The Name of This Band Is R.E.M.: A Biography

Carlin (Sonic Boom: The Impossible Rise of Warner Bros. Records, from Hendrix to Fleetwood Mac to Madonna to Prince) offers a detailed, descriptive, and exhaustive biography of R.E.M., the arty rock band from Athens, GA. Conducting interviews with friends and colleagues but without any new insights from the group, he begins with band members’ childhoods, especially singer Michael Stipe and lead guitarist Peter Buck, and carefully chronicles the group’s formation in 1980. Carlin moves to the group’s signing with I.R.S. Records two years later and the band’s mounting success as an alternative to mainstream music, especially on college campuses. Carlin focuses on R.E.M.’s full-blown entry into the mainstream when it hit with the 1987 album Document (which sold one million copies). The band signed with Warner Bros. Records the following year and emerged as a politically active, socially conscious rock group by the early 1990s before breaking up in 2011.