Alternative Guitar God Peter Buck's album-by-album guide through R.E.M.'s
13- year pageant
By Vic Garbarini
The Tortoise and the Hare. That's the parable that best captures R.E.M.'s
steady rise to their position as the most revered alternative rockers in the
world. During the Eighties, they grasped that the essence of the punk ideal is
to truly be yourself. And so, while everybody else looked around for somebody
to tell them who they were and what to play, R.E.M. shrugged and carried on
being folk-punks from Athens. If Neil Young is the godfather of the current
music scene, Peter Buck and company have become the alternative scene's
mature-but-hip older brothers. No less a personage than Kurt Cobain once
marveled at how R.E.M. "handled their success like saints." It's common
knowledge among their peers that they constantly re-invent themselves
musically-and that they are the most decent and sane four guys you're likely
to meet in the music business.
Peter Buck agreed to sit down with Guitar World for his most extensive
interview ever, to document, album by album, R.E.M.'s entire recording career.
MURMUR (I.R.S, 1983)
GUITAR WORLD: Was the sense of mystery that surrounded Murmur an intentional
ploy meant to enable people to bring their own sensibility into the songs?
PETER BUCK: When I started writing with Michael it was obvious that he was a
very oblique writer. I liked the fact that there wasn't a whole lot of
explanation. The [legendary Western] director John Ford said something once
about people enjoying a message much more if they can find it for themselves.
And Murmur is such a lyrically impenetrable record that no one is probably
going to ever get all that stuff. I don't get it all-and some of it isn't
even there to get. Certain bits are just words that sound good strung together.
GW: Musically, the songs are pretty dense and complex. As a guitarist, how
did you approach combining folk, rock and punk in your playing?
BUCK: We had this picture in our heads of this danceable record with folky
elements. The songs are pretty complicated. There's lots of chords and they
do move around a lot. In those days, if it didn't have three different bridges
and a separate A and B section before the chorus, it just wasn't any good.
Maybe it's because I wasn't a great player, but I felt I had to put in all
those extra chords. "West of the Fields" is a perfect example-there must be
15 chords in that song. So we wanted no lead guitar, and no heavy punk-just a
fast, weird folk rock record with tons of overdubs. Every song has 20 guitars
on it, most of them doing the same thing.
GW: Meanwhile, the official alternative line at the time was, "Do what you
want-so long as you just play the same three chords over and over again really
fast."
BUCK: There are always going to be certain cultural or musical signifiers in
punk, like going chromatically from E to F and being loud and irreverent and
whatever, that some people think will automatically make you rebellious and
cool. And there's a place for that in the world. But I don't really need it.
Maybe we had one song that continued in the same key from beginning to end.
But I like to change from major to minor, or to go from D to F#7. And the point
is there are no rules, you can put any chords anywhere you want to, as long as
the melody makes them valid.
GW: I remember how much flak you got from the politically correct alternative
crowd for the music, lyrics-everything.
BUCK: That's true; we were considered incredibly unhip when we went to New
York. On those early tours, a lot of people really got it and thought we were
amazing, and a lot of other people looked at us like we were insane. And to top
it all off, we had long hair. People would come up to us and go [whispers],
"Jeez, I don't know if you guys heard, but you've got to have short hair now…
and, uh, you need to buy some clothes with zippers. And what's this folk-rock
stuff all about?"
GW: It's funny-for many people, a new movement is just another herd to join.
And most herds eventually head over a cliff.
BUCK: Yeah, we'd watch these synth bands come to America and play to 4,000
people a night, and we'd still be playing clubs to 350. But I'd think, "Our
records are going to be around a lot longer than these guys." And they are.
RECKONING (IRS, 1984)
GW: Reckoning was a typical second-album: just go back to your roots and
knock it out quickly.
BUCK: True. We wrote the whole album in two weeks between tours.
GW: During this period you must have been the only alternative guitarist using
a Rickenbacker. Were you inspired by the Beatles and Byrds in that choice?
BUCK: No, it was just serendipity. My Telecaster got stolen, and I went to
Chick Piano in Athens, which is run by this nice family, and they had three
used guitars. I pulled out the Rickenbacker because it had this great neck.
After I got that guitar, suddenly everything seemed to come together, soundwise.
(真是神奇耶!因為tele被偷而換成Rickenbacker,一直用到現在)
FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION (I.R.S., 1985)
GW: Fables was considered a bit of a failed experiment at the time it was r
eleased. Do you still feel that way?
BUCK: Fables. "Boy, those guys, what were they thinking of?" [laughs] We'd been
on tour constantly for four-and-a-half years, we had two days to rehearse, we
had 22 songs, and we had no idea what we were doing. It was a chaotic
experience. We were in England. It was cold, we were almost broke, we had to
walk in the winter rain to the tube [subway] station every day, and it was
miserable.
But in retrospect, I really like that album because it's totally out there,
really weird. But we threw away half the songs and literally lost one we
recorded with a horn section. It could have been the single, but we simply
couldn't find it. Still don't know where it is. That's how out of our heads
we were. Then we couldn't decide on a mix. Bill just got fed up and went home.
But that record went to a lot of places and tried a lot of things we hadn't
attempted before. If we'd been less worn out and communicating more, maybe we
could have made a better record.
GW: And yet out of that chaos came "Driver 8," the song that almost defines
mid-period R.E.M. It also started this fascination you have with rocking out
over Em and Am.
BUCK: You're exactly right. And the funny thing was, we kept trying to
rearrange it. We did one version with a really heavy guitar that we felt
didn't cut it. Then we actually tried it with acoustic guitar and banjo,
with Bill playing bass. Finally we hit on what you hear on the record. About
those chords, I do come back to them on songs like "The One I Love,"
"Losing My Religion" and "Bang and Blame," among others. I can't think of any
band I like that hasn't used them: The Beatles, Elvis Costello-Neil Young
pretty much uses them on every song. Part of why they feel right, especially
the Em, is that you're only fretting two strings. So you have all those open
strings resonating, making a real nice harmonic overlay that you don't get
with a barre chord.
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