THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 7, 1995 TAG: 9510060073
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Interview
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 127 lines
AFTER A YEARLONG tour and a lifetime's worth of medical trouble, the members of R.E.M. will be ready for a rest when the ``Monster'' tour ends next month.
``I think the only actual plans we're making are to eventually finish the record that we're sort of working on now,'' said Mike Mills, R.E.M.'s bassist since the band's inception in the early '80s, ``and other than that, we're gonna be on vacation.''
About how long a break will that be?
``How long? Oooh . . . hopefully the next 10 years.''
Mills was joking - probably. And don't think he's not looking forward to Monday's show at Hampton Coliseum, the group's first area appearance since 1989. But R.E.M. has endured an inordinate number of health problems since the tour's start in January.
Drummer Bill Berry collapsed during a Swiss concert in March and underwent surgery for a brain aneurysm. Singer Michael Stipe had a hernia operation, and Mills had abdominal surgery. The resulting delays wreaked havoc on a carefully planned tour.
``It's been a very long, difficult year, because when people got sick, we had to reschedule a lot of shows, which means that what might've been a day off is now another show,'' Mills said in a phone interview from the band's Athens, Ga., offices in late August. ``The last couple of months have been pretty grueling. But it's a lot of fun. The audiences are great.''
Audiences are asked to bring cans of food to the Coliseum. Contributions will distributed to area charities by the volunteer group USA Harvest.
The ``Monster'' tour comes after more than five years off the road for R.E.M. That period spawned their biggest commercial successes, the albums ``Out of Time,'' ``Automatic for the People'' and, of course, ``Monster.'' Each of the albums sold millions of copies, received ecstatic critical praise and placed R.E.M., once and for all, firmly in the mainstream.
Best of all, the records contain some of the group's most varied work, from the mandolin-driven excursions of ``Out of Time'' to the huge electric guitar sounds of ``Monster.'' R.E.M. now seems to be one of those acts no one doesn't like; even Beavis and Butt-head recently decided that the ``Sweet Jane'' riffery of ``What's the Frequency, Kenneth,'' the first ``Monster'' single, kinda rocked.
Despite the stop-and-start nature of the tour, the creativity continues to flow. The band offered a new song, ``Wake Up Bomb,'' on the recent MTV Video Music Awards cablecast and has been dropping other new songs - such as ``Departure,'' ``Undertow'' and the ``Monster'' outtake ``Revolution'' - into its sets. The record that the group is working on is a collection of tracks cut during soundchecks.
``We're not sure exactly what we're gonna finish and when we're gonna finish it, but it could well be done soon,'' Mills said. ``It certainly will be different from this one, but not radically. Everything seems to be fairly guitar oriented so far, but that doesn't mean it sounds the same as `Monster.' ''
The sure-footed branching out into new areas and interests that has marked R.E.M.'s '90s work continues.
``I'm trying to learn how to play five-string banjo. Having very little success,'' Mills said. ``I tried to play the trombone for a while, but to truly play that, you have to do it every day, and I didn't have the drive to play every day. Sure, everybody's learnin' different things all the time. Just for your personal health as much as anything. You have to do it for yourself first, to see if it's something you enjoy enough to pursue. And then if it works, it can be something you can either write songs on or something you can add to flavor a record a little bit.''
Do R.E.M.'s members ever think about their importance in so many listeners' lives, a phenomenon that reaches back to ``Murmur'' (1983)?
``No, you can't start thinking about that, because that's just such an open-ended thing,'' Mills said. You can't try to please anybody but yourselves, and I know it's a cliche, but basically we have to be satisfied with the record, and that's the only thing we can control. Anything else is out of our hands.
``Sure, you shake your head. I mean, it's an odd thing to have an influence on that many people, but you know, we just try to do what we do with as much integrity and care as possible . . . and a certain amount of irreverence as well.''
But sometimes their fans don't quite catch that irreverence.
``People tend to take us a little more seriously than I ever intended,'' Mills said. ``There's a great deal of humor about what we do that gets overlooked.''
In that spirit, R.E.M. has stopped burying its lyrics under a wash of sound. The ``Monster'' singles even carry lyric reprints.
``Our point all those years was that you weren't supposed to separate the music and the lyrics, the singer and the band. It was all part of one thing,'' Mills said. ``I think we've sort of made that point now, and you know, you can change the things you try to get across to people as you go along.''
Guitarist Peter Buck recently said that he still doesn't know what the songs on one of his favorite albums, the Stones' 1972 classic ``Exile on Main St.,'' are ``about'' and that that's just fine. Mills agrees.
``Sure, sure. I don't need that,'' he said. ``Some people have this desire to know every word in every song, but half the time, it's disappointing to hear that anyway. If the song moves you, then it moves you. Don't worry about the words.''
That loose feel carries over to the band's concerts, which are a bit less spontaneous than in R.E.M.'s van-tour days. But not all that much.
``You can't be as spontaneous in an arena as you can in a little club, but you never know what's gonna come out,'' Mills said. ``I mean, I'm changing bass lines as I go along. You don't wanna be exactly sure of the next note. You don't wanna change things too much to pander to the bigger places. You have to make the lights a little more obvious, but not that much.''
Large stages are more of a comfort zone these days, said the bassist, who's taken to wearing garish Nashville-style suits with the advent of ``Monster.''
``I don't think that getting up in front of 20,000 people and singing and moving around is completely natural for any of us,'' Mills said. ``But at the same time, we enjoy it. It's amazing that we can get away with just doing that and not making a total chump of yourself. It's like fish walking on land, but it's something you can get used to. Also, at this point, the odds are they're not gonna hate you. You have to screw up pretty bad to get booed at this point. That makes it a little easier to be confident out there.'' ILLUSTRATION: JOHN HICKEY PHOTOS
Singer Michael Stipe's surgery was only one of many setbacks for
R.E.M. during this year's "Monster" tour, which arrives in Hampton
on Monday.
MONSTER TOUR AT A GLANCE
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
Bassist Mike Mills, right, has brought a Nachville look to the group
with his specially made suits.
by CNB