R.E.M. was, along with U2, the last important band of the eighties. Both were inheritors of the ironically conservative legacy of punk rock: that greatness was a matter of returning to the roots of rock & roll, which by the 1970s had been corrupted and diffused by considerations of commerce and faux sophistication. R.E.M. in particular managed to square a circle by crafting elementally simple, but undeniably catchy, pop songs made durably arresting thanks to haunting moods, graceful harmonies, and elliptical lyrics.
I’ve somewhat belatedly picked up Peter Ames Carlin’s The Name of this Band is R.E.M., which I’ve been experiencing as a warm bath of nostalgia—and alarmed to find an endorsement on the book’s Amazon.com page from the AARP (“Catnip for Gen Xers who came of age listening to these eccentric, groundbreaking musicians,” a pronouncement all the more troubling for this Boomer). Carlin, an indefatigable reporter who convinced Bruce Springsteen to confide in him for his 2012 biography, and author of a superb study of the Warner Bros. record label, among other fine books, is a master of the rock bio. The conventions of that genre include profiles of intelligent but lost souls who find their way with rock & roll; their discovery of fellow travelers and collaborators; concentric circles of success (along with conflicts and complications along the way); and arrival in the big time. In this particular case, the band’s rise occurred against the backdrop of the music scene of Athens, Georgia in the late seventies and early eighties, one that also gave us the delightfully madcap B-52s. R.E.M.’s story is perhaps notable to the degree to which its members seemed unusually well-adjusted and complementary (all band writing credits and earnings were divided equally). As is typical of such books, the early years take hundreds of pages to chronicle, while ensuing decades get summed up quickly.
Carlin shows us why the really great rock bands connect with their audiences: because they were once fans, too. So it is that we witness endless lurking in record shops, rushing to get hotly anticipated new albums on the day of their release, rabbinical studies of rock journalism on the part of Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry (sturdy white WASP names unremarkable for perhaps the last time). It was interesting to to learn that Stipe—whose queerness was something was a topic to avoid for perhaps the last time—happily cut his teeth in cover bands, and that early R.E.M. shows included sets with songs from the Monkees as well as the Sex Pistols blended in with originals, an approach that may indicate why they had so many hook-laden hits like “The One I Love,” “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine”), “Stand,” “Orange Crush” and “Losing My Religion.”
But there was also something almost unearthly about R.E.M., whose elusive lyrics could sometimes be exasperating. But at their best—as in their marvelously loving tribute to comedian Andy Kaufman in “Man on the Moon,” from their 1992 masterpiece Automatic for the People—they achieved the apogee of rock artistry. Their videos, from the glory days of MTV, were also great. In an age of Whitney Houston, Public Enemy, and Garth Brooks, the band achieved a kind of extraordinary simplicity. They had that quintessentially Gen-X fear of selling out, which could seem fussy if not hypocritical. But they managed to sustain their equilibrium.
R.E.M. was also unusual in the relatively quiet, unfussy way called it quits in 2011. Long may they wave.