PB98interview

Jon Chappell

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BUCK ON UP

R.E.M.�s Peter Buck talks about the secret to getting good feedback, reconstructing the formidable band that was once R.E.M., and finding new mountains to climb as a professional guitarist.

Pete Buck�s guitar style�jangly, swimmingly impressionistic and decidedly non-riffy�practically defined the first days of alterna-rock, for better or worse. For better, because Buck�s playing on such seminal R.E.M. discs as Murmur, Life�s Rich Pageant, and Fables of the Reconstruction was as head-clearing as a habanero inhaler; for worse, because his imitators�second, third and fourth generation alike�drove nail after nail into the coffin of an increasingly stultified genre.

In recent years, Buck has reinvented himself as a player and a writer, experimenting with instruments as varied as mandolin and bouzouki on �90s R.E.M. discs and moonlighting in invigorating side bands like Tuatara and the goofball Minus Five. To a large extent, the remade and remodeled Pete Buck has shaped the sound on R.E.M.�s just-released 15th album, Up, but even he�ll admit that the most important change isn�t one of addition, but of subtraction, the subtraction of Bill Berry, the band�s co-founder and drummer.

"We thought we�d just barrel through the record like nothing had changed, but very quickly we found that wasn�t true," says Buck, sipping from a courtesy bar Coke in his luxurious Upper East Side hotel suite. "It�s a very different dynamic, since you can�t rehearse with just a bass player and a guitar player, so we started recording having never played them together. It was real non- performance oriented, and that�s an equally valid way of making records, but I�m used to getting people together in a room and feeling each other out. There wasn�t a huge amount of that."

That�s not hard to see in the grooves of Up, which is R.E.M.�s most introspective-sounding release since Out of Time. Aside from the single, "Daysleeper," there�s not a whole lot of the dense, arpeggiated riffing most folks associate with the band. Moreover, they�ve stuck to their decision not to replace Berry (without, admittedly, going so far as to break up upon his departure, as they often promised in early interviews): While Barrett Martin (who plays in Tuatara with Buck as well as with the Screaming Trees) and Joey Waronker (best known for his work with Beck) provide percussive support, there�s not a whole lot in the way of standard behind-the-kit action.

"I would have felt weird just hiring a drummer and pretended nothing had changed," says Buck. "So for a year or so, I�d been doing demos with all my drum machines-which are all really old since I hate the way modern drum machines sound with all that gated reverb. The stuff I like is all this failed technology from the �70s, you know, the stuff you use to play at the Holiday Inn, with rumba, samba, rock ballad. Just put on a delay, add tambourine, congas and you have a rhythm track that�s like a real drummer."

Since their onset, R.E.M. has acted more like an actual band, in that old- school, all-for-one, one-for-all fashion than just about any of their peers. Sure, Michael Stipe pulled down plenty of attention over the years, what with the mumbled inflections, the cryptic pronouncements, the situationist politics evident in his T-shirt doffing award acceptance speech at a bygone MTV award show. But the decision-making and division of labor seemed a perfectly even one, from their inception straight through to the present day.

"We all had fairly big egos from day one, so the only way to really make it work was to make sure everything was an equal split," says Buck, whose affable demeanor ensured that he was ceded social-director duties in the earliest days, with Mills as the taskmaster that kept practical affairs in hand. On record as well, R.E.M. waxed remarkably democratic. Stipe�s trademark mumble ensured that vocals were treated as just another instrument; likewise, Buck�s playing, no matter how complicated the individual elements, was downplayed in terms of pure technique. Solos have always been kept to a minimum, as has flash for flash�s sake.

"I�ve always done single note stuff, sometimes all the way through a song, but it�s usually very subtle, and I�m not the kind of player who has the spotlight come down on him onstage," he explains. "If you go back to something like "Country Feedback" [on Out of Time], I just improved a guitar part, some riffs, sometimes referring to chords, sometimes harmony, but when it�s all mixed flat to the same level, it just sounds like some guy playing rhythm guitar."

When list-compilers�and you know who you are�get around to tallying the great guitar players of the last decade or so, many will ignore Buck for that very reason. But even so, R.E.M.�s records have always been shot through with fleetingly exhilarating moments of six-string abandon, going back as far as the dizzily-paced folk-punk twist of 1983�s Murmur and the more nuanced baroque-pop of the following year�s Reckoning.

"I always did a lot of arpeggios, and played through a set. But Up didn�t show it. It was a real division of labor, since Mike was a very busy bass player at that time and I got the high end to myself. I played real fast, was always able to flat pick and arpeggio real fast.

"I don�t think I even used distortion until the second album, because I felt like I was kind of a purist. Everyone else wanted to be the Clash and coat everything in distortion, and even though I loved that sound, I didn�t want to fall into the trap of getting a Marshall, a Les Paul, and blasting three chords. I loved the Ramones but I didn�t want to be one."

Instead, Buck stuck with his trusty Rickenbacker (he�s played the same one since 1982), the source of that jangly, Byrdsian tone that can be traced back to one of the guitarist�s earliest musical memories.

"I was in second grade in 1965, and for some reason, they brought in this band called the Postmen to play for us�they all looked like Brian Jones, and I think they all wore capes," he recalls. "They played �Mr. Tambourine Man,� �Ticket to Ride,� all stuff on that ringy 12-string Beatles/Byrds nexus, which had its impact on me, obviously."

By the time Buck�who had a nomadic childhood and adolescence�landed in Athens in the late �70s, he�d developed a dual fetish for pop�s sweetness and punk�s power. It wasn�t until he met Michael Stipe, an arch, arty fellow who fronted a dance-noise combo called Tanzplagen, that he was able to funnel those obsessions into a defined sound, one that quickly set R.E.M apart.

"Everyone kind of laughed at us, in a way, because as uncommercial as we seemed to the rest of the world, we were viewed as this bubblegum pop band on the scene," he recalls. "That�s because we weren�t doing one-note guitar things or conceptual pieces. If you listen to Murmur, the level of my playing wasn�t all that great, but the songs were fairly complex and there were some interesting harmonies and chords going on.

"The Athens thing was more monochromatic," he continues. "Take Randy Bewley from Pylon, who was the greatest player I�d seen back then: He played in this really weird tuning. It went B-D-C-G-D-A, and that was all he knew. He quit, saying he ran out of ideas, so I bought one of his guitars and when I tried to play it that way, I couldn�t play anything that didn�t sound like Pylon. He got it all."

It didn�t take terribly long for R.E.M. to surpass its more experienced neighbors in getting noticed on a national scale. They needed to release just one single on their own, the hyper-collectible "Radio Free Europe," before getting recruited by demi-major I.R.S. (then home to acts such as the Go-Gos and Hunters and Collectors). While that trajectory was mighty speedy for those days�contemporaries like Husker Du and Sonic Youth took six or more indie albums before taking the plunge�Buck insists that his band acted conservatively.

"There�s a lot of things we could�ve done, but none of us were comfortable with it. We didn�t even appear in our videos until 1991," says Buck, who was singled out for solo fame by a series of satirical "Pete Buck Comix," in which cartoonist-turned-singer/songwriter Jack Logan lampooned Buck�s ubiquitous presence. "We were happy selling a hundred thousand records and being able to play every city in America to a few hundred people. To me, that was success."

In the estimation of others, success came a-knockin� when the band first signed with Warner Brothers in 1988, a deal that enabled the evanescent Green to infiltrate the consciousness of middle America in a manner that none of R.E.M.�s previous albums had (even though the subversively ironic "The One I Love" had charted the year before.) "Every year, when I still lived in Athens, there�d be a fresh crop of kids coming in and sneering at us," recalls Buck, who now makes his home in Seattle. "To them, we were the enemy, so some kid in a brand new jacket with an anarchy symbol on it would always be coming up to me and telling me how much I sucked, and I�d be like, �okay, Mr. Punk, have a nice day.�"

But as success really started to nip at the heels of the little ol� band from Athens, things started to get a bit fuzzy. A long hiatus at the turn of the decade led folks to speculate about the state of the band (not to mention the health of lead singer Michael Stipe, whose appearance grew steadily more gaunt as the months wore on). Moreover, the band began to waver on their steadfast list of verboten acts, appearing in (and soon lip-synching in) videos, playing arenas, piling on lavish production tricks. As such, the band didn�t tour for much of the early 1990s, a transitional period that�s likely to be echoed in the coming months since Up, as Buck understates, "doesn�t lend itself to touring." The album�s subtle sounds are only part of the rationale there.

"We�d gotten about three-quarters of the way through making the record and realized we�d done a good job of defining what the record was all about, but we hadn�t really defined what the band was about nowadays," Buck says. "On this record, I played 90% of the bass, since Mike wasn�t really interested in playing it: So am I the bass player now? I�d tend to think not, but I�d have to teach the songs to Mike or else a bass player to go on the road with us. We definitely need to define what we are more clearly before we do a tour."

Buck�s role may be undefined, but his contributions to Up are remarkably captivating, particularly after a few listens: He daubs the corners of the album�s opening track, "Airportman," with a noisy whir wrung from a vintage Discoverer synth (which Buck notes "can do three things and only three, none of them very useful") and inverts his guitar line on "You in the Air" for a sort of call-and-response on bouzouki. Heck, he even dons the drummer�s mantle himself for a spell on the ethereal, Beach Boys-styled "At My Most Beautiful."

"When Mike brought in the basic tracks to that, I couldn�t help but think of Brian Wilson. So I put down these drum parts that were real Hal Blaine-ish," he says happily. "I can�t play drums at all, really, but I can do those fills."

His percussive potency notwithstanding, Buck�s most important contribution to Up is, naturally enough, a distinctive guitar sound, albeit not the one usually associated with his work. Even more than on left-of-center discs like Monster, Buck�s playing is abstract, impressionistic, to the point that he admits that "I can�t imagine sitting down with some of the songs on this record and actually playing them, since a lot of it is just this wash of sound."

That assessment is particularly true of some of the album�s most arresting numbers, like the uneasy-listening ditty "Hope."

"That was just a riff I had, which Michael was obsessed on turning into a song even though it only had one chord," he says, with a wry grin. "He kept saying �we can put more chords in if you want.� So we spent all this time turning it into a two-chord song."

And what about "Lost," which is one of the more psychedelic sounding numbers on an album that�s surprisingly permeated by such constructs?

"I love that stuff," he nods happily. "We used some very �90s technology and some very �60s, and somehow got this modern psychedelic record out of it. It�s there in the guitar sound, definitely, and we used a lot of concrete, ambient things too; we layered in the sound of the surf and children playing on the beach, which we taped in St. Sebastian Spain, and some stuff that [producer] Pat McCarthy recorded in India. We were more willing to just play with sound."

Rather than concentrating on effects, Buck relied on different amp/guitar combinations and microphone placement in the studio, though he does grant that a few eerie-sounding solos on Up were goosed by a voodoo vibe. Naturally, it was tethered to that trusty Rickenbacker.

"That guitar was perfect for what I was doing on this album because it�s really good for getting feedback, and if anyone wants the secret of how to get it," he says, peering over his shades conspiratorially. "Here it is: Just use the neck pick-up, drain all the treble out, and tune the low E to a D so you can do barre chords with one finger. You get all these overtones, and chords will form that don�t exist. I love that trick."

Buck also has a trick of sorts when it comes to choosing the perfect amp. "I usually come back to the AC30 since it has such a nice, warm sound," he says. "But I own all sorts of old things: Reverb Rockets and strange old Gibson things that don�t even have model names to speak of. For me, the deciding factor is to see if an amp has an accordion input on it. If that�s there, I know it�s gonna be good."

Around the same time the band moved to the arena circuit, R.E.M. decided that bigger was better in another way as well: Tours from that point Buck abetted by a second onstage guitarist, sometimes old pal Peter Holsapple (who�s been known to fill a similar role in Hootie & the Blowfish), sometimes ex-guitar tech Van Buren Fowler. Most recently, the fifth R.E.M.-er was Nathan December (now a touring component in the Goo Goo Dolls).

"There came a point when everything I was writing really needed two guitars," he says, further acknowledging that future tours could flesh out the band with even more players. "It was great having a four piece in the beginning; more money to split, fewer egos to contend with, but as songs got more complex, it seemed kind of � not necessary, but useful."

And what are the criteria in choosing a fifth wheel? "Mostly, we choose people we know and get along with, but there�s obviously more to it than that," Buck muses. "I can see someone play for less than a minute and know if they�d work out. It has to be someone who likes structures, as opposed to someone who likes to wing it.

"I was talking to [Grateful Dead drummer] Bill Kreutzmann, who I ran into on vacation, and he said he would never play a song the same way twice," he continues. "I can appreciate that as a listener, but when it comes to a song I�ve written, well, the bridge is gonna be in the same place every night, we�re gonna play in the same time signature, the same key. It�s going to be the same song."

With nearly two full decades behind them�and an $80 million deal with Warner Brothers stretching several albums down the line�R.E.M. has shown a continued willingness to tweak and experiment. Sometimes the results are less than spectacular: 1996�s New Adventures in Stereo�which was recorded entirely at soundchecks on the previous year�s world tour�was a disappointment both commercially and artistically, although Buck maintains that he�s "very proud of it both as a collection of songs and as a challenge to ourselves and the audience."

Perhaps as a reaction to the off-the-cuff feel of that set (as well as the fairly loose vibe that runs through Buck�s recent side projects, Tuatara and Minus Five), the studio is clearly audible in the grooves of Up. Producer Pat McCarthy (who worked alongside longtime band compatriot Scott Litt on several previous R.E.M. discs) subtly puts his signature on the recording, prying apart the normally close-knit song structures and deconstructing some of the more traditional spatial relations.

Not surprisingly, such puttering took some time. The band stretched schedules to the limit in making Up, spending six months bending and shaping the finished product. "It�s definitely more time than I would like to spend in the studio, but that was to be expected," is Buck�s defense. "Rather than knock off five basic tracks every day, we�d get one or two, and then overdub those at night. That�s still a decent rate of work, but on the last record, we did 30 songs in 10 days. This time we did 45 songs, and ended up keeping about 30 of those."

Most of the 14 that made the final edit are cut from similar cloth: melancholy, abstruse, and not particularly easy to hum. After several listens, songs like "The Sad Professor" and "Why Not Smile" (which could pass for an outtake from David Bowie�s Low) begin to reveal considerable charm, but we�re living in an age where attention spans need constant nudging from quick, easy hooks. Does Buck worry about R.E.M.�s position in the current hit-single driven climate?

"It�s easy for me to tell a good song, but impossible for me to pick a hit, which is why we�ve learned to just leave it up to the record company," he says. "All the songs on this album we thought would be good singles, they didn�t like. They chose �Daysleeper,� which would have been like twelfth on my list." That song, likely chosen because it�s the one tune on Up that�s immediately definable as R.E.M., is hardly sub-standard, but as Buck hints, it�s not exactly representative. His pick to click?

"�Suspicion,� which seems to have all the things people want," he chuckles. "People want ballads about love and that�s kind of a ballad and it�s kind of about love. Also, it�s got a guitar solo in the middle." The chord progression on that one is kind of dizzying. "Yeah, the verse just goes from GMaj to Gmin, and its basically a seesaw motion," he says. "I tried to get some other things in there, and I�m not even sure about the last chord I put in; it�s some kind of demolished (sic) chord, I think."

By his own estimation, Pete Buck has surpassed every one of the goals he set out for himself when he became a professional musician, and he acknowledges that finding new mountains to climb can be an even greater challenge than scaling the ones behind him offered. Still, he doesn�t sound like a man ready to rest on his laurels.

"At the point I�ve reached, the main thing is just keeping it fresh for myself," he says. "I can do that in small ways, like when I was last in the studio with Tuatara, I learned how to play in 7/8 time, which I�d never even seen before, and now I�m writing in it.

"There�s also the bigger picture: I may sound like an old fogey for saying this, but most of what I hear going on in rock and roll these days is awfully second-hand and very boring," he says. "Maybe that�s what people want to hear, which would be really sad. But I�d like to think that bands like us can still push a certain number of people in directions that are new, help them discover other music. There�s about a million things that can be done, and I haven�t even scratched the surface yet."