* * *

  —

  In 2011 Peter Buck moved to Portland, Oregon. His marriage to Seattle club owner Stephanie Dorgan had ended and he’d met another woman who lived in Portland. Maybe most importantly, Scott McCaughey, the Young Fresh Fellows cofounder and R.E.M. utility musician since the 1995 tour, had moved there to be with his new partner. Peter bought a nice old house near the center of town and settled in. He keeps his silver hair long, parting it in the middle, which, along with his generally unsmiling public mien, makes him look a little like Severus Snape, from Harry Potter, at his most severe. Until he picks up a guitar or bass and steps onstage somewhere, at which point everything about Peter lightens and something in him takes wing.

  During his band’s early years, Peter spent so much time and energy working to get the band and their music noticed—he was always the R.E.M. member most likely to be interviewed, speaking at length about his and his bandmates’ ideas, tastes, and ideals—that it was surprising to see how dissatisfied, even dismayed, he was when his work began to pay off. For all the dedication, and even joy, he brought to the band’s performances, the rest of the success/fame package seemed to grate against his skin. The sparkle he brought to all those early interviews—look at him in that 1984 interview he did for MTV with Mike Mills—has vanished almost completely by 1994. He still answers the questions posed to him, but there’s a wariness; he rarely smiles, and it’s hard to even imagine him laughing.

  Peter’s hatred of fame made it all the more excruciating when a brief lapse led to his being arrested and prosecuted for attacking a stewardess on a flight from Seattle to London in 2001, an incident triggered by his mixing red wine with sleeping pills. Peter had already had one strange reaction to sleeping pills in the mid-1980s—it took a long time for the pills to kick in, and sleep was preceded by a period of hallucinatory weirdness during which he painstakingly reduced a stack of newspapers to shreds, leaving knee-deep drifts he had no memory of creating when he woke up the next morning.[1]

  When he overdid the sleeping pills again fifteen years later, on the flight to England, his unconscious meanderings turned aggressive, at the expense of British Airways’ cabin crew, with whom the sleepwalking musician argued before drenching one with a thing of yogurt he snatched from a service cart. Once again he awoke with no memory of his unconscious actions. But this time he was in trouble. Peter spent the next year battling charges of midair assault, public drunkenness, and damaging the airline’s property. He was acquitted in the end—there was enough evidence of the mind-bending powers of sleeping pills, and of Peter’s many years of spotless behavior—for the jury to believe that the lapse was the result of a bad combination of substances, rather than the guitarist’s bad character. It was the first and last time Peter wound up in the media hot seat, but it did nothing to make him feel comfortable with the public notoriety his music had earned him.

  Peter and McCaughey work constantly, writing, producing, and performing for the seemingly endless series of bands and collaborations they form (the Minus 5, the Baseball Project, the No Ones, Filthy Friends, Arthur Buck, and on and on) and producing albums for, and often touring with, the likes of Robyn Hitchcock, the Jayhawks, John Wesley Harding, and Alejandro Escovedo, among others. For several years after R.E.M.’s breakup, Peter ran an annual music festival in the Mexican coastal village of Todos Santos, which boasted performances from Wilco, the Drive-By Truckers, Old 97’s, Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, and many others. Friends like Mike Mills, Steve Wynn, Kevn Kinney, and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones would come down to hang out, and most were happy to join in the fun, either adding instrumental or vocal parts for the billed bands or joining one of the unbilled conglomerations Peter and McCaughey pulled together to fill in that night’s performance. The festival, which raised money for the Palapa Society, an educational nonprofit supporting local kids, got bigger each go-round until 2016, when it stretched for two weeks, climaxing with a huge concert in the town’s central square, attended by thousands. That might have been too much of a good thing: the Todos Santos festival has been on hiatus ever since.

  Music continues to be the central organizing factor in his life. When Scott McCaughey suffered a stroke in November 2017, Peter put together a pair of fundraising concerts two months later to help pay for his recovery. Mike Mills and Bill Berry both performed at the shows, along with friends that included Escovedo, the Decemberists, Corin Tucker from Sleater-Kinney, James Mercer from the Shins, and the Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood, who had also settled in Portland. McCaughey made a full recovery from his stroke, and by April 2018 he was back onstage with the Minus 5 at Portland’s Laurelthirst Public House, Peter at his side, performing the first of what were billed as the Therapy Sessions, a weekly residency that went on for a month.

  The COVID pandemic sidelined Peter for a few years, as it did everyone, but he got back to his musical ways once the coast was clear and has been either in the studio, on the road, or on a stage somewhere ever since. As of this writing he’s touring with the latest iteration of the Baseball Project, performing songs about the nation’s pastime in a combo that includes Mike Mills, Scott McCaughey, Steve Wynn from the Dream Syndicate, and former Zuzu’s Petals drummer Linda Pitmon, who doubles as Wynn’s wife.

  * * *

  —

  Mike Mills keeps houses in Athens and Los Angeles and has been working most visibly with his childhood church choir friend Bobby McDuffie, now a classical violinist, for whom he composed the 2016 Concerto for Violin, Rock Band and String Orchestra. The pair have collaborated on other pieces and shows, including “A Night of Georgia Music,” an overview of the work of some of the state’s most influential artists, including Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers Band, Otis Redding, the B-52’s, Outkast, and R.E.M., and “R.E.M. Explored,” featuring classical arrangements of some of his old band’s songs. He also performs with original Big Star drummer Jody Stephens in tributes to that great, if largely unheralded, band, as well as on various all-star fundraising shows, for which he is always glad to do “Rockville” or one of the other R.E.M. songs that featured him, such as “Texarkana” or “Superman.”

  Mike is also a presence on Twitter, where he posts regularly on sports, particularly the exploits of the Atlanta Braves and the University of Georgia football team, and on current events and politics, which is where he really lets fly, unloading frank and often explosive commentary on politics, culture, and particularly Donald Trump, whom he clearly loathes.

  Mike is married to Jasmine Pahl, and seems the model of a well-adjusted former rock star, working on projects when and if they capture his attention and spending the rest of his time enjoying himself.

  * * *

  —

  Bill Berry, who left R.E.M. when the band was at the height of its popularity, still spends most of his time on his farm outside Athens, where he has resided for more than thirty years. He never stopped playing music but keeps the vast majority of it to himself. He has made an irregular habit of sitting in with friends, particularly when one of Peter’s bands comes through Athens or when Love Tractor performs. Musicians in Athens say he is remarkably generous with his time and attention. During the pandemic, one told me, Bill would call to check in once a week, making certain that things were still okay, that he had everything he needed. They had been friendly before, if not terribly close, and he felt touched by Bill’s concern. And even more touched when he realized that Bill was making dozens of calls just like that every week.

  In the late 2010s Bill started hosting regular jam sessions with former Five Eight singer Mike Mantione and a few other Athens musicians. They started writing and then recording some original songs, and after a few months they dubbed themselves the Bad Ends and decided to do something with their music. The band’s first album, The Power and the Glory, was released in late 2022 by the prominent indie label New West. Bill made it clear that he wouldn’t tour to promote the album, but he did play a few shows around Athens and, even more amazingly, appeared in the band’s videos, playing the drums, riding an ATV, dressing up like a zombie (!) in the clip for “All Your Friends Are Dying,” and as a chef in “Thanksgiving 1915.” Still, his appetite for attention is fleeting at best, and as of this writing Bill’s most recent appearance with the Bad Ends, in which he played just a part of the band’s full set, was billed as his last.

  * * *

  —

  When they ended their collaboration in 2011, the ex-members of R.E.M. vowed they would never reunite. A lot of other bands, including those whose breakups involved great eruptions of rage, mutual hatred, and public trash talking, have gotten back together to tour and even make new music. Breaking up and getting back together now feels almost like a required step in a successful band’s journey, which is one of the biggest reasons why the former members of R.E.M. are so determined to do no such thing. Their dedication to never standing on a stage together has remained steadfast, mostly. When Peter got married in 2013, he and the other three members of R.E.M. performed at the reception. Michael sang some songs with other musicians, but when Peter, Mike, and Bill got up to do a short set together, their former singer left the stage. The sole exception, for the length of exactly one song, took place at the band’s induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 13, 2024, when the four original band members performed an acoustic version of “Losing My Religion.”

  * * *

  —

  The four ex-members of R.E.M. are, by all accounts, still close friends. When one encounters trouble—a divorce, a bout of depression or any potential digression from a happy, healthy path—the others have stepped in to lend their support, to make sure their friend doesn’t steer himself into a ditch. It seems to help. They’re all still alive and well, active in their communities and doing things that matter to them.

  They’re also still part of an exclusive club: only the four of them know how it felt to be in R.E.M. They started out as college kids and ended up as rock ’n’ roll superstars. Bill might have missed the last fourteen years, but the die had been cast by then. As Peter has said, Bill never stopped being a member of R.E.M.; he just stopped performing and getting paid.

  Do the ex-members of R.E.M., the four of them, ever get together and play some songs just for fun? Back in 1980 they spent months in the back of the church, playing their favorite covers and fiddling with their own ideas because it was the most fun they could imagine having. It’s nice to imagine them doing it again, hauling their amps into someone’s basement or up to their old Clayton Street clubhouse and cranking it up. Just because they enjoy one another’s company, and because they still love the sound only they can make when they line up a tune, count to four, and dive in. Making music in the night, for no reason except that it feels so good to fill the darkness with noise. Gardening at night, they used to say. Gardening at night.

  Michael Stipe as a grade schooler.

  Bill Berry in 1968.

  Peter Buck as a fourth grader in 1966.

  Mike Mills in his 1975 high school yearbook.

  As a high schooler Michael, wearing his kimono shirt and Melanie Herrold’s silver lamé pants in her bedroom, dresses the part of the 1970s rock star.

  Michael with his first band, Bad Habits. Drummer Jim Warchol drinks a beer, guitarist Joe Haynes bites his fingernails, bassist Buddy Weber puffs on a cigarette while Michael explores the deeper cavities of his nose.

  Stipe and Buck bear down at one of the band’s first shows at Tyrone’s, 1980.

  In the winter of 1980 Michael Stipe was best known around the University of Georgia campus as an art student.

  R.E.M. on the road in 1981: Merlyn’s Club, Madison, Wisconsin.

  Backstage at Merlyn’s, November 1981.

  Mike Mills, Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Bill Berry, 1982

  Taking a break from producing the Athens band Dreams So Real in 1985, Peter Buck catches up on his reading.

  Jefferson Holt and Bill Berry, with Mike Mills just behind them, toast the new Warner Bros. Records contract at Bertis Downs’s house in Athens, Georgia, 1988.

  The four members of R.E.M. celebrate together.

  By 1989 Michael embraced his role as the band’s front man.

  Even the hectic 1989 world tour allowed Bill, with Mike in the background and his bandmates just out of the shot, time for sightseeing by kayak.

  After the “Losing My Religion” video cleaned up at MTV’s 1991 Video Music Awards, Bill Berry, Michael Stipe, and Mike Mills showed off Michael’s many message T-shirts.

  Michael at the top of the heap on R.E.M.’s enormous 1995 tour.

  Once the most collegiate-looking band member, Mike Mills got ready for the 1995 tour by buying a rack of spangled suits to wear onstage.

  When he wasn’t playing his guitar for tens of thousands of cheering fans, Peter did his best to help feed and care for his twin daughters, Zoe and Zelda.

  Mike on the ’95 tour with Seattle musician Scott McCaughey, who would play a significant role throughout the second half of R.E.M.’s career.

  After his 1995 aneuryism, and the brain surgery that repaired it, Bill took to wearing a cap onstage.

  After devoting his life to R.E.M. for nearly twenty years, Bill reveled in the quiet of his farm and the thrum of his tractor.

  Relaunched as a trio following Berry’s 1997 departure, R.E.M. poses for the European press in 1998.

  Michael stares down the doubters at R.E.M.’s triumphant appearance at England’s Glastonbury Festival in 1999.

  Michael and Peter share a moment onstage during R.E.M.’s 2003 European tour.

  With Bill Berry on drums and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder joining in, R.E.M. plays at the band’s 2007 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

  Acknowledgments

  Work on this book began, more or less, with the start of the COVID pandemic in the spring of 2020. The ensuing months and then years of near solitude were rough, but also clarifying. In the absence of friends, culture, live music, and virtually everything else at the heart of this story, the music and lives of the men who formed R.E.M. and the people who moved among them became that much more vivid. So much of what pulled them together, inspired their music, and then drew so many millions of people to listen to them began with the simple pleasures of community and art. Happily, R.E.M.’s community proved generous even from afar, and even more welcoming when I got a chance to travel again.

  For interviews, background info, fact-checking, comradeship, and other kindnesses:

  In and around Athens I am particularly grateful for the help of Grace Elizabeth Hale, whose book Cool Town is an essential work for anyone hoping to understand how so many residents of a small academic backwater went on to alter the course of American popular culture. Paul Butchart knows as much about Athens’s culture and history as anyone and is remarkably generous and patient. Patton Biddle, aka Pat the Wiz, is an amazing source for information and music, too. I am also grateful for the assistance of Tony Eubanks, Christian Lopez, Armistead Wellford, Mark Cline, Curtis Crowe, Michael Lachowski, Kit Swartz, Dana Downs, Andrew Carter, Velena Vego, Sam Seawright, Woody Nuss, Rodger Lyle Brown, Sean Bourne, Jay Gonzalez, Patterson Hood, David Barbe, Lance Bangs, Ingrid Schorr, Caroline Wallner, Vic Varney, Mig Hayes, Vanessa Briscoe Hay, Mike Richmond, Johnny Pride, Jonny Hibbert, Mike Hobbs, Terry Allen, Chris Slay, Lauren Fancher, Mark Methe, Spencer Thornton, Jeff Fallis, Debi Atkinson (Montgomery), Maureen McGloughlin, Keith Bennett, Dennis Greenia, Rick Hawkins, Matthew Grayson, and Craig Williams.

  At the University of Georgia: Judy McWillie, Robert Croker, Jim Herbert, Art Rosenbaum (RIP), Scott Bellville, Kat Stein, Mary Miller, and the staff of the University of Georgia’s Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

  Also many thanks to: Melanie Herrold (aka Noni Crow), Craig Franklin, Michael Edson, Lori Blumenthal, Mike Doskocil, Danny Gruber, Andy Gruber, Bill Dorman, Jim Warchol, Steven Scariano, Ken Fechtner, Joe Craven, Alan Ingley, David Clark, Mitchell Mills, Mari Berry (Miljour), Don Berry, and Robert McDuffie.

  Among R.E.M.’s friends, employees, colleagues, and fellow musicians: Robert Lloyd, Terry Allen, Geoff Trump, Kevn Kinney, Don Braxley, Karen Glauber, Bill Healey, Jeff Wooding, Scott McCaughey, Nathan December, Peter Holsapple, Ken Stringfellow, Mitch Easter, Don Dixon, Joe Boyd, Don Gehman, Scott Litt, Kurt Munkacsi, Peter Jesperson, Mark Williams, Jay Boberg, Cary Baker, Lenny Waronker, Julie Panebianco, Ross Hogarth, Jay Healy, Adam Kasper, Chris Fulton, Gevin Lindsay, Steve Wynn, Corin Tucker, Jason Ringenberg, Jay Gonzalez, Patterson Hood, Jem Cohen, Victor Krummenacher, and Eric Martin.