R.E.M. R.I.P?

It’s hardly the picture that critics painted when R.E.M. released their latest album in October. Around the Sun was dismissed as a dreary volume from a band who had run out of steam; their “unlucky thirteenth” album, as the NME put it. On the back of lukewarm reviews for the previous two albums, Up and Reveal, it was generally held to be time for the trio to retire to the porches of Athens, Georgia.

“We did long-lead press while we were recording the two songs for our ‘best of...’ collection and at that point I said the new album was going to be very political and very chaotic,” explains Stipe. “In my opinion it is. It’s just, ahm, sentiments are whispered rather than shouted. I think people expected London Calling and they didn’t get that. So expectations were dashed and there were strong reactions from certain factions.”

Stipe moves the tape recorder closer because, as soon as an interview starts, his voice turns almost to a whisper. Given the range of R.E.M.’s work across three decades, does a rash of bad reviews make him question their existence, or at best tempt them towards a radical change of direction? “No. You make the record you want to make because that’s who you are. The minute you start listening to people who say you need one more upbeat rock song to make it a complete record, you’re f*****. I may as well have a New Wave hairdo and pretend I’m 24.”

When Stipe was 24, R.E.M. were already releasing their second album, Reckoning. In those heady 1980s days, while pop music was backed by synthetic drums and hip-hop was changing the charts for ever, this band were in complete denial about the fall of New Wave. Fuelled by their passion for British punk and new music, and influenced by alternative American icons such as Patti Smith, they released a series of college-rock albums that articulated “Another America”.

The first time I interviewed Stipe, in 1988, the band

were about to release Green, their debut album for their new label, Warners. He explained why he was driven to write songs. “I was sitting in the car one night, having gone through one of those teenage heartbreaks, and I had the radio on. Song after song came on and I just felt that not one of them talked to me, expressed what I was feeling. I wanted to write songs that would express those feelings, real feelings.”

The move to Warners was intended to give R.E.M. a bigger international platform. As they moved from clubs and theatres to arenas and stadiums, R.E.M.’s music grew, too. The emotional themes were familiar, but their tone reflected a band whose own horizons had broadened, while the musical ambition of Buck, Mills and the drummer Bill Berry (who has since left the band) gave the lyrics a grander setting. By the time Stipe led a thousand people to abandon their cars in the Wings of Desire-inspired video for Everybody Hurts, their audience had swelled to embrace both indie fans and high street shoppers. It seemed Stipe’s desire for songs about real feelings was shared by the millions who bought Out of Time and Automatic for the People.

As they became a global phenomenon, interest in Stipe exploded. The earnest eccentric who used to tour in the “quiet bus” with his friend, the 10,000 Maniacs songstress Natalie Merchant, had become a Voice of Rock, his every political viewpoint a soapbox issue to the press and his public. By the time I next interviewed the frontman, in the mid-1990s, the band were no longer flying in to do press. Instead, they were camped out at a castle in Ireland while the press of Europe flew to them. Stipe’s increasingly gaunt appearance had led to the somewhat unimaginative speculation (coupled as it was by a lack of heterosexual love interest) that the singer had Aids. One of the many jealous young bucks coming through the ranks of rock stardom even declared that he hoped Stipe did have the disease.

There were upsides to the fame, though. The band re-signed to Warners for a record-breaking $80 million. Their ability to reach vast audiences but retain their credibility made them a beacon of hope for up-and-coming artists. Courtney Love and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke were two of the many troubled stars to be counselled by Stipe on how to deal with the clash of public and private life. His name and wealth allowed him to back films such as Being John Malkovich and Velvet Goldmine. Stipe has learnt, sometimes painfully, how to deal with a public persona. In 2001 he ended years of rumour by announcing that he was gay.

Before tonight’s gig, he walks around Prague with a few friends who’ve come over from his home town and with his assistant (and band photographer) David Belisle. In the 17 years since our first conversation, Stipe’s attitude to songwriting has gradually changed. He confesses that he no longer strives to make every song “timeless”. “That might be something that comes with experience and age and the recognition that the creative arts are touchstones to the time we are living through. Hopefully it broadens our idea of the world and our reactions to it, good and bad. So music and other forms of art create, in essence, a little bit of a road map, emotionally, to questions such as ‘who am I?’ and ‘what do I think of this?’”

Stipe is undaunted by the critical reaction to Around the Sun, but still feels the need to explain. “A lot of thought went into how the songs were going to be translated on to tape. We never want to take the easy road, so we might throw things in that you’re gonna hear on the ninth listen.”

Indeed, why take the easy road when they’re such

great musicians? That’s like having a sports car and just driving it to the shops. Stipe laughs. “We’re not great musicians! Sure, I don’t think we’re covering our ass, but some things in each song really just fall out of us. What you get with R.E.M. is three very different opinions.”

Stipe makes circles with his hands to improvise a Venn diagram. “They’re crossing over each other. And the little part in the middle is R.E.M.”

Besides, as a band of genuine music fans, R.E.M. are unlikely to be bothered by critical or chart disappointments, so long as they have enough money to buy Richard Hawley CDs and get to hang out with the bands they inspired. On their remhq website, Stipe came across as the awed guest when he described how honoured he was to join Radiohead onstage in Vancouver for Karma Police a couple of years back.

Back in early October, in the week Around the Sun was released, R.E.M. took to the road with artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam to champion the Vote for Change cause. It wasn’t the most unexpected move for a band whose website supports Aids charities and Fair Trade campaigns, but losing an intense week of album promotion, and curtailing their own North American tour by ten days, was no small sacrifice.

And still John Kerry lost the election. On the back of criticism for their own album, it was a disappointing autumn for R.E.M. “Let’s not conflate the two,” says Stipe, indignantly. “Those are two very separate things in my life, anyway! I’m not going to allow one thing to collapse over into the other.

“Working that hard towards an idea about the kind of country we think the US should be right now, and the direction it should head in, and then having it collapse at the election was incredibly disappointing, obviously. But what I pulled from it, and still do, is that what started from the great quiet after September 11, is a great period of personal activism. The shows had less to do with us doing what we’re doing and more about people coming together in peaceful protest and recognising that they were not the only ones who felt this way. That’s not something that ended the day after the election.”

Stipe says he was heartened by a rumour that three out of every four people attending Bush’s recent inauguration ceremony turned their backs as the President passed by. A doctor living next to R.E.M.’s manager in Athens drove to Washington with his wife and child to do the same. “That gives me hope. I’m the original ‘glass half full guy’. I’ve had a very fortunate life so it’s maybe easy for me to be optimistic, but I have great hope.”

On stage at Sazka Arena in Prague, the band romp through their set. Although it includes just one song each from Up and Reveal, reports of their death have, it would seem, been greatly exaggerated. Stipe swoops and pulls maniacally at his mike-stand with the same energy that won so many fans on their first visits to Europe. Even those who have spent the first four songs distractedly trying to get a photo for their mobile phones eventually succumb. Mixing the fresh emotional pop of the recent single, Leaving New York, with the chopping power of oldies such as Orange Crush, the live setting adds a much needed vigour to numbers from Around the Sun.

Before launching into two political songs from the new album, Stipe addresses the crowd. “We come from a country called the United States of America, and I’d like to say to each and every one of you: I’m sorry.”

The applause is the loudest it’s been all night and, as the band play I Wanted to Be Wrong and Final Straw with their message spelt out on the huge screen above them, the gig feels, for a few minutes, more like a political rally.

If you’re going to see R.E.M. when they play relatively intimate venues in the UK this month, or when they return to play vast parks and headline the Isle of Wight festival in the summer, you won’t see a band so hamstrung by paranoia about their current commercial downturn that they feel bad about their past. “This is a song we know you love and we’re very glad to play it for you,” says Stipe as the first notes from Buck’s mandolin introduce Losing my Religion. It’s only after a six-song encore that they leave the stage and the road crew prepare to head off for Latvia.

Touring mostly by bus suits the band, especially Buck, who is notoriously uncomfortable with flying (he was acquitted of charges relating to an alleged air-rage incident on a flight from Seattle to London in 2001). After accepting a cake backstage, which a group of fans have lovingly iced in the somewhat tricky cover design of the new album, Buck says his farewells. Happy in the knowledge that his pizza, fried chicken, good red wine and Bob Dylan DVDs are already on board for the 22-hour drive to Riga, he is all smiles.

The powerhouse guitarist looks more relaxed and trim than he did a decade ago. In fact, although Stipe’s shaven-headed look makes him appear even wirier than he is, and Mills has always enjoyed the youthful semblance of an undergraduate, the band are in good shape as they hit middle age. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the former drummer Bill Berry’s dramatic health scare, when he collapsed on tour in Switzerland with a brain aneurysm. Although he recovered fully, Berry eventually decided to leave. Does Stipe think the band could continue if another key member walked?

He laughs. “That would be the end! If two members had left, we’d have to do something different. People miss out on one key thing about when Bill left music to be a jobbing farmer. The first thing he said to us was: ‘If I’m going to be the guy that breaks up R.E.M., then I’ll stay and be miserable and, in some limited capacity, I will still be the drummer of R.E.M. But I don’t want to travel or do press and . . .’ I love the guy too much to have him be miserable. But I think if someone else left, it wouldn’t be fair to carry on using the moniker.”

R.E.M. are already writing more songs that will probably be aired on their summer dates. On tour they have been throwing in work they haven’t played in 20 years. In Budapest they played Swan Swan H, from Life’s Rich Pageant (1986). During tonight’s soundcheck, Stipe stands on each sound monitor along the front of the stage and gives a tentative jump. Once the show is in full swing, he skips around in his now traditional painted eye “mask” to songs that the band wrote before some of the audience were born. You have to wonder if a group such as R.E.M. ever feel that encroaching age makes life more difficult for them.

“It’s a good question,” says Stipe. “I feel that I’m so proud to be 45 and to still be here, just that I made it to this age! I don’t have those kinds of issues where I feel I need to appear younger or be someone I was before. I’m speaking broadly, but we’re really happy to be who we are right now. The challenge isn’t the typical one of how do you present yourself at this age? We’re doing it as 45-year-olds. And it feels real.”