I’ve been an avid fan of R.E.M. since first hearing them whilst on holiday in 1990. I’ve also found music by Bristol band The Blue Aeroplanes incredibly cathartic (for want of a better word) since the early ’90s. In particular, the wonderfully twanging, story-telling albums Swagger and Beatsongs.
This afternoon, probably thirty-three (?) years after first hearing the albums, I discover by chance that the “ooh-ing” in the background of their song “What It Is” is only bloody Michael Stipe! He wrote about the re-release of the album on the R.E.M. website back in 2006; the “little remix” he mentions is on Spotify as part of the two-CD set.
Also re-released is the BLUE AEROPLANES lp called SWAGGER, featuring my cello-esque background vocals on the song “what it is”. The band approached me to add a vocal to the song a thousand years ago, and frankly I thought it was a perfect song already and I would only muddy or fuck it up. So I sang a cello part that they had to put in really quietly.
There is a little remix on the 2nd cd in the package where they mixed my vocal up really loud, and you can hear gerards pre-finished lyric; what I consider to be one of their greatest lyrics, and certainly for me, emboldening. I had always wanted to do a dylanesque, or lou reed type vocal on a song [hear it in “end of the world…” or “belong”] but never felt that I could pull it off in an r.e.m. song; having toured with blue aeroplanes through part of May of 1989, I think it gave me the unconscious courage to go for it in what has become one of my favorite r.e.m. songs of all time, “e-bow the letter”. Gerards incanting over stunning guitars, layered like the feelies or john cale and brian ferry, with heavy dollops of neil young; its a great record. Throw it into shuffle, you want to hear one or two songs at a time, not the whole thing [like pj harvey or kristen hersh, or pixies or janes addiction. Or interpol or hidden cameras or antony and the johnsons for that matter]. Awesome, singular, revelatory. Also perfect summer listening.
Michael Stipe in 2006
