* * *

  —

  The next stage of the process began in early September, when the band, plus Holt, Downs, and a variety of assistants, family members, and friends, relocated to Luttrellstown Castle, a fifteenth-century keep on the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland, that had been repurposed into a luxe resort. R.E.M. rented the entire place, making it their center of operations for the international press blitz that would herald both the release of Monster, scheduled for the end of the month, and the launch of the 1995 world tour in January.

  For days on end the musicians, usually working in two-man teams, trooped from room to room and to the various camera-friendly corners of the grounds to face the cameras and the microphones and the open notebooks and the eagerly smiling reporters and anchors and correspondents, answering the usual questions about how they’d made the new record, about what the songs really meant, about why they hadn’t toured to support the last two records and why they had decided to mount such a big tour this time around. MTV was preparing an entire weekend of R.E.M.-centric programming pegged to the release of Monster and had sent a camera crew to shoot the band introducing and talking about their old videos. The musicians took turns introducing the older clips and, in case anyone watching didn’t already know who they were, themselves. For Michael it was a chance to acknowledge the rumors that had swirled around him for the past few years. And to start a conversation he was finally ready to have. “This,” he declared with a wicked smile, “is the very skinny, bald, sexually ambiguous Michael Stipe.”

  * * *

  —

  He never hid who he was. If you knew Michael as a person, you knew that he always had girlfriends and boyfriends and that he had pursued relationships with members of both genders with equal enthusiasm. He might have been more public about his relationship with Natalie Merchant than he was with Jeremy Ayers or the other men he had dated, but maybe that was because she was famous too, and when they were together, people noticed. But there were always men in his life. And where he came from, nobody cared. In Athens the art music scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s was as inextricable from the town’s gay community as it was from UGA’s art school. Four of the five original members of the B-52’s were gay, as was Love Tractor’s Mark Cline. The gay members of other bands were less well known or less public about their romantic lives, and however they chose to live was their business. The musicians and the people who followed them were interested in their music and art, not who the artists might like to smooch when the show was over.

  R.E.M.’s success, and the growing intensity of the media’s interest in its charismatic front man, put Michael in a different position. Particularly given the overwhelming masculinity that had always defined rock ’n’ roll. Even if they preferred to think of themselves as musicians and songwriters first and foremost, all four members of R.E.M. were aware of the band’s image, of how they looked and who they seemed to be when they were in the public eye. Peter was a particularly canny narrator of the band’s history, continually exaggerating the accidental nature of their formation and rise, and understating the time and attention he gave to mastering his guitar before he joined with the others.

  Still, while they’d talk at length about their music and their cultural opinions, all four band members were remarkably disciplined about keeping their private lives to themselves. To the extent that reporters asked Mike, Peter, and Bill about their families or romantic partners, or even the juicier details of the intra-band relationships and squabbles, the members of R.E.M. rarely volunteered much beyond an anodyne sentence or two. In their early years Michael would respond to questions about his family and childhood with wild, often wholly invented stories about his Cherokee grandmother or how he’d been a piano prodigy as a boy, only to have all traces of his talent slip away when he grew into puberty. But that was before the hit singles and platinum albums made R.E.M., and particularly Michael, into subjects of mass adoration and, inevitably, curiosity. And at the altitude R.E.M. had come to inhabit in the public consciousness, the questions, and the expectation that they would be answered, would not go away.

  At first this infuriated him. Like most people, Michael preferred to keep the details of his private life to himself and a small group of trusted friends and family. In fact, he was so averse to answering personal questions during interviews, and so prone to shutting down reporters who asked them, the producers of a 1989 documentary for MTV UK strung a few of his chillier refusals into an extended supercut of Stipeian rejections and dismissals. “I never stated that in public,” he snaps. “I really don’t want to talk about my past,” he huffs. “I really don’t want to talk about it,” “I choose not to talk about it,” and on and on.

  When whispers about his relationships with men merged with the ongoing toll of the AIDS crisis, and the AIDS-related deaths of gay celebrities including the pianist Liberace in 1987, Queen singer Freddie Mercury in 1991, and the actor Anthony Perkins in 1992 led to persistent rumors about the state of his health, Michael was at first repulsed. He’d spent several years in the mid-1980s terrified that he might have contracted the virus but, like a significant number of other potential victims, he’d been too leery of his test results becoming public information to risk getting tested. Instead he lived in fear, staying celibate for long periods, using his near-endless travels as an excuse for avoiding intimate relationships. He eventually did get tested, in 1987, and was relieved to learn he was HIV negative. When the rumors about his health gained currency in the wake of the dark-hued Automatic for the People (Why isn’t the band touring? Why won’t Michael do interviews? Why does he look even skinnier than usual? Why are all these songs about death?), Michael felt torn. He didn’t want people to worry about him, but he also didn’t want to further stigmatize AIDS patients by distancing himself from them.

  Then there was the matter of his sexual orientation, which fell somewhere in the murky region between the poles of straight and gay. Michael knew enough about modern sexual politics to know how rigidly dogmatic members of both camps could be. Even when he began to consider speaking out, he couldn’t imagine what an honest description of his orientation would achieve, other than infuriating almost everyone. Who wanted to hear from a guy who couldn’t commit one way or the other? The tension found its way onto Monster, stated directly in the media commentary “King of Comedy,” in which Michael follows a line about the commercial value of controversy with: I’m straight, I’m queer, I’m bi. Would anyone wonder what he meant by that? Would they say he was telling the truth? And what if they did? Michael already knew he was going to be giving interviews, countless interviews, to promote the new album and the tour. He wasn’t going to go out of his way to talk about his sex life, but if anyone asked, which seemed like a good bet, he knew he’d have to answer. And when he did, he intended to tell the truth.

  He did not hold back. The first time someone asked, he made it plain: he was bisexual. Asked for further clarification, he refused, while not denying anything: “I don’t think it’s anyone’s business what I do with my dick unless you’re sitting in my lap,” he told MTV. “If I suck dick or I suck pussy or I alternate between them, it’s kind of nobody’s business.” When the tour got to its launch in Australia a few months later, he elaborated just a little bit: “If I had to go on record, I’d say that sexually speaking I’m more ambivalent than anything else. Anything that moves, that’s my motto.” With this he gestured to the reporter, perched just a few feet away. “So just sit there and be very still.”[2]

  * * *

  —

  A chart topper around the world, Monster rated reviews that were a tick or two below the raves earned for Automatic but still almost uniformly upbeat. Writing in Rolling Stone, Robert Palmer was particularly struck by Michael’s handling of how fame had altered his identity, though other critics felt that the sardonic characters he embodied in the songs kept listeners at a distance. Which was almost certainly the point, though also a bit jarring in the wake of Automatic’s songs, so many of which seemed to come from deep within the singer’s actual experience of life. Of course, seeing his own spotlit form refracted through the media’s funhouse mirror was also an integral part of Michael’s real life. And as they prepared to take on the new experience of being superstars on a world tour, “throwing ourselves to the dogs,” as the singer told one reporter that fall,[3] they were excited, anxious, girded for what they were taking on. The one thing they knew for sure was that this was their time.

  “I think all of us kinda realized that we’re probably never going to be in a position like this again,” Michael told one reporter. “We’ll probably never be as popular, and never able to do a world tour on this scale again. And I’m looking forward to it. I’m gonna have a ball.”[4]

  * * *

  —

  Looking ahead to the tour, and the prospect of filling the world’s biggest arenas with music night after night without Peter Holsapple in the fold, they started auditioning side musicians to add depth and breadth to their sound. Peter’s first choice for a utility player was Scott McCaughey, of Seattle’s Young Fresh Fellows. They had played together frequently since Peter moved to the Pacific Northwest, and along with his musical versatility (McCaughey was also proficient on bass and keyboards and could flesh out the vocal blend too), Peter knew he had the right mix of brains, wit, and easygoing charm. McCaughey passed his audition easily enough, but the search for a second player, one who would play guitar exclusively, proved trickier. A couple of guys simply didn’t fit; T-Bone Burnett came in for a day, but more out of curiosity than anything else—he was too busy to consider going on the road for a year with another band. An L.A. guitarist named Brian Baker looked like a good candidate, but then he got an offer to join the band Bad Religion as a full member. He knew another guitarist who was plenty good, and an R.E.M. superfan, too. Nathan December was at his day job a week or so later when he got a call. “This guy says his name is Jefferson Holt and he manages a band called R.E.M.,” December remembers. Of course he knew exactly who Holt was. “And I was losing my fucking mind.”

  After spending part of a day meeting everyone on the set of the “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” video, December got a call to bring his guitar to a rehearsal. Once they all tuned up, Peter asked him which song he’d like to play with them. December shot back without thinking: “Anything you’ve ever written.” Recalling the moment now, he chuckles. “That was the right answer.” They jammed for a day, then six weeks passed before the guitarist got another call. Could he come to Atlanta to do some more playing? There he found the band in a big rehearsal complex where their entire stage had been set up. He rehearsed with them for half a day, then was preparing to fly home the next morning when he got another call. Could he come back to play a little more? December delayed his flight, and when he got back to the rehearsal complex the next morning he found the entire band, along with Jefferson Holt and Bertis Downs, sitting together, smiling at him. “We just wanted to welcome you to the touring unit,” he heard. “I said, ‘Oh, okay, cool,’ ” December recalls. “But I was totally losing it.” That was Sunday, November 6. Six days later, on November 12, December made his live debut with R.E.M. on Saturday Night Live, before an audience of millions.

  * * *

  —

  The documentary Rough Cut, made by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, the same filmmakers who had directed the “Wolves, Lower” video a dozen years earlier, reveals something of the day-to-day lives of the members of R.E.M. in the late fall of 1994. It shows the musicians in Atlanta, spending hours honing their show, constructing lists of songs they might want to play, trying to remember how they go, flipping through published songbooks of their own records to make sure they’re getting them right. When the instrumentalists don’t need him, Michael huddles with the artist putting together the graphics that will be projected behind the band during the shows, and with the designer choosing photos for the program they’ll sell at the venues. When he’s not doing that, the singer is surrounded by publicists, assistants, and other functionaries, all bearing urgent requests for one thing or another.

  He’s also got the filmmakers to deal with, and does so cheerfully but firmly. “I want them to have enough to make a great piece, but I don’t want them following me into the bathroom,” he says amiably. Then he starts joking around. “No, I will not be filmed on an airplane. This documentary thing has gone too far.” The attention seems to animate him; even when he’s hassled, he appears to be having a fantastic time. In the back of a limousine he introduces himself to the driver, then uses the car phone to call the hotel for messages. His room is registered to Mr. Cup. When the ’70s hit “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” comes on the radio, he sings along with gusto. He’s in a dressing room, he’s in another limousine, he’s in an elevator wearing a backpack strapped tight over his shoulders, like a kid on his way to grade school. “I’m a little tired, to tell you the truth,” he says to nobody and everybody. “I can’t sleep.”

  In the Saturday Night Live studios, they rehearse for the cameras, tracked closely by an older man with a headset and a clipboard, who relays information from the control booth. Preparing to shoot jokey little promos for the show with the week’s host, Sarah Jessica Parker, they go over the quips that have been written for them. When Peter sees dialogue with his name next to it, he draws the line: “I just don’t feel like talking. I hate the sound of my voice.” In the hallways, staffers surround them, asking for autographs, which the musicians provide happily enough. The actor and SNL veteran Bill Murray appears, and when he overhears Peter saying something about not having enough clothes to change between all the songs, he pulls him toward the show’s wardrobe room. “They have all kinds of crazy stuff in there,” he says, then asks a worker to find Peter a coat. It is big and furry, and he ends up wearing it during the third of the three songs they play: “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?,” “Bang and Blame,” and “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream.”

  There are interviews. Endlessly, interviews. In Atlanta it’s magazine writers and daily journalists, and some are better prepared than others. One guy seems uniquely clueless: “It’s loud, guitars…” He seems to be talking about Monster. “I don’t know how different it is from your other stuff.” The musicians nod and don’t seem terribly put out. A woman with a camera crew and elaborately sculpted hair smiles broadly while Michael talks about how other R.E.M. records came from the heart and the mind, but this one’s from the crotch. Noting the discomfort beneath the woman’s hairdo, he starts in on this being a dick record—and, oh yeah, can he even say dick on camera? The woman laughs, but her smile flickers.

  Now the entire band is being interviewed together, all four perched tightly on a sofa. The sculpted-hair lady asks if they ever think about breaking up, and Mike says no. “Not till journalists bring it up, anyway,” which makes everyone laugh. Michael adds that even when the band members disagree about something, they’re always on the same team, if not always on the same page. They like and admire one another a lot, but it’s the differences between them that make R.E.M. what it is, he says. Michael looks around him and seems, for a moment, to become genuinely emotional. “If anyone on this couch were to leave, then—” Bill, a sly smile on his face, breaks in. “Then the other three would be more comfortable.” Everybody laughs, but Michael still completes his original thought. “It would not be R.E.M. anymore.”

  40

  Did Someone Put a Curse on Us?

  The Perth Entertainment Centre, January 13, 1995. The first moments of the first night of the world tour. When the arena lights flicked off, a vast roar filled the blackness. Eight thousand Australians standing up and going waaaaaaaahhhh! The moment lingered and expanded on itself. So much at hand, so much at stake. Onstage, they could feel a solid wall of noise coming at them, the power humming in the amps. The musicians slipped into their places, instruments in hand, the electricity in their fingertips. This moment they’d first anticipated in the spring of 1993, that they’d hoped for and dreaded, that they’d dreamed of, that they’d argued about, that they’d been planning and preparing for, was right here, right now. Peter, his left hand holding the neck of his guitar, took a breath, then raked a pick over the strings, sending a loud buzzing chord into the air. Then another chord, tripping a blast of drums and a bolt of clear light revealing five musicians and Michael, shouting a single word into his microphone.

  WHAT!

  The drums and bass hit and then they all shot off together.

  “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” is your Benzedrine, uh-huh / I was brain-dead, locked out, numb, not up to speed…

  And there it all was. The present and the past, the signal and the noise, the insiders and the outsiders, the melody and the dissonance, all of it rolled into sound and beamed upward until it exploded, the fractured light of a mirror ball.

  * * *

  —

  This was the part Bill lived for, the moment when the lights went out and the music took over. He’d started talking about going back on the road in 1992. “We miss touring,” he told a reporter from Europe’s Super Channel in October 1992.[1] That was in the wake of Automatic, when he realized he was tired of all the midtempo songs that had no need for a drummer pounding away. Bill had helped write a bunch of those songs, but still. Enough was enough: the band’s performance chops had dulled, the time had come to rock. When he was interviewed by MTV as it was all coming together two years later, you could see a gleam in the drummer’s eye. “It’d just kinda be fun to go out and be a kid again,” he told one of the throng of interviewers witnessed by the cameras of Rough Cut. “I’ve got new drums and I get to hit ’em real hard. Pete’s got a new amp and he gets to turn it up all the way. We get to be kids again.”[2]