Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / R.E.M.: From Beginnings to Farewell – A Journey Through Their History [Episode 245]

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R.E.M.: From Beginnings to Farewell – A Journey Through Their History [Episode 245] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We're totally booked rock and roll. I think I'll leave you.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: You're reading little hands this, It's time.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: To rock and roll roll out a totally booked Hey guys,
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: welcome back to book don Rock, the podcast for those
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: about to read and rock online at bookdown rock dot com.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: Every episode in.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Audio and video.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Exclusive video highlights the latest rockbook releases.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: A recent rockbook release is.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: The Name of This Band is r EM, A biography
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: by Peter Ames Carl and Peter's a first time guest
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: to the podcast so much I want to know about
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: RAM and it does not get better than this book.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Peter looks beyond the sex, drugs, and rock and roll
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: to open a window into the fascinating lives of four
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: college friends, Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Barry,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: who's stuck together at any cost until the end. I
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: put together a playlist of RAM. You could find it
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: in this episode show notes, but right now here is.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: Peter Ames Carlin. Peter, thanks so much for coming on
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: to talk about the book.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: My pleasure, Thanks for having me.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: Where are you checking in from?
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: By the way, I am in Seattle, Washington, AH.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: Seattle. Very cool, Okay, you started working on the book
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: at the start of COVID spring of twenty twenty, and
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: you write, quote, the ensuing months and then years of
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: near solitude were rough but also clarifying. Can you explain
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: on that and what was the process like for you
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: writing this book?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, at first, it sort of wove in
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: magically with the demands of COVID, because starting any project,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: you know, you always end up spending a lot of
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: time just doing research on the computer and digging through
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: archives and figuring out, you know, what exists in terms
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: of the published media, ordering books and doing that kind
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of stuff, and reaching out to folks and maybe starting
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: to do some phone or zoom emails. And so for
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: the first you know, six or nine months, it was
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  Speaker 1: just it's just the usual sort of volitary building up
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: of the of the you know, your information base. And
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: then after that it began to become a limiting factor
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: because that's when I start traveling and meeting people and
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  Speaker 1: interviewing them, and I couldn't do any of that, let alone,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: you know, go to see shows or see music or
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: have anybody you know coming through town. And so it
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  Speaker 1: kind of slowed me down for a while. But eventually,
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  Speaker 1: you know, it began, you know, obviously as the restrictions
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: began to loosen and the vaccine came into play. Then
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I could travel back to Athens and start to hang
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: out with people and talk to them. And the other
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: thing is it just sort of allowed me to remember
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: as I was reading about their earliest days and just
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: sort of how important the Athens community was, and just
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  Speaker 1: you know, the ritual of going to a show and
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  Speaker 1: meeting people and seeing music and communing with folks with
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  Speaker 1: similar tastes and and and cultural sensibility. It was like, God,
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  Speaker 1: I missed that, And it just allowed me to sort
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: of think about the experience that they had had and
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: what it was that really merged them with their audience
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  Speaker 1: in those early days. And so that became, you know,
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  Speaker 1: something that I really began to think about and try
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: to start writing about. At the time.
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: How much of a fan are you of the band?
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I had become a huge band of
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the band. It was almost impossible to not be in
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the late eighties and early nineties. I mean, especially if
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: you had, you know, if you were interested in rock
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: and roll, if you were interested in kind of the
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: larger sort of you know, social political possibilities of rock
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: and roll. I mean. One of the things that made
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  Speaker 1: Ram so you know, so engaging and so bracing to
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: you know, to follow and listen to as they sort
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: of went through their biggest days, you know, from really
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the late eighties until the late nineties, was how they
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: really seemed to be a part of this wave of
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: kind of progress of politics and idealism that was sweeping
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: across the planet. You know, at the same time as
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: they were really coming into their own, you know, there
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: was the fall of the Soviet Union in late eighties,
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  Speaker 1: early nineties, there was a fall of apartheid in South Africa,
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  Speaker 1: and you know, and then the election of Bill Clinton
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  Speaker 1: in this kind of rise of at least some tentative
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: progressivism in the US. And they were, you know, kind
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: of came hand in hand in that because their music
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and sort of the way that independent music suddenly became
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: part of the mainstream in the late eighties through in
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of ways, what RAM was doing was really
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  Speaker 1: sort of encapsulated by the experience of seeing this band
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  Speaker 1: that had been a cult band and a college band
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  Speaker 1: and a nightclub band for so long suddenly become kind
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  Speaker 1: of the toast of the town, you know, and really,
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  Speaker 1: you know, in the early nineties, go from being a
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  Speaker 1: band that you know, a bunch of you know, a
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  Speaker 1: lot of people had heard on the radio and sort
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  Speaker 1: of knew of and kind of would maybe thing along
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: with or turn up the radio when the one I
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Love or Stand came on the radio to becoming kind
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  Speaker 1: of a national sort of rallying point in a sense.
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  Speaker 1: By the time the album Out of Time came out
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one and the single Losing My Religion
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  Speaker 1: became such a smash hit, they were ubiquitous, you know,
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  Speaker 1: you would you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing
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  Speaker 1: their songs, you couldn't turn on MTV without seeing their videos,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: and so it wasn't just the sound of RIM, but
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: kind of the idea of RIM as these kind of
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: college kids, you know, smart, sensitive, cool guys who ran
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: you know, not only saying about progressive ideals. But then
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: you know, the more you read about them, the more
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: you came to understand that they ran their office that
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: way too. They were so about recycling their garbage out
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: of the you know, I mean a lot of what
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: they did there and the issues they spoke up about
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: and the way that they communicated that stuff went hand
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: in hand with the music, and it just became a
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: part of what felt like a very sort of exciting, youthful,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: you know, idealistic moment in popular music.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: And you talk about them being ubiquitous. That's why for
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: me when it ended, and it ended so quietly without
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: much fanfare, I just remember being bummed, a little bummed
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: because I thought, well, there goes really one of the
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: greatest American rock and roll bands of all time, and
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: it's just kind of came and went, you know, no
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: farewell tour, and we can get into a little bit
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: of that as we move, you know, throughout this, but
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: I just I remember, like I said, just being a
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: little bum listen to their music the last few days
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: getting ready for the interview. I just think there's just
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: so many great songs, and they could have done like
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: a U two, like a residency at the Sphere, They
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: could have done something like that or the Rolling Stones.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: But as I find from reading the book, it's it's
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: really more of what they didn't do as much as
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: what they did do. So they kind of went against
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: against what you would expect. And Michael Stei too, I
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: always thought of him as being reluctantly famous, but he
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: did want to be famous. I mean he was outspoken
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: as a kid too. What were his childhood years like?
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: He moved around, I know, quite a bit, right, Uh,
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: military family exactly.
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  Speaker 1: His dad was a lieutenant colonel in the US Army,
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  Speaker 1: was in Vietnam and polled hazardous duty there for flying
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  Speaker 1: recon helicopters, so it was like daily dog bites essentially
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: over the skies of Vietnam, and the family, you know,
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  Speaker 1: bounced around the various military bases and eventually from you know,
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  Speaker 1: the bulk of Michael's childhood and adolescents ended up in
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: a suburb of Saint Louis where his dad was working
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  Speaker 1: at the military base, and you know, the kids were
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: going to school. It made the family very close, you know,
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  Speaker 1: and Michael was and remains very close to his sisters
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: and to his mother. His father passed away some time ago,
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  Speaker 1: but they were a very close family, and Michael was
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: All the kids were artistic, and Michael was particularly so
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: and very interested in visual art, extremely interested in music,
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  Speaker 1: rock and roll, and by the time he was halfway
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: through high school, was really fixed on this idea of
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  Speaker 1: becoming a you know, becoming a rock star essentially, and
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: he had a very close friend, this young woman, and
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  Speaker 1: they would hang out together and listen to records and
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: dress and rock and roll singer type clothes and banicized
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  Speaker 1: about this idea of which one of them was going
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  Speaker 1: to be in Rolling Stone first. You know. The other
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: thing that's interesting is that his dad, for all that
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  Speaker 1: he was, you know, a military guy and an officer
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: and career military. And one of Michael's childhood friends said
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  Speaker 1: that he never saw mister Stipe when he wasn't wearing
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  Speaker 1: a flight suit, you know, and wore a cavalry hat
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: like some of the people in the Army aviation units did.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: But he was also very soft spoken and very kind
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: and sensitive to his kids. And his friend Melanie remembered once,
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  Speaker 1: you know, they used to dress up and go to
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  Speaker 1: the Rocky horror picture show screenings, you know, where people
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: would dress in drag, you know, and Michael would dress
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: as doctor Frankenfurter, you know, with the full lace stockings
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  Speaker 1: and leather and mascara and heavy rouge and everything just
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: completely in drag. And his friend remembered that they got
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: dressed up in Michael's room and were walking through the
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: living room to go out and go see that night screening,
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  Speaker 1: and his dad, Lieutenant Colonel Stipe, sitting reading his newspaper
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  Speaker 1: and he glimpses over his paper and he sees his
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: son just as a woman walking out, and he goes, Michael,
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  Speaker 1: are you going out like that? And Michael said yeah,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: and his dad goes, Okay, have a good night, you know,
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  Speaker 1: just right, you know, where As you would expect that
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the lieutenant colonel helicopter flying dad is going to freak out,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: you know, but that's not how it was, you know.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: And I think given that foundation of really unconditional love
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: and support from his family, you know, it gave him
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: the wherewithal and the emotional foundation to become like a
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: huge rock star without losing himself, you know. And I
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: think all the guys in that band similarly supportive families
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: and came into that high pressure career of being rock stars,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: you know and global celebrities with a sense of themselves.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: You know, that allowed them to not get carried away
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: by the dark stuff.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well then we can get into I mean I
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: always think of the lyric that's me in the spotlight
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: losing my religion, to me, that's just selling your soul,
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: which is something they did not do. That's not necessarily
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: we could we could get.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Into not Michaels And I mean that's like an old
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Southern colloquialism which just basically means like losing your shit,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: you know, just going bananas. It's like, I can't believe this.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know, that's that's the feeling in that song.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: It's not selling out, it's just losing your your your
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: sense and yourself. Like, oh my goodness, you know, that's
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: kind of what that's about.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: Podcasts will be back after this.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Be right back with a snack Jack go away.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: Patty Smith's nineteen seventy I Have album Horses. That was
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: a watershed moment for Michael. What was it about that
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: album and specifically in that song Birdland that resonated with
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: him so much?
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Well, he had always been drawn toward I mean, he
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: had an interesting sort of paradoxical taste in music. So
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: you know, as a little kid, he really loved like
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: the Monkeys and the Archies and that kind of disposable
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: pop stuff. Like I think he loved the sense of
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: fun that you know, those kind of novelty songs or
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: slightly noveltyesque bands could bring to music. But on the
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: other hand, he was also drawn to art, serious art
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and avant garde art, and I think and the idea
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: of punk music and punk music itself and that kind
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: of immediacy and expression and the visceral power of it
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: really appealed to him as well. And so hearing Patti
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Smith and seeing how she could take really raw, visceral
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: music and pair it to really sophisticated, literary caliber poetry
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: was really moving and you know, an influential for Michael.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: He completely resonated with that album the moment that he
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: heard it and immediately began like insisting all of his
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: friends come and listen to it, you know, and not
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: all of them got it on the level that he did,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: because they were all aar album rock kids of the
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: mid seventies, you know, so they're listening to all that stuff,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: you know, Blue Oyster Cold and Ted NuGen and Southern
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: rock and all that stuff. And so Michael suddenly being
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: into this kind of hunk art punk songstress was like,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: where did this come from? But that was hugely influential
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: for him. Birdland was a song that he's talked about
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: this one of the you know, sort of the the
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: epic works on that album, and it's based on I
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: think a story written by is it Eric Reich, who
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: was the son of Wilhelm Reich, who was writing about
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: the law his grief for the loss of his father
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: and him imagining his father coming out of you know,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: his late father appearing to him in a spaceship and
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: him begging his father to let him go with him
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: on the spaceship. And you know, and when I think
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: about the idea of a dead father coming to connect
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: with his son and the son wishing to fly away
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: with him, it brought to mind, certainly to me thinking
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: about Michael's connection to it, the fact that he had
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: spent those years as a kid knowing that his father
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: was flying in a helicopter in extremely dangerous airspace, and
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: you know, you never know how a child internalizes that
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: kind of risk and fear and understanding that on any
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: given day his dad could be killed. And so that,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: in my sort of perhaps amateur analyzing, it seemed like
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: his deep connection to that song and his experience as
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: a child sounded connected to me.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: He met Peter Buck at a record store. Peter was
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: working at the record store. But you can talk about
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: how the four guys end up meeting.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Well, they were all in Appens, Georgia, which is a
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: small college town the home of the University of Georgia
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: in the northeast corner of the state. And Peter had
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: studied earlier and then dropped out of Emory University in Atlanta.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: He came from the suburbs of Atlanta, and the other guys,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Bill and Mike, came from Macon, Georgia. And those two
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: the bassist and the drummer in the band, Bill Berry
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: and Mike Mills, they had grown up in the same
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: neighborhood and become buddies and played in the bands together.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: You know, Bill obviously the drummer, and Mike the bassist.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: And you know, Mike was a very trained musician who
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: could handle keyboards and guitar, but took up the bass
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: was really loved playing the bass, and he and Bill
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: had a natural connection. And you know, as well as
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: being good friends, they had a good musical connection. And
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: they goofed around after high school in Macon for a
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: year or so and then decided to go to school
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: and packed up their instruments sort of with the idea
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: that maybe they'd find some like minded guys to jam with,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: and they got to Athens and Michael's family. His dad
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: had retired from the military and they had moved to
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: a town not very far away from Athens, and they
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: had assumed that when Michael graduated high school he was
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: going to go down there and study at the university.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: And for the first half of the year, Michael stayed
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: up in the suburbs of Saint Louis because that's where
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: his friends were and he wasn't sure he wanted to
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: move south, but eventually he ran out of money, so
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: he moved back down and he started studying at the
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Arts school. And Peter was working at this wack stream
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: music record store in Athens, and Michael came to the store,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: which was one of those places that had tons of
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: used records and imports, and discovered they had all these
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: punk and art music imports from New York and la
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and London and Paris and Germany, and was completely blown
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: away by this and started talking to the clerk, who
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: turned out to be Peter. And Peter had such an
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: encyclopedic knowledge of all of pop music is he had
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: grown up again, you know, in the suburbs of Atlanta,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: very very smart, constant reader who read everything to get
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: his hands on and was extremely interested in records and
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: pop music and was teaching himself how to play guitar.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: So it turned out that you know, Michael had sung
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: in some cover bands and Peter had been playing guitar
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: non stop since he was a teenager, and they just
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: decided to get together and jam and see what they
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: could come up with. And they were sort of just
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: beginning to do that when a friend of theirs who
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: also knew Bill and Mike, said, you know, I think
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the four of you guys would get along really well.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: So they thought, okay, and they met these guys at
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: a party and then they all got together to jam
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: and really, you know, the way everyone described it, from
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: the first time they got together, it was like, oh,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: we've got something here, like this a natural connection. And
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: they you know, that was in the winter of nineteen
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: eighty and they just kept playing together and then started
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: you know, writing songs together. And then when their mutual
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: friend was having a birthday party in early April, she
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: convinced them to make their debut as a performing band
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: at the party, which they did with no small amount
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: of stage fright and pre show nerves. But they got
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: up there and they played to this church full of kids,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: and you know, by all accounts, it was a really
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: striking debut, right st Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: closed Episcopalian church on the edge of downtown Athens that
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: someone had turned into apartments built in.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: Eighteen sixties and then it was a Red Cross but.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: It had been built by a guy that owned a
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: cotton mill or something and he wanted his workers to
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: have a church, you know. But then when the mill
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: shut down, then there was no need for the church,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: so it got basically closed and turned into a variety
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: of other types of housing for the local Red Cross.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: And then maybe there was a local museum or something
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: in there. But then this guy decided to turn it
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: into and built these weird modular apartments in there, and
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: that's where college kids could live amid their own filth.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I'm trying to picture that in my mind too.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: But also was the room in the back was perfect
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: to play music there, like the acoustics.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: There was something that it was the old most of
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the old sanctuary, right, So that was where the altar
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: where it was and where the pews had been, and
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: you know, there was the steeple that came up, but
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: the steeple had rotted out a little bit, so water,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: you know, rain would have been pouring in. So it
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: was a little musty back there, but it was a
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: great place to go with great acoustics for your band,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: you know, and you could set up on the altar
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: and your band could rehearse, or there could be a party,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: and then there was a natural stage there which was
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: only slightly rotted out from the rain water that had
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: been coming down. And so it was their friend Kathleen
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: O'Brian and it was her birthday party, and so a
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: couple of bands debuted. One was I think the Side Effects,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: which was another band of college kids, and then the
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: band that weren't quite called rim yet. I think they
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: called themselves the Twisted Kites that night, but they knew
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: that was just a placeholder name, and they came out
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: and it was like, you know, one of the interesting
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: things about Athens and the music scene was how many
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: bands came out of the art department there, the Lamar
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Dodds School of Art at the University of Georgia. Because
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: the professors there. The art teachers were many of them
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: were practicing artists who were very bohemian and avant garde
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: and their tastes and ideals, and they essentially had already
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: figured out that their interests in folk culture and in
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: avant garde art were also coming through in punk music,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: you know, this sort of post slick rock and roll.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: This really sort of stripped down grungy rock and roll
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: and the idea that you shouldn't need to be a
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: great musician to form a band. You know, just figure
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: out what type of band you want to be, see
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: what instrument you can learn, get together with some friends,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and then you all can be a band. And that's
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: exactly how the B fifty two Who's had come together
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: a couple of years earlier, and it was how Ram
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: came together. And like Pylon Love Tractor, the side effects
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: the method actors just band after band after band, and
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: they all sort of came up through this the sense
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: of with this sense of possibility that you could be
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: an artist and make really artistically creative music without necessarily
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: being like Eric Clapton on the guitar.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: There's a song gardening at night. That's important. I think
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: that's where all for as far as songwriting has they
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: all four really kind of lock in together.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: There was a whole very early on, I mean really
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: within the first few weeks of their first performance, and
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: you know, that spring and early summer of nineteen eighty
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: they began composing songs and coming up with things like
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Gardening at Night and Don't Go Back to Rockville and
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of those classic early songs, and there was
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a really cool sort of you know, the chemistry that
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: they brought to it together with all their sort of
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: diverse influences, was really interesting. And because Peter was you know,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I mean he had played a lot of guitar, but
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: he was not like school per se. You know, he
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: taught himself how to play by listening to, you know,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: hearing records on the radio or playing them on the
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: stereo and just figuring out how to play the chords.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: And so he came up with a very sort of
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: unique way of playing. He did a lot of you know,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: articulated the chords, you know, a lot of sort of
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: hanging chords, and Mike Mills, who was the most trained
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: of all the musicians playing bass, had a lot of
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: room to expand on his basslines and to come up
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: with really melodic stuff that he could play up and
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: down the neck of his of his instrument. And meanwhile,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Michael was, you know, an unschooled poet that obviously had
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: a really strong sense of the possibilities of lyric writing
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: and liked to write in a very kind of abstract,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: kind of impressionistic way, and created these lyrics that were
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: very even though you know, if you wrote the lyrics
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: down the sentences might not parse, you know, in the
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: sense of declarative sentences. There was the language that he used.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: He was very conscious of the texture of the language.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: He was very conscious with how words fit together and
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: how syllables worked, especially since they mixed the vocals so
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: low at first, and really had this idea that the
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: vocal should be just another texture in the music. It's
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: just another instrument, just like the guitar and the bass
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and the drums. Once you could work out what he
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: was saying, which you would have to do on your own,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: because they also wouldn't ever publish lyrics sheets at first,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: you had to. Really he left a lot of room
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: for interpretation in his lyrics. Let's put it that way.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: Gardening at night it's never where can you say where exactly?
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, It's like it's not and it's just kind
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: of like, you know, a lot of what he says
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: in those particularly in those early lyrics, are almost like
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: half statements and weird images that kind of come rattling
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: out that don't necessarily make literal sense, but when you
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: think about them in the context of the feeling of
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the music, you sort of begin to intuit things about
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: what he's saying. It resonates with the fact that the
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: band was called RAM, which you know, which stands for
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: rapid eye movement, which describes the level of sleep where
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: you're subconscious is most active and you're dreaming and you know,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: and you're having that, you know, living in that kind
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: of dream reality. And you could say, like, well, that's
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: obvious because their songs were so dreamy, but you know,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Michael has always insisted that he had no idea what
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: it meant when he pulled it out of the dictionary.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: He just liked the fact that there were initials and
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: that they had periods between them, and it just seemed
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: unique to him and also impossible to pigeonhole as a
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: band name, which is why they you know, they fixed
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: on it and stuck with it.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: He had to have been a big reader. Or is
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: I'm sure still like Peter.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Right well to a certain extent. Yeah, I mean I'm sure.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, Michael's a very intelligent guy, and he's very
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: you know, he's very sophisticated. But I don't know. But
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know that anyone reads as much
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: as Peter Buck does. I mean, you talk about guy,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's constantly never without a book. I mean,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: and kids that he went to high school with talk
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: about like, well, he'd be in classed, this bored out
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: of his wits because the teachers were idiots, and so
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: he would sit there with his own books sort of
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: in the textbook and just be reading whatever he brought
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: with him, you know. But he was one of these
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: guys that didn't have to pay attention in class, but
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: in order to ace the test. And if the spring
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: of his senior year, there was a rumor that started,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: which may or may not be true. Peter swears it
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: isn't that he had the highest SAT scores of anyone
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: in Georgia that year. Peter, So, no, that's nonsense, that's
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: not true. But but just the fact that people believed
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: it sort of tells you something about how smart that
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: kid was.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: Well, one thing he did work hard at was the guitar, right,
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: you talked about it.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: He worked very hard constantly. Yeah, but when you work
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: really hard at something, it looks effortless, right, But there's
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: an inverse proportional relationship between the amount of what labor
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: you put into something and how easy it looks, you know,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: after you've achieved it. So he was very interested in
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: learning how to play you know, these very sort of
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: complicated chords and lines, you know, and and coming up
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: with distinctive ways to play. So he's not the guy
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: that's gonna improvise a big solo, you know. I mean
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: he's not a rock guitarist in the way that like
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: you're Eric Clapton or you're you know, Jeff Becker or
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: the Eddie van Halen were you know he is. He
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: has his own and it's not because he can't do it.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: He just doesn't care to, you know, I'm sure he
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: you know, when you think about the moments in the
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Rim catalog where someone where he's playing a guitar solo,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: like in the one I Love Say It's four notes,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: you know, and and but it's a minimalism that is
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: so powerful, you know, more notes than that, it's I
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: think would would be worse. And so it was the
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: fact that the way they put their instruments together was
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: so distinctive from how other bands did it, and to
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: an extent they used their actual you know, to some
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: extent limitations and turned them into huge assets just by
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: being so distinctive.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: Will be back this war, we can you JC I
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: will be bad. They could have signed RCA, but they
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: favored IRS and they ended up signing with them. Talk
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: about why they ended up going with them instead of
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: RCA or.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: The RCA deal I think was super tentative. It was
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: a real low ball type of thing. And it was
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: even like, well, you can make an EP and we'll
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: see how that does, and if that does well, then
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: we'll pick up this option and you can make an
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: album or two or something like that. Whereas IRS, which
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: was an indie label, though it was an indie label
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: with pretty big that already had had hits I think
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: with the Go Gos by then and one or two others.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: In a sense, it was like they signed a smaller deal.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: They negotiated smaller advances in exchange for more artistic control.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: So the idea was that they were going to invest
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: in their own music and their own sense of how
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: they should pursue the music and pursue the work in
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: order to avoid any kind of you know, sort of
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: corporate executive decision making or authority coming in saying no, no, no,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: you're going to have to do this to make it
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: more radio friendly. You're going to have to do that.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: You're going to have to make this video this exact way.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: So the idea was, Okay, we believe enough in the
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: work that we're doing and how we're doing it that
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: we're going to take less money up front in order
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: to make the records that we want to make. And
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: it turned out to be a great wager for everybody,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: because they kept making these distinctive albums that flowed only
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: from their own taste and their own sensibility, but each
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: one really for the first fifteen sixteen years of their career,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: every record they made was bigger than the record before it,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: and every tour they played played to more people than
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the one before it, and just step after step after
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: step after step, and so they began even their early
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: ep the first EP Chronic Town, you know, sold like
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand copies or something, which was for a small
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: indie college band from a small indie college town on
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: an indie label. It got a lot of attention, and
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: that's a lot of sales for something like that. And
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: then they, you know, once they their first album, Murmur,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: came out in eighty three and it sold in the
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: low six figures, but was also such a critical smash
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: that when Rolling Stone had their year end Album of
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: the Year, you know, the Artists of the Year type poll,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: the critics proclaimed, you know, in the same year that
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Thriller came out, in the same year that YouTube I
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: think is it War came out? Yeah yeah, yeah yeah,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: like huge albums, like epic albums, they named Murmur the
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: album of the year, which was like a huge deal.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: This was a band. It was their first record. You know,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: this this weird, murky artie record. It got so much attention,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: and so of course the next album, Reckoning, came out
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: in eighty four and sold way better than that one,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: and by eighty six they were going gold, and by
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: eighty seven Document went platinum, and it was you know,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: and then Green went multi platinum, and then you know,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Out of Time and then Automatic for the People, and
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: then Monster were like ten plus million selling.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: Record setting, record setting deal with Warner Brothers. Remember in
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: the mid nineties. Yeah, even as the band ascended, though,
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: they were, like you said, they be lined to campuses,
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: they did college radio interviews. Why do you think our
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: EM's music connected so strongly with college kids?
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: I think because when they began making it, they were
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: college kids or college kid age certainly, and they one
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: of the things that they understood, you know, not only
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: you know, from the very beginning, was that a they
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: were going to play everywhere that they could possibly get booked.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: They were not going to be selective at all about
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: where they were going to play or who they were
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: going to play to. So from the beginning, you know,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: they were kids who were clearly not frat guys. You know,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: they were not that type of guys, you know, but
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: they would play fraternity parties, they would play sorority parties,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: they would play pizza parlors, they would play gay bars,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: they would play anywhere that had a new wave night,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: you know, go in there, play their songs, start to
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: meet people, and they were very welcoming to and very
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: collegial with their fans, because I think what they understood
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: it was, you know, not just their fans, but the
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: people who worked at college radio that these kids who
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: spun records on college radio and were drawn to that
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: scene or drawn to their music were essentially the same
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: type of people who they would have been friends with
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: had these kids gone to school in Athens, or if
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: they were going to school in you know, Madison, Wisconsin,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: or or wherever, you know, up in Boston. It's like
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: they would come to town, go to the college radio station,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: hang out with those people, get to know them, figure
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: out like what parts of town they might want to
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: go to hang out in, and they would end up
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: connecting with these folks and they'd become friends, and they'd start,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: you know, as they would cycle through towns. They could
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: come into any town and recognize a dozen two dozen,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: three dozen folks that they had hung out with before,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: you know, and invite them to the show and then
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: get invited to parties. And then it was this kind
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: of building this big foundation of fans and followers and
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: supporters like on a personal basis, and that became a
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: very strong fan base, and all those people began to
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: drag it in their friends, and then those friends brought
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: friends and you know, and it just grew and grew
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: and grew along those lines in a very just sort
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: of retail hand to hand to hand way. And I
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: think that accounted for a lot of you know, the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: strength of that of that audience and just how you know,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: how much it grew, sort of getting them to a
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: place where they could start thinking about getting, you know,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: making records that we're going to get played on mainstream radio.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: So you think that set them up because there was
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: a question that you know, in the book, reporters were
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: asking would success spoil rim Because as they make that
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: climb and you go through the years, eighty four South
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: Central Rain, I'm sorry and don't go back to Rockville,
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: do okay? Fables of the Reconstruction from eighty five has
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: a drive raid on there good songs, no huge hits.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: But then in eighty eight document the album The One
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: I Love is huge. That's a number ten single. It's
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: the end of the world as we know it. Now
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: we're starting to see the big success come. So did
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: that help them? Were they spoiled by that type of success?
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: It doesn't seem like.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: It they were very dirted for success in a lot
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: of ways. I mean both because of the many years
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: that they spent on the road, you know, living out
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: of each other's pockets essentially as they were driving in
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the van from place to place to place, you know,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: and they were very good friends when they began, and
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: they just managed to pursue their career in a way
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: where they really prioritize their relationship and maintaining good, warm,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: clear dialogue about everything that was going on. And they
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: had also, doing large part to Peter Buck's reading of
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: the rock and roll literature, had you know, sort of
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: come to understand that the two things that always break
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: up bands are fights over credit and fights over royalties.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: So in order to diffuse every fight before it began,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: he said, what we really need to do is just
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: agree ahead of time that everything that we write and
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: everything that we record that's an original song is going
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: to be credited to all four of us, and all
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: four of us are going to profit accordingly. So there
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: was no disagreement ever about wait, wait a minute, I
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: wrote more of that song than you did, or you
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: didn't write that, or blah blah blah blah blah. So
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: they went into their career and resolved, you know, having
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: resolved the worst possible conflicts before they could even have
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: a conflict over them. And I think also, you know,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the fact that they took them so long to break
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: through on that level meant that they could really establish
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: what their chemistry was, They really could understand, really value
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: one another's contributions and you know, and one another's humanity
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: on a level where the depth of their friendship and
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: their feelings for each other was always going to be
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: deeper than their connection to wealth and fame and the
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: spotlight and all that. You know, there was never point
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: that I've heard from a variety of people who produce
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: them that alone, among the bands and artists that they
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: had ever worked with, the guys in RAM were always
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: individually arguing that their part should be reduced in the mix.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: You know. They didn't nobody ever got into that thing
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: of like, well, I'm the star, Like that happens all
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: the time, right, except they were a band where everyone
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: was like, you know, something, we should turn me down
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: a little. You know, It's is not a conversation people have.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: Peter Aims Corley is the author of the name of
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: this band is arim a biography. By the way, the
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: title that comes from Michael would say that in concert, right,
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: name of this band is you know.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: It's interesting because when the after the book came out,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Chris Franz, who's the drummer for the Talking Heads, posted
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: something Facebook like, what the hell is this because you
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: know there's that Talking Heads record. The name of this
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: band is Talking Heads. And frankly, it's like I've always
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: admired Talking Heads and a lot of their songs, you know,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I love a lot, but I was never so conversant
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: with their career that, like, I can like half a
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: dozen Talking Heads records, but that wasn't one of them.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: So it was like and when that happened, and like
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: then some Talking Heads bands were like, hey, this is
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: a rip off, and I was like, hey, no, it's not.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: And b if I was gonna rip something off, it's like,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the thing, I would do,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it was like it was just
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Michael used to say it was like in the second
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: half of their career, he would start shows, they'd come
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: out on stage and the audience would go crazy, and
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: he would say before they played a note, he'd say
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: the name of this band is ARIM and this is
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: what we do, and then boom right into you know,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: two and a half hours of fantastic RIM songs. So
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: it was kind of like pretty groovy. And then when
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: they just played, they did the one four way reunion
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: that they've ever done since they broke up, where they
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: were being inducted just this last June in the Songwriters
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Hall of Fame, which was very meaningful for all those guys.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: They took their songwriting very seriously and it was a huge,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: huge deal for them. So they decided that this is
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: one time, you know, at the at the induction ceremony
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: where they were actually the four of them going to
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: get together and play one of their songs. And they
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: came out on stage and everyone's going nuts because who
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: thought this was going to happen? And Michael prefaced it
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: by saying the name of this band was r EM
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and this is what we did, and then they played
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Losing My Religion and I thought that was really sweet.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: Podcast. We'll be back after this, you leave down. The
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: contract ended with IRS with they they had like it
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: was a five record deal or whatever, what eighty two
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: to eighty eight, right, So so now irs wanted to
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: They wanted to keep RM, and they tried, but ri
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: em of course they met with all the big labels,
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: Warner Brothers ends up winning out. Why did Warner Brothers
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: end up getting rim on their roster? What did they
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: have that other labels didn't.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: They had a long standing track record as being the
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: major label that was the most sympathetic tour artists and
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: gave artists the most leeway to do whatever they felt
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: like doing. It's not a coincidence that the book I
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: did before the RAM book was called Sonic Boom, and
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: it was a history of Warner Brothers Records, and so
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: I got to know those guys who had worked at
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Warner's and it was you know, and that was a
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: really cool book for me. I really enjoyed doing it
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and getting to know those guys because they had, you know,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: the guy that was the chairman of the company, Mo Austin,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: and the fellow who was a first a record producer,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: A and R man who became the president of the company,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Lenny Warrenker, were uniquely as well as Joe Smith, who
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: was the president of Warner Brothers. They were sort of
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Warner reprieves for these connected labels at first, but they
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: all shared the sensibility of understanding as the sort of
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: the hippie era was beginning that this old corporate way
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: of making pop records and running a record company, where
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: essentially there was this understanding that this is disposable music
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: for teeny bop and it didn't necessarily need to be good,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: it just needed to be flashy. And to you know,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: that that was ending and that what was what was
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: happening was that music was becoming, you know, rock and
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: roll music was becoming more artistic and more substantive. And
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: in order to follow where the audience was was they
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: knew was going to go, they signed all these weird
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: edgy artists like Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison and Jimmy
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Hendrix and the Grateful Dead and Neil Young and said,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: make the records that you want to make, because we're
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: just we're executives, like you know what you you know
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: what your audience is going to want, because that's what
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: you want. And so they just gave these artists as
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: much room as they needed to make whatever records they
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: wanted to make, and then the Punchline was their record.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: As a result of loosening their authority over these artists.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: They became way more successful than the label had ever
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: been and very quickly became one of the most successful, influential,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: powerful record companies in the world. And one of the
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: things they developed along the way was this incredibly powerful
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: distribution network that had distribution all around the world. And
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: one of the things that IRS lacked, even though they
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: had hit records, was a strong distribution network overseas, and
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: RAM would get very frustrated in the eighties because they
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: would go tour and go play these major cities in
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Europe and like play to these small audiences because they
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: would go to the record stores and they couldn't find
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: their own records, you know, because IRS was having a
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: hard time getting them placed in you know, in all
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: these stores and doing the publicity and all that stuff
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: that was important. And so, you know, along with being
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: you know, sophisticated individual you know, individualistic artists, they also
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: wanted their music to be heard. And what they understood
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: was if they signed with Warners, they would sort of
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: get the best of both worlds. They were going to
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: make the records they felt like making. They were going
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: to have artistic control over the music and also over
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: you know everything about you know, the album, the design
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: of the covers that, you know, the videos they were
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: going to make. You know, they were going to make
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: the call, which was the Warner Brothers sensibility anyway, So
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: they were going to get that along with this global,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: powerful distribution network that was going to allow them once
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: they made these records and got them out, we're going
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: to be everywhere and lo and behold, you know, Once
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: their records came out on Warner they began to sell
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: you know, double, you know, three times ten times what
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: they've been selling with Irs.
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The timing too, because are ems they're at the
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: peak of their powers at that time. Right, five album contract,
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: that's the deal that they get with Warner Brothers, and boy,
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: they gave them their money's worth a phenomenal run just
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: to well they.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they signed two deals with Warners. I think the
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: first one was estimated to be somewhere between like eight
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: and ten million dollars for you know, and that's you know,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: and even then, you know, you're talking in some ways
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: about you know, their aspirational figures. It's like you could
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: make as much as this if you hit these sales figures.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: You know, if the record sells X number, then you
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: could make this much. And it became even more when
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: they re signed with them in I think ninety six,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: ninety six or ninety seven, Yeah, I think it was
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: ninety six.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: That was the record setting deal that.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Was that was like eighty million or you know, rumored
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: or written, you know, estimated to be about eighty million dollars.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: But again that you know, that depends on hitting certain
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: sales numbers, you know, I mean, it was going to
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: be no matter what, it was going to be a
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: lot of money. But on the other hand, they had
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: earned a ton of money, you know, I mean the
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: eight or ten million that they were paid, and you know,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: whatever the advances for the first five records was dwarfed
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: by the amount of income that they made off of
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: back to back to back, you know, ten million plus
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: selling albums.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: Booked on podcast We'll Be Back after This.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Hold on.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: Screen in nineteen eighty eight, ninety one Out of Time,
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: ninety two Automatic for the People, ninety four Monster, and
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: then the next was ninety six's New Adventures in High five.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: That right after you Admit right and New Adventures was
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: seen as a disappointment because it almost mild, like three
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: million copies, which was like, you know, it's sort of like, ah,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like that's interesting.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: Well because now a lot of fans say that's that's
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: their best. A lot of people that's interesting, interesting that
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: that album. I gotta go back and listen to it
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: again because I had been. I wasn't I didn't connect
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: with as much as the others, But I was just
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: listening to some of the songs the other day, and
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: it's really good stuff. They kind of went in a
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: different direction, tried some different things. Yeah, that was their
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: last with Bill Berry, who left the band amicably the
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: following year. The band members say, that's rim at their peak.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Do you agree, Well, everybody hears things differently, I mean
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: about m Yeah, of course it is. It's hugely subjective.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: I mean I think that, you know. I mean, it's
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: not my favorite of their records. It's got a bunch
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: of great songs on it, but it was kind of
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: a you know, they made it in a cool way.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: A lot of those songs were written and at least
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: partially recorded on the road, you know, at sound checks.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: They you know, sort of they hit their absolute popular
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: apex in like ninety four ninety five in the wake
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: of Out a Time and then Automatic for the People,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: which were both huge smashes, which they didn't tour for.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: They hadn't toured for half a dozen years, and they
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: decided to do this huge global tour in ninety five
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: and starting moving into that tour. You know, if you remember,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I was I remember at the time. I mean I
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: was sort of me at the peak of my rim
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: fandom as well. It was almost as if the Beatles
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: were going out on the road. I mean, the level
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: of attention you know that went into it, and the
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: you know, the lines to get tickets, and you know,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: the size of the venues that they were playing all
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: around the world, and the amount of it, you know,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: the attention that they were getting and the focus, and
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: it was like the tour where you know, they'd fly
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: into some town and there'd be people fans in the airport.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: You know, there'd be people lined up across the street
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: from the hotel when they got there.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: Alternative rock radio became huge in the mid nineties, and
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: so suddenly now are Em is huge on alternative rock radio,
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: so top forty radio rock radio, alternative rock. I mean,
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: I remember that Monster album just hit after hit on
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: all of those albums. I mean, they just were everywhere.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: And it was a time. But of course, at the
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: same time, you know, the you know, you can't really
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: underestimate the you know, the fact that that spotlight when
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: it gets that strong, you know, it kind of burns
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: you a little bit, just the amount of attention and
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: the amount of focus. You know, before they could go
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: from town to town. They'd play the local basketball arena
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: or whatever on the Green tour, but you know, before
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: the show, after the show, they could just walk you know,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: put on their coats and walk out, and people to
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: the extent that they were recognized, would leave them alone,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: you know, or just say hey. Whereas when you get
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: to be as huge as they were by the time
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: the mid nineties rolled around, the pressure of that level
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: of fame is just off the charts, and I think
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: that you know, people go like, well, they asked to
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: be famous, and it's like, well, they asked they wanted
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: people to pay attention to the music, They wanted their
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: music to be heard. They didn't personally want to be famous.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: You know, you don't necessarily just because you want your
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: work to be known doesn't mean you want people coming
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: up to you in the produce aisle of the grocery
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: store wanting to talk. You know, oh my god, I
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: love you so much. I mean, on any given day,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: you're not you know, you're just not in the mood.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: You know, you're not in the mood to talk to
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: your best friend, let alone strangers who wanted to take
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: a picture or ask you things, or tell you about
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: themselves or hand you their demo or whatever.
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: That's what happened with Kirk Cobain, right, Kirk Cobain probably
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: felt the same.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Way, absolutely, And the difference between Cobain's experience and Nirvana's
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: experience and RIM's experience was that Rim had ten years before,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: you know, being together and touring before they became mega successful. Yeah,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Nirvana had a matter of months, that's really you know,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: you know, they the time between when they were just
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: playing mossy basement clubs around Olympia and Seattle and being
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: at the absolute top of the heap was twenty months.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: You know, it was that much. It was their first
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: major label records that just exploded. And it wasn't just
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: one top ten hit. It was Coblamo and you know,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: all the power of MTV and all that stuff, and
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: they were global celebrity slash superstars before the you know,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: it's not getting the bends. You know, it's like how
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: do you deal with that? And if you're somebody like Kobang,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: who came into it already probably with you know, a
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: tendency towards depression, to say nothing of you know, the
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: drug use that probably was himself medicating for his psychiatric issues,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: you know. And meanwhile, suddenly you're at the epicenter of
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: a huge industry.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: Author Robert Boyd to put a book out in Nirvana
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: just had him put the episode just now we were
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: talking about that. I mean literally, like in September of
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: ninety one, they're playing basements, like cellar basements where the
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: ceilings hitting their heads. It's so small, and then two
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: months later it's like everywhere. So, yeah, you're right, Rim
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: had that time to build up to and I think
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: they might've even been in their thirties by the time
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: those albums really hit big. For Rim.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Michael was in his late twenties by the time they
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: began to have like hit singles and stuff, and the
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: other guys were a little bit older. But by the
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: time you get to be that age, you know, I
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: mean in your late twenties, you've been around for a while,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: and they've been tour and they had gotten to know
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: I mean to the extent that Michael ever had an
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: existential crisis over becoming famous. What would have been in
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: eighty five when Fables of the Reconstruction came out and
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: or they were making it at first and then it
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: was coming out, and you can kind of see his
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: he's talked about going through this period of depression and
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: feeling really unsure of what he was doing or why
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: he was doing it and why these people were looking
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: at him like that and why people were you know,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: and you can sort of see this interesting process that
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: he goes through between like the early spring of eighty five,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: and he's wearing dark glasses and a heavy overcoat. On stage,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: he's got this big floppy hat, and by the time
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: they get to the Rock Pallast TV show that they
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: recorded in Germany in the fall, and suddenly he just
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: looks so much more at ease, and he's described you know,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: trying to kind of think through his problems and sort
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: of think through what his conundru was at the time
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: and having kind of just the fog break and the
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: sun kind of come through again and feel like suddenly
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: realize who he was and what he was doing and why,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: you know, and just feeling this palpable sense of relief.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: And by the time you start seeing you know, the
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: videos from that show, that German TV show, it's like
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: suddenly he's you know. And then by the time eighty six,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: eighty seven and beyond you see him, you know the
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: clips of them on stage, and this guy is so
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: magnetic and such a powerful performer, it's unbelievable.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: Did you hear the interview he did with Rick rubin
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: Broken Record podcast? It was a year or two ago.
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: It's kind of out of nowhere and I was so
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: looking forward to and it was a great interview. But one
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: of the things he talks about there how he loves
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: his life now because he's been out of the spotlight
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: so long. He can go on the street, he can
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: go to the store, not everybody's going to recognize him.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: But the thing about Michael is that he was one
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: of those guys who knew how to even during the
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: Monster tour. You know, the he got his exercise during
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: the day was he would just put on a hat
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: and pull it low over his eyes and just walk
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: out of the hotel and take a walk around town,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: and people would just sort of think, like, oh, that
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: guy looks a little like Michael Stipe, but nobody would
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: believe that this guy's on the cover of all the
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: magazines and it's on MTV all the time, is actually
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: just walking around taking a hike through town. And that's
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: exactly what he was doing.
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: Book on podcast. We'll be back after this. Don't go away, gentlemen,
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: we may need all of you. You do mention Michael
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: and Mike Mills fell into fame more easily, whereas Bill
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: felt a little sense of guilt and Peter really retreated
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: and to himself right in the nineties.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I mean it's interesting because Peter was
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: the guy in the early days who when they were
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: doing you know, they did a ton of media in
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the early days. They would talk to anybody really just
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: to get the message out, and Peter was often like
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: the first go to interview guy. He was the most
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: enthusiastic because maybe because he had spent so much time
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: reading interviews of other rock stars that he just knew
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: exactly how it was done and was probably eager to
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: be on the other side of the microphone, you know,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: the other side of the camera for a while and
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: just experience that. And he was also particularly good at
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: kind of channeling the what their message was, what they
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: were about, what they were trying to do, and so
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: you could sort of see him working so hard to
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: get fame famous, you know. And in a way, Bill
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Barry was exactly the same way. Bill, you know, the
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: drummer in the band, but was the one guy who
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: had had experience in the music industry before the band
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: came together, you know, not just being in a cover
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: band with Mike Mills as a teenager, but he had
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: also gotten a job as an office boy at this
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: booking agency in Macon where Ian Copeland, the brother of
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: Miles Copeland who owned, you know, and founded IRS Records,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: and also the brother of Stuart Copeland, the drummer and
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: the police quite a family. Ian was working at this
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: Paragon booking agency and making and Bill got a job
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: there as a high school kid, just to do whatever
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: needed to be done around the office and show for
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: musicians when they came to town from place to place.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: But he was when they first began to come together
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: in that, you know, in that church in nineteen eighty
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: and then think about playing shows elsewhere. You know. He
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: went back to Paragon and talked to his old friends
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: who worked there, and came away with a list of
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: like all these different clubs in the Southeast, the names
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: of the bookers, and knew exactly how you get a
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: show at these clubs all over the place, and so
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: could go very quickly from being a basement band playing
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: parties for their friends to being a working professional band
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: because he knew what the requirements were. And both he
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: and Peter were very good at sort of, you know,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: creating that structure, understanding the workings of it and how
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: to make it happen, and do the labor day in
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: and out, you know, not just on stage age, but
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: the stuff that leads you onto the stage and then
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: away from the stage to the next stage. But both
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: of them were the ones who, as the band became
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: bigger and more successful, felt most alienated from that experience.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: And I think Bill Bill's problem was he loved the music.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: He loved playing music, he loved making records and you know,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: and writing and playing with his friends. But what he
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: didn't love was every other aspect, didn't like the travel,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: didn't like the interviews, didn't like the you know, the
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: photo shoots, the video shoots, all that stuff. Peter, I
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: think just got exhausted. And I think that he, you know,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: having achieved the great ambition in his life, you know,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: to become you know, a famous, working, you know, musician
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: and rock star. Once he got there, he realized like,
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: this is actually kind of it, or like we went
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: too far, you know, this is becoming a drag. It's
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: like all this other stuff. And so Bill suffered this
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: incredible thing of you know, in that tour in Europe
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: when they were playing Las Aigne, Switzerland in March of
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, had an aneurism on stage. You know.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of like, if you're thinking of it
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: in over dramatic figurative terms, the man's head exploded on stage,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: you know, while they're at the peak of their fame,
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: you know, in the middle of a show, and had
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: to be taken off stage and then eventually to a
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: hospital where luck being what it was, and good fortune
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: it turned out, you know, it was the hospital where
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: the world's most sophisticated brain surgeons worked, and they figured
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: out very quickly. He had this aneurism, and they knew
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: exactly how to treat it because they had just developed
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: a new way of healing these things. And so he
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: went from this extremely terrifying, life threatening thing to had
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: it fixed and rested up for six weeks and was
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: back on the road and played the rest of the tour.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: He recorded one more album, but you break it down
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: in the book he actually finished the song Man on
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: the Moon when that yeah, yeah, I mean it's you know,
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: then he's keeling over and the guys are in the
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: band or well, I mean at first they weren't sure
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: what was up, but then they realized, yeah, something's up.
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: But he had that did a I always thought that
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: he left the band for concerns health concerns as a
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: result of the aneurism, but it's really more of like
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: some field that kind of just that scared him. You know,
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: I'm not going back.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, well, you know, I mean there are a
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: lot of interpretations like was there a physical result, like
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: did it rewire his brain in some ways?
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: Or is he just reassessing life? You know, just say yeah,
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: and there's that too.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: It's like it's kind of like he'd always been more
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: of a homebody, and he was very drawn to the
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: idea of just living on a farm and working on
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: a farm. And I think by that point, you know,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: he'd been in this band for fourteen fifteen years, sixteen years,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: seventeen years, and they had made a ton of money,
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, And I think it's like, man,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: I've traveled around the world multiple times, you know, I
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: played all these shows, I'd made all these records. What
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: else is there to do other than repeat ourselves? And
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: it feels dangerous out there, and I don't like it.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: It's like, I want this band to continue because I
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: love you know, I love my friends, and I love
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: the music that they make, and I don't want them
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: to stop. But I don't. I just don't feel like
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: I can be a part of it because I don't
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: enjoy it anymore. It's like this whole process.
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: A farmer when he became as.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: He did, and he hangs out and he plays music
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: with his friends, and he's got a whole setup in
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: his basement and he hangs out around Athens and he
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: does that, you know. I mean, it's interesting to see
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: that they, you know, all four guys in the wake
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: of Ram just kind of went back to doing what
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: they always really wanted to do. You know, Michael is
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: super involved in visual art, making photographs, going around the
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: world to you know, see art exhibits and hang out
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: and you know, he has a really active and fun
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Instagram account where he posts photos that he makes around
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: various places that he goes, sees music, sees theater, sees art,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: great life. Peter Buck lives in Portland, where I was
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: living until recently, with Scott McCoy, who was the sort
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: of RMS Hillity musician for the second half of their career.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: And those guys are like peas in a pod. They
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: co produce records and he just plays shows. He just
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: plays in bars.
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, didn't Peter start his own band?
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: Oh? Peter and Scott have started half a dozen bands
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: at least. Yeah, Peters and you know they're always you know,
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: they just go from band to band. I mean Scott's band,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: The Minus five, Like Peter's a key member of that.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a conceptual band. It's whoever's around. You know,
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: Peter's often playing bass or second guitar. You know, there's
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: an array of other bands that they have. They produce
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: records for people, so you everyone from Alejandro Escovedo to
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: the Jayhawks and you know, and when those people come
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: through town sometimes or if they're going to go on
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: the road, he'll play, you know, they'll they'll just join
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: the band and go tour around. And he spent this
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: fall and maybe he'll be there for the Winner down
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: in Brazil playing with this guy, you know, And and
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: he was telling me like, ah, this is this guy's
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: like the greatest in the world now, you know. So
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: he's producing this guy's records and playing in his band
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: in South America. And Mike Mills is just kind of
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: this gentleman golfer, you know. He plays music, you know,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: and works with a friend of his that he grew
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: up with who's a classical violinist, and they do these
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: kind of quasi classical things and do all kinds of
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: things in and around Georgia.
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: Sounds like they're all and yeah, and Mike.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: And Peter and Scott and a bunch of other people
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: are in this band called The Baseball Project and they
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: just do concept albums about baseball and then tour around
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: during the summer, you know, and play in minor league
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: parts or whatever, and yeah.
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: Financially set. They're doing what they that's great to hear.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: I just wonder that does Michael sometimes get the itch?
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: Does he have lyrics to come to him and then
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: he thinks? But like I was hoping maybe he'd do
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: a solo project or something like that, he's.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: Working on what he is. Yeah, he had a few.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: He's been talking about it for a few years, and
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: he's released a few of the songs that he's been
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: working on. So if you go on Spotify or wherever
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: you can, you can hear him. They're around and he's
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: been saying, yeah, I'm working on a solo record and
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: it'll be done when it's done, you know. So he
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: works on it when he feels like it, and when
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: he doesn't feel like it, he does whatever else he
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: does feel like it.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: That's a beautiful thing. Beautiful thing it is. Book podcasts
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: will be back after this.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: A suspense is killing me.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: So the post Bill Years, the post Bill Berry Years,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: I thought they put out some great stuff, but you say,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: the three members no longer spoke the same language, and
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: the recordings were slow and painful. Those last five albums
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: up Reveal, Around the Sun, Accelerate, Collapse, into now, they
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: sold below expectations. How much do you feel that had
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: to do with Bill's absence, or maybe it was just,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: you know, they hit their forties into their fifties, and
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: maybe I.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: Think it's hard for yeah, you know, I mean, careers
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: kind of go like that, especially in pop music. It's
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: kind of especially in a band, you know, which is
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: about chemistry and about sort of everybody being on the
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: same page and being drawn to the same type of stuff.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: You know. So when Bill left in nineties, I think
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: they were working just starting work on their next record,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: which was eventually up came out. It was in ninety eight.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: I guess Bill leaving the band and urging them to
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: stay together. They had to relearn how to be a
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: band because they're used to this or man kind of
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: chemistry and how their various skills and talents kind of
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: woke together. Now they had to figure out a new
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: kind of a new sort of balance between the three
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: of them. And Bill had always sign of functioned in
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: some ways as a kind of the editor in chief
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: for the band and had been very much you know,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: he brought in a lot of original music and was
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: primarily responsible for like the chord progression for the Verse
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: that Man on the Moon. He wrote all the music
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: for Everybody Hurts, wrote like a lot of.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: The lot Yeah, okay.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. And also he was
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: the guy that everybody trusted, So people would come in
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: with their own little bits and pieces and he'd say, Nah,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: that's going on too long. You got to cut that down,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: or we can't go that's cool, but don't take it
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: over there. And for whatever reason, yeah, he was kind
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: of the guy who everybody trusted to tell them when
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: they were getting a little too far out of line
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: and helped kind of weave it together. So without him,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: they had to figure out a new way to do that.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: So I think the working process for Up was harder.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: That was the one where they had trouble communicating, and
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: then they kind of figured out who they were as
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: a trio and then it became a little easier. But
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: you know, you sort of go from record to record,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: and after you've done it ten twelve times, and you know,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: you've been in a band for more than twenty years,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: keeping it fresh, you know, and keeping it you know,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: and also keeping your thumb on the pulse of the
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: culture is something you know. It kind of comes in
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: and out of focus, and that happens for every artist
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: who's who has a long term career. Sometimes it seems
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: like you're channeling something that everybody can grasp, and sometimes
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: they have no idea what you're talking about, you know,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: or their eyes and ears are focused in a different direction.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: And so it's inevitable that some of your work is
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: going to be accepted, you know, and consumed at a
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: higher level than other moments. But all those records, all
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: those records in the you know, the twenty first century
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: rim records, you know, each one of them has even
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: the worst of them, you know, generally by large people,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: I think Around the Sun is the one that certainly
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: the people in the band felt like didn't work out
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: as well as they would have hoped, and critically was
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: probably the most beat up upon because it's the sleekest.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: It just doesn't seem to have the you know, aspects
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: of it. Just felt like they overworked it to some degree.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: But on the other hand, it's got like great songs,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, maybe they could have recorded them better,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: or maybe those songs are a little overfussed with or something.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: But you know, right after that, they made this really
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: raw hard rocking album called Accelerate, which is just like
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: it sounds like you know, they could have you know,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: And they recorded that in like three weeks, just pounded
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: it out and basically the you know, the marching orders
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: they gave themselves when they came in is we're not
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: gonna screw around with this and we're not gonna put
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of keyboards on this. This is gonna be raw,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: urgent rock and roll that's gonna come out and we're
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: not gonna fool with it. We're gonna get this on
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: tape and we're gonna release it bang. And that's what
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: they did. It's a great record. That's one with supernatural, supernatural,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: super serious Yeah Serious.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: Up has some great stuff on there too. There was
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: always something from each album. Oh My Heart, which was
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: about Hurricane Katrina. I just thought it was a beautiful song.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: I can't remember which one that's off of.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: But uh, that's on the last one that's on Collapsing
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: to Now.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, day Sleeper and Lotus from what I thought was interesting,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: there's that Beach Boys Pet Sounds song. It my most
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: beautiful right yep. Yeah, So they kept it a secret
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: for more than a year, but then in twenty eleven
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: they announced it was over, no final tour, no climactic
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: performance to pay tribute to their fans or their career.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: How did you feel about that? Surprised?
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: No, No, not surprised at all. I would have been
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: surprised if they had done the big farewell to her,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: because you know, again, I mean Rim begins, it's like
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: the first I think, the first line in the first
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: the prolog of the book is like even from the start,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: you would know them by their refusals, you know, and
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: there's this litany of things that all the other bands do.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: They're sort of pro forma for rock bands and rock musicians.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: That they were like, no, we're not doing that. We're
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: not gonna you know, we're not gonna lip sync in
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: our videos. You know, they had rules, and every so
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: often they would evolve away or change their mind and
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: find a way to do stuff like print the lyrics
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: or mix the vocal so you could hear what he
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: was saying, or lip sync in the videos when they
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: figured out how to do it in a way that
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: felt artistic to them. And so you know, when they
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: broke up, what they said was, we are not going
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: to get back together. It's like unlike every other band
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: you know that breaks up and that eventually finds a
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: way to reunite. I mean, look at Oasis, right, I mean,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: and those guys hated each other, huge fights, you know,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: couldn't stand each other, trash talcked each other to the
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: moon for whatever, fourteen years before they finally figured out
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: that it was time to get back together. Rim went
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: out the same way they went in, with hugs and
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: friendship and mutual affection and support and respect and have
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: never never faltered in that, you know. And yet so
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: you'd think that a band that was that closely allied
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: artistically and personally, even if they'd gotten to the end
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: of what felt like, you know, the natural lifespan of
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: their of their collaboration, that at some point can fifteen
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: years later they'd go, you know what, it'd be fun,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: you know, and like plus also, every year, you know,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: they get a different crop of hugely lucrative reunion offers.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: You know, come play Coachella, come play this festival, Come
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: play that festival. Will pay you to the moon. You know.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Somebody described it to me as generational money. You know.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: People come in and they're like, we will give you.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: And plus also, that's just the beginning of the summer
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: long reunion tour, right, So you go off and you
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: tour for three months, or maybe you go around the
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: world and you tour for six months, and you come
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: home with fifty million dollars or something like that, and
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: it's like boom, that's it. You know, you're saying it.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: It's not only your kids who are going to college,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: it's their kids and their kid kids and every kid
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: in town. You know, you could send to college if
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: you wanted to. Yeah.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: Just from the aspect of the legacy of the band too.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: Somewhat selfishly, I just feel like I wish that they
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: were out there continuing so they can get new generations
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: of fans, because I don't know how many of the
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: younger fans now know that much about em. And it's like,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: you don't know, this is a band with a huge
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: impact on the history of rock and roll, and that
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: you think about the songs. I mean, if they played
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: a show, they could probably fill three hours with just
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: songs that were on the radio that everybody knows, Yeah.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: And then come out and play a whole other three
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: hours show the next night and do the same thing,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean it's just like, you know, there's
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: certain bands, you know, and certain artists who are so
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: accomplished and have written, you know, had long careers where
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: they've made so much great work that it's like, you know,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: and I could think of a few. It's like, you know,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of them are still out there for you know,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: for one reason or the other. I mean, think of
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: Paul McCartney or Bruce Springsteen, or Dylan or or the Stones,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean the Stones come out and play,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I don't think that the Stones
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: have really made a great record since nineteen seventy eight,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: but the records that they made between nineteen sixty three
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: and nineteen seventy eight, you could do three straight nights
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: at two hour shows and never repeat a song and
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: it would be amazing. You know. McCartney could probably do
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: that for a week, you know. I mean, he could
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: come out and just play his hits from the seventies
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: because it would be so huge. No Beatles. You could
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: do an whold whole night of Wings show of Wings songs.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: And Ram could kind of do the same thing. You know,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: they could play a whole night. They could play an
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: entire show of songs that they only recorded for irs
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: before Green before Out of Time before, and it would
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: be a huge night full of hit after hit. You know,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: a lot of them are radio hits a lot or whatever,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: or or you know, or poullage radio hits or whatever,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: or songs that became popular subsequently. But it would be
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: driver a radio free europe gardening at night. Don't go
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: back to Rockville all the way up through the One
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: I Love, but like into the world as you as
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: we know it, just hit after hit after hit, and
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: none of them were on the on the Warners records,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: you know, and then just play it a whole you
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: could play two nights just made up of the first
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: five albums from the Warner years, and then they could
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: play a whole night of original songs from starting with
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: the post Bill Berryars and that's a whole other night
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: of great songs that were you know, and a lot
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: of those they weren't hits in the US, but a
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: lot of those songs off of Up and off of
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: Reveal were smash hits in England. It's like if you
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: go and you listen to the Glastonbury show that they
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: played in ninety nine that was on the Up tour.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating for a couple of reasons. One of them
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: is that a lot of those songs that were super
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: electronic on up and maybe harder for you know, your
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: bassline rim fan to grasp when they were playing them
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: on stage with a more guitar dominated lineup, it was like, Oh,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: these are just great rock and roll songs. Like underneath
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: the synthesizers and the layers of you know, electronica wooshing
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: and whirrying and mediated voices, it's like, this is just
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: a kick ass rock and roll song. You know, there's that,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: But then there's also the fact that, like when they
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: start playing the intro of the song day Sleeper, which
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: is a great song but didn't nobody wanted to know
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: about it in the US, but in England it was
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: like a top four smash, And when they start playing
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: the intro to that song, the place all of Glastonbury explodes,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: you know, in the same way that they exploded for
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: the intro of the one I Love like two songs earlier.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: So it's just like, oh, it's like it's like where
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: you were at the time. You know, they had even
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: in the first decade of the twenty first century when
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: they you know, it was really hard for them to
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: get on the radio, mainstream radio in the US. Suddenly
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: it's just hit after hit after hit after hit Overseas.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: Imitation of Life, right, Imitate Break the Way to Reno
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: is one of my favorite RAM songs. Those are two
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: right there, from Reveal.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: Or Lotus, you know lots you know that song, you know,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just kind of like Smash or The
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: Great Beyond, you know, the song that they that they
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: that were in the The Andy Coffin and The Man
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: in the Moon in a movie. It's like, you know,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: it got released here and people were like, it's like,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it may the top forty, but
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: in England and in Europe it was like again it
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: was a top five hit.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: I did not know that day Sleeper is a song,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: you know, that's the type of song is a little
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: more direct. He's telling a story, he's creating the story.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: But this poor guy, he's like he doesn't even know
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: why he's crying.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: He's just yeh, yeah, you know, well he's got this
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: weird upside down life, right, so so alienated from the
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: rest of society because he works during the you know,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 4: he's up at night and he sleeps during the day,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: and you know, it's a metaphor obviously, but it's like
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: but you know, I mean, but obviously, if you're a rock.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: Star, it's kind of you know, it's it's it's your
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: life too. They did such a good job of being
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: super successful and super you know, on every level, artistic, financial,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: the whole business, and still hanging on to their humanity,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: which is not you know, which is the less familiar
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: part of the rock star story. You know, people always
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: talk about the rare story of the good guy finishing first,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: you know, and then I mean, obviously, you know, in
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: any business, like being a rock star, anything that ends
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: with wealth and fame, there's a lot of ambitious people
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: hustling mightily hard to achieve things, and there's a certain
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: amount of ruth you know, hard decisions and even ruthlessness
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: that goes into becoming as big as ri Em became.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: And there certainly are you know, even a small number
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: of people who've been a part of our EM's story
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: where they felt hard done by in some way, shape
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: or form. But by and large, it was really interesting
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: to talk to a lot of people who had known
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: and been involved with them over a very long career,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: and virtually all of them were like, yeah, no. Ultimately
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: there were decent guys who did the right thing.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: The name of this band is rim A biography. It's
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: announced been out for a little while. You can find
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: out where her books are sold. Can people find you online,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: Peter if they want to reach out to.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: You, why they? Sure can they can. My website is
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: just Peteramesparlan dot com. So toss my name and the
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: Googler or your search engine of choice and I should
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: come rattling out of there.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: I'd love to have you back on again. I did want.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: I was trying to get you out for your Warner
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: Brothers book. I remember, I think I reached out to
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: the publisher. I'd love to have you back on again. Man,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of your work.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: Thank you well. The next one's coming out next August already,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: So it's a book about if you're interested in Bruce Springsteen.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: It's a deep dive, deep dive into the making of
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: Born to Run. So that comes out in August fifth,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of that album.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: So looking very forward to that. Yeah, I'd love to
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: have you back on for that.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: Peter Ams Carlin, thank you my pleasure, thank you for
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: having me on. That's it.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: It's in the books.