Reveal - The Story Of R.E.M.

by Johnny Black, R.E.M. (Artist)

(Book). R.E.M. has produced some of the most consistently fascinating, successful and honest music of the past 20+ years, combining lyrical and musical experimentation in ways that nonetheless are accessible to the mainstream rock audience. Drawing upon first-hand interviews with band members and insiders, Reveal is a biographical exploration of the work and life of this seminal band. With a focus on the music and how it evolves from the personalities within the group, this book provides new insights into R.E.M.'s creative process. 7-1/4 x 9-1/4, 272 pages

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction

1 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2004

Reviews

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kept feeling like I've read this book before, even though I'm pretty sure I never have. So, if I haven't, why did it seem so familiar? I wonder if / worry that the author was just taking huge chunks from other books about R.E.M. Granted, I've read nearly every book there is about R.E.M., and you can only read the same stories so many times before you know what's going to be said, but still, entire sentences (not quotes, either) seemed familiar.

I do have some qualms with this particular book/edition, though. For one, a copy editor might have been nice. Typos, missing quote marks, quote marks where there isn't a quote, people's names spelled wrong, band names spelled one way then another way a page later, quotes reused in different places in the book... ugh. And a copy editor who maybe knew something about R.E.M. would be even nicer. At least one picture had the wrong year in the caption (I know my R.E.M. phases pretty well, and I can tell you almost completely certainly that *that* is not R.E.M. in the Out of Time era; that has to be 1995 (i.e. Monster) R.E.M.). And getting band members' names wrong, or getting them confused? Really?!? Ugh!

I wish I could remember if I've read this before. If I could, this might lose a star in my rating due to unoriginality. Still, it was a good book, and worth the time to read. However, I wouldn't particularly single it out as being better than any other R.E.M. biography (better ones would be any edition of Remarks: The Story of R.E.M, Adventures in Hi-fi, and It Crawled from the South: An R.E.M. Companion), and wouldn't say it provides "new insight" into anything about the band.


And a note about all R.E.M. biographies: I tend to take R.E.M. biographies with a grain of salt. It's often said that the members of R.E.M. (especially Michael Stipe and Peter Buck, it seems) will screw with reporters and tell them things that are completely not true (like the inspiration for songs, or their autobiographical details), so why should we think that what they're telling authors is 100% true?

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

It tells their story in a mostly matter-of-fact recounting of the daily details of their rise to fame. Plenty of interesting particulars here! A very complete document of the great band. I'd never read a book about them before and this one covered a lot of ground. It was cool how it started with the crisis moment of Bill Berry's onstage aneurysm and eventual departure, then leapt back almost 20 years to the Athens convergence of the young indies.

Three complaints only. First, whenever the author's voice pops up, it sounds like he's trying to paraphrase the band members' internal monologues; it's jolting and weird. Luckily it's rare. Also, the book seemed somewhat light on the Stipe-lore. I wanted to know more about the band members' personalities!

And finally, while it's a later publish than many of the R.E.M. bios out there, taking us all the way past the titular Reveal, it leaves off somewhere after In Time, their disappointing latter-day best-of collection. Now I need to buy another R.E.M. book to read about the crash and burn of Around The Sun, the meanings behind the songs of Accelerate, and the source of massive inspiration that led to Collapse Into Now. Johnny Black should have waited another eight years so he could give us the whole story!

[Hanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having been a die-hard R.E.M. Fan in my teenage years, the band and their music have become my safe space. In emotionally challenging times I only need to put on their music and I will feel as if I am wrapped up in a warm cozy blanket.
I’ve already read this book before, back when it came out in 2004. It was one of the newest R.E.M. biographies back then and I remember to have liked it a lot. Re-Reading it, while listening to the fitting R.E.M. album for each chapter, it was doing its job in transporting me into my safe place, but honestly, I don’t find this book particularly groundbreaking. If you’re familiar with R.E.M. and their story you will hardly find any information you haven’t read before and it oftentimes felt like a chronological inumeration of statistical biographical data (the when’s and where’s of recordings or tour dates for example). It just features more information on the later albums like Up and Reveal (hence the title) than most of the biographies that were available back in the early 2000s . I guess that must have been the reason why I was more excited about it back then.

[Annabel Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was delighted to find this book in the bargain bin of my local bookstore. I think if you weren't a hardcore R.E.M. fan you might find this hard to get through, but as someone who has listened to them since their Murmur days, I was honestly spellbound from start to finish.

The best part of the book, for me, was the section on their early years...how they found each other, their early gigs, even legal missteps and growing pains they had. All of that was stuff I had never heard before. From there it moves on to their growth in popularity and ends up sometime around 2003, a time I found a bit less interesting. But even so, as time goes on, each album is discussed and you get insight into where each of the songs came from and what some of the lyrics mean.

Actually, the very best part of this book is the occasional insight into their mutual creative process and how creative types really seek and work and perservere to bring their visions to life. I wouldn't recommend this book to non-R.E.M. fans, but if you love this band, you will find a lot to love in this book.

[Bruce Kirby · Rating 5 out of 5]

An awesome book, easy to read and in depth analysis of the artists and their music. I learned so much about the band. I don't think we will ever see them get back together but they put out some great music.