Business Week: Bertis Downs ’78 and R.E.M.'s New Business Plan
Are you ready for some '90s nostalgia? Business Week reports that R.E.M.'s longtime business manager and lawyer Bertis Downs '78, "a naturally caffeinated 58-year-old lawyer," is banking on it. Downs "orchestrates the afterlife" of the iconic band from a red-brick factory near the railroad tracks in Athens, Ga., writes Hugo Lindgren.
"No one in R.E.M. is dead. Phew," reads the caption on the photo-illustration. And while it might seem soon to those who were there to celebrate '90s nostalgia, history major Downs is counting on it-by the same lights with which he saw the band's potential for success at the Kaffee Klub in Athens in 1980.