Peter Buck

Peter Lawrence Buck (born December 6, 1956) is an American musician and songwriter. He was a co-founder and the lead guitarist of the alternative rock band R.E.M.; he played the banjo and mandolin on several R.E.M. songs. Throughout his career with R.E.M. (1980–2011), as well as during his subsequent solo career, Buck has been at various times a member of numerous side project groups. These groups included Arthur Buck (with Joseph Arthur), Hindu Love Gods, The Minus 5, Tuatara, The Baseball Project, Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3, Tired Pony, The No-Ones, and Filthy Friends, each of which have released at least one full-length studio album. Additionally, the experimental combo Slow Music have released an official live concert CD. Another side project group called Full Time Men released an EP while Buck was a member. As well, ad hoc "supergroups" Bingo Hand Job (Billy Bragg and R.E.M.), Musical Kings (Michelle Malone, Peter Buck, John Keane) and Nigel & The Crosses (Robyn Hitchcock, Peter Buck, Glenn Tilbrook and others) have each commercially released one track. Buck's latest project as of 2025 is Drink The Sea (with Lizette Garcia, Duke Garwood, Alain Johannes and Barrett Martin), and the band has released a self-titled double album in Autumn 2025 .

Richard M. Nixon, a band Buck founded in 2012 to support the release of his solo album with live gigs, has never issued an official recording. Richard M. Nixon consisted of Buck, Scott McCaughey and Bill Rieflin, the same three musicians who comprise The Venus 3.

Buck has a career as a record producer including releases by Uncle Tupelo, Vigilantes of Love, Dreams So Real, The Fleshtones, The Feelies, and The Jayhawks, as well as a session musician (The Replacements, Billy Bragg, Decemberists and Eels).

Early life Buck was an employee at Wuxtry Records (pictured) in Athens, Georgia when he met Michael Stipe. Peter Lawrence Buck was born on December 6, 1956, in Berkeley, California, to Peter and Violet Buck. After spending time in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the Buck family moved, via Roswell, Georgia, to Atlanta. After graduating with honors from Crestwood High School in 1975, Buck attended Emory University and joined Delta Tau Delta fraternity. He eventually dropped out of Emory. Buck moved to Athens, Georgia, and attended the University of Georgia as well. While in Athens, Buck worked at the Wuxtry Records store,

Music

Buck's style of guitar playing is simple and yet distinctive. His arpeggiated picking makes wide use of open strings while chording to create chiming and memorable pop melodies. His sound, especially on mid-period R.E.M. albums that saw the band break through to international popularity, has been associated with Rickenbacker guitars, particularly a Jetglo (black) model 360. He has also used a wide variety of other instruments as the group continued to experiment and develop. On some more recent R.E.M. releases prior to Accelerate (2008), his guitar parts have been less prominent.

"When Peter plays guitar, there's a strong sense of fuck off that comes from his side of the stage. And you feel that he wants to be in a band because he likes what they do... but that's all," explained U2's lead singer Bono in 2003. "And it's almost like performing and having to deal with all of that is a bit of a compromise for him, so just fuck off. And I like that energy a little bit, and that gives them their aggression."

Buck has produced many bands, including Uncle Tupelo, Dreams So Real, Drivin N Cryin, The Fleshtones, Charlie Pickett, and The Feelies. Buck also has made contributions on many other musicians' albums, including The Replacements, Billy Bragg, The Decemberists, Robyn Hitchcock, and several Eels albums.

Buck, Mike Mills, Bill Berry and Warren Zevon recorded an album under the band name Hindu Love Gods, while the R.E.M. bandmates and Zevon were recording tracks for Zevon's 1987 album Sentimental Hygiene. Hindu Love Gods is one of many names the members of R.E.M. have used performing around the Athens area. Buck also continued to play live locally with the Normaltown Flyers, performing country and rock standards in local bars.

In March 2012, six months after R.E.M.'s September 2011 dissolution, Buck, now signed to Mississippi Records, announced intentions of working on a solo album, backed by singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur. The first track from the self-titled solo album, "10 Million BC," was released via SoundCloud on June 21, 2012. His eponymous first album was released later that same year.

In the final days of 2013, Buck announced he would be releasing his second solo album soon. The new project, titled I Am Back to Blow Your Mind Once Again, was released on February 18, 2014, again on vinyl only.

In 2015, Buck released his third solo album, Warzone Earth, under Little Axe Records.

In April 2017, Buck released the first single "Any Kind of Crowd" from his latest collaborative project with Filthy Friends, a super group with long time associates Scott McCaughey, Bill Rieflin, Kurt Bloch and Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney. The same month also saw another new release with Buck and McCaughey teaming up with Frode Strømstad and Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen of Norwegian band I Was A King to form the group The No Ones. The first song from their Sun Station EP was released, with the EP set to follow later in the year.

Arthur Buck, a side project with singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur in which Buck and Arthur share songwriting duties, released their eponymous debut album in June 2018. The following year, the Luke Haines collaboration Beat Poetry for Survivalists was released.

Personal life Buck has been married three times, each ending in divorce. He was first married to Barrie Greene, the owner of Athens' 40 Watt Club.

He has twin daughters, born in May 1994, with Stephanie Dorgan, the owner of Seattle's Crocodile Cafe music club. Buck and Dorgan married in January 1995 while in Perth, Australia, during R.E.M.'s Monster World Tour.

Buck married his third wife, Chloe Johnson, on June 1, 2013, in Portland, Oregon. The three other original bandmates of R.E.M. were all in attendance and performed at the ceremony. They divorced in 2019.

He is known for his encyclopedic knowledge of music, as well as his extensive record collection. Buck estimated his record collection to be around 25,000 in the late 1990s (he estimated he had 10,000 vinyl singles, 6,000 LPs and 4,000 CDs).

Buck is an atheist.

In the 1990s, Buck relocated to the Pacific Northwest and divided time between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. He has also lived in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico.

Airline incident On April 21, 2001, Buck was aboard a transatlantic flight (British Airways #48) from Seattle to London to play a concert at Trafalgar Square. Witnesses alleged that Buck exhibited various bizarre behaviors on the flight, including shoving a compact disc into a drinks trolley thinking it was a CD player, tearing up the "yellow card" warning notice handed to him by the flight crew, claiming "I am R.E.M." and being involved in a struggle over a yogurt cup with two flight attendants, which resulted in the cup exploding. Buck's actions led to two charges of common assault on the flight attendants, one charge of being drunk on a plane and one charge of damaging British Airways cutlery and crockery.

At the ensuing trial in London, Buck's defense claimed that the moderate amount of wine he had drunk had reacted adversely with the brand of sleeping pill he was taking and rendered him unable to control his actions. The prosecution argued that he was simply intoxicated from supposedly consuming 15 glasses of wine. After the trial, which included testimony from Bono, the lead singer of the Irish rock band U2, Buck was cleared on the grounds of non-insane automatism.

Discography

With R.E.M. Chronic Town EP (I.R.S.) 1982 Murmur (I.R.S.) 1983 Reckoning (I.R.S.) 1984 Fables of the Reconstruction (I.R.S.) 1985 Lifes Rich Pageant (I.R.S.) 1986 Document (I.R.S.) 1987 Green (Warner Bros.) 1988 Out of Time (Warner Bros.) 1991 Automatic for the People (Warner Bros.) 1992 Monster (Warner Bros.) 1994 New Adventures in Hi-Fi (Warner Bros.) 1996 Up (Warner Bros.) 1998 Reveal (Warner Bros.) 2001 Around the Sun (Warner Bros.) 2004 Accelerate (Warner Bros.) 2008 Collapse into Now (Warner Bros.) 2011

Solo Peter Buck (Mississippi) 2012 I Am Back to Blow Your Mind Once Again (Mississippi) 2014 Opium Drivel (Mississippi) 2014 Warzone Earth (Mississippi) 2015 Dear December (Yep Rock) 2017

Produced Eyelids: The Accidental Falls (Jealous Butcher Records) 2020 Dreams So Real: Father's House (Coyote) 1986 Alejandro Escovedo: Burn Something Beautiful (Fantasy) 2016 The Feelies: The Good Earth (Twin/Tone) 1986 The Fleshtones: Beautiful Light (Naked Language) 1993 John Wesly Harding: Greatest Other People's Hits (Omnivore) 2018 The Jayhawks: Paging Mr. Proust (Thirty Tigers/Sham) 2016 Kevn Kinney: MacDougal Blues (Island Records) 1990 Run Westy Run: Green Cat Island (Twin/Tone) 1990 Hector Tellez Jr.: The Great Unknown 2023 Uncle Tupelo: March 6–20, 1992 (Rockville) 1992 Vigilantes of Love: Killing Floor (Fingerprint/Sky) 1992

Recorded with

Arthur Buck Arthur Buck (New West) 2018 Arthur Buck 2 2025 The Baseball Project Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails (Yep Rock) 2008 Volume 2: High and Inside (Yep Rock) 2011 3rd (Yep Rock) 2014 Grand Salami Time! (Yep Rock) 2023 Drink the Sea Drink the Sea I and II (Echo Base) 2025 Luke Haines Beat Poetry for Survivalists (Omnivore) 2020 All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out (Cherry Red) 2022 Going Down To The River To Blow My Mind (Cherry Red) 2025 Mark Eitzel West (Warner Bros.) 1997 Filthy Friends Invitation (Kill Rock Stars) 2017 Emerald Valley (Kill Rock Stars) 2019 Full Time Men Full Time Men EP (Coyote) 1985 Hindu Love Gods Hindu Love Gods (Reprise) 1990 The Minus 5 Old Liquidator (Glitterhouse Records) 1995 The Lonesome Death of Buck McCoy (Hollywood/Malt) 1997 Let the War Against Music Begin (Mammoth/Malt) 2001 I Don't Know Who I Am (Let the War Against Music Begin, Vol. 2) (Return to Sender) 2003 Down with Wilco (Yep Rock) 2003 In Rock (The Minus 5 album) (Yep Rock) 2004 Gun Album (Yep Rock) 2006 The Minus 5 (Yep Rock) 2006 Killingsworth (Yep Rock) 2009 Of Monkees and Men (Yep Rock) 2010 Dear December (Yep Rock) 2017 Stroke Manor (Yep Rock) 2019 Tuatara Breaking the Ethers (Epic) 1997 Trading with the Enemy (Fast Horse) 1998 Cinemathique (Fast Horse) 2002 The Loading Program (Fast Horse) 2003 East of the Sun (Fast Horse) 2007 West of the Moon (Fast Horse) 2007 The Here and the Gone (Fast Horse) 2008 Underworld (Sunyata) 2014 Shamanic Nights (Sunyata) 2016 Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus Three Olé! Tarantula (Yep Rock) 2006 Goodnight Oslo (Yep Rock) 2009 Propellor Time (Yep Rock) 2010 Tired Pony The Place We Ran From (Fiction/Polydor) 2010 The Ghost of the Mountain (Fiction Records|Fiction/Polydor) 2013 Chuck Prophet Night Surfer (Yep Rock) 2014 Nando Reis Uma Estrela Misteriosa Revelará o Segredo (Relicário) 2024 The No Ones The Great Lost No Ones Album (Yep Rock) 2020 My Best Evil Friend (Yep Rock) 2023 Slow Music Project Live at the Croc 19 Oct 2005 (Slow Music) 2005