reckoning deluxe edition liner notes

L
THE ALBUM
I.R.S. SP-70044 RELEASED APRIL
14, 1984
CHICA
PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED
AT THE ARAGON BALLROOM
R LIVE
GO, IL, JULY 7, 1984
Femme Fatale
Radio Free Europe
Gardening at Night
9-9
Windout
Letter Never Sent
Sitting Still
Driver 8
So. Central Rain
7 Chinese Bros.
Harborcoat
Hyena
Pretty Persuasion
Little America
Second Guessing
(Don't Go Back To) Rockville
Conventional wisdom
has it that second
albums pose a problem,
especially for those acts whose debut releases have enjoyed unanticipated
success. But R.E.M. were never much concerned with following convention, and Reckoning, their 1984 follow-up to Murmur, served both to reinforce that record's remarkable sense of promise and to confound expectations. For where Murmur had downplayed itself with acoustic instrumentation and purposefully complex arrangements, Reckoning revealed itself
instead, for the most part, as a gloriously rambunctious representation of the
live set at a time that the group could be found playing, on average, every
other night. At the same time, by including the group's first true ballads,
Reckoning captured a deeply expressive melancholia that hinted at the
act's artistic depth. Its variety but one of its many virtues, Reckoning was
hailed upon release as another - but markedly different - instant
classic, and confirmed R.E.M. as the most exciting new band of their
American generation.
Certainly, had they stopped long enough to think about it, the stakes were
high for Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe as they
approached their second album in late 1983. Only thirty months had passed
since the quartet had gathered in the back of a small, dilapidated church in
their college hometown of Athens, Georgia, to play a set of assorted cover
versions and derivative “originals” before a crowd of equally drunken friends
for a birthday party. Something had clicked that night - not just something
musical, but a fortuitous balancing of personalities, an equal distribution of
distinct talents - and it propelled R.E.M. to overnight status as the biggest
band in a musically thriving town. From there, thanks to the committed
efforts of a loose network of college radio stations, print fanzines, and a slew
of self-sufficient groups who saw poverty-stricken backwoods touring not as
a duty but a privilege, R.E.M. had enjoyed rapid recording progress, from the
independent single “Radio Free Europe,” to a deal with I.R.S. and the Chronic
Town EP of 1982. The following spring delivered Murmur, a debut of almost
unconditional beauty, and one that, to the profound surprise of the group
itself, sold in the six figures on its way to the Top 40 of the American album
charts.
The stakes would have been higher still had R.E.M. waited until the New Year
to start work on Reckoning, for in the interim, the American music media
hailed Murmur as the best, or damn-near-to-it, album of 1983. Rightly so,
one could argue (especially from the benefit of 25 years' hindsight), but a
crown laced with potential thorns nonetheless. Fortunately for all concerned,
by the time such honors were bestowed, R.E.M. had Reckoning all but mixed
and mastered. “We were writing tons of songs,” said Peter Buck, looking
back on this period of excessive activity just a few years later and looking
forward, unwittingly perhaps, as he acknowledged that “everyone I know,
the longer they write, the less songs they write.” In other words, the R.E.M.
of 1983 barely gave expectations a second thought. “I knew when we
walked in on the first day,” said Bill Berry, “that the songs were better than
the ones on the first album, so I wasn't worried at all.”
The process proved almost embarrassingly painless. Basic tracks were
recorded during a week's worth of on-off work prior to Christmas, overdubs
and mixing completed during another week in early January. The band took
time out to play a farewell show in neighboring Greensboro at Friday's, one
of the ad-hoc venues (in this case, a pizza bar) at which they'd built their reputation; spent a day in the studio filming the video for “So. Central Rain,”
Michael Stipe singing live to tape in (short-lived) protest at the MTV-driven
trend for lip-synching; and devoted a full evening and night-time to the
recording of various covers and novelties direct to two-track, many of which
would show up on subsequent b-sides and compilations. As Mitch Easter
later observed, it was much like he imagined the Rolling Stones made
records in the early days; you either got it right or you didn't.
R.E.M. got it right. Mike Mills' and Bill Berry's rhythm parts typically
made it onto tape in just two or three takes, a result of the former marching
band partners' increasingly innate understanding of each other. Peter
Buck's Rickenbacker guitar overdubs - and there were usually several of
them - followed with equal ease, his arpeggiated riffs weaving around
Mills' contrapuntal melodies in a manner that soon became an R.E.M.
trademark (and later, something of a burden). The comfortably loose live
feel could be heard in such diverse tracks as the off-kilter opener
“Harborcoat,” the enervating three-year old rocker “Pretty Persuasion,”
and the cautiously melodic “Letter Never Sent.” At a time when click
tracks, gated drums and booming snares were the norm, it was especially refreshing to hear every component of Berry's acoustic kit being played
in unison.
As for Michael Stipe, Reckoning found him not only trying to balance his
“extreme shyness” with the glare of public recognition, but simultaneously
forced to defend his reputation for vocal obfuscation. Pop lyrics, declared the
same conventional wisdom that expected R.E.M. to falter in the studio second album around, should be clearly enunciated, and preferably to reference
familiar, obvious subject matter. Stipe, whose distinctly yearning delivery and the initial mystery of his mumbles - had contributed so much to R.E.M.'s
popularity, felt otherwise. “You write words to a song unlike you would speak
a sentence and unlike you would speak a sentence off a page,” he told one
interviewer at the time.
Ironically, if there was a single theme running through Reckoning, it was that
of communication. The title to “So. Central Rain” was taken from a headline
on television: the group had been in California earlier in 1983 when parts of
Georgia became flooded, bringing down phone lines and preventing members from checking in on their families. And the finale “Little America” was
what Buck called their “year in review,” a look at their world from the vantage point of the road - replete with close-ups of generic “Magic Marts,”
wide-angle references to the country's “empty wagon,” and the immediately infamous shout-out to then manager, “Jefferson, I think we're lost.”
That R.E.M. were spoiled for choice was evident by the demos recorded in
early November in San Francisco with Neil Young's producer Elliot Mazer:
twenty-four songs - a double album's worth - in just one day. A week later
they were in Europe for the first time, where British audiences, generally
cynical at the time about American “new wave” acts of the era, were
quickly set straight by a live TV appearance and two London club shows of
unbridled energy, not to mention rare length (by British club band standards) and the inclusion of five as yet-unrecorded songs.
But then with “Camera,” Reckoning's stand-out ballad, the lyrics were more
a matter of metaphor: the group had recently lost a close friend, their photographer Carol Levy, in a car crash, and the pain showed - even if the details
remained hidden - in Stipe's evocative imagery. Elsewhere, “Harborcoat,”
“Pretty Persuasion” and “Time After Time (Annelise)” would forever be
shrouded in mystery, and that was fine by the vocalist. “To give away everything is never good, at any time,” he said at the time of Reckoning's release.
Despite the session with Mazer, there was rarely any doubt that R.E.M. would
return to the source of Murmur's success when it came time to commit
those songs to vinyl. And so, in early December, they drove the two hundred
miles up Route 85 to Charlotte, North Carolina, where co-producers Mitch
Easter and Don Dixon were waiting for them at Reflection Sound Studio.
Much of Murmur's famed murkiness had been the result of that duo's
painstakingly deliberate studio techniques, but Reckoning was intended all
along as something of an antithesis, a chance to turn up the volume, tear up
the rule book, and capture instead R.E.M.'s on-stage mojo as instinctively
developed over the course of so much touring.
Like his playing partners, Stipe captured several of his vocal performances
close to the first take, but on both “Camera” and “7 Chinese Bros.,” he
engaged in some light combat with the producers. Perhaps recognizing the
intimacy of the former song, Easter and Dixon kept pushing for a definitive
delivery, until Stipe pushed back and insisted that they had it already.
(“That's the one you hear,” said Easter, “and I think it's the best one too.”) The
latter song's vocal only came together after Dixon handed Stipe a gospel
album off the shelf, and suggested he loosen up by reading the sleeve notes;
a recording of that unlikely take, “Voice of Harold,” later showed up on the
compilation Dead Letter Office.
Against all this, one song stood out as an anomaly. “(Don't Go Back To)
Rockville” had first appeared in the live set in 1980 as something of a poppunk thrash, but had subsequently been dropped and never seen the inside
of a studio. This may have been because the words - written by Mike Mills
(who also composed the melody) as a straight-faced plea to Athens friend
Ingrid Schorr not to return to her Maryland hometown - jarred alongside singer
Stipe's increasing poeticism. Yet when the group slowed it down to a country
pace at Reflection, as a favor for their legal advisor (and later manager) Bertis
Downs, they inadvertently created an anthem. It mattered not that the
“Rockville” in question was a specific place, or that the song's subject was a
particular person; listeners took the generic town name to signify Anyplace,
U.S.A., and frequently saw a part of themselves in the lyrics. The title itself
could even be read as a musical metaphor, and as a result of all these interpretations, along with its easy melody, rousing chorus, and heartfelt arrangement - never, despite some naïve media accusations, a parody - “(Don't Go
Back To) Rockville” became a rallying call for the new, fiercely independent
American music scene.
R.E.M.'s refusal to be sucked in by the mainstream at this time revealed itself
in several other ways, not least the album artwork. In America at least,
Reckoning eschewed use of that title on the sleeve and placed as much
importance on the spinal note “File Under Water,” a wry reference both to the
band's lack of easy categorization as well as one of the album's recurring
lyrical themes. LP sides were labeled “L” and “R” rather than “1” and “2,”
and the back cover featured black and white photos of the band members,
placed askew as if laid out for a fanzine, not a potential chart album. The
front cover itself was a distinct (and distinctly non-commercial) painting by
Georgia folk artist Howard Finster of a two-headed serpent engrained with
the song titles. In a further commitment to local artists, R.E.M. then recruited Athens painter James Herbert to film them walking through the nearby
whirly-gig gardens of sculptor Bill Miller, to which Herbert then applied his
“rephotography” method for the unlikely, twenty-minute promo clip entitled
Left of Reckoning. Given all this, it was impossible for reviewers not to focus
their own word cameras on R.E.M.'s southern accent - but then groups
always should evoke a sense of place, of coming from somewhere other than
just a recording studio. R.E.M. were from Athens, Georgia, and proud of it.
Not that they saw much of their home town in 1984, instead spending almost
the entire year traversing the States (twice), Europe (twice), Mexico and
Japan. On July 7, the “Little America” tour stopped in at Chicago's Aragon
Ballroom, for a concert broadcast at the time by WXRT Radio and included
here as a bonus disc that shows the depth and breadth of a live set that
changed, literally, every night. The group not only touted its two hit albums
but included songs that had yet to make it into the studio (“Hyena” would not
show up on record until 1986). But that was the nature of a group determined
to rewrite America's rock rule book. Not only did R.E.M. hand-pick its support acts, but the sets sometimes featured songs by contemporaries The
Replacements and Jason and the Scorchers. “We like to think of ourselves
as the tip of the iceberg,” Buck told European journalists initially bemused by
news of a burgeoning American scene, before going a step further and penning articles for leading music magazines on the subject while simultaneously decrying what, on an MTV special painfully entitled The Cutting Edge,
he famously described as the “cheese whiz” that passed for typical video
fodder at the time.
All of which resonated with the group's increasingly committed following.
Released in April 1984 to unanimously glowing reviews, Reckoning quickly
made the American Top 30, on its way to highly impressive Stateside sales
of a quarter-million. It has remained a fans' favorite ever since, capturing for
many the moment when R.E.M. rode highest their youthful crest of self-confidence. Reckoning can be viewed, in the big picture, as but the second of six
annual album releases, a remarkably prolific period of musical and commercial growth that would continue all the way through to 1988's Green. But it
can also be seen, in close-up, as a freeze-frame of a year otherwise spent in
constant motion, best summed up in the simple but stridently self-assured
chorus line to the exuberant “Second Guessing”: “Here we are.” And emphatically so.
-- Tony Fletcher
Tony Fletcher is the author of Remarks Remade:
The Story Of R.E.M. and All Hopped Up and Ready
To Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77.
He has also written biographies on Keith Moon,
and Echo & The Bunnymen. British born, he now
lives in New York's Catskill Mountains.
L
THE ALBUM
I.R.S. SP-70044 RELEASED APRIL 14, 1984
harborcoat
7 chinese bros.
so. central rain
pretty persuasion
time after time (annelise)
second guessing
letter never sent
camera
(don't go back to) rockville
little america
Deluxe Edition Supervised by Dana G. Smart
Deluxe Edition Compiled by Sig Sigworth
Mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound, New York
Archive engineer: Pete Doell at Universal Mastering Studios West
Project Assistance: Michael Plen, Norm Winer & Barry Korkin
Design: Chris Bilheimer & Michael Stipe
Band Photos: Ed Colver
R LIVE AT THE ARAGON BALLROOM
CHICAGO, IL, JULY 7, 1984 PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED
BROADCAST ON WXRT-FM, CHICAGO
femme fatale
radio free europe
gardening at night
9-9
windout
letter never sent
sitting still
driver 8
so. central rain
7 chinese bros.
harborcoat
hyena
pretty persuasion
little america
second guessing
(don't go back to) rockville
Coordinated for release by Monique McGuffin Newman
all songs by berry/buck/mills/stipe
except “femme fatale” by lou reed, Oakfield Avenue Music (BMI)
UMe thanks Bertis Downs, Kevin O'Neil, Randy Aronson, Beth
Lopez-Barron, Kristen Bensch, Andy Skurow, Bill Waddell, and the
staffs of the Universal Music Tape Library and Universal Mastering Studios.
recorded by timothy powell
courtesy of 93.1 fm wxrt / chicago
© 2009 I.R.S. Inc.
Manufactured by A&M Records.
B0013032-02