Has it been forty years? Has four decades passed since the legendary indie-rock super group, R.E.M., one of the most consequential bands of the time, and perhaps the world’s greatest alternative rock band, performed for the first time as a group in Athens, Georgia?
The four University of Georgia students who formed R.E.M. captured the spirit of Athens in the early 1980s and took college radio by storm. Over a 31-year run as multi-platinum-selling artists, R.E.M. became international superstars by creating a niche never witnessed before…..oblique lyrics, intellectualism, a quirkiness, all encompassing, soulful music….a new musical language that captured the imagination of a generation and spawned a musical revolution.
Five months before the glorious debut of Georgia freshman running back Herschel Walker and the Bulldogs march to the national championship, R.E.M. began its musical and creative ascent and would help define the Classic City as a world-recognized music and cultural mecca. From that first performance in the old St. Mary’s Church on April 5, 1980 to selling some 90 million albums worldwide, bassist and vocalist Mike Mills, front-man Michael Stipe, guitarist-mandolinist Peter Buck and original drummer Bill Berry were a pioneer of the genre and always were true to their early, college underground musical roots.
The boys, who called it a day on September 21, 2011, transcended underground and mainstream music but forever held on to that rock-rebelliousness. At the time, Michael Stipe told the Daily Beast, “If anything, in disbanding, R.E.M. managed to do something that’s never been done before in the history of pop music. We did so as friends, with no external forces causing that to happen and without lawyers having to square off. It was just that the time had come.”
Let’s go back to the beginning, to October 1979, because it’s here in the Classic City, that four students became known to the world as R.E.M. Stipe was an art student, where he befriended Buck, an Emory transfer working as a clerk at Wuxtry Records downtown. At a local party, they met UGA students Mills and Berry, Macon natives.
Berry and Mills had played together in a high school band called Shadowfax and were living in Reed Hall, enjoying college life and experiencing the burgeoning music scene around Athens. Stipe and Berry moved into converted apartments at St. Mary’s Church, a place only college kids could appreciate. One of the oldest structures in Athens, the church had been turned into a space where the city’s local artists hung out, practiced and lived.
The boys rehearsed at St. Mary’s in anticipation of their first show at the birthday party of friend Kathleen O’Brien. On Saturday afternoon, they stopped by WUOG, the campus radio station, for a pre-show interview. Some reports said the group appeared as Twisted Kites, but the band later confirmed that they hadn’t yet decided on what to call themselves. The band opened with The Troggs’ “I Can’t Help Myself” and followed with the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen.”
No one had any idea what the significance of that event on Saturday night in St. Mary’s would be. They weren’t even called R.E.M. but that night would be the beginning of 31 years of musical magic.
By the time R.E.M. played their second show on April 19th at the 11:11 Koffee Klub in Athens, they had picked a name (out of the dictionary): “R.E.M.” A reported 150 fans attended the show and true to their alternative form, the police shut the show down at 2:30am. The band was building momentum in May with Athens’ shows at Tyrone’s O.C., Memorial Hall, the 40 Watt Club and the Mad Hatter.
During a May show, R.E.M. opened for The Brains. The Georgia student newspaper, the Red & Black proclaimed, “R.E.M. blew away The Brains.” Mills and Berry moved into St. Mary’s in June and the boys were playing several dates a month. In July, they had their first gigs out of Georgia, when they played two shows in Carrboro, NC followed by a show in Raleigh.
Shows primarily in Athens continued throughout the fall and in December, the band opened for the Police in Atlanta’s Fox Theater before 4,000 people. In early 1981, the band released Radio Free Europe. The single received critical acclaim, and its success on college radio earned the band a record deal with I.R.S. Records. The band was well on their way to becoming a world-renown icon.
Meanwhile, St. Mary’s slowly began to disappear. History in the South is woven into the fabric of our lives and in Athens, history is as thick as a sultry August morning. Originally designed as a place of worship in 1849 for a local manufacturing company, the church was later decommissioned after the plant closed. The Red Cross revamped the space into residences, setting the stage for an important moment in music history. Within a decade, R.E.M. were international superstars, but the site of their first show was set for demolition.
The building was demolished in 1990 but the steeple was saved. Condos soon rose where St. Mary’s once stood but the steeple began to badly deteriorate.
“The steeple is the iconic symbol of Athens music, I think — what’s left from where we were,” Marc Tissenbaum, a project manager who sought to restore the site, told Flagpole. “When I first got here in 1986, everyone knew that was the R.E.M. steeple. … It’s a landmark. It’s a beacon. It’s a lot of things.”
The condo association gave the steeple to the nearby Nuci’s Space, a nonprofit organization that provides an array of services to assist in the emotional, physical and professional well-being of musicians. A crowdfunding campaign raised $150,000 to cover the restoration of the steeple and provide some needed support for Nuçi’s Space. R.E.M. and Athens alumni like the B-52’s, Drive-By Truckers and Neutral Milk Hotel donated guitars and autographed items for backers.
Today the “R.E.M. Steeple” is known to be a pilgrimage site of sorts for R.E.M. fans or music fans in general. It is a landmark in rock history and one of the most important sites in alternative music. Forty years ago, four college boys who simply wanted to be in a band and create some inspiring music, reached heights no one could ever imagined and inspired a generation.