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"Man on the Moon" is a Song by the Band R.E.M. from their 1992 album '' Automatic For The People ''. The song is about the comedian Andy Kaufman . It is about events in Kaufman's life — including his Elvis Impersonation and work with the wrestler Fred Blassie . The song was released as a Single in 1993 . The song gave its name to a 1999 film ('' Man On The Moon ''), and was used in the film's Soundtrack along with another R.E.M. song, the Bespoke " The Great Beyond ", which is about what Kaufman tried to achieve in his lifetime. "Man on the Moon" nearly didn't make it on to ''Automatic for the People''. It was only finished and recorded two hours before the album was due to be mastered. Michael Stipe has said that he deliberately tried to include the word " Yeah " many times in the lyrics, in order to create a song that has more "yeahs" in it than any song his friend Kurt Cobain had written. (This was probably a reference to " Lithium ", in which "yeah" comprises all of the choruses.) "Man on the Moon" contains 56 "yeahs". The song was placed on R.E.M.'s Warner Brothers "best of" album '' In Time - The Best Of R.E.M. 1988-2003 '' in 2003 . It was one of four songs from ''Automatic for the People'' to make the compilation, more than from any other album. VIDEO The song's video, directed by Peter Care , was shot over three days in the desert at Lancaster in the Antelope Valley area of California in October 1992. Care kept a journal of the unusually long planning, filming, and editing process, which was published by ''Raygun'' magazine and reprinted in the R.E.M. fanclub newsletter. It gave a clear idea of the amount of work, money, and attention-to-detail involved. Attired in a cowboy hat, white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and jeans, Stipe walks along a desert road, lip-synching away. He passes a writhing coral snake (having had its venom removed especially for the occasion). The surreal dark-sky effect is an exercise on contrast: the sky was normal but Stipe was lit by an especially powerful movie light called a Brute, which must have increased the already intense heat of the late summer sun. Stipe pauses to deliver his deadpan Elvis impression, while a truck rounds the corner behind him. Stipe leaps onto the passing truck, driven by Bill Berry, and hitches a ride to the Cactus Inn in Palmdale. Upon arrival, Stipe hops off and continues to lip-synch while the camera follows him inside, where he orders a plate of fries from the bartender, one Peter Buck, who is fulfilling a life ambition. "I never got to be a bartender, so at least I got to act like one," he explained on ''An Hour with R.E.M.'', which aired on MTV UK in May 2001, prior to the band's televised performance in Cologne. Behind Stipe, Mills, in the role of a pool shark, with steer-skull tattoos on his forearms just beneath his rolled-up sleeves, takes his drink from the bar, acknowledging the eatery’s newest customer. Stipe stops lip-synching, a task which is duly taken up by the surrounding extras, including Berry, who has left the truck out front. Some of the extras are actual customers and some are actors. Stipe munches on his fries, then gets up and walks out the door into a black night sky and goes on his way. “No longer quirky, catchy, and surreal,” explains Care, “it now takes on (for me) an unexpected sadness, too.” That was the simple part. The images that appear in the sky behind Stipe during the desert sequence weren’t superimposed by modern video technology but archival footage was played back on video, then re-filmed from the screen. Photographer Melodie McDaniel was present at the shoot. She took the photos of the band that grace the single sleeve. SINGLE COVERS |
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