This year marks the 40th anniversary of alternative rock reaching the mainstream, via R.E.M.’s debut LP, “Murmur,” and this, its leadoff song, became the band’s first single — and the first to reach the Billboard charts. OK, so it only reached No. 78, but it indicated the growing audience for music that didn’t fit the confines of mainstream record-company rock.
R.E.M., like most early alternative bands, built a following the hard way — lots of gigs at small venues along with sporadic low-budget recordings that caught ears on college radio stations. Longtime R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry credited “Radio Free Europe” with keeping the band going when times were lean.
Bill Berry:
College radio and major city club scenes embraced this song and expanded our audience to the extent that we moved from small clubs to medium-sized venues and the additional revenue made it possible to logically pursue this wild musical endeavor. I dare not contemplate what our fate would have been had this song not appeared when it did.
The demo of the song got them a deal with IRS Records, which released it as a single in 1981. They rerecorded it for “Murmur” two years later, and though the band found that version inferior, it’s the one that made the charts. Michael Stipe later admitted that his unintelligible lyrics in the original covered for the fact that some of them didn’t actually exist yet.
This is a live version from their first national TV appearance, on David Letterman’s show. They follow the tune with an on-stage interview and a performance of the as-yet-unnamed “South Central Rain.”
