Fables of years spent on the road. Decadent tales of groupies and drugs and arrogance and misspent lives near the top. You won’t find any of that here, although a friend of the band’s claims a magazine once approached him to write this type of expose on the members of R.E.M., a rock band so nearly perfect in integrity and beliefs that it’s sometimes difficult for cynics to believe that anything this refreshing could possibly be “real.”

R.E.M.’s rise has been one of the more classic (and classier) rock stories of the 1980s. In the grand tradition of the ’60s garage bands, R.E.M. formed five years ago in Athens, Georgia to just have fun, as well as an artistic outlet. “We weren’t thinking about making records or even playing in a club,” says singer Michael Stipe. “It just kind of happened. It’s just really been an interesting series of mistakes.”

Stipe met guitarist Peter Buck at a local record store where the latter was employed, and where the pair discovered they shared a mutual admiration for 70s punk (Patti Smith, Television, etc.), as well as musical predecessors like the New York Dolls and Velvet Underground. They eventually moved into an old converted church together, met ace rhythm team Mike Mills and Bill Berry at a party, and R.E.M. was born. Initially playing parties, they graduated to local clubs, turned into a “good band, kind of,” according to Buck—and suddenly realized that “maybe we could do this full-time.” With still no game plan in mind, they released an independent 45, got a solid reputation, went on the road—sometimes playing for as little as $40 a night (Buck has many classic “road” stories, including the night some bikers asked the band to play their club party, as a frightened Michael climbed, a fence to escape)—got signed by I.R.S., released an EP and two stunningly beautiful LPs to much critical acclaim, and won a fanatical following, both here and in England where the press has recently been crediting them with spearheading the American “grassroots” rock renaissance. With their third LP, Fables Of The Reconstruction, recently released, it appears that R.E.M. may be at the brink of what an I.R.S. spokesperson terms “mall credibility as opposed to just street credibility.” Nonetheless, both Stipe and Buck say the exact same words—“I’m as famous and successful now as I ever want to be”—and both are somewhat bewildered by certain aspects of the fame that has suddenly been thrust upon them.

Prior to having their lives “profoundly affected” at the same time by LPs like Marquee Moon and Horses, Stipe’s Midwestern high school crowd all listened to heavy metal (“I tried very hard to fit into that, but it didn’t work too well...I didn’t really listen to much music until I found out about the New York CBGB’s thing. It was like the first time you went into the ocean and got knocked down by a wave.”), while Buck was busy, perhaps unconsciously, becoming a rock historian, absorbing everything from the Beach Boys, Raspberries and Wizzard to Gram Parsons, Astral Weeks and Fairport Convention. But aside from the punk thing, the pair shared another musical connection in that "Moon River" (which they occasionally cover onstage) is the first song both remember liking as children. Stipe says he thought the song was "about Huckleberry Hound." but both recall that, even though they had no idea what the lyrics meant, it still affected them emotionally. "Even as a little boy. it made me kind of want to cry or be by myself for awhile." says Stipe. "I think it's a really special kind of song that can do that."

Which is a fairly apt description of R.E.M.'s own music. More often that not, it's impossible to understand what Stipe's lyrics mean on a literal level, but the various images merged with the band's instrumental interplay have an uncanny knack of producing strong feelings in the listener—ranging from bittersweet melancholy to excitement to, yes. even dread at times. In line with the "Moon River" connection, it seems that R.E.M. often pick up on childhood images, cliches and reference points, merging them into a dreamy stream-of-consciousness format with music that's evocative of the past, yet manages to descend into a reference point of its own. Perfect examples of this device are "Radio Free Europe." which is based on the old '60s TV commercial that featured the Drifters' "On Broadway," and "7 Chinese Brothers," based on a familiar fairy tale that featured, among other things, a character who could swallow an entire sea.

"At one point when the band started, Michael and I were discussing what we wanted to do with the lyrics," says Buck. "We decided that we ought to take all these cliches and mutate them. Take fairy tales, old blues phrasings, cliches like ‘easy come, easy go’—and just twist them so they were evocative but skewed more resonant. 7 Chinese Brothers’ was a result of that, and there’s a similar thing on the new album. ‘Green Grow The Rushes’ is an Irish folk song lyric. Well, some of it is. Most of it’s Michael, but then the chorus is this old Irish song he heard some drunk guy singing on a Sunday in New York or something like that.”

Because their fans take them so seriously, R.E.M. is often perceived as this serious, mystical ‘‘art” band. Nothing is further from the truth, as should be evident to anyone who’s seen their live shows—during which encores sometimes evolve into musical zaniness, and cover tunes might include anything from “Rave On” and “California Dreamin’” to “Smokin’ In The Boys Room” or a marathon version of Donovan’s “Atlantis.”

“To us, the lyrical obscurities and stuff have a whole lot more to do with ‘Louie Louie’ than they do with any book of French poetry or anything like that,” says Buck. “We’re a rock ’n’ roll band. It’s just that ideally we’d remake rock ’n’ roll in our own image, and that’s the idea. Rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be fun. You’re supposed to be moved, it’s supposed to change your life, but you’re also supposed to laugh. I don’t want to be one of those people who go ‘No, I’m an artist.’ It is silly, you know? You gotta revel in that part of it as well, and not take yourself too seriously.”

Some of this “fun” side will eventually be heard on “Burn In Hell,” the band’s heavy metal anthem (featuring the soonto-be-classic lines: “Women got skirts/ Men got pants/lf you’ve got the picnic/l’ve got the ants”), which didn’t make it onto the album but will probably be the “B” side of a forthcoming single. Other potential “B” sides include “Band Wagon” (which may be about the meaninglesss rock ’n’ roll political flagwaving and sloganeering Buck so passionately hates), “When I Was Young,” “Hyena” and a cover of Pylon’s “Crazy.”

One claim made by many long disenchanted with the music scene is that R.E.M. have managed to bring a certain degree of “magic” back to rock ’n’ roll. Peter Buck recently contributed some guitar parts to a forthcoming Fleshtones LP, recorded live in Paris. He’s now backstage at a New York club where Fleshtones guitarist Keith Streng is introducing him to members of Kristi Rose & The Midnight Walkers, a new "country punk" band that includes ex-Television assist Fred Smith. (Prior to this, Streng and Buck sat in a hotel room discussing rock 'n' roll as "blood & guts," "a way of life" and other terms that would seem almost comical today if their enthusiasm wasn’t so obviously heartfelt.) Kristi Rose’s drummer asks Buck to autograph a flyer for his brother who’s “one of those fanatic rock ’n’ roll collectors. He’s totally into the ’50s and ’60s, stuff like Elvis, Jerry Lee and Dylan— but he thinks the only people today who match up are Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M.”

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Not bad for a rock band that counts Andy Williams (or was it Jerry Butler?) as one of its musical influences.

“I moved to Athens from Illinois where I went to high school. It was a very outgoing, flamboyant, loud school, and I hated everything about it. I was very, kind of, afraid of a lot of things. When I moved to Athens, I just wanted to be alone, so I spent about a year by myself. I didn’t have any friends, and I didn’t talk to anyone. I just sat around reading or listening to music. I guess Peter was really the first person I met and got to know, and from there, the band came. That year alone, I think I really matured about five years in that time. It’s a long time to go without talking to people, and it really put a lot of things into perspective for me. I became much more of a quiet person after that. Much less bombastic, which is good.”

Michael Stipe is definitely a bit strange, but the shyness and eccentricity both come across as endearing traits. In his Salvation Army apparel and new short haircut (with a bald spot shaven on top), he’s reminiscent of the trendy art student roaming any college town—the major difference here being a genuine artistic sensibility on display. Not arrogance, but a gentle spirit that often seems almost childlike (i.e., he’s constantly asking what certain words mean) in its innocence.

He says photography is his first love. He recently had a photo taken of himself recreating the famous Diane Arbus shot of a child holding a toy hand grenade in Central Park. He designed all three R.E.M. album covers (and is still fuming about the shoddy reproduction on Reckoning). He loves nature and is extremely romantic about America’s past. He would eventually like to be a carpenter and raise snapping turtles back in Georgia (he points out a hidden turtle on the new LP cover, though I’ll be damned if I can locate it now). He says he recently had a bizarre dream in which his forearm became a universe. He admires Laurie Anderson, Tom Waits and Henry Mancini (naturally). He’s recently been listening to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman (though he hasn’t “the vaguest understanding of that kind of music”), and sometimes listens to more than one tape at the same time. He says that “making connection” with other people through R.E.M.’s music is very important to him. He likes carrot juice. He thinks that a cappella music will make a big comeback, and is currently working on an a cappella record with friends in Athens. And he says that “I just play the song out of my mouth as I hear it. If I were trying to enunciate or slur it more, it would probably be false. I just sing it the way I think it should be sung.

“As far as the band is concerned, and especially this record, it seems to have this very cyclical sort of sound to it. There’s a lot of motion, it’s kind of endless, and it just swirls around and around. There’s been that on the other records as well, and I think that’s something we’ve sort of nurtured from the beginning. But this one seems even more cyclical than the others.

“There’s this whole process you have to go through in the studio, using it as a tool, and it’s combined with this really deep, heartfelt, emotional desire to get across what it is you’ve created. I use that term ‘creative’ in its most base form. I’m not making any kind of claim to greatness or anything like that. I mean, you could create mudpies and that would be great, too. But I think we really took quite a few chances on this record, some of the more obvious things being a string section and horns. I went into the studio knowing I wanted to have at least 16 different voices on the record, and there’s one song in particular that’s got at least four different ones on it.

“My ideal music is the kind where I can be reading a book or washing the dishes, and have this music playing in the background like wallpaper. And the best thing is that you can suddenly tune out what you’re doing, listen to part of the music, and it’ll come out at you and be very clear. With R.E.M., it’s kind of like you can focus on one part or you can focus on another, and you can get all these different ideas or interpretations of what’s going on in the song. I like that. I kind of like the idea that people have to involve themselves in our music, even if it’s on a wallpaper level.”

Peter Buck is R.E.M.’s rock ’n’ roller, meaning he loves the concept as opposed to adhering to any type of cliched lifestyle. From his “Future Farmers of America” jacket, dangling earring, Lou Reed button, green toy monkey (someone threw it onstage) hanging from his belt, and excessive energy which mainly reveals itself through constantly twitching knees, a stranger could probably surmise he doesn’t work for IBM. He’s extremely positive, courteous, and an all-round nice person. He goes out of his way to meet fans. He could probably write a book on the best record stores and junk or regional food emporiums in all 50 states. He thinks that most of the music he recently heard in England “sounds just like Air Supply.” He says that Elliot Mazer and Van Dyke Parks, among others, were considered to produce the new LP; Joe Boyd (Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, Barrett’s Pink Floyd) was basically picked out of a hat, though he wanted someone familiar with guitars and liked the way the producer described his work in an interview. He gave his demo copy of the new LP to his mom. He’s learning to play the banjo (“Wendell Gee,” with sheet music in front of him, was his first venture). And he and his band have the audacity to wear their street clothes onstage in 1985. Some people say that R.E.M., in the most non-derogatory sense, may be the last “hippie” band.

“Even though they couldn’t be more wrong as far as what I conceive as a hippie band, I can see that completely,” he says. “If you divide it into hippie or young businessmen, then we’re definitely on the hippie side. Most rock ’n’ rollers today...take these heavy metal bands who are supposed to be real badasses. They’re really young businessmen. We’re not like that. We’re the quintessential fuck-ups, and in that respect, we’re gonna be like the Grateful Dead. We’re just gonna muddle along, though none of us will probably get arrested for freebasing.

“So much today has nothing to do with what rock ’n’ roll is all about. It’s flash, image and no substance. I mean, Jerry Lee Lewis had an image, but he was also a great singer and piano player. Dylan had a great image, but he certainly carried that image along with a string of great records. Whereas now, it’s all image and that’s what’s marketed.

“We could’ve made this record a sure-fire AOR hit, and it would’ve cut the heart out of it. The whole idea was to get real tough live tapes. Some of my favorite songs on it have like two or three big kinds of mistakes. Not terrible, though, and the tape kind of held together as a whole, so we said, To hell with the mistakes. I can live with it.’ So we sell less records. I think we make better records. And in the end, I can’t think of anyone who’s made really good records over a space of five or six years that hasn’t reached the right audience, unless they’ve self-destructed.”

How about the new “psychedelic revival,” which Fables Of The Reconstruction will undoubtedly get lumped into?

“There are a couple of songs that are kind of ’80s psychedelic, but it’s not the paisley underground thing. It’s more the way Nick Cave is psychedelic—kind of the wild glump. I never really think of anything in terms of ‘psychedelic,’ so whenever someone says that, I start laughing. I think of Nehru jackets and stuff. It’s different, though, so it might be psychedelic in the sense that the song structures are mutated. We’ve never been real traditional as far as song structure goes, and this is even less traditional than the other ones. The thing I always liked about psychedelia wasn’t the flower power, but the idea that you could do anything with a pop song and make it valid, without being arty or pretentious about it. I mean, some of my favorite psychedelic songs are like Tommy James & The Shondells.”

How about R.E.M.’s political vision?

“We say things and we do benefits that we feel are consistent with the band. I don’t think it comes across in the lyrics, except maybe a little bit in things like ‘Moral Kiosk’ or ‘Little America.’ But I think whatever comes across politically is intrinsic in the way we live our lives. As a reflection of our lives, the political things are going to be in there, but we’re not telling anyone how to live their lives. I don’t like sloganeering, especially when it gets to something like the Clash who don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re fucking boneheads. People think that’s revolutionary and it’s garbage. If somebody really wanted to change society with their music, they’d put together this hot heavy metal band like Van Halen, have three LPs of ‘party, party,’ and on the fourth one hit them with ‘the party we have isn’t enough.’ Because it’s bullshit to preach to the converted. I mean, you get all these college kids in combat pants going, ‘Hey, man, the Clash really turned me onto Communism, man.’ Have they read Marx? I haven’t. It’s just senseless sloganeering that could be taken for any side. Hitler said some of the same stuff the Clash do.

“I’d like to think that people who like us don’t like Reagan or agree with his policies, but that’s not really the case. When we were announcing onstage last tour that everyone should register to vote and see if we can get him out of office, we’d get probably two-thirds cheers and one-third boos. You try to talk to people about it, but they don’t really understand.

“But in the end, when you think about it, there’s horrible things all over the world. There’s starvation and stuff. But, really, one of the main problems is people just won’t go out of their way to be nice. They won’t help jumpstart some guy’s car when it’s raining. Or they’re just very rude to one another.”

Michael says the “Reconstruction” part of the new LP’s title came from a phone conversation he had with his father. Peter says it’s “just an Uncle Remus fable type thing”—and both prefer to remain obtuse about the title’s meaning. It suggests numerous interpretations, but, in many ways, R.E.M. are perhaps trying to reconstruct something that’s long seemed dead and buried, even if it is in their own image. The jury’s still out, but many of the LP’s images suggest a “sea of possibilities” (in the words of one of their heroes), as well as the obstacles that stand in the way (“You can’t do this—I said ‘I can’ ”). In other words, sometimes it does seem like you can’t get there from here, even though we’ve been there before and should still know the way.

“We get letters from kids,” says Peter, “and it’s like ‘I’m the only kid in Pork Butt, Idaho who listens to your music.’ We write back ‘Keep the faith’—because we’ve all been there too.”

“It’s a really weird time that we’re living in,” says Michael. “It’s kind of scary. I’m not sure that I like it too much.”

Maybe it’ll get better, I suggest.

“Is there a word that applies to the future, like an anachronism?”

I can’t think of one off the top of my head.

“How about ‘courage’? That’s a good one.” m