Newspaper Page Text
Q6A with BERTHS DOWNS
A Look Back at R.E.M.s 30-year Career
B etween 1997 and 2001, I was a temporary employee
of R.E.M.'s home office. During that time I became
friends with the band's manager, Bertis Downs. For
years since, I've wanted to interview him from a fan's
perspective, as opposed to that of a journalist. Since this week
marks the 30th anniversary of the band's very first public per
formance, it seemed like now was the time to do it. As always,
Downs was gracious and forthcoming. Here are some highlights
from our conversation.
Flagpole: My first exposure to R.E.M. was the band perform
ing on Nickelodeon's teen talk show "Livewire" (Oct. 30, 1983).
I was just a little kid, 12 years old, living in Miami, FL, and it
was the early days of cable television. It was the early days of
the band, too, and I was wondering how these opportunities
came about. Did the band actively pursue television?
Bertis Downs: Well, it was the early days of the band from
the perspective of now. At the time they had been
around for a few years at that point. I remember
some early TV they did, they did a Letterman
show [note: this happened three weeks before the
"Livewire" broadcast], and they had just played
[UGA's] Legion Field the week before. We did a
bunch of shows for "The Cutting Edge," which was
a documentary type of show on MTV [note: "The
Cutting Edge" was produced by the band's then-
label, I.R.S. Records]. I wouldn't say the band
necessarily sought out TV, it wasn't part of any
master plan. We would always kind of evaluate
things and see if they felt right. It was always the
kind of thing where they went with their gut in
terms of what made sense and what didn't.
FP: Fables of the Reconstruction came out in
1985, and “Can't Get There from Here" was the lead
single, and it's my first experience of having a band
I like do a song that is unlike anything they've done
before. It became, and remains, my favorite album
by the band, but I remember reading interviews
where the band said they hated it and Peter Buck
flat out said, Tables sucked." That was my first experience of
loving a record by a band but the band hating the record.
BD: I don't know that they still hate that record. I can't
speak for Peter with regard to that particular interview. He was
obviously in a fit of honesty at the time. On this last tour they
played quite a few songs from Fables... I'll say this: the making
of Fables was difficult. I think we've gotten smarter over the
years about where we make records and when. And they don't
generally pick northern climates during wintertime. At that
point in their career they'd only made two albums, arid those
were both in Charlotte, NC. So, we hired Joe Boyd [Nick Drake,
Incredible String Band, et al.], a lovely guy who's working with
us on the reissue. He came to Athens, and we did some demos
at Jim Hawkins' studio on Boulevard. Then a month later we're
toward the end of winter, but March ain't exactly spring in
London. There we are in north London at an old church that
had been converted to a studio... and London getting dark
really early... I just think that record was a tough experience
for them and it colored their opinion, but I think they like all
their records.
FP: The next big thing from my history as a fan is that it's
1987, Document comes out, and fans tend to always have a
sense of ownership toward a band they love. All of a sudden
everyone in my high school owns Document Then, the band
signs to Warner Bros., Green comes out in 1988, and the band
changes from playing 3-5,000 seat theaters to playing arenas.
What were some of the difficulties the band encountered when
making that change to playing bigger places?
BD: In the memory of it there's always a little bit of a
perspective shift, and I don't remember it being as abrupt
[as that]. They'd already played some arenas before that (on
1987's Work Tour) so there had already been sort of a shift. It
wasn't like jumping off a cliff from being small to huge. They
toured all the time, and it was always market-by-market. In
some places you played smaller places because of the size of
the town, the draw of the band and that's what the promoter
felt like was the right place to play. We always tried to play
places that had some personality to them. We really don't like
playing bad buildings... The big thing about '89 was... you
know, in the early days they played all the time on the road, so
those weren't really considered tours. But starting in '89 it was
certainly the first time we ever did two legs in America, two
legs in Europe, the far East, you know, all in one year. That was
the big change; just the wear and tear of going at it and being
away from home and friends and family and being in constant
travel-mode for an entire year.
FP: 1 saw the band on that tour at The Omni (Atlanta) and
the Macon Coliseum...
BD: Macon was the last date on that tour.
FP: ...and then the show at The Fox [Nov. 13, 1989]...
BD: That wasn't part of the tour. That was a one off.
FP: Right. The one where they played (unannounced) all of
Murmur and all of Green back to back. I’d never seen or heard
of a band doing anything tike that. That was such a thrill. It's
probably not a big story or anything, but I wanted
to know who decided to do that?
BD: Clearly, the band decided to do it. I have
no idea whose idea it was. But one of the guys
in the band must have thought it would be cool.
It wouldn't surprise me if it were Peter. The two
charities [that benefited from the show] were the
Campaign for a Prosperous Georgia and the Legal
Environmental Assistance Foundation (L.E.A.F.).
We'd done work with both those groups in the
past, and they just seemed like the right groups to
do a benefit for at the end of the tour.
FP: I think there's a tendency for fans to add a
certain amount of gravity to things the band might
take very casually.
BD: Oh, yeah. I think that's always the case.
FP: I remember very clearly thinking during that
Fox show: "Not only are they bookending the band,
but they're bookending the decade!" They prob
ably never even thought about that, and here I am
thinking it was this grand statement.
BD: I think they probably just wanted to make it different
than an average show. They didn't want to go out and just play
the hits and the set they'd just played a year of, not that they
did the same set every night, but just wanted to do something
to distinguish the show. And here we are talking about it 21
years later.
Gordon Lamb
Downs discusses the band's political activism, the backlash following
New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Billy Berry's departure and more as the interview
continues on www.flagpole.com.
18 FLAGPOLE.COM • MARCH 31,2010