[Piano music playing]
- All there is to it. - [Interviewer] That was it?
- That's all there is to it. - [Laughs]
- Just play black keys.
[Fast forwarding music]
- There you go. Now, it's sped up. - That speeds it up.
- That's great.
- Single version.
- [Interviewer] What made you decide to come to Paisley Park, first of all?
- It's the best studio outside of New York and L.A., and we,
you know, I had never seen it before.
I expected it to be all purple, and scarves everywhere, and incense,
but it's a very professional place. It's great.
- [Interviewer] How do you like Paisley Park?
- It's great. It's out in the middle of nowhere.
You know, there's not many distractions out here, which is a good thing.
- None [laughs].
- None, no distractions. Zero distractions.
- [Interviewer] What have you been doing
since you've been here, other than doing the record?
- You're looking at it [laughs]. This is it.
- There's not much else. We have a fireplace,
and so, we'd build a fire every night and watch that,
'cause we don't get cable, and we don't have a stereo.
- When we have Sundays off, we go into town,
go to a museum, go to First Avenue and see if there's a band there.
- Essentially, this is not a vacation.
We didn't come here for the waters, or for the entertainment or anything.
But actually, we're really easily distracted.
So, it's better that we'd be somewhere kind of
where there literally are no distractions at all.
- [Mike Mills] That's why we don't work much in New York or L.A.,
because there's too many people, and too much going on.
- [Interviewer] Are you mixing here?
Did you record it? Where did you record it?
- [Michael Stipe] Yeah, we recorded in Woodstock, New York, at Bearsville Studios.
We came down to Athens and worked in a small studio there, John Keane's,
and came up here to mix.
And we've done a number of of recording tracks here,
but they're kind of on the fly.
- [Interviewer] How has the Prince, Paisely Park sort of vibe
influenced the record so far?
- [Laughs] Funked it up a lot.
Scott [Litt] was saying that there is, actually, a kind of sound
that he thinks you get from this room that is present
in both the Prince records and ours, kind of a low in sound.
Other than that, I don’t know.
I've only seen him walking the hallways a couple of times.
- [Interviewer] How's the new record coming?
- Well, it's destined be to pop legend.
It's the best thing we've done.
- [Interviewer] Really? - Yeah, kind of —
it's gonna redefine music, I think, in the '90s.
- [Interviewer] Really? How so?
- Well, it's brilliant.
It's completely different from anything we've ever done before.
I think it's completely different from anything that's been done before, so —
- [Interviewer] Michael said that, you know,
it's redefining —
it's gonna redefine pop music.
- [Laughs] Best pop record of the year.
There are definitely some pop elements on it,
a lot more than we've had than, maybe, on the last few records.
It's a real diverse record.
There are some incredibly pop songs,
and there are some dark, slow songs.
It's gonna be a shock for a lot of people, I think.
- If anything, you know, we went on this long tour.
It was nine months, which is a long time to be traveling,
and it's very difficult to write new songs.
We came out with two songs, three songs —
one was a throwaway –
in that much time period.
And so, I think, when we got home, got rested a little bit,
we were all dying to get this new stuff out.
- [Interviewer] Mhm. - So, we went in and wrote 28 songs.
- [Bill Berry] It was the first record we've written, really, where
we actually started the songs,
the foundation with keyboards, and bass, and guitar
rather than working in a keyboard part later,
which is what we always used to do.
So, it's kind of — it's given a different flare to the record.
- We have everybody in the band playing
other than their own instruments,
their main instruments.
Bill on guitar, and Peter on mandolin, and me on keyboards,
and all kinds of stuff like that.
In that sense, it's a very big departure. - [Bill Berry] And strings, a lot of strings,
which we've never had.
- Some pretty serious strings.
Usually, the only strings we've had before were, like,
a little four-piece, maybe,
and we've got a full nine-piece string section on a bunch of this stuff.
- You know, I don't ever know —
we don't know what we're doing, ever.
I mean, we just start writing songs, and then, the songs are done.
And this time, we wrote a bunch of songs that just seemed —
well, first of all, it seemed less of a guitar record.
So, there's a lot more emphasis
on keyboards and vocals, strings,
and I personally have wanted to make
kind of a more baroque-sounding record for a long time.
- [Interviewer] Were you getting bored
with the guitar-drums-bass format?
- I think so.
We started writing these songs that —
we noticed it basically before the last record,
that started to sound alarmingly similar to stuff that we had already done.
And we said, "Well, we gotta get away from this."
Plus, there's actually playing your own instrument,
after a while, it's like, "Let's move on. Let's do something exciting and challenging."
So, we would sit down in the studio,
and Peter would have a mandolin in his hand,
and Bill would pick up the acoustic guitar, and I'd sit at the organ,
and we wrote several songs like that.
- [Bill Berry] And all that, but we still don't have
a name for the record yet, so —
- [Interviewer] What are some of the ideas?
- Oh, they all stink, you know. - Yeah.
- We have like a thousand names.
Every record we've ever had, the name just occurs
real early, and it makes sense,
'cause it kinda says what the songs were all about,
but I think the songs are so —
nothing links them,
really, either lyrically or musically, that nobody knows what to call it.
- [Laughs]
- 'Unfocused,' that's what we should call it.
- 'Lost.'
- [Interviewer] Any title for the record yet?
- Nope. - No?
- We were thinking of calling it 'Willful Obscurity,'
but that was too willfully obscure.
We were thinking about calling it,
'More Protestant Work Ethic.'
We were thinking about calling it 'Pomegranate,'
but that's a little too Stipe-ian, I think.
All these, you know — no, we don't have a name. - Mhm.
- We might just not call it anything.
Call it 'Peter Gabriel,' maybe.
- Yeah? That'd be good.
- We're thinking about not calling it anything,
just leaving it blank.
[Laughs] You know, 'cause usually,
every time we've had a record before,
the title has popped up at some point,
and everyone goes, "Yay! That's the one."
And we're not getting that with this one.
So, we're just thinking maybe it doesn't need a title.
- [Interviewer] Early in the studio, you said that
you think this is the best thing you guys have done.
- I think so.
You know, I said earlier that it isn't done yet.
So, we still have time to ruin it.
You know, there's always that, you know,
snatch victory, or defeat from the jaws of victory,
whatever the old saying is,
but we, you know —
I'm really happy with the songwriting.
It's one of the first records we've ever done
where I walked in before we laid down a note
and just was really pleased with the songs.
- [Interviewer] In September, you told MTV that,
“It’s about time the face of rock was changed,
“and R.E.M. is the band to do it,
“and we’re gonna do it with this next album.”
- Did I say that?
- You said that, and you laugh. OK? - [Laughs] Alright.
- Were you kidding, or were you half-serious? - No, pop history. You're looking at it.
This is it, you know? - [Laughs] It looks good.
- What can I say? Thanks. - [Laughs]
- Back to work.