R.E.M. Fiction:
An Alternative Biography

R.E.M. are, without doubt, one of the most important and popular rock bands of the past three decades. Lionised by the serious music press on both sides of the Atlantic since their formation in the early 80s, Michael Stipe, Bill Berry, Mike Mills and Peter Buck achieved worldwide commercial success in the 1990s with singles including "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts," and the albums Out of Time and Automatic For The People, which between them sold over 25 million copies.

After the messy experimental albums, illnesses and management problems of the late 1990s, R.E.M. returned to form in 2001 with the accessible and acclaimed album Reveal. In R.E.M. Fiction, David Buckley turns his critical eye on the accepted view of R.E.M. as the saviours of American rock, reanalysing their music, their public persona, and the media’s unquestioning portrayal of a group who sold almost no records for the first ten years of their existence, and became ‘the biggest rock group in the world’ for the second ten. A compelling and rigorous retelling of the R.E.M. story, R.E.M. Fiction is a music biography like no other.

– Exclusive first-hand interviews with members of the band and their management
– Definitive, informed reanalysis of the R.E.M. myth, drawing on interviews with the band's closest associates and friends
– Includes previously unseen early photographs