The R.E.M. song that took 20 years to release
Only those on the ground floor of R.E.M. fandom knew the song ‘All The Right Friends’ before the year 2000. Originally written by Michael Stipe and Peter Buck during some of their first writing sessions together, ‘All The Right Friends’ became something of a white whale for hardcore fans. After 1982, the song was rarely played live, and unless you were able to get your hands on a 1993 European reissue of the compilation album Dead Letter Office, there was no official recording to be found.
As one of the first R.E.M. original songs, ‘All The Right Friends’ was recorded and considered for both Murmur and Reckoning, but it didn’t make the cut either time. A third demo version of the song was recorded during the initial sessions for Lifes Rich Pageant, but that recording was only released on the 25th anniversary edition of the album.
By the turn of the new millennium, it seemed as though an official studio recording of ‘All The Right Friends’ would never see an official release. Then came director Cameron Crowe, who had asked R.E.M. to contribute a song for the soundtrack to his 2001 film Vanilla Sky. With a massive overhaul of the original lyrics, ‘All The Right Friends’ was finally chosen.
“This is by far the oldest song on this set,” Peter Buck explained in the liner notes to the band’s 2003 compilation album In Time. “It was written in 1979 by Michael and me before we had even met Bill and Mike. We played it at every show until about 1982. I don’t know why we never recorded it; maybe we thought it was kind of juvenile.”
“Twenty years later, when asked to contribute a song to the Vanilla Sky soundtrack with about eight days’ notice, it no longer seemed quite so naive,” Buck added. “We recorded it in three hours prior to a show in Seattle, and quite consciously tried to record it as we would have in 1982.”
The version featured in Vanilla Sky became the “definitive” version, but the other recordings of ‘All The Right Friends’ would find their way onto other compilations. The same recording the band made during the Murmur sessions eventually appeared on the 2006 compilation And I Feel Fine… The Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982–1987. Despite being a key part of the band’s history, no versions of ‘All The Right Friends’ found their way onto the band’s definitive compilation, Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011.
Check out ‘All The Right Friends’ down below.
