My days with the shiny happy people of R.E.M.
April 1st, 2008, 6:26 am Hobbies Ideas
There was a time, a little more than ten years ago, when R.E.M.’s position as
arguably the most successful band in the world exempted them from some of
the grubbier realities of the music industry. Interviews were a rarity. Even
touring was dispensed with for the ten million-selling albums Out of Time
and Automatic for the People. Not any more.
Last week the members of R.E.M. - Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe -
were in London, where they lashed themselves on to a three-day treadmill of
press, radio and television interviews, live sessions, a concert at the
Royal Albert Hall - somewhat inevitably broadcast live on BBC Radio 2 - and
indiscriminate flesh-pressing.
So complete is their prostration before the beast of publicity that they allow
me intimate access to their world, to the extent that I now know the name of
Stipe’s favourite new restaurant (the Providores %26amp; Tapa Room, on
Marylebone High Street) and can reveal that the outwardly bluff and
garrulous Buck has to gear himself up before entering an aftershow party.
By our third day together, I have been invited into a cramped BBC studio,
somewhat embarrassingly, in precedence over the band’s official
photographer. Mills has taken to inquiring after the health of my little
fly-on-the-wall. Given the head-spinning schedule, their reserves of
tolerance are prodigious. I wake up dreading these days, says Buck, over a
drink in the Haymarket Hotel. So it’s nice to see a familiar face.
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