Resumed work on Up

The band cancelled their scheduled recording sessions as a result of Berry’s departure. “Without Bill it was different, confusing”, Mills later said. “We didn’t know exactly what to do. We couldn’t rehearse without a drummer.” The remaining members of R.E.M. resumed work on the album in February 1998 at Toast Studios in San Francisco. The band ended their decade-long collaboration with Scott Litt and hired Pat McCarthy to produce the record. Nigel Godrich was taken on as assistant producer, and drafted in Screaming Trees member Barrett Martin and Beck ‘s touring drummer Joey Waronker . The recording process was tense, and the group came close to disbanding. Bertis Downs called an emergency meeting in which the band members resolved their problems and agreed to continue as a group. Led by the single ” Daysleeper “, Up (1998) debuted in the top ten in the US and UK. However, the album was a relative failure, selling 900,000 copies in the US by mid-1999 and eventually selling just over two million copies worldwide. While R.E.M.’s American sales were declining, the group’s commercial base was shifting to the UK, where more R.E.M. records were sold per capita than any other country and the band’s singles regularly entered the Top 20.