Here's a clipped interview with Scott McCaughey about some stuff R.E.M.
But first, who is this chap? Every lazy editor turns to wikipedia for 'advice' these days, and I'm no different.
"Since 1994, he has worked with R.E.M. both on stage and in the studio. While originally brought on as a second guitarist for the Monster tour, McCaughey has remained with R.E.M. in various capacities since then, contributing to the band's studio albums New Adventures In Hi-Fi, Up, Reveal, Around The Sun and Accelerate. Additionally, he has received credits for his work on the R.E.M. Live album as well as their 2003 greatest hits collection, In Time. When working with R.E.M., McCaughey plays guitar, bass, keyboards, and adds backing vocals."
They you go, now you shoudl enough perspective to enjoy the following talk about McCaughey's travels with R.E.M.. ;)
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Since joining R.E.M. as a supporting tour musician on the 1995 Monster tour (“Aneurysm ‘95” to the fans), McCaughey has become more than just a multi-instrumentalist. He has become a part of the very fabric that now makes R.E.M. today. Having been with the band at a time when it knew its identity and then suddenly had to search within itself for a new one after original drummer Bill Berry’s exit in 1997; McCaughey is now a fifteen year veteran with the band which now enters its third decade in existence.
R.E.M. closed the last decade with two of its most solid releases—2008’s Accelerate and 2009’s Live at the Olympia. The latter became the band’s second live album after 2007’s R.E.M. Live (coincidentally both albums are recorded in Dublin, Ireland). And although the band has opened up its vaults by including bonus live performances in its recent reissues of Murmur and Reckoning (and producer Joe Boyd revisiting Fables of the Reconstruction in the works), R.E.M. Live and Live at the Olympia were fully tailored live releases.
If R.E.M. Live is the reminder that the band can still pull off arena rock and still make it look fun, then Live at the Olympia is the best testament of how far the band has come since 1997. What the album says is that this is R.E.M., plain and simple.
Do you remember the earliest conversations of this idea (a live album) being proposed?
I don’t remember exactly when. I guess we were working on the record (Accelerate) in Vancouver. I don’t know if it was planned all along. I think it might have been, even before we started the record; it might have been in everybody’s head to go out and play the songs before the record was actually finished so we could test run them and see if there were things we discovered about them by playing them live. That definitely happened. Some of them didn’t change at all after playing them for the 5 nights in Dublin. Some changed quite a bit, and, on other ones we were able to fine tune them; we were able to kind of figure out what wasn’t working, maybe, by playing those nights. I think it was kind of in the plan all along when we were making that record. I could be wrong, but that’s the way I remember it.
At the time Accelerate came out, a lot of the interviews that Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Michael Stipe had done really gave me this impression that the post-assessment about Around the Sun was less than desirable. What was it like having gone through that recording process to now take a different turn, incorporate live performance and hit the refresh button?
Since Bill (Berry) quit the band, we’ve made three records that were all real studio records, and that’s not a bad thing. We were having a really great time. Each one kind of got, maybe, a little more convoluted and a little more drawn out. By the time Around the Sun got finished, I think we were kind of done with that process for a while (laughs). Peter, especially, was like, “I never want to make a record that takes that long, again.” I think he felt like that record was better after we had just gone in and played the songs in the studio before they got as much window dressing as they got. Some of the guitars got lost in the process.
We were pretty much determined to make a record where there was no possibility that could happen. Really, that meant mostly just playing songs with 2 guitars, bass and drums; play them live in the studio and not do a whole lot of overdubbing. So, it fit in perfectly to go and play them live with that kind of material. A lot of the Around the Sun songs ended up sounding—when we played them live—probably a lot better; a little more direct, a little more guitar oriented and stuff. That tends to happen with some of the studio stuff, anyway. It gets simplified when you play it live. With the Minus 5 it’s always like that. Most of the songs that we record that are piano songs we end up playing on guitar, ya know? Two guitars, bass, drums and let it fall where it may.
This time it just made sense for us to make a record that was not going to be as labored over and can just be really fun, bash it out live and not get hung up in the process of making a record.
In listening to everything that you’re saying, it seems like Accelerate kind of tied back to, in some ways, how 1996’s New Adventures In Hi-Fi was made.
Yeah, that’s true to a degree. The difference with New Adventures was mostly songs that were being developed as we were actually touring. There were a few things from Accelerate that had probably gotten developed on the tour before that, things we played at soundchecks and stuff. Yeah, there’s similarities to the approach.
What were your feelings as you were walking out on stage for the first of the five nights? I assume Peter still does the setlist. So, once the setlist was written up and you guys were ready to go, what do you remember back then?
It was kind of frantic. Besides the fact that we’re playing all these new songs that we never played before live, we kept adding, everyday during a two hour soundcheck, other songs to play. Most of those other ones that I played live I’d never really played before; we did a lot of really old songs, and I just never really played most of those. Neither had Bill (Rieflin)! We were learning songs for hours at soundcheck before each night, as well as going over the new stuff. Then we’d have about an hour or two off and then play the show. It was pretty hardcore. It was a full day’s work, everyday, and, after soundcheck, I’d be cramming and trying to remember how to play “Little America” or something like that that I’d never played before, so, it was actually really intense. Once we got on stage, they were super fun. I had a great time. I didn’t worry too much about playing everything perfectly. I tried, of course, but I’m sure I failed on occasion (laughs).
It’s kind amazing how great it sounds. I know that Jacknife (Lee) didn’t fix a lot of stuff or anything. He just kind of found the best takes. You can tell there’s rough edges to it, but that’s cool.
And it keeps in spirit of what the whole project was all about.
Yeah. It’s kind of a great record though. I like the pacing and sequencing. It’s just such a bizarre huge grouping of songs. The focus of it is really early stuff and then the really new stuff. R.E.M.’s most famous and biggest songs are totally unrepresented. Their biggest records, Automatic for the People and Out of Time, aren’t there at all…I think “Drive” was played. It’s pretty cool. I like the selection of songs. We were just picking them each day. They were just coming out of nowhere. It wasn’t like we had this big masterplan. We didn’t (laughs).
From the musician standpoint, I know most of these songs, the older material, have popped up here and there—not very often—since the Monster tour. Thinking about songs from Fables of the Reconstruction or Chronic Town, what did you appreciate about those songs and the work that was originally done on them once you got to play them? For how old some of those songs are, they still sound great…
Because they’re really weird songs (laughs). Musically, stuff like “Little America,” “Wolves, Lower,” and “Carnival of Sorts,” I’m like, “What the hell were you guys doing? How do write songs like that?” You can tell they’re songs that are written by a band and not by one guy sitting around with a guitar. They’re not singer/songwriter songs, which is kind of what I’m used to. There’s a different logic to the way they’re constructed. They’re a little tricky for me to get my head around. Peter’s guitar playing is so individual and so precise. A lot of the songs, I just wanted to stay out of his way. I had to figure out things that I could play that wouldn’t muddle up the songs but add a little force to them. I think it worked out well. They sound really loud and trashy. It’s kind of cool to hear them sounding a little differently than they do on the original record. Peter’s got a heavier guitar sound, and you can actually hear the lyrics (laughs). You start realizing songs like “Second Guessing” have basically one verse sung over and over again (laughs). It works somehow. They’re very strange songs, and it was really interesting to play them, for me, because it’s a whole different style of songwriting than what I’m used to.
Did you get any impression from Rieflin? I would have loved to ask Bill this, about taking on Berry’s early work. ’95 was the only time I ever saw Bill Berry with the band. But to hear Chronic Town songs and hear how much is going on with the drums, however direct, there’s still a lot of presence there. Did he (Rieflin) share any thoughts of what it was like to perform that work?
I think there were times when he was definitely really, really impressed with how cool the drum parts were, and, other times, he was probably slightly amused because Bill’s (Berry) drum parts are really cool and really unusual. A lot of people don’t give him the credit that he should get. Bill Berry was a pretty amazing drummer, and he wasn’t really playing like anybody else back then. Rieflin did an amazing job at being faithful to those parts, not slavishly, but they kind of have to be there to make the songs work the way they did because they’re pretty intricate and precise kind of songs. I think Bill really appreciated Bill Berry’s drumming and really nailed it. The thing that I was most impressed about on the record was listening to Bill’s drumming. I just think he’s so awesome on this, and the drums sound really amazing, too. They’re super powerful and really rock. Hats off to Rieflin.
So, what’s currently happening in R.E.M. land? You guys were down in New Orleans doing some recording.
We did 3 weeks of work and tracked a bunch of new songs. Michael sang on about half of them, probably. So, we got a really good start on the next record.
Are there other locales in mind for recording, like Vancouver?
We’re not going to Vancouver. We’ve got a couple more stops in mind. I don’t think they’re exactly nailed down, yet. We’ll do two more three week stays, but the next one probably isn’t going to be until April into May. So, there’s a lot of time right now to sit around and ruminate on the songs or come up with new stuff; mostly for Michael to work on lyrics, melody and stuff. He’ll probably end up doing something before the rest of us get back. He might just go somewhere with Jacknife and record some more vocals. He’s got some great stuff. We got a really good start. The tracks all sound amazing, and the stuff that Michael has come up with are super cool, too. I’m pretty excited about it.
Right now, I’m not thinking about it for a little while. I’m going to let it go a bit and then get back to it, but I’m really happy with the stuff we did in New Orleans.
Article written by Chris Castaneda. Full version ici.
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