R.E.M.: ROAD WORRIERS

Yet another irony-or omen, if you will-came the night of R.E.M.'s first of two Rome concerts at the sports arena Palaeur, exactly a week before Berry's collapse. One verse into the opening song, "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" the sound and lights went dead. Then, during "Man on the Moon," it happened again. "What the f--- is going on?" said Stipe from the stage, his soft murmur of a voice flashing a twinge of anger. "Did someone put a curse on us or something?" The crowd didn't mind, nor did they care that the sound system reduced much of the music to a wind tunnel with a beat, or that the intimacy of songs from Automatic for the People was swallowed up in the cavernous space. They didn't even seem concerned that the two-hour show concentrated heavily on the band's last three albums, omitting early hits like "Fall on Me" or "The One I Love." They greeted the recent hits (and the arty films behind the band) with cigarette-lighter salutes and a lusty, aerobics-class abandon. What was evident from the Rome concerts is that R.E.M. is both the most natural and least natural arena band on the planet. Mills, looking like a % Hollywood cowboy, worked the front rows as if he were perfectly at home. Stipe, coming off like an underfed white hip-hop kid with his shaved head and wool hat, addressed the crowd with oddball, deadpan comments ("We're going to play a song, and then another song after that") and sang "Country Feedback" with his back to the audience. The following night, as part of their plan to stave off boredom, they replaced 30 percent of the set list with different songs, including a rare performance of "S. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)."

While the bedridden Berry recuperates in Lausanne for an estimated week to 10 days, the band is still planning to begin the American leg of the tour on May 5 and to write off the losses from the canceled European shows. "Their concern isn't 'What about the tour?'" says filmmaker Jim McKay, who spoke to Stipe the day of Berry's operation. "Everyone just wants Bill to get better." Whether Berry will be joining them remains unclear. The band insists that it wouldn't be R.E.M. without the four original members. Yet industry sources and friends in contact with the R.E.M. camp speculate that with such huge contractual agreements weighing upon the band, they may have no choice but to find a temporary replacement until Berry is well enough to pound again. Such a scenario was the furthest one from everyone's mind after the snafu- ridden first concert in Rome. Back at their hotel-the same one, strangely enough, where Kurt Cobain had attempted suicide 11 months before-the band and a few friends and family members commandeered the bar. In light of the double- whammy power outage (caused, it turned out, by a fluctuation in the venue's house power), Berry, Buck, and Mills truly needed to chill out. "You feel like a total d---head, but you keep playing," Buck said as he unwound with a glass of wine. "If you don't accept a few bumps in the road, there's no point in doing it." Berry, standing nearby, grinned his consent and grabbed a beer. In retrospect, it was an eerie coincidence in a situation loaded with them.