Full Transcript for EP12: Bertis Downs - In Conversation with Alex Maiolo

he's an actual person. He's an actual person. Alex Maiolo: 3:02 It's nice though I mean you know you'd like to think that people like that exist only on some astral plane or whatever. But you know these days we're used to the barrier between fans and pop stars being unapproachable. That barrier never quite seemed there with bands like rem. They seem genuinely appreciative of the fans and as long as you don't get too weird on somebody like that, they'll usually talk to you about stuff you know. The SuperSwell: 3:26 How did you? Alex Maiolo: 3:26 actually get Bertis here. It's a typical Talent Music Week story. Last year I went to see Ed O'Brien from Radiohead talk and it's nice to see Ed just be a regular guy chatting and actually being quite open about a lot of things, and during that he mentioned on multiple occasions you know the band's admiration for REM. I got into that. Bands like Coldplay and the National and Radiohead of course all took cues from, not REM as a band but their management structure. Split everything four ways. Don't let one person get considerably richer than somebody else. Don't set up a scenario where people are bickering all the time, and Burtis is a big part of that. You know there's so many fifth Beatles that I don't know how many Beatles there are anymore. But it's pretty safe to say that Burtis is the fifth REM and that's because he always seemed empathetic to what the band wanted and made sure that that directive was followed. That freed them up to follow their artistic dreams. They didn't have to worry about what was happening on the back end with the money and the contracts and all that because they had a person who cared a lot about making this happen. Alex Maiolo: 4:40 So ed and I started talking about, you know, the whole southern-ness thing and Bertus came up and I instantly texted Bertus and said do you want to come to Estonia next year and talk about REM stuff? 10 minutes later he's like sounds cool, let's talk more about it later. So I wrote Helen and I said would that work? And she writes back in capital letters yes, with an exclamation point. And Bertus took it very seriously. He's like well, I'd like to get on the phone with some people and talk about it. And you know, back in November he's like let's just have a phone meeting and talk about what we're going to talk about. The whole time he was like it's a real honor to go. Thank you for asking, thanks to Helen for making it happen and of course I'm thinking thank you for coming. You know, it was very easy. Let me put it that way, typical of things in REM world if they want to do it, they do it, and if they don't, they don't. And there's not a lot of hoops to jump through. The SuperSwell: 5:29 Well, thanks a lot for bringing him, alex, and great job, by the way, thank you. So let's sit back and listen to Alex Maiolo in conversation with Bertis Downs. Alex Maiolo: 5:39 Thanks very much, thank you the music business

is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and men die like dogs. But there's also a negative side. This is what hunter s thompson said about the entertainment industry, and I think a lot of us can jibe with that. A lot of what we know about the record industry is rooted in bad deals and bad contracts, cheats, liars, divide-and-conquer strategies, often within the same band. But there are some rare exceptions of people who have maintained their integrity and their vision throughout their entire career, from their humble beginnings to their meteoric rise, to the time they call it a day, and I think REM exemplifies that. One of the things that allows a band to follow that trajectory is having a good team of people behind them who are empathetic to that vision, somebody who doesn't work for the band but works with the band and fully understands the directive, so the band can focus on their artistic vision and not have to worry about the back end and what's happening there. One of those people is with us today. Alex Maiolo: 7:09 Ladies and gentlemen, talon Music Week. Please welcome Bertus Downs. So, bertus, thank you, alex. Yeah, of course, welcome back to Talon. I should say You've been here a couple of times already, right? Bertis Downs: 7:26 Been here twice before, which is one reason I was very excited to get the chance to come back. I like this part of the world for various reasons. We were here in 2005 and 2008,. And our promoter one of our promoters was Helen Sildner, who, either that year or the following year, started Talon Music Week. So I didn't know anything about Talon Music Week then, but 16 years later, no more band. They decided to call it a day in 2011. But yeah, we were here in 2005 on a snowy day in January and we were here in I think it was September it was either August or September. Toward the end of summer, much nicer weather in 2008. That was our last European tour. Alex Maiolo: 8:05 All right, yeah Well, welcome back and thanks for being with us today. A little background about myself, if I may. My name's Alex Maello and I'm a journalist and a musician, and I'm from a town in North Carolina called Chapel Hill. Now, chapel Hill, north Carolina, is intrinsically linked to where Burtis is from Athens, georgia. They're both small university towns that are very progressive and hit well above their weight when it comes to art and music. One of the things about growing up in the South when your parents are Northerners is you feel a little bit out of place. The South is a very interesting and complicated place and I, as a child, didn't really know my way. I didn't really fit in. I mean, this is a story we can all relate to. We're all music people, we're all outcasts. Right when I was 12 years old, after being subjected to the Southern rock stylings of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers, you know who are great bands. Alex Maiolo: 9:04 They just didn't speak to me. I heard REM and within weeks I was changing the way I dressed and wanted to play in a rock band and this is not an unfamiliar story. This is long before the band became a big band, the band that started touring the world. They're a hardworking, influential, inspiring band that played throughout the United States any place that would have them Pizza parlors, gay bars, fraternity houses and they kind of like the Velvet Underground quote that says not many people bought the first record, but everybody who did formed a band. I think that that is kind of how we feel about rem, and we were very happy when they moved on to become this giant band now. Birdis, you did not start life thinking one day I'm going to manage a rock band yeah, that's true. Bertis Downs: 10:02 Um, I think, like most kids, I don't know what I started life thinking I was going to do. I was a kid, you know, but I did end up in Georgia in sixth grade. Weirdly, I'd grown up in Taiwan, totally different part of the world, and ended up in Georgia for middle school, high school and then went to college in North Carolina not Chapel Hill, I'm not sure I'd ever heard of Chapel Hill at that age. I went to Davidson in a small school in North Carolina and I then came back to Georgia for law school. I had graduated with a liberal arts degree history. I had no real idea what I wanted to do with that. I'd gotten very interested in law while I was in college and I knew I wanted to study law. I felt like, among other things, it would give me three more years to figure out what I wanted to do kind of like treading water and it would be interesting and I might have an aptitude for it and I might be decent at it. So I went and studied law for three years at Georgia. That coincided with the guys in REM in college at the University of Georgia deciding to start a band. So yeah, that's kind of what got me to the point. Bertis Downs: 11:12 I will say also I didn't necessarily think I would manage a band or be involved in the industry, but I was always kind of fascinated by it. I remember, oh, even in law school. You know I studied plenty hard in law school but sometimes to take a break I would go to the main library of the university and they had the old paper copies in the stacks of Melody Maker and New Music Express. Really yeah, and I would go and I would see these were like a couple of weeks late by the time we got them all the way to Georgia. I remember seeing when it was changing from Pink Floyd and Queen on the cover of Melody Maker and Enemy to Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Buzzcocks, and I remember as a fan I was interested in all that. And I was also really interested in the business side of it. I was studying law. I was always interested in contracts and rights and copyright. The parts of law school that were most interesting to me were intellectual property. We didn't have a lot of intellectual property in Georgia. I did take a trademark class which came in handy Again.

I'm just fascinated by that. So yeah, early days I had some indicators that this might be something I'd be interested in. Bertis Downs: 12:25 And then I got to know the guys in the band and started out kind of helping them out as a hobby, as a volunteer, and, you know, enjoyed it. It was fun they were. They were on their way up. I mean they I don't know if you used the right word meteoric it didn't feel meteoric, it was a slow burn. It was a slow. Yeah, I don't know what meteoric means. I think of it as being like liftoff, like in a rocket or something. But yeah, a few years in it was like okay, but it certainly wasn't right away. They had very gradual growth and that's something I guess was afforded a band in those days. That's what they. They were good at it. They wrote a lot of good songs. Alex Maiolo: 13:02 They sure did, and at it they. They wrote a lot of good songs. They sure did, and I look at them as kind of a different band at that time, which is why they were influential in what would become indie rock. Alex Maiolo: 13:12 I mean, I think most people would say that rem like wrote the template for what would be indie rock similar to some help, yeah, yeah similar to what you were saying about looking at the melody maker and new musical express and and things like that, and and you seeing sex pistols taking the place of pink floyd week, like in a matter of a month. That's right. Alex Maiolo: 13:31 The rem kind of did the same thing on village voice and some of the the what would become known as alternative new york rocker yeah, new york rocker, but also spin and things like that we all of a sudden we just started seeing them show up and I know there's a palpable feeling. Well, michael stipe said himself that when you have a band that's like dear to you, that you love, you want to keep them to yourself because, like they're your band, right. But you also want what's best for them. You want them to be successful. But if they become successful, then then they're not like your band anymore. What do you do? And, uh, I remember having that feeling when I started seeing them on the cover of some of these bigger magazines and band of the year and things like that is that around the time where they needed a lot more of your help and you started getting more involved in the legal side because contracts started coming in, yeah, they they started in 1980. Bertis Downs: 14:26 Their first single came out in 1981. That's the year I got out of law school. And then they signed with IRS Records, which was a small label but distributed through a larger label like a lot of things still happen these days and that was 82. And then their first full-length album came out in 83, and then they put an album a year out for five years before they signed with Warners. So we kind of finished the warm up part of the career. None of this was particularly planned out, it's just the way it worked out. They were prolific guys, they wrote a

lot of songs, they did an album a year, they toured constantly and so at the end of that five year contract, which had never been renewed, it was time to talk about going to somewhere. Bertis Downs: 15:08 When we came to Europe, which we did a lot we came to Europe starting as early as 83. We wanted our records to be in the stores. We wanted it to be something that people if they wanted to hear. An RIM record. There was no Internet, or if the Internet was around, it was a secret, certainly nothing. That was a consumer the way things are now. It was a scarce world where there were not that many records released, relatively speaking, so they really wanted to go ahead and have a bigger impact. They like coming to Europe, they like being over here, and if they're going to make the effort to do that, it has costs, et cetera. They wanted people to be able to find them in the record shops and that was a good reason to go with warners, which is what we did in 1988. So, yeah, during all that time I became, it became less of a hobby and more like a job before that, you know you talk about the pre internet world. Alex Maiolo: 15:57 What was it like setting up tours? You know, when you're at that point, a relatively unknown band that had a lot of momentum and were looked at as like the trademark of cool amongst people who knew them. But how would you say, well, we're this band from athens, georgia, and we want to come over and play throughout the uk well, it's the reason they made that first single. Bertis Downs: 16:16 They made the first single, which was actually three songs. It had an instrumental as well. It was radio for europe, sitting still in a instrumental called white tornado, and they sent the cassette out to a bunch of clubs. That was a way to get people's attention like listen to this for three minutes and see if it doesn't sound like something that might work in your club on a Tuesday night, or you know. So there was that. But also pretty early on, they had an agent, and an agent was a pretty important part of the team all the way through their career. I mean, it's certainly not just the band. The band ultimately makes decisions, but, as you said, it's a team of people, it's a business manager, it's manager, lawyer, lawyers and an agent that put all that together and then the band sits. Bertis Downs: 16:57 In those days we would sit down and we would go through various possibilities, talk about things like opening bands. How long are we going to tour? Is there a break? Uh, is it possible to make that jump from one city to the next in one night or two nights? We usually got that right a couple times, didn't? Um and uh. Yeah, it was a different era. A lot of it still to this day. It's word of mouth if people are talking about it, uh and uh. Also, thankfully you were able to go back to towns more than you could go regularly. We had certainly your town, the Triangle area, DC. There's a well-trod path on the East Coast and the Midwest and the West Coast of America and you know you go back and you play either two nights at the same place or a bigger place and more people are there and you know it just kind of builds. It was a gradual build, but it was a. Alex Maiolo: 17:48 It was steady I know I've always known you as a person who traveled with the band a lot. Bertis Downs: 17:55 It seemed to me that you you were at a lot of the shows I was, but, um, only in the more modern times I was, uh, I actually, right out of law school, had been teaching at the university of georgia, taught there for quite a while and then, starting in 88, I started teaching an entertainment law class, which was it was entertainment law geared toward music, because that's what I was doing and that's what I was more interested in. But we covered some film and some book publishing and some movies to the extent I could learn a little bit about that to impart to my students. But it was more on the music side of the entertainment law space. So I taught for a long time at Georgia and didn't really start going to. I would go to a lot of shows, but I didn't start going to pretty much every show till 95. Bertis Downs: 18:38 The 95 tour was a big tour for REM and they hadn't toured for six years and they put two huge albums out. The albums were not by accident, but the fact they became a huge hit without a tour was kind of weird. It wasn't at all in the playbook and so by 95, that ended up being a tour with a lot of drama and a lot of, unfortunately, cancellations due to health you know, serious health matters involving band members, and so it was good to have everybody there. You know, everybody in the same place, not trying to reach each other on the phone or early days of email. Alex Maiolo: 19:10 Oftentimes bands having to cancel due to health is a euphemism, and in your case it was. Bill Barry had an aneurysm. Bertis Downs: 19:18 Yeah, brain surgery yeah. Alex Maiolo: 19:19 Yeah. Bertis Downs: 19:20 Pretty serious, emergency, scary, you know, life or death stuff, that's right. And Pretty serious, emergency, scary, you know, life or death stuff, that's right. And thankfully it was in Switzerland. If you're going to have brain surgery in a hurry, lausanne, switzerland. It was a lucky break. We'd been in a lot of other places in the world up to that point in the tour and then Mike, a couple of months later, had a completely different type of surgery and that was in. Where was that? C cologne, germany. So anyway, we, we ended up. Bertis Downs: 19:46 Yeah, that was a. That was a uh fraught tour. We were happy. Well, you're always happy when the tour is finally over because you've accomplished a tour. It's worked out. It was also a good time to have insurance. Uh, I don't know if there's much talk about insurance these days for bands that are touring, but we had. We had always bought non-appearance insurance and normally the insurance company

wins that bet, which is why they have big office buildings and employ thousands of people. You know they have. They do really well on those bets, but in our case we won the bet because you, you won, yeah, we won the bet because we had to cancel a sold-out tour. Bertis Downs: 20:21 Right, there was no way to reschedule because it was an intense year. Alex Maiolo: 20:27 But you did come back and that was the thing. You kind of returned to those places. Bertis Downs: 20:32 Yeah, but only because we already had the outdoor shows booked. Alex Maiolo: 20:35 Ah, okay. Bertis Downs: 20:37 Couldn't really make up the. Alex Maiolo: 20:38 So during what I consider to be the first upswing of the band's career, when they started getting on bills with huge bands like u2 and the police opened for the police. Bertis Downs: 20:49 Oh yeah, they opened for the police in 83 and they opened for u2 in 85 right, you were back at hq just doing your thing, pretty much pretty much. Bertis Downs: 20:57 I did go to some of those police shows um up in. Uh. Yeah, I went to a couple of the police shows in the north east. That was only about eight shows, and then the2 stuff. They were just on the same festivals. They were at a big U2 show called the Longest Day, like on the summer solstice in England, and then I think they were at Verkter. First time they played Verkter in Belgium. In Belgium, yeah, torhut and Verkter when U2 was headlining it for the first time on the war tour. So yeah, but I was mainly in Athens during those days. Alex Maiolo: 21:27 Doing that? And how did you start navigating your way through what must have been a very, very complicated new set of circumstances? Learning on the job, it seems. But I had good mentors, I'll say that you did. Who were your mentors? Tell me about that. Bertis Downs: 21:42 I had a. I came to conferences, especially law-oriented conferences, one in New York called Practicing Law Institute still going to this day. It's been going about 45 or 50 years and the person who organized the music part of that actually organized the whole thing became a mentor of mine. His name was Marty Silphin and he negotiated the first deal that REM did with his partner, janet Glasser, and they let me look over their shoulder I basically learned, as they were the people who'd been out of law school a lot more than one year, because I was not silly enough to think I could do it that much of a rookie. So Martin and Janet became lifelong friends and helped out early on. Bertis Downs: 22:22 Another guy in Georgia named Russell Carter, who was a little bit ahead of me in law school. He ended up to this day manages a band called the Indigo Girls you may have heard of them Very successful band in the States. Russell and I would compare notes and he did some of the RIM work in a year that I was living in Washington DC working for a judge. So yeah, there were people around us and the agents were very experienced. We had agents both in the States and we had an agent in Europe, including one who dealt with Helen Sildna on our first and second appearances. Bertis Downs: 22:56 I already mentioned that before, but Bob Gold, he had a great I love the name of his company, wasted Talent. He was Bob Gold at Wasted Talent and he helped get us through. So, like I say, it was always, you made a point very early on. I worked with a lot of people. It was a collaborative arrangement. I mean, there is a great saying and I'm sure I stole this from somewhere, I have no idea where but there's no such thing as great managers. They're just managers with great bands. Alex Maiolo: 23:28 Oh right, I don't know if I agree with that. Bertis Downs: 23:30 I don't know if that's true or not, but in my case it felt like it was true. Alex Maiolo: 23:34 Yeah, I think that worked both ways. Yeah. Bertis Downs: 23:36 I mean, there are various keys to it, I guess, but in our case it really was somewhere about halfway through their career I realized it's their band, it's really their decisions. However they want to do, it is what we've got to make work, and that was very much my philosophy. It was their career, it's their band and there's no reason to get in the way of that. Alex Maiolo: 23:59 What you need to do is figure out a way to facilitate that and help make it happen, sure, but that's a super important factor, like I was saying in the introduction, like if you can trust what's happening on the back end, because I mean, the entire record industry in the 1960s is just tales of tragedy and woe and people not knowing where their money went, and stuff like that. So isn't it nice to have the freedom to know that you're working with a trusted entity. Alex Maiolo: 24:27 Yeah absolutely Huge part of it. Which brings me to my next question, and that is a lot of us feel like. Rem wrote a new playbook on how to run a band. That the idea of things like even splits and creative control demands and doing things entirely on your own terms, that seemed to people my age. It seemed revolutionary. It's like a band. A band can do that. A band can can kind of push back against what the, the industry says is the right way to do things. Did you did? You feel like it was a revolutionary move to felt natural for them, it's what they like. Bertis Downs: 25:05 At the point I made a minute ago, it's their abandons that they, very early on, made the decision that they were all songwriters, they were all musicians, they were all equal contributors. This just became one of their internal rules that they said from the beginning they were going to split everything four ways and that's what they did and it worked out because they all contributed. They all worked on their own, and sometimes in pairs and sometimes as a band, but whatever came out of all that, it was considered their collective work and I think that they talked openly

about this. History is filled with examples of bands that don't do it that way, which is fine, but there ends up being dissension over relative wealth equality and with our guys, they just decided to do it that way really early on, when the stakes were extremely low Publishing didn't. Bertis Downs: 26:02 They understood what publishing meant, but at this point it was potential. It really wasn't. They understood what publishing meant, but at this point it was potential. It really wasn't high stakes at all. If they decided this halfway through their career, it might have been a different outcome. Alex Maiolo: 26:15 Right, right, but it was a prescient move, though, because it's usually the opposite seems to be the case, where a band gets big and they're like, oh God we didn't think about all this. Bertis Downs: 26:30 We didn't set this no. They thought about all this that's great, well, as you were, and they also decided not to. They kept their own publishing. They they didn't sign over their publishing. They've always had a publishing company administer their publishing for a small, small percentage, but they've never actually sold the copyrights or transferred the copyrights. They maintain that because they want to maintain the control. The key to it is being able to say no, at least in those days. I don't know how much these days any of us are able to say no with some of the current things going on, but yeah, that was a key decision early on is that they were going to hold on to their publishing. Bertis Downs: 27:06 And then the final thing about the creative control. That really wasn't an issue because we signed with a label, warners, our first big label we signed with in 88, after the IRS 5 records. They were a creative control kind of company. Their roster proved that they had artists that could make whatever record they wanted and Warners was going to support it and that was very much in line with the thinking of the band, or that was very much one of the. It was the determining factor of why the band signed at Warners was that they really believed them when they said you can do whatever you want. Bertis Downs: 27:40 We're not going to make you stay. We're not going to be heavy-handed in going to. You know, be heavy-handed in. We want you to be ram, you know what you're doing. You've done really well. These irs records are really good. We think we can, you know, help you go to a different level and we we believed them in it and it was legit and it it worked out for a nice long time well, I'm sure plenty of bands have been told that before and then it went another way. Alex Maiolo: 28:03 There's an old think in your line of work as a lawyer, that's trust. But verify, I believe, is what people say. What made you think that Warner was Because? Bertis Downs: 28:14 they had the roster. That proved it. They had people on the roster and they had people on the roster who'd gone in very different directions. Neil Young would be one example. Bonnie Raitt, I think, is one example. Captain Beefheart I'm trying to remember. But literally these are bands we talked about in 1988 when we were looking at these various possibilities of where we'd go. It made all the sense in the world because they clearly had those kinds of acts I'm talking about. I have no idea what Warners these days is like and Warners internationally is like. That would be more relevant to those of you that are from this part of the world. Bertis Downs: 28:47 But the Moe and Lenny version of Warner's Moe Austin, lenny Warrinker, who ran Warner Brothers in the 80s. They had a lot of great records and including a lot of kind of great weird offbeat records. It made the man feel a freedom to be on a label that really did that. That didn't just say it, it felt legit and it turned out to be. I mean, the first record they made was an REM record with a bunch of guitar. The second record they made, peter was tired of playing guitar and they put a record out with a bunch of mandolin and bouzouki and zither. Bertis Downs: 29:23 I think we have a song called Zither, but it was out of time and it also had a song on it called Lose my Religion, which became their biggest hit of their career, which almost wasn't a single. It almost wasn't the first single on that record and it might not have ever been a single if it hadn't been. And then they didn't tour either. So none of that is like traditional thinking of like how do you break a band. But they toured so much in the 80s that by 91, when Out of Time came out, they really didn't. They went into it knowing they weren't going to tour. They went into it knowing they weren't going to tour, which is why they felt the freedom to make this kind of different, very different than trademark REM or something people would have expected with big guitars and jangly pop rock songs. They were ready to get away from that and had been for a while. So it ended up being a very good association with Warners for that next period of their career for 20 years. Alex Maiolo: 30:12 It was a good look for Warners, because I remember, you know, I had known in the 80s Flaming Lips as this acid-fried, crazy-ass band From Oklahoma, yeah, from Norman Oklahoma. Alex Maiolo: 30:25 You know, in 1985, if you'd put on here it Is, or oh my God, it's the Flaming Lips and you told me they were going to become one of the biggest bands in the world at some point I would have thought you were crazy. Alex Maiolo: 30:38 They're writing songs about taking acid on easter sunday and blowing things up and all that. It just didn't seem like this that they were going to turn into this. First of all, that they were going to get signed to warners and, second of all, that they're going to become a kind of a cute and fun band. You know, but I guess that's what happens when you, when those guys, when mo and lenny were in charge yeah, they would sign a band like

that for sure, it's crazy. Um, when, um, I imagine at that point you, you and the band felt like with this new level of fame comes big responsibilities, and at what point did you feel like you had to start saying no to things and that you had to start speaking up about other things, because I think of REM as a band that always had a lot of integrity when it came to opinions and things like that. Bertis Downs: 31:33 I think they said no to things as soon as they wanted to say no to things. We got asked early days to put our songs in TVs and movies and we tried to say yes because we like our songs to be used in TVs and movies To this day. It's a great way to get your songs, whether they're hits already or whether they could be hits if somebody ever heard them. Having them in a key scene of a movie or end title credits or kind Could be hits if somebody ever heard them. Having them in a key scene of a movie or entitled credits or kind of a theme that goes on in a television show, I can think of many times and we've said yes as often as possible. We do occasionally say no on matters of taste or just doesn't seem right for that song. So then we drew the line on ads and commercials. We're one of the old school bands. I guess there are still a few that have never had their stuff used to sell products. And then there would be a gray area, like when festivals are being sponsored by a product. Look, what are you going to do? The festival's being sponsored by the product. We're still going to play the festival. It's not really our call on that. Bertis Downs: 32:31 So we tried to do a little bit of case by case but have our principles, have our values of what we wanted to be known for, and they didn't want to have their songs associated with a particular brand, even if we liked the brand. We were asked what about this really cool brand that's environmentally right now you know? So we said no, a lot Speaking out. It was always just kind of a personal thing within the band what they wanted to do. Sometimes they did get behind various issues. We tore up plans for a tour in 2004. We had a tour booked pretty late in the day because it became pretty apparent that we could do a. This was right around the 2004 elections and REM with Pearl Jam, dave Matthews, the Dixie Chicks and Bruce Springsteen went and played a bunch of the shows in the States. Alex Maiolo: 33:22 Tell Us the Truth. Tour that one. Bertis Downs: 33:24 Yeah, it was called Vote for Change. Alex Maiolo: 33:26 Vote for Change. That's right. Bertis Downs: 33:27 I remember that yeah, it turned out that we ended up getting to play with Bruce Springsteen. It's one of my favorite phone calls ever to get a call from John Landau asking if he said how did REM find Bright Eyes to be their opening act for their shows? And I said, well, they like Bright Eyes. I mean, he's an artist that they kind of vaguely know because he'd lived in Athens for a while. He lives in Omaha now. He's great and he's a solo artist and John and he's a solo artist. And John was very impressed and he said, well, bruce doesn't want to play one of his long, long, long shows on this thing. So what would you think about REM and Bright Eyes playing with Bruce Springsteen? I said, well, I think it's great, let me check with the guys. And called him back about 10 minutes later, after checking with all the guys. Bertis Downs: 34:06 So that ended up being a fun thing because obviously you know Bruce was a iconic, heroic person to get to play these shows with. And they ended up playing on each other's sets uh, they're on youtube, I mean, like everything else, but springsteen comes out during our am set, plays a couple of songs they do because the night together and then our guys get to play on born to run. So yeah, they did some. They did the bridge school with neil young. They did the they were would not have been asked to do the 1985 live eight shows but we did do the one in 2005 that gildoff did in london high park live eight, the debt relief shows there circling back on something you said earlier because I think it's it's something that might be important. Alex Maiolo: 34:51 a lot of people here probably understand what publishing means and why it's something that might be important. A lot of people here probably understand what publishing means and why it's important to retain publishing, but when we're talking about revenue streams that aren't going out and playing giant rock shows, could you explain how maintaining publishing in the band positively affected your career? Bertis Downs: 35:09 Well, I just think that it was a matter of taking money in advance versus getting more money on the back end. And they were always willing to bet on themselves that over time the money would earn back what they would have gotten in advance. And they weren't looking for an advance, they weren't. They started out as college guys. They did not have house payments kids. They lived in a fairly cheap town, not unlike Chapel Hill college town in those days, and it just seemed to them like why take some money up front that you would have made over time anyway and have to give away a piece of that, including often some of the control of that? It just didn't seem necessary. Alex Maiolo: 35:57 It seemed remarkably prescient, though. To a lot of people who were starting bands at that time, though, it just didn't seem like something that happened. You know, we're always told about this way that it works. Bertis Downs: 36:09 Like you get a giant advance. We were told that too. Alex Maiolo: 36:11 Yeah, and you just push back against it. Bertis Downs: 36:13 Well, it didn't. Alex Maiolo: 36:14 It didn't make sense for our guys yeah, yeah, but that that's that's why I keep coming back to the idea of, like having an empathetic person who will work for you and and work with you and make sure that everything on the back

end is being handled as it should is remarkably rare to me. Alex Maiolo: 36:33 It had a huge influence on other bands. It seems Like last year I had the great pleasure of seeing Ed O'Brien speak in the next room. I'm sure some of you were at that and you know I'd never met Ed before. Lovely, yeah, I mean like I spent some time with him later that night seeing some shows and I didn't bring it up. He brought up the fact that I mean I spent some time with him later that night seeing some shows and I didn't bring it up. He brought up the fact that you know he was talking about some of the early Radiohead shows without me asking, and he said, yeah, we really felt like it was our day, you know, when we got to play with REM and we showed up not knowing anything about how you deal with a band that's bigger than you and apparently Michael just showed up as a welcoming committee and made sure, I guarantee you, we were as excited to play with Radiohead as they were to play with us, and those shows had been booked like in 94. Bertis Downs: 37:27 And they didn't happen until midway through 95. And during that time the bends kind of went crazy. That's right. So it ended up being a really strong package, to say the least, and it started in Berlin. It started at the Waldbier in Berlin. I remember that show, august 1st of 95. And I'm not sure any of us ever seen Radiohead. We just knew they were good and we could hear the records and we knew they'd be a good bill months and months ago when these shows went on sale and yeah, that was a real highlight. And then those shows in Europe followed by some shows in the States as well and it was, I think, mutually. You know those bands are friends to this day. It's 30 years later. Alex Maiolo: 38:06 Right. Well, one of the things I had mentioned is that the band had been super inspirational and I think that's been the recurring theme throughout this conversation that they learned from REM that you can split things up equally and you can maintain creative control. And other bands seem to have taken a lot of inspiration from that as well Coldplay comes to mind. They do it that way and isn't it remarkable how these bands are still together and friends that they did that? There's a great scene in a documentary that I hope some of y'all take time to watch because it shows REM as a very young band in the Athens Georgia scene. Other bands are in it Pylonylon, who of course are wonderful, kind of put dance punk on the map and it's called Athens Georgia. Inside Out it's a wonderful film and there's a scene where the proprietor of a barbecue place called Walter's Barbecue, walter Rigdon, he says, oh yeah, all the bands come through here. He said there's a band from Austin, texas. They're called something like Asshole Surfer. They come in and they get barbecue here. They pattern themselves after REM. I'm pretty sure the Butthole Surfers didn't really pattern themselves after REM. They're very, very different bands, but I think about that line a lot because so many bands did pattern themselves after REM and one of the things that they patterned was not just the look and the creative control thing and all that, but the management structure. Alex Maiolo: 39:49 I reached out to Brandon Reed, who was the manager of the National for a long time a band that has a pretty strong bond with you and I talked to him and I said would you tell me about meeting the band? Because I was thinking about what Ed O'Brien had said. And he wrote me and he said I met Bertus in 2008 when REM asked the National to join the Accelerate Tour. I was in my 20s and tour managing and mixing front of house for the National. I hadn't transitioned into being a manager yet. Alex Maiolo: 40:22 At the third show of the tour at the Greek in Berkeley, california, I sat with Burtis for the first time to solve some issue we were having with the touring sound company and crew. Burtis dealt with the situation so gracefully that it left an impression on me. I'd see him day in, day out talking to everyone around the venue touring staff, venue staff, everyone mostly just saying hi, checking in. I learned so much about what it takes to make a good manager. It's community maintenance and communicating. Artists rely on a village of support, and it takes connecting with people to establish that birdis is a community builder by nature. Yeah, so I thought it was a very sweet thing to say overly I don't I don't know, that's awfully nice. Bertis Downs: 41:09 I'm not sure I deserve all that, but yeah, I mean that's that's. Alex Maiolo: 41:13 He's a kind guy yeah, yeah, but talk about community building and and at this point, when the band is big, like giving back, like because I've always thought of y'all as a band that was good with advice and and helping out and showing other people the way I mean it seems like I mean as simple as the way that you've described two times that the band were nice to their opening bands. Bertis Downs: 41:35 That they were. I mean as simple as the way that you've described two times that the band were nice to their opening bands. That they were. I mean they. Bertis Downs: 41:38 We had a lot of great opening bands, uh, over the years they and it actually made my job really easy because I had a lot of people, kind of industry people, asking me to get their bands on our shows and I said it doesn't work that way with our guys, they pick their own opening bands. He goes, really, I really I said yeah, based on who they like. So if your band that you're asking me to put on the show because they're on the same label or because you know me and we're friends and you need a favor, or what, the band literally goes through the possibilities and picks bands that they like, which is why they typically built really good bills and that's why, when we went out, the people opening for RIM were worth seeing. I won't name names, but I do think that they've

talked about it openly. I guess I could, but they didn't necessarily feel that kind of love when they were an opening band and they quit being an opening band pretty early on. Bertis Downs: 42:29 They certainly bonded with U2 the minute. They knew each other and had such similar paths in some ways. In some ways very different, but U2 being from Dublin, ram being from Athens, being roughly the same age although our guys are actually a little older than the U2 guys but there was a natural simpatico between those two units of brothers, and when they started getting to the point where they needed to have opening bands playing big shows, where they knew the opening band is going to have issues with the production, with how loud is the sound or how much of the lights, they tried to kind of go out of their way to be welcoming and to watch their shows. They're part of the show. It's just in their nature. I don't think it was anything they had to try to do. I don't think it was anything they you know it wasn't a conscious decision, it was just something that came naturally to them. Alex Maiolo: 43:19 I see. Bertis Downs: 43:20 And then and then I think the community building that they have always been pretty involved in in their hometown of Athens and the early days could have moved to the kind of sort of thought about moving to Los Angeles. That's when the days they were with IRS. It would in some ways have been easier. There's more studios there, there's easier to do promotion and all the kind of record company carnival kind of stuff. But they decided to stay in Athens. Partly it was cheap. They all had significant family in the Georgia area parents, siblings, friends, family, that kind of stuff and they decided just to you got to start a tour and end a tour somewhere and Athens was as easy as anywhere else. So inertia took over and they really never have left Athens. It's still where they're based Right right. Alex Maiolo: 44:07 Dave Allen, the bass player from Gang of Four, once said that you shouldn't move to Los Angeles until you can't not be in Los Angeles anymore. Yeah, it's probably a good, and I would imagine that there was quite a lot of pressure for them to get at it. Nah, it wasn't pressure. Bertis Downs: 44:22 It was more just like a suggestion, like wouldn't it be easier? But no, it was never. Nobody ever tried to like force it or, you know, coercion or something like that. Speaking of Gang of Four, that's a band that's. You mentioned the way that REM learned that Radiohead learned from REM. Rem learned a lot from Gang of Four. They went out and did a run of dates with them in June of 1981. I didn't know that they opened for Gang of Four and that's when they both, I think in some ways musically, in some ways musically uh, in terms of, like, guitar sounds, uh, and certainly the way a band carries itself, the way a band conducts their business, they learned a lot. They grew up a lot. Gang of four was a few years older. They were well into their career by then. A few years, a few years into their career, sure, uh had entertainment was out, I guess, and that was an example of rem learning from an older band sure, sure, there were a couple of things that were. Alex Maiolo: 45:13 I remember being more aware of REM's use, of when Michael Stipe would hit the chair with a stick. Or later pretend. Bertis Downs: 45:22 Yeah. Alex Maiolo: 45:22 And then songs where he'd use a megaphone and things like that, and then I started becoming familiar with Gang of Four's back catalog. Bertis Downs: 45:30 Orange Crush, yeah, yeah. Alex Maiolo: 45:31 And then I started thinking like, like, oh yeah, these guys are definitely. No, it was an influence, the big, the big influence. Yeah, it was very cool. Yeah, so you mentioned that they stayed in athens and continued to stay in athens. What were some of the things that you felt were important to give back to the athens community, like the community that obviously had been very generous to the band, and what were some of the things that the band got involved with? Bertis Downs: 45:55 they got involved in some historic preservation stuff. They've gotten involved with supporting candidates for local government basic stuff, you know. Yeah, I'm trying to think what they've done. Well, it's a little complex of a question because they broke up as a band, uh, 13 years ago. They broke up in 2011. Can't believe it's been so. There's broke up as a band 13 years ago. They broke up in 2011. Alex Maiolo: 46:14 I can't believe. It's been 13 years, so there's no longer a band charity account. You know there's not a in terms of, but they do things individually, Sure, and you obviously are of like mind and you've been a big supporter of public education, which I think a lot of times, when we talk about things like public education support and access to health care and things like that in Europe, that seems very strange. Bertis Downs: 46:39 It's kind of a given? Alex Maiolo: 46:39 yeah, yeah, it's kind of a given, but would you talk a little bit about your—. Bertis Downs: 46:42 Well I just—in the States it's not like here. There's a lot of segregation in the States, where kids from different backgrounds and kids from different races and kids— and we have a great deal of diversity. It's what has built America into, in some ways, a great country over the years, over the centuries. But there, anybody who reads the news these days knows that there's a lot of tension in all that, and I'm a believer that kids my kids, everybody else's kids should go to school together and work things out from an early age, and so it's something I've been. Bertis Downs: 47:17 I also really admire the way this part of the world treats teachers, and we don't treat them like that in America. Bertis Downs: 47:24 Teaching is a really hard job at any level, but at least getting paid

decently. And the way I know y'all are not technically Scandinavia, but my sense of things in estonia and scandinavia they have a lot of things in common in terms of their philosophy on education, um, including the model for the professional. Instead of making the job of a teacher harder and less esteemed, here it seems like it does the opposite of that and as a result, there's a great saying that I used occasionally a teacher's working conditions are a child's learning conditions, and I've seen that. I've seen really good teachers in their 30s and 40s that are getting good at it quit because they're just they can't do the job anymore. It's not worth it to them, they'd rather do something else, which is not a very good sign for a for a society. So I'm involved in a couple of boards, and both at the local level and uh national level, on public education and access to it and, like I say, reintegration of our schools yeah, it's, it's. Alex Maiolo: 48:29 It's a hard thing to describe to people I actually use to the the term the nordics, you know, and when you get outside of scandinavia, but you keep these people and I consider estonia to be very much in the nordics yeah, when you try to explain to somebody from this corner of the world that I mean I'm just going to openly blame the republicans because I have to that are trying to pull money out of the public education system, which is already struggling, I'm trying to pull money out of the public education system, which is already struggling. Alex Maiolo: 48:56 They're not trying to, they are. Oh, they are, yeah, yeah, and they do it under various headings, but ultimately what they're trying to do is drain public funds from education and put them into not great things, including corporations' bank accounts. And so it means a lot to me that a band I grew up loving so much and people who are associated with it share my views, even at this age that I agree. I wrote a piece for Louder Than War about the 40th anniversary of Murmur and I took the band from that record all the way to the day the band elegantly broke up and I remember thinking at that time I hitched my cart to the right band and the right people, they're still doing all the right things. I've really appreciated that quite a lot and seeing your posts on social media about how important education is. Bertis Downs: 49:53 I'm not sure I saw that piece and louder than were I think I'll. You'll send it to me or I'll remember I actually name. Check you in that? Alex Maiolo: 49:59 okay, I need to see it. Bertis Downs: 50:01 Yeah, I said uh but I think, much appreciated yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Alex Maiolo: 50:07 But uh, one of the things I also wanted to bring up here is you grew up in Taiwan, you said right, so did you do much traveling before you were connected with REM? Bertis Downs: 50:21 No, not that much other than getting on a ship and going to Taiwan twice as a missionary kid. But then no, I would not say I did much. I never came to Europe until I was out of college. My just out of college trip was to come to Europe for the first time, right, and I didn't get to Estonia. It was 1978. Alex Maiolo: 50:39 Right, well, you could, probably couldn't have come to Estonia in 1978. Bertis Downs: 50:42 I don't think I could have. Alex Maiolo: 50:43 Yeah, when you came over, you know, you and I've talked a lot about how things are over here versus how they are in the United States. When you came over here, what were some of the things that were inspirational that you took back that maybe changed your life? Things in europe that were inspirational. Bertis Downs: 50:56 I don't know. I just the culture, the food, I mean all the, all the typical silly american things that we are intrigued by here. Um, it's a hard question for me to answer. Maybe it's a maybe there's a great answer to that question. I just liked it, yeah, and I'd say that with the band. I mean I really didn't come to Europe in earnest until the band got over here in 83, 84. Bertis Downs: 51:19 They always liked it here because it was really weird for a band from the South and the States, from a college town that was still pretty much only doing exposure on college radio and college towns and small clubs. They just had a connection with audiences here, which surprised us. But early days in England we got the equivalent of the Rolling Stone, melody maker, those kinds of things fanzines, enthusiastic crowds showing up, bringing their friends going back the next time playing big. The BBC was an early supporter their friends going back the next time playing big. The BBC was an early supporter. Bertis Downs: 51:59 A lot of public broadcasting in Norway, belgium, france, wherever we were in Europe. It seemed like our aim was embraced and if you're an artist looking for an audience you've gone to a certain amount of trouble and in those days we were actually taking money. We made in the states. We were profitable in the states on tour and we would cover the cost of going over here with that. There's not label support, oh right. So it was just nice to be wanted, it was nice to be able to make a career over here. From that and from 1991 on, starting without a time, they never had a record that did better in the states than it did in europe. Alex Maiolo: 52:37 I was going to say europe did it was a huge part of their success I actually felt like rem became europe's band at one point and I it was, because obviously they were still huge in the us. But I noticed that the band was spending a lot of time over here and playing some impressively large shows after Bill left, um and the OOs, we played a bunch of great. Bertis Downs: 52:59 that was some of our very best touring days was over here, including the, the Baltics. We played, uh, baltic countries and I had obviously been playing Scandinavia a lot beforehand and played the Balkans a

couple times. So, yeah, yeah, we had some real highlights later in their career and part of that, I really believe, is that because of again we're kind of talking about, we were at that cusp of pre-internet, as the internet was starting, and now whatever there is in the digital world and the different types of technology and the different types of technology. But we really like being here, we really like playing those shows. Alex Maiolo: 53:40 Right, right. I still hear the tracks on the radio stations over here a lot, the loyalty of radio. Bertis Downs: 53:45 The big legacy radio stations over here, the BBCs and all that stuff and all their equivalents throughout Europe. Once they like a band, they're going to play the new stuff. We were lucky to be the beneficiary of that, Whereas in the States the formats and the programmers and those kinds of things change frequently enough that you kind of fall out of favor. You're not AOR anymore, You're not adult alternative. All these different formats, the formats themselves change, who's in them changes. So Europe stayed more consistent. For us stayed more solid. What do you? Alex Maiolo: 54:19 see the role after this massive paradigm shift we've been through. I actually look at it as kind of like two paradigm shifts. There was the big Napster thing where all of a sudden you could get all this music and you didn't have to pay for it, and then of course that was semi-corrected. With the streaming world and and obviously budgets have changed and how bands are signed have changed it's changed pretty dramatically. What do you see the role of a manager as now? Like, how has that changed? Bertis Downs: 54:49 well, I feel like a manager's role is still fairly, at least in my world. First of all, there's all kinds of managers and all kinds of bands. Uh, a band, that's not even a band, just an artist like a solo artist, who's super young, has a lot of talent but no particular vision. Right might very well want a lot of direction. Alex Maiolo: 55:12 Right might might very well want somebody to help them with their output almost like how a producer is in the studio for their career. Yeah, right. Bertis Downs: 55:22 And then other bands, like mine, were more self-contained. They had a very strong sense of themselves. They very much knew what they wanted to do and they needed somebody to help them do it and not themselves have to be meeting with people right going to, you know, networking, doing all the nitty-gritty of the business side of things, but have their interests at heart and help figure that out. So I feel like in that sense, the management world has not changed. I think in some ways, that managers have become more like labels and labels have become more like managers, and there's kind of a morphing of those two. In some places managers are labels and vice versa. For sure, yeah. Alex Maiolo: 56:04 So let's open up for questions. We wanted to try to leave plenty of time for that, because I'm sure people have some questions. Is there? We have a microphone person. Okay, great, great, great yes. Audience Question: 56:16 So you mentioned that you tried to say yes as much as possible to being in different movies or TV shows. So there's this fun fact circulating that Shining Happy People was supposed to be the original theme song for Friends. Is that true and why did it not happen? Bertis Downs: 56:33 if it's true, If that's true, I never heard about it, or if I heard about it, I forgot it. I'd say the second is more likely. But no, I think the first is more likely. I'm pretty sure that's not true. We probably would have said yes to this. I mean, I don't know. It was never presented to us. I don't like hypotheticals, I don't like to predict the future and I don't like hypotheticals. Yeah, so next week Friends 2 comes along and they ask us for it, and then we say no, I don't know. I mean, I'm just at this. I really don't remember that happening. I remember most of these kinds of things because I got a decent head for that, but I'm also not infallible. It's possible that that's true and I forgot about it. Alex Maiolo: 57:10 That's a very good lawyer answer, by the way. It's possible that it's true, but I'm not quite sure it's the closest to the truth I got from from the person who's like oh yeah, I remember that time radio had august 1st 19. You remember things, man. That's what I know you as. So, uh, another question right here. Okay, we'll get you next hi. Audience Question: 57:29 Just curious how many people are still employed by rem organization, because I mean, you know, your social media is still very active, uh, you know, and the re-release campaigns and etc. And one more thing I'm working for a public broadcaster in Lithuania, so every weekend we broadcast archive shows or like fresh shows from international artists, and REM is actually the only band who always posts on their official Facebook you know page saying hi, by the way, in Lithuania this weekend. Tune in at this hour. So, thanks for that. Bertis Downs: 57:56 We try to pay attention and, like I said, we liked the one night we had in Vilnius, the two we had in Riga and the two we had in Tallinn. They were in their own ways they were all very memorable but so employed right now. It used to be bigger, obviously, when they were touring, hiring producers, making records. You know bigger operation we used to employ, I mean on tour. We had, you know, a small city moving, you know a big town moving around with the tour organization, but in the office we had seven or eight people. Now we're down to myself and two other people but then we have somebody who is just doing social media for us and we have somebody else who's just doing like equipment manager and production for some of the side stuff the guys do I mean Peter and Mike are involved in various side projects. So there's still a few people that are doing at

least something. We kind of kept the team together as much as we could. Alex Maiolo: 58:56 I love that question, though, because I think you've very humbly said, like you know, we're kind of just doing what other bands should do or would do or whatever, and you've told me that REM's basically the only band that checks in and says like hey, this thing is happening here. Bertis Downs: 59:12 Well, we did resist for a long time having a website. I mean, websites were kind of like this thing about 96, 97, 98. And we're like, do we have to do a website? So finally we were on tour in 99. And we're like I guess we should do a website. Bertis Downs: 59:31 But this was before social media. This was years before social media. Just a website, whatever that is these days. I guess it's still important to have a website, but it was the thing you needed to have. We said we were going to be the last band in the world to have a website and we were, but not quite. Bertis Downs: 59:48 But one of the reasons is you have to feed the monster. Once you create this thing, website, you constantly got to put something on it. So we're constantly looking for, you know, content, social media, engagement, it's like whatever it takes Part of that's because it's fun to let people know. You know if you'd rather people know about it than find out on Tuesday that they missed it on the weekend. And you never know the proliferation of information out there now. You never know what's going to connect with somebody or who's going to see it or who might share it. So in a certain extent it's a service. Bertis Downs: 1:00:18 But when we look at Spotify numbers, when they're going up, something's making that happen and the fact that the band broke up 13 years ago. They left in their wake a couple of hundred great songs, including some that are kind of part of the culture. Well, we're glad people still care about that and that they go to their playlist or that they share, or they get excited about something that they saw on a TV. You never really know what it is that drives those numbers, except that it all does it all. You know all of the above, but I will tell David Bell that he got a nice compliment. He's our website guy, he's our digital marketing and does all the Facebook stuff. He works really hard at it. Alex Maiolo: 1:00:59 Part of what's interesting about now. We're always hearing about lost classics and things People are like have you heard this record? As if it was just buried under a rock somewhere. The best example I can think of is a record called SF Sorrow by the Pretty Things. It's an absolutely incredible record that, if you like the who, you would love this record, but for whatever reason it didn't make it to the ears of the fans who should have heard it when it first came out in 1968. It actually beat Tommy as a concept record by about six months and I think a lot of that has to do with bottlenecks being smashed. That's a lot of the reason why I get to hear music from all over the world a lot easier than I used to Music by marginalized, traditionally marginalized artists women trans artists, non-binary queer artists and things like that. Alex Maiolo: 1:01:58 It's been interesting to watch songs that nobody really paid any attention to for a long time become big. I'm not talking about the Kate Bush thing, which is kind of like a second act of a big song. That song is big right. Are there any REM songs that you're like what? We didn't know that that one was going to be big and now all of a big song. That song was big right. Yeah, are there any REM songs that you're like what? We didn't know? That that one was going to be big and now all of a sudden, the number's on the climbing. Bertis Downs: 1:02:20 Well, it wasn't the Kate Bush, we didn't get very far up the hill. But there's a TV show that was very popular last year in the States called the Bear and called the Bear, and it was a show about a restaurant and about cooking and it was a trending popular, at least on the coasts. It was massively popular New York and LA. Well, the numbers weren't. It wasn't that popular. Alex Maiolo: 1:02:46 All right, it was popular with people I live in my bubbles, yeah. Bertis Downs: 1:02:51 Anyway, it's a great show, very good acting, great writing and great taste in music. And they loved REM and they used a bunch of REM cues, including a song called Strange Currencies, which was a single, but not a particularly. It wasn't a hit back in the 90s during the Monster time. It was on the Monster record and there were just other songs on that record that got more attention. But Strange Currencies is kind of a soft ballad love song and they used it at a couple of really key scenes and we saw some nice numbers in terms of Spotify and all. But the funny thing about numbers is these days, the numbers that the world in terms of how artists get paid and what's fair and the amount of the monetization trick on all this stuff is that the math is never going to work out. It's never going to be the same. Bertis Downs: 1:03:44 I see a couple of people in the room that are more in my generation that rearview mirror always looks better than what's ahead, because in the rearview mirror there weren't that many records being made. You were just lucky to get a ticket to the carnival by getting a deal and then, if you got even further lucky, you were enough of a priority and your music connected with people and then became a hit and then there's limited playlists on radio and they're going to play your stuff. It was a primitive world. It was a. Really, when I think back on it, it was an easy way compared to now. Bertis Downs: 1:04:18 So when I think about my role with the band or, more importantly, how would the band have made it in this world? I got no idea. I mean, we would have figured it out. They're smart guys. They wrote great songs. They would have figured things

out, but it would have been a very different job than what they did, which was put the music out, work hard by playing it, do it again, you know, several times, make some good business decisions. It's just, it's a much more daunting task. As I look at it now, uh and I'm I'm glad I'm not the one trying to figure it out, but I try. I'm still a student of the game. I'm still fascinated by it. Alex Maiolo: 1:04:59 Yeah, like be a good band, work hard was kind of what y'all had been. Whatever the situation is, yeah, yeah, and you have a question. Audience Question: 1:05:11 I wanted to ask you how the band came to the decision to quit, because the last studio album was released in March 2011, and the band decided to announce about splitting half of the year later. So did you foresee this coming? Bertis Downs: 1:05:29 Maybe this was already the decision They've been talking about it for a while. Bertis Downs: 1:05:32 The last two records were produced by Jack Knifeley, who's just a prince of a person and you know, great producer, and he really pulled. He gets a lot of credit. Obviously, the band wrote the songs, the band made the records. Jack Knife was a big part of that process, both Accelerate and Collapse into. Now. I think they just came to the mutual decision that 31 years was the right amount of time and it was a friendly thing then and they're as good or better friends now than they were then, including Bill who'd left the band much earlier. So yeah, it was a good decision. They just didn't want to do it anymore in terms of the demands on all that goes into being a band. They had 15 albums and all this live stuff and a solid career and they also wanted to do other things and they all are doing other things. They're all still pretty active, with Michael particularly art, but also some music, and then Peter and Mike a variety of musical things. So it freed them up to do those kinds of things. Audience Question: 1:06:40 So when the last album was recorded, the band already knew that it will be the last studio. Bertis Downs: 1:06:49 That's a hard question for me to answer, especially at a public thing. That's going to be on a podcast soon. From what I understand, I never I mean I'll honestly say I never talked to him and said, hey, is this going to be the last record or not? The sense of it was it was probably going to be the last record, but I don't think that was decided for sure. Michael has even talked in interviews about the fact that on the cover of the last album he's waving. I don't know if that's. He said nobody kind of caught that, but the cover. If you go back to look on your phone you can do Collapse and Denial artwork and you'll see it's the guys, they're kind of silhouetted and Michael is waving. Alex Maiolo: 1:07:31 So I guess that was somewhat of a hint Hindsight being 2020, there were some what seemed to be blues. Oh yeah, all the best. Yeah, that, and also just the idea to make an album at Hansa Studios in Berlin. Bertis Downs: 1:07:39 Yeah, Hansa. Alex Maiolo: 1:07:40 For those of you who aren't familiar, Hansa Studios started quite a long time ago in West. Bertis Downs: 1:07:46 Berlin, I think it started in the bad old days it did. Alex Maiolo: 1:07:52 That ballroom is really old, yeah, well the ballroom where a lot of your favorite records if you don't mind me being so bold to tell you what your favorite records are the Berlin Trilogy by David Bowie a lot of it was done there, including all of Heroes, lust for Life, was done there. That was what's that? Lou Reed Lou Reed yeah, like the record that took Depeche Mode from being kind of like a cute pop band to being the dark and brooding band they became. That all happened there. The Birthday Party, neubauten Records and things like that. It seems to be where bands go to do like their big artistic statement. Bertis Downs: 1:08:33 Oh, Zoo Station. Alex Maiolo: 1:08:34 Yeah oh right, yeah, u2,. Yeah, recorded one of their. Bertis Downs: 1:08:40 It was a great place to make a record. Yeah, it turned out to be the last record. Alex Maiolo: 1:08:44 And that's what I mean. In hindsight, it kind of seems like you know that would be a nice one to check off the list working at Hansa. In fact, at that point, the big hall where David Bowie did what I consider to be his best work which is an opinion, because the guy made a lot of great records wasn't even a studio anymore, it was a banquet hall. So they had to reconfigure that to let you record it. No, we recorded it upstairs. You did record it upstairs, but isn't there some footage of it all in the hall? The hall. Bertis Downs: 1:09:18 Yeah, we just used it for that one day for some filming, ah you fooled me, okay, uh, any other questions yet? Audience Question: 1:09:26 okay, uh, this is not necessarily music related, but I'm just interested from pr side of things because this comes across. As you know, rem always did the things their way without letting anyone tell them what to do. I was just curious, you know, in the 90s, when losing my religion became huge, etc. Michael wasn't so direct about his sexual orientation in the new interviews etc. Was there ever any pressure from the label or like your agents or like PR commonly saying, hey, you know what, stay silent and let's not be direct about it, or something like that? Bertis Downs: 1:10:00 Nah, I don't think so. Not that I ever picked up on. That was personal, that was his own. You know how he handled that. It was never something anybody tried to control or counsel. Okay, and I have another. Bertis Downs: 1:10:14 It was interesting though in 92, when they did the promotion for Automatic for the People, he didn't do any, it was all Peter and Mike. That's true, michael did a quiet year, he just decided you know what? I talked a lot after at a time, and I'm sure I'll do promotion and publicity in the future. But Peter and Mike went and did promotion and the future. But peter and mike went and did a promotion and their, their favorite part of it was when they were in tel aviv and they were in a disco at like two o'clock in the morning and all these people come up to them and this is right after automatically, people came out. So one year after, out of time, all these people come up and they go oh yeah, you're the band that does that song. Oh life, oh life, because everybody in israel thought Losing my Religion was called oh Life because that's the first two words of the song. Audience Question: 1:10:58 Can I ask one more? That's a funny one 2008, you know, rem show in Vilnius and we still had our local currency, which was called Litas, and I bought a tote bag and two t-shirts and I think you know something else, because that was kind of it was twice cheaper than investing in Europe. So did you miscalculate the money and exchange rates or did you make a special effort to make the merchandise more affordable for people in those countries? Because that was like 2.5 euro tote bag and I think the T-shirt was something like 10.11, and everywhere else it was like 20.25. Bertis Downs: 1:11:28 Unfortunately, we're just out of time. Look, look, 0.0.0. I have no idea. Alex Maiolo: 1:11:35 Man. Man, that was a very, very good rem. Bertis Downs: 1:11:36 That was a little uh not, I was not paying attention to that detail that night yeah, well, thank you everybody yeah, great crowd thank you very much, it's really nice to have you all here today, thank you. The SuperSwell: 1:12:00 Well, that was just great. Thank you to Bertie Stowns for a truly fascinating look at his work with REM, and an excellent job by Alex Maiolo for guiding the conversation so beautifully. This special edition of the Super Swirl podcast has been brought to you in collaboration with bertis and alex and in association with talin music week. It's a real privilege to be able to present this talk via the super swell platform, so a big thank you to everyone involved and thanks to you for listening. Find out more at the super swellcom. Until next time, ciao.