By David Peisner

Michael Stipe had fairly modest ambitions when R.E.M. first formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980. "We just wanted to play in clubs," he remembers. "We never even intended to make records."

It's somehow fitting that a band with such an initially non-careerist bent would eventually become the benchmark against which other bands would measure their careers. R.E.M.'s slow growth from an early-'80s cult phenomenon to its mid-'90s run as the biggest band in the world is held up as rock and roll's gold standard of artistic and commercial development. It's also increasingly an anomaly in an industry obsessed with breakout hits, first-week sales and chasing trends.

Stipe, the son of a military man, grew up on army bases around the U.S. and Europe before moving to Athens in the late '70s to study art at the University of Georgia. There, he met budding guitarist Peter Buck, who was a clerk at Stipe's favorite record store. The two bonded over a love of early punk and were soon playing cover songs around town with bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry under the gloriously stupid moniker Twisted Kites. Soon rechristened R.E.M., the band began writing songs that melded the Byrds's jangly, psychedelic folk rock with darker, artier impulses rooted not only in punk but also in the surreal lyricism of Beat writers like Allen Ginsberg and William H. Burroughs.

Their murky but quite catchy debut single, "Radio Free Europe," resonated out of college radio transmitters wrapped in Buck's ringing guitar and transported by Stipe's otherworldly mumblings. Subsequent recordings built on this combination and were spread by rabid word-of-mouth raves, tireless touring and through the then-nascent medium of college radio.

The band's first five independently released albums, starting with 1983's Murmur up through 1987's Document, gradually broadened R.E.M.'s appeal without sacrificing the twitchy energy of its first single. After scoring a Top 10 hit with "The One I Love," the band was snatched up by Warner Bros. with a then-obscene multimillion dollar contract. It proved money well spent after the band delivered a pair of multiplatinum records in the early '90s -- the eclectic Out Of Time and the near-flawless Automatic For The People. Their 1994 effort, Monster, was a deliberately back-to-basics rock record that mostly worked, and 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi was a moody travelogue that mostly didn't.

The latter record heralded a troubling time for R.E.M.: Drummer Bill Berry retired in 1997 to work on his farm in rural Georgia, leaving the once unbreakable quartet as a trio. The music since his departure has become a bit more experimental, and the resulting albums have met with a mixed response. The band's 13th album, Around The Sun, sometimes feels like an attempt to address that issue: Its sound hearkens back to Automatic For The People, and while the pace is a little sluggish, some of the songs simmer with political disaffection and bite pretty hard.

R.E.M.'s wiry frontman has long been outspoken, but in conversation he's almost unnervingly soft-spoken: His voice barely rises above a whisper, he pauses frequently to hash out his thoughts and has no fear of a good, hearty, uncomfortable silence. Still, on the eve of the re-issue of R.E.M.'s last eight albums on special-edition CD and DVD, Stipe spoke openly with Playboy.com about the band's early days, his disappointment over last November's elections and why R.E.M. didn't just call it quits after Bill Berry chose farming over drumming.