The “polite jab” featured in ‘Get Up’ that defines how REM functioned
Let’s be honest, when we were at school, college or university, we all had stupid dreams with our mates that we would form a band and one day make it big.
For most, within a few years, those grand plans drifted away and remained only memories to laugh at when you met up for drinks. But for REM, those halcyon days turned into the rest of their lives, and it was perhaps this naïve dynamic which kept them going as long as they did.
Whether it was jokes at the others’ expense or the occasional friendly feud, the band largely gained success not just because their music resonated with the alternative rock boom of the late 1980s and 1990s, but because the energy between the four was palpable and infectious for all to see. In short, everybody wanted to be a part of REM.
What was perhaps rarer was the fact that despite the level of international stardom that rock fame afforded them, the heart of the group never stopped beating, as friendship was more important to them than their relationship as bandmates. As Michael Stipe put it to CBS News last year: “We’re also here to tell the tale, and we’re sitting at the same table together with deep admiration and… lifelong friendship. A lot of people that do this can’t claim that.”
REM may have been a band built on the foundations of brotherly love, but with that being said, it didn’t stop them from winding each other up from time to time, especially when it came to their music. The perfect example of this emerged on their song ‘Get Up’, the final single from their 1988 album Green, which Stipe wrote as a tongue-in-cheek jibe towards one of his bandmates’ lazier tendencies.
The band’s bassist, Mike Mills, wasn’t much of a morning person, which annoyed Stipe endlessly when he was buzzing with shedloads of fresh sonic ideas every morning and was raring to jump into the studio. But even still, Mills’ moody mornings provided themselves as their own muse, as the frontman hilariously vented his frustrations at his bass player through the medium of the not-so-subtly titled ‘Get Up’.
Drummer Bill Berry confirmed this years later when he explained, with regards to the song: “Michael mentioned, only once, that these lyrics were a polite jab at Mike’s proclivity to sleep late when afforded the opportunity. Notice, however, that Mike’s vocal enters before Michael’s. He must have beat Mr Stipe to the studio on that particular occasion!”
That story alone goes a long way in summing up exactly who REM were as a band and what they stood for, with friendship going far beyond any dreams of huge success. Of course, that acclaim did eventually come rolling in, but if it wasn’t for such a strong dynamic between the band members in weathering the storm, they may never have made it through. Their only wish, if they could do it all again, is that Mills invest in an alarm clock.
