And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 89: Michael Stipe and Mike Mills of R.E.M.

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

Our guests this week are two Grammy Award-winning artists, songwriters and musicians who were members of the alternative rock band, R.E.M. Having established a powerful legacy as one of the most enduring and essential rock bands in popular music history, R.E.M. pioneered the alt-rock movement of the ‘90s, influencing the likes of Radiohead, Nirvana, Pavement and Pearl Jam. Formed in 1980, the group enjoyed an extraordinary three-decade-long run of creative vitality and multi-platinum sales before amicably disbanding in 2011. With the massive commercial and critical success of 1991’s ‘Out of Time’ and 1992’s ‘Automatic for the People,’ in just a few years, the Athens, GA, four-piece had become one of the biggest, most recognizable bands in the world, thanks to hits like “Losing My Religion,” “Man on the Moon” and “Everybody Hurts.” Despite great success, the band members never lost track of their core values—remaining outspoken in their views about political, social, and environmental issues, and never wavering when it came to artistic integrity. Throughout the course of their career together—an immense legacy which approaches a 40-year tenure in 2020—R.E.M. released a total of 15 studio albums, won three GRAMMY Awards, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2019 Craft Recordings released a 25th-anniversary reissue of R.E.M.’s acclaimed ninth album, ‘Monster.’ And The Writers are...Michael Stipe and Mike Mills of R.E.M.! This episode is sponsored by Bandzoogle, SESAC & Royalties.Art: Michael Richey White Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, welcome to Ann the writer is. I'm your host, Ross Golan. I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years, and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs.

I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, big deal music publishing, and mega house music management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear. Go to our website www. And The Writer is.com. For a little bit of context, we just wanted you to know that a lot of these were recorded before quarantine.

And as we know, a lot has changed in 2020. So again, please stay safe out there. and enjoy the new episodes of And The Writer Is. This episode is brought to you by the new Quibi series, Royalties. Royalties is a 10-episode scripted comedy about songwriters, trying to make hit songs daily. The show is created by, and stars Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor, my friend Darren Chris, Go Blue,

who also co-wrote all 10 original songs. Just to give you a sense of the show, they have Mark Hamill as a country star named Philip Combs, singing about King Kong Small Pinas. They have Jennifer Coolidge as a pop diva who decides to do a K-pop collab, and Rufus Wainwright as a dance music icon. You can watch all 10 episodes and music videos on Quibi with a free 14-day trial. And Republic Records has released the entire soundtrack.

So go check out royalties. This podcast is brought to by CSAT. An industry leader and innovator in music performance licensing for over 80 years, CESAC has established strong relationships in the creative community by investing in the careers of its top-tier affiliated songwriters and film and TV composers. To learn more about CESAC and its affiliated relationships with songwriters and composers, visit cc.com forward slash origins to learn more. Again, visit Csac.com forward slash origins. Today's podcast is brought to you by Banzugal. Built for musicians by musicians, Banzugal makes it easy to build a professional website and EPK for your music.

Go to Banzugal.com to try for free for 30 days and use the promo code ATWI to get 15% off of your first year of any subscription. That's Banzugal.com and use the promo code ATWI to build your website today. All right y'all ready oh yeah okay well the swisher

gets finished over there I don't like Swifers does anyone here like Swifers like Swifters? Like Swift Jets? Yeah no Swifters the cleaner Oh the cleaners yeah the thing you clean up your apartment

there's too much disposable stuff yeah and they also they leave these little weird like hair Hairy particles everywhere I don't like it at all Hairy particles The new band New punk band

Exactly all right Shall we? All right. Welcome to And The Writer is I am your host Ross Golan. Today's Rock and Roll

Hall of Fame songwriting legends defined a genre simply by being themselves. These heroes are the meaning of alternative music originals in their craft.

These guys sold over 85 million albums worldwide by painting with guitar tones and drawing with emotionally personal lyrics. Still, throughout their success,

they've notoriously remained aggressive in their advocacy by humbly fighting for a whole generation. Established in Athens, Georgia, these Grammy award-winning rock stars formed the year I was born and shaped not just my musical upbringing, but many of yours. 15 albums later, I'm proud to welcome my new friends, and the writer is our Michael Stipe and Mike Mills of R.E.M. Hello, Ross.

Wow, I feel like we can go now. That was... And thank you so much for... That was great. Exactly. We love you. The hook comes, pulls us out.

Yeah, right. The new press is right. Right. Okay, so here's some fun backstory. We're here to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Monster of sorts, amongst other things. But what's crazy is on the album,

you have the live concert from Chicago. I was at that concert when Luscious Jackson was the opening act. Incredible. And I just, it was such a mind trip that I think the last time I saw you guys in person was then. So it's kind of fun to see you guys here.

We look great. You look great. Thank you. How old were you then? 14? I was 15, yeah. 15, yeah. Wow, wow.

So Luscious Jackson must have been quite an opening act. Oh, totally. Totally. Yeah. Like, wow. Yeah. Mind-blowing. Well, you know, that's a, that was an interesting band to have as an opening act because they, I think they had one song that was kind of a hit at the time. But it must have been something that you guys found that you guys really liked, right? We always insisted on, yeah. We only took bands out that we wanted to watch from the side of the stage. So it didn't matter if they were popular. We took NRBQ out because they're great. We took Pylon out because they're great. And bands that we just like watching them. But that year we had Luscious Jackson. We had radio. had we had blur. We had the cranberries.

Who else, Mike? Damn. We had radio had a lot. I can never remember. Wilco was, we had Wilco on one of those tours. I don't know if I was 89 or 95, but. That's crazy. Well, you know, let's, we'll go back to the beginning before, you know, between

1995 when that came out and when you guys started 15 years earlier, a lot of things happened. So let's go to the beginning. Usually I start from where you guys were born. So we can just kind of do like a, the brief. synopsis between when you were born to when you guys you know

meet Atlanta Georgia January 4th 1960 Capricorn Sun Pisces moon Libra rise that explains it and in Vedic astrology I'm a Sagittarius yeah

wow city of Orange California 1958 moved immediately to Georgia and stayed there until I met the guys that made the ban so

how did you guys end up in Athens. I mean, obviously a lot of this is Wikipedia-able, but just for the people who are too lazy to look it up, how do you guys end up in Athens? That's a college town. Yeah, we were there to go to school, ostensibly. So, how does the band

meet each other? Bill and I were friends from Macon. We'd already been in a band or two together in Macon, Georgia, and we both decided to go to college at the same time to get the heck out of Macon, Georgia. And Bill started dating a girl that had recently been dating Peter,

and Michael and Peter had met and we're looking for a rhythm section Bill and I were looking for a guitar player and a front man. We found him. Yeah, that's about it. I feel like people who start music now are thinking more often about the commercial part of music

and what they can do to become successful where... To become a brand. Yeah, I mean, well now it's hard to become a band. Brand. Oh, to become a brand. It's easy to become a brand. It's easy to become a brand. Right. It's all about sort of the branding.

Even, you know, you grew up as, you guys, you play guitar, and so you have to actually practice a guitar. Now people, their instrument is a computer. Yeah. And they're given that. You know, what was the purpose of you guys? You know, you're looking for a rhythm section and looking for, you know, a front man. Well, that was a little tongue-of-cheam.

No, but on some level, but that's how band started. You look for the other, you know, if you're a, if you're a good, guitarist and if you're a lead singer you need a guitarist you look for a guitarist you need a drummer you look for a drummer if you look you know what i mean why why even start a band in 1980 well bill and i had been like i said we were in bands in mason and we'd kind of given up on music because all we played was uh in the 70s all what all it was was southern rock and then uh my friend ian copeland introduced us to all the new music that was coming out of new york and and london so that got us re-energized and when we came to college we said you know let's get back into this and

and reformed. But Bannon, so Kathleen O'Brien, that Bill started dating and had been dating Peter. She says, well, I know these guys. And we said, well, let's meet those guys. And that's kind of where it went. We played her birthday party, and it took off. That was our first show.

It was playing her birthday party on April 5th, 1980. But I was 19. I met Peter in a, Peter Buck in a record store that he worked in. He was just really cool. I called him Richard for the first four months that we knew each other. He never corrected me. And then I thought he was even cooler.

And a little odd. But, you know, I had known since, I was 15 that I wanted to start a band and that was going to be my, that was going to be how I was. Were you writing music at 15? No, no, I bought Patty Smith's first album Horses the day it came out and listened to it all night long,

stayed up all night listening to it and that morning I just said that's what I'm going to do. That's it. When did you guys start? I was an early adopter. What music did you guys actually play on April 5th, 1980? I mean, are these covers or are these originals? Some covers and some

originals. We had, Bill and I had a few songs from Megan that we brought with us. And that was one of the things that really impressed me was what Michael and Peter did with the music that we gave them. And I said, well, these guys have something. That's really cool. So we had a bunch of those songs. Did any of those end up on?

Oh, Lord, no. Oh, no. Hopefully they're lost. Could you see them? Yeah. I'm not going to. But could you? Do you have that kind of memory?

Yeah, no. I played, we had one called Action that I actually played the baseline at a baseball project show not long ago. and Peter was like, oh. I said, do you remember it? He says, I think so. So we kind of played that one for a little bit, and that was one of the very early ones.

Did you guys understand, you play a birthday and the people at the birthday like it? So that's enough hope to go and go back to rehearsal and write new music. From that point to building a fan base, and that was an era where people actually went to shows, for bands that they didn't know it felt like

how are you getting the word out were you recording demos and people finding the demos or were you just inviting people to rehearsal spaces how do you build the brand of REM and

don't see that no but we basically played anywhere and everywhere that someone would have us play and we didn't need a stage we would just play pizza parlors, gay bars

anywhere that would have us and eventually you know two people in the audience became 10, became 100, became 3,000, became 20,000, became 150,000. We did some fun promo stuff. We made a three-song cassette set

that may yet see the light of day again. Had radio for Europe and sitting still and a song called White Tornado that we abbreviated as Tornado. And then we, you know, because that wasn't really, you know, getting us anywhere, we said we wanted to find some clubs in other cities so we cut a 45 just to send to

club owners so they know kind of what we sounded like and here's the band that you're going to get so and the 45 took off it's a song called radio for europe it became the single of their year at the village voice and um the and the b side was a song called sitting still they both wound up on our first album but it you know people were watching Athens Georgia because of the b 52's this incredible band that came out of there in the late 70s who radically and still haven't really gotten the kind of um attention that they should get for what they did they were so radical unbelievably radical and that they were so radical they completely radically changed what was then New Wave, I guess, in New York and L.A. People had never seen anything or heard anything like them before.

What is it about Athens? So they were really watching Athens. And anyone that came out of Athens, the band Pylon came out of there, the band The Method actors, the side effects, and then REM. And I don't know, just because of the bees, you know, we got a little bit of an audience everywhere we went. What about Athens at that time? I mean, there were obviously these pockets in different eras that we can. point to you know

it's a cute town you know it's a couple really nice venues Georgia theaters there historically historically

it's a pretty liberal town college town it had a it had a rich history of a of a political activism

in the 1960s and intellectual like academic intellectuals and hippies and queers and artists and musicians

and so it's kind of a perfect breeding ground for some nascent scene like this to develop. And the South is weird, man. I mean, you've got to remember this is a very strange place. And it's a weird place to be different. And so a lot of the people who are the musicians in this particular little scene, and we were, of course, completely unaware that it was a scene, which is what makes a good scene.

But, you know, it's a strange place, and it's a strange place to be different, and it's a different place to be strange. So we were all those things. And, you know, just a lot of creative people, in a very conservative, a liberal pocket of a conservative environment, and one of the ways that you act out is to be different and play music and make music your art. There were a lot of these guys were artists that weren't really musicians,

but they chose to make their art through music. And that led to something really cool like Pylon. There was only one true musician in that band originally, and the other three were just artists who decided to make noise and turned into one of the best bands. Who was the true music? Curtis Crowe, the drummer was an actual solid powerhouse drummer, yeah. Who introduced you guys to the business part?

You know, I mean, you guys are releasing, you know, you have these three songs to the end up on murmur, and then, you know, how do you get, well, how do you go from, I'm going to record three songs, and we're going to tour around, and we're building fans. I mean, something switches where somebody says, you know, hey, you guys, someday you're going to be a star or try to sell you on something.

This guy from Atlanta, who was about our age, was kind of a, an A&R guy. And he had seen R.M. Mark Williams is his name. He wanted to become a very famous ANR guy, but he had seen REM and he let a few people know on the West Coast at IRS Records that they should fly out to see us at a

show. So Jay Bobberg showed up in New Orleans. We played in front of seven people that night, and he was one of them. The beat exchange. Introduced himself at the end of the evening. He said, I'm Joe. Jay Bobberg and I said, I was afraid you were going to say that. And I said, I'm Michael and this is our band and this is what we do and he signed us. What a great place. There were syringes in the toilet. It was kind of a junkie hangout.

You know, Bill Berry actually used to sort of, Bill Berry was in, he was going to be an entertainment lawyer, I think, originally was his plan. And he was taking some of those classes at school. And he sort of managed the band in the very, very beginning. And then we met Bertus Downs, who became our advisor and took over all that for us. in the process of being in a place where people are actually singing about things that matter and writing about things that matter did you feel once there was once there were people saying hey man we're gonna you should sign this record deal

we're going to release music and all that did you ever feel like you should write for a different purpose than for yourselves like did you ever think oh let's go aim for radio Or were you just doing yourself and then radio just happened? Radio came to us. Yeah. We were steadfast in our desire to put out something that represented who we were and we were fiercely independent and we were, you know, we had Hutzpaw. I mean, we had a chip on our shoulder and it was our head,

and we went into the world like that. I mean, imagine trying to write for commercial radio in the early 80s. I mean, the only way to do that was you would have to go synth pop like the, you know, the Brits were doing, but there was no other, do I know there was no way no we were just doing what we felt like doing

and we knew it was good but we liked it yeah you listen to radio free Europe and you know well this is that's that's the sound of you know 15 years later it's so ahead of its time

for when it was and when we think about the music that really hits for radio in the mid late 80s or early mid mid late 80s

it's so much so much hair metal and so much music that's just so different from you guys but it doesn't seem like you guys weren't musically capable of going that direction if you guys

had chosen oh let's go chase deaf leopard it never occurred to it's hair metal made sense to me if you listen to the sex pistols album never mind the bollocks it's it's basically heavy metal with a really really charismatic frontman

and very different lyrics and then the image that one would expect from that era coming out of London but it's it's heavy metal it's not that far off from Rush or or not Rush, let's say, let's say, Aerosmith. Aerosmith, poison, you know, I mean, it's,

it's all pop music dressed up differently, you know, I mean, and just a little bit of different sound on the guitar and a different approach for the singer and a different hair and makeup. And it's, you know, they're not all that disparate as you might think they are. So hair metal coming out of L.A. kind of made sense as a reaction to punk rock and New Wave.

We talk a lot. That's not to say I like it. Sure. I don't. There were aisles and stores at the time. You know, a lot of what we talk a lot about now. There were stories. There were actual stores.

And people had to define music. Yeah. And that's one of the most frustrating things for a musician is when, no, we're just, we're just REM. We're not, whatever, we're not pop rock and we're not, you know, whatever, wherever you want to put us. You guys always have fit in your own lane. was it hard for people to when people started defining you guys did you guys feel like you had to define

yourselves and you know how did how did that work because when you guys are coming out with this music that's reacting at radio when college radio was a thing and regional radio was huge so that really that helped so much in that era how would you guys

define yourself they didn't know how to define they didn't know how to define it so they were like well it's not it's not this It's not that. It's not this. It's not what we are. So it's alternative. So we were one of the first bands to kind of break into, break towards the mainstream and help define what alternative music was supposed to be. Now that's, of course, an embarrassing turn of phrase now.

Wait, why do you say that? Alternative? Because it's not alternative. There's nothing alternative about it. But, I mean, it certainly isn't now. At the time, though, that's what it was called because no one had a name for. right, Mike? Well, there was no need for us to define it because what was happening was there was this whole

nascent thing going on in America, primarily, of all these bands who rejected the hype in excess of the current commercial thing. When you think of bands, you think of these, you know, these big, huge, overwrought guys. And there was this whole rejection of that among these people all over the country, you know, in Lawrence, Kansas, and Minneapolis

and all these weird little towns, Omaha. and they were just making the music they wanted to make and it came about in conjunction with this new format of college radio and so we didn't need to describe it because everyone knew what it was. It was indie music, it was people making the noise they wanted to make in counterpoint to the prevailing successful music. So we didn't need to label it and we didn't. That's why we made the single.

It's like, well, we don't know what to call it, just listen to this and you'll know. And you can't really talk about that era in music without mentioning MTV because that was such a profoundly important part of what happened and the kind of explosion of all these different labels and then different like kind of side or micro labels. And where we fit in then I guess would have been 120 minutes. So it was the place where they put all the videos that they didn't know what to do with,

they would play on a Sunday night. I mean, how fun, it must have been really, clearly it was fun for you guys because you guys were part, so many of your videos were part of the zeitgeist and they would travel beyond MTV you'd see your videos everywhere as artists

did you start being inspired to create music that was more fun to film or did you have you know were there did you start thinking about oh this is all one and the same this is all the same art while you're writing are you thinking of this is this is how we're going to film this video well making videos it was very it was very clear

very early on that there was a format that they wanted you to stick to and we didn't want to have anything to do with that. I refused to lip sync. We didn't want to dance around on stages. We just felt stupid. It just looked so artificial and dumb. So we went kind of the opposite direction and I came out of art school so we got really fucking hardy.

And I refused to lip sync until losing my religion. That was 11 years later, right? Yeah. That I lip synced my first ever R-A-M video and of course it became international it single. So I learned my lesson there, but it was because I had seen

Shined O'Connor videos. and I was very emotionally moved by her performances in them. Suddenly something that everyone knew was incredibly artificial and fake felt to me very real. And I recognized the power of that. Now, Madonna and Michael Jackson had gone the other direction 10 years before that and became who they were through music, through MTV and through music videos.

It helped define the music that they were making. We went the other direction. Yeah. goodness it worked um i feel like there's you know to me the you had a lot of albums that were that were working that were selling and it feels like document to me maybe i don't know if that's just from me being old enough to understand music at that point but to me that's the first album where it kind of gets so it seems so big and maybe just because the singles on it started getting so big you know um the one I love and it's the end of the world.

Those songs, they weren't number one songs on the Hot 100, but I think over time those are legacy number one songs. Did you understand what charts were when you started having these songs reacting at radio across multiple formats, and they're happening worldwide? Are you starting to understand at this point how significant these songs are?

I mean, we chose producers who were going to help us break through some of the doors that were slam shut in our faces. Why were the doors slam shut? Because we weren't mainstream. But the mainstream was coming to us. That's the beauty of the 1980s is that, you know, it happened again with hip-hop, with rap, which became hip-hop. And now it's happened yet again with post-hip-hop. But you take, you know, Billy Elish, for instance, you take all the lessons of pop music, you run it through. hip-hop and then you come out the other end and you wind up with something that's a

synthesis of these other styles but it's completely different and it completely absolutely defines the moment it's it's the zeitgeist and it makes perfect sense we were that but the the mechanism wasn't in place uh people drag their feet a lot more they didn't want to come to us but they were having to because that's where the audience was going yeah when when you would travel internationally That's accurate, don't you think? Yeah, that's actually, and the producer thing is true. I mean, we chose producers that we thought did good records and made good sounds. And the, you know, Life Street Pageant, we worked with Don Gaiman, who had had huge hits with, you know, John Cougar, Mellencamp.

And we wanted to get a sound that we felt like represented the kind of music we were making. Not so much to get on the radio, which would have been fine, which is what Don Gaiman wanted. He was like, I want to make hits. And we're like, well, you know, if we have hits, that's great, but that's not why we're here. We're just going to make the music we want to make. But if you turn it into a hit, that's fine with us, as long as it sounds like we want it to sound, which it did. So, you know, that was the beginning of that. And then he didn't want to make the next record because, as he said, you guys don't care about hits.

He said, I want to make hits, and I don't think you guys care enough about it. So I'm going to move on, and I got this guy, you might like, try Scott Lid. So we did a song with Scott, and we said, holy cow, that works. And that was the next five records. Scott took our sound, and his vision was close enough to ours to where, you know, he took our music and made it sound like we wanted it to sound. And that happened to coincide with the fact that, you know, listeners across America were starting to, they'd already rejected the pomp in excess of the previous commercial music,

and we're coming over to all this other stuff, of which we were kind of in the front row. So that's how it came together. Peter Buck once said, we were the acceptable face of the unacceptable stuff. I don't think I don't think anything true was ever said about where I am

you guys are releasing albums at that time once every year yep it's a lot of work it's a lot of work how do you guys say that

how are you that prolific and still promoting and touring how were you actually physically writing and when are you actually writing the songs that you have to then

sift through rehearse write all the parts are being written You know, I mean, how do you physically... Well, this isn't... Musically, you know, instrumentally speaking, you know, when Peter and I were sitting around,

we had a guitar in our hands. I mean, you were always playing guitar and... On your bus, on the bus or in hotels or anywhere. And mostly in our houses, but yeah, anywhere. I mean, we wrote songs on the road. We wrote songs, you know, in hotels. We wrote them in our houses. You know, wherever you are, we didn't have buses back then.

We were in a van. But, you know, wherever you are, you're playing guitar. And, you know, when you're in your 20s, there's a lot of stuff in there trying to get out, you know, and it came out through our guitars. And so we had all this, I mean, writing these songs instrumentally was relatively easy because we just had so much inside it.

The hard thing was for Michael. I mean, to write 10 or 11 songs worth of lyrics and not just toss any of them off for a record a year, it was like, I mean, we've got the easy part of this job. Thank you for my hat's always been off to you for that. I'm incredibly difficult. It was a lot of work. It was a lot of work.

But it's all that we had. It was, you know, we were in it. It was really like the four musketeers, you know. It was all for one. It seems like that. And credit-wise, you guys have always been really good at giving everyone credit. Because most bands break up for not figuring that out at an early point. Who led you in that direction?

Peter's a, he loves rock and roll more. than any human on the band. Encyclopedic. And he knew all of this. He knew what broke bands up, what helped him stay together, you know, what to do, what not to do. And he said, when we first started,

he said, we're going to credit all four songs equally. I said, well, why are we going to do that? He said, because the publishing, that's where you get a lot of the money. And he said, if only one or two of us is getting the money, that's going to break up the band really fast. Damn.

I didn't care about the money. I just said, well, shoot, I want the credit. If I wrote the song, I want the credit. He goes, yeah, I understand that. But, and this is the best thing we ever did, You said in order to have any future with this band, we got to split everything equally. And as it turned out, you know, everybody did a huge amount of work. You know, I might write an entire song or I might just bring the germ of an idea in

and everybody else would turn it into a finished song. And that's one of the smartest things we ever did. Yeah, it's just so notorious as the reason why bands break up. And people, you know, bands hate lead singers and lead singers hate bands for so many reasons that deal with the credit. but even in your videos you guys always were in the videos together

you guys were always saying or not or not but it felt it felt like you guys were always it was you know it always felt like a band

well you know we weren't one of those like three musicians need a singer you know we came as two parts of a package deal and Bill and I were looking for somebody and Michael and Peter were looking for somebody and and we from the very beginning we formed it as equals

you know we one of the early things we gave each other was veto power. If there's something one person really, really feels strongly against, then we won't do it. And that's just how it has to be in that sort of arrangement for it to last anytime at all. Green comes out

in 1988 and you guys have, at this point, it's full-blown crossed over as far as it's no longer you know, this is no longer really, like you were saying, it's not really alternative at this point, this is mainstream. And it's really the

It feels like it seemed like those next few years really give permission to the Seattle scene. It gives permission for some people to say, oh yeah, I can go and write music that's not guns and roses and it can still be successful, you know, or, you know, whatever the pop music is of the time. But it felt like that was permission to do music that, you know, it seems intimate. can retain authenticity and still be very, very popular. That's what R.M. offered. I think that's what we were able to show that. Did you feel at the time like there were people, did you feel pressure to sort of be leaders in the movement?

Or is it sort of just happening? There was no movement. There was no movement. We were just doing what we did, and we did it our way and with integrity, and that's what other people saw. We weren't trying to be the vanguard of anything. We were just doing things the way we were,

wanted to do them. And I think that's what other bands saw. And they said, oh, we can, we can be popular without compromising our integrity. And, and if anything, that's what we gave to other people. Yeah, keep in mind, all these people, none of these people were famous at that point. They were all starting their own bands, you know. Right. That, you know, Eddie Vedder and Courtney Love and Brett Anderson from Swade and, uh, help me hear Jarvis Cocker. Uh, yeah, just, and, and, and Kurt, uh, Kirk Cobain, uh, all landed on, on this at the same time. And, um, and, uh, and, uh, and they started their own thing and yeah the replacements actually were one of the bands that we took out on the road very early on and they boy did they do things their own way yeah and the same with huskudu and i don't know who else the sonic youth certainly but there were a bunch of black flag there were a bunch of bands that were kind of coming up together um and minor threat uh which became fugazi and or members of which became fugazi you know we were all kind of on the same circuit and we all knew each other and we all were pushing for something that was recognition really And in our case, it became very wide recognition through the songs and through the hits that we had.

But it showed those people that I, all those people that I just mentioned, who were all separate from each other. It wasn't really a scene. It wasn't really maybe little scenes developed here and there. But it showed that you could remain authentic and do really fucking good. Yeah. And get a lot of fans. The advocacy part. And pervert MTV. You know, you knew that radio was, we were in a very unique position in that we were able to take MTV and radio and kind of fuck with it a little bit and say, all right, we're going to release this song as our single.

As our single, because we know that you have to play it or we know you're going to play it and people are going to like it because it's so odd and it's such an unexpected non-business kind of move. And then we're going to get the kind of attention that we want for the second singer. And that's what happened. It worked. Today's podcast is brought to you by Ban Zougal. From garage bands to Grammy winners, Ban Zougal powers the website for tens of thousands of musicians around the world.

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It's basically the untold story of songwriters behind the world's biggest hits and follows the songwriting duo, Sarah and Pierce, as they navigate the strange and hilarious challenges of creating great songs for insane artists. You can check out the music, which has been released

on the one and only Republic Records, on your favorite DSP. So go check out Quibi's News Show royalties now. How many times were their songs, or which songs, were the ones where you said, this is going to be the single, and they were said absolutely not. They never told us no.

I mean, when we signed our record deals... Not even the label, like MTV and the radio stations, all these people, or do they, or... They never ended up happening. No, it never happened. Not for a long time. I mean, because, you know, the kids wanted to hear it. You know, they're in there to make money.

They're not going to cut off their nose despite their face just to say, we're not going to play that because you're weird guys, and we don't like you, you know, we don't like you guys having the power. Here's our song, the fans want to hear it. They're going to call you about it, so you might as well play it. I think losing my religion was supposed to be the song that was released first that sets up the next song and the one after that. So it wasn't even supposed to be a hit.

It's just supposed to be something that got people's attention. And Drive. We put Drive out, I think it was the first single from Automatic. That's right. That is not a single. I mean, by any definition, it's really not a commercial single, and yet it was pretty big hit. Yeah. Yeah, I would say. Did you guys, at this point, you guys are in your 20s, early 30s.

Yeah. Are you guys being healthy at this point? you know I feel like the mental health is something that we're talking a lot about as professional musicians in this era but there's nobody in that era that is that's talking about mental health for musicians yeah um did you have any guidance as far as going from or are you guys just looking at each other as trying to grow up to get but you know it was it was not an easy time to to go through dark periods at all and and and to and to sometimes have them not be recognized or acknowledged even by other members of the band. And we all went through difficult life things, you know.

But we had all made it through our 28th year. So that was a good thing. That's a rough one. That's a really hard one. Why? I mean, I know why historically, why the number? But why is that so difficult emotionally? Why is that that time of your life so difficult to be successful?

It's when you realize that you're no longer young. You're not immortal. You think you're immortal up until then, and then all of a sudden. You question everything that you are, and it's so important, I think, that people approaching the age of 20, late 26, 27, 28, certainly 28, that you know that this is a difficult time to make it through. You have to, and that goes across, you know, that goes across everybody. Yeah, everybody. That goes across all different religions, all different ideas, whether it's astrology or your Saturn return or your 10,000th day, or it's Hindu, it's Buddhist, it's everything. that's a rough time for everyone.

You have to kind of chrysalis yet again at the end of your 20s and emerge as an adult. And people sometimes don't make it. So at that point, we'd all made it. But the 1980s were difficult for me. I thought I was sick with HIV for a few years and I couldn't get tested anonymously. So I was really worried about that.

I had quit doing drugs altogether at one point in the early 80s. And I quit drinking for a long time. And I quit having sex for a long time, and that sucked. But, you know, I was worried. And then in 1987, around the time of document, I was able to get anonymously tested the week before we went on a tour to find out that I was not positive, that I was fine and healthy. Why did you feel that way?

Why did I feel that I was... Why did you think you were a sick? Well, it was just because it was a pandemic. It was really, it was horrible. And if you're queer, you know, it was hitting, of course, the gay population, the queer population much harder than anyone else. and so it was really, really a difficult time. And we had very close friends who died.

And people who, you know, I had shared beds with, people who were lovers or people who I had shared lovers with. So it was a very, very difficult time. But I made it through, and the band helped me. And we all made it through our 28th year. And then what? I mean, then we became super famous. Well, what's weird is, yeah, it really is that's the real change.

Then we became super-duper-famous, yeah. And we talk a lot about what happens in between the years. When you look at somebody's discography, it always looks, you ask them about the year where the things were commercially successful. You don't really ask about the three years where there is the development and the head games and whatever else is going on to develop three years of your life. And between green and out of time is three years of human development and growth. Was it three years, Mike? That doesn't seem... Green came out in 88 and out of time came out in 91.

Okay, yeah, because we did the Green World Tour. That took a year and nice of change. That's the whole college career in itself. When you think of it out of... So much happens in three years of your life. For us, that was three out of, you know, 11 to that point. Oh, sure. So it was just another part of this journey we were on.

I hate that word journey, but that's kind of what it was. And, you know, those were... We found ourselves getting, more and more popular and it had been gradual for us. We were able to deal with it and grow into it and accept it because it had happened slowly over time.

Why do you hate the word journey? I don't know. It's just too woo-woo. It's life. Yes, it's a journey. We're all vessels on the river of life, whatever, but it's you know, it's just growing. You know, you live your life and you bump into things on the way and either you fall down or you don't.

after you have the cleared you know when you get the test anonymously comes back you're healthy yeah well we're still in the Reagan Bush era right totally so life fucking sucks if you're American and especially if you're traveling the world every time we would show up somewhere people would be like what the fuck are you doing yeah we did a lot of apologize

what's with the cruise missiles like are you fucking the rest of the world we're like what the fuck are you thinking did you feel like after that you well two questions one is why did it need to anonymous and then two why do you feel like or after that did you feel now that you guys

have become famous did you feel a responsibility to become louder advocates well this all dovetailed at the same time for me but the anonymous testing was because there was rumors that they were setting

up camps in which to place people who were HIV positive or had AIDS and at that time it was a death sentence you you people were dying a lot of people were dying and so you know it was it was a deeply frightening thing to in in that era under Reagan and you're in New York at the time correct we were based in Athens but I was New York has been my second home since the 80s so yeah sure and then the you know the advocacy for you guys becomes really significant around this time now but like you're saying it's not it's all it's not just about

it wasn't about just the AIDS epidemic. It was about everything. Political. Political. Yes. Did you guys think of yourselves as, yeah. Racism. All the giant problems of America kind of became, not kind of,

all the giant problems of America became more abundantly clear under an administration like Reagan and then Bush Sr. And we thought it was the darkest time. I thought, I referred to it as the darkest era ever in American politics. I couldn't imagine it could get worse than that. well, it did, and then it did again. And here we find ourselves. Yeah.

Do you find it, you know, and we haven't even gotten a Monster yet, and I know we're limited on time. We'll go to Monster, and then I'll ask some broad strokes questions, some Mark Rothko kind of pain for those strokes. But let's go with Monster. Monster feels like it was

the peak of of an of the the sort of genre of alternative where at this point you have other bands have

their second or third album that's successful and you guys have become you know that in a way that with respect the elder statesman of a genre

you know releasing such a record like that being able to release that and then bringing on those bands that you were talking about as your opening acts that radio hits and all that stuff. Did you find Monster was at this

point a peak of your artistic growth? I mean it's so different. To me it's so different from Automatic for the... It's so different. It's not like any of the other albums previous to it. That was a clear reaction to our own work and we knew that we

you know, to be clear we had we had put out green we had done the Green World Tour in 1989 and then we took off for two albums I didn't talk to anyone I did know I did no press we did a few

TV shows like unplugged for MTV and but we put out our two most successful records both really quiet records compared to anything that we'd put up and certainly compared to Monster so Monster was knowing that we wanted to

go back on the road knowing that we had all these now very famous hit songs that everyone wanted to hear that were very quiet or mid-tempo. We knew needed to write something that was loud and fast and raw and had some swagger. And so we turned to the one thing that we shared as fanboys was a love of glam rock. And this dovetled perfectly with me shaving my head, proclaiming my sexuality publicly for the first time, and off we went. And it was perfect.

Because the world had changed dramatically in those five years since we had last toured. And we were a big part of that change. So this was our response to, let's say, the Seattle scene to what was happening in London with blur and with Swade and with Travis Cocker and Pope. Pope, thank you. And here we were doing kind of a little bit of an ironic. It was meta before the word meta was in the line, but this kind of meta, ironic distance,

able to laugh at our own selves, playing with glam rock and playing with that genre of music and updating it to 1995. It was fucking cool. Did you guys think of these, you know, I think what's a frequency, Kenneth is the first single off of it, correct? Yeah, it was. So releasing that as a first single is another one of those. Well, this is what we're releasing as our first single.

And everyone had to be like, this, what the, this is not the, you know, you've now done losing my religion. I mean, there's just so many of these classic hits that we haven't even talked about. But then this comes out, it must have been so, such a left turn for radio to be, okay this is where we're going now also keep in mind sorry go ahead okay you go ahead well Peter Buck who was you know for all intents and purposes the leader of the band in terms of what direction we were going in suddenly picked up and left Athens Georgia and moved to Seattle and started a family and bought a house and then Kurt and Courtney bought the house next door because they wanted to be

next door neighbors to Peter Buck so suddenly the whole Seattle scene through Nirvana and through Pearl Jam Eddie Vedder had moved up from San Diego I think to front Pearl Jam or to to start the band Pearl Jam and suddenly these people are not only fans, but they're becoming friends, and they're doing their own thing, and we're pulling from that. But we're already established, we've already done all this stuff, and then we put out these two really quiet records that sold tens of millions of records of copies, and we now have to respond to how are we as a live act five years later.

So it all fed into that, you know. And Peter wasn't going to come back, you know, he'd taken a hiatus from the electric guitar for the most part to on those two records. he played a lot of different stringed instruments, you know, because he was, you know, you just get stultified after a while. So he wasn't going to come back and play the same sort of, again, another word, he was a jangly stuff,

but he wasn't going to play that arpeggiated rock that he'd been playing for 10 years. He was going to come back and play electric guitar in a slightly different style. And so to get that kind of sound, we wanted the loud, aggressive, rock, quote-unquote sound, he played guitar in a different way. And by that point, you know,

music had changed. popular music had changed and it had gotten more guitar oriented and heavy guitar sounds were not that strange to hear so when Peter we came out with that song it wasn't it was kind of a left turn for us but it wasn't really a left turn in terms of what was going on in the music world at that point because Seattle had changed

everything so much the next so I know we've got like five minutes left so without you know you end up with another eight albums after that or something like that something sounds right then.

Why did you guys decide to call it quits? Why? Why? To encapsulate the legacy of what we had created and to allow it to not get dragged through the mud by

endless farewell tours or Greatest Hits tours. You know, I'm turning 60 in two months. I look great. I was going to say this. Thank you.

but I didn't want to be doing that at 60 and some people do it really well some people you know fucking kudos to Mc Jagger I think he's awesome and I'm glad they're out there doing what they do so this is no diss but for REM I think we all realized that we had done

we never set out to do anything but whatever it was that we had wound up doing we realized well this is about as good as it's going to get and maybe this is the time to allow it to encapsulate itself and become a complete thing

of the past. And becoming that, it can now move forward. It can now be something that people acknowledge and look at as a complete body of work. Yeah.

It does. There were a lot of factors that came into it, but it all played into the final thing of, okay, we've accomplished everything we can possibly want to accomplish. Anything that we might do further, you know, might tarnish the legacy

that we've created, not that we thought about it really as a legacy but it was this body of work that we'd done it's like okay let's we're still young let's go off and be friends and make other music and have other kinds of fun and while we still can instead of beating a dead horse i didn't want to become a judge on the voice or whatever those tv shows are and i'm sorry i'm you know again i'm not dissing anyone who does that but that's not who i am right and it's not what i wanted to do in order to place myself in the public's eye as a whatever 51 year old it was like no that's maybe there needs to be a show where they

have real, you know, there's, I always say they're, I'm a celebrity, get me out of here that one. That's really funny. I was thinking where they actually have, where they have bands that show up that are, you know, that are left of center, that would be something that wouldn't fit in the genre now. Maybe there's some world where we can actually listen to music that it's not about how do we fit this person in the box, and it's more how do we get these people out of the box. Maybe there needs to be some sort of show where we could use your expertise. we'll go to this next segment,

which is usually five for five, where I say five names and you say what comes off the top of your head. But being that we don't have like a ton of time, I'm going to go with at least two for five. Let's do five for five. Okay, okay, cool, yes, all right. Okay, let's go with, I checked over for time, we're good.

Let's go with Peter Buck. Star. Am I supposed to use one word? You can use multiple words. I'm not going to get mad at you. One of the smartest people I've ever met. Bill Barry. Next to Courtney Love

probably. Really? Yeah, Peter and Courtney are easily... Let's do Courtney Love next. Well, you just said Bill Berry. Okay, Bill Berry. They're very different people.

Courtney Love and Bill Barry. We'll go with Bill Love, Courtney Barry. We'll do Bill Berry first. Let's close out the... Let's close out the quad. He's my oldest friend. He's the true eccentric of R.M.

Really? Yeah. He's really eccentric. The least normal one of us. No way. He's the guy that wrote everybody hurts. He's brilliant. He's a musician.

Well, he's, he's both very afraid and very fearless at the same time. I mean, to walk away from R.M. Is one of the balliest moves you can imagine anyone doing. And he did it. At the height of our, at the height of our everything. Who does that? And for no reason other than it was just what he felt like he should do for himself. And that's such a.

a brave move i can't do you guys ever feel like you were going to walk away at any point times yeah four million times but but we didn't yeah i mean we're still here so obviously um let's go with courtney love i like that tornado brilliantly talented artist and sonwriter i think we have to do the other one in this case too because he's you've brought him up and i know that the significance you guys were to him but um kirk obane great sense of he super sweet guy very very sensitive songwriter

I have to say my favorite well let's go with radio head I thought you were going to go to Marlon Brando after that Marlon Brando yeah let's go to my favorite Marlon Brando let's do radio head Marlon Brando

I mean they are the Marlon Brando of kind of of kind of post everything rock I mean the word rock to me in 2019 doesn't really exist it's more of a it's more a concept from the past it's an idea from the past

but those guys managed to create their own universe and invite us in and it's a universe that we all want to be a part of yeah I think radio had took whatever lessons we had to teach and applied it as well as anyone ever could

to their own career and their own music kudos well thank you guys for doing this for doing and the writer is. You know, for all of us, for me in particular,

I'm so fortunate to have had people lead the way and say it's okay to write music that isn't part of the mainstream and been fortunate to have success in the mainstream and then be able to write music that is left of center and make a living off of it.

And it's because people open the door ahead of us and the fact that you guys are still here and still making music and doing, you just release, looking at Michael, you just released your solo song in October. You know,

you guys are still artists, still creating art, and it gives, you know, it gives all of us hope that if we're just ourselves, that there might be people on the other side of the microphone

that want to listen. If you follow your instinct, yeah, I mean, if you have an idea and you feel really strongly about it and you follow your instinct, I guarantee you there's an audience of people out there that identify with whatever it is you have to say. I can guarantee that. Absolutely. Thank you,

guys. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist or visit our website at and thewriteris.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter. is produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Berg's mom, and published by Big Deal Music. A special thanks to David Silberstein from Mega House Music and Michael White. Until next time, this is Ross Golden.