REM – Man on the Moon

I noticed doing my Max Picks that I have never covered this song before by REM (I guess I’m giving this one away)…which really shocks me because it’s one of my favorites by them. This one is in my top three or four of REM songs. Its subject matter is no other than Mr. Andy Kaufman and that is probably the reason I like it so much. I’ve read a couple of books about Andy…what an interesting fellow. First a little about Andy.

Andy Kaufman covered the bases…Mighty Mouse, Foreign Man, wrestling women, Elvis Impersonator (I think the best), Tony Clifton, bongo player, Great Gatsby reader and generally pissing people off, boring them or making them laugh. He was a performance artist – a comedian who sometimes was uncomfortable to watch but great. He was not a joke comedian…not remotely close. He loved making the audience uncomfortable to the point of booing him at times. He ate all of that up. More than once he started to read The Great Gatsby…and he continued to read it until everyone left. Not one of his best routines but people noticed. After a show at Carnegie Hall, he took his entire audience out for milk and cookies with buses taking all the audience out.

I remember seeing him on a clip from the Tonight Show… as the very innocent childlike “foreign man” talking for a while and doing terrible celebrity impersonations and then suddenly shedding that character like a used coat and doing an Elvis impersonation…no, he WAS Elvis… I’ve read that Elvis said that Andy was his favorite impersonator but whether that is true or not I don’t know. He did do that show before Elvis died so it’s quite possible.

The song was originally titled ‘C to D Slide’ because that is the chord pattern that drummer Bill Berry had for it. Bill Berry came up with the melody and Peter Buck helped finish it off. Stipe came up with the lyrics as their back was against the wall to finish the album. It’s one of their most beloved songs. It was on the album Automatic for the People. 

One line that I like is “Mr. Fred Blassie and the breakfast mess” which refers to Kaufman’s movie My Breakfast With Blassie…which is a good but different…as is everything to do with him. It was Andy talking and yes…having breakfast with wrestler Fred Blassie.

There are always rumors about celebrities being alive. You know…Lennon and Cobain hang out on an island having Mai Tai cocktails while jamming with Elvis. The only one that I thought if any more could pull it off…it would have been Andy.

The song was released in 1992 and peaked at #30 on the Billboard 100, #3 in Canada, #18 in the UK, and #8 in New Zealand. I double-checked it and #30 on Billboard is much lower than I thought it would be…I was thinking top 10.

Andy died in 1984…or did he? Bob Zmuda has said that Andy did say he was going to fake his death and said that he actually helped Andy plan it. More people have come forward saying the same thing. Every few years we get an Andy sighting in Albuquerque or somewhere else. No, I don’t believe he did fake it…but hey I would love it if he popped up well and alive anytime in the future. The world needs original people. You know he would be loving the rumors about him being alive…if he is alive or not…yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Mills: “Bill Berry is still a very good songwriter, he had a lot of musical ideas, then he and Petr Buck fleshed the rest of it out musically. It was a song that me, Pete, and Bill really loved and had musically finished right up to the last day of recording and mixing in Seattle, and we’d been leaning on Michael very heavily for some time trying to finish it.” 

Man On The Moon

Mott the Hoople and the Game of Life, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Andy Kaufman in the wrestling match, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Monopoly, twenty-one, checkers, and chess, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Fred Blassie in a breakfast mess, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Let’s play Twister, let’s play Risk, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
I’ll see you in heaven if you make the list yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now, Andy, did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Andy, are you goofing on Elvis?
Hey baby, are we losing touch?

If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon
If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool

Moses went walking with the staff of wood, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Newton got beaned by the apple good, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Egypt was troubled by the horrible asp, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Charles Darwin had the gall to ask, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now, Andy, did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Hey Andy, are you goofing on Elvis?
Hey baby, are you having fun?

If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon
If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool

Here’s a little agit for the never-believer, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Here’s a little ghost for the offering, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Here’s a truck stop instead of Saint Peter’s, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Andy Kaufman’s gone wrestling, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now, Andy, did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?
Hey Andy, are you goofing on Elvis?
Hey baby, are we losing touch?

If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon
If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool

If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon
If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool

If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon
If you believed there’s nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool

If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon
If you believed there’s nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool

…

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

46 thoughts on “REM – Man on the Moon”

  5. Thanks for posting this one. To be honest, I did not appreciate this tune at the time of its release (party due to the extremely HEAVY rotation it received on the radio at the time!) but hearing now for the first time in a couple decades, I can see the appeal.
    I was a MASSIVE R.E.M. fan when Murmur came out and remained so for their first 5 albums, but they “matured” musically before I did and I just didn’t really dig their later stuff nearly as much. (I’ll take Rickenbackers and Telecasters all day long over acoustic guitars and mandolins!) This is a good reminder to go back and “rediscover” from time to time.

    I will say, they were a great live band. I was fortunate to see them twice before they really blew up and have fond memories of the band from my early days!

    And coincidentally, I just started watching old Taxi re-runs a couple weeks ago…I forgot how funny Andy was on that show!

    Thanks for the great work!

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    1. I wish I would have seen them. I listened to them around 85 and on…after the Monster album I lost touch.
      Thanks for reading…yea Andy Kaufman was an aquired taste but I liked that…he was totally different. I love Taxi…my crush on Elaine always comes back.

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  6. Now we’re talkin’. Definitely one of my favorite songs of the ’90s (yet not even my favorite on the album) and always a highlight of their live sets. Everything about it works, the vocals, Buck’s guitar, the melody… everything! And from it I first found out about the Apollo moon conspiracy (hence the chorus, many think it was all a fake filmed in some studio or in the desert to boost US morale) and then about KAuffman, who I also only knew from Ladka on Taxi. Have to echo Jim there, he was great in that role, but as I learned more about him – then saw the movie of this name based on him – I would say… well, he was unique! But not really my style of comedian.

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    1. He took chances and that part I liked…some I did some I didn’t but he went out there more than others do and risked his career on top of it. I liked the Mighty Mouse thing a lot and some of the wrestling he did.
      I liked the song when it came out and I saw the movie at the same time…very well done movie by the way.

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      1. Carey really got into the character for it, that’s for sure. It was a good soundtrack, that I loved, even the mighty Mouse theme and Taxi one.

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  9. Not your average ‘boy meets girl, you rock my world, Moon June’ tune, there’s some great lines in there.
    I’ll come out and say it- there is no equivalent USA eccentric to the English eccentric. There is room for a Vivian Stanshall in the UK, but the US generally doesn’t have as broad a stage for real off the wall comic acts. The US just dismisses them as weirdos. And I’d say, even in the UK there is a very niche market for the oddball.
    His role in ‘Taxi’ was very funny but it wasn’t what he would wish to be remembered for, or at least I think so.

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    1. Vivian Stanshall…Keith Moon’s pal…that says a lot there. I knew him most being from the Bonzo Dog Band.
      No he did not like Taxi taking his “Foreign Man” and sterilizing it. He was out there. I love Taxi though…and Elaine…did I mention Elaine?

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      1. Stanshall is… waaaay out there, in left field ,way past the Bonzos.
        Elaine, yes you mentioned Elaine…I remember Elaine…Sigh.
        On that old school appreciation of the opposite sex I can’t for the life of me see why- beyond the too (two?) obvious, as to why guys went berserk for Chrissie/Suzanne Summers in ‘Three’s Company?’ Was it just me that preferred Janet?

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I need to check him out.

        It must be the blonde hair and the heighth…I like short girls like Janet. I’m also a full Mary Ann guy…anyday.
        Marilu Henner is interesting…she has total recall…it’s amazing what she can remember. Imagine being her husband…”on August 3, 1988 you pissed me off you swine”

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      3. Ob, to me, Benny Hill and the whole Monty Python crew are weirdos from England that I love. You’re right though, USA doesn’t welcome weirdos in with open arms as much.

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      4. Dave Allan, yes, I can think of none better of his older style of comedy. Not very well loved by the Catholic church, it must be said. His ending his show with ‘goodnight, and may your God go with you’ is a lovely bit of wickedness.

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      5. lol… I loved it. Much of it went right over my head. The last time I watched him was when I was 12…I need to look up some on youtube. Good…I thought he was quality but it’s been so long…

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      2. S…L…O…W D…O…W…N
        Obbverse how about Dave Allen? I liked him a lot…they would play Benny Hill and Dave Allen at Large right after Barney Miller here. Something about him I really liked…he was funny.

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    3. What a great comment. I have been thinking about what you say about eccentrics. Yes, Stanshall was one and just growing deeper into at with the Rawlinson bit. I never appreciated it. I appreciated Viv, but as he got away from the Bonzos I lost the connection. And I always knew it was my loss. Your comment about eccentrics just brought it back out and what you say is very true.

      Oh, as to the subject of the post. Loved the song, never much of an REM fan, never much of a Kaufman fan.

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      1. I really liked the Bonzos when I was younger, generally more the Innes flavour but Viv was the WTF!? guy for sure. When a little older I really enjoyed Viv’s way with words- he had such a surreal way with words, and if you could somehow drift, fall, spin and align into his orbit he took your mind into the strangest twists and turns. A real wild and crazy guy!

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  12. I’m not awfully into REM but they do have a handful of songs I like and this is one of them. It’s really well done. I also wasn’t familiar with Andy since he was gone before I was old enough to know or care. Seems like he was an interesting dude, I mostly learned about him through his stints in pro wrestling.

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    1. Yea he was totally different from anyone that I’ve ever seen. If you are ever bored…that movie is pretty good.
      I was more of a Replacements guy…they rocked a lot harder… but I do like a lot of REM.

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  14. Kaufman’s Elvis impersonation was almost as good as mine! You see, Elvis was Christian’s childhood idol, and when he was like 10 or 12, he worked a wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom hard to impersonate the man. In the bathroom (great acoustic!). In front of the mirror. Sometimes with grease in his hair. Always with passion! 🙂

    On a more serious note, I’ve always loved that R.E.M. song. I think the first time I heard of Andy Kaufman was because of that song. That said, I hardly know anything about Kaufman.

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      1. He certainly was his own guy and he was very funny. I never watched Taxi I just knew him from his bits and routines. All caught on the tv shows. No internet back then The whole Jerry Lawler thing was great.

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      2. Him reading the Great Gatsby was classic…he was great with the few times he was on SNL. I remember watching the Lawler thing…I have to admit…that movie was pretty good about him.

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  16. was never that much of a fan of the song, it’s decent enough, but Andy Kaufman was fun in Taxi, which was all we really knew about him in the UK. Sad life story of course. His series co-star “girlfriend” is now in the fab Star Trek Strange New Worlds and it gladdens my hear to see an older actor getting roles in the very youth-obsessed TV shows – Carol Kane, who is as deliciously off-the-wall as ever.

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    1. Oh yea…Carol Kane I think… she was great in Taxi and Scrooged… I agree that it is nice to see an older person in a show now.

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