Part Lies, Part Truth

 

I read the recent biography of REM, "The Name of this band is REM" by Peter Ames Carlin. I've read a lot of books about the band in the past, but much as my interest in the band dwindled towards the end of their career, so did the biography industry, and most of the books stop at their peak rather than afterwards. This book carries on to the breakup of the band, and has been well reviewed over the past year or so, and with my interest in the band renewed following the Shannon / Narducy Fables tour in 2025, I put it on my Christmas list and have devoured it since then.


First things first - the band aren't interviewed for the book, so any words from them are from contemporary interviews or as told by other people. It's at its strongest in those early years - capturing the contradiction between a band that was willing to put the hours and the legwork into becoming a great band, and one that didn't want to appear in its videos and have decipherable lyrics to sing along with. 

This is both a strength of the book and a weakness. There's a lot of colour, and you really do feel at times like you are there, crisscrossing the States, being at those early gigs, sharing their joy at those early successes. But - those have been covered before, and although it does a good job of covering the mega stardom of the Out Of Time / Automatic era I imagine that the band and its organisation is so locked down by then that there aren't so many stories to tell and far fewer people willing to tell them. 

With that caveat, it's still an enjoyable read if you're a fan of the band. It covers the departure of Bill Berry effectively and it reminded me that after he left they got bigger than ever in Europe as their star was receding back at home. I came to REM relatively late but they were my favourite band for a while in my twenties and every time I saw them live, on the Monster tour and beyond, they were nothing short of thrilling. If you've never read an REM book before I think I still prefer those by Marcus Gray in the 90s, but as a straightforward biography, this probably has the edge over the Tony Fletcher book because it continues to the end. 


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