Volume 5, Issue 24: All Happy Families

"That's another thing. I don't want to hear anymore how it was in your day."

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This week, R.E.M. was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. They celebrated by playing “Losing My Religion,” their most popular song, live. It was the first time the band has performed together on stage since it disbanded in 2011, and the only video I’ve been able to find of it is low-quality footage shot by someone in the crowd with their phone. I hope that’s corrected soon, because if we don’t get a high-quality version of the only R.E.M. performance in 13 years, I’m going to throw a shoe through the wall.

It has been a week to fete R.E.M. Anthony Mason took a break from elbowing Dale Davis in the face to sit down with the band for a rare interview for “CBS This Morning” and visited with them in their studio space here in Athens, Georgia, the town I’ve lived in since 2013 and the town I love. It’s an excellent interview, all the more so because it’s so rare to get them to sit down together and do anything. In public, anyway.

Mason, after getting his haircut correct like Anthony Mason, finishes the interview by asking the right question, the one question he has to ask because it’s the one question everyone wants the answer to, even if they already know it:

Mason: What would it take to get you guys back together?

Mike Mills: A comet.

Bill Berry: Super glue.

Mason: It ain’t happening, it’s what you’re saying.

Michael Stipe: [shakes head dramatically]

Mason: Why is that?

Peter Buck: It’ll never be as good.

I still remember, vividly, the day R.E.M. retired. It was September 2011, and I was actually in the Gawker offices, visiting with friends and then-current Deadspin staffers, for reasons I can’t really remember now. The R.E.M. news electrified the newsroom, which is sort of remarkable to think about, that the staffers of Gawker Media, at its absolute peak at that point as the supposed snarky jaded hipster media conglomerate, could be so shaken by news that a deeply sincere indie rock band would no longer be making music. But R.E.M. felt like a band that would be there forever. Because they always had been.

R.E.M. had been there in high school, as my friends and I listened to “Automatic for the People” on repeat while driving the country roads of Central Illinois, as Tim sang “Nightswimming” for his audition for the school play. R.E.M. had been there in college, as they, and the rest of us, mourned the loss of Kurt Cobain on “Let Me In.” (Cobain always connected with R.E.M. on a fundamental, almost primal level: "I don't know how that band does what they do," Cobain told Rolling Stone in one of his final interviews, in 1994. "God, they're the greatest. They've dealt with their success like saints, and they keep delivering great music.") R.E.M. was there as I entered the grownup world, with their eternally underrated “Up” album speaking to anyone who has ever felt lonely and lost. R.E.M. was there before all of that too, and after all of it. They were the soundtrack of an expanding life.

And then they were gone. A rock band? Retiring?

Their reasoning, though, was unassailable, further proof of one of the key things that made them so great: They were normal sane human beings, or at least as sane and normal as one of the biggest rock bands in the world could possibly be. “A wise man once said, ’the skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave,’” Stipe said in a release. “We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we're going to walk away from it.”

And they did. And then they got to be normal human beings again—or maybe they just remained that all along. When you live in Athens, you inevitably run into members of R.E.M. all the time; they do live here, after all, and it’s not that big of a town. (I’ve also become good friends with Bertis Downs, the band’s longtime manager and a fellow devoted public school advocate.) They are merely regular people you see walking around. I’ve had dinner with Mills before; we mostly just talked baseball. You see Buck in the crowd at rock shows in town constantly. Last August, when I performed “Suffragette City” as David Bowie in Bertis’ annual birthday rock band karaoke show, my friend Carrie and I talked to Berry for 10 minutes before I went on stage. (“Will. Carrie. Like me! Bill Berry!”) Mills, Buck and Berry were all in the audience for that performance; you’d think it’d be nerve-racking to sing in front of three-quarters of R.E.M., but seriously, they do just blend in: They really are just regular people. Stipe is inevitably more elusive, but it’s still pretty wild to live in a place where you occasionally find yourself in line behind one of the biggest rock stars in the planet at the health food store. He’s very particular about his rutabaga.

And that early retirement, that insistence that they are done, well, that’s mature and normal and sane too in a way that, today, almost feels revolutionary. The implication behind Mason’s continued questions about whether the band will ever get back together for a world tour—including one question when he rubbed his fingers together as if he were counting money—is that such a tour not only would be incredibly lucrative, it would be entirely in keeping in what every other rock band does, as a matter of course, even obligation. The rock world that R.E.M. left in 2011 is both entirely different than the one that exists in 2024—and also stultifyingly the same: The genre has nearly fallen out of current popular music entirely, which means that the only rock bands who can sell out shows anymore are nostalgia plays: I just went and saw the Rolling Stones last week, after all, and it is becoming a family tradition for me to buy my parents tickets to a different aging rock band for Christmas every year. (Previous editions include The Eagles and Bruce Springsteen.) An R.E.M. tour would be huge, but it would not just be that: It would be restorative. It would harken you back to a time when a band featuring these four guys really could be the biggest rock band in the world.

But the thing that made them so great is exactly the reason they’d never do that. As much as I enjoyed seeing the Rolling Stones last week, it’s unquestionable that they’re nothing close to the band they once were. Mick Jagger does his best, but he’s still 80 years old, and the band feels more dutiful than inspired, particularly Keith Richards, who, I’ll have to confess, looked to me only half there most of the time. This did not diminish my enjoyment of the show: The songs are still perfect, and if you get a chance to see the Rolling Stones while you still can, you absolutely have to do so. But you more admire the fact that they’re still out there doing it than you are enraptured by the show itself. You’re mostly remembering what they once were, which is to say, you’re remembering what you once were.

That R.E.M. would resist such nostalgia plays, that, as Buck puts it so simply, “it’ll never be as good,” has the simple purity of their greatest music. Most bands would hear “it’ll never be as good,” and they’d nod and agree but still go out there anyway: There is money to be made, after all. That R.E.M. has decided not to do that, that they believe there are things more important than money, that the words “selling out” still have some sort of meaning to them, well, it’s a reminder that they, more than anyone else of the era, remain the truest incarnation of the Generation X rock band ethos: What matters is being real, staying true to who you are and letting your work speak for itself. Sure, there’s a lot of money. But some things are more important than that. Being able to look at yourself in the mirror, to look at the work you have produced and being proud of it rather than having to constantly repackage it and feign enthusiasm, to pretend you have not changed and grown as a person, to dress up and commodify your nostalgia, to not be true … that’s the opposite of what R.E.M. always was. It’s the opposite of what made them mean so much to so many. Including me.

A couple of years ago, I was fortunate enough to get to go to the great 40 Watt Club here in Athens for the 40th anniversary celebration of the release of “Chronic Town,” the band’s first album. It was an all-star show, hosted by David Cross, with various musicians and celebrities coming on stage to perform their favorite R.E.M. songs. (My favorite honestly might have been Darius Rucker, though the Indigo Girls were great too.)

At the end of the show, Mills and Buck themselves came on stage and actually played on several songs, on a small stage, in front of about 400 people. Stipe stood just off right, a tiny couple of steps away from grabbing a microphone and giving those 400 people what millions would give anything to see. But he just clapped along, and smiled, and danced, and enjoyed being among friends and family and then getting to go home at the end of the night, back to a normal life.

R.E.M. knew when to walk off the stage, and when to stay off the stage, because they know what’s important in life, because they always did, and that’s why we loved them so much. They were true to themselves, which allowed them to be so true to the rest of us. Being with friends, being at peace, living in the now rather than the past, giving yourself and the ones you love room to grow, being able to argue a punk kid about Pete Rose at a nice dinner, or make puns about your name, or stand in line for the right root vegetable—living a full and rich and present life. R.E.M.’s music is wonderful. But how they’ve lived outside that music may be even more impressive. Do your work. Make it great. And let it stand on its own. Then make sure, when you’re done, when you’re with the ones you love, to remember to smile and dance and clap along.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. In Praise of Joey Chestnut and the Truly American Sport of Competitive Eating, The Washington Post. I had a lot of fun with this one. This piece came out great.

2. Pixar Movies, Ranked, Vulture. Updated with Inside Out 2.

3. My Guide to Filling Out Your All-Star Ballot, MLB.com. This is the only ballot you need.

4. Will Smith Movies, Ranked, Vulture. Updated with Bad Boys: Ride or Die.

5. This Week’s Five Fascinations, MLB.com. The Braves’ struggles, the Padres’ successes, the relentless Royals, Rickwood Field and a Father’s Day reflection.

6. Caitlin Clark and the Stupidity of Sports “Clout,” New York. I had more to say about Caitlin Clark last week than I did this week.

7. This Week’s Power Rankings, MLB.com. It’s incredibly difficult to keep these things under 3,000 words every week.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we talked about Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man,” as well as “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” and “Anatomy of a Murder.”

Seeing Red, Bernie and I are watching the Cardinals veer back and forth. Again.

Also! I have yet another new podcast. It’s actually not just mine. MLB.com just launched the Morning Lineup podcast, an every-weekday morning podcast that recaps all the games and big stories from the night before in under 10 minutes. I’ll be doing it every Friday morning, though this week I’ll be filling in both Tuesday and Wednesday morning. It’s really fun—I had a blast doing this one. Subscribe!

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“America Should Appreciate How Joe Biden Handled His Son’s Trial,” Jonathan V. Last, The Bulwark. Key bit:

So just to sum up: President Biden kept the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who was investigating his son. Biden’s attorney general granted that U.S. attorney special counsel status when it was requested. The special counsel charged Hunter with 12 felonies in 2 separate cases. Each case was overseen by a Trump-appointed judge. There is no indication that President Biden ever spoke with the FBI, the attorney general, or any other member of the Department of Justice about these matters.

And President Biden’s reaction to his son’s conviction is to say that he loves his kid, accepts the outcome, and respects the judicial process.

Isn’t this everything we ask of a president? Isn’t this the most ethical and proper handling of the office imaginable? Is there one single thing that President Biden could have done better?

No.

And will the voting public give President Biden any credit for this?

Also, I really enjoyed Michael Weinreb on Steve Garvey.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

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Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
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CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Leave,” R.E.M. Haven’t picked an R.E.M. song in a while, so let’s get them back in teh mix. I’m always a little surprised how often I return to this particular album.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

This woman celebrated her [redacted] birthday this week with a massive chicken sandwich, as she should. Happy birthday, Mom, and happy Father’s Day to my dad, and all good dads, there are a lot of good dads out there.

Have a great weekend, all. Let’s keep stomping those Cubs, Cards.

Best,
Will