REM
In July 1999, REM staged a 3 day concert event at Stirling Castle. REM's album Perfect Square was released internationally in March 2004 and the DVD features a documentary 'A Stirling Performance' that highlights the impact on Stirling
To celebrate the March release of A Stirling Performance, featured bonus material on the Perfect Square DVD, A Lonely Goat, aka Deborah Hogan and Andy Cronk, have kindly put together a retrospective on the making of the documentary. Read on and learn the whole story behind the making of the film which chronicles REM's three-night stand in Stirling, Scotland, during the Up Tour in 1999.
Behind the Scenes of A Stirling Performance
It's almost five years since we started on the journey that was to become A Stirling Performance. It's a film that shouldn't really have happened and came about almost by accident. There were times when we thought it would never even get finished let alone be screened anywhere. So it's incredible to be looking back at how it all came about as the film is released worldwide on DVD.
In the summer of 1999, we were in the late stages of planning a documentary about a music festival. Two weeks before we were due to start shooting, our funding was cancelled. Rather than sit around moping, we decided to channel our anger and energy into another idea.
My co-director Andy Cronk and I had seen REM's UP tour schedule and in disbelief saw Stirling Castle on it. Stirling, the wee friendly town that one of my friends was from and where I'd spent a great deal of time over the years. We thought it would be impossible for a town like Stirling to be unaffected by REM's presence and we started to talk about how this would make a great film, about how the B&Bs, pubs, shops and an historic site like Stirling Castle would deal with it all.
