R.E.M.'s Peter Buck Explains Why Band Won't Tour

R.E.M. fans hoping to see the band hit the road to promote new album, 'Collapse Into Now,' look set to be disappointed after guitarist Peter Buck revealed the band have no plans to tour the record.

Buck believes that in the current music-buying climate, touring no longer plays a significant role when it comes to record sales. He told Beatweek, "I'm not really sure that touring sells records. What sells records anymore? It seems like less and less people are buying albums, so do what you want."

The non-committal guitarist continued, "We'll just see what happens. But it does seem like we've toured a lot in the last eight or ten years. To some degree it felt like we'd just been doing kind of the same thing we did last time. You just don't really want to repeat yourself in that way."

Elsewhere in the interview, Buck described 'Collapse Into Now' as a return to an earlier R.E.M. sound. He explained, "We'd made a couple records that were mid-tempo to slow. This time around we were all trying to bring in different kinds of stuff and capture some of the things that maybe we'd done in the past that we hadn't revisited, the kind of acoustic stuff which I've been playing -- more or less folk music -- since I was 15."

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