The Tapes Archive

Peter Buck: Hello.

Marc Allan: Hi, hi, is this Peter?

Peter Buck: Yes.

Marc Allan: Yeah, hi, this is Marc Allan.

Peter Buck: Hey, how you doing?

Marc Allan: Okay, well let me start out by asking you, I’m looking at all this material that’s been sent along with the new album, and everything talks about your being more accessible, and I never thought of you as inaccessible. Did you think you were inaccessible before?

Peter Buck: I don’t know. I mean, I always felt that we were fairly commercial. I mean, when you compare us to our peer group, we were always the most commercial band. I mean, my peer group being, whether it’s Love Tractor, or Sonic Youth, or the Pixies, now, or something. We were always the one that seemed like we’d be more successful, but when you compared us to what was on the radio, say 1983, we were a little bit less successful than Berlin, or Missing Persons, or whoever. And times have changed. I look at stuff in the charts now that I just can’t believe is in the charts, like Tracy Chapman. Five years ago, that a black female folk singer, singing pretty political stuff, selling two million copies, it’s unheard of, and would have been unheard. So for us, so we just been wandering around. We made a record that probably people understand lyrically a little bit better. I don’t know, I mean, I never really understood a lot of the criticism anyway. This is what we do.

Marc Allan: This isn’t even really criticism. I mean, this is even from your own label, in your own bio it says that.

Peter Buck: Yeah, well you know, I think they’re trying to reassure themselves . Yeah, you know, I guess, when I listen to this record, I guess, just because the lyrics are more straightforward, that makes it accessible, but musically, it’s kind of a weird record. People never notice that. Most people that listen to rock ‘n’ roll probably have some experience in like going to college, and at least like in writing things, and going to college and reading books, and analyzing lyrics, so that you can make a really weird musical record, and as long as the lyrics are understandable, well, it’s successful. And no one’s really mentioned that on this record there are very few real choruses, that a lot of the songs just kind of don’t have real arrangements, they just kind of wander around some. There is and are repeated phrases as hooks. You know, that to me is like the first thing I think about when I heard the record, but, you know, it’s more accessible ’cause you can understand all the lyrics.

Marc Allan: So you think you’re inaccessible now?

Peter Buck: You know, I just think that what we do is, quite often we’re judged by how much people understand, literally, like, what is this song about? Whereas to me, I think, “Well, gosh, “we have probably one of the weirdest harmonic senses “of kind of rock ‘n’ roll bands “that have records in the Top 40. “The harmonies and the bass parts, “the structuring of the songs is fairly strange, “and no one notices that, “so I guess we put it across okay.” I mean, Prince is probably the only guy in the Top 20 that’s stranger than we are. I think the guy’s probably a genius, so good for him. I could never understand why “Lovesexy” wasn’t a big hit, ’cause “Alphabet St.” is a great song.

Marc Allan: And another thing that people are saying this, that “Green” is supposed to be uplifting, and when I listen to it, I don’t think of it as particularly uplifting, do you?

Peter Buck: I think it means more so than “Document.” I mean, there’s some songs that I don’t think are uplifting at all, and Michael obviously does. You know, for example, something like “Wrong Child,” which, to me, is a fairly depressing song, about a crippled child, or whatever, and to Michael, the fact that the character is accepted is kind of uplifting, and I guess in a way it is, but to me, it just depresses me. Something like “You Are the Everything,” “World Leader Pretend,” I think are real kinda up, I mean for us. We’re never gonna be a happy party band.

Marc Allan: But isn’t there a line on “You Are the Everything,” something about not being optimistic, or what am I thinking of?

Peter Buck: God.

Marc Allan: Geez, maybe I’m just confusing it with something else. I could’ve sworn that was the song where there’s something–

Peter Buck: I don’t think the word “optimism” is in there, but you know, it’s a song about tearing down barriers and borders.

Marc Allan: So along those lines, is there reason to be optimistic?

Peter Buck: Maybe not. And that’s probably a good reason to make music that’s a little bit more optimistic. I mean, from us, “Document” was a fairly angry record, and I don’t really wanna have a career of manufacturing anger. I mean, I’m probably angrier now than I was in 1986 or ’87, whenever that was, but, you know, I think maybe in the kind of dark years, something that’s a little bit more up and pleasant isn’t necessarily a really bad thing.

Marc Allan: Is there a reason you’re more angry now?

Peter Buck: Well, you know, it’s fairly obvious, the environmental problems, racism. I mean, it’s kind of cool again to be a racist. I mean, almost every political campaign that I see appeals on some level to subliminal racism. I get sick and I walk the streets of New York and see little kids sleeping in gutters. I mean, it hasn’t been that bad since Dickens’s day. And really the government isn’t do anything about it. It’s a very sad thing. I live in a place that doesn’t have a ton of homeless, and isn’t really polluted. So, it’s things that I experience by travel. I mean, we’re obviously electing governments that are saying, “Oh, don’t worry, everything’s fine. “Don’t worry, be happy.” I can’t think of anything more insane.

Marc Allan: Isn’t that more of a reason to make an album like Lou Reed just made, “New York”? I would think that if you’re angry about things like that, it would be a time to come out and say, “This is ridiculous.”

Peter Buck: Well, you know, that’s a lot of what “Document” was about. And I bet Lou Reed doesn’t make “New York” again.

Marc Allan: Well, if album sales are any criteria, probably not. Probably the record company won’t let him make it again.

Peter Buck: You know, I think it’s a great record. And, it’s like the voice crying out in the wilderness, but you don’t really do those things twice. And we made that record for us. We’re never gonna be as direct as Lou Reed. Assuming that we’re both artists, we both work in different ways. And for us, “Document” was a fairly angry album. I mean, we’d never write a song where we mention Jesse Jackson, or you know, something like “Dirty Blvd,” which is really straight and real direct. You know, he’s a storyteller. Like that guy that hangs at the bar and tells you things. And we’re not quite that band.

Marc Allan: Is there a reason for that, or just that’s not the kind of people you are?

Peter Buck: You know, I don’t know. Michael being the lyricist, he’s not a Lou-Reed-type person. He doesn’t sit and tell stories and that kind of thing. I mean, he’s probably more elliptical. He’s more speaking, more as well as writing lyrics, as Lou Reed. I mean, not to say that it’s not there, and he doesn’t think about those things. It’s just, he tends to think, and I agree with him to a certain degree, that being really specific and pointing fingers can take away, at least from what we do as a band. I mean, I’m not gonna mention names, or vote Republican, or vote Democrat, or whatever. I think that it’s there, and it’s implicit in a lot of the lyrics, especially on the last record, and in the things we say in public. I mean, I love Lou Reed. I just, I couldn’t write those songs. He couldn’t write ours, either, for that matter–

Marc Allan: He certainly couldn’t sing them.

Peter Buck: I love his voice. He’s got one of my favorite voices in rock ‘n’ roll, but he’s very conversational as a singer.

Marc Allan: Yeah, I mean, he’s not really even a singer, for that matter. But I mean, at least I don’t think of him as a singer, but I do think of him as a storyteller. But that brings up an interesting point, because there has been a lot of writing about “Orange Crush,” and it being about Agent Orange, and all this kind of thing. Well, I gotta admit, I don’t get it. And that was not what I would have associated the song with, had I not known or not read what other people have said about the song. Is there a reason to be obscure? Is it important?

Peter Buck: Well, you know, I mean, we could have called the song “Agent Orange.” I don’t know. For me that’s a little bit too much. I mean, not too much, it’s just, I don’t think most of the people, I know those people I talked to got it. I mean, we got contacted by a Vietnam vets organization, who asked if we’d donate the song to a film about Agent Orange, called “A Time for Action,” which we did. They seem to understand that there are a million ways to tell stories, you know? And if you like O. Henry, you’re probably not gonna like Sean, what’s his name, Barthelme? Barthelme? The guy who just died. You know, I love his short stories, but they were really surrealistic, and elliptical, and different, and there are a million ways to, like I said, to do things. Lou Reed takes one tack, U2 takes another, Dylan takes another, we take one. Sometimes being really direct is something that is real important, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the way you approach something is just as important as what you say about it.

Marc Allan: So we can pretty much expect that R.E.M. will never write “Good Evening Mr. Waldheim,” or anything like that?

Peter Buck: You know, I wish I could. I mean, on a separate ground, other than lyrically, musically, Lou Reed writes stuff that’s much more direct. All his songs are basically three chords, and a four-four rhythm, and they’re great songs. I mean, I wish I could’ve written almost every single one of the songs he’s written. There are different ways to work, and we don’t do that. I really like his stuff, I know he likes us. We saw him a lot this summer. One of my favorite records is the first Velvet Underground album, which is really direct, and then probably my second favorite is “Astral Weeks,” which I could listen to for 27 years, and still have trouble getting a handle on it. I know what it’s about emotionally. Intellectually, I’m not sure I get everything.

Marc Allan: It’s interesting because when I’m sitting here on the phone and I’m talking to you, I know what you’re saying . I guess in the songs, I often don’t know.

Peter Buck: Okay. See, I mean, I talk to a lot of people, and, obviously the ones who talk to me, usually are the ones that tend to like us. You know, the guy who hates you doesn’t walk up, “Boy, you know, I don’t like you.” I mean, I don’t hear that much.

Marc Allan: Yeah, people are pretty good about that.

Peter Buck: I mean, it happens once in a while, but very seldom does someone come and go, “You know, I don’t like you because of this.” They’re usually just like, “Oh fuck you, I don’t like your stuff.” So the kids I talk to, and people I talk to, maybe they’re in the minority, but they seem to know what’s going on, when they have interpretations of songs. I mean, especially the last couple of records, I don’t really think that the songs need to be interpreted so much. I mean, I think they’re fairly straightforward for us, but I don’t know. I mean, it depends what you’re used to. If you’re used to Van Halen, I’m sure that we’re incomprehensible. We put out at our fan club, David Lee Roth is doing this interview, and he was talking about modern music, and he’s just, “And R.E.M., I just don’t get it. “I mean, I don’t get it.” And I thought, “Well great, you know.”

Marc Allan: In fact, that should have made you really proud.

Peter Buck: It did. I mean, I figured, “Well God, you know, “I’m afraid I get Diamond Dave all too well.” And I loved Van Halen, and I still do like Van Halen a lot. But, it’s kinda like, look at David Lee Roth’s solo record. You know, sorry. That’s what we said at the fan club, I thought it was funny. There’s a lot of traditions in rock ‘n’ roll, like Van Morrison pulled in a lot of weird, poetic aspects, from Irish traditional stuff, which was unheard of in like 1968, ’69. To this day, he’s still writing kind of, I mean, it has more to do with Yeats and Blake than it has to do with Chuck Berry and Jelly Roll Morton.

Marc Allan: Well enough about that, I really–

Peter Buck: Well know, I mean, I’m good talking about stuff like this. I hope I don’t sound defensive or anything, ’cause–

Marc Allan: No, no, not at all. It’s interesting to hear how you approach it, and why. I guess it just seems to me that audiences get dumber and dumber, and you have to be pretty direct, like–

Peter Buck: It could be, but then again, you know, Springsteen is real direct, and nobody understood “Born in the USA.” They filmed the concert and people were waving flags. I think you make a big mistake to say, “Well gee, people are really stupid, “I have to pander to them,” because I think that people aren’t that stupid. I mean, a lot of people are, but you’re not gonna reach them anyway. I’m not gonna write a song for an eight-year-old. You have to approach it the way you approach it. And I’m sure that Springsteen would, I mean, when he made that record, “Born in the USA,” the whole album, he knew it was a real negative portrayal of America, and boy, you know, I mean everyone starts waving flags–

Marc Allan: And Ronald Reagan starts quoting it–

Peter Buck: George Will writes a column about, yeah, sure, here is this flag-waving guy, and you know, it’s like, sorry, it wasn’t about that. George Will, who, as much as I dislike him, he’s a smart man. But you don’t write for these people, you write for yourself, mostly. And we do talk about it though. I mean for the song “Flowers of Guatemala” on “Lifes Rich Pageant,” we talked for a long time about whether there should be another verse that made a linkage between flowers and graves. And we thought, “Nah, I mean I think enough people “have heard ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ “to know that that’s what this is about.” When you sing a song, real pretty song, and talk about a real pretty place, I think everyone knows what’s going on in Guatemala, I don’t think you have to make the third verse, or fourth verse say, “And it’s a pity because of the death squads.” Maybe I’m wrong, but I seem to think that everyone got that–

Marc Allan: In some of the material I read, you said that you’ve been quoted as saying the trappings of success, the playing the big arenas, et cetera, I believe, you’re a little ambivalent there. Are you doing anything specific to get around those trappings?

Peter Buck: They’re only trappings if you let them be trappings. I mean, if you just assume that “Well we have the talent and we’re so great “that we can do this, we deserve it,” then you’re bound to look like fools. We’re at the point where we’re successful enough that we pretty much have to play the large places, and I am ambivalent about that. I don’t really go to many of those shows, but the ones I do go to, I’ve seen Prince in big places, and Springsteen in big places, and I like those shows. There’s a way to do it without selling yourself short or selling the audience short. And I think we’re handling that really well, but I think it’s important to be ambivalent about success. You know, I mean, I want to sell millions of records, and I want everyone to hear us, you know. But you have to know what you’re getting into. It’s something that you have to guard vigilantly against every single day. You can’t become a cartoon figure on “Entertainment Tonight.”

Marc Allan: And that’s pretty much what happens to most arena bands.

Peter Buck: There’s a way around it. I consider that we’re ourselves, we’re just in a bigger place. And I think we’ve been playing really well this tour, and I think we’ve met the challenge, and I’ve seen a lot of bands that haven’t. I see bands that I know and have grown up with, they’re like, playing to a thousand people, and they’re already an arena rock band. You just gotta be careful, I mean, as in anything.

Marc Allan: The band’s path to success was real interesting. I mean you guys got to where you are so much differently than most other bands do. I mean, no amazing amount of commercial airplay. I mean, R.E.M. is certainly not beaten into your head if you turn on the radio. Can you account for it? Did you do something, or was there something about R.E.M. that brought you to this level?

Peter Buck: Well, there was a point in time, I think starting out in the early ’80s, ’82, ’83, when the large amount of people that liked rock ‘n’ roll were just not having their needs met by the radio. And so we just had to kind of short-circuit that. We played everywhere in the world. We played all over little teeny towns. We put out records that sold 100,000, that was good. We played everywhere. We made ourselves accessible to lots of interviews, talked to people, and kind of got around the, we were never even on commercial radio until ’86, ’87 even, and by that point we were selling 750,000 records. But a lot of bands have done that. I mean, Cream never had a hit single really, did they? I mean, that’s before my time, but they were well-known. Hendrix, he sold tons of records. You just have to kind of get around it. We were arrogant enough to believe that we were good enough to kind of survive without having the next hit single.

Marc Allan: Was there a time, though, I mean, did you ever get down on yourselves, and just think, “Geez, this is a extremely tough way to do it. “We oughta just sell out”?

Peter Buck: I mean, I think if we knew how to sell out there would have been at least some talk of it. But, you know, I’ve been listening to music for, God, 25 years now, since I was like five-years-old or something, and I don’t really know what appeals to people commercially. I don’t. I wouldn’t know how to go in and make a hit record. We knew that we were good and we knew that we had to follow our own dictates, for better or worse. But there were definitely times when we’d look around, and go, “God, what are we doing?” There were too many nights when we were in little clubs, playing to like 30 people for 70 bucks, and the manager of the club was rude to us, and you know, but then usually, that’s 20 people liked it when they’ve talked to us, And it’d be like, “Well see, we can come back here, “and we can sleep on someone’s floor, we can do this.” And as long as you have enough confidence in yourself, and that gets at least something back from the audience, it’s easy to keep doing it.

Marc Allan: When you recorded “Stand,” and you heard that back, you didn’t say to yourself, “Geez, this is a hit”?

Peter Buck: The second we wrote it, we all just started laughing, you know, and Michael came and just, when he heard it and he fell down on the floor, and he just goes, “I’ve got lyrics for that.” And I heard it, and we did kind of go, “Well geez, you know, if we ever have written a hit, “this sounds like it.” But knowing us, was kinda like, “I have my doubts.” Actually, I can’t tell. I mean, I thought that that would probably be the first single, but you know, I thought “Get Up” was the one that would be the hit. Haven’t seen that .

Marc Allan: Well, it’s early, yet. Singles seem to come out slowly now, and maybe that’s next–

Peter Buck: Yeah, the new idea is that, oh the record can last a year. Used to be, well three months and it’s over. I mean, even the Eagles’ records were gone in four months, and they sold two million or something. Now in U2, aren’t they still releasing singles from that thing?

Marc Allan: Yeah, probably.

Peter Buck: Our record came out eight months ago, I think there’s gonna be one more single.

Marc Allan: Now, you mentioned Springsteen, I mean, there were probably six or seven singles off “Born in the USA.”

Peter Buck: Oh yeah.

Marc Allan: That lasted for years.

Peter Buck: Yeah, you know, I kind of resent it in a way, just ’cause, there should be more room at the top, and not just for us, but like when our record came out, I was looking up, and eight of the Top 10 people had been there for more than a year. So that’s just not very fair to the young bands. I mean, if everything you’re playing is a year old, and everyone’s heard it all anyway, then you’re not serving anyone except for the kind of dumb heads who want to hear the same thing over and over again. You might as well just play led Zeppelin.

Marc Allan: Well, and along those lines, that’s what everybody’s doing.

Peter Buck: Yeah, and it’s really depressing too. You know, this the whole classic rock thing, it’s like, great. So, 90% of what you play is a year old, and the other 50% is 15 years old. It must be hard being a kid now, ’cause how do you find out what you like? I remember when I used to hear The Stones on the radio, and Dylan, and you know, maybe I was only 10, but it seemed like there was always a new record. Now it’s like, Christ, I mean, I’m still hearing things from the last Michael Jackson record.

Marc Allan: So you will resent it a year from now when they take a single off “Green” and they say, “Here’s the new R.E.M. single”?

Peter Buck: I think that’s gonna happen. There’ll be a single out with this tour because that’s the way it goes, and I doubt it’ll do anything. But, I mean, when it’s done, it’s done. I mean, I can’t blame anyone. I mean if someone said, “Would you rather sell four million, or three million?” I’d say, “Well, four million,” of course. I’m not dumb. I think radio oughta probably step in and just say, “Sorry, when we’ve played a record,” you know Def Leppard, I mean, that record came out when we put out “Document,” I think, and that’s two albums ago and eight tours. It’s kind of like, let’s get onto the next album, or something.

Marc Allan: If you step back, and I don’t know if you’re able to do this because you’re so involved with it, but if you could analyze your music for a minute, do you have any idea what it is that people see in R.E.M.?

Peter Buck: Oh God! I get asked that sometimes, and without being glib, I really don’t know. I think we write good songs, but then a lot of people- Elvis Costello writes great songs, you know? I don’t know. I think, from meeting people that like us, is that we, in a way, somehow reach out more than a lot of, I hate to use a word like “performer,” but performers do, not like us personally, but the records seem to mean a lot to the people who buy them. I guess that has a lot to do with Michael and the lyrics, and that it’s an involving process. Even something like “Stand,” which is fairly straightforward, you maybe have to think about it a little bit more, and I think people like that, they like to discover things themselves. I think it was John Ford who said, “People always like a fact better “if they discover it for themselves,” or truth better, or something like that. Other than that, I don’t know. For a long time we were about the only alternative. I mean there were good bands, but they never toured. You never saw them. And everything else was kinda boring, and like in ’83 when “Murmur” came out, there weren’t many records like that.

Marc Allan: Maybe that’s it. The quote that you said about the fact and discovering it for yourself, and maybe that’s it, that because you weren’t forced down anybody else’s throat. You know, you really weren’t played all the time on the radio and people weren’t all raving, and you weren’t on all the covers of the magazines. Maybe that’s why.

Peter Buck: Yeah, I mean, I get lots of letters. I used to try to answer ’em, at least on a postcard, and I’ve got a lot lately from people that are like 22, and like, “Well, gee, I’ve loved you guys since I was 16,” horrifying thought as it is, and you know, I’ll go, then they’ll say, “Well gee, I was really disappointed “to see you have a big hit because you were my band, “but I like the new record anyway,” that kind of thing. And I can see that. I mean, I know what it’s like to like, I remember Patti Smith, I mean I thought she was the greatest thing in the world, and then she had a hit single, and it was like, I didn’t stop liking her, but it was like, “Well gee.” All of a sudden these kind of guys who went to Georgia Tech that I knew were playing “Because the Night,” and gee, her best record was probably “Horses.”

Marc Allan: Right. Absolutely. In fact, that may be her only good record, but I don’t know, let’s–

Peter Buck: I still love her, but you gotta admit, she’s pretentious a lot of times. A lot of this is bullshit, but it’s the kind of bullshit that I like. I mean, I can buy the pseudo-literary poetic pretentions, garage-band-meets-Rambo, but you know, if you’d invented that for me, that’s what it would sound like.

Marc Allan: You were quoted, I think it was in the “Boston Globe” as saying that, “If we sold a million and a half copies of ‘Murmur,’ we’d either be dead or broke, “and or living in a boring mansion in Hollywood.” And I’m wondering why would you think that?

Peter Buck: We’ve had nine years to grow into this, you know, to practice playing in big places, to hone our songwriting. As much as we thought we were really adults, when “Murmur” came out, Michael was 20, I guess, I was 25, well no, Michael was 21, I was 24, 5, oh my God. Bill and Mike were 23, I don’t know how people handle that kind of success. We weren’t ready. We wouldn’t have been able to play the big places, I wouldn’t have been able to handle all the TV stuff, the madness that goes with the hit record, it would have been too much for us. As it is, we’ve had nine years to kind of figure out what we’re doing and how to do it, and I’m real confident. I’m not afraid that, “Gee, I have to follow up this ‘Green’ with a big hit record.” I don’t have to do anything. All I have to do is write good songs and record them well and make a good record, and if it doesn’t sell, I’m confident enough to know what to do. I mean, look at the Go-Go’s. They were pretty much our peer group, they’re a little bit older than us, but the success ruined them. I mean I love that first record, and there are good spots on the other two records, but three records and massive success, and each record sells less than the one before it, and everyone starts arguing about songwriting, and someone leaves the band and then the band breaks up. So like, it wasn’t good for them at all.

Marc Allan: How do you pick where to record your albums? I mean, you’ve recorded in some not exactly out-of-the-way places, but maybe, you know, unusual for most bands.

Peter Buck: Every studio, you gotta figure, has good equipment. I mean, just about every one we’re gonna look at has what we need. It’s gotta be real comfortable as far as you like the people there, and you like the way it’s set up, so you can get away from the music. You need to feel good about living there for four weeks. And then for us it’s good to be in a smaller town where there aren’t as many distractions. We could go to New York, it’s like Christ, there’s something to do every night, and movies, and restaurants, and plays, and bands. It’s good for us to be some place where we can concentrate only on working.

Marc Allan: Maybe you can shed some light on this one, this is a question I’m sure you’ve been asked a million times, but what is the deal with Athens? That’s not exactly the place you would expect to be pumping out so many bands.

Peter Buck: You know, I really don’t know. I mean, there’s always been music here, since the ’60s, lots of folk stuff, and there was soul bands, and a lot of my older friends, guys in their 40s were like white guys that were backing up Marvin Gaye, and stuff, on tours in the South. And it just, it continued. It’s a college town, a lot of college kids play music, and above that, I don’t know. I think now a lot of people are moving here, to be in bands, so, I mean, I can think of a lot of bands, where specifically people moved here, just to be in Athens.

Marc Allan: One other quote that I pull out of all of these articles is you’re saying, regarding the trappings of success, and you still don’t need a yacht, et cetera, et cetera, but now that you are in the situation you’re in, do you have big plans? Gonna buy a baseball team, anything like that?

Peter Buck: It’s funny you mention baseball. A real good friend of mine wants me to put in money into some Minor League team. I don’t know anything about baseball, you know, and I don’t have that kind of money, anyway. This guy’s putting bank, I tell him, “You’d be a fool to think that this is gonna last forever.” I have a nice house. I’m married, I live near town, it’s a nice house. I’ve got a car that runs. I can buy as many records as I want, but my case is fairly simple. I mean, to me, going out and having a $30 dinner is a big deal. I mean, the amount of money you can make doing this is shocking. I don’t think I’ve seen as much as some people have, but, you know, I mean actually, I’m gonna put it away. And you know, I bought my brother a house, so he’s set up, and you know, I take care of my family and stuff.

Marc Allan: Oh that’s nice.

Peter Buck: Yeah, you know, I mean, it’s a good thing to do with the money. I mean, I was thinking that I could buy a Maserati or something, but, you know, I don’t really even like cars, I kind of have an antagonistic relationship with machines. I mean, I’ve got a Jeep, it cost $17,000, paid cash. I think the guy’s still lying on the floor.

Marc Allan: You didn’t haggle with him, did you?

Peter Buck: I walked in and I said, “Listen, I’ve got exactly this much money.” And I said, “Well this is how much I wanna pay.” It was like 17,8, or something. The guy goes, “Well, that’s about $1,000 less “than what we have on that sticker there.” And I said, “Yeah, but it’s exactly as much “as I’ve got in my pocket.” He went, “What?” And I just lept in, go up, and handed it to him and said, “You count it.” And he counted it and said, “See you later.” I mean, I just happened to get a really big check in, and it was like, I didn’t have a car. This was last year, but I didn’t buy a car until last year, that’s how cheap I am. You know, I mean, I ride my bike everywhere, so. I just figure, hell, I’m tired of like borrowing cars to tote my amps to some club to play with somebody, so I need something to carry equipment, so I got a Jeep.

Marc Allan: That’s great. I mean, that’s a wonderful story. No pretense at all.

Peter Buck: I figured the guy would like, would take my offer- if I had the cash right there. I mean, if I’d said, “Well, gee, I’ll come back with the cash,” that’s one thing. But, you know, most of the guys don’t see that kind of money. You know, it’s like nobody pays cash. And I said, “Here it is. “Take it.” And you know, I got it. I think I got less than they paid for it. I think the guy was just stunned, it was like, “Wow.”

Marc Allan: He probably never saw it in cash, anyway. I mean maybe in a check–

Peter Buck: Yeah, for sure. Everyone in the whole car agency came over and counted out the money. I think they all thought that I was a drug dealer, or something, ’cause it was all in $100 bills, and I’d just got like the biggest check I’d ever gotten, pretty much, from royalties, and I thought, “What the hell, I need a car, I need it bad.” ‘Cause I was renting a car like once every other week to go to Atlanta to visit my mom or something, and it’s like, this is stupid. Paying Budget rental money when I could buy my own car and not worry about it.

Marc Allan: So this was in Athens?

Peter Buck: Yep.

Marc Allan: And they didn’t know who you were?

Peter Buck: I think they figured it out, about halfway through the signing stuff. I think that they just thought I was like laundering drug money or something. I mean it was just like, “What the hell is going on here?”

Marc Allan: Okay. When you come to Indianapolis, it’s sort of like kicking off another leg of the tour, isn’t it? Was it chosen to start here for any reason, or just scheduling, that’s the way things work?

Peter Buck: Scheduling, pretty much. I think partially ’cause we didn’t wanna have a day rehearsal in the place that we’re playing at. And there are a few places that have days open beforehand, so, but you know, we’ve been playing all year, it’s not as if we need to learn songs or anything, but we wanna get used to working with a PA again, cause we’ve been rehearsing in our little studio, which is two 12-inch speakers, and drums, and bass, and guitar. It’s quite different to play with–

Marc Allan: Monster equipment.

Peter Buck: A million-dollar watt system or something, I don’t know.

Marc Allan: Yep. So you’re going to play in the market square the day before, just to practice?

Peter Buck: I’m not sure. I mean, I think we’re there to set the stuff up, but I don’t know. Don’t write that. I’m not sure. I don’t want people hanging around.

Marc Allan: Oh no, hell, I wasn’t gonna write it. I just want to if I could come.

Peter Buck: Usually everyone doesn’t like anyone there. I don’t really care. Mike is real, he’s going, “Goddamn, if I’m working on harmonies, “I don’t want to have someone looking at me.” I think also, what we’re gonna do is workout on the new songs, we’ve tried to cut about four or five new songs, and that’s real embarrassing to do in front of people, ’cause you know, we’re not quite sure like how to end them, and bins sound different to the PA, so once you get to hear yourself, it’s like, “Ooh God, what a horrible bridge. “Rewrite that.”

Marc Allan: Okay. So you don’t want immediate feedback, is what you’re saying. You’ll wait till the next night, when there’s 15,000 people there.

Peter Buck: Yeah. What we would do, we rehearsed for a day, or two days, in Louisville, I guess it was, this year, and the last day, like all the crew had met girls and stuff, and they brought their friends over, and so we’re playing, all of a sudden there’s about 70 people watching us, and we’re going, “Shit, you know we haven’t played in a place all year, “really, except for the dates we did in Australia and Japan, “and a big place, and we’ve got new songs, “and you know, “and they’re all watching us, oh God, this is embarrassing.” And really it is sometimes, it’s embarrassing some of the things you have to do to be in a band.

Marc Allan: So there are four or five new songs that you’re gonna play during this show?

Peter Buck: We’ll definitely have three, and then there’s another four or five above that that we’re working on.

Marc Allan: New R.E.M. songs, or cover songs?

Peter Buck: Our songs.

Marc Allan: Oh, okay.

Peter Buck: Yeah, we write all the time, and we just have had very little time to rehearse, and so this month off, we’ve been rehearsing every day, and I got practice in about two hours.

Marc Allan: All right, let me just ask you one other thing, and I’ll let you go, and that is, can you tell me about the songs, what they’re called, or anything like that?

Peter Buck: Lyrically, Michael’s still going through changes on ’em. I mean, he’s still at the melody stage. The lyrics usually come last, because he kinda fits it around what we do musically. Sound-wise, let me think. We’ve got one that sounds kind of Scottish. I don’t know. It’s kind of in a strange guitar tuning that I like. It sounds like a bagpipe, the guitar does. And the other one’s kind of a rock ‘n’ roll song. We’ve got a couple, it’s just hard to describe ’em, you know, they’re a little bit different than stuff we’ve done in the past. Some of them are real droney, a couple of them. The only song that’s got a title is a song called “Belong.”

Marc Allan: “Belong”?

Peter Buck: Yeah.

Marc Allan: B-E-L-O-N-G?

Peter Buck: Yeah.

Marc Allan: Oh, okay.

Peter Buck: And pretty much everything that we’ve written so far has been major chord, but only a couple of chords, less chords than we’re used to even writing with, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s ’cause we write ’em at sound checks, that’s the way they come out.

Marc Allan: “Belong” is which kind of song? Is that the Scottish song, or is that–

Peter Buck: No, that’s just a couple of chords.

Marc Allan: Kind of a straight rock ‘n’ roll thing?

Peter Buck: No, it’s not. It’s somewhere in between ballad, it’s got kind of a weird rhythm thing, and then this kind of circular riffs, and circular background harmonies. It seems like the songs are getting more static as far as development, chord-wise, and getting more kinda out there as far as harmonies, and melodies, and stuff go. Who knows? We might not record any of this stuff, but it’s always nice to have new songs. I remember we did tours for years where we’d do songs and never record them, and people would go, “God, whatever happened to that song? “I kinda like that.” “Oh, we just didn’t do it.”

Marc Allan: Do you remember back several years touring with Gang of Four?

Peter Buck: Sure. Yeah, they’re a big influence on us.

Marc Allan: Yeah, I just wondered, ’cause that’s when I saw you, and I was wondering what that was like.

Peter Buck: Great. You know, we really didn’t like opening for anybody, but we kind of decided, well, we’ll work with bands that we respect, if they’ll take us. We weren’t competing with the Gang of Four, because, you know, ideologically they were correct. I mean, it wasn’t like when we opened for Bow Wow Wow a couple of times, and I was listening to crap. I mean, you know, not only did I not like the band, but they were fascists. And those guys, I liked the music a lot. I liked the dynamic of the group, the fact that they wrote together, and that they were all equal to one another like we are, and I think we learned a lot from those guys, in the positive and the negative. We learned, both of those bands broke up through, you know, despair over not being successful, and greed, and arguments within the band. And we learned not to do that. We also learned, idealistically, a way to be in a band as a kind of a commune. I hate to use that word, but, you know, four people working together, as opposed to the star and his backup guys.

Marc Allan: They were bitter, I think, at each other, by the time–

Peter Buck: At the end. You know they’re getting back together?

Marc Allan: Oh really?

Peter Buck: I’m not sure who’s in the band, I think it might be just Jon and Andy. Michael has a demo tape that they’re doing, it sounds real good.

Marc Allan: That’s good. Well, it’s good to know, I guess, but I guess everybody gets back together eventually.

Peter Buck: doubt they’ll make as much as The Who, or the Rolling Stones would.

Marc Allan: Yeah, well, that’d be one of those things, but. Any rate, well I really appreciate, dude, you’ve been very generous with your time–

Peter Buck: Sure, no problem at all.

Marc Allan: Thanks, I’ll see you when you’re here.

Peter Buck: All right

Marc Allan: Bye-bye.