REM as Buck would have it

Surrounded by an armour-plated aura, Michael Stipe is not the most approachable guy on the planet. At least, not today he’s not.

The skeletal and scraggily dressed REM singer is sitting just a few feet away from me in the quaintly Victorian tea-rooms of London’s Milestone Hotel, mumbling lowly to his media minder, perusing a menu, and fending off the outside world by keeping his tightly shaved head strategically covered with his hand. He looks like a hungover Yul Brenner. Everything about him says ‘Do Not Disturb’.
Hotpress has flown to London on the understanding that, in tandem with Today FM, there’ll be some face-to-face time with Stipe but, now that we’re here the word comes down from the Warners International department that the plan has changed and now I’ll just be talking to guitarist Peter Buck. In the UK primarily for a low-key launch gig in two nights time, the band have apparently agreed to do a total of just twelve-hours of European press to promote their new album Around The Sun (they might have been paid an estimated $80 million to stay with Warners, but they’re obviously not expected to bust their promotional asses for it) and the media schedule’s tighter than a post-election finance minister. All of my protests fall on deaf ears. This is unfortunate because both Buck and bassist Mike Mills are famously as confused as everyone else about the meanings behind many of their eccentric frontman’s lyrics.
Awarded a deserved 9/10 by Niall Crumlish in the last issue, Around The Sun is the band’s thirteenth studio album and if you’re an REM fan you’ll certainly get your money’s worth. Stipe could inject passion and pathos into singing a train timetable, and so it is here. With a couple of up-tempo exceptions (album opener and first cut ‘Leaving New York’ in particular), the thirteen tracks are generally slow and mournful, and the songs as lyrically oblique as ever. Stipe could be singing about the state of the world. Or he could be singing about the state of his world.
I consider chancing my arm and approaching him anyway but, just as I’m working up the nerve, the record company girl reappears to tell me that Buck is waiting for me in the suite upstairs and the clock is already ticking. When I meet him, the fortysomething guitarist looks tired and pasty-faced. Tall and bulky, he’s wearing requisite shades, a black leather jacket, black trousers and a shirt so garish only a rock star or native Hawaiian could get away with it. As he politely pours hotpress a glass of mineral water, he barely suppresses a loud yawn.

OLAF TYARANSEN: Hi Peter! Em, if you don’t mind me saying, you’re not looking madly enthusiastic about this...
PETER BUCK: Ha, ha! No, I’m just really jet-lagged. Need to sleep. But it’s cool.
Do you enjoy the interview process?
I love writing songs, I love playing in public, I like a little bit of the recordings – you know, the beginning: but talking about ‘em, I could probably do without it. But, you know, it’s what you do. I’m proud of the work and I want people to hear it. I suppose I feel like I don’t do them justice. People ask me questions and I’m always going, “Umm . . . I don’t know!” Ha, ha!
Have you figured Around The Sun out yet?
Well, that’s the thing. Until the first interview I never really think about why you do this or what it means. And then after the first couple of days of interviews, people are asking you and you have to really think about what does it mean, why did we do this: I mean, I never go consciously into doing a record thinking, ‘Oh, it’s gonna be this kinda record or that kinda record’. It just . . . appears.
I read somewhere that you never knew that ‘Get Up’ was written about you until Michael announced it onstage one night. Do you talk to him much about the meanings behind his lyrics?
Actually, I always thought it was about Mike [Oops! – O.T.]. Ha, ha! But I really like Michael’s work, and I’m kind of a fan.
I just kind of like to listen to him go, and then tell him what I think about it. You know, a song like ‘Leaving New York’, to me, it’s literally about what we do all the time – leaving someone behind and going somewhere else. But for me, I have trouble hearing the word ‘New York’, because I’m thinking about the Trade Centre and what the city went through and all that. And I don’t really know if that was an intention of Michael’s or not.

Were you in New York when 9/11 happened?
No. I was in Seattle and I’m so out of touch with things – like I don’t listen to the news or the radio or even read the newspaper really that much. I got up that morning, drove my kids to school, dropped ‘em off and went home and went back to bed. And about 10 or 11 – which is about 2 o’clock in New York – my wife woke me up screaming. I was like, ‘What?’ I thought something had happened to my kids. So yeah, I was just blithely driving around, blasting the stereo, dropping the kids off to school going, [scrunches face and puts on cute daddy voice] “Have a nice day!” I guess I should have realised that everyone else in the world was totally freaked out, but I didn’t notice.
Do you think that the subsequent actions of President Bush and the neo-cons have made the world a safer or more dangerous place?
Hmm . . . [sighs heavily]. Well, you know, I’m of two minds. One part of me is going, well, you know what? – I’m an older, rich, white guy, so this does not affect me at all. You know. It’s the sense of empathy. But you want to see your country as the good guys, and I’m increasingly having a hard time feeling that way. When every single person that I talk to over here asks me about the war and what I think about it. . . It just seems like a huge disastrous error. Forget about the moral aspect to it – it’s immoral I think – but, God, what a mistake! And it just goes on.
My mom works with disadvantaged kids and she was just saying how much this whole thing with Iraq upsets her because she just knows that this is gonna ruin that whole generation of kids’ lives. I mean, if you’re lucky enough not to get killed or maimed, just the bombings, the terror, the . . . You know, it’s not gonna end when this ends. This is gonna go on, just like it goes on in Vietnam right now.
What’s going on in Vietnam right now?
There’s a legacy still of the violence of Vietnam, whether it’s landmines going off, whether it’s having a huge amount of beggars – you know, maimed people – on the streets. Twenty years from now the repercussions from what’s going on right now will still be happening. And every time some innocent person gets killed, there’s another potential terrorist going to revenge that person.
Going back to music for a second. . .
Sure!! Ha, ha!!
You played on the new Thrills album.
We played Glastonbury and I’d read a bunch of reviews of the record and so I was going to pick it up. And I went back to our trailer and they’d come by and I guess I wasn’t in and they’d left a CD – and it was signed ‘From the Thrills’. So I immediately stole it! I listened to it on the bus and I really liked it. I went to see them play in Seattle, and they all kind of know my band really well. They were asking me questions about songs that I didn’t even remember writing.
Who had the balls to ask you play?
Daniel said, ‘We’re gonna make a record, if you’re gonna be around do you wanna come down and work on it?’ So I said, ‘Sure, here’s my phone number, gimme a call’. And he called and left a message that said, ‘I’m sure you’re busy but, you know, if you did want to come down...’ So I rang back and said, ‘I’ll come down Friday with my mandolin and my dulcimer, and we’ll see what happens’.
And it was a great experience. It was a really cool song and they let me just kind of make up my part.
What do you think of Let’s Bottle Bohemia?
I think the record’s really good. I liked the first one a lot but I think I like this one even better. The songs are a little bit more diverse, they cover a bit more ground.
Did you give them any career advice?
I might have mentioned something about creatively doing exactly what you want to and not listening to . . . you know, there’s always outside advice. And my feeling is that if the people at the record company knew what they were doing, then every record that they put out would be successful, rather than just 5% of them. So I might have said something like, ‘Stick to your guns and you know what you’re doing’.
I’ve seen bands who – I hate to use the term ‘sell-out’ but – took other people’s advice, turned into something they weren’t and then weren’t successful. They alienated their old fans and didn’t get the new ones.
This is REM’s third album since Bill departed. Is it getting easier to operate as a three-piece? And do you still seek his advice?
Bill Berry? The last thing he wants to do is give opinions on things. I mean, he left the music business for good reasons – he didn’t wanna have anything to do with it. Bill is still one of my best friends, but I don’t really see him much because he’s a real homebody. We always send him a copy of the record and he always says very complimentary things. I think he’s just so relieved that it’s not him doing it!
But as far as feeling comfortable as a three-piece – we feel good in this arrangement but, to me, it’s also a six-piece, because we’ve got these three guys working with us. Though they’re not exactly proper members of the band they’ve been with us for a long time and they have input in the way things sound.
Pat McCarthy worked on this record, didn’t he?
Yeah, it’s our third record with him.
He’s from Dublin, isn’t he?
Yeah, I think his first session work, when he was about 15, was engineering The Unforgettable Fire. I don’t know how he got the job but he kinda picked up from there. He worked on Monster with us. He was, for a little while, kind of a protégé of Scott Litt’s – or at least they worked together. And I can remember an experience mixing, em, I can’t remember what song, but it was on Monster, and no-one could really get it. Everyone was mixing for about three days and it still wasn’t right. Then Pat and I went into the room with the song for about three hours and mixed it, and it was just like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect!’
So when Scott and us parted ways – Scott went off to form his own record company – I remember thinking, ‘Oh that Pat guy, he was really good’. But yeah, he led to the Irish connection. We recorded a lot of the last record [Reveal] in Dalkey. Pat had told us it’s a great little town and we could go and hang out in Dublin.
This new one was recorded in Vancouver, wasn’t it?
Started in Vancouver then, after the tour, we went to the Bahamas for a while, because it was winter and we wanted to get some sunshine. It was mixed in Miami.
Has settling down and having a family changed your attitude to life?
Well, I can’t tell if it’s just me getting older or if it’s having a family, but you certainly think of the world in a different way. I never thought about my future a whole lot – I mean, to me it was always, ‘I’ll live till I die’. Then you start to realise that these kids depend on you, so maybe I go to the doctor a little bit more, brush my teeth a little better. As far as the travelling goes, it makes it harder for me to be away. But then they understand that I have to do this. And when I’m at home I don’t have a job, so I’m pretty much a 24-hours a day on-call parent.
There’s a very folksy, fireside feel to a couple of the tracks on the album. . .
This time around, I didn’t have any fixed plans when we went into studio. I had written a bunch of stuff. And my first demos were all really dark and gloomy – kind of like ‘High Speed Train’ and ‘Electron Blue’. Those were actually recorded in my house. So there’s a lot of stuff that kinda sounded like that. And it just seemed to me that the record was . . . I started hearing the lyrics and feeling where the album was going, and I just felt that it wasn’t feeling like a heavy record. It was still maybe a little dark – but the acoustic guitar I wanted to be kind of light, and have room for the songs to breathe. And I do play a lot of folk music and listen to it, so that kind of gets in there.
What’s your favourite track on the album?
You know, one of my favourite songs that we’ve done in years and years and years – maybe in the last fifteen years – is ‘I Wanted To Be Wrong’. I just like that song because I love Michael’s lyrics [“I threw it into reverse/ made a motion to appeal / you kicked my legs from under me/ and tried to take the wheel”], it always provokes an emotional response when I’m listening to it or playing it. I don’t know why – it just hits with me in a way that sometimes other songs don’t.
Do you ever find yourself moved to tears on stage or in the studio?
Yeah, it happens. This last tour we had a thing where people would email in requests. And they started emailing in telling life stories and, as the wheel turns, telling a few death stories too. And we were in New Orleans and this woman emailed a letter to us. Her and her husband’s favourite song was ‘Strange Currencies’. And he had been in a car wreck and he had brain damage and he died – I don’t know how but it wasn’t a good thing. And she was crippled and she really wished we’d play it. And we started playing it and I looked over and I could see her – she was in a wheelchair. I just started sobbing. I had to turn around, I just couldn’t deal with it – because she had started crying. I just turned around and went, [softly] ‘Fuck!’ It really hit home.
What’s the biggest downside of being in REM?
Boy, you know, it sure beats working for a living so, whenever anything negative happens, I just always go, ‘You know, if I had some job I hated, I’d probably be dead’.
Ever get any weird stalkers or strange mail or anything like that?
Ha, ha! All of the above – yeah. I guess, for me, it’s not even a downside so much as it’s something I’ve got to get used to, but I’m not really good with meeting new people. I’m not a very social person. But it just so happens that a big part of my job is meeting people all the time. And to me, that’s just a nightmare. I like people generally, it’s not like I don’t like people, I just never learned how to do it. I went from being shy to being famous. Ha, ha!
It was a reasonably slow build though, wasn’t it? It took quite a few albums – really up until 1991’s Out Of Time – before REM became seriously famous.
Yeah, but even at that level, when people come up and start talking to you, they have something to say to you. Even now, when I get dragged to a cocktail party or something, to me it’s just like I don’t know how people do this. So I just become another person. I try to be an extrovert and talk and tell stories. But really I just wanna get outta there. It really wears me out.
Are you into studio technology in a big way or are you more of a mandolin/guitar kind of guy?
I use the modern technology. I’m kind of fascinated by it. Obviously, we occasionally use Pro-tools, we record digitally, and I use all kinds of effects and things. But I still think the best way to do it is to go in and record something live. Get the band to perform. Like ‘Boy In The Well’ is a really great feeling track on the new album, and that’s us playing it live with a minimal amount of overdubs.
Are you worried about people downloading your music for free from the Internet?
That never really bothered me. I mean, I know that everyone in the band has a different opinion on it, but we’re lucky enough that we made our money back in the 20th century. And at this point, wherever we are in our career, assuming we’re gonna sell, say, a million records, I’d rather have ten million people hear it and only a million people buy it, than a million people buy it and only a million people hear it.
That’s an unusual position for a musician to take.
While there’s something to be said for actually being paid for your work, for me if there’s an opportunity for us to be heard or to touch people’s lives . . . I’m thinking of the kids who live in Idaho or something that may not have a really good record store nearby, or they’re living in a small town, but if they’ve got the internet then that’s cool – that’s fine with me.
Michael has been getting heavily involved in movie production over the last few years. Do you have any other business or artistic interests outside of REM?
Not really. I mean, business doesn’t really interest me all that much. If you make money, obviously you do have investments and stuff, but I’m not a particularly hands-on guy in that regard. You know, for me it’s music. I don’t have any interest in film. I don’t wanna act. I can write, but I don’t have a novel in me. Although every now and again, I think ‘OK, when I’ve got a year off, I’m just gonna go up to the attic and write for two hours a day to see what happens’. And maybe I’ll do that but, you know, I’m lazy and that seems an awful lot like work. If I could be guaranteed to get a great novel out of it then maybe I’d do it, but I have a feeling that I’d go up to the attic for two hours a day and end up with a bunch of scribbled pages that I’d hate.
What are you reading at the moment?
I’m rereading Something Happened by Joseph Heller. I read that in like ‘73 or ‘74 when it first came out. It’s about middle-aged angst and hating your job and loveless marriage and alcoholism and family dynamics. I thought it was a real strong book but I don’t think I really understood all of that stuff. So, going back and reading it now, it makes a lot more sense. Ha, ha! Although, thank God, it’s not my life.
Have you been back in Britain since your ‘air rage’ incident on British Airways?
Oh yeah. That was in 2001 so I’ve been back a couple of times since then.
Wow – was it that long ago?
Yeah. Almost three years.
Sorry to bring it up so.
That’s OK. Everyone else does! Ha, ha!
What are your feelings on it now?
Well, you know, it’s part of my life and if I can live with it, I guess everyone else is gonna have to. Was it the hardest moment of my life? – no, but you know . . . [shrugs].
It was a sleeping pill you’d taken, wasn’t it?
Yeah – mixed it with wine. I blacked out, I don’t remember anything. I mean, in a way, it’s good. I’m sure I’d be much more mortified if I actually remembered what went on. And I don’t know what went on because I couldn’t tell from the testimonies. It didn’t make any sense. I think that generally the large percentage of what went on that night was a misunderstanding. But I fly BA all the time and they don’t hold anything against me and I don’t hold anything against them.
For the most part, REM seem to have managed to avoid the usual rock & roll pitfalls of drink and drugs. . .
Yeah. You know, when we were younger, I did pretty much all the stuff you’d expect a guy in a rock band in the 80’s to do. Ha, ha! On the other hand, we put out pretty much a record a year for six years and toured 150 – 200 shows a year for ten years. You know, I just have more important things to do than get wasted all the time. I always say about these people that just get so fucked up on drugs that they can’t function are pathetic. And I’ve always felt that way.
So you don’t approve?
I’m not saying that they’re bad people but to me it just seems like what a fucking waste. I could see if your life was awful but if you’ve got something going for you – I just think those people who blow it are just stupid. And I feel sorry for ‘em. And probably it is an illness of some type, although . . .For me, I’ve got the band, I’ve got my family. I just don’t have time for that.
Do you have a motto in life?
Em . . . ‘Let’s panic later’. Ha, ha! I seem to use that a lot. Because everyone around me is always panicking. I live at a kind of high anxiety level, but I don’t worry about stuff that much. I just feel that, you know, you can worry about this shit now or you can just deal with it when the time comes, and it’ll probably be fine.

Around The Sun is out now on Warner Brothers