The trauma of Stipe and co.

"Either all together or it's over for everyone". That was the motto of the four musketeers from Athens, who went down in history as R.E.M.. As if the alchemy of the Georgia band were a one-of-a-kind result, achievable only by mixing the four elements in just the right measure. As if a band with that name couldn't exist without even one of them. So on that cursed night of March 1, 1995, something really did risk breaking forever.

The Lausanne incident

R.E.M. are playing a concert at the Patinoire de Malley in Lausanne, Switzerland. It's the tour supporting "Monster", released in September 1994. During the performance of "Tongue", drummer Bill Berry suffers a sudden medical emergency and is taken backstage for assistance. He would later recall the sensation of having been hit in the head by a bowling ball.

After the show, a doctor examines him but comes up with the wrong diagnosis, as recounted in David Buckley's book "Fiction. Una storia vera". The band's manager, Bertis Downs, later clarified: “The seriousness of Bill's condition wasn't diagnosed until the following day, and once it was, it was treated to the highest professional standards”.

Guitarist Peter Buck recalled those moments this way: “We were forced to end the show; it was unsettling and strange. Then we went to see him, and there was a doctor who told us: ‘He has a migraine’. Bill looked at me and said: ‘My head is about to explode’. The diagnosis from the doctor who happened to be in the audience was completely wrong. He went back to the hotel and his wife said: ‘Something's wrong with him’. Four or five hours passed between the first symptoms and the moment she insisted on taking him to the hospital… They only got him to the hospital for an examination at four in the morning”.

The correct diagnosis comes the following day: a ruptured aneurysm, with subarachnoid hemorrhage. On March 3, doctors perform a craniotomy and apply a clip to the aneurysm to reduce the risk of further bleeding. The operation succeeds without complications. There are no injuries that could impair his bodily or brain functions, as a relieved Warner statement points out, adding that Berry would be able to “pick up his sticks again within the next two or three weeks”. A prediction that would prove far too optimistic, however. The band, already worn down by other mishaps (Mills needs intestinal surgery, Stipe an operation for an inguinal hernia), is forced to cancel all remaining dates of the “Monster” tour, which will only resume on May 15 in Mountain View, California, when Bill Berry returns behind the kit for the resumption of the tour at the Shoreline Amphitheatre.

But from that moment on, something changes irrevocably within R.E.M.

Right in this most difficult moment, the band pulls back together, rediscovering the deepest reasons for staying a unit. This is how the idea of an on the road album is born, written mostly during the tour and recorded between soundchecks, before being finished off in the studio in Seattle under the supervision of trusted producer Scott Litt. But without too many frills: for the recording, even a bare-bones eight-track will do. Hence the self-deprecating title of the album, “New Adventures In Hi-Fi”. A title that also contains a clear reference to the underlying concept: the journey, which is also hinted at by the striking black-and-white cover, depicting a desert landscape photographed by Stipe straight from the tour bus.

It will be another sold-out run for R.E.M., but also the final antechamber to the trauma that would mark them deeply.

The new beginning of “Up”

On October 30, 1997, Bill Berry announces his sudden decision to leave the band. The group is on the edge of the abyss. Every attempt to make him change his mind runs up against the drummer's absolute intransigence: he's going through a personal crisis (having just separated from his wife Mari), was shaken by the Lausanne incident, but above all was tired of playing a rock-star role that never suited him. “He no longer wanted to travel, eat strange food, meet new people. Basically, everything I find fascinating, he didn't like”, Mills would later explain. “When he had the aneurysm, what he thought was: why should I keep doing something that I don't enjoy? I think he hated everything else so much that even making music no longer excited him”.

For R.E.M. the loss is enormous, and not only because of the secret pact. Berry was the band's metronome, as well as a master of studio editing: he always knew when a bridge needed trimming or a chorus needed shortening. A kind of rhythmic center of gravity for a band that, having summed up its entire career on “New Adventures In Hi-Fi”, was now searching for a new direction to follow.

Adding to the confusion was the need to replace producer Scott Litt, who had moved on to work for a new record label. The choice falls on a former studio assistant, Pat McCarthy, and a new location is chosen for the sessions: San Francisco. But total confusion reigns over the new project.

A cul de sac from which Michael, Peter and Mike emerge with what is perhaps the boldest choice of all: to carry on. To start over as a trio, because “a three-legged dog is still a dog, it just has to learn to walk again”, as Stipe would later put it, in a famous line that would forever define that period.

Out of this comes an album, “Up”, which inevitably carries the mark of this sense of disorientation - the same feeling the listener experiences when confronted with its songs. Because the impression, at least at first, is that this doesn't even feel like an R.E.M. record. Drum machines, layers of electronics and assorted studio trickery attempt to fill the void left behind - even though Berry is replaced by Beck's drummer, Joey Waronker, and, on percussion, by Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees (and of Tuatara, Buck's side project) - while banjo, harmonica and assorted 1960s trinkets (including a Moog) attempt to bring back some “retro” warmth. There's no shortage, however, of unexpected flashes of brilliance, starting with the gorgeous single “Lotus”. To the point that some would describe it as “an Automatic produced by Brian Eno in the 1970s”. Over the years, “Up” would gradually be reassessed and would come to be counted among the most interesting works by the Athens band, which, in its “three-legged dog” incarnation, carried on in fits and starts until that September 21, 2011, when a brief statement (“To our fans and friends: as R.E.M., as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we've decided to call it a day as a band”) closed the “perfect circle” of a thirty-one-year story. An almost quiet exit for one of the most important and beloved bands on the planet.

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12/03/2026