I Sit At My Table

This clip from R.E.M.'s TourFilm came my way at the weekend, World Leader Pretend filmed during R.E.M.'s 1989 world tour to support their major label debut album Green. 

I was at the Liverpool gig at Royal Court 21st May 1989, the only time I saw R.E.M. live. I didn't see them earlier because I only got into them around Document and didn't see them later on because of my general aversion to arena and stadium gigs (and drift away from them in the mid 90s)- probably a mistake on my part especially when you watch the 1999  Glastonbury performance where they look like a band on fire. On the other hand, I saw them once in a relatively small / medium sized and it was so memorable and so good, that maybe once was enough. 

In the clip above Stipe introduces World Leader Pretend by whacking a metal school chair with a drumstick. The white suit, dark smear of eyeliner and intense demeanour under bright lights is pretty arresting on film and was very much more so in the flesh. On that night, a warm evening in north west England towards the end of my first year away at university, R.E.M. were highly anticipated. Green had been out for six months already so everyone knew the songs inside out and the Royal Court was packed from before the time the support band took the stage (The Blue Aeroplanes, fantastic that night incidentally). Their set pulled from their back catalogue as well as Green, opening with Pop Song '89 and finishing with It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), a song taken at breakneck speed, the entire crowd waiting and then almost missing the 'Leonard Bernstein' part. In between they sprayed us with their 80s brilliance, Buck whirling around, white shirt and Rickenbacker or Les Paul, and Mike Mills at the front stage left, his backing vocals high in the mix. The website SetList FM says they followed Pop Song '89 with These Days, Turn You Inside Out, Disturbance At The Heron House and Orange Crush. They slowed down a bit for the next few- King Of Birds, Sitting Still, Feeling Gravitys Pull and Coyahoga. Then they played World Leader Pretend before pitching it up again with Begin The Begin, Pretty Persuasion, Get Up and Life And How To Live It. I don't really remember too much of the details and I couldn't have listed that setlist without the help of the internet. I just recall the overall blur and energy of song after song, harmonies and guitars, and Michael Stipe's presence out front and a crowd lapping it up. I clearly recall Michael calling somebody out who was throwing beer around in the crowd- 'that better not be styrofoam'- and the intro to Orange Crush where he stood in a single spotlight singing acapella 'be all you can be/ in the army' before Bill Berry crashed in with his drums. 

The encores do stick in the memory- Stand, Belong (then unrecorded, a song that would appear on Out Of Time in 1991) and You Are The Everything. They went off again and then re- appeared for a Hugo Largo cover version, a brief run through Gershwin's Summertime and a crunching, loud Finest Worksong. Following that they played Perfect Circle, one of early R.E.M.'s highlights, a beautiful, fragile song, Stipe introducing it as a song 'we only play when we've played really special gigs'. They finished with their cover of The Velvet Underground's  After Hours and we all disappeared into the summer night, giddy/ drunk on our own youth and music. 

This photo appeared on Twitter some time ago, a postcard from the past, Stipe with his megaphone at the Royal Court taken by someone nearer the front than I was. 

Green was the first album for Warners and seems like both the end of the first chapter and the start of the next one. It is still clearly the work of the same band who made Document and Lifes Rich Pageant, a record stuffed full of singles, clarity, direct statements and loud guitars played in major keys. I still like the silly songs, the singles, that some people can't stand- Stand and Get Up. Turn You Inside Out and I Remember California are dark heavy guitar rock, forerunners of Monster perhaps. Green also feels like the first album in the trilogy that made them enormous, turned them into genuine stadium superstars, the mandolins and acoustic guitars and softer spaces of Hairshirt and The Wrong Child paving the way for Losing My Religion, Low, Half A World Away and Automatic For The People. It's an album that the band have said is haphazard and scattershot, experimental even, but to me it's a complete piece of work (and an instant return to being eighteen and nineteen too). 

World Leader Pretend was clearly a big song for Michael Stipe, a grand statement. The lyrics were printed on the inner sleeve, the first time R.E.M. had done that and no other song from Green got that honour. It's straightforward and direct, no mumbling or confusion, no oblique images stitched together, just Michael Stipe. Apparently the vocal on the record was the first and only take. The instruments jump around in the mix, the acoustic guitars, mandolin, the cello and pedal steel taking it in turns to have a moment in the foreground while Stipe sings, a song he says was in part a tribute to Leonard Cohen. Despite speculation about it being about political leaders the song seems to me much more personal, an admission that he/ the narrator isn't the centre of the world, that not everything is about him, and what we hear is a humility from someone about to become a superstar- Stipe's inner conflicts and past mistakes writ large. 

World Leader Pretend