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MIKE MILLS INTERVIEW

By Martin Jones

Mike Mills didn't bring his golf clubs to Australia. He and R.E.M founding members Peter Buck and Michael Stipe are here for just a few days and most of that time is taken up with promotional duties for their new album Reveal.

Journalists, camera and sound recording crews, and promotions folk file in and out of Melbourne's Como Hotel where the band members are granting audiences to a chosen few. Later that night they're scheduled to perform two songs on The Panel and then they're heading up to Sydney to do more interviews, live radio and TV performances.

If you know of R.E.M.'s recent doldrums, you'll understand why Reveal is being so thoroughly and efficiently promoted. It wasn't that long ago that long serving drummer Bill Berry left the band and the future of R.E.M. was seriously threatened. The album made during that period, Up, wasn't received as well as the band would have liked.

Then there was Peter Buck's airborne tantrum and consequent prosecution, and the likelihood that, around the time of Berry's departure, none of the band members were feeling all that chipper and ready to face the press as shiny, happy people. Considering all that, Reveal, and it's bright faced promotion, are essential to preserve R.E.M.'s impeccable record and, though doubtful they'd admit it, stop fans from jumping ship for good.

Then there's the fact that Reveal is a spectacular pop album, critically hailed as R.E.M.'s best since the all conquering Automatic For the People (1992). You make an album this good, you want people to know about it. So you forego the eighteen holes you probably richly deserve and you do the promo.

"Yeah, we go to Sydney tomorrow morning for two days," says the immaculately groomed Mills, as we begin the interview in a tastefully decorated hotel suite, "and then back to the States for another week of work."

And that's it for the introductory banter. When you've got an R.E.M. member alone in a room for thirty minutes, you don't want to waste time. So Mills is immediately asked for a true or false response. In a recent interview, Michael Stipe claimed that when Berry departed, R.E.M. actually split up.

"Ohh, Michael says it is [true], I'm not sure if it is or not," Mills replies immediately. "But we were certainly all, in our minds, prepared to deal with that as a reality."

Mills does admit that it was the closest the band has ever come to extinction. "Without a doubt. It was the biggest crisis we've ever had to endure, but we came out the other side stronger."

With renowned drummer Joey Waronker permanently on standby alongside fellow 'unofficial' R.E.M band mates Scott McCaughey and the Posies' Ken Stringfellow, initial questions about replacing Berry permanently have been answered in the negative. That the trio of Buck, Stipe and Mills were already too much of a family (sharing twenty years' recording history) for another to be welcomed as a sibling of equal standing is evident. Mills admits as much. Then Berry's departure ultimately brought the trio even closer, making infiltration even less likely.

"Well, sure, once you realise," Mills begins when asked if the danger of losing R.E.M. gave it a new sense of value, and then pauses to chooses his words more carefully. "Basically we just had to sit down and talk and communicate and say 'look, what are the problems? Let's deal with them'. And basically what we realised is that we are very good friends and we didn't want to throw that away and also that this is our life's work, as Peter says, and the best work that any of us will ever do, we're going to do with each other. And the fact is we still have a lot of that left to do and that's very exciting for us. As this record proves, you know not necessarily to anyone else, but at least to ourselves especially, that we still have 'it,' whatever 'it' is."

It's true, there's "it" galore in Reveal. The song crafting that encompasses the best aspects of popular music and that has become R.E.M.'s specialty, is stronger than ever. Stipe's distinctive vocals nail both the sweeping melodies and the sentiments that authored them. And instrumentally, it's both the band's most diverse yet confidently restrained recording yet. But is it a "rebirth" or a "reinvigoration" as headlines have claimed? Mills let's out a long sigh at the presentation of such terms.

"Not really because I feel like it's kind of dismissive of the work that we've done on Up or even Adventures in Hi Fi," Mills dismisses the terms right back. "I think those are great records and, especially Up is a very dense record, it's difficult to get into, but once you get into it, I think it's a great record. And a lot of people just dismiss it as the struggle of people who are trying to find their footing. And certainly that was going on but I think it's unfair to the quality of the work. So no, I don't think it's a rebirth, maybe recommitment. R.E.M's a different band now. When Bill left, it's the same name and it's three of the same guys, but it's a different band. So I don't know, words like that, I mean that's up for journalists to throw around at the end of the day. I don't see it in those terms."

So consider Up as a period of discovery, of coming to terms with life as a three piece, and of perhaps feeling an unnecessarily, though completely understandable, urgent need to progress as 'the new R.E.M.'. In hindsight, Mills admits that a smarter band might have taken a break to sort things out after such a crisis. Then, who's to say if R.E.M. would have ever got up and running again after losing the momentum. Reveal would have certainly been a very different record without the benefit of Up. Then there was also, in this period, the Man On The Moon soundtrack, a piece of work that is often overlooked in piecing together recent R.E.M. history.

"It was a nice bridge for us" Mills recalls the project. "That was right before the '99 tour so it was after we finished up and we'd had our big decision about 'do we break up, do we continue?'. And it was pretty good for us because we were able to start sort of a new phase of R.E.M. with a soundtrack which is less pressure because you know it's not your project. You're really helping someone else achieve their vision. So you don't have to sit there and beat yourself up to make sure it's perfect. So it was a very nice transitional thing for us. And we got a great song out of it"You can imagine that being presented with, a narrative, a vision already intact in the form of a film to score, it would be much easier to make a cohesive album of music. The theme is already there. Stipe has said that, lyrically, Reveal is about 'ascension' or 'enlightenment'.

Regardless, there is a definite musical coherence in the way the tracks relate to each other, a coherence that, many have pointed out, was not so evident on Up. Mills agrees but denies that such 'cohesiveness' is necessary in a great album.

So what, in concrete terms, makes for a cohesive album of songs? A perfect example presents itself in the first single "Imitation of Life". On it's own, it's almost too obvious - too much like what the band has done in the past. The sounds, the melody, the style, it's all instantly recognisable in a neat, buoyant package. But nestled alongside some of its more sparse, less merry, less lively album-mates, it's a crucial, vivacious climax to the record.

"Yeah, well we almost left it off the record" Mills reveals of "Imitation of Life", "because it is such an R.E.M. song, quote unquote. But it makes it a better album, it really does. And it's a great song; it's a nice catchy pop song and there's plenty of room in this world for those. "Well, we've done that" Mills responds when asked if the band was tempted to choose a less obvious first single.

"Certainly probably at a cost to our career in terms of keeping it advanced. I mean we put "E-Bow The Letter" out and that was our decision instead of "The Wake-Up Bomb" which would have been the obvious first single.. Did that cost us in terms of sales? Maybe. But was it good for the integrity of the band? Yes it was.... I think our credibility and our integrity are pretty much understood at this point by the public and by the record company and everyone else. So we just let them do whatever they wanted on this as far as singles and, you know, it's hard to argue with Imitation as a single".

Listening to Reveal, you get that comforting impression of confidence. Explaining the sensation to Mills, I raise the oft name-dropped Jimmy Webb as an example. There's an unhurried nature to the record, a space and pace that prompt you to believe that the writers know exactly what they're doing.

"Well songwriting, other than playing live, being a great live band, songwriting to me is the most important thing that we do" Mills declares.

"Because that's the hardest thing. You know, anybody can learn to play guitar. Anybody can sing. Maybe not so well, but anybody can sing. Writing songs, and writing good songs, is hard. And I think it's in the shortest supply in the musical world. That's why people do covers, for Christ sake I just read that Everclear is putting out their next single and it is going to be "Brown Eyed Girl". I mean come on! What is the point of that?

"I mean there's nothing wrong with doing covers. And there's nothing wrong with putting covers on your record, but to make them your single? It just drives me nuts. I think it's so weak. It's so lazy. I'm sorry Art, but I just think it's really lame. But anyway, it just goes to point out that the hardest thing in the world is to write a good song."

But Mills attributes the unhurried nature of Reveal, the rare quality of nothing sounding forced, to more than just their ever improving songwriting skills. The manner in which the album was recorded was, he affirms, vital to its success. The band gave themselves as much time as required to complete the record.

Reveal was begun in Vancouver, further developed in Georgia, completed in a seven hundred year old property in Dublin from which Stipe was at liberty to fly to Israel, France, Denmark, etc. for inspiration, then finally mixed in Miami. Let's play the Devil's advocate and claim such measures to be unnecessarily extravagant.

"It's a luxury but it's not frivolous," Mills responds. "I mean sure if we had to sit down in two months in a traditional recording studio in Atlanta, we could do that. But would the record be as good? No. Would I enjoy the process? No. I think that's one thing we've earned, because of the very reason we know how to use that luxury wisely and well. You know we're not doing it just for the hell of it, we're doing it because we know we're going to make a better record this way."

The proof, as they say somewhat esoterically, is in the pudding. The ends justify the means. Reveal is a triumph firmly thrusting R.E.M. back into the spotlight as one of the world's most popular bands. This is no small achievement for a band that has been consistently releasing records for over twenty years. Think of another pop band that has been together for twenty years and is still making vital, relevant music.....

"Absolutely," Mills affirms the importance of Reveal in instigating a creative momentum for R.E.M. "Creativity comes and goes, the Muse comes and goes. Sometimes you'll sit down and play guitar for a couple of weeks and absolutely nothing of any use comes out and that's frustrating. And now I feel like every time I sit down I'm coming up with something that's at least interesting even if it's not useful. So yeah we're riding a wave and we definitely want to keep that going."