By 1995, R.E.M. hadn’t toured in six years but you could hardly say the decision to take themselves off the road had caused a downturn in fortunes for the Athens, Georgia quartet. Quite the opposite: during that period, they hunkered down in the studio and released a pair of early 90s classics in 1991’s Out Of Time and quickfire follow-up Automatic For The People, which came out the following year. Both sold in the multi-multi-millions and made R.E.M., already a sizeable, arena-playing band, absolutely huge. Monstrous, in fact.
They were ready to get back out there and their 1994 record Monster was written with big stages and bigger crowds in mind: after the low-key, acoustic-heavy sounds that made up much of Automatic For The People, this was loud, crunching rock music built for mass projection. The tour, which hit the road 30 years ago this week when the band kicked off a near year-long trek with shows in Australia, would also require an about-turn from frontman Michael Stipe, who cut an introspective albeit captivating figure for some of the songs across those two records (OK, maybe he wasn’t so introspective on Shiny Happy People). He was certainly in the mood to embrace his inner flamboyant showman, and a few years ago he told this writer about what it entailed to get into the zone for the band’s biggest shows yet.
