WITH 10 top-notch albums under their collective belt, R.E.M. have certainly had one hell of a great adventure, and the four major dudes from Athens, Georgia could easily just hang up their spurs and settle down to making some safe, undemanding pop fluff. Warners have just handed the band around $80 million to keep making blockbuster records, and that's plenty enough dosh to keep them nice and cosy as they slide into the middle-aged musical comfort zone. After all, they've earned a bit of a rest, haven't they?
But what do R.E.M. go and do instead, only make one of their best albums to date, a record vastly superior to 1994's Monster, and surpassed only by Automatic For The People as a shimmering example of the band's indefinable, enigmatic talent. New Adventures In Hi-Fi is the 11th album by R.E.M. and it's about as safe and secure as a visit to a deserted space colony with Sigourney Weaver. If this is the sound of a band getting old and tired, then get me ageing pills - fast.
Mike Mills looks so young and fresh-faced as he sits in Room 403 of Dublin's Clarence Hotel, you'd swear he was just a wide-eyed fan who had sneaked up from the lobby to try to meet his hero. The bass player in the biggest American band ever is in town to do some promo for New Adventures, accompanied only by R.E.M.'s manager and attorney, Bert is Downs, and so far the pair have covered nine European cities in 2 days. Not that the album needs any promotion - it's just entered the charts at No 1 in Ireland, the UK and America, to mention just three territories, and it has also become the fastest-selling R.E.M. album ever. Welcome to a bright new future for hi-fi. Hope you remembered to bring your shades.
We warm up by talking about music videos, and out pops my first question has R.E.M. ever made a really embarrassing video?
No, no, no, I don't think so. Shiny Happy People kinda teeters on the edge, but then the whole song kinda teeters on the edge. It is a fun song, the only problem I had with the song is that it got to when people think of R.E.M. they mention Shiny Happy People. I'm thinking, God, can't you find another song to have us known by?"
I could think of plenty, like the sublime, spine-tingling Everybody Hurts, or the mandolin mania of Losing My Religion. But I wouldn't have immediately thought of E-Bow The Letter, the downbeat, almost dirge-like first single off the new album, whose refrain is haunted by the dark alley-wail of Patti Smith. Is this R.E.M.'s attempt to deflate the shiny happy brigade's bouncing ball?
"It's not really in reaction to Shiny Happy People, it's in reaction to the fact that we've never taken the easy way out. It's important for us to challenge ourselves and the audience. Audiences can respond well to things like that, like putting out Drive from Automatic For The People. That was a very important decision for us, and the record company weren't real thrilled about it, but they trust us and they know we have reasons for what we do, and it usually works out. It didn't do Automatic much harm."
No siree, Bob. In fact, it did just fine and dandy. And it looks like Adventures is gonna do pretty okay, too, both critically and commercially, which is nice since Monster, despite its brashness and bravado, is now widely seen as R.E.M.'s major label lame duck.
"Monster was about a sound. Monster was about electric guitars. It was about tremolo amps, things like that. We had some electric guitars built up in our system after Automatic and Out Of Time, which was a little more poppy than crunchy. And we wanted to get out there and make a rock record. So we did, and we got that out of our system. And then with this one we didn't have any guiding principle like that, we were just trying to make a great record, and if we had great songs we put em on there, whether they were rock songs, or pop songs, or neither, we just used all our best songs. Monster was to scratch an itch for us, basically."
Itch having been loudly scratched, R.E.M. then embarked on their first tour since 1989, playing a gruelling worldwide schedule of stadiums, enormodomes and outdoor festivals. During this monster 18-month jaunt, Bill Berry was struck down onstage by a life-threatening brain haemorrhage, and both Michael Stipe and Mills had to take tour breaks to undergo minor operations. For a while there, it looked as if Peter Buck would have to do the whole tour alone with just his acoustic guitar. Somehow, in the middle of all this madness, major trauma and minor illness, R.E.M. found the time to write, rehearse and record most of the new album. Not bad for a bunch of decrepit rock monsters.
"Well, a great deal of the music was actually written before the tour started. We had a lot of stuff kicking around. A lot of it was finished on tour. So it was really bits and pieces of almost a two-year period of writing and finishing songs. We knew all along that we were going to take it into the studio after the tour and fix it, it was never going to be a live album per se. We knew we'd probably redo most of the vocals we weren't going to perfect the mistakes by any means, but we were certainly going to polish the sound up. The idea was to make it a good-sounding record, not so much a rough, raw, on-the-road record. What we wanted from the road was the energy from the live shows and the looseness and spontaneity of the soundchecks. I think we got the best of both worlds."
It's probably the last chance R.E.M. will get to make almost an entire album on the road, because Mike confirms that the band will never again tour so intensively, even if the record company should demand it.
WE pretty much do what we want to do, and the record company doesn't talk us into anything. We're not gonna do anything that's gonna hurt the band. It's like the goose that lays the golden egg: nobody's gonna make us do anything that might break up the band, when there could be years of potential cash coming out of us. So we don't get that kind of pressure. But what people should know is that we all felt it's very important as a rock'n'roll band that you have to play live sometimes. You can't go for too long without playing live because you lose touch. You forget what it's all about.
And we all like playing, there's no question about that. What the hard thing is, is when you add the travel involved, and the different city every day, then it becomes something other than playing. live, it becomes a tour, and a tour has a life of its own. So that's why, when we go out again, which I'm sure we will, it'll be in smaller increments.
It's the end of the tour and we know it, but it's certainly not the last great adventure for R.E.M. Since they formed in Athens, Georgia, all those years ago, they've grown up a lot, yet they've grown apart only a little, and the strong bond between the foursome has kept their artistry and integrity sharp. Even the fact that Peter Buck now lives in Seattle hasn't broken the perfect circle.
"Three of us still live in or near Athens, but Peter met a woman from Seattle, and he loves the city, so he moved to Seattle. Big deal. I thought it would be really, bad for the band, but it turned out not to be, because we weren't staying at each others' houses like we used to do when we were 5 and when we need to get together we do. And in this modern age, communication is easy, so it hasn't really affected us that much. You grow apart, you develop other interests as you go along, but it actually has worked out rather nicely."
Is he worried that R.E.M. might one day grow apart musically?
"No, that hasn't been a problem. We do write a little more individually than we used to, but we get together and show each other the songs and what bits we have, and it's still definitely a group process. I was really surprised and happy to see that. And as friends, we've all realised that we all care very much for each other, and certainly Bill getting really sick and the possibility of losing him made us all realise how important it is that we are aware of how much we care about each other. That's the positive thing that came out of the tour, is that we realise that one of the most important things is our friendship, and that the uniqueness of what we do together is worth making an effort to keep."
