An American Masterpiece Turns 40

How one of the finest debut albums in rock history laid the humble foundations of the college rock revolution

‘Radio Free Europe’, the lead track from the R.E.M. debut LP, Murmur has all of the earmarks of a catchy underground hit. A simple, repeatable chorus line draped within a catchy, ascendant vocal line. The apparent gibberish of the remaining lyrics simply reinforcing the compact glory of the harmonies and hooks. There is that driving rhythm action, the spare chime of that Rickenbacker, and that weird Southern smog that belongs only to America’s greatest band.

By most metrics it’s easy to see how ‘Radio Free Europe’ was a regional hit, and how that success could lead one to think there might just be a promising career ahead for those four young men from Athens, GA. It would have been impossible to predict the overwhelming and culturally defining impact this band would be making in less than a decade.

By the time R.E.M. released their full length debut Murmur on April 12, 1983, they were already a well seasoned outfit. The four piece had been touring tirelessly throughout the southeast and up the east cost for more than two full years. Quickly, they found enthusiastic audiences on college campuses, as well as larger markets like New York, Boston, and Washington, DC.

With an ever growing reputation as a whirlwind of a live act, R.E.M. signed with the very independent, and short lived label Hib-Tone records to release ‘Radio Free Europe’ as a 7” single. The first run of less than 1,000 copies was largely sent out for promo purposes, but led to critical acclaim, radio play, and brisk sales of the single at the band’s gigs. A second run of 6,000 copies was ordered, and the band’s reputation and acclaim grew further.

IRS Records signed the band to a multi-album contract in 1982 after a feverish bidding war with a host of labels vying for the band’s services. The first release, Chronic Town is a tight five song set that hints at the band’s ever emerging command of song and dynamic structure. The twenty minutes on that first EP would be a feather in the cap of most bands. R.E.M. were just getting warmed up.

There are a million reasons why a great record doesn’t become a hit. It lacks the proper distribution or promotion, or maybe the creator behind it is volatile or unwilling or unable to perform live. Sometimes great stuff is ahead of its time, other times people are just dumb and fail to see the greatness in front of them. Therefore, having a great band with great songs and being a great live act was and is no guarantee of any level of success. Sometimes though, the planets align perfectly and greatness might just occur.

In the mind of this humble narrator, Murmur is in a rare class of the greatest debut albums of all time. The twelve songs are catchy, unadorned, under-produced and compared with the other records of the era, quite spare. Yet, they are rife with melody, energy, hooks, excitement, and jangle. Oh, that jangle.

The threadbare presentation of the debut from R.E.M. was a stark departure from huge sellers of 1983 like Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Synchronicity by The Police, the Flashdance soundtrack or Men At Work’s Business As Usual. U2’s surprising success with their War LP was the single band even in the same sonic world as R.E.M. operating at a large commercial level.

On the two sides and 44 minutes that make up Murmur, we are privy to a churning musical engine channeling the Byrds, and Big Star and the Velvets into a language that made sense for unfocused and/or disaffected kids too tame for punk and too square for synth pop and goth. The chapters hide the remnants of classic country childhood nights, classic rock radio summers, and nascent studio experimentations. This music is playful, forceful and hooky.

Murmur was the living museum piece that led me to a world of weirdness, charm, melody, and eventually learning how to haunt the listener with a song. It also led an entire generation of American kids like yours truly to dive into the worlds of Flannery O’Connor, The Left Banke, T. Rex, and Bowie, as well as the aforementioned Velvets, Byrds and Big Star.

Maybe you arrived at ‘Radio Free Europe’ because your friend said that it sounded, “a little like a weird/cool Tom Petty track”, but now you were deep down a rabbit hole that somehow led from The American Anthology Of Folk Music to the New York Dolls. R.E.M. could connect those dots to the strange and shaded corners of our cultural pasts. For so many of us that band was a guiding light back in to the cool things that our parents forgot to tell us about, or somehow just missed.

The success of that debut also helped to greatly shape the face of music over the intervening decade. Murmur’s immediate commercial and critical success led to a wave of similar bands signing at large labels, and forced labels to re-evaluate what artists they had their stable that might be suitable for this new phenomenon of College Rock.

Without the commercial success and critical acclaim of Murmur happening the way it did, it’s hard to imagine bands like The Pixies, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Wilco becoming household names. That’s not to say that other bands didn’t till some of the same cultural earth as R.E.M.; The Cars, Blondie, Devo, Talking Heads, and The Ramones had all done great things for American rock in the years leading up to Murmur.

R.E.M. now sat poised to become the band that synthesized the counter-cultural and aesthetic elements of those bands with a uniquely new American sound to become the focal point of a generation of our nation’s music.

Making a truly great record is something that few bands will ever achieve. Almost none do it on their first try. Somehow, R.E.M. managed to do all of that and then some with Murmur.

It’s a record that is honest about its past, it portends what is to come for an American musical juggernaut, and it stands on its own two feet as a genuinely great record of the rock and roll era.

Happy birthday to a masterpiece,
Matty C