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| R.E.M. > Albums & Lyrics |
The story of the lives of Peter Buck, Micheal Stipe, Mike Mills and Bill Berry before the formation of R.E.M.
Peter Lawrence Buck was born on December 6, 1956 in Los Angeles, California. His family soon moved to San Francisco, where Peter spent most of his childhood. It was there that Buck started his life-long love of music. After a short period in Indiana the Bucks settled near Atlanta in Roswell, Georgia in 1970. Peters musical tastes had evolved from listening eagerly to The Beatles and The Supremes on his radio in San Francisco to buying records by rock stars such as the Rolling Stones and glam rock artists T. Rex and Slade during the early seventies in Georgia.
In 1975 Peter finished high school and left home to study at Emory University in Atlanta. It was then that Peter bought his first guitar, consequently taking lessons from his brother Kenny. Uninspired by his collage course, but inspired by Patti Smith and Velvet Underground, Buck quit collage after less than a year to take up a job in Atlanta record store Doo Dahs.
In 1977 Peter went hitchhiking around America, doing casual work to pay his way. On returning to Atlanta employment was found at Wuxtry Records. Peter harboured intentions of being in the musical scene, either as a critic or playing in a band. Around Christmas 1977 Peter was given the chance to transfer to the Athens branch of Wuxtry, which he accepted. Peter moved in with his brother, who was already living on the outskirts of Athens since he was attending university there. Working in the record store made it easy for Peter the chance to meet people with similar musical tastes to himself, and in late 1978 he got talking to a regular customer named Michael Stipe.
Michael Stipe was born on 4 January 1960 in the Atlanta suburb Decatur. Actually named John Michael Stipe, he didn抰 spend much of his childhood in Georgia. Michael抯 army parentage meant that he grew up in Texas, Germany, Illinois. Young Michael being shy, probably because of his transient childhood, resulted in his sisters Lynda and Cyndy being his closest friends.
Michael attended high school in Collinsville, Illinois. It was there, as an adolescent that he became a punk music aficionado before punk became mainstream. Gaining in confidence as he grew up he fronted his first band Bad Habits in Collinsville, a brief encounter acting as a prelude to his eventual career in R.E.M.
In 1978 the family moved to Watkinsville, a small town near Athens. The confidence gained in Collinsville was gone and Stipe the first year and Stipe spent much of the first year alone. He said he became "a much quieter person?Much less bombastic." Than the one he had become in Illinois. In late 1978 Stipe moved to Athens enrolled as an art student at the University of Georgia. His own opinion of his ability as an artist was not high. Stipe claims he was "good at going to school, but I wasn抰 good at what I was doing. I was able to convince my teachers that what I was doing was worthwhile when I was not really doing anything". Perhaps this is another example of Michael抯 lack of confidence, as one teacher disagrees "he was actually one of the better students I ever had".
In late 1978 the new Athens resident was a regular visitor to Wuxtry Records on East Clayton street where he first encountered the sales assistant Peter Buck. The story goes that Buck was intrigued as Michael often came into the store with a girl on each side. Unbeknownst to Peter these were not two girlfriends, but Michael抯 sisters Lynda and Cyndy. Peter asked Michael to have a drink with him after work, and the two struck up a friendship. They soon found that they shared similar tastes in music, both being interested in the New York punk scene, and Patti Smith in particular. I didn抰 take long to establish that both men wanted to be in a rock band, and although Michael was a quiet and introspective man and Peter was loud and outgoing, their shared musical tastes convinced them that this was a idea they would pursue together.
Michael Edward Mills was born in Orange County, California on 17 December 1958. Mike抯 father being of Georgian origin the Mills family moved to Georgia when Mike was still a baby. Mike comes from a musical family, his father was a tenor and his mother a pianist and guitarist. It was surely no surprise that Mike studied piano from an early age and bass guitar at school. It was in 1972 the he me Bill Berry, but the ninth graders did not initially hit it off. Mike was class goody-goody, hard working and a non-smoker. However Bill was dabbling with drugs and despised goody-goodies.
William Thomas Berry was born in Duluth, Minnesota on 31 July 1958. The Berry抯 family also lived in Milwaukee and Ohio before moving to Macon, Georgia in 1972. Bill found he had a talent for music at school and decided to learn to play drums.
Mike and Bill first became involved together musically when they both attended an after school jam session at Mike抯 house. Despite Bill抯 reservations about Mike, they soon found that together they formed a good rhythm section for a band. They went on to play together in the school marching band and a successful lounge trio that were hired for events such as weddings. They also played in a couple of bands, Shadowfax and the Back Door Band, but they had thus far concentrated on playing cover versions to satisfy demand.
On graduating from high school they shared an apartment together in Macon. Without the missing pieces of a good band Mike and Bill struggled to take their musical careers further, so Mike took a job working in the local branch of Sears. In late 1976 Bill went to work as an errand boy for the music acts booking agency Paragon. It was here that Bill made some connections that would prove important in the future. Indeed in early 1977 Berry met two brothers who had come over from the UK to promote British punk music. The men in question were Miles and Ian Copeland. Miles would later found the Record label I.R.S., which gave R.E.M. their first albums deal. Mike and Bill were two of the few people who appreciated what the Copelands were trying to do, and Ian became a friend.
Frustrated with the difficulty in promoting punk Ian formed a band with Mike and Bill called The Frustration, in attempt to demonstrate how much fun punk was. Ultimately Ian gave up his quest, after influencing only two Macon residents. Inspired by his experiences at Paragon, Bill decided to pursue a career as an entertainment抯 lawyer. Unable to achieve any more in Macon Bill and Mike moved to Athens in January 1979.
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