R.E.M. is 'bad' at reminiscing, so they'll gladly let others talk about their passion

BY GLENN GAMBOA | glenn.gamboa@newsday.com

March 11, 2007

R.E.M. was at dinner in Oxford, England, talking about its future when it got the news about the celebration of its past.

"We knew you had to have had a record released 25 years to be inducted into the Hall of Fame," said singer Michael Stipe, recalling how the band's manager, Bertis Downs, announced the honor to the band, "and we all looked at each other and said, 'Have we been doing this for 25 years?' That's a quarter of a century. That's a little bit daunting."

Then, Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck and bassist Mike Mills returned to the discussion of the band's 14th album, which it plans to write and record this year, and Buck's current tour with Robyn Hitchcock.

Stipe says R.E.M. doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about 1981, when it recorded its debut single, "Radio Free Europe." And the band really isn't the type to worry about its multiplatinum legacy or how it helped pioneer "college rock" in the '80s and alternative rock in the '90s or how its hits, including "The One I Love" and "Losing My Religion," helped pave the way for a generation of indie rockers to enter the mainstream.

They will happily leave that to other people to discuss. (Eddie Vedder, will, no doubt, have plenty of interesting things to say when he inducts them into the Hall of Fame Monday.)

"We're really awful at looking backwards," Stipe says. "For an institution like the Rock Hall to do it on your behalf, it's really, really nice."

Stipe says he is struck by how much he has changed as part of R.E.M.

"I wanted to be in a band when I was a teenager, but I didn't really know it involved writing songs; I didn't take it that far," he says. "The band still laughs at me because it was when we were working on our second album, 'Reckoning,' when I realized that the bass guitar, the one that had the four strings, was the one that made the low notes."

He jokingly adds that since he shaved his head, it has been harder to remember when major band events occurred, saying, "I used to measure time by the haircuts I had, until I became a slaphead in the early '90s."

Nevertheless, Stipe says the band (who will be inducted with drummer Bill Berry and plans to perform with him for only the sixth time since his retirement from the group in 1997) is pleased by being seen as part of rock's history. "A lot of people inducted are heroes of mine," Stipe says. "To be included in such a list of great performers is an honor."

When asked why he thinks the band is being honored, the main reason Stipe comes up with is "we had the audacity to stick around."

He pauses after the answer, before adding, "when I say we're bad at looking back, we're really bad. We don't burn bridges, we blow them up."