R.E.M., Mills Are Playing by Own Rules

Chatting on the phone with Mike Mills, one gets the impression he could have climbed as high on the corporate ladder as he has playing for R.E.M., one of the most important, successful, long-lived and consistently rewarding rock bands of the past 20 years.

He’s smooth and personable without coming off as oily. He knows how to stay “on message” as a spokesman for his concern’s interests, and he makes his points clearly and confidently.

Of course, if R.E.M. were part of the Fortune 500 instead of the Billboard 200 (the music trade magazine’s chart of the top-selling albums), Mills almost surely would be floating into retirement right now on a golden parachute instead of embarking on his band’s first U.S. tour in four years.

R.E.M., which opened the tour Monday night at the Greek Theatre, plays there again tonight and headlines Wednesday at Irvine Meadows, has been compiling the kinds of numbers lately that get executives pushed out of their suites, and bands off of magazine covers and into their autumnal years of playing smaller venues for loyal, old-line fans rather than a mass, arena-scale following.

R.E.M. was golden--or, rather, multiple-platinum--for the first half of the 1990s. Its three albums during that span, “Out of Time,” “Automatic for the People” and “Monster,” averaged U.S. sales of more than 3 1/2 million each, according to SoundScan--and the band hadn’t even bothered touring to promote “Out of Time” or “Automatic.”

With its contract expiring right on time for a big score, R.E.M. played the field as a free agent before re-signing with Warner Bros. for what reportedly was a record-setting five-album deal totaling $80 million (part of it contingent on how well those albums would sell).

The fact that R.E.M.’s subsequent releases, “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” (1997) and “Up” (1998) have sold 962,000 and 566,000 copies, respectively, might have set parachutes unfurling at Warner Bros.

But racking up huge numbers is not R.E.M.’s concern, Mills said, speaking by phone from the band’s office in its hometown, Athens, Ga.

“That’s not why we’re doing this. Everybody knows how we operate,” said Mills, the group’s bassist, keyboardist and backing vocalist. “We put the songs on there that we want to. We make great music, and it’s somebody else’s problem to sell. I think we’re still writing good music. As long as we’re doing that, [we’re fine]. Our perceived popularity is out of our control.”

To some ears, “New Adventures” wasn’t so great. Not bad--R.E.M.’s dozen albums all have maintained a certain standard of quality and often have excelled--but diffuse and halting and indecisive.

“Up,” clearly the least-commercial release of R.E.M.’s career, is a fine comeback, ranking among the band’s best. It’s a muted album, with only two full-on rockers, but its dreamlike textures broke new sonic ground for R.E.M.--no small feat for a band in its 18th year. Its themes of alienation and isolation, even persecution, send R.E.M. toward the millennium with a cohesive, if decidedly nervous, vision of what lies ahead for the world at large.

“Up” came out of a nervous time for R.E.M. The original foursome of Mills, guitarist Peter Buck, singer-lyricist Michael Stipe and drummer Bill Berry had been altered for the first time when Berry resigned after “New Adventures.”

“It pretty much threw us into chaos, and we were trying to figure out what kind of band we were,” Mills said. “It is a very introspective record. A lot of the people in the songs are characters who find themselves in really dire situations and think, ‘What are we going to do now?’ It’s basically the position we found ourselves in when Bill left.”

And what is R.E.M. going to do now, booked mainly in arenas, when its most recent album is an inward, floating antithesis of arena-rock?

The initial answer provided in promotional notes sent out when “Up” was released was to stay the heck out of arenas. “I think headphones are the trip on this record,” Mills was quoted as saying. “More than any of our other ones, this could be a really good late-night, by-yourself, in-the-dark kind of record to listen to.”

Mills said R.E.M. isn’t touring in support of “Up.”

“We don’t tour to promote records; we tour because we like to play.” Translation: the album is not going to be a big-seller no matter what R.E.M. does, because it just isn’t that kind of critter.

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But Mills said R.E.M.’s shows will include five to 10 songs from “Up,” some of them in more assertive, less headphone-ready form than on the album.

Promotional trips to Europe last November and January for TV and radio appearances and two club gigs prompted R.E.M. to rescind its decision not to tour.

“It was so much fun, and it felt like such a real band,” Mills said. R.E.M. recruited Beck’s drummer, Joey Waronker, to take over for Berry on a sideman basis, now that R.E.M. is officially a trio with the remaining original members, who add others as needed. Also on the tour are guitarist Scott McCaughey, who played in the Young Fresh Fellows and has backed R.E.M. on previous tours, and former Posies co-leader Ken Stringfellow on guitar and keyboards.

A tour of Europe earlier this summer confirmed that returning to live performance was a good idea, Mills said: “It went incredibly well. We didn’t play a bad show.”

Regardless how the marketplace responds to what R.E.M. does, Mills doesn’t see the group moving into any autumnal phase soon. Its next venture is an already-completed score for a biographical feature film that will star Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman, the off-kilter comic/performance artist whose death inspired R.E.M.’s 1992 hit song, “Man on the Moon.” Mills said that “Great Beyond,” which plays under the end credits, is part of the band’s touring set. Other new material is in the works.

“I feel 25, both as a person and as a band member,” said Mills, who is 40. “I’m completely excited about the songs we’re writing for the next record. I know we’re writing good songs, and the possibilities are endless.”

* R.E.M. and Mercury Rev play tonight at the Greek Theatre, 2800 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, and Wednesday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8808 Irvine Center Drive. 8 p.m. $25-$35. (949) 855-6111 (taped information) or (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).

Mike Boehm can be reached by e-mail at Mike.Boehm@latimes.com.