Newsgroup: it.fan.musica.rem
Titolo: [LUNGO] Interessante Intervista - BBC Radio 2

Lunga intervista da Sheffield, ma con "novità" relative al
presente-futuro dei rem. la riporto tutta... trascritta su
murmurs.com
:
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BBC Radio 2 Interview Wednesday 2nd March in Sheffield
Mark Radcliffe interviews Michael Stipe and Peter Buck. The interviews
are conducted separately.
Mark Radcliffe starts off by asking Michael... how long they had been
on tour?
Peter and I argue about this really if you count back almost two
years. I've been working since '98 but it's a little longer than that!
But we've been doing this tour...I guess Vote for Change would be, if
you don't include the little thing we did after we released the best
of in 2003, its been since September I guess.
What do you need on a tour of this length. Are there things that you
insist on, like obviously...
Coffee!
Just coffee keeps you going is it?
I love coffee...I need more than that but it's the first thing I
thought of!
Do you eat much? You don't each much do you?
I eat a lot.
Do you?
I eat tons of food. I eat for three people. I have a very fast
metabolism if that is not already evident which is largely what keeps
me so thin, but I eat huge amounts of food.
What do you need backstage? I came in here today and I noticed there
were three dressing rooms so do you need your own room and your own
space before you go on while Peter bangs Rickenbackers off the wall?
Always, and that's why.
Just to get away?
Yeah, you've read the stories. Peter prepares for the show by playing
guitar incessantly and I prepare for the show by ignoring what we are
about to do. It's just not good for us to be in the same space. And
we've known that since 1986 I guess....figured it out.
And there's a room across the hall, does it say Dr Sharon, Please
knock?
Yeah
Whats that about then?
Sharon is a chiropractor/acupuncture/herbalist/ massage therapist that
travels with bands and films and we brought her out for this leg of
the European tour.
Does that help you?.
Helps a lot
What does she do for you?
You know I do a lot of stuff just to keep myself in shape, but a lot
of acupuncture works really well for the stuff that bothers me and
massage and chiropractic, you know..
Is it still fun? Are you still enjoying it this far into the ride?
Now what do you think? (kind of a smile in his voice)
I would think it would be great it seems like one of the best jobs in
the world.
I think it might be yeah..
What happens when you start up for a tour like this? Do you
...obviously you've got the new album to do. Do you go all the way
through the back catalogue and go Hey we could do that again, songs
you haven't played for years and years?
Yeah, we get together and rehearse for a couple of weeks and come up
with "Well, I don't really want to play that one anymore" or "lets
give that one a shot" or "lets try and update this one and see what it
sounds like and we've been pulling songs out, the other night, in
London, we played Swan Swan Hummingbird which Peter told me, and he's
good at this kind of thin, that we had played that twice since we
wrote it, or the tour of the record which its on, which I think was in
1986. We played it twice in front of an audience. It sounded great and
felt really good the other night . It just keeps it exciting for us to
be able to swap songs out in the set, bring up some older stuff, some
really obscure songs that people might not know or might know and have
forgotten about. Or songs that we've forgotten about.
Do you write all the time? Do you have scraps of paper, observations,
lines and things?
I write on my cell phone, actually, right now as sometimes I don't
have time to turn on my computer and I don't really write on paper, I
haven't done that since the 1980s cos I loose it so... I am now hoping
that the contents of my cell phone don't end up on the internet
(laughing) which will probably shut down in about five minutes if it
did. There are lyrics to three songs on my cell phone right now...I
was working on one of them on the train here.
But is that sort of constant then? Do you never think we are not doing
an able for the next six months or a year I'll just clear my head and
deliberately not write anything?
Typically that's what would happen but things were different at the
end of Around the Sun, I kept writing. I don't think that's happened
before. I was really inspired by the music that those guys had thrown
at me and by how well it was going...so I wrote way more songs for
that record than we needed and finished them which is really
unprecedented.
What about the.writing for this? I was intrigued by the way songs
happen for REM because as I understand it Peter and Mike write songs
without words separately and then they send them to you and you start
to improvise stuff over. Is that how it happens?
Improvise is a strong word. That's how it happens. I think its how
most people write songs...they come up with the music first and then
they find the words to go with it . Maybe solo artists are the
exception to that.
I thought most people start with the words...I can see if you are
writing a song the music and the words..
No, you wouldn't do that (adamantly). I don't think that's the case.
Is that the case?
Well a lot of people do don't they?
(Calling him on it ) No. Who?
Elton John does because he gets words...
He doesn't write his own words
No. So he gets the words then puts his own tune to them, but it seems
to put a lot of pressure on you because the form is already
dictated..if you can write words..
Well no because the arrangement of the song changes dramatically after
I've come up with an idea and let me think of an example. Leaving New
York off the last record changed a lot in terms of the arrangement
simply because the chorus was as strong as it was. We shifted things
round a lot ...made one of the verses shorter made another ramp up in
the middle of it which is my favourite part of the song.
So it's not set in stone then?
No, no...they come up with the ideas and kind of throw them at me then
and we work together to rearrange….you know arrangement is a huge part
of song writing and so they have raw material, I have raw material we
throw it together and we start finessing it into something that's
listenable and enjoyable.
How did the idea come together for the Vote for Change Tour?
US, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews Band, The Dixie Chicks and Pearl
Jam all separately wanted to do something to support John Kerry. Our
managers, and some of us, are acquainted with each other and came
together in New York and said we should really try to focus this and
perhaps we could do it together and that's how the Vote for Change
tour began. At that point in the US people were very afraid to raise
their voice, much less a voice of dissent. In doing so it felt,
personally, really invigorating, and our voice as performers is
usually from the stage. REM as a group have never supported a
presidential candidate before. Neither had Bruce Springsteen. I'm not
sure about the other bands but it was something we felt we really
needed to do.
What was your reaction then when the Dixie Chicks made their statement
and what happened to them after that..sort of putting their head way
above the parapet..
You're going way before the VFC tour ..
Yeah..
The thing that happened to them? Well that was during the period I
call the great quiet when people were afraid to speak up and certainly
afraid to say anything against the current administration or the
actions they were carrying out in our name. I think what happened was
that Natalie, the singer with the Dixie Chicks made a fairly kind of
simple statement that I didn't find that offensive but it got picked
up by the American media and they had a field day with it. I think
they were having a slow week and they decided to barbarque somebody
and unfortunately for the Dixie Chicks they were the ones who were
barbarqued. Whatever their politics were before that, they probably
kept them pretty close to their chests, after that they didn't really
have an option because its all people really wanted to talk to them
about.
Have you any way of knowing what difference it made in terms of
energising and getting people out to vote for Kerry?
It felt to me, after the first show we did it wasn't about us and it
wasn't even really about music it was about something much bigger than
that which was a fundamental part of what I think is at the core of my
country and a lot of other places in the world a feeling of having the
freedom to speak out and to express your opinion without being cut
down at the knees for doing so and I think it was really about the
people that came to those shows and feeling a sense of community that
you were not a voice in a wilderness , you were not the only person
that was offended by or dismayed by the actions of our government,
invading Afghanistan, invading Iraq, some of the other stuff that has
been going on under the current administration. It felt very
empowering, I have to say. Sadly that didn't affect the outcome of the
election.
Did you think it would?
I did, I have to say. For me it was so obvious the difference between
the two candidates but the media, really..if I were to hold anyone's
hand over the fire as to the outcome of that election it would be the
media, the US and their inability or lack.. ..to make a stand opposite
to that being handed to them from Washington.
Has it made any difference to the way REM are considered in your own
country? Has there been a backlash from any quarters?
I don't think so. We've been pretty vocal in our politics and activism
for years and years, unlike the Dixie Chicks so I think people
expected us to say something.
You're on this round the world jaunt and you've still got a lot of
countries to do before you come back and do a lot of open air shows in
the UK in the summer. Do you still enjoy the travelling?
Of course I do!
…do you get out and see things?
I wouldn't be here talking to you !
Well you might be!
Why would I? What on earth would put me here if I didn't enjoy it?
I know you enjoy being on stage we've established that but the
travelling can get you down...I dare say some people do it and you get
a fair paycheck at the end of a tour.
Yeah, I do very well!
and that's an incentive for some people.
(Calling him on it again) Like who?
Well I don't know (both start chuckling) well anybody likes a bit of
money...but do you still get out and see stuff in the cities or do you
have to keep yourselves a bit cacooned?
I do. I didn't see much of Sheffield except the train station After
our interview I'm going to go back and call Los Angeles and speak to
Peter Care a video director we've worked with more than any other cos
I believe he was born here. He's the only person that I know from
Sheffield. So I'm going to give him a call and let him know I'm in his
home town.
Is it a radically different life to home life? I suppose there is
someone to take you anywhere you want to go and to do anything you
want to do and facilitate that. Maybe there is at home...I don't know
I was talking about this the other day. I did an interview with
Intersection magazine, which is mostly about cars 
Are you in to cars?
Not really. Not particularly. The point of raising it is that I've had
the same car since 1992 simply because the only place that I do drive
is in Athens, Georgia, or out to my parents house, or once a year
maybe drive to Atlanta.. but I don't really drive a car very often.
What car is it, this car you've had since 1992?
It's a Volvo. Stationwagon 240. It's a good one. Solid.
Do you live on your own?
Uh-huh
Do you like that? Do you have plenty going on in your head to keep
yourself company?
Yeah....being in my head too much is probably not a good thing.so I
have a lot of people I can hang out with!
Are these people you knew before REM was this big band?
We've been doing this since I was 19 years old so there are a few
friends that I know since before that or the inception of REM, the
first couple of years. You know its really ...in contrast its
radically different and its not that different. I work during the day.
I go out for meals at night and that's what I do. Most of my work is
by telephone or email and I do most of my work from home.
Interview with Peter Buck
For a definitive view on how long they had been away from home, he
asks Peter 
I left home August 15 and I had some of Christmas off and I'll be done
July 10th.
Are you at the stage were you can enjoy it now? Presumably its all on
you own terms..
We've always enjoyed it and always kinda worked on our own terms.
We're in a good place right now and playing well. It feels really
good.
Does it take its toll on you as you get older then? Have you had to
back off drinking? What are you drinking now?
This is an orange vitamin drink .I buy it in England. Its actually
easier as you get older as you have less distractions. I'm not out
running around until 4 in the morning. I get on the bus, there in my
pyjamas reading a book. I think it was Flaubert (?) who said "One must
be disciplined in your life to be savage in your art" and I've learned
the art of discipline in the last few years I think.
Was there a time when you were savage in your life then?
I wouldn't say savage (!) but you know we were guys in our early
twenties back in the 80s touring in a van in a rock band and you can
imagine what kind of high jinx we got up to.
Do you miss home know you're older cos you've got a family and
everything...or are you at the stage were you think well this is what
we do?
It's a little bit of it...and I've explained to my kids that..I'm the
only Dad that picks them up from school every day, I do the field
trips, I cook the dinners, take them to the park and I'll do that for
months on end and the trade off for being able to do that is that I
have to go away for a while.
Tell us a bit about the album, about Around the Sun. I was intrugued
from talking to you last time, the way REM works as a writing unit
…let me see if I remember this right...you and Mike go away and right
songs without words completely separately and then you send those to
Michael who starts to improvise over the top. Is that right or have I
imagined that.
Generally that's what happens. We both have little home studies and
I'll write maybe 10 or 15 things and think about them and maybe
whittle it down to two or three and Mike will write some things and
then we kind of get together with Michael and he'll work with us
working with melodies and lyrics but then with touring like this we
have a bunch of new songs we do at soundcheck and we play those
everyday and Michael'll kinda....we've got one right now that's an
inch from being finished so Michael's kinda mumbling along on the
sidelines. Ideally in the next few weeks we'll have it finished and
we'll do it in the show now and again. 
When you were four guys in a room you must have written together and
things came along a lot quicker in those days or not?
I've always written a lot. Things always come quickly for me.
Micheal's always been a little bit slower and as you get older I think
you get a little bit more reflective and lyrics are the first things
people pay most attention to and he takes it very seriously...so its
slowed the process down a bit but the end result is what really
counts. 
There is more of a reflective mood to this record isn't there? Its an
interesting record cos in some ways it was wrapped up when you were
doing the Rock the Vote thing and there is an element of protest song
and element of being more reflective and mellow at the same time.
I hate to use a word like mellow but its certainly a record...
...I didn't mean it as an insult!
(laughing) Well for our generation it almost is! I think that living
where we live in America and the times we're living in which are
pretty crazy, I think the record captures mentally who and what and
where we are. 
Was there a genuine feeling when you were on that tour, doing those
dates, that you could make a difference?
I think it did make a difference in the sense that a lot of people who
were maybe a little bit younger got a little bit motivated. It didn't
change the election or the country or anything. Part of the reason I
did the tour was to say I did what I could. I did everything I could.
I'm not going to have to explain to my kids what I did during this
election. I remember talking to my Mom about Vietnam - when I was 14 I
marched against it - its like "Why didn't you do something about this
8 years ago?" and she's like "Well, we didn't really know". And I
don't want to have to say that to my kids. I did what I could and
there we are.
How long are we into REM now? Did you think that you would be going
this long when you and Michael met in that record shop where you were
the assistant there and you used to practice your chords behind the
counter? 
I brought my guitar with me and played it everyday. If they pay you
$3.50 an hour you should have a little latitude to not be working the
whole time. My goal was - I really wanted to play New York City and I
wanted to make a record and I was really hoping that maybe we would be
one of those bands that maybe puts out a single and an album that
maybe sells 2,000 copies, we'd get to play New York, then ten years
later someone says "Wow, what a great record that was"! and honestly
when we put out Murmur I was totally prepared for it to be our only
album. I'm glad it wasn't. I don't have any skills other than this so
When did you last listen to Murmur? When you are making a new record
do you listen to the old records or not?
Occasionally, and I never play them for pleasure and I don't really
listen to radio. We tend to, when rehearsing for a tour, go back and
play stuff just because we've written a lot of songs and I can't
remember the chords sometimes - and we'll go back and listen and think
its kinda interesting 
Do you still speak to Bill Berry at all?
Yeah 
He's a farmer isn't he ?
...and a Dad...I think he just wants to enjoy music for what it
is...he'll sit around his house and play harmonica and guitar but he
doesn't ever want to book a tour or ..he's had offer to do stuff. He
just doesn't want to.
Do you think you'll ever be like that? Do you ever think about the
future or do you just roll on with this because its what you do?
I've never been one of those people that lives in the present. I hate
to admit it but I'm always thinking about what I'm going to do next,
what the future's going to be like...inevitably this band will break
up someday. I hope its on good terms and I hope its pretty far in the
future but I'll continue to work, I've done lots of fun things on the
side, done music for a little play, scored some things, write songs
with other people. I play on this group, the Minus Five, and we have
seven albums out. There'll be a time when I don't make videos, or have
my picture taken or do interviews! But I'd like to think I'll be
playing music right up to the end.
Back to Michael
Are you still friends with Mike, Peter and also with Bill Berry?
Yeah, I don't see Bill very often but when I do its like I saw him
yesterday. He and Mike keep in pretty much constant contact..but he
lives out in the country and as I already said I don't drive that much
even when I'm there. My friendship with Peter, my friendship with Mike
and my friendship with Bertis, has of course changed over the years,
change being the only real constant we can depend on in this life and
I have to say that with everything that we've been through, it's a
much richer friendship in each case than when we started. I know those
guys as well as I know myself I think and I wouldn't trade what we
have, not only as musicians writing songs together doing what we do
but also their friendship and support, for anything in the world. 
You obviously all have projects outside of REM but no ones gone out
and made a solo album as a statement apart from the band particularly
I've never really had the desire to go off and make a solo record.
There's music that I love that's very different from what we do...most
of it doesn't have vocals and I'd love to be involved in something
like that but frankly there's not really much time for it. And the
challenge of writing pop lyrics for REM and finding...each of us being
very stubborn people with very big ideas....finding where those ideas
come together and create something which is really bigger than any of
us, which is REM, is enough of a challenge.
Have you ever come close to going your separate ways?
A couple of times....its been well documented. We've been very frank
about it.
Is everything happy in the camp now? Are you enjoying it as much as
you ever did really?
Yeah, I think the shows would indicate that. Its pretty clear that
what we are doing we really enjoy doing. I can't remember a tour when
we've had this much fun, despite the flu. Everyone in Europe has the
flu right now and a lot of people back home have it in fact..and it's
a pretty rough one...but despite that we're having a great time.
And what about the next record? Peter's indicated that he wants to
rough it...he wants to rough it up a bit, that its going to get a bit
more aggressive. He said he was quite surprised by some of (Around the
Sun's) mellower moments although he didn't like the word mellow.
I can't stand that word personally. I don't think its ever applied to
my band. We have already started writing songs, as I indicated
earlier, and they are much louder than the stuff that wound up on
Around The Sun, a record that I'm very proud of ...that record found
its groove and told us what it wanted to be and we just had to fall in
line with that. We're going to do one of the songs tonight, one of the
new songs, called I'm Gonna DJ. Frankly it would not have fit on
Around The Sun very well, I don't think (laughs). We've been writing
new songs and I'm pretty pleased with how they sound.
Do you think there's still a kind of energy in the band...when you and
Peter started and you used to go to the record shop and he was playing
his guitar. The energy of some of those punk records that enthused you
as it did a whole generation of people even though the records are not
punk in a simple way of using that phrase. Do you think there's still
that kind of energy that infuses what you do? Which is why you hate
the word mellow maybe?
Punk to me was always more of an attitude than a way to look, or a
haircut or a sound. That sound is very limited and I think that people
that went beyond a second or third record discovered those limitations
and either changed dramatically what they were doing or fell into
obscurity. I think the attitude of punk rock is still well within us,
not only as a group but as people and it carries us through just about
every decision that we make. 
In what way?
We are fiercely independent. That's that. Any deal we signed with a
record company, they knew exactly what they were going to get and I
think they applauded that.(laughing) most of the time...
So is there anything else that you would really like to do? Yourself
or with the band. A film sound track or ..
We did that with Man on the Moon. That was an interesting experience
and one I wouldn't trade working with the likes of Milos Forman and
Jim Carrey was really pretty incredible. And it came at a good time
for us as we were still finding our way as a three piece at that point
in time. I'm pretty much doing everything I want to do and I'm happy
to report its all going swimmingly well. I wish I had a little bit
more time to do it in. That's the one thing that seems to be slipping
by faster and faster.
Ciao!
Vero - 
High Speed Train Jumpers #2
"The ascent of cactus" club #3
--
JMS: I wanted to change the band's name every time we made a new
record, because I don't like it. [Laughs] I mean I'm okay with it. 
It is what it is, but I wanted a name that didn't have periods in it
and wasn't mispronounced in ROMANCE-LANGUAGE countries.
[Ogni riferimento/allusione è puramente casuale :P ]
PB: How do they pronounce it?
JMS: [Rolling his tongue] Remm-eh. [Laughs] The term R.E.M. is almost
impossible to say in certain languages so it just became something
else, which is fine. But it's very hard to work with periods,
graphically
                              **ROTFL!**


murmurs.com
:
[MEGA-CUT]
miiii... non è che qualcuno mi fa un riassuntino o una sorta di "il
meglio di..." di questa intervista... :-)
-- 
magoparanoico
WebSoccerManager2.0: 
http://wsm.altervista.org
gioco di calcio manageriale online

meglio di..." di questa intervista... :-)
ehehe
allora la parte più interessante... durante questo tour i Rem stanno
continuando a scrivere nuove canzoni per il prossimo album. Ed è la
prima volta che capita a Michael di continuare a scrivere testi dopo
l'uscita di un album.... in particolare adesso scrive testi sul
cellulare. :) Ha tre testi già completi  !
"...
I write on my cell phone, actually, right now as sometimes I don’t
have time to turn on my computer and I don’t really write on paper, I
haven’t done that since the 1980s cos I loose it so... I am now hoping
that the contents of my cell phone don’t end up on the internet
(laughing) which will probably shut down in about five minutes if it
did. There are lyrics to three songs on my cell phone right now...I
was working on one of them on the train here.
.... things were different at the end of Around the Sun, I kept
writing. I don’t think that’s happened before. I was really inspired
by the music that those guys had thrown at me and by how well it was
going....so I wrote way more songs for that record than we needed and
finished them which is really unprecedented...." (Michael)
Peter parla di una nuova canzone quasi pronta "an inch from being
finished" per fare il suo debutto in un concerto... nelle prox
settimane. Sempre Peter vorrebbe fare un album più aggressivo e
renderlo un più grezzo.
Su ATS quando l'intervistatore utilizza l'aggettivo "mellow" per
descrivere l'album lui risponde che non è proprio il massimo della
vita sentirsi affibbiare un appellativo del genere... 
"...I didn’t mean it as an insult!" (intervistatore)
"(laughing) Well for our generation it almost is!" (Peter)
ma che cmq il disco così com'è riesce a catturarare "chi" "cosa" e
"dove" sono al momento... all'interno del contesto più ampio della
situazione americana.
When you were four guys in a room you must have written together and
things came along a lot quicker in those days or not?
I’ve always written a lot. Things always come quickly for me.
Micheal’s always been a little bit slower and as you get older I think
you get a little bit more reflective and lyrics are the first things
people pay most attention to and he takes it very seriously...so its
slowed the process down a bit but the end result is what really
counts. 
Ciao!


cellulare. :) Ha tre testi già completi  !
è passato dagli haiku agli sms? :-)
grazie per il riassunto lurex. sei perdonata del fatto di avermi
superato come numero di messaggi nel ng. :-)


superato come numero di messaggi nel ng. :-)
LOL ;)
Ciao!
Vero - 
High Speed Train Jumpers #2
"The ascent of cactus" club #3
--
JMS: I wanted to change the band's name every time we made a new
record, because I don't like it. [Laughs] I mean I'm okay with it. 
It is what it is, but I wanted a name that didn't have periods in it
and wasn't mispronounced in ROMANCE-LANGUAGE countries.
[Ogni riferimento/allusione č puramente casuale :P ]


 ehehe
[CUT]
Sono veramente curioso di sentire le nuove canzoni, di solito quando sono in 
tour partoriscono dei bei bimbi sani e forti