Stellar reviews aside, the I.R.S. Records publicity team still encountered resistance from mainstream radio and media outlets that steered clear of anything that seemed too obscure for their audience. “You’re competing with a lot of people that are willing to make artistic compromises R.E.M. was not willing to make to achieve a certain commercial acceptance,” Jay Boberg told the Los Angeles Times that July. “We’re looking at it as an educational process. We just have to go to greater lengths to inform them of the things going on in their backyard with this band.”[5] But in the midst of Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America campaign for reelection and the festival of nationalism the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles had become, the band members did everything they could to hone their insurgent reputation. “We see ourselves as the quintessential outsiders,” Peter said in the same Los Angeles Times article. “Hell, our album was number 27 on the charts and MTV dropped [our video] from rotation because it wasn’t naked girls or smoke bombs.”[6] Ironically, this anti-mainstream stance earned the band the attention of the über-mainstream Entertainment Tonight, whose correspondent Scott Osborne noted that R.E.M. were “music rebels [who] don’t buy into the homogenized sound they feel is prevalent today.”[7]

  * * *

  —

  For some observers, the band’s anti-commercial/critics’ darlings positioning seemed to wear thin. A reporter on Citytv’s The NewMusic program in Toronto, after challenging Mike to justify having lyrics that are “mumbly to the point of incoherence,” proposed that having “masses of accolades shoveled on top” of the band could become a problem. The bassist, looking collegiate in his English Beat T-shirt, horn-rimmed glasses, and bowl-cut hair, shrugged it off. “We know better. There are plenty of people in America and elsewhere that are just as talented as we are.” The reporter, thoroughly defanged, chuckled and moved on. What about all the comparisons to classic rock bands like the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, and Hot Tuna? (Where he came up with Jefferson Airplane, let alone Hot Tuna, is anyone’s guess.) Again Mike shrugged it off as politely as possible. “I think we just have a similar sensibility,” he said. “If we’d been around in the ’60s we would’ve sounded like them. If they had just come along now and we’d been in the ’60s, it would’ve been the other way around.”[8]

  If it seemed like a presumptuous way to answer the question, it was, at least, based on something other than baseless supposition. In early June, just a few days before the taping of the Rock of the 80’s show, R.E.M. had performed a special concert in Passaic, New Jersey, for MTV’s Rock Influences series, sharing the stage with 1960s folk-rock heroes Richie Havens, Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel of the Band, John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful, and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds. The folkies started the evening by playing mini sets, setting up an hourlong performance by R.E.M., who opened with a stately version of the Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes,” then jumped into a set dominated by songs that were either on the new album or too new to have been recorded. Dressed with casual collegiate flair—Mike and Peter in button-up shirts and Michael in an olive T-shirt worn over pleated wool trousers while Bill sported a sweatshirt with stylishly ragged torn-off sleeves—the band, which had grown accustomed to performing in clubs and theaters seating more than a thousand people, moved easily with the music, looking entirely comfortable working the three-thousand-seat hall.

  When the main part of their show was over, the band encored with Sebastian on the Spoonful’s 1960s hit “Do You Believe in Magic” and with McGuinn, who brought his own Rickenbacker to lead his inheritors in the Byrds’ 1967 hit “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star.” It was a powerful moment. The band had the tune down cold. Michael threw in some harmonies, though he hadn’t quite mastered all the words. All of the younger musicians seemed to be having a ball, but McGuinn, who had had his first hit two decades earlier, glanced around the stage meaningfully as he sang about the verities of the popular musician’s life: the emphasis on clothes and sex appeal, the fast-talking managers and music industrialists, the rapacious fans, the record company that is in the business, ultimately, of selling pieces of plastic. You get rich, maybe even relatively quickly, but at what cost?

  The price you paid for your riches and fame, was it all a strange game? You’re a little insane.

  It sounded like a welcome. And a warning.

  Don’t forget what you are, you’re a rock ’n’ roll star.

  * * *

  —

  The Passaic show was the last booking R.E.M. traveled to in a van. They flew to Los Angeles after that and were picked up in a Golden Eagle touring bus, specially outfitted with reclining seats, a bathroom, café tables, a sound system, and bunks for those long overnight drives. The crew got their own bus, and the gear went into a truck. They spent a few days in L.A. doing interviews and taping TV shows, then on June 16 got back on the road, performing that night in Fresno, California, then heading up the coast on the first leg of a tour that would have them crisscrossing the continent, playing clubs and, increasingly, auditoriums until mid-October.

  At some point along the way, Bill was having a few beers in his hotel room with Gevin Lindsay, an old friend and guitarist from Macon who had set aside his own music for a while to serve as R.E.M.’s guitar tech. Looking out the window, the drummer noticed the tour buses waiting in the parking lot and let it all wash over him. Buses! Trucks! All that gear, all those people to ferry it from one venue to the next, all of them filled with fans who would listen and cheer them down the road to the next place and then the place after that. “He got kind of emotional there for a moment,” Lindsay recalls. He and his three friends just wanted to be in a band and play rock ’n’ roll for their friends, and somehow that had led to all this. “I could see the revelation on his face. He was just astonished for a moment.”[9]

  Not that he had a lot of time to sit and reflect. They had about a week off after the end of the U.S. tour before it was time to fly off to play a Halloween show in Honolulu, en route to a week of concerts in Japan, then a month hopscotching through the UK, Ireland, and Norway. They weren’t quite rock stars—they could walk down nearly any street without being recognized. But four years of work, the touring, songwriting, rehearsing, and recording, the interviews, autograph sessions in record stores, visits to college radio stations, in-studio visits to commercial radio stations, meet-and-greets with industry insiders, post-concert hangouts with fans, beers hoisted, and nights in the van, had started to show results. Bigger halls with crowds in the low thousands, better stage equipment, the buses that made their endless travels at least a little more comfortable. They weren’t getting rich yet, but the weekly road salaries allowed for real meals in real restaurants, assuming they had the time to go out, find a decent place, and sit down to eat. They got most of the holiday season off but regrouped in time to play a homecoming/New Year’s Eve show at the 4,600-seat Atlanta Civic Center. That was as close as they could get to Athens, which no longer had a venue big enough to satisfy the demand for tickets.

  24

  Gravity Pulling Me Around

  “Driver 8” and “Old Man Kensey” debuted at the Passaic show in mid-1984 and were followed that summer and fall by a variety of other new songs: “Good Advices,” “Wendell Gee,” “Auctioneer (Another Engine),” and a few more. The new songs, written largely in hotel rooms, worked out at soundchecks, and first performed in cities hundreds and thousands of miles away from Athens, evoked home in a distinct way none of their earlier work had done. There was a clarity to the writing, a sense of place and character that seemed to have grown more vivid from afar. Both Peter and Michael were fans of the writer Flannery O’Connor, whose tales of the Deep South bristled with prophets, murderers, priests, hermaphrodites, the disabled, disfigured, and deranged. The new songs were written in her thrall, grounding them in a crooked vision of home that was both dark and affectionate, spiritually hobbled yet radiant with love. He sees what you can’t see, went one of the new songs. Can’t you see that?

  * * *

  —

  The planning for 1985 started in the fall of 1984, when R.E.M. was working through the final leg of the year’s American tour and then taking flight to Japan and England. They were all out of their bodies then, their shared momentum carrying them farther and higher than they’d ever dared to dream. Eager to develop new facets of their sound, they decided to make a break from the production team of Mitch Easter and Don Dixon and find a new partner to help them explore. Peter, with his intricate knowledge of rock history, suggested they try to connect with Joe Boyd, an American expat who had spent the past twenty years in London producing ambitious records for everyone from Pink Floyd, back in the band’s earliest, Syd Barrett–led days, to the brilliant, doomed singer-songwriter Nick Drake and the folk-rock duo Richard and Linda Thompson, among many others. At first it seemed like Boyd wouldn’t be able to help: he was in the middle of a record for the Canadian art-rock singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O’Hara. But in mid-February, when that project ended earlier than expected, he rang up Jefferson Holt, and a few days later he arrived in Athens to help R.E.M. record some demos and see how it felt to work together. The band cranked through thirteen of their new songs in a day, and it felt so good they signed up Boyd on the spot. He’d need to do the recording in London, as he was running his own record label at the time and needed to be close to his office. That didn’t bother them at all. In fact, they were delighted. “They said, Cool! London! Fine!” Boyd recalls.[1]

  The band got to London in the third week of February, just a few days after the demo session in Athens. They moved into a multifloored town house Holt found for them in the elegant Mayfair district, near Hyde Park. It was a beautiful neighborhood, the streets chockablock with restaurants, pubs, and all the swank shops and bustle of central London. The only problem was that Livingston Studios was in the Wood Green section of North London, eight miles away. Boyd had tried to convince the band to stay closer to where they’d be recording; he had even secured them reservations at a nearby hotel. But the American musicians were set on Mayfair.

  They should have listened. London doesn’t have the kind of car-friendly streets American cities do, and the drive to the studio in the morning, navigating the crowded, twisty streets, could take an hour or more. The trip home in the evening wasn’t a lot faster, and between that and the gruesome winter weather, moods sank and tensions rose. They’d been riding in the same cars, sleeping in the same rooms, breathing the same air, thinking the same thoughts for five years, nearly without interruption. Now they were doing it in a strange city in the least pleasant time of year, in an unfamiliar studio with a new producer who didn’t know how they’d always done things, who kept opening doors, snapping on lights, asking ticklish questions—Would a click track help keep the rhythm straight? Shouldn’t the vocals be louder?—that poked at the band’s soft spots and forced them to reconsider decisions they’d made years before. The days dragged. The nights were endless. British food was pasty, and last call at the pubs went out before 11 p.m. The TV had only two channels, and neither of them showed sports they cared about or could even follow. None of it was fun anymore.

  How long could they tolerate this? Even if they got through the next few weeks and made it home in time for the start of spring, which is the best time to be in the South, they’d have approximately six days to enjoy it before they were set to take off on another concert tour. Then they’d head up to the frigid Northeast, where April still meant snow, ice, and skeletal trees. They’d been going and going and going, nearly nonstop, since the party in the church. And what the fuck was it getting them?

  They had some beers one night and groused to Jefferson Holt, who peered back at them through his glasses and nodded. Yes, yes, he totally got it. Yes, what they said made sense. Yes, they could completely revamp how they did things. They could cut back touring by half or more, spend a lot more time at home, and make the band more like a part-time job. Of course, they’d have to reduce their expectations accordingly. Reckoning hadn’t gotten a lot of radio play, but their constant touring had pushed sales to about 250,000 copies. If they toured significantly less, they’d sell maybe 100,000 copies of the next record, so that’d be less money coming in. And they’d make significantly less from performing, too, so maybe they could go back to college, get other jobs, or figure out how to live on next to nothing? That or they could continue the work they’d been doing over the past five years and leverage the great new record they were making into becoming an even bigger, more artistically powerful and profitable band. The musicians listened, nodded, looked at one another. Hmm. Well. Huh. If you put it that way…

  * * *

  —

  For Michael the gloom had little to do with the weather or the commute. He usually came to the studio a few hours after the other guys anyway, and spent his solitary time visiting the city’s museums, galleries, and other cultural hubs. He learned to get around on London’s Underground, and made his way to work on the Piccadilly Line, which deposited him just a block or two away from Livingston’s front door in something like half the time it took to drive, with only short walks to and from the stations. R.E.M. was still hardly known in England, and it was easy for him to stay below the radar, especially since he had lopped off his chestnut curls, razoring the remnant to stubble, which he dyed a chemical shade of blond. Anonymity was a relief. But he knew it was only a matter of time before they’d be back in the United States, back onstage, and he’d have to face it all again.

  All those eyes looking at him, all the lights and noise, the same dizzy feeling night after night after night. He’d be onstage singing, the band blasting away behind him, the crowd at his feet and everything he ever wanted right there for the taking, and think, What am I doing here? He knew that Peter, Mike, and Bill made a terrific band, and they wrote great songs, too. They’d come up with chord progressions, verses, and choruses and play them for him, and all he had to do was string together some words, figure out a melody to hold it all together, and then dance around and look cool while he sang. It seemed like an idiot’s game. He’d bought himself some good clothes, had grown out his hair until it fell over his shoulders like a golden waterfall, and as long as he made eyes at the spotlight and played hard to get, everyone swooned. And what were they cheering, exactly? And what did it have to do with him? Cutting off his hair was one way to find out. The other guys had their own ideas about the band; they didn’t care what he thought, and why should they? Back in Athens, talking to his friend Chris Slay, a poet he’d met at school who had a similar look and passion for art and music, Michael grumbled that they could change places and nobody would be the wiser. “You could stand up there and it wouldn’t make any difference!”[2]

  Or maybe he was feeling something else, the emotional riptide created by such a powerful, unrelenting wave of energy. The rootlessness that went along with touring and the stimulants they all used to keep going, to keep their light burning bright enough to fill every room they entered. It sapped him in a way he didn’t even notice at first. That’s what the beer and the pills had been for, to fill in the gaps and give him a leg up. But then he’d wake up in a tangle, a piercing throb behind his eyes, and all the doubts would return.

  It wasn’t just the glare of the spotlight, or the pie-eyed adoration of fans who had no idea who he was or what he was saying in the songs they said they loved so much. That was all hard enough, but Michael had even more trouble in mind. The part of himself he never hid, but never really talked about either. It wasn’t anyone’s business, for one thing, just the basic function of his mind and body, the animation of his spirit. He was drawn to women but also to men, and he bonded emotionally and physically with both. His sexuality never troubled him. He didn’t lie about it, was often frank in his pursuit of partners of both genders. But he also didn’t speak of it in public. First because it wasn’t anyone’s business, especially in a society so governed by phobia and hostility. Then came the poison tide of the AIDS epidemic, which not only made tenderness a potential vector of death but also provided another reason for people, and his own government, to despise him, to talk about sending everyone like him into concentration camps, in the name of not just common decency but public safety. And what if he had it? Michael hadn’t gone in for a test yet, partly because he was so well known, but also…mostly…because he was terrified to know what the result might be. So he kept moving, kept himself at a distance, kept finding other things he could control or change. Other ways to express his terror and his yearning in words that wouldn’t reveal too much of his heart.[3]

  * * *

  —

  Where were they, where had they come from, where did they want to go? Part of the decision to move away from the Easter/Dixon production team stemmed from a thought, maybe an abstract suspicion, that they might want to clarify the sound of their records. To make them an easier fit for radio, without going full synth-pop Top 40. If the band felt ambivalent about the change, Joe Boyd made it easier on them. He was sweet and sympathetic and knew how to work with artists, how to turn murky feelings and half-thought ideas into sound. He quickly figured out how the band’s internal disjunction—the clash between Michael and Peter’s arty, intellectual approach and the R&B party-band grounding of Mike and Bill—magnified all their strengths into a unified attack that was adventurous, tight, and tremendously powerful. Boyd also encouraged the musicians to clarify their sound. To push Michael’s vocals a little higher, create more separation for Peter’s guitar parts and more depth for the bass and drums. He also got them to enhance some of the songs with outside musicians, adding a string section to “Feeling Gravitys Pull” and an exuberant horn section to “Can’t Get There from Here.”