The band breaks from its latest run to talk about rock, three decades into the game.
By Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
AUSTIN, TEXAS -- YOU'D think 15 minutes with one member of R.E.M. would be a lot like 15 minutes with another. In the rush and grind of promoting "Accelerate," the band's 14th album, at the South by Southwest Music Conference, Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills didn't have much more to spare.
A Wednesday club show at Stubb's Bar-B-Q led to a Thursday taping of the venerable "Austin City Limits" TV series; in between there was radio to do, a campaign's worth of hands to shake, and a new set of songs to try to thoroughly grasp.
Media encounters inked into such a run take on an inevitable shape: for a veteran band, it means discussing the new album (this one rocks), assuring fans you still enjoy the job ("fun" is the operative word for these three), and offering some warm memories and rejiggered hopes for the future. Potentially meaningful encounters with journalists turn semianonymous, like visits from the cable guy. Even smart, friendly, seasoned artists can't be blamed for resorting to stock answers.
But for the passing moment in which these three submit to amiable grilling, they are fully present. This is an old game for them, but they take it seriously.
"The truth is, I've been working so hard I haven't had time to land," said Stipe when asked what it means for R.E.M. to be here, at a festival rooted in the indie-rock scene the band was so instrumental in creating. When he did talk about legacy, wasn't in terms of music, but politics, and generations.
"As a 48-year-old, I'm thrilled to have someone younger to vote for," said the unabashed supporter of 46-year-old Sen. Barack Obama. "I think we screwed it up, you know? I'm looking at and talking to and hanging out with people born during the Reagan era, and I feel like our generation, we did what we could, but it really wasn't enough. I think we can continue to inspire -- I hope -- or support the next generation or the generation below. But I think it's time to pass the baton to them and see what they can do with this mess."
Meanwhile, R.E.M. is busy redefining the romance of its own existence. Except for U2, no other band of its generation has been stuck with so much heavy meaning. As one of indie rock's co-founders -- along with many more obscure bands, such as the Dream Syndicate and Hüsker Dü, whom Buck habitually name-checks -- R.E.M. still represents the idea that amplified, guitar-based songs can bring people together and even form the basis for a larger life.
"Being in a band is a lifestyle," said Mills. "Being politically active is a lifestyle. Being a fan of music is a lifestyle. You can combine those things, and it does become a big community. That's a very difficult thing to do, and when you can pull that off -- when you can make so many people feel the same sort of passion -- you've done something really good for the world in general, I think."
It's a beautiful ideal, and on some level, it has to be an illusion. Like any long-lived band, R.E.M. is also a business that has to keep renewing itself.
The meditative, electronics-influenced albums the trio has made since drummer Bill Berry's 1997 departure haven't always pleased longtime fans, who miss the driving melodicism of classic works such as "Document" or "Murmur." "Accelerate," which hits the Internet on Monday via the Facebook-friendly music application iLike, before arriving April 1 as a physical disc, willfully answers that criticism. It is songful and determined, a frank gesture of self-acceptance.
"I'm just really personally pleased that they made this album at this point in their career, on an artistic level," said the group's longtime manager, Bertis Downs, backstage at "Austin City Limits." "People wouldn't have thought this was the record they'd make, and I'm not sure they would have thought it was the record they'd make. Whatever it does commercially -- and it's gonna sell -- the fact that they've made this record in their career is a very good thing, artistically. I hope it's the first of many, many more; it may very well not be. But I just think it's really nice that they have."
Asked whether "Accelerate" represents some idea of "classic R.E.M.," Buck cringes just a bit. "You try to avoid repetition," he said. "I could probably rewrite 'Murmur' every day, and that would be a little less than interesting. Sometimes you do come up with a really great chord change, and you say to yourself, you know, this sounds like something I might have done 10 years ago. But if it's great, you take it."
Buck is forthright, with a hint of a laugh behind his quick answers. ("Music is all he does," Mills says of his tune-writing partner.) Playing in R.E.M. has become an extension of his larger life as a working musician in the Pacific Northwest, where nobody's overly committed to one band. Recently Buck has played guitar with indie-pop guru Robyn Hitchcock and toured in bands with R.E.M.'s longstanding sidemen, drummer Bill Rief- lin and multi-instrumentalist Scott McCaughey. Buck's love for playing seems inexhaustible; he still enjoys sound checks. And there are plenty of those ahead during a 5 1/2 - month world tour that stops May 29 at the Hollywood Bowl.
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