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XL on ACL: Still Shiny, Still Happy

By Joe Gross
Austin American-Statesman
Sept. 19, 2003

You gotta hand it to him: Mike Mills still sounds excited about his job.

"Oh, that's awesome!"

You'd think he'd be a little sick of it by now. Just a tad jaded.

But no, after 23 years, 12 albums, a few hit singles, and, oh, yeah, a career in one of the most respected American rock bands of the '80s and '90s, R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills, 44, still sounds thrilled about being the bassist in R.E.M.

For the record, what Mills finds "awesome" is the sheer number of bands and diversity of sounds available at the ACL Fest. Mills says R.E.M., perhaps the ultimate alternative band gone popular, is into cross-genre festivals these days. They've just come from the European summer festival circuit, where attracting a wide variety of fans is the norm. "The European festivals are really good about (mixing genres)," Mills says by phone from his hometown of Athens, Ga. "They have different stages, but even on the main stage, they'll have a wide variety, and that's just good for music in general."

R.E.M., the core of which is Mills, singer Michael Stipe and guitarist Peter Buck (drummer Bill Berry bowed out in 1997) is in the middle of an American tour, largely to generate interest in the upcoming "Best of R.E.M." collection, which hits the streets on Oct. 28.

Much as "Eponymous" collected hits from the band's early I.R.S. years, "Best Of" is a solid collection of the band's '90s work, including such hits as "Losing My Religion," "Man in the Moon" and "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" as well as two new songs, "Bad Day" and "Animal."

Mills is quick to emphasize that the band, which has been fairly quiet since 2001's "Reveal," is still into the idea of touring.

"If you don't play live, you're not really a band," Mills says. "Even if it is infrequently. Right now, we're playing really well." This time out, the touring band includes longtime sidemen Scott McCaughey and Ken Stringfellow on guitars, bass and keyboards, along with touring drummer Bill Rieflin, whom Elysium regulars might know from such industrial acts as Ministry, KMFDM and Nine Inch Nails.

"We learned about 75 or so songs from the catalog," Mills says. And yes, sports fans, you are guaranteed to hear "Losing My Religion" and "Man in the Moon." Everything else, on the other hand, is up for grabs. "Some of the songs we'll only do once on the whole tour but that's half the point," Mills says.

But before the band hit the road, the core R.E.M. members spent "about six months" in the studio working on the new songs for the hits comp and a new album to be released in 2004. "We still have to go back in the studio after the tour," Mills says.

When asked what direction the new music will take, Mills sounds totally flummoxed. "Um, that's a really good question. . ." He pauses for what's dangerously close to an awkwardly long time. "I don't know how to answer that. There are some quasi psychedelic moments in the new stuff. We're always looking for new approaches and new sounds to make." Well, that was vague.

These days, with Stipe a big-time movie producer ("Being John Malkovich" is probably his best-known film) and Buck busy with the Minus 5, his band with McCaughey and Stringfellow, Mills says he and Buck write independently. "The bulk of the material, Peter and I write (the music) alone and then give it to Michael," who then adds lyrics.

Mills denies that the band's physical distance (Buck has lived in Seattle for eight years, Stipe splits his time between Athens, New York and Los Angeles, and Mills has stayed in Athens) has adversely affected the band's songwriting. "The primary difference is that I can't walk down to Peter's house and write songs with him," Mills says. "When we were starting out, we spent all our time together and wrote together, but as you get older you tend to sit alone and write more than you do in a group. I think a band should write as a group, and we still do, just not that often."

But sometimes it's nice to write as a team. "One of the prettiest songs we have coming up on the next record is something I sat down and played on the piano. Peter threw out chords for the next half of the song and within about 10 minutes we had a new song, so that stuff still happens when we get together.

"The only retooling we had to do was when Bill quit," Mills says.

Ah, Bill. Bill is drummer Bill Berry, founding member of R.E.M. Berry's decision to retire in 1997 following a scary bout with an aneurysm and lackluster sales of the underrated 1996 album "New Adventures in Hi-Fi" looked like a body blow to longtime fans. "We had to totally reorganize the recording process," Mills says. "And that took awhile. But I think we have that sorted out now."

But Mills freely admits that working without Berry makes for a fundamentally different R.E.M. "When we write and record now, we always have to remember to edit ourselves," Mills says. "That's one thing Bill was always really good at." Mills also says that while Berry and the band are on excellent terms, Berry is still very much retired to his farm outside Athens. "Professionally, we're completely separated, but I was just at his house having a beer last week."

Even without Berry, R.E.M. are still a creative powerhouse with a traditionalist streak. In this age of downloads, Mills says the band still believes in the album. "I think it may become a bit of a lost art, but I don't want to abandon it," Mills says. "I think having a place that you can go for 45 minutes is still very important. In this time of instant gratification and very short attention spans, it may not be as important to as many people as it used to be, but I still really enjoy creating this little miniature world."

Of course, self-editing is also important. "On 'Reveal,' we took off what became my favorite songs because it just made the record too long."

Says the scholarly looking member of one of rock's most cerebral groups, "The brain can only process so much stuff."

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