“Fables sucked!” - Bill Berry
In March of 1985, R.E.M had been on the road for pretty much three years straight, and they were miserable with the prospect of another year of the same. Record label I.R.S. hated their last record, Reckoning, and were ready to assign a more “noo wave” producer. When the band hired Joe Boyd (of Nick Drake fame) and jetted off to London without permission, the record company men were predictably less than pleased. And the recording sessions were a trial, resulting in a dark and dissonant album that was, in the words of Michael Stipe, “monumentally fucked-up.” Most of the band admitted this was the closest they’d ever come to calling it quits.
A year later, for Lifes Rich Pageant, they would sign producer Don Gehman (John Mellencamp, Barbra Streisand, The Bee Gees) and make their first impenitent grab for the mainstream. Guitarist Peter Buck was sick and tired of The Byrds comparisons and was ready to really rock. And, of course, Michael was ready to start enunciating.
So Fables of the Reconstruction has come to be known as the last “classic” R.E.M. record, because the guitars are still jangly and the vocals still foggy. But it hardly fits alongside Reckoning and Murmur and Chronic Town -- it’s just so fucking dour. It’s a hard record to get through, and it really stands alone in their catalogue, not least because of its low standing with the band members themselves (later rescinded).
I’ve always had a sort of affection for it, though. Everyone remembers the spry rockers (“Driver 8,” “Can’t Get There From Here”), the cacophonous opener, “Feeling Gravity’s Pull,” and “Good Advices,” if only for the line: When you meet a stranger/ Look at his shoes/ Keep your money in your shoes.” But what about the mesmeric “Maps and Legends” or “Kohoutek,” which is beautiful and strange and an undeniable love song? Or “Green Grow the Rushes,” with its delicate, elliptical riff and gentle coda of “la la la la la’s”?
Stipe called Fables his “storytelling album... the whole idea of the old men sitting around the fire, passing on legends and fables to the grandchildren.” On “Old Man Kensey,” an Athens man holds neighborhood dogs for ransom. “Wendell Gee” is a drunk who disappears into a tree trunk, and “Life and How to Live It” references Georgian writer Brivs Mekis.
“As formalists, they valorize the past by definition,” griped Robert Christgau of the Village Voice, “and if their latest title means anything it’s that they’re slipping inexorably into the vague comforts of regret, mythos, and nostalgia.” On the whole, however, reception was not terrible. But the Fables tour was probably the most bizarre chapter in the band’s entire history; Michael cropped his hair, gained about thirty pounds, and took to wearing granny glasses and taping posters of Ronald McDonald to the back of his suit jacket. One particularly surreal moment: after a spot on Music Convoy in Germany, the band was interviewed by a clueless and increasingly despondent emcee who, when a stray dog wandered across the stage, asked if “you guys have any animals at home?” Michael responded with, “Yes, we have animals in America, just like here. Different kinds: cats and dogs, birds, lizards.”
