“I can’t see myself at 30,” R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe sneered at the start of “Little America,” a song written while the band sat wedged in the rear seats of a panel van during an early ’80s tour. Stipe was 24 when he recorded those eight syllables, so there’s no way he could’ve conjured himself as he is today, a bald fiftysomething with an Obadiah Stane beard and the same now-31-year-old band.
Or he did have the same band, until last week. On Sept. 21, the three remaining original R.E.M.-ers — Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck and bass player Mike Mills — released a statement on their website saying that after three decades of recording and touring, of corners and spotlights and losing their religion, they’d “decided to call it a day.”
For all of my fellow music nerds, click HERE for last week’s interview with R.E.M. producer Mitch Easter, who talked about the band’s legacy, their time together and where Peter Buck tried to pick up chicks. It’s half profile, half trans-Atlantic conversation transcript and I’m completely grateful that he endured my fumbling attempts at introspective questions.
It’s a total cliche, but I’m logging off, queueing up “Everybody Hurts” and aiming my speakers towards Jonathan Papelbon’s Benedict Arnold of a right arm.
YES IT ALL COMES BACK TO THE SOX, OK? OK.
