Starred review from July 15, 2024
Journalist Carlin (Sonic Boom) brilliantly captures how a “spunky alternative band whose singer spoke in riddles” became a powerhouse that brought alt rock into the mainstream. After meeting in the college town of Athens, Ga., Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe made their debut as R.E.M. at a house party in 1980. Shaping their sound in an Athens alt rock scene built by such bands as the B-52s—and embracing an “outsider” label amid what they viewed as the era’s social and political conformity—the band amassed enough of a following to play arena shows, despite relatively modest sales for their 1982 debut EP Chronic Town. Thanks to hit song “Losing My Religion,” their breakout album, 1991’s Out of Time, sold more than three million copies in the U.S. in its first year, propelling the band to mainstream success with “catchy,” energetic songs paired with “melancholic” lyrics and paving the way for groups like Nirvana. Vividly bringing to life the political and cultural ferment of the 1990s—the waning optimism of the Clinton era, Kurt Cobain’s suicide—Carlin examines how R.E.M. balanced their “countercultural” ethos with the commercial appeal it brought them, touching on what it means for rock when the “rebels” become the “dominant culture.” Kinetic prose elevates this perceptive portrait of one of America’s most vital bands.
August 15, 2024
How four college-town scenesters became unlikely million-sellers and the center of the '90s zeitgeist. For most of its 30-year run, R.E.M. enjoyed a charmed life. Formed in Athens, Ga., in 1980, its four members (drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, singer Michael Stipe), pursued a slow but steady climb to national attention, getting early singles to the right critics, touring constantly, and landing on a major label while controlling their egos and maintaining their artistic integrity. Stipe's gnomic, often-mumbled lyrics were hard to parse, but the band was expert at sly, jangly hooks; by the end of the decade they'd enjoyed hit singles and topped the album charts with 1991'sOut of Time. Music journalist Carlin ably chronicles the band's climb and thoughtfully contextualizes it within larger social and political trends in the country. (He suggests that R.E.M., as vocal progressive activists and standard-bearers for Reagan-weary Gen Xers, helped deliver Bill Clinton to the presidency.) Charmed lives don't always make for dramatic biographies, though. Perhaps because band members declined to be interviewed for the book (Buck confirmed some details), Carlin adheres to a straightforward narrative of the band moving from strength to strength. Bumps in the road--a brain aneurysm that sidelined Berry and his departure from the band, a sexual harassment accusation against the band's longtime manager--are dealt with crisply and mainly as evidence of the band's indomitability. To fill out the story, Carlin attempts to interpret Stipe's lyrics, sometimes questionably. By the book's end, the band still feels somewhat unknowable, and Carlin doesn't explore their legacy following their (amicable) 2011 breakup. They started out strange and hard to interpret--and still are. A well-researched but by-the-numbers biography.
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October 15, 2024
Since he was young, Michael Stipe, the lead singer of R.E.M., wanted to be famous. He wanted to be a rock star. Ironically, as biographer Carlin notes, Stipe "always wrestled with shyness." Nor is he known as being flamboyant in the way of, say, Mick Jagger. Even so, as a teen watching the participatory Rocky Horror Picture Show, Stipe once dressed in a red bustier, leather jacket, fishnet stockings, mascara, eyeliner, powder, and rouge--a full-on Tim Curry--much to the amusement of his military father. Unlike many musicians, Stipe grew up in a loving family, a strong family, as he said. An army brat, he moved around the country from Texas to the St. Louis area to Georgia, where, in Athens, the members of R.E.M met. Carlin offers astute details as he follows R.E.M., from its early work (Murmur) to its many best-selling albums (Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Life's Rich Pageant, Document, Green, Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster) to its break-up in 2011, and also discusses their political activism. A pageant of riches for R.E.M. and Michael Stipe fans.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
October 25, 2024
Carlin (Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records, from Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Madonna to Prince) offers a detailed, descriptive, and exhaustive biography of R.E.M., the arty rock band from Athens, GA. Conducting interviews with friends and colleagues but without any new insights from the group, he begins with band members' childhoods, especially singer Michael Stipe and lead guitarist Peter Buck, and carefully chronicles the group's formation in 1980. Carlin moves to the group's signing with I.R.S. Records two years later and the band's mounting success as an alternative to mainstream music, especially on college campuses. Carlin focuses on R.E.M.'s full-blown entry into the mainstream when it hit with the 1987 album Document (which sold one million copies). The band signed with Warner Bros. Records the following year and emerged as a politically active, socially conscious rock group by the early 1990s before breaking up in 2011. VERDICT Though never pinpointing the reasons for the explosive, major-label success of a rebellious band, which ostensibly distrusted corporate rock, Carlin assembles a solid, much-needed narrative of one of the major alternative rock bands that both complements and updates David Buckley's 2002 R.E.M. Fiction: An Alternative Biography.--Dr. Dave Szatmary
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