I am a pretty big R.E.M. fan. I have all their CDs, lots of special releases and a bunch of bootlegs. I have seen them in concert seven times, know a lot of useless trivia about them and have bought some cool merchandise on eBay to decorate my basement.
But I just learned one of the coolest fun facts (at least to me) about one of their lyrics yesterday.
I was listening to the bootleg of the shows they did in Dublin last month. They peppered their new material with some pretty old songs, including “Second Guessing,” which appeared on Reckoning, their second album.
As Michael Stipe introduced the song, he talks about how songwriters write themselves into songs. Instead of doing that, he says, he used the names of the other three members of the band.
Every lyric service online I could find lists the last line of the third verse as ” Be in my club, write a book this season” when, I now know that it is “Peter, Mike and Bill, write a book this season.” Unless Stipe is revising history. Which has happened before. Either way, it’s pretty cool. Watch it below.
That is an awesome fact! Thanks for posting (came across this blog in the “Pop Songs” blog which wrote about each R.E.M. song. This has always been a favorite of mine. I’m an old school fan that listened to them 85-88/89 when I went to college and they lost appeal to me. Pretty cool about the lyrics to it! I’m now getting back in to all the old stuff!
I think a lot of people have thrown Reckoning into their CD player recently. 🙂
I was at the first two of the Dublin shows, and was equally surprised at this revelation. Going back and listening to the recording on Reckoning, it does seem like we’ve just all been mis-hearing it all these years. I was curious when I got home and couldn’t find one lyric sheet or webpage that had any idea that it was “Peter, Mike, and Bill.”