison Stewart
My guest is Peter Ames Carlin. The name of his book is the Name of this Band Is a Biography. It's our choice for full bio. Musically, Patti Smith set off something in Michael Stipe. You say it catalyzed his imagination. What was it about Patti Smith?
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Listener
Well, I think it was her ability to contrast kind of edgy, punky rock and roll with really sophisticated and. And, you know, and emotionally revealing lyrics. Her being such a, you know, such an accomplished poet and, and drawing from, you know, drawing from the. The most raw forms of rock and roll and from, you know, very gentle, sophisticated poetry at the same time sort of showed him something, revealed something to him about the, you know, how a person could combine that kind of visceral attack of rock and roll with the higher language of poetry. And I think that was remarkably moving to him and obviously super influential. And he's, you know, has never not credited her and spoken of her in the highest terms. And I think he's in fact, now scheduled. There's going to be a tribute show for Patti in New York later this winter. And I think he's one of the performers. So she has always, you know, been central to his conception of, you know, who his, his biggest influences were and what helped make him what he is as an artist.
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Alison Stewart
He joined some cover bands.
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Peter Ames Carlin
One was called Jots, and then there.
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Alison Stewart
Was a group called Bad Habits. What did he learn from being in Bad Habits that set the stage for.
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Listener
REM I think that was the band, you know, the first band you mentioned was. Was kind of a one off show. It was like the high school talent show type of, type of outfit. But at the same time he was starting to rehearse with this band, the Bad Habits, who were a cover band like so many teenage bands are, but they focused entirely on punk and new wave music in the late 70s. Whereas these other bands, you know, in and around the suburbs of St. Louis were just playing, you know, the AOR stuff you just find on mainstream rock and roll radio. His band was sort of, you know, they were much more interested in, you know, these sort of punk bands, edgier bands, Iggy Pop and the Ramones and, and. And that kind of stuff. So. And they played a few shows and I think that was where he first established, you know, or first came to understand what it took to be the front man in a rock band and how to perform and was such a, you know, an effective and spellbinding performer, even by the like, I think really the soul professional show that they played, which was at a club in St. Louis called Mississippi Knights. And they were opening for the great band Rockpile, which was a great gig to get. You know, we Rockpile with Nick Lowe and Dave Edmonds. You know, they were such a great kind of post punk band of the late 70s, the Pub Rock movement in England. And they were touring the US and so Michael and the Bad Habits played the show and he, you know, was so hypnotic to these two young women who were there with their boyfriends that the boyfriends got mad, decided to teach these guys a lesson and. And followed the band outside while they were loading up in their van and tried to, you know, tried to beat up the. The kids in the band. And it. Anyway, it turned into a big fist fight of one sort or the other. I don't think Michael was involved in. In the fisticuffs, but somebody ended up getting gouged with a beer bottle and had to go to the hospital. But. But it just an interesting illustration of what a natural and powerful performer he could be, even as, you know, an almost completely inexperienced teenager.
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Alison Stewart
When Michael went to college, what was he going to study? And also, why did he change his name from Mike to Michael?
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Listener
Why does anyone do anything when they're 18 years old? You know, I mean, I think it's, you know, you go to college and there's a, you know, and you get this opportunity to kind of redefine yourself. And I think, you know, coming out of the suburbs of, you know, of St. Louis and this very sort of middle American scene where he always felt a little like, you know, a fish out of water. The idea of going to Athens and going to the art college at University of Georgia, at that moment, I think he came to understand that, you know, he really wanted to re. Establish himself as an artist and an artistic person. And Mike Stipe, I think, had less of a, you know, it doesn't flow off the tongue in quite the intriguing way as Michael Stipe somehow. But, you know, it was interesting because he really didn't want to move down to Georgia and go to school in Athens because his folks moved back to Georgia where they had come from after his dad retired from the military, right after Michael graduated from high school. And at first he would. Did everything he could to stay up in St. Louis. He was moved in, you know, into a group house with some people and scraped together enough money to go to community college for a term or two and then realized, I think, that he was running out of money, and he really needed his family support. And they essentially said, well, that would be great, but you just have to come down to Georgia. So he moved down there sort of with his, you know, against his. His will. You know, he said to one friend in a letter, you know, I don't want to live in this town, you know. But he went there, and I think what happened was he started his classes at the Lamar. The Lamar Dodd School of Art, and came to understand that, among many other things, the University of Georgia and particularly the art school were magnets for Southern bohemians. You know, all these young kids who felt out of place in the little towns that they had grown up in were all drawn to, you know, to the art school there because the fellow who was at, you know, who eventually lent his name to the school, Lamar Dodd, and had been the chairman of the department for many years, had spent a lot of his time trying to staff up the school with, you know, with practicing artists who were leaders in their particular discipline. And so he brought them, you know, a whole array of these people into the faculty. And they all. Many of them turned out to be these very sort of bohemian, avant garde people who were working really at the leading edge of their disciplines. And they shared, you know, there was a kind of shared aesthetic, not only toward the avant garde, but also this idea of folk culture and of expression in art, expression over craft, really. And so when punk rock and that whole sort of punk ethos started bubbling up in the music industry, there was an immediate kind of connection or affinity between these artists, these people who mostly practice visual art and at least the sound and idea of punk music and the dialogue between the academic, between the professors and the students often came to be about music and all these different ways to practice. And, you know, one of the painting teachers, Judy McWilly, told me that they were having a while, you know, she was overseeing, you know, a workshop class where, you know, the students were at the easels, you know, doing work, but they were all talking about, you know, and at this moment, talking about music. And someone asked her if they thought you had to be, you know, as sophisticated a musician as Eric Clapton to, you know, to be an effective rock and roll guitarist. And she said, if you can't play it on a $50 guitar from Sears, it ain't rock and roll, which was. It seemed to be a very valuable thing for them to hear.
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Alison Stewart
The name of this band is R.E.M. a Biography. It's by Peter Ames Carlin. It's our choice for full bio. All right. I want to talk about Bill Barry and Mike Mills in the same sentence. Because they went to high school together. They were very, very different. Give me a few adjectives to describe Bill Barry, young Bill Barry, and a few adjectives to describe a young Mike Mills.
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Listener
Well, Bill Barry was a little bit of a rebel, kind of an outsider kid in a way, though. You know, he also came from a pretty close family. He was the youngest of several kids. But he didn't enjoy, you know, he wasn't a very enthusiastic student. You know, he was one of those kids that kept to the back row and kind of grumbled. Whereas Mike Mills was, you know, you might call him, like, to be unkind. You might call him like a pencil neck geek. He was very well dressed and very neatly coifed and just was one of those kids that does so well in school all the time and charms and delights his teachers. So Bill Barry was seeing the skinny kid with neatly combed, you know, like, chestnut hair at the front of the classroom, you know, acing all his classes, and just thought, you know, what a jerk. And so they became kind of young antagonists and really didn't have any time for each other until they accidentally turned up at the same jam session. And Bill said that he was so. He was so disgusted when he saw that dorky Mike Mills showing up to play bass that he was tempted just to pack up his drums and leave. But that would have been. You know, it takes so much time and effort to pack up your drums and leave that, you know, he decided that was too awkward. And he was just suffered through this wasted afternoon of trying to play music with this geeky kid. But then they started playing together and there was an instant sort of musical connection and rapport between them. And really from that afternoon, they just looked at each other and said, we don't need to be enemies anymore. And then they became really, really close friends.
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Peter Ames Carlin
Yeah, they ended up in a band.
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Alison Stewart
Together called Shadow Facts.
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Listener
Yeah, they were. It was just, you know, another high school cover band. But then apparently, you know, but they had this very, very tight, very, very well honed rhythm section in Bill and Mike. And, you know, a good guitar player and a good. And a good singer. And so they became one of those teenage cover bands that starts getting hired, you know, for various professional gigs here and there. They played a lot, you know, parties, school functions, but, you know, all kinds of other. Other kinds of events as well. And they continued that until the lead singer, I guess, decided he was gonna go off to college and kind of broke up the, the Enterprise. And they tried again. I think they formed a more sort of jammy sort of southern rock cover band called like the Blue, the Back Door Band. But that didn't last very long. And, and then they ended up just kind of cooling their heels in Macon before they dec the University of Georgia and figure out what was going to be next for them.
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Peter Ames Carlin
It was interesting because Mike studied music. He played saxophone in a band. He kind of came from a family that was interested in music. How did that shape Mike Mills as a musician?
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Listener
Well, one of the things that it allowed, I mean, his dad was quite an accomplished singer and sang in a lot, was a featured tenor soloist in, you know, one of the leading church choirs in Macon and had performed with a military choir on the Ed Sullivan Show. So he was not unfamiliar with professional caliber music and, and so, and that, and the, his mother sang in the choir as well. So they were a very musically focused family in a lot of ways. And so when Mike began to get interested in music and took a lot of lessons and studied and then, you know, began to teach himself other instruments, his parents were excited and happy that he was actually sort of, you know, pursuing a goal that they had also had as younger people. And so, you know, again, you know, you have another member of the band coming from a very supportive family who were very, you know, were not in any way contesting the idea of building a career or some kind of life with music at the floor. And so along with being a high performing student and a good citizen and all these things, he was also given the leeway to pursue this sort of more bohemian life of being a musician with his parents enthusiastic support.
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Alison Stewart
Coming up, we'll continue with the story of REM and how they came up with the name. That's next.
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Unknown Speaker
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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Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection.
- [21:05]
Listener
Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime And there's much more to come.
- [21:10]
Unknown Speaker
This is the Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's on the Media. To listen, subscribe to OnTheMedia wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:21]
Alison Stewart
Next. This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart and we continue on with full bio. It's 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. We are talking about the book the name of this band is R.E.M. a biography by Peter Ames Carlin. Let's get back into it with the story of guitarist Peter Buck and how they landed on REM.
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Unknown Speaker
Guilty Prayer, empty mouth, Talk about the passion not everyone can carry the weight of the world not everyone can carry.
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Alison Stewart
Peter Buck. He came from a family where his dad had some rough times including being wounded by a grenade. When he was in the Marines. He got married. He worked for a mattress company. He thought Peter's interest in music was frivolous.
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Listener
Yeah, you know, Peter was also did very well in high school, but in, but he was one of those kids that, that wasn't as. He wasn't as agreeable student as the others. I mean he found his classes boring essentially and preferred his own reading. But then when the tests came around, he would ace the tests. You know, that was his thing. And he was always kind of a quirky kid. I mean a good looking guy, you know, popular, but not all that involved in the sort of social scene at the high, you know, at his high school he was much more interested in playing guitar. But he, but he never, but he wasn't a guy that joined a lot of bands. You know, he wasn't a big joiner. He liked to kind of learn on his own. He taught himself how to play by listening to, you know, to records and trying to pick out what he was hearing. And he had one friend that he used to jam with like on a regular basis and they would sit together in the basement in the Buck's house and sometimes playing with Peter's brother as well. And just, you know, they figured that they weren't good enough to learn other people's songs. So they were just going to create their own music and try to figure out how to play it. So on the one hand he's played constantly and really thought about little else but music. You know, he was and remains a voracious reader. And a lot of what he read as a kid were like, you know, music books and magazines and he really internalized everything he could about what it took to be, you know, a professional musician and a rock star. And what the. You know, what the opportunities were and what the pitfalls were. And he came away from that with a real solid sense of, you know, what he wanted to be and who he wanted to be as an artist. Though he also resisted joining bands forever and ever. You know, he used to say, and I'm going to paraphrase here for the radio. That guys who play in rock bands are jerks. And I don't want to be a jerk, you know, but in some ways, he may have been just kind of, you know, fronting, as they say. Because he really, really did want to be in a band. He just hadn't found the right bandmates yet.
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Alison Stewart
He was a smart kid. You make a note that there was a story that might be apocryphal. But it might have been believ. Is that Buck had the highest SAT scores in Georgia in 1975. Why was this believable, even if it wasn't true?
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Listener
I think it was the fact that he was so smart. That he didn't actually have to go to class. Or pay very close attention to what was happening when he was there. In order to ace his tests and do incredibly well. You know, he eventually, when he left school, he studied. He got into Emory University and studied there kind of somewhat lackadaisically for a couple years. Before he realized that that really wasn't what he wanted to do. And then he quit and started working in record stores. You know, much again, to his father's disappointment. Because both of his parents had gone to graduate school. And their assumption for their kids was that they were going to, you know, get advanced degrees and do something in the professional world as well. But Peter had no interest in that. And they didn't care for that at all. But there was a very. You know, Peter is one of these guys who is pretty quiet as an adolescent. Who really, you know. But wasn't. You could sense that he was shy, but not because he was insecure. Or that he felt there was something wrong with himself. You know, if anything, he just found the social scene boring. And wanted nothing to do with it. And, you know, kids were respect that in their peers.
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Alison Stewart
How did Peter Buck and now Michael Stipe wind up playing together?
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Listener
Well, Peter would move to Athens to work in a record store called Wuxtree. Which is one of those, you know, back in the day, these big kind of used record stores. That had, you know, vast arrays, you know, not just of records and tapes. But also comic books and other sort of related kind of pop culture, you know, huzzah, as my mom would say. And Michael, you know, once he got to Athens and looked around town, I mean, obviously this was a place that was going to call to him because they had a lot of import singles and records. So there was a lot of kind of sort of relatively obscure punk records and art records that came out of, you know, overseas from London and Europe and from New York that he had been reading about because Michael was a Village Voice subscriber even as a high schooler and. And was. Was just loved the sound of, but hadn't been able really to track down. And if Wuxtree didn't have it on their shelves, then probably the guy behind the counter who turned out to be Peter had it at his house. And he was more than happy to bring it in and let you borrow it, you know, if you. If there was a connection. And so he and Michael started talking at the store. And, you know, Michael noticed that what Peter did to kind of occupy his hands and while he was waiting for people to. To buy records was just to play his guitar. You know, he had an unplugged guitar. He would just strum behind the counter. And Michael took note of that. And as a new kid in Athens and with an eye toward maybe trying to find some people to join a band with, he, you know, that, that, that. That encouraged their connection. And after a while of talking, they finally decided to try to get together and maybe play some music and see if they could come up with something. And they were already playing together, jamming pretty regularly and trying to write little songs while Bill and Mike were across town on campus also beginning to play with other people. And they had a friend in common named Kathleen O'Brien who knew both Peter and Michael and also knew Bill and Mike and was the first person to think, you know, these guys would get along well and, you know, would probably make cool music together. And so she sort of midwifed this, this. This meeting between them. And soon they started playing together. And it was. It was one of those connections where, you know, as they say, maybe without too much exaggeration, from the first time they all plugged in and began to play together, they could sense that there was something happening between them that was going to be significant.
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Alison Stewart
Once they started playing together, they came up with the name R.E.M. what were some of the other names they considered for the group? And then how did they arrive on.
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Listener
REM they had a bunch of names that would have been Terribly regrettable if they hadn't tried to use those. You know, there was one. Golly what. I mean, there was, you know, it's. It. There are a bunch of op. There are a bunch of different things that people have published. And then I've subsequently heard that maybe those weren't quite right. But the, but the. The names. And again, we're talking about very regrettable names thought up by kids in the late 70s and the early weeks of 1980. But it was like Slut bank was one of them supposedly Negro wives, which is like, I don't know where that would have come. Come from. Or Negro eyes. And just the idea of. I mean, you begin to understand a little something about what maybe young kids in the Deep south didn't under. Even progressive kids or kids who considered themselves to be progressive weren't considering when they were thinking about using terminology associated with African American, you know, the African American population. But there they were. So they had, you know, an array of names that weren't going to work at all that, you know, ultimately didn't strike them. And then they were flipping through a dictionary or Michael was when they were considering what to call themselves. And the way he tells the story, he just happened to see the term REM which of course stands for rapid eye movement. You know, the term for the deep state of sleep when you do your dreaming and, you know, and all that subconscious action takes place. And he said that he didn't really connect with that idea. You know, he wasn't thinking about dreams and sleep or different states of consciousness when he saw the name. He just liked the fact that it was three letters and that they were separated by. By periods. There was something about the look of it that appealed to his eye and something about the fact that it seemed like an indefinable term that he thought would be, you know, a good way to establish something about the essence of this band that they were just putting together. And so R.E.M. you know, it's like it felt indefinable to him and then to his bandmates. And they liked that. They didn't like the idea that they would take a name that would just allow people to instantly pigeonhole them without hearing a note of their music.
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Alison Stewart
Tomorrow in full bio how REM learned the importance of retaining their masters and how they use producers to create their unique sound.