A Day at Home With R.E.M.

From Indies to the Majors with Green, 1988

In autumn 1988, the sharp and compassionate culture editor at New York Newsday, Caroline Miller, waved me into her office. "Do you like rem?" she asked. She meant R.E.M., since 1980 the avatars of indie rock. I have made similar errors. Early in the social media game, I asked one of my classes at St. John's what a "memee" was, when I should have known the word was "meme." Caroline had heard that R.E.M. was leaving indie label I.R.S. to sign with Warner Brothers Records for $12 million and full artistic control. She suggested I set something up with them and see if I could hop on a plane and come back with a nice Sunday cover story. Warner's fine New York publicist Karen Moss was happy to oblige, as the first album for the label, Green, was about to be released. Green may have referred to R.E.M.'s avid environmentalism at the time, though the cover was what might be called "napalm orange," the subject of the new song "Orange Crush. " Meaning "Agent Orange," as seen in the helicopter ba…