14 replies to this topic

[Driver Eight]

I'd enjoy very much if the guys from REM, Bill and contributing non-members included, would write a history of their band. They have a great story to tell. Much of it has gotten out to the world via interviews and stories over the years, but there's a rich treasure trove of stories and lessons to mine. It would be great if they were to share it - if they wanted, they could use a coordinating writer or ghostwriter to facilitate. Anyone hear of them considering such a project, whether now or in the past?

[Sweden]

Don't think they'll ever be involved to that extent. They have of course provided interviews for several of the exisiting books, with the exception of Michael I think. Check out Adventures in Hi-Fi, It Crawled From The South, REMarks and Fiction and you'll have a pretty good insight I think.

I think that the stories that they are OK with are already out here, the ones they prefer to keep for themselves would not be shared in any book. I would however love to see any of the exisiting books being updated to cover the last ten-fifteen years as well. Adventures and Fiction are about ten years old, ICFTS thirteen or so and REMarks maybe fifteen.

[Driver Nate]

Driver Eight, on 18 November 2011 - 02:58 PM, said:

I'd enjoy very much if the guys from REM, Bill and contributing non-members included, would write a history of their band. They have a great story to tell. Much of it has gotten out to the world via interviews and stories over the years, but there's a rich treasure trove of stories and lessons to mine. It would be great if they were to share it - if they wanted, they could use a coordinating writer or ghostwriter to facilitate. Anyone hear of them considering such a project, whether now or in the past?

A few years ago there was word of a book about R.E.M. being written by Anthony DeCurtis but that never came to fruition. Still, I'm not sure of how much input there would have been from the band. Rest assured though, now that R.E.M. have come to an end, I'm sure the market will be flooded with R.E.M. bios in the years to come.

[iskra]

If recent interviews are any indication, Michael can barely remember half of R.E.M's history. I blame the drugs and whatnot. Oldtimer Buck probably won't give anyone the time of day about any of it, and seeing as how he's pushing 60, probably won't be the most reliable source anyway. Mills probably has the best grasp, but one gets the feeling as though even he's been dependent on the internet and publications to formulate certain anecdotes to the press.

I would like to hear more from the band about the past decade though. The early days and everything up to Monster got covered pretty heavily through the numerous books that were getting published. Then when they started putting out less popular music, the number of books decreased. If there's any story I'd like to hear, it's about these years. Anything else is bound to get repetitive.

And I know Stipe and Mills have been eager to talk about the band's history in the past month or so, but one gets the feeling that once this Greatest Hits media blitz is over with, they'll want to stop talking about the band's history so much. Enjoy these interviews while they last because my guess is that Stipe's going to become the stuck-up artworld recluse he's always dreamed of becoming, Buck's going to be off doing his own rock and roll things, and Mills will be focused on creating his schmaltzy two star solo masterpiece. I don't expect any of them to want to talk about the band's fuzzy past. Put another way: they're all going to be Bill Berrys (Berries) very, very soon.

[electronmove]

iskra, on 18 November 2011 - 05:30 PM, said:

And I know Stipe and Mills have been eager to talk about the band's history in the past month or so, but one gets the feeling that once this Greatest Hits media blitz is over with, they'll want to stop talking about the band's history so much. Enjoy these interviews while they last because my guess is that Stipe's going to become the stuck-up artworld recluse he's always dreamed of becoming, Buck's going to be off doing his own rock and roll things, and Mills will be focused on creating his schmaltzy two star solo masterpiece. I don't expect any of them to want to talk about the band's fuzzy past. Put another way: they're all going to be Bill Berrys (Berries) very, very soon.

I cringed at this spot-on analysis. Also agree the band's last decade or so is the most interesting part of their history left for behind-the-scenes stories. The rest seems pretty well plumbed.

[Driver Eight]

I agree with y'all, to an extent, that the 80s for these guys is ground well covered by a few books and lots of magazine articles. But there is no story as told from the horse's mouth. Michael has spoken several times in recent interviews about wanting Part Lies to be for young music lovers of today what a Bowie retrospective album was for him in the '70s. I book of the sort we discuss now, paired with a neat Cameron Crowe-esque film, would be a nice combination along those lines. I agree Peter would likely be the last to cooperate with such a project.

[wagtail]

meh.  I'd rather hear about their futures than their past, but last night a friend described me as ruthlessly unsentimental, so maybe I'm just going through a phase that finds looking back sad, frustrating and ultimately pointless.  I kinda think the only history of REM that matters is the one that they presented in real time on the albums.

Even if I were more interested in reading a written history, I think the band members seem too attached to the idea of REM to be very effective chroniclers of the reality.

[fredrik]

Sweden, on 18 November 2011 - 03:08 PM, said:

I would however love to see any of the exisiting books being updated to cover the last ten-fifteen years as well. Adventures and Fiction are about ten years old, ICFTS thirteen or so and REMarks maybe fifteen.

The newest I know of is 2nd edition of Inside Out, it goes until and including ATS.
Fiction ends spring 03.

[Driver Eight]

wagtail, on 18 November 2011 - 08:29 PM, said:

meh.  I'd rather hear about their futures than their past, but last night a friend described me as ruthlessly unsentimental, so maybe I'm just going through a phase that finds looking back sad, frustrating and ultimately pointless.  I kinda think the only history of REM that matters is the one that they presented in real time on the albums.

Even if I were more interested in reading a written history, I think the band members seem too attached to the idea of REM to be very effective chroniclers of the reality.

Setting aside my personal fondness for them and their music to the extent that I can, I see REM as a very interesting band with an inventive and highly influential approach to running a rock band, as has been glancingly referenced in the multitude of stories about them in the past two months. I think a book with three themes could be very illuminative and interesting:

Theme 1 - how they were different from other bands, innovative, savvy and trailblazing in how they managed themselves and their career arc,
Theme 2 - how they were the similar to many bands in several respects (creative and personal tensions, depressive jags, drunken binges, writer's block, problems with lovers, partners, spouses, ennui, etc.), and
Theme 3 - how the two prior themes interacted, illustrating the resilience as well as the limits of their approach in the inherently messy and complicated world of building and maintaining a top-level rock band over the long haul.

Sounds quite technical and even bloodless, the way I outline it, and that's not how I envision it. Rather than a formal B-school case study, most any of us would rather see a fun, lively book telling their stories and getting out their perspectives while mixing in the themes above.

[hikerdeb]

Ideally, what R.E.M. fans would want (and will never get) is something similar to U2 by U2. For that gigantic book, all four U2 members and their manager gave full cooperation to a writer who compiled quotes and interviews from U2's entire history. U2 was willing to do this because there's nothing they love better than self-promotion. But the members of R.E.M. have nothing to gain by putting out such a book. Everything they want to talk about, they've already said, and what they haven't said, they feel is nobody's business but their own. I think they believe the music should stand on its own, and the personal lives of the band members are irrelevant. They've been famously silent about certain issues and incidents involving the band, and there's absolutely no reason to start talking now. They're still friends, so the old rule still applies: You don't say things that make the other members of the band look bad.

And I'm not sure how interesting a more recent history of R.E.M. would be, because for the last decade or so, their shared history has been limited. They came together occasionally for tours or to record an album, but the rest of the time they were each off doing their own thing. It was much easier to write a history of the early days, because back then, they were pretty much together 24/7.

[bluemookie]

fredrik, on 19 November 2011 - 08:52 AM, said:

The newest I know of is 2nd edition of Inside Out, it goes until and including ATS.
Fiction ends spring 03.

lolwut?

[fredrik]

bluemookie, on 21 November 2011 - 01:55 PM, said:

lolwut?

Hmmm? The two newest books I've read. You've got others?

[bluemookie]

fredrik, on 21 November 2011 - 02:08 PM, said:

Hmmm? The two newest books I've read. You've got others?

I thought inside out was a song-by-song book, that was published in the late nineties.  The last R.E.M. book published that I'm aware of was Hello.

[fredrik]

bluemookie, on 22 November 2011 - 06:57 AM, said:

I thought inside out was a song-by-song book, that was published in the late nineties.  The last R.E.M. book published that I'm aware of was Hello.

You're right, but 2nd ed of IO came in 2005 (Fiction was published 2003). It contains some pages of band history between the albums.