Their reckoning

Michael Stipe is in such a good mood on this afternoon in the recording studio that he probably wouldn’t mind if you gave his shaved head an affectionate noogie. It’s a side of him -- and the band -- that you don’t normally see in photographs or even on stage, where the earnestness of the music defines the tone.

When one of the musicians who’ll be accompanying the band on tour this summer hits a wrong note, Stipe laughs so hard that guitarist Peter Buck and bassist Mike Mills also break up. They have to start the song three times before everyone gets back on track.

The window on the recording-studio control room underscores the group’s playful mood these days. It’s lined with the unlikeliest albums the band could find in its rounds of local used record stores -- including one of the duo Mickey and Bunny singing “This Land Is Your Land” and other folk tunes in English and Polish.

“I’m going to have some fun with the lyric on this one,” Stipe says as the band begins playing the next song, “Little America.” Written during the Reagan administration, it casts a wary eye on the nation’s swing to the right.

The line Stipe has his eye on is the one at the end that goes, “Jefferson, I think we’re lost.”

When “Little America” came out, the lyric was widely seen as a reference to Thomas Jefferson and the country’s traditional values, but Stipe later explained it was really inspired by the band’s former co-manager, Jefferson Holt, and the time the group’s tour van took a wrong turn.

Politics?

Wrong turns?

It’s not unusual for there to be debate over R.E.M.’s lyrics.

As a lyricist, Stipe has an uncanny ability to pull images at random from his subconscious and then stitch them together in ways that carry a ring of truth and discovery, even if the thoughts don’t always proceed from point A to point B.

On this day in early May, though, there is no confusion about his substitute line in the song: “Washington, I think we’re lost.”

It’s not the subtlest of commentaries from the band that has often ventured into politics, including putting a new song (“The Final Straw”) on its Web site to voice its reservations about the Iraq war. This friskiness, however, sends out another message: R.E.M. is still alive and kicking.

Much as U2 did in 2001 with its “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” album, R.E.M. is out to reassert its place at the forefront of rock.

The group, one of the dozen most admired American rock bands ever, begins its first tour in four years on June 21 in the Netherlands, reaching the U.S. in September.

There’ll be a greatest hits album, including two new tracks recorded here, and then a full album of new songs and another tour next year. The new tracks, “Bad Day” and “Animal,” have an energy and confidence that rank with the group’s best material.

All this is good news for R.E.M. fans who may have felt in recent years that the band itself was lost. With the group’s profile slipping because of declining album sales and infrequent touring, some fans might not have been surprised to wake up one morning and find a farewell notice posted on the group’s Web site.

And it almost happened.

When guitars are ablaze and the crowd is on its feet cheering, rock bands seem invincible, yet they are fragile entities. The Rolling Stones may be going on forever, but the history of bands disintegrating, either through ego battles or self-destructiveness, is sobering. The long list runs from the Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival through Guns N’ Roses and Nirvana.

R.E.M. has always seemed so close-knit and sensible that it appeared immune.

Yet things were so tense during the recording of the “Up” album in the summer of 1998, the group now acknowledges, that it held an emergency meeting to decide whether the band had any future.

Buck wondered if the others still even cared about the music. Stipe was so shaken by the breakdown in communication that he suffered writer’s block for months. Mills, too, felt helpless.

R.E.M.’s story shows how difficult it is for any high-profile band to keep its creative and emotional balance amid the pressures and demands of a pop career. Even if you are as close-knit and grounded as R.E.M., the simple frustrations of the creative process can turn members against one other.

“When we went into that meeting [in 1998], things were very fragile in the band,” Stipe says during a rehearsal break. “We hadn’t talked in six months. Things had completely fallen apart. For the first time, I was forced to imagine life without R.E.M. and it was terrifying.

“As we talked, I think each of us realized just how much the band meant to us. Getting back together was like church. This band is my church, pure and simple. The music is flowing again. It is like the band has been reborn.”

STAYING GROUNDED

You can learn a lot about a band over the dinner table; not by what the members order or even what they talk about as much as simply how they conduct themselves.

Some groups care more about the restaurant’s opulence than its food -- they like being treated like stars. They like private rooms or ask for separate tables. Almost all use their clout to get preferential treatment at the door.

R.E.M. was still in its infancy in 1985 when I went to the group’s home base in Athens, Ga., so it figured that things would be pretty informal. And sure enough, dinner consisted of takeout food that Buck picked up at a favorite barbecue stand.

Nearly 40 million in sales later, R.E.M. still seems remarkably down-to-earth during another interview here. (The group has remained a bestseller around the world. Its 2001 album, “Reveal,” only sold about 400,000 copies in the U.S., but more than 2.5 million copies outside it.)

When the band heard a lot about a tasty Indian restaurant awhile back, the members just showed up -- and politely waited an hour in line for a table. They’ve been back several times and they still line up along with everyone else for a table. On this night, the room isn’t crowded and the wait is brief.

Of course, it’s hard not to get some special treatment if you’re a pop hero. While they wait, every employee, from the chef to the waitresses, stops by to say hello or bring by appetizers.

Unlike some musicians, who can’t talk about anything other than their music or their career, R.E.M.’s trio isn’t self-absorbed. The conversation at the table this evening ranges from books (Buck, a history buff, is excited about Antony Beevor’s account of the fall of Berlin in 1945) to films (Stipe, who co-produced the much-buzzed-about 1999 film “Being John Malkovich,” riffs about director Atom Egoyan’s 1997 “The Sweet Hereafter”) to the Dixie Chicks.

“I can’t believe all the fuss over what she said,” says Buck, 46, referring to the uproar in country music circles over Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines’ derogatory remarks about President Bush in connection with Iraq. “A bunch of my friends went out and bought the Chicks’ album to show their support.”

They are not only bandmates but also best friends. To avoid some of the conflicts that had torn apart other groups, R.E.M. shares songwriting royalties equally and gives each of the members veto power. Buck and Stipe, 43, may be the most high-profile, but Mills, 44, has an equal voice in everything from tour dates to musical arrangements.

This sense of partnership and community is a characteristic of the band’s music, as well.

For millions who grew up in the ‘80s, especially, the group’s songs expressed much of the idealism and anxiety of the time -- a voice of reason, insight and even comfort. The new pieces the band is working on here have the energy and evocativeness to live up to those standards.

And those standards are high indeed.

After years of underground success, the band was embraced by mainstream radio in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, thanks to such caressing hits as “The One I Love” and “Losing My Religion.” Album sales jumped from about 500,000 per outing in the U.S. to multi-platinum.

Warner Bros. Records, which signed the band in the late ‘80s, rewarded it in 1996 with a new contract, worth an estimated $80-million, that was believed to be the largest in the record business at that time.

There is no limo or van waiting to take the band back to the hotel after dinner, though -- no security guards, no entourage. Just the three of them and longtime manager Bertis Downs.

One reason R.E.M. is recording here is that it’s just a couple of hours’ drive from Seattle, where Buck lives with his wife and his 9-year-old twins, Zoe and Zelda. He can go home on the weekends. (Stipe and Mills still have houses in Athens, although Stipe, who stopped living part time in L.A. after the Northridge earthquake, spends much of the year in New York and Mills has a place in Los Angeles.)

“I think our generation was kind of lucky because we got to see the first generation of rock bands who gave it all away for one reason or another,” Buck says later at the recording studio. “They just didn’t care enough about the music to keep the band together.

“I didn’t want to be one of them myself. I wanted to be one of those that keep making records, and one way you do that is try to live as normal a life as possible.”

With his reputation for being so levelheaded, it was startling to see him charged with assault and being drunk on an aircraft following a flight from Seattle to London in 2001. He was subsequently acquitted. (Bono testified as a character witness.)

“I did something really stupid,” Buck says now. “I took a sleeping pill -- which I never do -- and a couple of glasses of wine and I woke up in jail. I had no idea how I got there and it was weird and scary. I was definitely embarrassed. I felt I had let the band and our fans down.”

‘A BREAKING POINT’

It’s midafternoon the following day and R.E.M. is playing “Bad Day.” Many will see it as a look at America’s role in the war with Iraq, but Stipe feels that’s too narrow a view. “It’s really as much an indictment of the media as it is politics or the current administration,” he says, sitting in an upstairs lounge during a rehearsal break. “For me, it’s about the ever blurring line between entertainment and news, and how that affects how we see the world around us.”

During the early days, Stipe was too shy to speak up in interviews. He left most of the talking to Buck. But he began opening up in the mid-’80s, although his comments sometimes seemed as elusive as his lyrics.

It’s still hard to make out all of his words when he’s singing in the studio, but Stipe is far more comfortable with interviews now, and his words are more to the point.

Unlike the straightforward Buck and Mills, however, Stipe has a bit of a performer’s aura about him. He warms up for the interview by slowly rolling a cigarette, using his favorite Drum tobacco.

“It’s from Holland and less addictive than American cigarettes,” he says in his raspy voice. “A lot of people see me smoking and they think I’m smoking pot. People in cars are always looking over and going, ‘Hey, dude, pass it over.’ But I quit smoking pot when I was 17.”

As much as he would like people to see his lighter side (“My lyrics are pretty sincere, but there is a healthy piece of humor in there”), Stipe tends to become serious during interviews.

There’s almost a father-confessor side to him that has made other musicians -- from the late Kurt Cobain to Courtney Love, Bono to Thom Yorke -- speak of him as a valued friend.

So it was a shock to him when, in the summer of 1998, he found that he was no longer able to communicate with his friends.

Because Stipe is the lead singer and, probably, the most famous member of the band, it’s easy to assume he could have made the easiest adjustment to a solo role. But he says he was devastated by the distance he felt from his bandmates. Music, he says, remains his main passion, not film.

“The truth is, I need a huge amount of support from Peter and Mike and Bill [Berry], when he was in the band,” he says solemnly. “I needed their approval and support and I didn’t have it, and I lost it as a writer. I found I was nothing without them.”

All three members have their takes on what happened that summer, and all of them relate to the changed relationship in the studio after drummer Berry left the group in 1997, two years after suffering a brain aneurysm.

“During the making of ‘Up,’ we realized we had been together all these years and maybe never really expressed a lot of stuff,” Buck says.”To me, it didn’t seem to be working in the studio and I might be completely wrong about it, but I didn’t feel anyone was sharing the enthusiasm I had.

“We had been laboring for months and months, and there didn’t seem to be anything being accomplished except this stuff I was kind of pushing,” he says. “It finally reached a breaking point.”

Mills, whose steady demeanor makes him an emotional anchor in the band, thinks the blowup was due chiefly to the different ways the band members work in the studio.

“When Bill was there, he was more like Peter,” he says. “He would get there on time for one thing, which Michael and I aren’t very good at. Peter always had someone to talk to or work with in Bill.”

In the 1998 meeting, Stipe says, it was the friendship that pulled them through -- and faith in the band’s future. “After Bill left, the inner dynamics shifts ... just like a death in the family or something,” he says. We dealt with it like men. Call it dumb uncommunicating, fear of confrontation, all that psychology stuff. None of us had dealt with it. I think the thing that pulled us through was no one was willing to let the band fall apart.”

The band went on to finish “Up,” but, although R.E.M toured at the time and downplayed the near-breakup, the strain of the period shows in the album. The group’s musical revitalization began with 2001’s “Reveal,” whose “Imitation of Life” and “Summer Turns to High” were among the group’s most appealing songs in years.

But the album tracks didn’t connect with radio programmers, and the lack of a tour also hurt the band’s profile.

Even longtime admirer Bono warned the band members in 2001 that they had to become more active again or people would just think they didn’t care anymore about their music.

The band seems to have gotten the message.

It isn’t going to be as visible as U2 -- which toured for months and even performed at the Super Bowl in support of “All That You Can’t Leave Behind.” But it is going to be the most active it has been in years. This year’s greatest hits album and tour, in fact, are a way to help set up next year’s album -- a way to remind old fans and acquaint young fans with the band’s gorgeous body of work.

Tom Whalley, who took over as chairman of Warner Bros. Records after the release of “Reveal,” is greatly encouraged by R.E.M.’s revitalization. “They are passionate about the music and they are willing to work. That’s all you can ask for as a record company.”

But will radio again embrace R.E.M.’s music?

“There are no guarantees in the pop world anymore because there is so much competition for everyone’s attention,” says Jeff Pollack, one of the nation’s most powerful programming consultants. “Yet R.E.M. is still greatly respected by radio, so if they come with a record people like, they will have no problem convincing stations to play it.”

LONGEVITY GOAL

As dusk nears, shadows fill the studio and the band members continue to dig deep into the R.E.M. catalog. They’ve already rehearsed more than four dozen songs for the tour.

The music, with its jangly guitars and loping melodies, was drawn from rich folk-rock strains -- a mix of old and new textures as timeless and as graceful as the music of the Band in the ‘60s and ‘70s -- and those qualities enable them to still sound fresh.

The titles, written on a chalkboard, include a lot of the usual suspects, including “Everybody Hurts,” the sensitive 1992 ballad Stipe wrote after hearing about a teenager who tried to kill himself, and “Electrolite,” the enchanting 1996 song that reflected the seductive nature of fame.

But the list also includes some lesser-known album tracks that the band wants to throw into the set from time to time to surprise the older fans.

“We all realize that this will come to an end, but we want it to be on our terms. If the band broke up during ‘Up,’ I would have felt we failed because we felt there was still music to be made,” Stipe says.

Buck would like to think that he’ll know it’s over when the music loses its edge, although he acknowledges that’s often hard for bands to see clearly. He says sales won’t be the determining factor. He sees R.E.M.’s career more in terms of Neil Young and Tom Waits than U2 -- meaning there will be ups and downs rather a straight series of blockbuster albums.

“You are always looking at what you do to see if the music is still fresh and worthwhile, and it feels all that,” Buck says. “It always sounds strange when people say they think their best work is still ahead of them, but that’s what keeps you going, isn’t it?

“That’s why Dylan is such a great inspiration. I’m not just talking about the great stuff he did in the ‘60s. I’m talking about his last two records. There’s never been anyone at that age that has made a great record until him. That gives us all hope.”

*

On and off the tour’s set list

With a huge catalog of contenders to fill a greatest-hits tour, R.E.M. is being selective. Here are the songs the three look forward to playing every night, and the ones they don’t expect ever to play again. The tour, their first in four years, includes a stop Sept. 10 at the Hollywood Bowl.

PETER BUCK

Always: “Losing My Religion” is something we are going to play until the day we die. I love the song and the way Michael sings it, the restraint in his voice. The fact it was also a huge hit is beside the point. We’d always play it if no one else had ever even noticed it.

Never: “Shiny Happy People.” The funny thing is “Losing My Religion” and this were on the same album [“Out of Time”]. I think Mike and Michael are both a little embarrassed by “Shiny.” Personally, I don’t find it any more twee than a lot of Donovan songs, and I love Donovan. It was meant to be something lightweight everyone could sing.

MIKE MILLS

Always: “Cuyahoga” is one of my favorites because I just love the bass line. It’s so much fun to play and there’s just something about the song that makes me feel good. We haven’t played it in years, but then we picked it up again during rehearsals and it still feels good.

Never: “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite,” and I can’t really tell you why, except that there’s something about the song that just doesn’t work for me.

MICHAEL STIPE

Always: “Man on the Moon” is the song that I love singing because it makes me feel the most heroic. I look out and see people just vibrating with excitement.

Never: We’ll never perform “Shiny Happy People” again, and probably not “Stand” or “Pop ’69.” We were trying to write super, super pop songs for kids, like the Monkees and the Banana Splits did, and we overstretched our abilities.

Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, can be reached at robert.hilburn@latimes.com