With R.E.M bidding adieu heres a look at how a bunch of weird Georgia guys and their jangly guitars made it big and survived 30 years When michael Stipe,Peter Buck,and Mike Mills officially announced their retirement on September 21,millions of fans performed some rapid eye movements of their own. They blinked in disbelief. While many seemed crestfallen (tweets flashed Losing my R.E.M),some clung to the hope that their favourite musicians might reunite in the future. Others posted videos of Its the end of the world as we know it a track that seemed tailor-made for an occasion like this on their Facebook profiles. It was not an unexpected reaction. For a band that has been an integral part of popular culture for the last 30 years,such an announcement was bound to shock. Today,there are more people who would associate the term R.E.M with Michael Stipe and his group of merry men rather than a mere stage of sleep. But few know that around the time of the bands inception,names as obnoxious as Cans of Piss and Negro Wives were being considered. They finally arrived at R.E.M when frustration drove the band to pick the first word that they came across in the dictionary. The story of the band began in the absence of any grand plan in 1980,when Buck,then an employee at an Athens music store,realised that some shopper was whisking away all the Velvet Underground records he had been saving for himself. As it turned out,the confrontation between Buck and the shopper,who was Stipe,brought about a movement that laid the foundation for alternative music in an arena dominated by classic rock bands. Their collaboration was one of the longest-running musical collaborations in history. The two hooked up with fellow Georgia University students Mike Mills and Bill Berry,and the band was complete. R.E.M experienced many ups and downs in the years that followed,and the biggest obstacle were those listeners who couldnt tear themselves away from their Rolling Stones records to listen to a bunch of weird Georgia guys who blended jangly guitars with vocals that nobody could decipher. The English audience,which did not let the band near the top of the ladder,even when they were making it big in America with albums such as Fables of The Reconstruction,Document and Green,didnt help matters either. Out of Time,released in March 1991,changed all of that. The bands first album to top both the US and UK charts,it sold 4.2 million copies in America alone,and about 12 million copies worldwide by 1996. The albums lead single,Losing my religion was R.E.Ms highest chart-topping single in the country. The song remains R.E.Ms biggest hit till date,followed closely by Man on the moon and Everybody hurts. Sadly,things changed soon after,and the bands popularity started heading south. Berry decided to hang up his drumsticks in 1997,and even Stipe acknowledged that a three-member R.E.M just wouldnt be the same. I guess a three-legged dog is still a dog, he said,It just has to learn to run differently. The band ran for a while,stumbling and rising,before finally achieving success with Around The Sun (2004). Months after achieving their latest hit in Collapse into Now (2011),the three decided to follow Berry out of the door too,bringing the curtains down on a band that changed the face of rock music. But it may not be the end. Reunions are not unheard of in the rock music domain,and the audiences lure might bring them back onto the stage. But,until then,its adieu R.E.M.
