Classic Tracks | REM ‘Radio Free Europe’ : November 2009
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Producers: Chip Young, Billy Swan; Engineer: Chip Young In 1974 Billy Swan walked into Chip Young's Young'un Sound studio and, in two takes, recorded a million-selling single that had taken him 20 minutes to write. This is how it was done... Track: 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' The story of how a characteristically chaotic and unorthodox 1978 recording session took Ian Dury & The Blockheads to the top of the UK charts. Producers: Nile Rodgers, Madonna, Stephen Bray • Engineer: Jason Corsaro In mid-1984 Madonna arrived at New York City's Power Station studios with Nile Rodgers to record the album that would make her an international superstar - using cutting-edge 12-bit technology. Producers: Richard Dashut, Ken Caillat, Fleetwood Mac In 1976, in the face of deteriorating personal relationships and massive record company pressure, Fleetwood Mac managed to create a record that would go on to sell 30 million copies. Producer: Alan Mair • Engineers: John Burns, Robert Ash Although never a commercial success, the Only One's 'Another Girl, Another Planet' has proved to be massively influential; and nearly 30 years after its original release, it's finally getting the recognition it deserves. Producers: Tricky • Mark Saunders  Producer: Billy Sherrill • Engineer: Lou Bradley 1973's 'The Most Beautiful Girl In The World' was one of the defining moments of the Nashville sound, and was the product of a finely-honed studio recording process. Producer: Phil Spector • Engineer: Larry Levine Phil Spector was one of the first producers to realise that a recording studio could be an instrument in itself - and the sound he created over 40 years ago has influenced popular music ever since. Producers: The Jam, Vic Coppersmith-Heaven • Engineers: Alan Douglas, Vic Coppersmith-Heaven 'The Eton Rifles' captured both Paul Weller's growing talent as a songwriter and the raw power of his band the Jam, and gave the group their first top 10 hit. Producers: Depeche Mode, Daniel Miller, Gareth Jones • Engineer: Gareth Jones Released in 1984, 'People Are People' perfectly combined Depeche Mode's love of pop music and experimentalism, and gave them their first US hit single. Producer & Engineer: Les Paul Les Paul made some of the most innovative records of the 20th Century, but he had to invent multitrack tape recording first... | Classic Tracks | REM ‘Radio Free Europe’Article Preview :: Producers: REM, Mitch Easter, Don DixonPublished in SOS November 2009 Technique : Classic Tracks REM’s first single wasn’t just an embryonic form of the style and sound that would later make them so successful, it was also a gem of the American new wave. But it took a long time coming...
“Keep me out of country in the word / Deal the porch is leading us absurd...” Complete babbling? That’s how Michael Stipe once described his lyrics to REM’s first chart single, ‘Radio Free Europe’, and many listeners would agree. Stipe, after all, has never been averse to employing a memorable title or an oblique, oddball phrase that has little connection to a song’s meaning. Yet it was this idiosyncratic approach, so ably demonstrated on ‘Radio Free Europe’, that would eventually see the band become favourites of the burgeoning ’80s college-rock scene before finally crossing over into the mainstream with such phenomenal success. It’s all there in that first single: from the obscure, sometimes unintelligible vocals to the minor-key guitar jangle, ‘Radio Free Europe’ is a blueprint for the REM sound. It wasn’t an easy birth though: the single was demoed, recorded, remixed, recorded again and released in two very different versions, the first in 1981 and the second two years later. Fans of the Athens, Georgia outfit have spent a commensurate amount of time during the past three decades debating which version is better: the original neo-punk recording that, as released on the independent Hib-Tone label, is favoured by the band members themselves, or the slower, slightly more textured IRS release that made the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100. “When I hear the second version now it sounds a little too sedate,” says Mitch Easter, who earned production and engineering credits for both recordings of ‘Radio Free Europe’, as well as for REM’s first two albums, Murmur and Reckoning. “It’s more hi-fi, for sure, but it’s also heavier and the energy is a little different. I think it’s saved by Michael’s vocal and the cool bass line on the transition to the chorus, but I kind of prefer the faster speed.” In The Beginning...
A native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who had played in school and college bands since the age of 12, Mitch Easter graduated from college in 1978, and had initially relocated to New York City with the intention of launching a studio there while still playing in bands. However, within a couple of years, unable to afford the Big Apple’s high overheads, he launched the Drive-In back in North Carolina, and it was around this time that Michael Stipe and guitarist Peter Buck teamed up with fellow University of Georgia students Mike Mills (bass) and Bill Berry (drums) to form REM. Following several months of rehearsals, the group quickly built a strong local following on the club circuit, and it was after adding ‘Radio Free Europe’ to the set list and opening for the Police at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta that, on April 14th, 1981, the Athens quartet showed up at the Drive-In to record a demo. This was thanks to a recommendation by another Winston-Salem native, Peter Holsapple, who, with Chris Stamey, had founded a jangle-pop outfit called the dB’s. “I had heard of REM and I’d seen a poster of them in a club,” says Easter, who had formed his own jangle-pop trio, Let’s Active, “but I still didn’t really know what the guys did until they started recording the next day, and at that point I was kind of surprised at the music they performed. They had a funny sensibility, because back then many bands were on one side of the punk fence or the other, whereas these guys were in their own sort of category.” ...
Published in SOS November 2009 
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