R.E.M. - Perfect Circle

MONSTER (1994)

WHAT’S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?

On top of the world, and yet never so shaky. Rem, who in 1993 were vying with their friends in U2 for the title of the biggest rock band on the planet, were an increasingly fragile creature, undermined by success and by the liturgies of the music business. Berry, the one most allergic to it all, made it clear he wanted to pull the plug. Buck, meanwhile, could barely stomach the band's new political role, having effectively become a standard-bearer for the new Democratic era: when Berry, Stipe and Mills flew to Washington to attend the celebrations for Bill Clinton's new term, he let it be known he had "no interest in meeting presidents or anything like that."

Stipe, by now shaved bald under his usual baseball caps, decided instead to finally come clean about his health: "I'm fine, really fine," he would reveal to Rolling Stone. "And I'm not HIV positive; if I never publicly denied those rumors, it's because I didn't want to hurt the feelings of people with AIDS... My sexuality has always been ambiguous, I've always been skin and bones and I've always had thinning hair."

For Michael, though, it was a season of terrible losses. In a short span of time, he lost two friends: actor River Phoenix, felled by a stroke following an overdose on Halloween night 1993 (to whom the new single from "Automatic For The People", "Find The River", released a month later, would be dedicated, along with the entire "Monster" album), and Nirvana frontman Nirvana, Kurt Cobain, found dead in his Seattle home on April 8, 1994, officially by suicide with a shotgun.

It was a deep bond that united the grunge star with Rem. It wasn't just that Cobain was aware the Georgia band had been a formidable trailblazer on the route between indie rock and the mainstream; there was also a sincere admiration for Stipe, someone who had managed to handle his fame in a human, independent way, something Cobain himself couldn't manage. In short, he held genuine admiration for Rem. "If only I could write a couple of songs on their level," he had gone so far as to say. And Stipe wanted to pull him away from Seattle, away from that abyss of despair and madness. Together they had already planned future collaborations between the two bands, but we'll never know what they would have been, just as we'll never know whether Cobain's passion for "Automatic For The People" would have pushed Nirvana to produce that "graceful, ethereal, acoustic" record their leader had dreamed of.

The news of Cobain's death, destined to mark a watershed for the entire musical decade, reached Rem in the middle of the recording sessions for "Monster". It would leave a deep mark on the record, with a song, "Let Me In", dedicated precisely to their departed friend. What's more, the band decided to use one of Kurt's guitars, at the explicit request of his widow, Courtney Love, with whom Stipe would strike up an affectionate (and much-discussed) friendship. "I got goosebumps when I saw Michael and Courtney telling each other how much they loved one another," Rem's first producer, Mitch Easter, would recall. But it wasn't a bond born out of nowhere: Buck himself, after all, had for some time been living in Seattle, the new mecca of grunge-rock, where he had become none other than the Cobain family's neighbor.

On this treacherous ridge, made up of doubts, contradictions and gossip, Rem risked falling apart again, and this time for good. Stipe, paralyzed by grief, remained stuck in writer's block for several months. And as if that weren't enough, Mills was briefly hospitalized with diverticulitis. The band seemed drained: "At a certain point we stopped talking to each other... We'd look each other in the eye and there was nothing but anger and resentment; we were basically completely out of our minds," Stipe would recall. They pulled through by plugging their guitars back in. And by channeling all the anger that had lain dormant beneath the melancholy grooves of "Automatic For The People".

Recorded almost "live in the room" at Crossover Studios in Atlanta, as if it were a concert, "Monster" marks a forceful return to rock. A rock never so noisy and distorted, one in which there's no trace left of the serene, mature awareness achieved on the two previous albums, but only the snapshot of a fresh nervous breakdown, the collapse of the certainties of an adrift Generation X, gripped by a new season of obsessions and violence. "An unsettling collection, one that explodes right in your face," is how Buck describes it, and it was he who also suggested the title.

Drowned in a swarm of feedback and reverb, "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" is the battle cry of this new, acidic, headlong course. A tale of madness and violence, concealed, as usual, behind a veil of lyrical nonsense.

“What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” is your Benzedrine, uh-huh

I was brain-dead, locked out, numb, not up to speed

I thought I'd pegged you an idiot's dream

Tunnel vision from the outsider’s screen

I never understood the frequency, uh-huh

You wore our expectations like an armored suit, uh-huh

The inspiration is a real event that happened to celebrated CBS anchor-man Dan Rather. On a night in October 1986, while walking through Manhattan, Rather was assaulted by a deranged man who kept repeating "Kenneth, what is the frequency?". Stopped shortly afterward, the attacker, William Tager, explained that he had attacked Rather because he was convinced the media were controlling him by sending signals into his head; he believed that if he could discover the exact frequency of those signals, he would be able to block them. Mockingly, R.E.M. staged a delightful pantomime on the David Letterman Show, in which the real Rather sang the track in Stipe's place, to hilarious comic effect.

The song, however, is anything but funny. This is confirmed by the second verse too, which alludes to the apathy of the notorious "Generation X", a term coined by Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel of the same name and often linked precisely to the grunge boom.

I’d studied your cartoons, radio, music, tv, movies, magazines

Richard said “Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy”

A smile like the cartoon, tooth for a tooth

You said that irony was the shackles of youth

You wore a shirt of violent green, uh-huh

I never understood the frequency, uh-huh

I studied your cartoons, radio, music, tv, movies and magazines

Richard Linklater is the director of “Slacker”, one of the cult films of Generation X, to which is attributed the line “Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy.” As if, deep down, behind the reticence and indolence of the flannel-shirted youth of the Nineties there were nothing more than the same nihilistic rage expressed fifteen years earlier by the punk generation. Stipe, although not strictly part of that generation, absorbs its anguish, its disorientation and its lack of dogmatism. And he frees it from the stereotypes of vacuity and cynicism that would so easily have been pinned on it — stereotypes that would later be spectacularly disproved when it was precisely the kids of Generation X who became the protagonists of the internet revolution.

But everything here is stylized, sublimated into that cutting riff and that stubborn chorus that leave no way out.

CRUSH WITH EYELINER

The tremolo guitar of “Crush With Eyeliner” introduces what, according to Stipe, is the collection's main theme: a free and brazen sexuality. “I wanted to make a record of songs that were about sex,” he explained in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I thought it would be fun, powerful… I have a kind of standard answer regarding my ideas about sex, which is that it's nothing more than friction and ego… and timing. These songs are deliberately explicit. I wanted something that was brash, messy and sexy, with a bit of dysfunction, and an ambiguous sexuality. I hope there's also a bit of humanity in there, though.”

And “Crush With Eyeliner” plays precisely on the theme of a shifting sexual identity, one that bends to the whims of a “crush,” an obsessive infatuation.

I know you

I know you’ve seen her

She’s a sad tomato

She’s three miles of bad road

Walking down the street

Will I never meet her?

She’s a real woman-child

Oh my kiss breath turpentine

I am smitten

I’m in like

I’m infatuated

It’s all too much-the pressure

She’s all that I can take

What position should I wear?

Cop an attitude? (You faker)

How can I convince her? (Faker)

That I’m invented too, yeah

I am smitten

I’m the real thing (I’m the real thing)

We all invent ourselves

And, uh, you know me

Ambiguity, then, and fiction as instinctive reactions to an uncontrollable passion. Almost echoing the contemporary "Even Better Than The Real Thing" by U2, which exalted the fake as "almost superior to reality", Stipe goes as far as defining himself as a creator of artificial, constructed products. "I could be your Frankenstein", he'll go on to say a few lines later. So much for the myth of the rocker's authenticity. Stipe's own singing transforms too, becoming thicker, murkier, more sly. Halfway between the crooning of Bryan Ferry and the most vicious Lou Reed. With that hint of irony that always makes the difference, starting with the unlikely and rather unpoetic comparison of his beloved to an overripe tomato.

Adding lustre to this dirty, distorted glam-rock boogie à-la New York Dolls is none other than Thurston Moore, leader of Sonic Youth, who picks up the second guitar and engages in a memorable duel with Buck.

KING OF COMEDY

"Monster" is an album full of unreal characters, of "monsters", precisely: altered, manic, unbalanced personalities. Some consider it Stipe's least autobiographical collection of songs, and perhaps not without reason, judging by Buck's own words: "The whole record was a kind of reaction to having such a huge following and ending up in the papers for the strangest reasons. When I read the lyrics, I thought: these guys are out of their minds, I have no idea who they are, it's certainly not Michael. I'd say this was the one time he created disturbing characters, and I don't know if people actually got it. He was expressing himself by playing parts that weren't like him at all". As Buckley recalls, "Monster was Stipe's attempt to burn every bridge between himself and the kind of 'unwanted' people who were nonetheless part of the traditional audience". A continuous provocation, then, almost as if determined to distort at all costs the image that R.E.M. had built, more or less deliberately, on the two previous albums.

Stipe plays with masks, in short, and the most detestable one is precisely that of "King Of Comedy", taken from the 1983 film of the same name by Martin Scorsese. But while Robert De Niro embodied a comedian in constant search of glory, Stipe's character sums up all that's worst about the hated music business: a manipulator of souls in the name of a few extra dollars.

Make your money with exploitation

Make it holy illumination

Say a prayer at every station

Don't forget to ask for mercy

Make your money with a pretty face

Make it easy with product placement

Make it charged with controversy

I'm straight, I'm queer, I'm bi

I’m not king of comedy

I’m not your magazine

I’m not your television

Once again, metamorphosis and artifice, this time in the service of commerce, of showbiz's money-guzzling circus. And with a touch of sarcasm that is, this time, provocatively autobiographical: "I'm straight, gay, bisexual," sings Stipe, as if poking fun at himself and at the silly labels slapped on by the media.

Amplified distortion and reverb, closely recalling the noisy U2 of "Zoo Station", dominate the scene, pushing into the background the singer's hoarse, almost "absent" voice, which settles into a deliberately flat, detached register. "A rip-off of Leonard Cohen," Stipe would later joke, having already paid his own tribute to the Canadian master with a vibrant, R.E.M.-style cover of "First We Take Manhattan" on the tribute album "I'm Your Fan" (1991).

I DON'T SLEEP, I DREAM

After the roaring start comes the first pause. The tempo drops and Stipe's voice softens, climbing into a boyish falsetto for the refrain, surrounded by a menacing drumming and sparse piano chimes. He's not sleeping, he's dreaming: "I Don't Sleep, I Dream" dusts off the enchanted touch of classic Rem ballads. But the lyrics are yet another blunt sexual proposition, leaving little to the imagination.

Are you looking to drive my dreams?

You here to run my screens?

You come, deliver my demons

Hooray hooray hip hip hooray

Are you coming to ease my headache?

Do you give good head?

Am I good in bed?

I don't know, I guess so

I don't sleep, I dream

I’ll settle for a cup of coffee

But you know what I really need

It's all very explicit, even the metaphor of “getting rid of the headache,” which clearly refers to sex as the best possible remedy for that kind of ailment.

But while the whole lyric is a cheeky back-and-forth of sexually charged advances, one of the opening lines hints at new inner torments, of which dreams might be the most unsettling mirror: “You looking to dig my dreams/ Be prepared for anything,” warns the narrating voice. To dig into her dreams, one must be prepared for anything. It's obsession, the album's true leitmotif, coming back to the fore in yet another exploration of the mind's darkest, most unspeakable recesses.

STRANGE CURRENCIES

But the past isn't forgotten. And it can resurface wearing eerily similar clothes. "Strange Currencies" is, in effect, a new "Everybody Hurts": same guitar progression, a melody bordering on plagiarism in the chorus, just slightly more upbeat and "rock" overall. The lyrics, though, are one of those fine tales of teenage uncertainty and love that Stipe does so well. The "strange currencies" are the indecipherable nuances of people, the unfathomable ways through which feelings make themselves known.

I don’t know why you’re mean to me

When I call on the telephone

And I don’t know what you mean to me

But I want to turn you on, turn you up, figure you out, I want to take you on

These words, “You will be mine”

These words, “You will be mine”. All the time

The fool might be my middle name

But I’d be foolish not to say

I’m going to make whatever it takes

Ring you up, call you down, sign your name, secret love

Make it rhyme, take you in, and make you mine

A plea delivered in an especially heartfelt tone, a desperate cry to be heard, voiced – as Stipe explained – by an immature adolescent, hopelessly in love with someone he's idealized to the point of morbidity (the female counterpart will be the following "Tongue", where to give voice to an insecure girl the singer resorts to an unprecedented falsetto). "I need a chance, a second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance": unreasonable love, that keeps on asking and won't bow even in the face of obvious failure. Because, in all likelihood, it won't get so much as a single chance.

BANG AND BLAME

A swaggering reggae-rock gait à la Police, with Mills's bass calling the shots and Buck embroidering tremulous guitar chords in the background. "Bang And Blame" is one of the classiest tracks on the record. Explosive in the chorus, yet melancholy at the same time, especially in Stipe's vocals, as he holds forth on a new, troubled relationship with bleak, fatalistic spleen.

If you could see yourself now, baby

It’s not my fault

You used to be so in control

You’re going to roll right over this one

Just roll me over, let me go

You’re laying blame

Take this as no, no, no

You bang, bang, bang, bang and bang

Blame, blame, blame

You bang, bang, bang, bang and bang

It’s not my thing so let it go

It's the chronicle of a dangerous, pathological transformation. The partner addressed by the narrating voice has lost all the self-control they once had (“You used to be so in control”). With terrible consequences, too. Stipe, in fact, has clarified that this is a case of “domestic violence”. Once again, then, love turns possessive, morbid and pathological, spilling over into obsession and aggression. And that this amounts to a complete metamorphosis is confirmed by the lines that follow: “The tables have turned/ The whole world hinges on your swings” (“The positions have reversed / The whole world revolves around your shifts”). A metamorphosis that breeds bewilderment and an inability to communicate.

I TOOK YOUR NAME

In this catalogue of pathological lovers, unbalanced minds and stalkers, there's also room for a thinly veiled allusion to the fan, someone who identifies so closely with their idol that they want to take their place entirely.

I wore the clothes you wanted

I took your name

If there is some confusion, who's to blame?

I signed your living will

I smiled your face

I’m ready to close the book on NASA in outer space

But shape-shifting is also one of the hallmarks of that glam-rock era referenced here and there throughout the record, and sealed three years later by the film "Velvet Goldmine", which Stipe himself would go on to produce. So there's naturally room for a nod to one of the kings of that chameleonic musical season, Iggy Pop.

I’ll be your albatross

Devil, dog, Jesus, God

I don’t wanna be Iggy Pop but if that’s what it takes, hey

Searing whiplashes of guitar set fire to one of the toughest tracks in the Georgians' entire catalog. Buck alternates the tremolo of his strings with bursts of feedback and an almost heavy-metal solo, scorching the earth around Stipe's vocal, once again monotone and almost "robotic". The effect is undeniably striking and will be amplified in the live version, which would open every setlist of the Monster Tour in 1995.

LET ME IN

A ravine of pain, hemmed in by thick walls of deafening noise. The most anguished of dedications pushes its way through clouds of distortion, in a desperate, heart-wrenching cry that will go unanswered. "Let me in," Michael seems to say to Kurt. But entry into that solipsistic universe of despair will remain forbidden. Even so, right up to the end Michael will try to pull him out of that world, even buying him a plane ticket to Athens.

The lifeless body of the Nirvana frontman is found on April 8, 1994, in the greenhouse above the garage of his house on Lake Washington. “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” his farewell to the world, quoting a famous Neil Young song, “Hey Hey, My My (Out Of The Blue).” Stipe is devastated, condensing his despair into a few lines of a statement: “His death is a profound loss and I can’t add anything more.”

“Let Me In” is thus the chronicle of this failure, but at the same time the testimony of a sincere friendship, one that bound together two seemingly worlds-apart figures.

Yeah, all those stars drip down like butter

And promises are sweet

We hold out our pans with our hands to catch them

We eat them up, drink them up, up, up, up

Heyyyyyy, let me in

Heyyyyyy, let me in

I only wish that I could hear you whisper down

Mister fisher moved to a less peculiar ground

He gathered up his loved ones and he brought them all around

To say goodbye, nice try

There are many references: from "All those stars drip down like butter" which quotes Patti Smith's "Birdland" ("It was if someone had spread butter on all the fine points of the stars") right up to that Mr. Fisherman, alluding to Cobain's zodiac sign, Pisces. The moment of the end is recounted with bitterness, as if Cobain had wanted to ideally gather all his friends and relatives around him, to be able to say goodbye to them, when instead it all happened behind the closed doors of the most remote solitude. And Stipe still hasn't found peace, over that failed attempt to stop everything, to dive into that abyss to save his friend: "I had a mind to try to stop you. Let me in. Let me in/ But I've got tar on my feet and I can't see", sings Michael, almost in tears.

Amid a blanket of reverbed guitars creeps a tender organ melody, which opens up achingly in the chorus, sung with dramatic solemnity. A funeral oration written "to Kurt, for Kurt and about Kurt", as Stipe put it. A fully successful tribute, one that dodges the pitfalls of rhetoric and drives straight into the heart.

Despite the torments of its gestation, the band's own uncertainties—they never considered it one of their best records—and a harsh sound that left new fans disoriented, those lulled by the sinuous melodies and baroque arrangements of the two previous albums, "Monster" extends Rem's winning streak, selling over 10 million copies, topping the charts in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and providing the ideal foundation for a new, thrilling tour. A tour that, however, won't be remembered for those performances, which saw Rem back on stage after six years, but for the tragedy narrowly avoided in Lausanne (Switzerland) on March 1, 1995.

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08/05/2026