Maps and Legends: The Story of R.E.M.

by John Hunter

The second printing of Maps and Legends has sold out, and a third printing has been ordered. It should be available from Monday, March 11, 2024. The most thorough and comprehensive biography of R.E.M. yet published, Maps and Legends covers not just the band’s entire career, from “Radio Free Europe” to Collapse Into Now, but also delves deeply into the childhoods of each of the band members, tells the story of each of the teenage groups one or more of them played in before R.E.M. – among them Bad Habits, Shadowfax, the Back Door Band, Gangster, and the Wuoggerz – and concludes with a detailed look at the solo work of Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe. John Hunter was born in 1968 in Raleigh, North Carolina. At the age of sixteen, he began to sneak into local clubs such as the Brewery and the Cat’s Cradle, where he saw artists ranging from Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, and the Replacements to the dB’s, Let’s Active, and the Connells. From 1986 to 1991, he studied English at the University of Georgia, during which time he also performed at the 40 Watt Club, Uptown Lounge, and Rockfish Palace. More so than any other biographer, he witnessed firsthand major events in R.E.M.’s career and in the larger Athens music scene during the second half of the 1980s. To research Maps and Legends, he pored through over a thousand original newspaper and magazine articles about R.E.M., watched and listened to hundreds of video and audio interviews with the band, and conducted new, original interviews with eyewitness sources and members of the band’s inner circle, ranging from high school classmates, bandmates, and friends of Peter Buck and Michael Stipe to Hib-Tone Records founder Jonny Hibbert and the band’s catalyst Kathleen O’Brien to Jeff Walls of Guadalcanal Diary and R.E.M. producer John Keane. The cover photograph was taken by Bob Crisler during R.E.M.’s performance of September 21, 1982 at the Drumstick in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Genres: Music

706 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2023

About the author

A native Virginian and graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, JOHN HUNTER is an award-winning teacher and educational consultant. Hunter led his first sessions of the World Peace Game at Richmond Community High School in 1978. Since then, he has taught the game successfully in a variety of settings, from public schools in Virginia and Maryland to a session with Norwegian students sponsored by the European Youth Initiative. He has spoken at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Google’s Palo Alto campus, the Pentagon, the United Nations, and elsewhere. His March 2011 TED talk was greeted with a standing ovation, and Arianna Huffington and Chris Anderson named it the No. 1 talk of TED 2011.

Reviews

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a lot of admiration for this book. For one thing, it’s much more comprehensive than other books about the band (though it cites them well), with more information on the band members’ roots and music background. It’s also quite clear-eyed about the band’s strengths and weaknesses, and it doesn’t shy away from noting bad work and bad behavior—while maintaining an equally clear view of what has also made so much of their work so wonderful.

[Tom Kielty · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's an uneasy task chronicling the career of an act as iconoclastic as R.E.M.. Like Timothy White's "Catch A Fire: The Life of Bob Marley" and Bob Mehr's Replacements biography, "Trouble Boys," "Maps and Legends: The Story of R.E.M." is destined to serve as the definitive account of four University of Georgia dropouts that went from the abandoned Athens, GA Episcopal church where they both lived and performed their first show to playing to adoring audiences around the globe. Along the way they took what was known among students and aficionados as college rock and propelled it to a multi-million dollar popular culture platform known as "alternative."

Hunter's research is exhaustive, as seventy-four pages of references and an additional 126 pages of footnotes clearly evidences, yet despite his admitted fandom he is an objective reporter. To his credit he calls out the band's victories and some well-hidden internal defeats with equal detail. One, perhaps not so well hidden theme that is illustrated early, is that despite their carefully captivated public persona as the humble, "Nicest band in rock," from their days as music-obsessed teens Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe were focused on being rock stars and did whatever it took to achieve that goal.

Which is not to say that their melding of unique musical influences, sensibilities and styles didn't provide the undeniably original sound that earned them millions of fans. Their stubborn insistence on calling their own shots dates all the way back to the maneuverings around their first single, "Radio Free Europe," which ended up being recorded again for their IRS album debut, "Murmur" (which followed the labels' first American release, the band's EP, "Chronic Town") after first perking the ears of college radio DJ's as a 7" on ultra indie Athens label, Hib-Tone. Their Hib-Tone benefactor, Jonny Hibbert, was among the first to be discarded by the four-headed beast who insisted all songs be credited to "Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe."

Which, despite the often outlandishly hyperbolic tales spun to journalists by Buck (referred to by his bandmates as "Tales from Buck World) was completely accurate. Throughout their career each of the musically inclined members came up with original melodies that would be worked to fruition, often amongst swapped instruments, by Berry, Buck and Mills with Stipe responsible for lyrics and the group's evocative art work and thematic approach. While that allowed for some of the most musically diverse and adventurous sounds created among their 80's and 90's peers it also presented a challenge to "not sound like R.E.M." Buck encapsulates that with this candid quote.

"I can write that kind of stuff in my sleep. I can write "Driver 8" every day of the week. We all can," Buck said in a 1985 interview before admitting, "It's kind of the quintessential R.E.M. song." The author notes a similarity of chord progressions in both, "The One I Love," and "Imitation of Life," which was nearly left off "Accelerate" for sounding "Too R.E.M." Sounding "too R.E.M." was a problem most bands would die for and it provided the always insular act to keep tight ranks while simultaneously allowing their egos to expand side-by-side with their bank accounts. As R.E.M. continued as critics' darlings they needed to expand beyond their core four and when for the first time an outsider asked for a bigger slice of the pie, the request was not met favorably.

Peter Holsapple was a hero to early R.E.M. His band of regional heroes, the db's, had hosted the young Athens band as a support act and when R.E.M.'s rising star eclipsed their North Carolina mentors they returned the favor, eventually adding Holsapple as a fifth touring member and during the taping of their "MTV Unplugged" appearance Stipe's introduction was, "Here we are, this is Mike Mills, Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Peter Holsapple, we are R.E.M." A stream of adulatory accolades from his bandmates/employers ended when Holsapple had the audacity to ask for a co-writing credit on the largely forgotten "Out of Time" deep cut, "Low." He was soon out. Years later when Joey Waronker who had taken his place on the drummer's seat after Berry's retirement and was told after a five year apprenticeship that a membership in the exclusive club of four (five if one includes manager Bertis Downs) was not forthcoming left of his own volition despite being asked to continue as a "non-member" member of the group. Some questioned the band's dismissal of Downs's longtime managerial partner, Jefferson Holt, due to an unspecified sexual infraction which has since been buried beneath non-disclosure agreements but cynics pointed out the convenient timing: R.E.M. was getting ready to sign a new deal with Warner Brothers following their, at the time, record breaking $80 million contract. Their next deal would be split five ways, not six.

For hardcore fans (of which I am admittedly one) the inside info and salacious gossip is revealing but to Hunter's credit it always serves as an aside or in some cases an explanation of R.E.M.'s processes both musically - writing, recording, performing and touring - and personally - internal conflicts between bandmates, musical differences, scheduling and the fragile balance between work and life - as an influence on the finished product they delivered to the public. Equally impressive is the author's encyclopedic knowledge of the band's musical output. He leaves no B-Side, Fan Club Single, Bootleg or drunken cover (of which there many, often positioning themselves dangerously close to the Replacements' inebriated alter-ego the "Mats in terms of performance level consumption).

The period following Berry's departure is particularly interesting following the worldwide success of "Monster" (which the author pans while making note of the health emergencies that befell Berry, Mills and Stipe during the supporting tour), the underrated (to my ears) "New Adventures In Hi-Fi" largely recorded on the "Monster" tour in a style Buck had often campaigned for and which Radiohead had employed when assembling, "The Bends." Returning to the studio for the first time without Berry, R.E.M. rises to the occasion with the impressive stylistic departure of "Up." Hunter finds himself less enthused about the triumvirate's ensuing trio of releases ("Reveal," Around The Sun," "Accelerate") that musically find a struggle reconciling the more "modern" approach of "Up" with the guitar driven classics that formed the definitive R.E.M rock jangle of "Reckoning" through "Document." Each of the post, "Up" records show flashes of the band's revered greatness but with each of the three remaining members questioning their focus and devotion at various times the high points are fleeting. If nothing else the band did break new ground in one respect, longtime sideman Scott McCaughey received a writer's credit on the "Accelerate" bonus track, "Airliner." An honorary membership in the Athens "Gang of Four," which was now what the author repeatedly referred to as a "Three-Legged Dog."

A dog that still had some fight in it and going in to record, "Collapse Into Now," the three founders, "Had a little talk about what we wanted to accomplish and decided that we wanted to make one final last great record." Free of expectations and constraints, no longer feeling burdened by sounding too much like what they envisioned was their stereotypical signature sound, they simply wrote and recorded the songs that they felt strongest about. Throughout their career, particularly in their mid-80's heyday, live performances were often marked by songs that had not yet appeared on a released album and proving that old habits die hard, perhaps the last greatest hit didn't make it onto "Collapse Into Now." The Mills-penned, "We All Go Back To Where We Belong," ended up on the posthumous greatest hits package, "Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage," and served as the perfect conclusion right down to the title.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hadn't given much thought to the world of band biographies before I picked up this book. I'm glad that I decided to dive into the genre with this work.

Hunter's love of and respect for R.E.M. as apparent in the detailed accounts of their rise and individual backgrounds as well as in his colorful, sometimes electric personal opinions. Some may worry that an opinionated author might alter what ought to be a factual account too much, but in this case it transforms what could be a dry textbook into a rich, engaging document.

Highly recommend, regardless of one's level of familiarity with R.E.M.