By Lora Watters
Were they to follow through with a plan Bill Berry loosely proposed in a 1991 interview to break up one minute after midnight on New Year’s Eve 1999, then the next few months may be your last chance to see R.E.M. live. However, despite illnesses that plagued their last major tour and the departure of original drummer Berry, R.E.M. shows no signs of slowing down. Short of a small, intimate club, Hollywood’s scenic, 6,000-seat Greek Theatre was the perfect place to see the group open a series of North American dates on their new tour.
The Athens band played a range of songs from their nearly two decades of history, resulting in a fun collection of new tunes from latest release Up, hits from other ’90s albums, plus oldies but goodies from mid-80s records Document and Life’s Rich Pageant.
New York’s Mercury Rev opened the show at dusk with a mellow, keyboard-friendly set that included a cover of the Talking Heads’ “Once In A Lifetime.”
To elated cheers from the crowd, R.E.M. took the stage after nightfall, opening with a sped-up, vocally charged version of “Lotus” from Up which crushed the album version like a grape. The remaining members of R.E.M. — vocalist Michael Stipe, bassist Mike Mills and guitarist Peter Buck, backed by talented younger musicians Ken Stringfellow, Scott McCaughey and Joey Waronker — then energetically ripped through “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?,” “The Wake-Up Bomb” and the smooth “Suspicion.”
Casually dressed in a navy blue T-shirt bearing a face he described as “Iggy Pop with an afro,” Stipe took on a serious, introspective tone during “Daysleeper” and the spoken-word “E-Bow the Letter,” plus the pretty “Sweetness Follows” and “Find the River” from the band’s 1992 smash Automatic For The People.
From the dancing during the 1986 single “Fall On Me” to couples rocking out to the popular and anthem-like “Everybody Hurts” to everyone standing for “Losing My Religion,” the crowd seemed pleased with the 90-minute set, and other than a minor no-smoking altercation in rear section C, remained on good behavior throughout the evening.
Under colorful, lit-up images that looked like a deranged cross between a Lite-Brite, Las Vegas and the Moulin Rouge, the band continued with a brand new “Great Beyond,” older hits “The One I Love” and “Finest Worksong,” and Up‘s “At My Most Beautiful,” replete with banjo and Beach Boys-inspired vocal arrangements. With Mills dressed in a wild black suit complemented by yellow accents, and Buck dancing in a conservative black suit and white dress shirt, both the band members and audience exuded enthusiasm for the set’s closers “Walk Unafraid” from Up and “Man on the Moon” from Automatic…..
Promptly encouraged by screams and cheering, Stipe re-emerged on stage to showcase his newly acquired guitar-playing skills on an acoustic version of “Falls to Climb.” In what served as both a poking fun and tribute to fellow singer-songwriter Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, Stipe jokingly delved into a passage from the Pumpkins’ “Disarm,” and proclaimed that someday he’ll write a song Corgan can’t sing “even on his best day.” Mills then joined Stipe with on acoustic guitar for “Why Not Smile” and the full band returned as the audience stood for the upbeat “Crush With Eyeliner” and piano-loaded “Tongue,” both from 1994’s Monster.
The group resurrected the classic “Cuyahoga” from Life’s Rich… and wrapped the encore with a no-holds-barred grand finale of 1987’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” (which recently regained popularity as a theme in the 1996 alien flick Independence Day) with bits and pieces of Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” randomly intertwined into the song. Just as the number was winding down, Stipe proclaimed, “I’m not stopping yet” and kept the song going another verse.
While it would have been nice to see the band bust out material from their earlier albums like Chronic Town or Reckoning, the show served as a worthwhile kickoff to what’s sure to be a successful national tour. Hopefully, we’ll be able to catch them again after New Year’s Eve.
