Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Up by R.E.M. Up by R.E.M. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 660c7973f8a24e2c • Your IP : 116.202.236.252 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. The Real Reason R.E.M. Broke Up. Regardless of what your opinion about R.E.M. is, there's no denying that they shaped the face of alternative rock for years. Heck, they've basically been every kind of alternative rock band themselves. They spent their formative years as cult favorite college rockers. Then, they started attracting more and more attention until they were making music with genuine mainstream appeal. Between 1991 and 1992 alone, they released the folk- inspired Out of Time and the baroque Automatic For The People, making them easily the most successful band to attack the audiences of the early grunge era with both mandolins ("Losing My Religion") and string arrangements (A good chunk of Automatic ). Oh, and as Rolling Stone reminds us, said arrangements were by Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, because of course. That alone would have been enough to cement these guys' legacy, but they just kept on going, pinballing from straight rock to low-fidelity artsiness to electronic experiments. And then, in 2011, they broke up. As Matthew Perpetua of Rolling Stone tells us, the decision was amicable enough — but what on earth could have caused these seemingly boundless creative forces of music to part ways after three decades of glory? What could be the real reason R.E.M. broke up? R.E.M. just wandered away to do other things. In a 2016 interview with David Fricke of Rolling Stone , guitarist Peter Buck insisted that R.E.M. never truly broke up, despite their 2011 message where they declared they were "calling it a day as a band." To be fair, there's a lot of "technically," there. The original lineup had technically already fractured in 1997, when drummer Bill Berry left the group. Buck himself admits that the rest of R.E.M. technically broke up in 2011, but he's also quick to point out that they only "broke up" in the sense that they stopped touring and making records. They still have all sorts of properties they own together, from publishing companies to record masters and even buildings. As for why they broke up, in whatever sense they feel like they've done so, Buck says that they basically just grew weary of life in a huge major label band with scores of hits. This is evidenced by the fact, he notes, that former members have kept quite active, but prefer to keep their artistic activities at a grassroots level instead of forming supergroups. And how did they arrive at the all-important decision to "break up?" According to Buck, Michael Stipe said: "I think you guys will understand. I need to be away from this for a long time." Buck replied: "How about forever?" and bassist Mike Mills chimed in: "Sounds right to me." Talk about band chemistry. Whatever Happened To R.E.M.? The most famous and successful product of the 1980s music scene in Athens, Georgia, R.E.M. became one of the biggest bands in the world. Not only did Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Peter Buck, and Bill Berry sell millions of records and make really artsy music videos, they pioneered and popularized a whole new genre of music: college rock (or as it would later be known, alternative rock). Built on jangling guitars, melancholy melodies, and the crushing baritone of Stipe, R.E.M. secured their place in rock history with songs like "Fall on Me," "The One I Love," "Everybody Hurts," "Losing My Religion," and "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" R.E.M. was even enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. R.E.M. dominated alternative radio, MTV, and the charts in the '80s and '90s, but the band eventually ceded its position to other, major left-of- center groups that followed in its wake. So afterwards, what exactly happened to the four musicians who changed music history? Well, here's what the members of this merry band of shiny happy people have been up to over the past few years. R.E.M. split up in 2011. In March 2011, R.E.M. released its fifteenth studio album, Collapse into Now. Just six months later, the band announced that it was unequivocally, absolutely, and completely done. "As lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band," read an announcement on the group's website (via Rolling Stone ). "We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished." But why? Why end a band after more than three decades of unbelievable success and musical experimentation? "The time just feels right," bassist Mike Mills added, assuring fans that "there's no disharmony here, no falling-outs, no lawyers-squaring off," and that the decision was made "together" and "amicably." Singer Michael Stipe later told Salon that the group had been winding out since its 2008 tour. In 2016, guitarist Peter Buck recalled the breakup discussion to Billboard , saying, "We got together, and Michael [Stipe] said, 'I think you guys will understand. I need to be away from this for a long time.' And I said, 'How about forever?' Michael looked at Mike, and Mike said, 'Sounds right to me.' That's how we decided." Buck also chalks up the end to the not wanting to become an over-the-hill rock band that was just playing the hits. "We didn't want to keep doing 20-year-old songs." Michael Stipe moved into the visual arts. Michael Stipe has always been an artsy guy, and his need and willingness to express himself has never been limited to his substantial musical talents. While still fronting R.E.M., he released a coffee table book about a certain New York rock legend called Two Times Intro: On the Road with Patti Smith . That book prominently featured Stipe's photography, a passion he's had more time to pursue since the demise of R.E.M. And in July 2018, Stipe published Volume 1 , a collection of pretty pictures he took between 1980 and 2015. A year later, he teamed up with Canadian artist and author Douglas Coupland (author of Generation X, who coined that name to describe his and Stipe's generation) to make Our Interference Times: A Visual Record , another collection of provocative visual art. The erstwhile singer also dabbles in sculpture and art installations. In 2018, Journal Gallery in Brooklyn presented Infinity Mirror, which included Stipe's artful arrangement of a bunch of old chairs and shelves. "Each of these is something coming out of the magic decade of the 1970s. I turned ten on January 4, 1970, and turned 20 on January 4, 1980, so it was a teenage decade for me," Stipe told ARTnews . As for what inspired the installation, he saw the shelves online, and as he explained, "They just looked so '70s — then I wondered,' What would happen if I stacked them?'" Michael Stipe is still making music . but rarely. As one of the most famous and distinctively voiced frontmen to ever bounce around a stage, a breakout solo career for Michael Stipe seems like an inevitability, and any music he'd release would sell at least moderately well to R.E.M.'s huge fan contingent. Well, one would think that, but in spite of this, Stipe has released extraordinarily little music in his own name since leaving his world-changing band. In October 2019, eight years into a professional life sans Mills, Buck, and Berry, Stipe released his first single, "Your Capricious Soul," with proceeds going to a climate change activism charity called Extinction Rebellion. Three months later, Stipe released a follow-up, another one-off single called "Drive to the Ocean." He released it on his website on January 4, 2020, his 60th birthday, at a price of 77 cents and pledging to send profits to another climate organization called Pathway to Paris. As of February 2020, Stipe has yet to release an entire album's worth of material. Yes, that is Michael Stipe in that thing. As the lead singer of R.E.M., Michael Stipe was always the "face" of the band, and he was highly recognizable, what with his clean pate, wiry frame, and wildly fluid dance moves. So it's of little surprise then that Stipe has been the one guy from R.E.M. to go Hollywood, showing up with relative frequency on television and in movies. He's played an exaggerated version of himself twice on the silly and satirical At Home with Amy Sedaris, popped up as a talking head in documentaries about R.E.M. and the band Big Star, along with multiple appearances on both The Colbert Report and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.