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R.E.M. Members Reunite

11/19/2013
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(Gibson) There was a partial reunion of R.E.M. last week when drummer Bill Berry and bass player Mike Mills joined guitarist Peter Buck on stage during one of his solo shows at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia.

The former bandmates performed R.E.M.'s 1984 track "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville." According to reports, former frontman Michael Stipe was in the audience too. So if he happened to be singing along, a case could be made that R.E.M. performed together, right? Right?

R.E.M. called it quits following the release of the album Collapse Into Now in 2011, an album which they chose not to tour for. "As lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band," they sad by way of explaining the break. "We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished."

However, comments made by Mills to Rolling Stone in May seem to indicate that this onstage jam is as close as we're going to get to the real thing. "We said we're done and we're done," he said at the time "If we honestly thought there was a chance of a reunion tour, we might have said so at the time."

During that May interview, Mills explained that there was no animosity among band members: it was simply time to bring the band to an end. "There were no real factors other than deciding it was time to break up," he said. "There's no drug abuse. There's no in-fighting. There's no legal problems. It was time to break up. That's never really been done before. The idea of breaking up and not reforming for a reunion tour is kind of attractive to us. I doubt you'll see us touring as R.E.M. again."

Check out video of the reunion performance here.

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Copyright Gibson.com - Excerpted here with permission.

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