“I Don’t Sleep, I Dream”
(or “Daysleeper,” or “The Sidewinder Didn’t Sleep Tonite”)
I suffer from insomnia. It’s a demon I’ve battled all my life. I had it just this past week following my COVID booster, which brought on muscle aches and chills. I was so uncomfortable that I lay awake for eight agonizing hours. But I often think back to 1983, when I had an all-night insomnia bout that came at an awful time.
I had graduated from NIU in journalism and was now a freelance writer and young bachelor in Chicago. I lived alone in a 400-square-foot coach house near Wrigley Field. I was writing for Trouser Press, Creem, Mix, Record, the Chicago Reader and the Illinois Entertainer. It was the last that assigned me an interview with the young R.E.M., which was touring its just-released debut album, Murmur. I’d heard the clamor about R.E.M. from Matter magazine and its editor, Liz Phillip, a very early believer whose tastes I’d come to trust.
I went to the tony Park West to see them play. It was the band’s third Chicago stop — the first at the dive bar C.O.D. in the Edgewater neighborhood, the second at Stages (now the venerable Metro). I only wish I’d seen those dates. But I was thankful to catch them when I did, and they delivered.
Then I got home from the show and did not sleep a wink. Not a single zzzz. I don’t believe I was wired from the show — even if it was truly a musical revelation, feeling as though I’d heard the future of pop music, or at least my lane in it. It was simply one of those nights when insomnia took hold. I was supposed to interview them the next day.
I’d heard and fully sensed the guys were intelligent. So perhaps my sleeplessness was based upon anxiety about not being up to the task. Who knows. Anyway, I did not sleep. The sun came up and I was still tossing and turning.
While in Chicago, the R.E.M. members and their manager, Jefferson Holt, were staying not at a hotel but with friends in Chicago — a nice couple named Jim and Jeannie, who lived in an apartment in the city’s Ravenswood neighborhood. You know, one of those brown-brick walk-ups that famously line Chicago’s residential streets.
I called I.R.S. Records’ then-head of publicity in L.A. that morning and explained that I hadn’t slept. A. Wink. I asked if the guys might be in Chicago another day.
“No,” came the reply. “Have yourself some coffee, then set the microphone in front of Peter Buck. He’s a motormouth. Ask him one question — he’ll do the rest. Michael Stipe will not be quite as helpful in that regard. He’s more reserved.”
Alrighty then. Gallons of joe that day down at the Greek breakfast diner on my corner — in an age before Starbucks. I showed up at the Ravenswood walk-up apartment of Jim and Jeannie and was buzzed in.
I was tired beyond belief. I did have a question list, so I asked Peter Buck the first question and BINGO — he took it from there. I even caught a second wind. Then I ran out of steam and said, stupidly, “I’m thinking of where to take the interview next.” Mike Mills and Bill Berry were also loquacious, Michael Stipe looked at me quizzically, and I could swear he murmured, “Dachau?” It’s entirely possible I misheard that in my fatigue. After all, most of us didn’t catch R.E.M. lyrics on first listen.
Then Jim and Jeannie asked me to stay for dinner, which they’d been preparing. Uh-oh, I thought — this is where they’ll see I’m an under-slept idiot.
But no. I was offered a beer, then another… and the band and I clicked even more over dinner. Even Michael came around. We had some great laughs.
The interview yielded great material for an article, which appeared in a 1983 edition of the Illinois Entertainer.
* * *
A few months later, I learned via a press release in the mail that I.R.S. Records was seeking a publicity director. “Qualified candidates,” it read, “should send their résumés to the label’s head of business affairs.”
I thought about that for a moment. It was a bone-chilling Chicago winter day. I had headed publicity for a small Chicago indie label, Ovation Records, from 1979-81 and knew the day-to-day, with a pretty impressive Rolodex. If I could publicize Ovation’s bands, like country stars the Kendalls or Chicago AOR rockers Tantrum, imagine what I could do with I.R.S. bands.
I was, after all, an I.R.S. adherent and had come to know many of the executives when they came through Chicago or when we’d bump into each other at the New Music Seminar.
I mailed a résumé and cover letter. I donned my parka and boots and walked it down to the post office at Southport & Irving Park. Turns out I was one of 60 applicants.
I received a call asking if I could be in Los Angeles in the next few weeks. As it turned out, I already had plans to travel there. Fortunately, this time I had plenty of REM sleep the night before and interviewed well. A week later, I was offered the job… involving a move from Chicago to L.A., if I could make the move in three weeks.
I managed to pull it off — packing my belongings, putting everything I owned (including my car) on trucks from snowy Chicago bound for L.A. I’ll never forget arriving at LAX with two suitcases and renting a car bound for the Sunset-La Brea Travelodge, my home for three weeks, kitty-corner from the A&M lot, where I.R.S. operated out of a green bungalow.
My first assignment at I.R.S.: set up press for the Alarm’s Declaration. Next, the Go-Go’s Talk Show. And finally, the main event for me: R.E.M.’s Reckoning. My predecessor had laid the groundwork magnificently, and R.E.M. had won many early key critical accolades. But I do believe I helped take them to the next level in the press.
One night on the A&M Records lot after work, early in my tenure, I was walking to the parking lot with Jefferson Holt, who asked in his charming Southern accent: “Now you know why you got this job, doncha?”
Uh, well, I dunno… why did I get this job?
“Because we liked you in Chicago and heard you were up for the job and put in a good word for you!”
I oughta get insomnia more often.
Or wait a minute — I do.
CARY BAKER is a veteran writer and publicist in the music industry. Cary served as Director of Publicity at I.R.S. Records, beginning circa R.E.M.’s Reckoning LP.
MORE ON CARY:
Cary’s first book! Down on the Corner: Adventures in Busking and Street Music
Cary’s website is at carybaker.com
🚲