March 2005
Rapid Ear Movement
Amidst their 25th anniversary album reissues, we revisit the craft and career of a group whose activism and music go hand-in-hand.
by David Sason
Two days after last November’s presidential election, thousands gathered at Madison Square Garden to see seminal alternative rock band R.E.M. When house lights faded, a rapid drumbeat filled the arena, followed by grinding guitars and spitfire lyrics. The Dylan-esque rant culminated in the song’s title, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” as performers and audience bellowed in unison. Then Michael Stipe’s cathartic roar, “And I feel fine!” concluded the chorus hopefully and drew purging cheers from above Penn Station. Microsoft once courted the song for a commercial — unsuccessfully — but for those still grieving John Kerry’s loss, that opening anthem was right on the money.
Ever relevant, R.E.M.’s songs have long served as a soundtrack for the American psyche. Amidst their 25th anniversary album reissues, we revisit the craft and career of a group whose activism and music go hand-in-hand.
Finding a Voice
It was 1980, when four university students formed the band in the progressive nook of Athens, Georgia, quickly drawing attention for their unconventional sound. With Stipe and Peter Buck wielding vocals and guitar, their songs gave voice to a new rock language full of cryptic mumbles and rhythmic guitar jangles.
Relentless touring and slowly growing sales reached a benchmark in the sonically and lyrically mature album, Life’s Rich Pageant. Here, Buck’s folk-rock guitar chimes are replaced by a raucous electric blast, and Stipe’s obliquely figurative murmurs evolved into a clear voice, literally and lyrically. The 1986 album (their first certified gold) showcased newfound ecological concerns and a flair for personalizing complex, universal issues.
“Fall on Me,” a song about acid rain, presents a helpless Stipe intoning, “Buy the sky, and sell the sky, and tell the sky, ‘Don’t fall on me.’”
The zenith is “Cuyahoga,” named after the heavily polluted Ohio river that famously caught fire. The lyrics interpret the fire as retribution from massacred natives and bitterly lament the commercialization dishonoring the area’s indigenous sanctity:
Let’s put our heads together, and start a new country up, / Up underneath the riverbed, we burned the river down. / This is where they walked, swam, hunted, danced and sang, / Take a picture here, take a souvenir / Cuyahoga, gone.
The final verse brings the line, “This land is the land of ours, this river runs red over it,” blending Woody Guthrie’s assertion of communal ownership with a refreshing sense of modern accountability.
Meaning for the Masses
The group’s political penchant was evident from their major-label debut, Green, named for environmental awareness (not for their lucrative new Warner Bros. contract, as cynics suggested). Packaged with a collage of leaves and tree trunks, the 1988 album reads like a left-wing manifesto, from its chronicle of deforestation, “I Remember California,” to its enduring anti-war rocker, “Orange Crush.” Accompanied by militaristic drumming, a bitter young voice fumes: “I’ve had my fun, and now it’s time to serve your conscience overseas,” before a moan of impending doom: “It’s coming in fast, over me.”
The 90’s brought superstardom, but R.E.M. didn’t waste the media attention, countering their newly meditative lyrical themes with TV spots for pollution prevention and Rock the Vote. When their mandolin-driven hit, “Losing my Religion,” swept the 1991 MTV Awards, Stipe delivered each acceptance speech wearing a different message T-shirt with slogans from “Handgun Control” to “White House Stop AIDS.”
The retirement of drummer Bill Berry resulted in some sub-par efforts, but recent global strife seems to have rejuvenated the remaining trio, as is evident on last October’s Around the Sun, one of the great post-9/11 albums. R.E.M. brilliantly merges the personal and the political in “The Final Straw,” a shocked response to the Iraq invasion. Amid a galloping acoustic riff recalling Dylan’s “Masters of War,” Stipe conveys paralysis and rage as he alludes to the Patriot Act (“what silenced me is written into law”). While Dylan closes with an eternal curse, Stipe struggles to find resolution in forgiveness. Seething with animosity, the former Army brat purrs: “I offer love with one condition: Look me in the eye; tell me why.”
The record’s centerpiece is “I Wanted to be Wrong,” a vulnerable soliloquy articulating domestic confusion and the myopic, malignant patriotism so dominant in the past few years:
I know that the sun has shined on my side of the street, / The basket of America, the weevils and the wheat, / Mythology’s seductive, and it turned a trick on me / That I have just begun to understand. / I told you I wanted to be wrong, / But everyone is humming a song / That I don’t understand.
This prolonged, heartbreaking refrain gives way to soaring, angelic hums, striving to soothe a disillusioned nation.
A quarter century on, R.E.M.’s catalog continues the group’s mission to inspire political activism. Even their latest single, “Aftermath,” reminds us that “in a universe where you see the worst, it’s up to you to fix it.”
David Sason is a freelance writer and contributor to Common Ground.
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