Mike Mills once described his song “Nightswimming” as a beautiful piece of piano music that Michael [Stipe] was inspired to write some incredibly beautiful lyrics to. Originally recorded during the sessions for the preceding album, Out of Time, Mills didnt think it would amount to much since the piano part kept moving in circular fashion, repeating over and over. But the flowing pattern gave Stipe an idea for a song. According to Mills and Peter Buck, the lyrics conjure up memories of the early days of the R. E. M. After a set, once the clubs had closed, the band and their friends would go skinny dipping. Says Buck, Wed go to parties, wed go to the clubs, and wed go to the Ball Pump [to swim], and there would be any number of these same 50 people, so it was a very tight circle of friends. Stipe wont confirm whether thats what the song is about or not, but he did once state that it deals with a kind of an innocence thats either kind of desperately clung onto or obviously lost. Mills considers “Nightswimming” one of the highlights of his career with R. E. M. But even now that the group has called it a day, the music continues to be a part of his life. In an Onion A. V. Club interview he mentions that hes done some fun things with Nightswimming. Mills: My friend Robert McDuffie is a violinist who has established a music school at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, a school for strings, and I went down and performed. He had a friend arrange it for a string quartet, and he plays the vocal melody on his violin. We went down and presented that as part of a classical program, and that was pretty thrilling right there. A. V. Club: “Nightswimming is a great example of how the members of R.E.M. collaborated, with you writing the piano part and Stipe those evocative lyrics. Mills: Well, that’s the essence of the band. That’s one reason Peter, Michael, and I stuck it out all of these years in difficult times, because we knew the best work we would ever do as musicians is the work we do within R.E.M. I mean, we all do great things alone, but our life’s work was this band, and the way the band works is the collaboration between the four and then the three of us, and that’s something we enjoyed and respected. https://youtube/watch?v=yjQmv1NNii8
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:53:45 +0000
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