A liner note from the Special Edition of In Time written by Peter Buck: Man on the Moon

So like REM are one of the few bands whose second best of was better than their first. Die hard old school work fans will argue the toss, but seriously does anyone own Madonna's secondbest of? OK you might own U2's second one but you are in all likihood to own In Time 1988 - 2003 The Best of REM. Why, because it rules and had why more publicity that that IRS one...

A liner notes from the Special Edition of In Time written by Peter Buck

Man on the Moon

"If I were to pick one song as the quintessential REM Song, this would be it, which is kind of ironic because it came within tow hours of not being on Automatic for the People.

With five days left before the record was mastered, we had the track, completely finished except for the lyrics. Micheal was completely stumped, and was getting quite irritated with all of us leaning on his shoulder. It was decided that rather than drive each other crazy in the studio we should take a few days off. Micheal spent his time off driving around in his rental car woth a cassette of the track singing along for four days..

When we reconvened, Micheal walked into the studio, sang, Man on the Moon once, and walked out. We were all stunned. It was one of those magic moments I'll remember long after the award ceremonies and the photo sessions have disappeared into the mists of time"

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Sounds like an Eddie Van Halen moment to me - ala Beat for Micheal Jackson. Mr Van Halen came into the studio, did two takes of the solo, left and they used the first.

I think the slide intro to Man On the Moon is one of the coolest guitar bits on Automatic for the People - every so often if I have a beer when playing the acoustic, I'll pull out a dirty version. Then I pretend to be Ben Harper and it drives the misses insane!

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