“It's destined to be pop legend. It's going to redefine music in the 90s. How so? It's brilliant.” R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe’s description of their seventh album Out of Time, captured in a 1990 interview with MTV was a little arch, but viewed from 2014 it was pointedly accurate. With harpsichords-a-go-go, and a mandolin solo on anthemic hit “Losing My Religion,” the band became synonymous with the all-conquering genre ‘alternative rock’ and the show that symbolized the decade: MTV Unplugged. 

“We didn't expect ‘Losing My Religion’ to be a hit,” confides the band’s “fifth member,” longtime manager Bertis Downs IV. “It doesn't really have a chorus.” With help from Downs, new documentary R.E.M. by MTV uses archive material from the vaults of the 24/7 video channel to document the rise of Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry from Athens, Georgia, and of MTV itself – an era when rock ruled the roost, and 'the biggest band in the world' was a notion that still existed. The title was undoubtedly R.E.M.'s for a while, although as manager Downs recalls, “they never really were a big show-band with pyrotechnics or lots of props. R.E.M. was about the music and their friendship. 

These days MTV Unplugged exists only as the odd special, a far cry from its 90s hey-day and throughout the retrospective excerpt Stipe is dressed as if he has wandered in from a different band, channeling everyone from the Who to De La Soul. The group disbanded in 2011, having sold 85 million records—due in no small part to the compelling eccentricity of their lyricist, a rock star who once described his most valued possession as his salad spinner.

Tom Horan is Culture Editor-at-Large at NOWNESS.

R.E.M. By MTV will be released as part of the box set REMTV, a six DVD collection available November 24, and simultaneously premiered on VH1 Classic and Palladia.