Tom Dunne: Watching REM reconnect with their music is magic itself

REM pictured in 2001. The band reunited on stage this week. Picture: Anthony Harvey.

“What band would you most like to see reform?” is a dinner party conversation starter. It’s supposed to inspire light-hearted banter. But not in our house. “REM” is the immediate answer and then we switch on the football and ask guests to leave. 

In 2011, I felt REM were right to break up. I felt it was a 'You have to go away to come back' kind of thing. But there I was at the REM bus stop a decade later in my 'Shiny Happy Person' T-shirt and still there was no sign. “Could they,” I wondered, “actually mean this?” Hence, I watched the CBS This Morning interview through my fingers. Could they? Would they? Might this be our Peter Jackson Get Back moment? Could the breakup, like Let It Be, have been mispresented?

The body language was not positive. It was all folded arms and defensive middle-distance stares. Every sinew screamed, “Don’t mention the war.” But he did: “What would it take to get you to reform,” asked the interviewer. “A comet,” came the instant response.

Earth passed an impact-free day, and yet, 12 hours later, REM were on stage together playing. That was them in the spotlight, that was me in the corner, rediscovering my religion. How did this come to pass?

I re-watched the interview. Anthony Mason, the host, was an unlikely hero. He is a lifetime TV journalist, best known as a one-time co-host on CBS This Morning. He distinguished himself in 1991 reporting on the Soviet coup attempt.

Coups, war zones, and armed struggle make for excellent experiences if trying to get to grips with any modern rock act. Bands are dysfunctional in a way families can only dream about.

There were odd moments from the get-go. All of REM’s gear, the drums, the guitars, the amps, the flight cases are all still in the same room in Athens, Georgia where they were deposited in 2011. It is the Marie Celeste of rehearsal rooms. All that is missing is the band.

Viewing this, Michael Stipe admitted – possibly feeling left out as he has no instruments – that he still has every pair of shoes he ever wore since 1981. The band looked at him the way bands often look at singers. No one said, “that’s weird Michael!” They’re used to it.

They talked about meeting up and how easily their distinctive sound came together. “Kismet” was how Stipe described it, and I can only echo those sentiments. Their debut, 1983’s Murmur sounded like a band that had always been. Timeless and of its time, ancient and new.

I heard it whilst in the USA with a friend in 1984. I had just joined Something Happens. When I got home, the other members of the band descended on my house – urgently – to play an album they’d also discovered. Kismet, indeed.

'In 2011, I felt REM were right to break up.' Picture: PA Photo/Handout.

The CBS interview seemed to be petering out in platitudes like “deep respect and admiration” and “no regrets” when Mason earned his stripes. “And you, Bill” he said suddenly to Berry, “have you any second thoughts?” The “of course I did” was out of his mouth in seconds.

He was in tears soon after, the first genuine recognition of the enormity of their shared human experience. The elephant in the room was called out. REM, Bill and his mates, were a generational band. They soundtracked a generation. “Of course I have regrets” he added, about leaving.

Subsequent to this, the answers became a bit less trite. The “comet” answer was too quick to not have been long rehearsed, but Buck’s later reply to getting back together – that it wouldn’t be “as good” – lacked conviction, the first tacit acceptance that what REM had done, was amazing.

What happened after that interview I don’t know. But 12 hours later there was REM back playing live, Michael Stipe looking engaged, conducting the melodies, anchoring a unit that suddenly looked ten years younger and utterly re-enervated.

Music does that and watching a band that once ruled the world rekindle that magic was magic itself. Former glories can’t be repeated but watching a band reconnect with those songs has its own power.

Seeing an artist, be it Johnny Cash, or Willie Nelson or Paul McCartney, or Bruce, re-connect with the fire of their youth, the fire of our youth, from a position of aged wisdom and insight has its own powerful alchemy.

Not quite the end of the world as we know it, but getting there.