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Releases
REM’s Peter Buck to release solo album
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 3 October 2012
Former REM guitarist Peter Buck has announced that he will release a solo album later this week – Friday to be exact. Written in the months following REM’s split last year, Buck said in a message published via the band’s website that the record was just something he is “doing for fun”, rather than as a career choice.
Buck wrote: “I know I said for years that I would never make a solo record. It was never a plan or a desire, but it just kind of happened. When REM called it a day, I’d spent the last three months on my back with a semi-crippling injury unable to play guitar. With my band gone and unable to use the fingers on my right hand, I started writing lyrics just to have something creative to do. The lyrics turned into songs and the songs turned into what felt like a possible album, so I called some of my favorite musicians, Scott [McCaughey], Mike [Mills], Bill [Berry], Lenny Kaye, Corin Tucker, Jenny Conlee, and booked studio time”.
He continued: “Not being really confident in my singing, I asked Corin to sing one and she was gracious enough to do so, Scott sang a few, mostly the ones he wrote melodies to. So why is it a solo record? I wrote 95% of the lyrics and most of the music, it is the first thing I have ever been involved in where I was actually in charge, and the record turned out to be kind of like a trip through my mind, all of the kinds of music I love, played with some of my favorite musicians, in a completely one take spontaneous atmosphere. It was either call it a Peter Buck record or Richard M Nixon – Lenny Kaye convinced me that it should be called a Peter Buck solo record because it does represent me or at least me right then”.
The album will be released by Mississippi Records on 5 Oct and initially limited to 2000 copies on vinyl.
