Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey y'all, Today we have a conversation between old
Speaker 1: friends Rick Rubin and Michael Stipe. Along with this former
Speaker 1: Georgia based band RM, Stipe helped to popularize what was
Speaker 1: once called alternative music. With his open, arted lyrics. Stipe
Speaker 1: gave voice to the sensitive and misunderstood among us with
Speaker 1: hits like the One I Love, Everybody Hurts, and Losing
Speaker 1: My Religion. On today's episode, Michael plays Rick a new
Speaker 1: song of his called Future If Future, produced by Andy LeMaster.
Speaker 1: The song, as he explains, was released in partnership with
Speaker 1: Earth Percent, which gives artists a simple way to support
Speaker 1: groups fighting climate change, something Stipe cares deeply about. Michael
Speaker 1: Stipe also talks about the upcoming solo album he's recording
Speaker 1: and how he always intended to be super famous and
Speaker 1: then what it was like when it actually happened. This
Speaker 1: is broken record, line of notes, but a digital age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin mission. Here's Rick Rubin and Michael Stipe. Hello. Rick,
Speaker 1: it has been a very long time since I've seen you,
Speaker 1: and you look great. You too. How long have you
Speaker 1: lived in New York? It depends on which government agency
Speaker 1: you talked to, but I've been here since nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: I see, do you ever go back to Georgia. I
Speaker 1: spent most of lockdown in Georgia with my mother, my sisters,
Speaker 1: and a few very close my family. I had some
Speaker 1: vulnerable people in my family, so I spent most of
Speaker 1: lockdown there, and then starting last summer summer of twenty one,
Speaker 1: was able to travel to our home in Berlin because
Speaker 1: I now lived between New York and Berlin, and then
Speaker 1: and then came back when things got bad again with
Speaker 1: a delta. When you're in Georgia, is that at home,
Speaker 1: in the house that you grew up in? No, that's
Speaker 1: a misnomber that I grew up in Georgia. My father
Speaker 1: was in the army, so I traveled my whole life
Speaker 1: with him. He was in Vietnam twice, he was in
Speaker 1: Korea once during my lifetime, and we would pick up
Speaker 1: and move every couple of years. So I was born
Speaker 1: in Georgia. I returned to Georgia when I was eighteen
Speaker 1: because my father retired. He and my mom moved to
Speaker 1: Athens because there's a college there that my uncle went to.
Speaker 1: He was this great he is this incredible activist and
Speaker 1: spent the sixties and seventies in Athens as an activist
Speaker 1: at the University of Georgia. My mom and dad liked
Speaker 1: the sound of it, and so they moved there in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight when I was eighteen, and I followed them.
Speaker 1: I was living with a punk rock band in Granite City, Illinois,
Speaker 1: and I ran out of money and I moved with
Speaker 1: my tail between my legs. I moved to Athens, Georgia,
Speaker 1: thinking that it was a hippie cowtown and that I
Speaker 1: didn't fit in because I was just, you know, urban
Speaker 1: punk rocker. And it turns out that one of the
Speaker 1: most incredible punk rock scenes in America was happening right
Speaker 1: under my nose in Athens, Georgia, and I became a
Speaker 1: part of it. Unbelievable. What are the odds of that
Speaker 1: being the case. It's just a remarkable You would never
Speaker 1: guess it. Also that it would be, you know, the
Speaker 1: band that kicked it off, of course, of the B
Speaker 1: fifty twos. And that's a band, in my opinion, that
Speaker 1: had yet gotten their due recognition for the degree to
Speaker 1: which they altered the trajectory of contemporary music. Who with
Speaker 1: other bands in the Athens scene at that time, like
Speaker 1: post B fifty two's pre Rim, what was that window
Speaker 1: Brim would include the Method Actors and Pylon and that's
Speaker 1: about it. With Rim came a band called the Side Effects,
Speaker 1: and then a couple of other bands. There was a
Speaker 1: whole scene going on in Atlanta, but there's always been
Speaker 1: this weird thing like San Bernardino, La County kind of
Speaker 1: thing between Atlanta and Athens. There was a band called Vietnam.
Speaker 1: There there was a Ruphole's early band Ruphol and Weipole,
Speaker 1: a band called the Now Explosion, and that was They
Speaker 1: were all really fun people and we would hang out
Speaker 1: with them from time to time, but it was really
Speaker 1: Athens had its own thing going on. A lot of
Speaker 1: that had to do with Jeremy Arrows, my mentor the
Speaker 1: first really the first love of my life in a way,
Speaker 1: and he had moved from Athens where he grew up,
Speaker 1: to New York became involved in Andy Warhol's factory as
Speaker 1: a drag queen named silver Then, who Andy loved, but
Speaker 1: Paul Morrissey, who made all the movies, didn't like very much. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Andy really hung onto Silva until Jeremy decided to move
Speaker 1: back to Athens, and then he was really profoundly involved
Speaker 1: in the beginnings of the B fifty twos and helped
Speaker 1: kind of set the stage for what Athens would become
Speaker 1: as this like hotbed of new music. What was your
Speaker 1: first memory of the punk rock world in the United States?
Speaker 1: So we're not including sex pistols, We're not including like
Speaker 1: your first US experience of punk rock? What was it? Well,
Speaker 1: it predates the sex pistols. I was sent attention in
Speaker 1: high school in nineteen seventy five, and under my desk
Speaker 1: where I sat, someone had left a torn up copy
Speaker 1: of Cream magazine and there was an article written by
Speaker 1: Lisa Robinson about CBGB, and she was comparing the CBGB
Speaker 1: scene to as a black and white, scratchy TV to
Speaker 1: the technicolor, bloviating, bloated rich were better than everyone else
Speaker 1: kind of rock scene that was happening in modern America
Speaker 1: and saying, this is so much more real and so
Speaker 1: much more raw, and so much cooler, and these are
Speaker 1: the people involved in it. And there was a photograph
Speaker 1: of Patti Smith and she looked for all the world like,
Speaker 1: you know, like a vampire black and white picture. She's
Speaker 1: got her eyes wide open and I saw the picture
Speaker 1: and I was like, these are my people. And I
Speaker 1: read the article and I was like, this is it?
Speaker 1: So I wound up accidentally subscribing to the Village Voice.
Speaker 1: My sister had one of those Columbia House subscriptions where
Speaker 1: you paid a dime and you could get ten magazines
Speaker 1: for free, and the Village Voice just sounded like fun.
Speaker 1: So she asked me to pick a few magazines and
Speaker 1: I picked that one, and suddenly I was immersed into
Speaker 1: the whole CBGB scene and I started following it. And
Speaker 1: I bought Patti's first album the day that it came out,
Speaker 1: when I was fifteen years old, and I decided then
Speaker 1: and there that I was going to become a singer
Speaker 1: in a band and that was going to be my life.
Speaker 1: And I naively moved forward with that, and I outrageously
Speaker 1: and very luckily I was succeeded at it. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful story. And was what was your experience
Speaker 1: of music prior to the punk rock experience? Did you
Speaker 1: love music from young childhood or no. I loved music,
Speaker 1: but I was only exposed really to pop radio, and
Speaker 1: the five years that are kind of probably most significant
Speaker 1: to me or the years that we spent in Texas.
Speaker 1: We had moved from Frankfort. Outside of Frankfort, Germany, where
Speaker 1: there was pop radio, but it was all German, so
Speaker 1: it was like the Beatles singing Michel Mabel in German.
Speaker 1: I distinctly remember that as a child standing in a
Speaker 1: cabbage garden, if you can believe it, it was very
Speaker 1: German in nineteen sixty seven and moving as a seven
Speaker 1: or eight year old to Texas and then hearing pop
Speaker 1: radio which included Tammy Wynette and a lot of country music,
Speaker 1: but then also the Archies and the Banana Splits and whatever.
Speaker 1: You know. The Flintstones were primetime TV at that point
Speaker 1: during the Vietnam War. Yeah, my exposure to pop radio
Speaker 1: during those those years between sixty seven and seventy three,
Speaker 1: that was really primo amazing radio in terms of music
Speaker 1: that I really clocked as as a young team. I
Speaker 1: always cite rock On by David Essex, which I then
Speaker 1: kind of extrapolated into the song drive by RIM's. It's
Speaker 1: a very very That whole album in fact, is really
Speaker 1: referencing the nineteen seventies and the song by song you
Speaker 1: can go to everybody Hurts is Nazareth the band Nazareth
Speaker 1: Guy that covers Love Hurts, which was an earlier song
Speaker 1: from I think the nineteen fifties or sixties. Drive was
Speaker 1: my homage to David Essex and rock On. The other
Speaker 1: song that I always name is my now very very
Speaker 1: very dear friend and a man who I love very much.
Speaker 1: But Elton John put up bidding in the Jets and
Speaker 1: I had never heard anything like that before. It was
Speaker 1: absolutely mind blowing to me that the production it was
Speaker 1: really and I'm talking to you about this, but it
Speaker 1: was really the production. The song is a great song,
Speaker 1: and he's of course an amazing artist, but the production
Speaker 1: of the song was so whacked out. In the production
Speaker 1: of rock On by David Essex was so whacked out.
Speaker 1: But I think that was coming out of well, you know,
Speaker 1: what was happening with the glam rock in England, early
Speaker 1: kind of Mark Bowland, very early David Bowie, Slade, the
Speaker 1: Basicity Rollers might have come a little bit later, and
Speaker 1: they were very pop of course, but I think a
Speaker 1: lot of that production stuff was coming from there. So
Speaker 1: after you saw the picture of Patty, did you go
Speaker 1: to find her? Is that? Is that? The next step.
Speaker 1: You went to New York. That was what drew you.
Speaker 1: I did not go to New York for another three years.
Speaker 1: I didn't actually meet Patty until twenty years later. Wow,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five that we actually met each Incredible, incredible.
Speaker 1: We can continue from nineteen seventy nine when I first
Speaker 1: came to New York. But um, you and I go
Speaker 1: back a long long way, and we all have our
Speaker 1: past that are maybe a little bit embarrassing. But I
Speaker 1: know that you used to spend a good bit of
Speaker 1: time in New York at Exterminator Chile. Yes, remember that
Speaker 1: place I loved. My two best friends worked there, Tom
Speaker 1: Gilroy and Jim McKay, both artists, and Michael Imperioli from
Speaker 1: who went on to do The Sopranos, worked there as well.
Speaker 1: But you used to go for lunch and occasionally for dinner. Yes,
Speaker 1: And the person who managed Exterminated Chili, whose name I
Speaker 1: can't think of now because I haven't thought about it
Speaker 1: since then, managed band and we ended up signing that
Speaker 1: band called Masters of Reality that were a super cool
Speaker 1: kind of psychedelic psychedelic rock band. I remember Masters of Reality.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. And also, but why are eight there. Wow,
Speaker 1: the Chili Peppers made a video there, I think, and
Speaker 1: that might have been before your time. Yeah, thinking about
Speaker 1: the early days of punk rock and starting your post
Speaker 1: punk band, I guess would you would you qualify rim
Speaker 1: as a post punk I think so. Yeah, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was alternative music. Could you possibly imagine that it would
Speaker 1: become as popular and as mainstream as it ended up being?
Speaker 1: I think, to be completely honest, I think that was
Speaker 1: my intention all along. I wanted to be as big
Speaker 1: as I could possibly be. I just wanted to be
Speaker 1: really super fucking famous and not by any means necessary,
Speaker 1: which is what you find in today's culture. You know,
Speaker 1: there are people that are famous for the sake of
Speaker 1: being famous, and you know, then they become a billionaire
Speaker 1: with a makeup line or whatever. That's that's a little insulting,
Speaker 1: frankly for those of us who actually work at more
Speaker 1: than just business. But yeah, I wanted. I knew that
Speaker 1: I had something to offer. I didn't know what it
Speaker 1: was when I was nineteen or when I was fifteen,
Speaker 1: but you know, over the course of a few records,
Speaker 1: I figured out that I had a voice and that
Speaker 1: and then much later I found out that voice was
Speaker 1: quite unique and uh, and I started really enjoying the
Speaker 1: process of writing. And you know, Peter, Mike and I
Speaker 1: and Bill when he was in the band, we're the
Speaker 1: best of friends, and we supported each other, We loved
Speaker 1: each other. We kept each other alive many times, and
Speaker 1: we had a great grand adventure together, which you know,
Speaker 1: for me lasted thirty two years. The postpartum after thirty
Speaker 1: two years is let me tell you, that's something that's
Speaker 1: that's a high that you don't come down from easily.
Speaker 1: And so it took me several years to kind of
Speaker 1: I had really had to step away from music because
Speaker 1: I'm all and you know, I don't do anything halfway.
Speaker 1: I accept the defeats and the embarrassments along with the
Speaker 1: triumphs and the hit singles, but if I don't do
Speaker 1: anything halfway. And so when when ari Am finally disbanded,
Speaker 1: I needed to take a break and I needed to
Speaker 1: not think about or look at music for a long time.
Speaker 1: And it turned out it was like five years before
Speaker 1: I actually kind of accidentally fell back into it through
Speaker 1: Fisher Spooner and then working with Andy on that project,
Speaker 1: I realized that he and I had this really good
Speaker 1: rapport as as co writers, and we started working together
Speaker 1: and now we're involving all these other people. Galen Lea
Speaker 1: do you know her. She's this astonishing singer songwriter from
Speaker 1: the Minneapolis Saint Paul area. She has this astonishing, incredible,
Speaker 1: incredible presence and a very very unique voice, and our
Speaker 1: voices meld together beautifully. So so Galen is contributing on
Speaker 1: the record, some other people have stepped in to do work,
Speaker 1: and I'm just really very excited about it. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's a very different you know, I have no representation now,
Speaker 1: I have no record company. I was. I was under
Speaker 1: contract since I was twenty two years old, and now
Speaker 1: I'm sixty two years old, and uh, and I'm a
Speaker 1: free agent. I can do whatever I want, and I don't.
Speaker 1: There's nothing forcing me or making me make the choices
Speaker 1: that I make other than just wanting to create things
Speaker 1: that are beautiful and that inspired people in somewhere. And
Speaker 1: the reason I asked about what you thought was possible
Speaker 1: was I remember being in my parents house and seeing
Speaker 1: looking at the New York Times Sunday calendar section, and
Speaker 1: there was a full page ad for the police at
Speaker 1: Madison Square Garden and I remember looking at it, I think,
Speaker 1: I think this is a mistake. The Police can't play
Speaker 1: at Madison Square Garden. They play at the club's you
Speaker 1: know they play. I went to the Roxy and to
Speaker 1: the Ritz and to you know, to the Palladium. They
Speaker 1: could maybe play at the Palladium. They can't play at
Speaker 1: Madison Square Garden. That's not where That's not where the
Speaker 1: Police play. That's not where the groups that I like play.
Speaker 1: That must have been after Roxane. Yeah, you know my band,
Speaker 1: my former band Oriam, opened for the Police, actually not
Speaker 1: at Madison Scrub Garden but at Shay State when they
Speaker 1: played there. And we had the same booking agent who
Speaker 1: Mike and Bill, the drummer and bass player for former
Speaker 1: drummer and bass player knew Ian Copeland very well. They
Speaker 1: worked for him in Bacon when when he first started
Speaker 1: and he put us on this bill. It was us
Speaker 1: and Joan Jett in the Black Hearts and the Police,
Speaker 1: and we played a twenty minute set in the pouring rain.
Speaker 1: I was twenty three, I think, and Andy Warhol was
Speaker 1: there and Joan Jett came and said hello, and I
Speaker 1: was really because I loved the Runaways. I loved Joan Jett,
Speaker 1: who else? Matt Dillon came, Matt telling he was a
Speaker 1: big fan, and he came by and said hello. So
Speaker 1: that was a That was an August afternoon for us.
Speaker 1: What was it like walking out onto that stage? What
Speaker 1: was the feeling? I imagine what size places were you
Speaker 1: playing at that time? At twenty three, we were playing
Speaker 1: clubs seven people rick, nobody knew who arium was. Nobody cared,
Speaker 1: and that's fine, you know, I mean, it was just
Speaker 1: it was like throwing raw meat to dogs. You know,
Speaker 1: they had no idea who we were. We were on
Speaker 1: and off before they could get angry and like throw
Speaker 1: bottles at us. And you know, we did a really
Speaker 1: tight set. Everything was very very like Ramone speed at
Speaker 1: that point with Orium, so it actually I kind of
Speaker 1: developed a singing style because the band refused to play
Speaker 1: slower than they did. Mike was really loved the Ramones
Speaker 1: and really loved a really fast bass part, so everything
Speaker 1: was really like rockabilly Ramons kind of fast. And I
Speaker 1: got tired of singing that fast and I thought it
Speaker 1: was boring, so I started slowing down my part. It's
Speaker 1: the one thing I could do. They wouldn't slow down,
Speaker 1: so I slowed down my part, and that actually became
Speaker 1: a singing style for me. By the time we recorded
Speaker 1: our first album and a song like talk about the Passion,
Speaker 1: they were playing everything really fast and jangly, and I
Speaker 1: was just singing very very slowly and holding my vowels,
Speaker 1: and that became what that became, well, something like a install.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm so happy to see I have to say.
Speaker 1: I feel I miss you and I love you, and
Speaker 1: it's so nice to talk to you, and I feel
Speaker 1: like we I feel there are a million things for
Speaker 1: us to talk about, because everything you said is the
Speaker 1: beginning of another conversation. Like we could talk about the
Speaker 1: Village Voice alone forever. I was a pack rat when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and I subscribe to the Village Voice.
Speaker 1: And at one point there was an entire room of
Speaker 1: my family house that I grew up in Florida ceiling
Speaker 1: the entire room of just Village Voice newspapers because I
Speaker 1: saved everyone, and I didn't save them in any way
Speaker 1: that I could refer back to them. But when my
Speaker 1: mom would say we have to throw away these newspapers,
Speaker 1: I said, you can't throw them away, because I might
Speaker 1: have to refer back to something in those There was
Speaker 1: no way for me to do that, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to know all of the information in all of these newspapers.
Speaker 1: It was our life's blood. We have a lot in
Speaker 1: common record. I'm pack rat would be a very friendly
Speaker 1: term for what we call me and my father. I'm
Speaker 1: a hoarder, and I happen to have really good taste,
Speaker 1: and I've had a fascinating life thus far. So the
Speaker 1: things that I've parted are for the most part, pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Stacks and piles, and you know, Warhole had his time capsules,
Speaker 1: which was just cardboard boxes and he would jam everything
Speaker 1: that came to him would go into a cardboard box
Speaker 1: and that became time capsules. It was my friend Todd
Speaker 1: Everley who used to He's a photographer, very talented artist,
Speaker 1: and he worked for Vanity Fair forever. But he was
Speaker 1: called to the Warhole Museum and he was handed the
Speaker 1: task of photographing time capsules that Warhole had left when
Speaker 1: he died that had never been open before, and he
Speaker 1: found some unbelievable things. I still regard Warhole as the
Speaker 1: greatest artists of the twentieth century, the close second being
Speaker 1: Brenkouzi Brenkouzi managed to bring modernism and traditionalism together, not
Speaker 1: capital tea but small tea, traditionalism together in art, and
Speaker 1: do so in a way that was that was not
Speaker 1: only elegant, but but insanely timeless. Yeah, and felt new.
Speaker 1: It's interesting when someone can make something traditional and modern
Speaker 1: and it lives in both worlds. It still feels new.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. You see your brand Cuisy piece and
Speaker 1: you're like, what is this? This is the most elegant,
Speaker 1: the most I'm using that word a lot, but it
Speaker 1: does describe I think it's his work. I remember one
Speaker 1: of my fondest memories of things that we got to
Speaker 1: do together was we went to Manhattan's Center for an
Speaker 1: event for Johnny Cash and it was a tribute to
Speaker 1: Johnny Cash. But he sang at the tribute and it
Speaker 1: was a beautiful I remember we were sitting up in
Speaker 1: the left balcony and it was just a beautiful night,
Speaker 1: and I was just so glad that we got to
Speaker 1: do that together. I think, I think that's because of
Speaker 1: you that I've managed to make it backstage before the
Speaker 1: show and I met Johnny for the first time. I
Speaker 1: had met June several times before because of charity events
Speaker 1: that we were both attending, but I had never met Johnny,
Speaker 1: and as it turns out, of course, that was one
Speaker 1: that was in the last year of his life. So
Speaker 1: thank you for allowing me to meet Johnny Cash, one
Speaker 1: of my great heroes. We have to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back with more from Michael Stipe.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from Rick Rubin's conversation with Michael Stipe.
Speaker 1: When you guys first toured, what was your first tour vehicle?
Speaker 1: A Dodge Van van Green? How many years were you
Speaker 1: guys in a Dodge Van. We didn't have a bus
Speaker 1: until nineteen eighty four, so we were four years in
Speaker 1: the in a van. It's just I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: for people to understand at the time that you guys
Speaker 1: became who you became, what work went into it, because
Speaker 1: I don't know that that really exists in the world anymore.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a little bit of a loss people
Speaker 1: going out on the road and building up a following
Speaker 1: and someday getting to play at the Rose Bowl. Let's
Speaker 1: say where where. I remember when I heard that you
Speaker 1: were playing at the Rose Bowl and you were already
Speaker 1: r Am and I was surprised you were playing at
Speaker 1: the Rose Bowl, because like, that's the Rose Bowl. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Patti Smith did an interview with The Guardian. She was
Speaker 1: quoting someone I don't know who said up but in
Speaker 1: referencing work as an artist, it's a ten percent inspiration
Speaker 1: and ninety percent perspiration. And in the nineteen eighties we
Speaker 1: certainly put in our fair share of perspiration. And in
Speaker 1: the process of building up that that audience and a
Speaker 1: reputation as a band, we actually got our chops. You know,
Speaker 1: we grew up in public. I mean, we had no
Speaker 1: idea what we were doing. I didn't know that a
Speaker 1: bass guitar made the loan notes until our second album.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I knew that it was the
Speaker 1: one with four strings. That's all I knew. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was that ignorant of music. And and yet we
Speaker 1: managed to create this these songs that were really quite stunning,
Speaker 1: and we were lucky to work with people like Mitchister
Speaker 1: and Don Dixon or in the early days to help
Speaker 1: us kind of form what was a sound. You know,
Speaker 1: at the time in the early eighties, everybody wanted the
Speaker 1: vocal really loud and the drums really loud because it
Speaker 1: was post disco, and even if you were no matter
Speaker 1: who you were, if you turn the drums up, you're
Speaker 1: going to have a hit, or you're more likely to
Speaker 1: have a hit. And we were like, turned the drums down,
Speaker 1: and turn the vocal down, and turn it. We were
Speaker 1: the people that were saying turn everything down. We don't,
Speaker 1: we want everything quieter. Thank God for remastering because we're
Speaker 1: able to go back onto those recordings now and bring
Speaker 1: it up to speed to what these things sound like.
Speaker 1: With digital technology, with the advent of of all of
Speaker 1: our devices, and the way that we hear things now
Speaker 1: was very, very different from nineteen eighty two. Was the
Speaker 1: road from the Dodge van up to the state eventually stadiums.
Speaker 1: Was it a consistent road or were there like moments
Speaker 1: on the way where they were breakthroughs. You remember the
Speaker 1: first time something big happened, Well, the first big thing
Speaker 1: was when I walked on stage for the first time ever,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is a this is where
Speaker 1: I like, I loved it. And half the time again
Speaker 1: I was you know, I tranced when I performed, so
Speaker 1: half the time I was kind of not really there.
Speaker 1: I could be reminded of something and be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's when I stumbled over and I hit that note
Speaker 1: that I don't usually hit, or that's when someone threw
Speaker 1: something and it hit me in the shoulder. But I
Speaker 1: would go into really a trance state when I performed,
Speaker 1: and and that's very lucky for me. You know, it
Speaker 1: kept me from becoming terribly self conscious. I was as
Speaker 1: pretentious as anyone, and I embrace that pretension. I love pretensions,
Speaker 1: as you know. If you think of it as a
Speaker 1: way to rise out of yourself and to allow yourself
Speaker 1: to become something bigger than what you are, then wow,
Speaker 1: I'm really pretentious. And look where it placed me. I'm
Speaker 1: okay with that. Yeah, I love to perform. What was
Speaker 1: the question, Rick, That was a good question. We're talking
Speaker 1: about the first moment where like something big happened. So
Speaker 1: the first one you gave me was stepping on stage
Speaker 1: and realizing this is for you. And then in the band,
Speaker 1: when was the first moments like oh this is things
Speaker 1: are things are changing. I can answer that and it
Speaker 1: echoes the rest of our conversation. Yeah, we were voted
Speaker 1: band of the Year Jazz and Pop Pass and Job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Vollage Voice Murmur, our first album nineteen eighty three Record
Speaker 1: of the Year by the critics choice, and that was
Speaker 1: over Michael Jackson's Thriller. So the enormity of that to us,
Speaker 1: you know, we were living in this rundown fleaback hotel
Speaker 1: in Times Square. I would eat one knish a day.
Speaker 1: I knew where I could go to get it. I
Speaker 1: knew where I could go and bat my eyelashes and
Speaker 1: get someone to buy me a beer and not have
Speaker 1: to you know, not have to get laid in the
Speaker 1: prop but I you know, I would, I would. I
Speaker 1: lived off of a knish. We were living on five
Speaker 1: dollars a day and a bag of M and m's
Speaker 1: that my uncle left when he traveled through New York.
Speaker 1: We had nothing, and our record was the Village Voice
Speaker 1: Record of the Year over Michael Jackson's Thriller. We were
Speaker 1: playing clubs to twelve and fifteen people at a time,
Speaker 1: you know. But but anyway, I mean those were the days.
Speaker 1: You know, it was good fun and we made the
Speaker 1: most of it. And I'm glad I had those experiences.
Speaker 1: And what was the next like breakthrough moments like oh,
Speaker 1: this is bigger than that. What were just looking for
Speaker 1: like the stages of development. Fall On Me was the
Speaker 1: video that MTV had to play. I was disgusted by
Speaker 1: most music videos. I thought they were cheesy and stupid,
Speaker 1: so I refused to lip sync and we refused to
Speaker 1: perform in them, and fall On Me became kind of
Speaker 1: a minor hit and so in America. And so the
Speaker 1: video I was I shot with a sixteen millimeter camera
Speaker 1: and a rock quarry outside of Bloomington, Indiana, with a
Speaker 1: guy that I had a giant crush on at the time,
Speaker 1: and I developed the film, turned it upside down, ran
Speaker 1: it backwards, ran the words to the song over this
Speaker 1: really shitty black and white footage of a rock quarry,
Speaker 1: and that became the weirdest music video of the year
Speaker 1: on MTV. And so that was a big moment because
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, I can manipulate this. I can
Speaker 1: I can make them do things that they don't want
Speaker 1: to do just because they have to do it because
Speaker 1: the song is that good. Then of course we had
Speaker 1: a hit song, top ten song with the one I
Speaker 1: Love and that was the video was by Robert Longo,
Speaker 1: who's a pop artist and a great friend. And then
Speaker 1: the next big moment after that was was the Green
Speaker 1: World Tour, and then after that was losing my religion.
Speaker 1: And when losing my religion hit, you know, if I
Speaker 1: ever had I'm not a person who has ambitions. If
Speaker 1: they're they're they're unconscious or they're subconscious. I don't know
Speaker 1: which to call it. But I did always want to
Speaker 1: be really famous, and I didn't realize what really that entailed.
Speaker 1: And looking at it from the other side, it's nice
Speaker 1: to be anonymous again. I'm on the subway and nobody
Speaker 1: knows who I am. They don't look at me. If
Speaker 1: anyone under the age of thirty does not even look
Speaker 1: at me, because they just register old. And I'm fine
Speaker 1: with that. It's totally amazing. But losing my religion was
Speaker 1: when I went from being someone that was recognized by
Speaker 1: people in my age group who loved a certain type
Speaker 1: of music to being universally wildly, insanely famous and on
Speaker 1: the street like I couldn't know anywhere, and it was okay.
Speaker 1: It was kind of charming. In New York, people yell
Speaker 1: whatever they want to yell at you. They tell you
Speaker 1: if they like you, they tell you if they think
Speaker 1: you suck, and I kind of love that about New York,
Speaker 1: and I never liked LA because I never knew where
Speaker 1: I stood with people there. Everyone's your friend there. It's
Speaker 1: very isolating and very kind of aggressively calm, and I
Speaker 1: can't stand it. But I'm sorry, Los Angeles. There are
Speaker 1: aspects to it that I love, and there are people
Speaker 1: that I love but can't can't do it. But losing
Speaker 1: my religion really changed it for me. And one thing
Speaker 1: if I ever had an ambition, it might be to
Speaker 1: have a song of the summer, and losing my religion
Speaker 1: became RIM's song of the Summer and that was that
Speaker 1: was thrilling. Yeah, what do you remember about writing first?
Speaker 1: First of all, when you wrote it, did you know
Speaker 1: that song was special? No? No, In fact, we released
Speaker 1: it as a first single thinking that it was going
Speaker 1: to set up the next song, which was something much
Speaker 1: more pop. I don't remember what it was. And then
Speaker 1: eventually I Think Everybody Hurts, which was a big ballad,
Speaker 1: and that became a hit song around the world, and
Speaker 1: so that was also really good for us. But and
Speaker 1: that's a beautiful video as well. Yeah, no, we did.
Speaker 1: We didn't know it was going I mean, it's such
Speaker 1: a weird song. We had no idea that it was
Speaker 1: going to resonate the way that it. What do you
Speaker 1: remember about writing it? I changed one lyric. I remember,
Speaker 1: that's me in the kitchen, that's me in the spotlight. No,
Speaker 1: that's the that's me in the corner. That's me in
Speaker 1: the spotlight. That's me in the corner, that's me in
Speaker 1: the kitchen. So what I was pulling from was being
Speaker 1: the shy wallflower who hangs back at the party or
Speaker 1: at the dance and doesn't go up to the person
Speaker 1: that you're maddly in love with and say, I've kind
Speaker 1: of got a cross on you. How do you feel
Speaker 1: about me? So there's this whole relationship that's happening only
Speaker 1: in the person's mind, and he doesn't know whether he's
Speaker 1: said too much or hasn't said enough. So he's like
Speaker 1: in the corner of the dance floor watching everyone dance
Speaker 1: and watching the love of his life on the dance
Speaker 1: floor dancing with everyone because that's the most exciting person.
Speaker 1: Or he's in the kitchen, you know, behind the refrigerator,
Speaker 1: and I changed the kitchen to spotlight, and instantly, of course,
Speaker 1: the song became about me, which it never was. I
Speaker 1: don't think. I mean, I'm pretty self aware, but the
Speaker 1: video with Tarsaum is what really pushed it over the edge,
Speaker 1: and that was probably the queerest video of all time,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of nice. Yeah, I'm harping on
Speaker 1: it because I heard it the other day in a
Speaker 1: shop that I was in and me and my partner
Speaker 1: stopped and listened to it, and we both looked at
Speaker 1: each other, and I don't know if we actually teared
Speaker 1: up or if we just had the feeling of tearing up,
Speaker 1: do you know what I'm talking about, Like the emotion came.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there were actual tears. It's amazing
Speaker 1: that the song to this day has this power to
Speaker 1: it and I don't truly understand it, you know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's the words. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know why it has so
Speaker 1: much emotional resonance. But it's one of these songs that
Speaker 1: when you hear it, you know, the world stops and
Speaker 1: you're you're put in the place of wherever this song
Speaker 1: is happening, and you're in the void of the song.
Speaker 1: It's mystical. It's very that's very generous. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: That means a lot to me coming from you. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Just tell me about the experience of writing. Where did
Speaker 1: the music exist first? How did it happen? The music
Speaker 1: has just existed. First, I know that Peter Peter was
Speaker 1: tired of playing guitar and didn't Oriam's former guitars after
Speaker 1: touring for nine ten years in the nineteen eighties, and
Speaker 1: he was buying wild interesting instruments that he did not play,
Speaker 1: and his experimentation as a musician was to throw roads
Speaker 1: in front of himself by trying to play something that
Speaker 1: he couldn't play. So this was one of his first
Speaker 1: experiments on mandolin. We still have the original cassette that
Speaker 1: he gave me of Losing My Religion, and it is
Speaker 1: exactly the same arrangement. It sounds identical to what wound
Speaker 1: up as the final version of the song. So that's
Speaker 1: all Peter. You know, everybody hurts was Bill Berry and Supernatural,
Speaker 1: super serious was Mike Mills. I mean, those guys quite
Speaker 1: often would turn in things that were so brilliant and
Speaker 1: you know, even day, I think in the arrangement they
Speaker 1: might not realize that. Well, I can flesh this out
Speaker 1: with a story I can throw a trajectory and a
Speaker 1: narrative into this and make this arrangement work. Sometimes, no,
Speaker 1: sometimes we had to make a lot of arrangement changes
Speaker 1: in order to fit the vocal or the melody into
Speaker 1: the song. I was always about shorter songs. I always
Speaker 1: wanted to get in and get out, leave him wanting
Speaker 1: more always, and so a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 1: I'm doing as a solo artist is much It's very pop,
Speaker 1: but it's incredibly short songs. Would you start with like
Speaker 1: a scat vocal or would you start by writing? To
Speaker 1: just tell me the process of you? You hear music,
Speaker 1: you're inspired by it. How do you get to a song?
Speaker 1: What's your process? Historically, I hear music and I'm inspired
Speaker 1: by it, and there's a melody that comes along, and
Speaker 1: I close my eyes and I see a landscape and
Speaker 1: music translates to me as as as a visual and
Speaker 1: so a good music. Bad music is just fucking horrible,
Speaker 1: like bad, like what my dentist was playing this morning,
Speaker 1: by the way, I hope he's listening. I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, we have to we have to talk
Speaker 1: about the music. We have a very good rapport now
Speaker 1: because his dental assistant, and he had very different musical tastes.
Speaker 1: So they'll they'll throw a song on when I'm there
Speaker 1: just to see how I react, and one of them
Speaker 1: will say, Michael, and I'll say, like turn it off now,
Speaker 1: like next, next, next, and she'll crack up because she'll
Speaker 1: have told him he's going to hate this song. This
Speaker 1: is not a good song. Do you write just the
Speaker 1: number of lyrics that are in the song are there's
Speaker 1: sometimes more verses like how does it happen? There's often
Speaker 1: there's often more verses, but it really depends on how
Speaker 1: much I going back to the conversation earlier about trusting
Speaker 1: your gut, you know, when I close my eyes and
Speaker 1: I see that music, I always saw my job as
Speaker 1: my job is now to put a narrative on top
Speaker 1: of that, to create some kind of story that people
Speaker 1: can follow along with. And it doesn't have to make
Speaker 1: really linear sense. I'm really good at not making linear sense.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it makes a lot of sense, and sometimes you
Speaker 1: need a little bit of an indication of what's happening,
Speaker 1: but clues as to what the story is actually about,
Speaker 1: and I hope to provide those as a lyricists. I
Speaker 1: hope that by the end of the song, I will
Speaker 1: have provided some clue to what's going on. I did
Speaker 1: that with RM, and I'm doing it now as a solo,
Speaker 1: so hopefully it's going to work. There's another song that
Speaker 1: we're working on right now. The working title is I'm
Speaker 1: the Charge and everything you need to know about this
Speaker 1: character is in the second verse and the last three words,
Speaker 1: which have nothing to do with the rest of the song,
Speaker 1: But they set up another song which is an entirely
Speaker 1: different piece of music the same character thirty years later.
Speaker 1: And I'm following the arc of this character over time,
Speaker 1: and I'm imbuing this character with this extremely shifting sense
Speaker 1: of self, going from someone who's extremely vulnerable and quite difficult,
Speaker 1: but always in charge, always in power, to someone who's
Speaker 1: extremely invulnerable and almost cynical in their work. But they
Speaker 1: have developed, They've developed this very tough skin, but they're
Speaker 1: now using the vulnerability of their youth to be able
Speaker 1: to create work that, although is uninteresting for them, inspires others. Boy,
Speaker 1: that sounded like a really bad off Broadway played. Admit,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm talking to myself here and you just
Speaker 1: happen to be present. Sorry, Rick. Anyway, the song is
Speaker 1: called I'm the Charge, and the second song is called
Speaker 1: it doesn't have The working title would be a Pull
Speaker 1: of Love. Will the whole album have an arc like that?
Speaker 1: I don't know yet because I'm still working on it. No,
Speaker 1: I don't tend to write. I will revisit characters from
Speaker 1: time to time, and then I have to question. Often
Speaker 1: I have to question myself, like how did I embody
Speaker 1: this person? What what gender did I make them? What
Speaker 1: political leaning did I give to them? What what horrible
Speaker 1: position did I put them in that they now have
Speaker 1: to work their way out of or have some cathartic
Speaker 1: moment that pulls them out of it, like the song
Speaker 1: Sad Professor, or one of my favorite RIM songs, Country Feedback.
Speaker 1: That song, I think in my memory, I sang it
Speaker 1: one time and that was it. I think. In the
Speaker 1: rerelease the band put out the twenty fifth anniversary rerelease,
Speaker 1: they found a demo. But you hear at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of the song, I say these clothes and I
Speaker 1: pause because I came into early, and then I say,
Speaker 1: these clothes unfit us right, and I'm to blame. It's
Speaker 1: all the same, It's all the same. I didn't know
Speaker 1: the song I hadn't worked it out. I hadn't mapped
Speaker 1: it out. Peter has this memory of me walking into
Speaker 1: the studio with a piece of paper that had a
Speaker 1: drawing of an Indian, a pencil drawing of an Indian
Speaker 1: on it, and a few words on a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: and he said he walked in with that, and that
Speaker 1: was the song, and that became Country Feedback. The working
Speaker 1: title was Country Feedback because it sounds like a country song.
Speaker 1: It was very obviously inspired by Neil Young, and it
Speaker 1: has feedback on feedback aatana, so that the working title
Speaker 1: became the title of the song. I remember performing it,
Speaker 1: and it was at John Keene's studio in Athens, Georgia,
Speaker 1: and it was in a ISO booth, and I was
Speaker 1: in headphones, which I can't stand to sing into because
Speaker 1: the engineers can never get the mix right for me,
Speaker 1: and it makes me crazy. I hear myself too much
Speaker 1: or I don't hear enough, and I like singing into
Speaker 1: an open mic at a desk, but that of course
Speaker 1: causes all kinds of problems with digital technology. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: remember singing it walking out and walking out of the
Speaker 1: house and the studio and I was done that was
Speaker 1: it for the night. I didn't remember it until I
Speaker 1: don't think they even played it for me. The next day,
Speaker 1: the band listened to it, and I think they listened
Speaker 1: to it a few times, and then I came in
Speaker 1: two days later and listened and I was like, this
Speaker 1: is I'm not going to resing it. That's a that's
Speaker 1: the take. I did the same thing with World Leader
Speaker 1: Pretend Rip, another song that the heavy of obvious inspiration
Speaker 1: there was Leonard Cohen. I lifted everything that I could
Speaker 1: from from that beautiful, beautiful writer of a man, beautiful
Speaker 1: man of a writer, and I used, you know, the language,
Speaker 1: the dialect of war to describe an inner battle, a
Speaker 1: deep emotional turmoil inside the protagonist of that song. And
Speaker 1: I sing it once and I was so impressed by
Speaker 1: myself that it was the first time that RM put
Speaker 1: that I allowed the lyrics to be printed on the
Speaker 1: album's sleep that we were I think nine years into
Speaker 1: our career at that point, and I had yet to
Speaker 1: lip sync in a video. I refused to do it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was too cheesy. So we were you know,
Speaker 1: we we I mean, as a band, we always knew
Speaker 1: what we didn't want to do. We knew that we
Speaker 1: didn't want to be cheesy. If we were gonna be cheesy,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be cheesy on our own terms, and god
Speaker 1: knows we were, but they were on our terms, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were quite beautiful when it happens. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a there was an element of cheese there
Speaker 1: and sinamentality, and that's okay, that's part of pop music.
Speaker 1: But it was on our terms always, and I'm so
Speaker 1: very proud of that. You know, what we left behind
Speaker 1: is this body of work that I include the times
Speaker 1: that we fell on our face publicly, and I did
Speaker 1: many many times, and I humiliated and embarrassed myself over
Speaker 1: and over again in public. But guess what I embraced
Speaker 1: those moments along with the hit singles and the triumphs
Speaker 1: and the moments of absolute joy and being able to
Speaker 1: meet people like yourself and Fatilkhan and Patti Smith and
Speaker 1: Tom Verlaine, my hero. You know, I don't even like guitar,
Speaker 1: and here's Tom Verlaine, you know, the one guy that
Speaker 1: I could actually watch play guitar and not blink for
Speaker 1: forty minutes other than Peter Back, of course. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: a life that provided me, and what a journey I've
Speaker 1: been on. I feel like really a very, very lucky person.
Speaker 1: I had this ridiculous teenage fantasy dream idea of what
Speaker 1: I was going to do with my life, and I actually,
Speaker 1: with a lot of work, I actually made it happen.
Speaker 1: And here I am kind of looking back on it,
Speaker 1: but I'm also looking forward because you know the songs
Speaker 1: that we've put out that I've put out each song
Speaker 1: for the first year of its release. All of the
Speaker 1: money that I would make on that song, whether it's
Speaker 1: through a movie, through a TV show, being in a
Speaker 1: commercial which hasn't happened yet, but I'm offering it up
Speaker 1: right now on this podcast, all of the publishing that
Speaker 1: I would make from the first year of the release
Speaker 1: of that song goes to a charitable organization of my choosing.
Speaker 1: So far, it's been Extinction Rebellion and Pathway to Paris.
Speaker 1: Extinction Rebellion for the first song that I released as
Speaker 1: a solo artist, which is called Your Capricious Soul, and
Speaker 1: then Pathway to Paris is an organization trying to hold
Speaker 1: the United States and other nations to the Paris Agreement
Speaker 1: in terms of environmental a blueprint for where we need
Speaker 1: to go in order to not wipe ourselves out and
Speaker 1: take a lot of other species with us. And that
Speaker 1: was a song called Drive to the Ocean, which I'm
Speaker 1: extremely proud of. And I think I'm just gonna release
Speaker 1: sum a single at a time. I don't feel like
Speaker 1: I need to compete with Duelppa or name Whoever's amazing
Speaker 1: right now? Who's amazing? Rosalia? What the fuck? She? Where
Speaker 1: the fuck did that come from? She's incredible. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back after a break with more from Michael Stipe
Speaker 1: and Rick Rubin. We're back with Michael Stipe, but before
Speaker 1: we jump back into this conversation with Rick, let's hear
Speaker 1: his new song future a future feature. Future feature is
Speaker 1: fast goodtion, co hearted cards, still seats, fly flies words
Speaker 1: ha ha ha I am I am got flight up
Speaker 1: the meek with the event between one stable. Please save
Speaker 1: us a termpion purpose sweeing smacking with ecstatic fresh. Please
Speaker 1: don't stare with doing all week. Please don't stare with
Speaker 1: doing all we can dy come she is a sea.
Speaker 1: We uns much now it's fair. Please don't stare you
Speaker 1: know can future future the futures start to high has
Speaker 1: guess you've got dear us. We've got the power. Please
Speaker 1: tell stay, tell me how that got written, tell me
Speaker 1: the story of writing it. It's one of those songs
Speaker 1: that just flew out, and I didn't think too much
Speaker 1: about the lyric the music. I believe most of the
Speaker 1: music came from Andy Lemster, but we worked together in
Speaker 1: the studio. We you know, I don't play an instrument.
Speaker 1: I played classical piano when I was a child. I
Speaker 1: played accordion as a as a as a very young man.
Speaker 1: I think I was eight or nine years old when
Speaker 1: I picked up accordion, and then I stopped both and
Speaker 1: forgot everything that I knew about music and reading reading
Speaker 1: music because I read classical piano, you know, off the
Speaker 1: off the page. But but I don't play anything. So
Speaker 1: I became the singer in ORIM and that's good and fine.
Speaker 1: And from time to time I would like, you know,
Speaker 1: have a guitar and pretend like I could play it,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't. I still can't play an ef A B.
Speaker 1: But I started writing after RIM disbanded ten years ago.
Speaker 1: I started writing music on synthesizer and really enjoyed the process.
Speaker 1: Us and realize how really difficult composing is. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a way different story from lyrics and melodies and singing,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a way different thing. And also
Speaker 1: working on music, I would almost go into a trance state,
Speaker 1: which is good because I would forget who made the music,
Speaker 1: and it was in fact me or me and Andy
Speaker 1: working together. This one is mostly Andy, I think musically,
Speaker 1: and then the lyric flew out of me. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't really question it or overthink it, and I
Speaker 1: think that that's really my superpower now. My superpower as
Speaker 1: the singer of Brim was realizing that as a man
Speaker 1: presenting as a man in my era, in my time period,
Speaker 1: that my vulnerability and my ability to express that vulnerability
Speaker 1: was was really something that we had not seen in
Speaker 1: a way that wasn't just super hyper cheesy and manipulative.
Speaker 1: So that vulnerability became a superpower. Now. I think my
Speaker 1: superpower is recognizing that and my gut is really really good.
Speaker 1: And if I don't overthink things, you know, right, drunk
Speaker 1: edit sober, you take that in extrapolated and you move
Speaker 1: it into a not like Norman Mailer or Gore Vidal
Speaker 1: like universe. I write without thinking, I write, I go in,
Speaker 1: I go into a trance, and I write right right,
Speaker 1: I write, and then I edit and I edit sober,
Speaker 1: and I go, Okay, that's crap. That's bad poetry. That's
Speaker 1: not bad, not great poetry. But if we repeated a
Speaker 1: few times, maybe it's a good chorus. And you use
Speaker 1: those tricks that you learn. But I don't ever think
Speaker 1: things anymore. I just kind of let them flow out,
Speaker 1: and when they're not flowing, I put them aside and
Speaker 1: I go work in photography or other mediums. And I'm
Speaker 1: working in all these different things now. I'm putting out
Speaker 1: photo books and I have a big show in Milan.
Speaker 1: I'm having a solo exhibition at the Ica in Milan
Speaker 1: of all the work that the plastic work that I do,
Speaker 1: the stuff that's sculptural or photo based. And there will
Speaker 1: be a music musical component to that show. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if the music is feeling a little stale, then I
Speaker 1: just jumped to one of my other things, and one
Speaker 1: of my other things, and I come back around and
Speaker 1: I listened to it with fresh years, and they go, well,
Speaker 1: that's one of the worst courses I've ever written, so
Speaker 1: let's re examine it. I want to I want to
Speaker 1: come to the show in Milan. When that happens, beautiful
Speaker 1: It's opening. In early November twenty three, you said something
Speaker 1: interesting that your superpower in RM was your vulnerability. When
Speaker 1: did you realize that, because I imagine in the early
Speaker 1: days you were just vulnerable. You weren't somebody who understood
Speaker 1: that your vulnerability was a superpower. No, I didn't understand
Speaker 1: that at all. I didn't understand. I mean I didn't
Speaker 1: understand from the very early moment that we spoke about,
Speaker 1: where I decided at the age of fifteen that I
Speaker 1: was going to become a singer in a band. It
Speaker 1: didn't occur to me that you have to You have
Speaker 1: to have a modic amout talent. You have to be
Speaker 1: able to do something. You have to be able to
Speaker 1: stand on stage and perform. You have to be able
Speaker 1: to write songs. You have to be able to sing
Speaker 1: those songs. You have to work with other people. You
Speaker 1: have to travel NonStop, you have to eat really shitty
Speaker 1: food most of that time. You have adrenaline and addiction
Speaker 1: issues to deal with, because adrenaline is the most hardcore
Speaker 1: drug I've ever ever in my life taken and not
Speaker 1: taken everything. But you know, I quit drugs when I
Speaker 1: was twenty three, I drink occasionally. Now I still love
Speaker 1: to drink, but I know it's not good for me,
Speaker 1: so I try to limit it. I'm thinking about going
Speaker 1: back to gummies. You know. I'm excited here in New York.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's now illegal, and I haven't touched
Speaker 1: weeds since I was seventeen years old. So although actually
Speaker 1: the truth says, I worked on a record with a
Speaker 1: Fisher Spooner kind of accidentally reintroduced me to music about
Speaker 1: five years ago, and I wound up producing their album,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a really good record, culled sir,
Speaker 1: And it's a very very very very very queer, very
Speaker 1: gay record in terms of its thematic content and it's trajectory.
Speaker 1: But in writing that record, I experimented with weed a
Speaker 1: little bit, and I smoked weed for the first time
Speaker 1: since Wow, I was a kid, and some pretty good
Speaker 1: songs came out of it. I have to say, so,
Speaker 1: who knows, I'm excited. I'm really really sensitive, Like I'm
Speaker 1: really sensitive. I'm allergic to all these foods and I'm
Speaker 1: allergic to all this stuff, and I have to be
Speaker 1: very careful, you know, like what kind of things I
Speaker 1: breathe and all this blah blah blah. But so I
Speaker 1: can take the tiniest amount of weed that would, you know,
Speaker 1: the what other people wouldn't even feel, and it knocks
Speaker 1: me over, but it makes for a really good lyric writing.
Speaker 1: So maybe I'll maybe I'm going to move into weed now.
Speaker 1: That'll be a third act for me. What's your favorite
Speaker 1: song on the Fisher Spooner record. Well, the one that
Speaker 1: I wrote We Too is called I Need Love, and
Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm thinking about covering it. I think it's
Speaker 1: such a good song. What motivated you to feel like
Speaker 1: it's time to do a solo project? It's it's interesting
Speaker 1: that you haven't done one yet, and the fact that
Speaker 1: now you're deciding to do one makes it interesting. With
Speaker 1: this window of time, I can be really honest, and
Speaker 1: I've said this before, but I love my voice. I
Speaker 1: love my singing voice. I don't like my speaking voice,
Speaker 1: although I'm really glad we're talking, but I love my voice,
Speaker 1: and I feel like I have a limited amount of
Speaker 1: time in which to use that voice. You know, I
Speaker 1: kind of feel like, I mean, I'm not a Christian,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm a deeply spiritual person, but I don't
Speaker 1: really follow any particular path, but I do feel in
Speaker 1: a way that I don't know. I've got a beautiful voice,
Speaker 1: and I really I really enjoy it, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people like hearing me sing, and music has a
Speaker 1: really powerful medium, and I feel like I've got a
Speaker 1: lot to say, so why not use that voice and
Speaker 1: stop talking, just get back to sing. And I enjoyed
Speaker 1: a lot. It's My first real love was photography, and
Speaker 1: I've now been putting on a book a year and
Speaker 1: I intend to do that for the rest of my life,
Speaker 1: and I hope that I love a really long time.
Speaker 1: We have forty or fifty more books coming as much
Speaker 1: as as much as I find immense joy and putting
Speaker 1: together images that I've taken or things that I've collected
Speaker 1: and showing them to kind of introduce the way that
Speaker 1: I see and feel and interpret the world and the
Speaker 1: way that I moved through it, because I do feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're all unique in our own ways, right,
Speaker 1: We're all little snowflakes. But but there is there is
Speaker 1: something to the way I put things together that I
Speaker 1: think is enjoyable for other people. So I really like
Speaker 1: doing that but nothing beats coming up with a lyric
Speaker 1: and a melody that people come back to you two days,
Speaker 1: three days, four days later and say, I can't stop
Speaker 1: singing your song. Thank you for that. That song was
Speaker 1: there for me at a very important moment for me.
Speaker 1: You know that kind of I sang last night. In fact, Rick,
Speaker 1: you knew how Wellner, I'm sure. And we had a
Speaker 1: memorial for him the last night at Saint Anne's warehouse,
Speaker 1: and I did a song written by his best friend
Speaker 1: lou Reid that I had covered for the Velvet Underground
Speaker 1: record that came out with Todd Haynes's documentary, and I
Speaker 1: told how I said I would participate in the project
Speaker 1: if I could have the first song on. It's a
Speaker 1: recreation of the first album by the Velvet Underground, which
Speaker 1: in my life ranks as one of the top five
Speaker 1: records of all times. You have to interpret music like
Speaker 1: that in the same way that you interpreted Hurt. And
Speaker 1: handed that to Johnny Cash and said do what you'd
Speaker 1: do with this, and he took that and he made
Speaker 1: it a better song than it ever was or ever
Speaker 1: will be again. And we have you to thank for that.
Speaker 1: And Mark Romanick did the video for that correct. Yes, beautiful,
Speaker 1: astonishing video with June, one of the most It's really
Speaker 1: one of those like moments. And you know, I know
Speaker 1: you're not a boastful person, but you should be very
Speaker 1: very proud of that moment that you offered us just
Speaker 1: in that one single collaboration. That's such a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: Do you like singing in front of people? Do you
Speaker 1: like the feeling of how being in front of an audience?
Speaker 1: I've blacked out last night on stage because there were
Speaker 1: no vocals in the monitor, and I just went into
Speaker 1: kind of I had rehearsed it three times, so I
Speaker 1: don't really remember the performance, but everything before it and
Speaker 1: after it was okay. As soon as I found out
Speaker 1: that the voice was actually in the house, then I
Speaker 1: was okay. I couldn't tell if my voice was actually
Speaker 1: being projected into the house or not. But yeah, when
Speaker 1: you do something that's not just one song at a
Speaker 1: memorial or on a TV show, you know, you go
Speaker 1: into a journalized state. And as I mentioned earlier, that's
Speaker 1: the most powerful drug I've ever taken. And it's why
Speaker 1: I think so many of our people, and I'm speaking
Speaker 1: of creative people wind up in trouble because you you
Speaker 1: come off of a tour, you wind up, you finish
Speaker 1: a movie, or you know, if you're in the heart
Speaker 1: of Globe Shatters, or if you're you're a professional athlete,
Speaker 1: you stopped the tour and your adournaline is writing at
Speaker 1: a rate that's superhuman, and you can't really match that
Speaker 1: with with anything. The only thing that I found, and
Speaker 1: I started this in the late eighties to combat that um,
Speaker 1: that hyper adrenalized state, was acupuncture. A lot of body work,
Speaker 1: but mainly acupuncture really helps a lot to kind of
Speaker 1: retune the endocrine system in particularly the kidneys to kidney energy.
Speaker 1: As a Chinese would call it beautiful. So it's almost
Speaker 1: like it's just that the nervous system is on high
Speaker 1: alert and you just need to calm it down, and
Speaker 1: it seems like acupuncture does that fight or flight. And
Speaker 1: then you know, after after you make an album, and
Speaker 1: you know this from from working on from working as
Speaker 1: a producer and otherwise, you know that you have this
Speaker 1: kind of postpartum You know, you work, you intensely work
Speaker 1: on something, so you put everything that you are into
Speaker 1: it and then it's over. And whether it's a tour
Speaker 1: or a record or what what, what have you? You
Speaker 1: go through this kind of postpartum and the adnal, the
Speaker 1: adrenaline has to go back down to not a fight
Speaker 1: or flight kind of place, and for most people that's very,
Speaker 1: very difficult, and to try to try to mimic the
Speaker 1: high that you get from adrenaline is literally impossible. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you just for the songs. There's
Speaker 1: so many songs that you've written that have meant so
Speaker 1: much and that are so beautiful, and uh, I just
Speaker 1: want to thank you because I love them. I love
Speaker 1: the songs. Thank you, Rick, and I love you and
Speaker 1: I love how well I love receiving compliments from you.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, thank you. I'm I'm really um, you know,
Speaker 1: I can, I can pretend to have humility, but I'm
Speaker 1: really proud of a lot of the work that I've
Speaker 1: done in my short time on this earth, And thank you.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate that. Obviously, I'm a giant fan of
Speaker 1: your work, and um, and it's a it's a good
Speaker 1: pleasure after all these years. We haven't seen each other
Speaker 1: in some time, huh, in a while, but it's really
Speaker 1: it's really great to talk to you and be able
Speaker 1: to just unravel some of these some of these threads,
Speaker 1: huh same and we will change that and see each
Speaker 1: other soon, I know at one one place or another,
Speaker 1: maybe in Milan, you never know. Please come to Milan. Okay, great?
Speaker 1: Thanks bye. Thanks to Michael Stipe for given insight into
Speaker 1: his early days with RM and sharing details about his
Speaker 1: upcoming solo project. To hear our favorite RM and Stipe
Speaker 1: solo songs, check out the playlist at Broken Record podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel
Speaker 1: at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where we
Speaker 1: can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is producing
Speaker 1: help from ly Arose, Jason Gambrell, Beentaladay, Eric Sandler, and
Speaker 1: Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chaffe. Our executive
Speaker 1: producer is Neil Aval. Broken Record is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others from Pushkin,
Speaker 1: consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast
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Speaker 1: for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and if you like the show,
Speaker 1: Please remember to share, rate, and review us on your
Speaker 1: podcast app. For the musics by Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond.
Speaker 1: Four