Former R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck discussed R.E.M. disbanding in a new interview with Salon. He said that while he loves the R.E.M. hits, he has no desire to play them again. Buck said, “Well, I love those songs. But I never want to play ‘Losing My Religion’ again. ‘Man on the Moon,’ it’s a great song. But it’s five minutes long and I’ve played it a couple thousand times.”
Buck also discussed why the band decided to split, “So once we’re thinking we’re not going to tour, and we’re not going to get a record deal probably, we talked about what we wanted to do. What we could possibly do. And there wasn’t anything that we decided we needed to do. And there also wasn’t anything that we really agreed on that we all wanted to do. ‘Cause I was saying, “You know we could always do what Tom Waits does. Write a record on an independent and play theaters.” And everyone’s like, “I dunno.” That sounded OK to me, but I’m not going to push for it. You know, some people wanted to get away from it for a while. I wanted to pursue it, maybe not with R.E.M. I think we were all really ready for a change. Which is why I started singing and writing lyrics. I’ve never done this, but I’m just going to try it.”
“I love the Rolling Stones. I wish I’d seen them in this last tour. But I don’t want to be playing 30-year-old songs when I’m 70. I mean, the thing that I really enjoy about my solo show is that every song I’m playing is a year old. I’ve done plenty of things where I’ve written it at 4 in the morning, taught it to myself.”
