Peter Buck
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
While 1986s Lifes Rich Pageant revealed a growing awareness with sociopolitical concerns (among them environmental issues and American foreign policy), the following years Document was R.E.M.s commercial breakthrough, buoyed by the Top Ten hit The One I Love. Released on Election Day 1988, the Warner Bros. label debut Green was R.E.M.s most pointedly polemic effort to date, although the hits Stand and Pop Song 89 also reflected the bands wry sense of humor. Following the Green tour, R.E.M. took an extended break, during which time, Buck, Mills, and Berry teamed with singer/songwriter Warren Zevon to record an LP as the Hindu Love Gods. Buck, who earlier produced the Feelies 1986 comeback LP The Good Earth, also helmed sessions for Kevn Kinney (MacDougal Blues), Run Westy Run (Green Cat Island), and Uncle Tupelo (March 16-20, 1992); a comic book written and drawn by then-unknown singer/songwriter Jack Logan even depicted the guitarist as a superhero.
R.E.M. returned in 1991 with the chart-topping Out of Time, which generated the Top Ten hits Losing My Religion and Shiny Happy People; the elegiac masterpiece Automatic for the People followed in 1992 and as alternative rock took over the pop charts, the band was widely acknowledged among the chief inspirations behind a generation of new artists. In the wake of 1995s Monster, Buck formed the side project Tuatara, an experimental, free jazz-inspired collective also featuring the Screaming Trees Barrett Martin and Lunas Justin Harwood; the groups debut album, Breaking the Ethers, appeared a year later, followed in 1998 by Trading With the Enemy. In 1997, he also teamed with ex-American Music Club frontman Mark Eitzel for the collaborative LP West. He returned to R.E.M. -- now a trio following Berrys retirement -- for 1998s Up.
