Rem

The river flows toward the ocean

A fortune for the undertow

None of this goes my way

There is nothing left to throw

Of ginger, lemon or indigo

Coriander stems and hay roses

Strength and courage overcome

The tired, privileged eyes

Of the river poet who seeks simplicity

Climb up here and set off on the journey

The river adapts to the tide

Everything goes your way

Monty & Andy got a raw deal

Also coloring the grooves of "Automatic For The People" is a couple of curious cinematic tributes to figures thwarted by fate. Like Montgomery Clift, the American "beautiful and damned" actor of the '50s, already commemorated by the Clash on "London Calling". A figure who – in Stipe's eyes – embodies fame and myth, yes, but also the squandering of success amid alcohol and drugs, as well as being yet another victim of that McCarthyism already stigmatized in "Exhuming McCarthy" ("Document", 1987). In the end "things went wrong for him": "Monty Got A Raw Deal", a perfect title for a sketch that opens with Buck's classic arpeggio and then brushes against exotic shades with the oriental-tinged colors of the refrain and the estranging embroidery of a bouzouki. To the recounting of Monty's ill-fated destiny ("buried in the sand", and "strung up in a tree") Stipe adds a (self-?)admonition not to be blinded by the will-o'-the-wisps of celebrity. The narrative device is a kind of imaginary dialogue with the protagonist, just as in the more famous "Man On The Moon". The man on the moon is Andy Kaufman, the brilliant and hapless comedian of the '60s, specializing in a deranged anti-humor that has more than one point of contact with Stipe's beloved nonsense. The shimmering folk-rock of a few albums earlier is the ideal setting for a ballad that already sounds "classic" on first listen, with its sly swaying moves, dancing between samba and calypso, with Stipe's mischievously Elvis-like delivery and Buck's soaring solo adding an extra touch of epic grandeur. Parodying Elvis was in fact one of the specialties of the misunderstood Kaufman, whose bewildering string of hits and flops is retraced in the lyrics. Not without a touch of bitter disenchantment about the "game of life" and its illusory truths. Thanks to this song Kaufman would be rediscovered, all the way to the eponymous film "Man On The Moon" by Milos Forman, starring Jim Carrey, in which the Rem song would also serve as its soundtrack.

Conclusion

"Automatic For The People" is a collection of songs meticulously crafted from a musical standpoint, already fully formed and vibrant even before acquiring lyrics and choruses. A record that, listening to it today, sounds like a greatest hits, given how many classics it manages to pack into a single tracklist.

The only jarring note, ultimately, is the coarse rock invective of "Ignoreland", in which Stipe rails against the by-then declining Reagan-Bush Republican era. There's too much fervor, too much recklessness in wanting to fire off every round without a single metaphor left in the holster, unlike historic R.E.M. anthems such as "Cuyahoga" or "Begin The Begin". The euphoric yodeling interlude of "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" (from the evergreen "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", made a hit by the Tokens in the '60s) instead serves to ease the tension, with its bizarre pastiche of lives on the margins (the homeless man who "sleeps curled up" and turns away soup kitchens demanding something "more substantial") and childhood memories (the fables of Dr. Seuss, creator of the Grinch). The same goal is pursued by another "minor" track, the eccentric jazz-tinged vignette of perverse love that is "Star Me Kitten".

These are episodes that don't in any case alter the record's overall sense of sober austerity, of which Anton Corbijn's black-and-white shots included in the booklet are the most faithful aesthetic transposition. Even Rem's audience had grown more mature, and understood. Despite selling almost half as many copies as "Out Of Time" in America, "Automatic For The People" would immediately land at No. 2 on the US charts, held off only by the country giant Garth Brooks, and would also take the rest of the world by storm, topping the UK charts and reaching the Top Ten across half of Europe, as well as in Canada and Australia. For Buck and Mills too it remains the band's best album, period. It is certainly the most compact and harmonious. To deny its centrality in Rem's great American novel is less a matter of shortsightedness than of bad faith.

Ghost track

Once upon a time in Athens there were four young guys, a group of friends and boisterous nights out, which ended with swims under the stars in the still waters of Ball Pump lake. "It was a few miles outside town, we'd go there with a few friends to skinny-dip after the clubs closed. There was us, Paul Butchart, DeLoris, Love Tractor, and the girl 'Camera' was about, Carol Levy. Between 1979 and 1981 there were only about 50 to 75 people interested in this music. We'd go to parties, we'd go to clubs, and we'd go to Ball Pump, where there were always some of those same fifty people." It was the Perfect Circle of youth and innocence. Before the specters of drugs and AIDS loomed over an entire generation. In Mills' memory lies the essence of "Nightswimming", a ballad suspended between memory and nostalgia.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night

The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago

Turned around backwards so the windshield shows

Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse

Still, it's so much clearer

I forgot my shirt at the water’s edge

The moon is low tonight

A quiet night is all you need for a night swim

The photo on the dashboard, taken years ago

Turned around backward so it reflects on the windshield

Every streetlight reveals the photo in reverse

But it's just as clear all the same

I forgot my shirt down at the beach

The moon is low tonight

The first sequence is idyllic: the quiet night, lit only by scattered streetlamps, the barely rippling waters of the lake and that old photo on the dashboard. But these are memories now yellowed by the wear of adulthood and all its fears. What does it cost to turn thirty and leave behind those carefree, unburdened days? What is the price of a fame that has forever upended one's habits and way of life? A cyclical, descending piano line, recalling the one in "Perfect Circle" itself, is the backbone of a ballad made even more poignant by the hushed, quivering swell of the strings and Stipe's moved delivery. Written in 1990 under the title "Night Swim", it was meant to appear on "Out Of Time", but found its true home among the dark, melancholy grooves of "Automatic For The People".

We want to remember them like this, the four friends from Athens: happy and excited, swimming in the lake under the moon, still unaware of the bright future awaiting them.

With excerpts from "Rem – Perfect Circle" (Arcana, 2012)

The book, through the analysis of the songs, tells the fairy tale of the four boys from Athens, Georgia, from their beginnings to their breakup. From the wild parties that packed the deconsecrated church on Oconee Street up to the belfry, to the mega-shows of worldwide stardom, Michael Stipe and his bandmates completed the perfect arc. Embodying the anxieties and aspirations of an entire generation. Their songbook is an enigma: as gripping and immediate musically as it is intricate and cryptic in its lyrics. Between dreamlike sketches and heartfelt political exhortations, childhood memories and neurotic, introspective portraits. But in R.E.M.'s trajectory one can also read the transformations of thirty years of American society, passing through the anguish of the Cold War and imperialism, the contradictions of the Reagan era, the optimism of the Clinton years and the season of terror and conflict after 9/11. An epic condensed into an astonishing sequence of killer choruses.

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31/08/2014