Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: from My Heart Radio. I'm Frank Imperial and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing from I Heart Radio. Hey Frank,
Speaker 1: what's going on? Is there a technical problem? No problem
Speaker 1: on this side. You just asked me to host an
Speaker 1: archived show. Oh right, why do I keep forgetting that? Well?
Speaker 1: Good luck with the show, Frank. Oh are you going
Speaker 1: to mute me? Definitely? Two of the most popular shows
Speaker 1: from the more than two fifty archival episodes of Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing are radioheads Tom York and r E MS.
Speaker 1: Michael Stipe, the frontman for two of the most interesting
Speaker 1: and influential bands of the last several decades, have a
Speaker 1: lot in comment. Michael Stipe was a founding member of
Speaker 1: R A M, the band that practically defined alternative music
Speaker 1: in the eighties and early nineties. R M released fifteen
Speaker 1: studio albums and was inducted into the Rock and Roll
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame in two thousand seven. RIM broke up
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eleven, and Michael Stape has been
Speaker 1: exploring other ways of making art and music since then.
Speaker 1: But first Alex two interview with Tom York. He formed
Speaker 1: Radiohead with some of his friends when he was just
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. Since then, the band has been nominated
Speaker 1: for eighteen Grammys, won three, and sold tens of millions
Speaker 1: of records. Radioheads nine studio albums have demonstrated the group's
Speaker 1: comfort with experimentation. Tom ne York said technology made some
Speaker 1: of that easier. After we did Okay Computer. I finally
Speaker 1: in the late late nineties you could like go on
Speaker 1: tour with the laptop and it was powerful enough that
Speaker 1: you could record, edit, use synthesizers, bit into it and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't crash, and it was fairly stable. So I
Speaker 1: first started getting into it then. And what I thought
Speaker 1: was really interesting is when we were working on Okay Computer,
Speaker 1: I started using learning the software that we were using
Speaker 1: the studio to We were still mostly working on type
Speaker 1: old school, but I suddenly thought, we'll hang on a minute.
Speaker 1: If I can learn how all this equipment works, I'll
Speaker 1: have a completely different way of thinking about how to write.
Speaker 1: So I forced myself to learn all this equipment and
Speaker 1: learn to use the laptop because a lot of music
Speaker 1: I was into was being made electronically anyway, and I
Speaker 1: kind of thought it would be interesting to do it
Speaker 1: within the band, because normally musicians don't fall into doing
Speaker 1: the production side of it or building the tracks. They're like,
Speaker 1: stay this side of the studio, offense with the mix,
Speaker 1: and let someone total. So I definitely was much more
Speaker 1: into blurring that up. Did n produce both your solo albums? Yeah?
Speaker 1: He does. He does a lot, and he did all
Speaker 1: of the radio, Yeah he does. You attribute that to
Speaker 1: having that kind of faith of someone. You find someone
Speaker 1: you trust. I mean not all the time, and we
Speaker 1: do argue a lot, but to have someone who's like,
Speaker 1: um I sounding board all the time, it makes everything
Speaker 1: so much more fun because if you're if you're knocking
Speaker 1: out ideas, you can't edit them and knock them out
Speaker 1: at the same time. Like if you're on the stage
Speaker 1: and you're trying to get through your part or whatever,
Speaker 1: you have to have someone out front saying, okay, that's
Speaker 1: not working. I mean I do on my own a lot.
Speaker 1: I do work. You know, you generate ideas, but all
Speaker 1: I then have is a mountain of ideas that gradually
Speaker 1: I don't have to sit through and it just takes
Speaker 1: so long. It's so much more fun sharing it with
Speaker 1: someone and you think about your four days into computerized music.
Speaker 1: He was into it. I did wonder when I first
Speaker 1: started doing it, but he was into it because he
Speaker 1: watched me doing it in such a different way to him.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I was like a kid being given
Speaker 1: a hammer. I was just handling away on stuff. I
Speaker 1: didn't really know what I was doing, but he was
Speaker 1: kind of fascinated about that, you know, and he'd come
Speaker 1: and literally tidy up the mess I've done on the computer.
Speaker 1: What were other people? Who were other people that were
Speaker 1: working in that in that area that you listened to
Speaker 1: who is making then? Then well then it was I
Speaker 1: was obsessed with a X twin then and Oteca. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of really interesting things happening in Britain.
Speaker 1: Then on this label called Warp and it was it
Speaker 1: was first spell as in the warp w a RP
Speaker 1: like the floor is warped after the fun Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then I say, with your accent, that could have been
Speaker 1: anyone of forwards. When on this label called wo Wo
Speaker 1: Warm War, Warp Wall War, War whoop, yeah, saying like
Speaker 1: we're saying here in the United States war it's war
Speaker 1: country and Western record bit you bottom now and there boy,
Speaker 1: so you you as you were, you were obsessed with
Speaker 1: the music that was on Whoop Records because it didn't
Speaker 1: have any guitars and I was having a troubled relationship
Speaker 1: with my guitar at the time. Is that true? Well
Speaker 1: not really. It's just like I ended up being in
Speaker 1: a band, signing this to this big record label, and
Speaker 1: it's a band and when big letters, so certain things
Speaker 1: go with that. But yet when I was at college,
Speaker 1: I was listening to a lot of other things, and
Speaker 1: after a while it was like, oh, this is it's
Speaker 1: really annoying that I felt like we couldn't break out
Speaker 1: of that. So I just started forcing us to break
Speaker 1: out of that because it didn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1: You've been with those guys for how long now we
Speaker 1: started when we're sixteen Radiohead, which is um Now I'm
Speaker 1: forty four, so that's quite a while. And some bands
Speaker 1: that have had a tremendous longevity, obviously the Rolling Stones
Speaker 1: of the premier example, they've changed partners over the years,
Speaker 1: like they were the New York Yankees. You know, there's
Speaker 1: somebody else playing a third base every four or five years.
Speaker 1: But you guys, it's the same cast of people obviously,
Speaker 1: what do you attribute that to persistence my great diplomatic
Speaker 1: skills not but there must be times when they've I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll never mccurrently said to me, even the Beatles got
Speaker 1: tired of being the Beatles were the times you guys
Speaker 1: said there and looked at each other and said, I
Speaker 1: think we're done. I do that frequently, frequently, I mean
Speaker 1: at least the others too, not as much. They just
Speaker 1: wait for me to do it. Um. So, we just
Speaker 1: did a tour last year, right, and it was probably,
Speaker 1: in theory, the scariest one we've ever done, because it
Speaker 1: was lots of big gigs, which I normally am spending
Speaker 1: my time trying to shy away from. Why because you
Speaker 1: can't achieve technically in a large space where you normally
Speaker 1: want to exactly that you can't get across to people
Speaker 1: the right way, I felt. So we did spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time and effort coming up with like a
Speaker 1: stage design which used screens in a certain way which
Speaker 1: made it intimate, even though you know, some nights was
Speaker 1: like thirty or forty. People are trying to create some
Speaker 1: sort of intimacy with that, and when it worked, it
Speaker 1: was insane. It was because the upside of playing to
Speaker 1: that many people is you have this really crazy collective
Speaker 1: energy that you can tap into, like a crowd, you
Speaker 1: know thing. There's one show we did in Phoenix that
Speaker 1: sticks in my mind where there was something about maybe
Speaker 1: that it was in Phoenix and people don't get the
Speaker 1: opportunity those sort of people don't get the opportunity to
Speaker 1: get together that often or something. There was some sort
Speaker 1: of excitement within the crowd that was so great to
Speaker 1: play with. When when we hit it musically, it felt
Speaker 1: like the whole room, the whole of the building was moving. Honestly,
Speaker 1: we both came off you know that, and it's bombed.
Speaker 1: I understand that not from my own experience, but from
Speaker 1: seeing artists perform. You know. I often asked myself, why
Speaker 1: the hell would would you put yourself through this? Because
Speaker 1: it's very stressful. It's a lot of pressure, and for
Speaker 1: me mentally, I've just build myself up to it in
Speaker 1: my head gradually and it sounds really precious, but it
Speaker 1: messes with my head. I want to get to that
Speaker 1: given to me a couple of hours before you go
Speaker 1: out there, and you've got to blow this thing out
Speaker 1: for all these people and just stone cold silence, basically
Speaker 1: almost meditative. Well, yeah, I do. I do that and focused,
Speaker 1: I stand on my head for a bit and basically
Speaker 1: I'm completely on my own until five minutes before we
Speaker 1: go on, and then we're all in the room together,
Speaker 1: pacing up and down like wild animals, and then then
Speaker 1: we're on. But when we first started doing big shows,
Speaker 1: it was with my from Michael Stipe, and he does
Speaker 1: the total opposite. He literally he'll be talking to you
Speaker 1: and then someone taps in his should and then they're on.
Speaker 1: And I was like, how the hell do you do that? Man?
Speaker 1: And I tried to do it like that, I couldn't it,
Speaker 1: and so I ended up going did he did? Did
Speaker 1: you get any indication why Stipe could do that? There's
Speaker 1: a lot of nice spiritual tones inside of R. E.
Speaker 1: M's music too. Yeah, no, I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: what he used to do was you'd stand there for
Speaker 1: the first two tunes, barely move. He was a sort
Speaker 1: of lightning conductor and he was just waiting for it
Speaker 1: to hit, and then when it hit, he was off.
Speaker 1: But he would wait and if he wasn't going to hit,
Speaker 1: he was still there three or four tunes later and waiting,
Speaker 1: he kind of warmed up in front of everybody, engaging
Speaker 1: it all, whereas I can't do that because I have
Speaker 1: to sort of be clear of everything before, you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: I need to um be completely empty. I started playing
Speaker 1: guitar when I was seven. I sat down and said
Speaker 1: I was going to be Brian May when it was
Speaker 1: a lot of bad thing to be. And then I
Speaker 1: tried to do I read like when I was ten
Speaker 1: or something. I read that he built his first guitar himself,
Speaker 1: which is when he still plays. So I tried to
Speaker 1: do that, but my efforts would in that sense, you
Speaker 1: were not Brian May in that sense of handcrafting of
Speaker 1: the guitar. And I had to cheat with the neck
Speaker 1: on the guitar. I found an older neighbor gave me
Speaker 1: a neck of an electric guitar. That great. Okay, that's good,
Speaker 1: but you know I was ten or eleven, so I
Speaker 1: was trying to like bolt it together to this other
Speaker 1: piece of wood that I had cut out, and it
Speaker 1: was just a disaster. But it kind of worked, but
Speaker 1: it was ugly. Was your family musical? Not really? No.
Speaker 1: The only one that sticks out is barently my great grandmother.
Speaker 1: She get really hammered and then stay up playing her
Speaker 1: pump organ thing downstairs all night and keep the family up.
Speaker 1: You were around, did your witness that I met her
Speaker 1: once and she was kind of she wore black. I
Speaker 1: was quite scary when I was really tiny. But now
Speaker 1: that your parents were artists musicians, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: When the guitar came into your life when you're seven,
Speaker 1: Brian May or no, was it music itself? And when
Speaker 1: you moved by music itself? Or was it like many
Speaker 1: people when they're very was rock stardom was? Never? It was?
Speaker 1: It was you weren't running around your bedroom imitating Jagger
Speaker 1: and you thought, like you want my My whole thing
Speaker 1: was we didn't have any sound system in the house.
Speaker 1: We had nothing, no high fi nothing except for in
Speaker 1: my dad's car and had a type player in it.
Speaker 1: So I when and would sit for hours. I would
Speaker 1: sit for hours and it was the sound of Brian
Speaker 1: May's guitar. Actually it was. It was one of those
Speaker 1: funny things where you know, when you turned something up
Speaker 1: and you're in a very controlled loud environment, just that
Speaker 1: sound was just you know, nothing else. It was that
Speaker 1: when you're that small and you've never I've never really
Speaker 1: heard music particularly at all up until that point. You know,
Speaker 1: it's funny, it's got a weird thing. But I mean,
Speaker 1: lots of kids at that age that you know, their
Speaker 1: parents didn't really have hi fires or anything as such.
Speaker 1: You know, guy I didn't know who had a high
Speaker 1: fight down the round and only played Albert, which I
Speaker 1: thought was worse than not having one. But that was
Speaker 1: me some of those goods. And then and then the guitar,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to fashion your own guitar by the
Speaker 1: time you're eleven, and then when you take another step
Speaker 1: toward deepening your commitment, how old are you when you
Speaker 1: form the band. I did have a band when I
Speaker 1: was eleven. It was very exciting, like going around to
Speaker 1: a friend's house is setting up and jamming, and all
Speaker 1: our mates would come and hang out and girls, which
Speaker 1: I thought, this is interesting, But that sort of fell
Speaker 1: two bits because I kept fighting with the drummer. And
Speaker 1: then when I was sixteen, I was thinking, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I need to get this together really and just went
Speaker 1: around the school sort of choosing people. So you went
Speaker 1: around picking people. I got it. I got it because
Speaker 1: he was dressed like Morrissey, and he had some cool socks,
Speaker 1: and I saw he had a guitar. I had no
Speaker 1: idea where they could play or not. I don't really care.
Speaker 1: I got Colin because I knew Colin could play very
Speaker 1: well and I needed a base player could play very well.
Speaker 1: But he had never played bass before. And his brother
Speaker 1: Johnny was this mythical musical prodigy, so roped him in.
Speaker 1: And then Phil was the only drama we knew anyway,
Speaker 1: So and and he had a house down the road
Speaker 1: that we could rehearse him and you and you lived
Speaker 1: where you grew up where well, this was at Abingdon
Speaker 1: School in near Oxford. And then when you form Radiohead
Speaker 1: when you're six team basically yeah, we started sort of writing,
Speaker 1: doing demos and messing about and it was, you know,
Speaker 1: it was quite interesting straight away that it was quite
Speaker 1: I think because Phil had quite a lot of experience.
Speaker 1: He was a bit older, and he'd had his home band,
Speaker 1: so he knew how to put things together a bit.
Speaker 1: And in fact, we used to go and do demos
Speaker 1: in his sister's bedroom like right from the beginning, which
Speaker 1: which was great. I mean, there's nothing better than like
Speaker 1: just starting off by just trying to write demos from scratch,
Speaker 1: even though you can't really play, even though you don't
Speaker 1: know each other. That's where you start, you know. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a nice way to figure out where you're about.
Speaker 1: What do you think you do best? You lead a band,
Speaker 1: you well, you you play guitar, you write music, you
Speaker 1: produce music, you do it, and you sing. What do
Speaker 1: you think your greatest strength is? If you had to
Speaker 1: pick one. So, I don't know what I'm doing, right,
Speaker 1: I like the fact that's I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I think we're not. Honestly, I can't go I'll go
Speaker 1: through whole phrases where I've got a clue. I regularly
Speaker 1: lose complete confidence in what I'm doing. Why do you
Speaker 1: think that? Is? Partly because I think I don't quite
Speaker 1: understand how it happens. When what happens when the appreciation
Speaker 1: comes to you know, when you're when you're piecing something
Speaker 1: together right, things will fall into place you make it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, in some ways, the nicest bit about the
Speaker 1: creative thing, the nicest bit about recording and writing, is
Speaker 1: this sort of weird limbo where you in between scratching
Speaker 1: away scratching away nothing really happening, nothing really happening, and
Speaker 1: then something wants to be built and starts to get built.
Speaker 1: You just have to let it happen. And then it
Speaker 1: gets to the end and you and you look at
Speaker 1: it a few months later and go huh um, sort
Speaker 1: of weird amnesia that goes with it. Something will happen,
Speaker 1: one little sound goes off and you go, oh, that's
Speaker 1: really nice. When I was at school, I didn't get
Speaker 1: on with the school system at all. Um. I see it,
Speaker 1: and my son the same, that sort of the mechanics
Speaker 1: of how a school operates and how you're supposed to
Speaker 1: blend in or whatever. So I hid in the music
Speaker 1: stroke art department and had a great time there and
Speaker 1: discovered that actually that's what I wanted to do. Straight away,
Speaker 1: the heads of both schools just saw what I was up.
Speaker 1: This is the teacher that you often credit with your Yeah,
Speaker 1: where was the teacher's name, Terry James, But but it
Speaker 1: was him and my art teacher as well. Actually it
Speaker 1: was like someone sort of takes you and of the
Speaker 1: wing and say, well, you know what, you're actually quite
Speaker 1: good at. Mentoring is a very critical thing in this business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's not. It's enough at that age, it's enough
Speaker 1: to just get a little push and then okay, what
Speaker 1: does someone push you in a different direction? Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that would be bad. How about do you go to
Speaker 1: the other I think you need engineering? Yeah, my father
Speaker 1: used to think. I used to get to advertising, which
Speaker 1: is like really brilliant. Yeah, I'd really be good at that,
Speaker 1: sending other people ship. Well, one thing you're good at
Speaker 1: is avoiding. My original question, which was what do you
Speaker 1: think your best at? And let's try to choose. If
Speaker 1: you can't, if you may, you don't mind, confine yourself
Speaker 1: to the list. I provide what do you think your
Speaker 1: best at? Okay, this is multiple choice guitar band, kind
Speaker 1: of you know, paternal figure, songwriting, producing, singing, I guess singing.
Speaker 1: What was singing to you? How did your singing evolve
Speaker 1: where you were right of where you are now where
Speaker 1: most people say you have one of the most evocative
Speaker 1: singing voices and all of music today. Well, basically went
Speaker 1: to a few singing lessons, but that was basically just
Speaker 1: so I could literally breathe right. You know, my favorite
Speaker 1: singers like bu York. When I watched Buyork sing It's
Speaker 1: in here, it's right here. They say in yoga and
Speaker 1: stuff that whatever it is, can't remember that that spot
Speaker 1: at the top of the forehead that you really Most
Speaker 1: singers like Neil Young's the same. He sings into this
Speaker 1: spot in his head and and what he's singing he's
Speaker 1: already heard, you know what I mean, He's hearing it
Speaker 1: come out. The same with with Buyork when she's singing,
Speaker 1: she's singing what she's hearing, So there's no force. It's
Speaker 1: a force in itself. It sent me a while to
Speaker 1: get that, you know, even when we were on tour
Speaker 1: with R. E. M. Back when we're doing the Benz
Speaker 1: in nineties six or whatever it was. I was still
Speaker 1: trying to figure it out then watching Michael and wanting
Speaker 1: to sound like Michael Bike. I couldn't, you know, because
Speaker 1: my voice is in a different tone completely and so on.
Speaker 1: But what I did learn, what you know, watching him,
Speaker 1: was again that thing of like watching someone who their
Speaker 1: voices in sort of command of them rather than the
Speaker 1: other way around. Yeah, but it's very natural, but it
Speaker 1: takes a long time for that to become natural. I think,
Speaker 1: like any singer, it takes a long time to find
Speaker 1: that thing, and it keeps changing to me how I
Speaker 1: sing now, or to me it feels different to a
Speaker 1: few years ago. It just does it, just does each
Speaker 1: of doything to do it. Well, yeah, there's probably some
Speaker 1: physical elements to it, but but also just where you're at,
Speaker 1: you know, because singing is nothing but like probably like
Speaker 1: that saying sing is nothing but being in a moment.
Speaker 1: That's it. Radioheads, Tom York, did you know that there
Speaker 1: are over two fifty episodes in the Here's the Thing archives.
Speaker 1: If you like these in depth conversations between Alec and
Speaker 1: other actors, policymakers, and musicians, go to Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: dot org and take a look around. After the break,
Speaker 1: Alec and Tom York talk about fatherhood and how it
Speaker 1: changes performing. I'm Frank Imperial in for Alec Baldwin on
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. Tom York seems a little uneasy about
Speaker 1: his fame, and Alec wondered would he trade the trappings
Speaker 1: of being a celebrity for a better world. If I
Speaker 1: said to you, I snapped my fingers and you go
Speaker 1: back to having a very normal life and you're not
Speaker 1: you at all with everything that goes with it, and
Speaker 1: the rest of the world is elevated unless of the
Speaker 1: world gets better. Things you care about? I think of
Speaker 1: an issue you can I say to you Tom York,
Speaker 1: Tommy York, Tom, or you go back and the world
Speaker 1: gets better. Would you make that change to find better?
Speaker 1: It's a tricky question, but you do. It's not an
Speaker 1: either or, but you do care. But other things. Is
Speaker 1: there an issue that you're embracing now? Is there something
Speaker 1: you're involved with now? I well, in my slack asked fashion,
Speaker 1: I was helping um Greenpeace do this thing which was
Speaker 1: trying to stop drilling in the Arctic. But it sounds
Speaker 1: like it's kind of working because the company seem to
Speaker 1: be pulling out because they can't just pull up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. I don't think that's entirely down to us,
Speaker 1: but I think it definitely helped that we're making their
Speaker 1: life extremely difficult everywhere they turned. But challenge now is
Speaker 1: to turn the Arctic into reserve so it can't happen
Speaker 1: because what that was going to do is create this
Speaker 1: gold rush, you know, all rush up there, which was
Speaker 1: just going to be insane, and this at the same
Speaker 1: time where the ice is melting. Basically, they only started
Speaker 1: considering it was a possibility because the ice was melting.
Speaker 1: They thought, okay, great, maybe got a better chance of drilling,
Speaker 1: which is like, So I was kind of stuck in
Speaker 1: that for a while because Yeah, to me, the irony
Speaker 1: of it was too much. Um, I don't know where
Speaker 1: I'll go next. I don't I find it very stressful.
Speaker 1: I did get involved. A few years ago. We did
Speaker 1: this thing in Britain, the first Climate Change Act, which
Speaker 1: meant the government was is committed to reducing CEO two
Speaker 1: emissions and now lots of countries have got it. It
Speaker 1: was the first one and the government didn't want to
Speaker 1: do it. Bled didn't want to do it, but we
Speaker 1: found this interesting loophole and got thousands of people to
Speaker 1: send letters in and said at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: letter to the the MP, please can you pass this
Speaker 1: on to Blair? Right, And apparently they were obliged to
Speaker 1: pass on these letters. So Blair was literally getting thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of letters,
Speaker 1: which doesn't normally happen. And he did pass the law
Speaker 1: after much arguing and me refusing to meet him because
Speaker 1: it was during the Iraq War and all sorts of Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: any normal human being would be. Anyway, I was very
Speaker 1: glad I did it, and the people I was working
Speaker 1: for at the time, I was it was Friends of
Speaker 1: the Earth and it was really inspiring and I became
Speaker 1: really good friends with the guy who's running Friends of
Speaker 1: the Earth at time, Tony Juniper, who now works with
Speaker 1: Prince Charles um And and it was a great period.
Speaker 1: But I just it burned me out getting that close
Speaker 1: to politics. The most fascinating figure that we work with
Speaker 1: was the lobbyist that we had, our one lobbyist, so
Speaker 1: like we went into this Port Colors House in Britain.
Speaker 1: You probably have the equivalent here. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it's called, but Port Collor's House was built for the lobbyists.
Speaker 1: It was built for special interests to go and sit
Speaker 1: with a cup of coffee, round table about this size
Speaker 1: and wait for MPs to go past, color them, sit
Speaker 1: them down and lobby them in big the Capitol building. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I found it completely fascinating, you know, because it's there's
Speaker 1: hundreds of these people walking around and I'm like, none
Speaker 1: of them are lobbying for us. So when you may
Speaker 1: possibly could argue that our one mate, Friends of the Earth,
Speaker 1: that was like technically, you know, maybe speaking for the
Speaker 1: people a little bit, but basically they were all special
Speaker 1: interests and they had the ear of government, and I
Speaker 1: just thought, hang on, hang on a minute, how did
Speaker 1: this happen? Anyway? Where were we a minute ago? I
Speaker 1: know where I want to go? Okay, go and let
Speaker 1: go there there? Your children? Do your children know who
Speaker 1: you are and what you do? Yep, they're used to it.
Speaker 1: They're used to people coming up and saying hello. But
Speaker 1: most of the time it's very friendly, and that's normal.
Speaker 1: That's their normal. That's what they've grown up in. Twelve
Speaker 1: and seven. So one seven the age that you decided
Speaker 1: you wanted to Brian May and by then he's he
Speaker 1: he would already have made his guitar with that neck.
Speaker 1: That was eleven. I think you said, So where are
Speaker 1: they at musically? Um, my son is a great drummer,
Speaker 1: But I don't know if you want to do that
Speaker 1: forever or not. He's like not bothered really, which is cool.
Speaker 1: You know, he just and he comes and hangs out
Speaker 1: with me when I'm working in my studio. We just
Speaker 1: hang out. You know, we're friends. But I don't think
Speaker 1: you know, they're burning ambition to be musicians or anything. Really,
Speaker 1: even though he's really good, he's for pleasure. I mean
Speaker 1: at that age that's good, right His father had affected
Speaker 1: your work? Um, yes, but not really that you have
Speaker 1: the obvious things where you go out on the road
Speaker 1: more if you didn't have children. Yep, absolutely, But that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a bad thing at all. You know, being
Speaker 1: on the road is is it's a it's not a
Speaker 1: great way necessary, it's it's you don't want to do
Speaker 1: it all your life. You get a little bit on,
Speaker 1: it gets a little unhealthy quite quickly mentally, if not physically.
Speaker 1: As you've gotten older and you look around the musical landscape,
Speaker 1: do you admire a lot of what's being done is
Speaker 1: your in the in the mainstream, in the mainstream. There's
Speaker 1: nothing in the mainstream. The mainstream is just avoid you know.
Speaker 1: To me, I mean, what's weird about putting a record
Speaker 1: out now? Really? And this is not like sour grapes
Speaker 1: at all. It's just the fact the volume, literally the
Speaker 1: sheer volume and stuff that gets put out. It's like
Speaker 1: this huge fucking waterfall and you're just throwing your pebble
Speaker 1: in and it carries on down the waterfall and that's
Speaker 1: that right, Okay. Next, basically, you know, like in this country,
Speaker 1: see the radio is tied up and people don't really
Speaker 1: listen to already. In the same way, it's it's music
Speaker 1: is going through a weird time because on the one hand,
Speaker 1: as ever, there's always really exciting music being made. It's
Speaker 1: never not being made. It's a question of whether you're
Speaker 1: going to get to hear it or not. And I
Speaker 1: mean I kind of I kind of knew the game
Speaker 1: was up a few years ago when one of our
Speaker 1: sort of team of people came in saying, Nokia wants
Speaker 1: to offer you millions of pounds because they want content
Speaker 1: for their phones. And this is like in two thousand,
Speaker 1: I don't know, early two and like, content, what you know, content?
Speaker 1: What do you mean music? Yes? Okay? Content maybe that yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: just could be music stuff, Yeah, stuff could be snoring.
Speaker 1: Have you got some stuff? You know? And you're like okay,
Speaker 1: And I think really that my problem with it is
Speaker 1: it's like it's now like something to fill up the
Speaker 1: hard ware with, you know, the music itself has become
Speaker 1: secondary to that, which is a weird thing to me.
Speaker 1: Is like the most pleasurable experiences you ever have is
Speaker 1: like when something's played to you don't know. We're like
Speaker 1: going around to friend's house and they'll stick a tune
Speaker 1: on you, like what the hell's there? You know, which
Speaker 1: is what it's about. You know. That's what we're like
Speaker 1: going into store when I was a kid, like and
Speaker 1: the new Smith's records come out, and like and I'm
Speaker 1: going up to the guy. I think that's like he's
Speaker 1: really cool, like the indie store in town and just
Speaker 1: talking to him about music for twenty minutes, you know,
Speaker 1: And you know how everywhere you go, music is everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere, but it's not like, yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's content. Yeah, it's content. Is king that bullshit will change,
Speaker 1: And when it does, then I think we'll have a resurgence.
Speaker 1: The underbelly will come back over belly and then well
Speaker 1: with its middle aged to belly. So you're forty three
Speaker 1: years old, forty four years old. It's just our professional
Speaker 1: courtesy that we shave a year off of of our already. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of them. Um, you're in the now and you're
Speaker 1: in the here or what have you. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that glibly, and you're know what I'm saying, but
Speaker 1: you're not somebody who like Mick Jagger, for example, like
Speaker 1: I wonder if Mick Jagger is going to hit a day,
Speaker 1: Like does it happen in a day? Like as Mick
Speaker 1: Jagger in bed one day and he picks up the phony,
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, I just can't do it anymore.
Speaker 1: I can't get out of this bed. I can't do
Speaker 1: another fucking show again. And it's over. Like do you
Speaker 1: think of other things? I think all the time of
Speaker 1: the next thing I'm gonna do. Yeah, as the next thing.
Speaker 1: You don't have to tell us what it is, but
Speaker 1: you know it would end if someone happens in my voice,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Certain things could make it physically stop,
Speaker 1: and it will stop at some point, something will happen.
Speaker 1: But for me, I'm yeah, I'm always hearing different things.
Speaker 1: There's always half finished things, which you asked Pol Nigel.
Speaker 1: He knows about that. There's always a mountain of half stuff.
Speaker 1: I want to get into stuff. I've started stuff I
Speaker 1: want to you know. But I also think it's good
Speaker 1: to sort of take breaks because it's like anything you
Speaker 1: start to go in small circles unless you you literally
Speaker 1: you're spending unless you are just literally working too hard.
Speaker 1: It's a regenerative thing. I find that I'm well. I mean,
Speaker 1: my family, my friends know that I'm a nicer person.
Speaker 1: If I'm working and I'm into what I'm doing, then
Speaker 1: if I stop, there is a period where I'm fairly unbearable.
Speaker 1: If I do stop, yeah, for too long, probably there's
Speaker 1: a threshold. But like, if you want to shift right
Speaker 1: with your work, if you want to shift, if you're writing,
Speaker 1: if you're being creative at all, you kind of have
Speaker 1: to stop to make that shift because if you just
Speaker 1: I'm constantly creating, I've got this mountain of brilliant ideas.
Speaker 1: You're making the basic mistake that you're assuming all our
Speaker 1: ideas are brilliant, where in fact I need to go
Speaker 1: and do normal ship. I need to. I can't write
Speaker 1: unless I have a period where restored. Well, no, it's
Speaker 1: not restored, just just reset. I'm like just normal, normal, normal, normal, normal,
Speaker 1: normal normal. You must have a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the music world, young people who look up to you. Um,
Speaker 1: one of the best buzzes really is that thing where
Speaker 1: someone comes up who's new and they're really into you know,
Speaker 1: I'm really into what they're doing it's really fascinating and
Speaker 1: it's really totally new to me. But yet the occasions
Speaker 1: when off of you yeah, and you're like, how could
Speaker 1: you how could you feel off me? I don't see
Speaker 1: any of my stuff, but they see it, and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's so cool, especially when it's like like it's in
Speaker 1: hip hop and like, really you know people within hip
Speaker 1: hop who are into Radiohead. I'm like, I find that
Speaker 1: so fascinating because i mean, obviously I'm massively into hip hop,
Speaker 1: and we've we use hip hop as a reference point
Speaker 1: in the way we build tracks and stuff. But really, wow,
Speaker 1: that's bonkers. Obviously that's one of the really good bits.
Speaker 1: But it's not really mentorship. It's just people who you
Speaker 1: admire good at their ship. You know, when it happens,
Speaker 1: it happens. How does success make you feel? Well? Has
Speaker 1: it made me feel? It's always been a little bit
Speaker 1: far away from me, And the only time it sort
Speaker 1: of makes sense is when we play in front of people,
Speaker 1: and the rest of the time it's like, well, it's
Speaker 1: it's just it's who I've been for so long. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you because it's just that's what it is.
Speaker 1: I've probably been doing it more than I haven't in
Speaker 1: my life in terms of years, in terms of time.
Speaker 1: So most of the time I don't really notice. Some
Speaker 1: people come up and I go, well, that's nice, you know,
Speaker 1: thanks very much. You know, it's not like I'm not grateful.
Speaker 1: I'm just I just don't notice. And then sometimes something
Speaker 1: will whack you over the head and you go, blimey,
Speaker 1: things like doing the first time we did Saturday in
Speaker 1: my life, for example, and you go, really, people give
Speaker 1: a ship because sometimes you can't. You don't know, you
Speaker 1: don't know you've got on the inside, you can't see it.
Speaker 1: And and and also we've spent so long running away
Speaker 1: from it, and I don't feel like a run away
Speaker 1: from it now because there's nowhere to run run, nowhere
Speaker 1: to run. And also it's like, yeah, I'm really grateful
Speaker 1: for I'm very incredibly lucky. It's a very good point.
Speaker 1: There's nowhere to run and still do it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just think I'm well jammy as we take it's
Speaker 1: just really jammy, especially in the US, you know, like
Speaker 1: people really give a ship and it's like, well that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Radio heads Tom York to hear the complete conversation go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot org. It's hard to believe
Speaker 1: that r M broke up a decade ago. When Alec
Speaker 1: talked to Michael Stipe in two thousand and sixteen, he
Speaker 1: was just five years into his post r M life,
Speaker 1: with more time to pursue photography, teaching, and spending time
Speaker 1: with his friends and especially his family. What being an
Speaker 1: Army brand did to myself and my sisters was to
Speaker 1: create probably a closer family dynamic than regular people have,
Speaker 1: because we picked up and moved so much that we
Speaker 1: were we were the foundation. It made you closer, It
Speaker 1: made us much closer, and so a very very very
Speaker 1: lucky man in their regard. I'm one of the ones
Speaker 1: who I like I landed, like I got the gold ring.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to family, yeah, I mean you're
Speaker 1: you have two sisters, two sisters, so the three of
Speaker 1: your total and they around you see them? Are they
Speaker 1: or they often like Alaska and Fiji were the whole
Speaker 1: family lives in Athens, Georgia, and they're in Athens. I'm
Speaker 1: of Athens Club. I know Athens yea. And that it
Speaker 1: wasn't Mike was Mike from Athens. Mike Mills actually from making.
Speaker 1: We all met, all were from, we all met a
Speaker 1: new g A of the places I read that you
Speaker 1: lived when you were moving around in Europe and in
Speaker 1: the South and so forth, was there one place you
Speaker 1: stayed the longest, if you're a recollection of memory of
Speaker 1: a place you were in, remember Germany? Yeah? I remember
Speaker 1: Germany more than anywhere. Really. I think Germany and then well,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say because I kind of see everything,
Speaker 1: so but then I don't really remember everything. But Germany
Speaker 1: was for me a time that I feel like I
Speaker 1: remember almost every single day that we were there, which
Speaker 1: was about just under two years. How old were you
Speaker 1: seven and eight? How old were you when you'd say,
Speaker 1: I'm not a musician. I don't play music, but I
Speaker 1: feel like I have, you know, Elvis lives inside me,
Speaker 1: you know, have I have this desire like everybody everyone,
Speaker 1: which is they could sing and get up there and
Speaker 1: perform and have that effect on people. And you'd hear
Speaker 1: MacArthur Park, you know, Richard Harris would sing McArthur and
Speaker 1: and I go, god, I remember listening to that song
Speaker 1: on a transistor radio and I go back and look
Speaker 1: up the date, and I go, oh, my god. I
Speaker 1: was nine. It's so much younger. It's in you so
Speaker 1: much younger. Can you can you remember when how old
Speaker 1: you were when you let that in? And this starts?
Speaker 1: What a great song to reference. I mean, that's one
Speaker 1: of those really insanely bizarre pop songs that you know,
Speaker 1: here's a guy that doesn't sing, he's he's a drunk
Speaker 1: most of his life. He's a he's brilliant, and for
Speaker 1: some crazy, for some reason, the songwriter tags him to
Speaker 1: sing this insanely beautiful song about nothing about a cake
Speaker 1: with green ice that's melting in the rank. It's really
Speaker 1: it's you know when win in? Yeah. I love that
Speaker 1: song and I love the song, and the guy who
Speaker 1: wrote it was one of one of our great American songwriters,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Webb. I did. I did an interview with him
Speaker 1: once for a book that he wrote, and he called
Speaker 1: me on the phone to talk about songwriting, and we
Speaker 1: had an hour to talk and I couldn't get a
Speaker 1: word in edge twice he talked the entire time. I
Speaker 1: couldn't wait for the book to come out to see
Speaker 1: what I had said because I don't remember having said anything.
Speaker 1: It was pretty pretty good. But but you remember like
Speaker 1: an age was it was your time in your life
Speaker 1: when you remember when music came in, music comes in,
Speaker 1: It was always there. My kind of ground zero point
Speaker 1: was at the age of fifteen when Patti Smith releases
Speaker 1: and I bought it the day it came out. But
Speaker 1: prior to that, the songs that really resonated with me
Speaker 1: on radio or the Banana Splits, the Archies, you know,
Speaker 1: it was really kind of crappy, beautiful pop music, The Monkeys,
Speaker 1: The Monkeys, I didn't have a brother or sister who
Speaker 1: turned me on to the Who and Alice Cooper and
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones are the Beatles where my bandmates did
Speaker 1: have that. I listened to what kids listened to and
Speaker 1: what the cereal boxes were telling you was music. But
Speaker 1: following that, it was really bending in the Jets by
Speaker 1: Elton John and the song um Hey Kids, book You Too,
Speaker 1: Jump Up and Down and Rock, which I kind of
Speaker 1: rewrote as a song drive on Automatic for the people.
Speaker 1: It opens It opens that record and um I rewrote
Speaker 1: that song. I rewrote a bunch of songs from the
Speaker 1: seventies and songs that I remember, Like Everybody Hurts was
Speaker 1: my take on love Hurts, kind of a direct left there,
Speaker 1: but but it turned into a very different song. And
Speaker 1: do you learn to play an instrument? I played accordion
Speaker 1: when I was that's it well. I wanted to play Oregon,
Speaker 1: but we couldn't afford the next instrument up, so I
Speaker 1: wound up with an accordion and I played quite well.
Speaker 1: You weren't accomplished accordions. You could have been on a
Speaker 1: Sullivan now when No. But but as many people they're
Speaker 1: entry into music is whether it's you know, they pick
Speaker 1: up a guitar, and there's obviously a discipline, a curiosity.
Speaker 1: I'm always mesmerized by this by in and women who
Speaker 1: they pick up a guitar when they're nine and ten
Speaker 1: years or they just start to explore that we're beyond that.
Speaker 1: In a more traditional way, someone's parents are saying, sit
Speaker 1: down at that piano and you're gonna do this lesson
Speaker 1: for a year and grind them down until they break
Speaker 1: through and they can really play the piano. Then they're
Speaker 1: grateful that they have this skill that attracts all these people.
Speaker 1: Was there anything like that for you? There was no
Speaker 1: formal musical training none, so thus you knew is it
Speaker 1: safe to us him? Did you always know you wanted
Speaker 1: to be a singer. No, the whole idea of punk
Speaker 1: rock was that anybody could do this. That it was.
Speaker 1: It wasn't this kind of holy handed down from on
Speaker 1: high talent or skill. And I was and remained quite literal.
Speaker 1: And so when they said anybody can do this, I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. And I guess I was too lazy
Speaker 1: to learn. And so you believe that everybody, anybody can
Speaker 1: do it? Absolutely not right. When did you realize you
Speaker 1: could sing? Well, honestly, about ten years ago. I realized
Speaker 1: that my voice was that specific. I never through most
Speaker 1: of our career. I didn't understand why people liked my
Speaker 1: voice or thought that my voice was that different. And
Speaker 1: it's a very different voice. It's a very recognizable voice.
Speaker 1: So when you were singing in the in the beginning
Speaker 1: of your career, it was awful. We were We were terrible.
Speaker 1: I mean I sang Rocketbilly. You mentioned Elvis Presley earlier.
Speaker 1: I was singing in this kind of hiccup. Elvis Presley's
Speaker 1: style probably inspired by The Cramps. I loved Luxe Interior
Speaker 1: and I loved the Cramps, and I saw them perform
Speaker 1: on I think one of the first shows they ever
Speaker 1: did outside of New York City and um and I
Speaker 1: thought he was just amazing and they were incredible. So
Speaker 1: I kind of picked up that rocketbilly thing. But I
Speaker 1: don't think I really developed a voice until my Well,
Speaker 1: people that love murmur would argue with that, but anyway,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel confident with my voice until probably the
Speaker 1: third or fourth album, which was six years in. When
Speaker 1: you were at you g A with the other three,
Speaker 1: What do you think that they saw on you that
Speaker 1: they picked you for that job? Well, it sounds arrogant
Speaker 1: to say it, but charisma. It was that that that
Speaker 1: genes a quad that we all know when someone walks
Speaker 1: into a room or and when I walk into a room,
Speaker 1: I don't have that, but when I'm on stage performing
Speaker 1: with that band behind me, it was. It just was
Speaker 1: the chemistry between all of it. Really, when you open
Speaker 1: your mouth and saying those songs with those guys and
Speaker 1: something happened, you believe that. How did you find each other? Clubs?
Speaker 1: Record store? You saw Mills and a record store and
Speaker 1: Peter buck Rabbit and he looked really cool, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people back then didn't look really cool, but
Speaker 1: he looked really cool, and he would turn me onder
Speaker 1: different records that that would come into the store, and
Speaker 1: and like Suicide, the first Suicide album. We hit it
Speaker 1: off and then I had to convince him to start
Speaker 1: a band with me. What was it about horses that
Speaker 1: appealed to you? I can't say, I mean outside of
Speaker 1: you know, I had really good taste. As it turns out.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of the greatest records I ever made.
Speaker 1: And I did buy it and listen to it on
Speaker 1: the day that it was released, which is kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: But you've spoken about the cover art appealed to you too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's an incredible image. Uh. But she represented
Speaker 1: something other and something to me alien, And part of
Speaker 1: that was this openness, is fluidity about sexuality that I
Speaker 1: think certainly resonated with me and with millions of other
Speaker 1: people who are questioning their sexuality or or or emerging
Speaker 1: into something that they weren't familiar with or something that
Speaker 1: wasn't at the time quite accepted or acceptable. We're doing
Speaker 1: her on this show and a kind of a live audience.
Speaker 1: She's a great conversation. Yeah, but you related to that.
Speaker 1: It's really really the third song I think it was
Speaker 1: Birdland is the song that touched me in a way
Speaker 1: that I don't think anything i'd ever touched me before.
Speaker 1: And I stayed up all night listening to it. I
Speaker 1: went to school next day and I said, that's that's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do. And then it took me two
Speaker 1: years to find people that I could play with. That
Speaker 1: didn't work out very well, and I wound up moving
Speaker 1: to Athens following my father's retirement and started the band.
Speaker 1: And when you leave Athe, I mean there's a kind
Speaker 1: of gestation there and athen and performing in clubs in
Speaker 1: all over Georgia, are you like, well, what kind of
Speaker 1: do what's the what's the circuit you get into there
Speaker 1: when you're at that level. Well, it was early days,
Speaker 1: so there wasn't really a circuit. I mean one was
Speaker 1: kind of cabbled together by bands like RM and Pylon
Speaker 1: also from Athens, and Black Flag, Sonic Youth. All these
Speaker 1: bands were playing like these pizza parlors and gay discoss
Speaker 1: and kind of anywhere that would let a band set
Speaker 1: up in a corner. Music is very different than that
Speaker 1: it is now, and the way that music is consumed
Speaker 1: and the way that it's marketed and so forth and
Speaker 1: most bands, I mean yours could be different. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I want to find that out. Most bands enter into
Speaker 1: a business agreement in order to take them to the
Speaker 1: next plateau that's disadvantageous for them. Did that happen to you? No, Um,
Speaker 1: when you started signing with people, did you maintain all
Speaker 1: the rights tool you're publishing? Yeah, you did, and we
Speaker 1: own our masters. Peter and Mike particularly were encyclopedic about
Speaker 1: Sick and they had read every biography and knew every
Speaker 1: in and out of every story of a band that
Speaker 1: got so far and then it fell apart because of
Speaker 1: this or this reason, and they were determined to prevent
Speaker 1: that from happening to us. Who did you sign with?
Speaker 1: Who was your first label you signed with? The first
Speaker 1: label was I R S Records, Miles Copeland, and he
Speaker 1: was very generous looking back. I mean we didn't like
Speaker 1: each other very much at the time, but he allowed us. Well,
Speaker 1: he was a business guy, and I wasn't that interested
Speaker 1: in the business part of what was going on. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to do what we did, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to do it our way. And who in the band
Speaker 1: was taking care of business? Mike, No, we had a
Speaker 1: manager and a lawyer who were helping us, and so
Speaker 1: nobody in the band. You had to rely on people
Speaker 1: you trusted to take care of it. And it all
Speaker 1: worked out well. You were happy. We were really lucky
Speaker 1: in that regard, and you know, we we kept our
Speaker 1: eye on it and I didn't allow those things that
Speaker 1: break up bands to break us up. So we had
Speaker 1: a really long, great career and chose the time to disband,
Speaker 1: and I think we even did it was the time
Speaker 1: most broke up with We even did that, right, M Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean over and over. Sure, when you had conflicts
Speaker 1: with people you make music with, what is the conflict?
Speaker 1: But typically, I mean I was very young and very shy,
Speaker 1: and so I would just shut down. I would go
Speaker 1: into a kind of a quiet you know, I would
Speaker 1: I would be silent for three days, which nobody wanted
Speaker 1: because it made it, It made everything impossible. Those guys
Speaker 1: were more loud and often got their way, but it
Speaker 1: but often it kind of pulled me out of you know,
Speaker 1: we're in a in a in a band dynamic. Everyone's
Speaker 1: got an idea, in an opinion. And what happened, what
Speaker 1: happens when it all comes together is this this beautiful
Speaker 1: compromise where one person over kind of overseas one part,
Speaker 1: another overseas another part. Somehow it all works. So that
Speaker 1: chemistry served us pretty well for most of her career.
Speaker 1: But but it was, you know, it was at times
Speaker 1: very very difficult, and I'm proud of the times that
Speaker 1: we failed. We failed horribly, and but we all know,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't blame the other guy. We didn't
Speaker 1: blame the industry, we didn't blame radio. We just agreed
Speaker 1: that we had not made the best record, or the
Speaker 1: best song or the best recording. Some of my favorite
Speaker 1: recordings of our work is not what wound up on records,
Speaker 1: but what wound up in live performances. Su Jazz. The
Speaker 1: song Lotus is a good example of a song that
Speaker 1: we recorded Lotuses. Lotus is the name of the song,
Speaker 1: and it's a good song, but it's way too long
Speaker 1: on the record. It's too slow, which is my fault,
Speaker 1: and we recorded it and mixed it at a time
Speaker 1: when we weren't really talking to each other, so it
Speaker 1: was very difficult to arrive at a place that made sense. Live,
Speaker 1: the song is faster, and we're ajournalised because we're performing
Speaker 1: it in front of people or whatever, and it got
Speaker 1: a lot better. It got a real lot better. So
Speaker 1: for my money, you know, the recording of that song
Speaker 1: is kind of dis interesting document of a moment in time,
Speaker 1: but but the real song emerged in live performance. Is
Speaker 1: there a producer or like who decides, especially in the
Speaker 1: early days before you become big stars, Like who's sitting there,
Speaker 1: sitting there going, well, you're gonna come in here and
Speaker 1: you will drop that note down a little bit. Who's
Speaker 1: who's the decider? We always had finals, We always had
Speaker 1: final cut on everything. So all of our records were
Speaker 1: produced with a producer, but we were co producing, so
Speaker 1: the band had final saying final cut. Was there one
Speaker 1: of you who had a better ear than the other
Speaker 1: in terms of how this music should be mixed? Do
Speaker 1: somebody have a gift for that? No? Right, everybody had
Speaker 1: an opinion, sadly. Did you like performing live? I loved it.
Speaker 1: What's the first time you performed live? Because Murmur becomes
Speaker 1: the album of the year from Rolling Stone, you beat
Speaker 1: out Thriller. How did you feel about that? I wanted
Speaker 1: to crawl into a hole one during myself. You didn't
Speaker 1: want to be famous? No, I wanted to be famous.
Speaker 1: But but my idea you did want to be famous.
Speaker 1: My idea of fame was this kind of teen age
Speaker 1: fantasy version of it. It didn't require all the work
Speaker 1: and all the scrutiny and all the kind of like
Speaker 1: all the stuff, Like being able to look you in
Speaker 1: the eye and sit here and talk about myself is
Speaker 1: something that it took decades for me to be able
Speaker 1: to do, and that that's not my nature. Why do
Speaker 1: you think it's not your nature? Well, I mean you
Speaker 1: are a shy person. Yeah, yeah, I still am, but
Speaker 1: I've I've managed over the course of fifty six years
Speaker 1: to kind of emerge. I always say to people, I'm
Speaker 1: a person of adulthood. But I say to people I
Speaker 1: think I am a shy person, and they look at
Speaker 1: me to go, you're kidding and out of your mind.
Speaker 1: Just overcame. It's so extraordinarily. The thing you figure out
Speaker 1: when you're around a lot of creative people is is
Speaker 1: that if you're a creator, you have to create. It's
Speaker 1: not a choice. It's not something that you do because
Speaker 1: you want to be famous. It's something that or because
Speaker 1: you want to be recognized for something, for this or
Speaker 1: that you create because you have to and maybe that's
Speaker 1: what separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes
Speaker 1: to the culture that now allows people to be famous
Speaker 1: just for the fact being famous, or that you're you're
Speaker 1: acknowledged and recognized for something other than a talent or
Speaker 1: a thing that you can offer that's unique or interesting.
Speaker 1: One time I did a concert style version of South
Speaker 1: Pacific and it was Reba McIntyre and Brian Stokes Mitchell
Speaker 1: are the leads, and we're there and Paul Jim and
Speaker 1: Yanni's there conducting this orchestra. It was. It was it
Speaker 1: was like a ninety piece orchestra and like, Okay, we're ready,
Speaker 1: We're gonna be here and we're gonna sing and they
Speaker 1: call up someone so we're gonna sing bally High and
Speaker 1: also this orchestrauld be like Bannan. The music would play
Speaker 1: behind I'm sitting there in a chair, the orchestras five
Speaker 1: behind me, and I get this chill that just shoots
Speaker 1: right up my skull, like, oh my god, this is music.
Speaker 1: You know. What was the first time you stepped out
Speaker 1: in front of a stadium and crab What was your
Speaker 1: first big first moment, What was your first Paul Jim
Speaker 1: and Yanni Momentum. We one of the one of the
Speaker 1: things that Miles Copeland, who had I R. S Records,
Speaker 1: did was he put us on a bill at Schase
Speaker 1: Stadium with Joan Jett and the Black Hearts Hope for
Speaker 1: the Police. So we played to sixty people. We had.
Speaker 1: We played five songs. I said I would do it
Speaker 1: if I could wear a wedding dress. Someone said, I
Speaker 1: dare you for a hundred dollars, which at the time
Speaker 1: was a very very large amount of money to me,
Speaker 1: I dare you to wear a wedding dress. She's taking
Speaker 1: my I said, I'm gonna do it. So I went
Speaker 1: looking for a wedding I couldn't find one. I found
Speaker 1: a tuxedo, so I wore a tuxedo instead of really
Speaker 1: ratty tuxedo. Did you tell the guys in the band
Speaker 1: you would plan on wearing a wedding and they were
Speaker 1: cool with it. They were fine, They didn't care, they
Speaker 1: didn't give a fuck. Um. They wanted you to be you.
Speaker 1: But I remember it because it was raining and we
Speaker 1: had five songs, and it was this giant place, and
Speaker 1: to the band it meant everything because of the Beatles
Speaker 1: had had famously performed there. To me, it was just
Speaker 1: as big outdoor as your wedding day. It was my
Speaker 1: wedding day right as it turns out, and my dress.
Speaker 1: You were getting married to sixty people. My dress wasn't starched.
Speaker 1: How did it feel? You know? What's interesting is that
Speaker 1: I don't really remember the show so much. I remember
Speaker 1: the backstage what was happening. Andy Warhol was there. That
Speaker 1: was thrilling for me. Matt Dylan was there, and this
Speaker 1: was after not the outsider was what was the Rumblefish
Speaker 1: kid done? Rumblefish? And and I was a huge fan,
Speaker 1: and he was kind of like hanging out in between
Speaker 1: these two trailers. One was ours, the other was Joan Jutts,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, Joan jutt knows Matt Dilon,
Speaker 1: How exciting is that? And we were kind of peeking
Speaker 1: through the window. And then there was a knock at
Speaker 1: the door and it was Matt Dillon and he was
Speaker 1: a big r M fan. So we sat with us
Speaker 1: and we talked for a long time and I was
Speaker 1: kind of touched by the very touched by the r
Speaker 1: M s. Michael Stipe. If you're enjoying this conversation, be
Speaker 1: sure to follow here's the thing. On the I Heart
Speaker 1: radio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When
Speaker 1: we come back, Michael Stipe talks about how he became
Speaker 1: politically aware. I'm Frank Imperial and this is here's the thing.
Speaker 1: There's a deep passion in R. E. M's music, and
Speaker 1: Alec marveled at how it never crosses over to sentimentality.
Speaker 1: I could cry right now, thank you for saying that.
Speaker 1: I'm a very sentimental person, and I despise sentimentality. I
Speaker 1: despise nostalgia. Do you agree that that's a hallmark of
Speaker 1: the music you guys make. I'm very flattered that you
Speaker 1: say that we go to that line and we never
Speaker 1: cross it. In my in my most closer than anybody
Speaker 1: I know, well, thank you. In my most critical moments,
Speaker 1: I would say, well, no, we crossed it many times,
Speaker 1: and and not so gracefully. But I appreciate that. That's
Speaker 1: a huge compliment. As a writer, that's a huge compliment,
Speaker 1: and as a singer, because you can the way the
Speaker 1: way something is performed, the way you put it down
Speaker 1: on tape really can make or break it. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of an example of someone who's very, very
Speaker 1: brilliant with that. I think Sia is brilliant with the
Speaker 1: way she uses her voice. There are other singers throughout
Speaker 1: our lives, and we don't have to name names who
Speaker 1: have amazing voices but have no idea how to use them,
Speaker 1: or they overuse them or their producers. They do that
Speaker 1: crack at the high note every single time, and by
Speaker 1: the end of the song you're exhausted. And the thing
Speaker 1: they do, there's a thing regardless of after murmur and
Speaker 1: after you start to take off and really make it.
Speaker 1: One of the things I'm always curious about for highly
Speaker 1: successful musicians of whatever type of music is is music
Speaker 1: in your life, other people's music, And then the obligation
Speaker 1: and or or even just the ambition to now drive
Speaker 1: your music to the next level, does it push other
Speaker 1: music out? Or if you always listened to music, And
Speaker 1: that's a really good question, and I'm going to answer
Speaker 1: it honestly. There's a point where I stopped being able
Speaker 1: to listen to other music. And it wasn't because I
Speaker 1: was afraid I was going to accidentally imitate or steal
Speaker 1: something from someone. Music became un interesting to me. Now
Speaker 1: that I don't make music anymore, I'm able to listen
Speaker 1: to music. I'm able to read novels uh and books.
Speaker 1: I'm able to absorb myself into TV shows and films
Speaker 1: that I just didn't have time for. I mean, I
Speaker 1: realized when Rim disbanded five years ago. It took me
Speaker 1: about six months to recognize how much of a creative
Speaker 1: kind of fog I had been in with that band.
Speaker 1: I'm such a perfectionist, I'm such a control freak. I
Speaker 1: oversaw every aspect of the band, and and along with
Speaker 1: Peter and Mike and Bill when he was there, it
Speaker 1: completely consumed my every waking thought the entire time that
Speaker 1: that band was going, and so other things fell fell away,
Speaker 1: and I think I became a little bit of a
Speaker 1: less interesting person for now working having a life that
Speaker 1: allowed me to not write a song about being on
Speaker 1: the road or being in a band, or write songs
Speaker 1: about the industry of music, which is the most pathetically
Speaker 1: boring thing you could possibly you know, focus on what
Speaker 1: people do. One of my favorite songs that we ever
Speaker 1: wrote is called Supernatural, Super Serious, and it's this insanely
Speaker 1: beautiful narrative, really beautiful narrative about innocence and teenage ideas
Speaker 1: and how those are flattened or dismissed or disregarded as
Speaker 1: an adult, and then you come back. It comes back
Speaker 1: at some point and you realize you're still that person.
Speaker 1: So that's all in this lyric for me, I probably
Speaker 1: need to write a little short story to go along
Speaker 1: with it for anybody that listens to the song, because
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I successfully manage to get all
Speaker 1: that into the lyric. Have you ever thought about writing
Speaker 1: a book like that where you explicate all the lyrics
Speaker 1: of your songs? Or I'm actually doing it, I'm not
Speaker 1: doing a very good job of it about well, I'm,
Speaker 1: as you may have figured out in this conversation, I
Speaker 1: think in a very circuitous and tangential way, and so
Speaker 1: I'll always come back to my point. But I lose
Speaker 1: most people in the way. I have great stories, and
Speaker 1: I'm a terrible storyteller. Now, the you are very well
Speaker 1: known and legendary, if you will, for your passions about causes.
Speaker 1: When does that begin for you in your career when
Speaker 1: you say to yourself, I can't keep my mash and
Speaker 1: I want to start talking about this. Well, it was
Speaker 1: the Reagan era and the kind tree was falling apart
Speaker 1: in a way that that was quite evident. And we
Speaker 1: were then as as a band traveling overseas representing America
Speaker 1: and getting shipped thrown at us for the cruise missiles
Speaker 1: that were being sent over and put into position in
Speaker 1: parts of Europe. People were very, very unhappy about that.
Speaker 1: We became politicized quite quickly as a band um and
Speaker 1: I'm a child of the seventies, you know, we came
Speaker 1: out of a place where everything that the sixties was
Speaker 1: and this is I think perfectly encapsulated. Again. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about Patti Smith for a moment, but when she wrote
Speaker 1: Just Kids, that book to me is like The Big Chill,
Speaker 1: but for sentimental douche bags, for people that lived through it,
Speaker 1: and we're at one point told your sellout and you
Speaker 1: have to get a job, and all of your dreams
Speaker 1: and aspirations, everything that you thought you could do with
Speaker 1: this thing is flatlined. Go get a job. Just Kids
Speaker 1: provided those people for the first time, I think, a
Speaker 1: way of looking at themselves as children, as teenagers, as
Speaker 1: young people again and saying that innocence was quite beautiful,
Speaker 1: and in fact we were right. Things didn't go our way,
Speaker 1: but we had a place the people that dropped out
Speaker 1: in the sixties and then had to get jobs. Became
Speaker 1: the people that were teaching me in sixth, seventh, eighth,
Speaker 1: and ninth grade, and so in the early seventies in America,
Speaker 1: in public school, there was a very clear understanding that
Speaker 1: it was our job to talk about and fix what
Speaker 1: became dramatic climate change issues, energy problems, the Lynchin, what's
Speaker 1: going on everything. But I had an entire year long
Speaker 1: course called environmental science taught by miss Enoch. There was
Speaker 1: a textbook and it was taught in public schools in Texas. Anyway,
Speaker 1: as a twelve thirteen year old, I knew about all
Speaker 1: this energy stuff and and so then as an adult,
Speaker 1: you know, you become politicized quite quickly when you travel
Speaker 1: outside the country. And that's what happened to us. I
Speaker 1: was talking to other people who work in your business,
Speaker 1: which and like my business, which is a very youth
Speaker 1: centered business in terms of the performing and the whole
Speaker 1: of the arc of it, and all of us as
Speaker 1: we get older in this business, it changes. Was there
Speaker 1: a moment that you realize it started to change for you?
Speaker 1: Many times as an as an older person in a
Speaker 1: you know, rock and roll band, for our pop band. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a point where I said, it's not a good
Speaker 1: look and we I we have to either grow with
Speaker 1: it and be who we are right now or stop.
Speaker 1: And I think we did a pretty good job of
Speaker 1: being people in their early forties, mid forties, late forties,
Speaker 1: early fifties doing this, not the perpetual teenager thing that
Speaker 1: a lot of people kind of go down that route
Speaker 1: and the camels get a little fuzzier and pulled back
Speaker 1: a little more. I just didn't particularly see myself in
Speaker 1: that role. I'm now exploring all these other mediums that
Speaker 1: I'm really thrilled to be working on other than music.
Speaker 1: And I'm also although I'm not prepared and already to
Speaker 1: be a pop star again a pop singer, I'm dabbling
Speaker 1: in music and it feels yeah, yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: started actually about a year and a half ago. A
Speaker 1: friend called me, Casey Spooner from the band Fisher Spooner
Speaker 1: working on an album for a couple of years and
Speaker 1: got really stuck and said I need help with a song.
Speaker 1: Can you help me? And I went in and it
Speaker 1: was very clear to me what needed to be done,
Speaker 1: and I told him, but there was another piece of
Speaker 1: music playing while we were talking, and I said, can
Speaker 1: I comment on that one as well? And long story short,
Speaker 1: I wound up producing the album and co writing every
Speaker 1: song on it. And so as a producer and writer,
Speaker 1: I've kind of come back into music through Fisher Spooner.
Speaker 1: You've been making films as well a film production. I
Speaker 1: stopped making film. You just stopped. I stopped filming because
Speaker 1: I wanted, I needed to just step away from everything.
Speaker 1: And so when when when I I am disbanded five
Speaker 1: years ago, I pretty much shuddered both of my production companies,
Speaker 1: thrilled that we had done what we did in the um.
Speaker 1: It was twenty seven years, I guess of I made
Speaker 1: about that many feature films, most of them very independent,
Speaker 1: the most famous one being being John Markovic with Spike Jones.
Speaker 1: But I was really ready to just step away from
Speaker 1: everything and explore other mediums that I not wanted to
Speaker 1: be Photography needed to really look into, and photography the
Speaker 1: primary one now. Photography was my first love, photography before music,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of the work that I'm doing
Speaker 1: now it's not I don't I think of myself as
Speaker 1: an artist who works in all these different mediums, and
Speaker 1: music is one of them, and obviously the most the
Speaker 1: one I'm best known for. But photography has come back around.
Speaker 1: I'm doing a book. I'm working on a book now.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Burger brought me to n y U to teach
Speaker 1: art for the False semester and that was thrilling. And
Speaker 1: out of that is coming a book of my work
Speaker 1: that I'm working with him on. So that's really exciting. Um,
Speaker 1: you are such uh unique and such a kind of
Speaker 1: particular person and you know that. Thank you and you
Speaker 1: and you're performing well. I mean you're performing. You're singing,
Speaker 1: and your style and your appearance and your kind of
Speaker 1: demeanor and everything you're You're very was acting ever in
Speaker 1: the cards for you? Did you ever think about going
Speaker 1: off and making films and acting? I was offered the
Speaker 1: role of the psychopathic killer in the film seven. They
Speaker 1: wanted someone very unexpected, and unfortunately my band was going
Speaker 1: on tour the same month that they started filming, so
Speaker 1: I wasn't And it required nothing I had to do
Speaker 1: is run down some hallways and look scary. There was
Speaker 1: no dialogue. I'm so glad you didn't do that. I
Speaker 1: would have loved doing it. I I didn't like the
Speaker 1: way that movie ended. They changed something at the end
Speaker 1: that meant that Brad Pets rather than Morgan Freeman's character
Speaker 1: killed Kevin Spacey in the end, which shouldn't have happened.
Speaker 1: It didn't make sense. But but yeah, I mean, I no,
Speaker 1: I don't. I always felt like just because something is
Speaker 1: available to you through fame, or through connections or through proximity,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that you should say yes to it,
Speaker 1: And so I've been very careful with I mean, the
Speaker 1: other mediums that I'm working in now are things that
Speaker 1: sometimes terrify me. I'm doing collage work. I'm I despise collage.
Speaker 1: I'm working with I'm working with hand handwriting in my
Speaker 1: own line, and I'm a terrible drawer. But I'm I'm
Speaker 1: working with the things that I most fear about myself,
Speaker 1: and I'm and I'm not showing them to the public
Speaker 1: unless I really think that I've got something. But this
Speaker 1: book that I'm working on, I'm kind of working through
Speaker 1: a lot of these things with the book. So it's
Speaker 1: it's been thrilling. I'm not saying that you should play
Speaker 1: Boo Radley, but you should play a Boo Radley type
Speaker 1: of character where no matter how unique or odd he
Speaker 1: may strike people in the hair and make up the
Speaker 1: whole appearance. Deep down inside, he's this beautiful soul. I
Speaker 1: would like you to stick to that. The idiot mantel
Speaker 1: I'm good at. That's what my dog thinks. I'm the
Speaker 1: idiot mantell. The freaky angel. I like to the weird
Speaker 1: angel when I psycho killer, when I meet um directors
Speaker 1: like Todd Haynes and Spike Jones, or I meet actors
Speaker 1: like yourself. For John Malkovic, I realized that these are
Speaker 1: people that wake up with a need and a desire
Speaker 1: to do that thing, and I have so much respect
Speaker 1: for it that for me to even try. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't play trombone either. Why would I Why would
Speaker 1: I even want to ever try to play trombone? But
Speaker 1: I I leave that to those that have that need,
Speaker 1: that wake up with that desire. My desires are in
Speaker 1: the same ballpark, but slightly different. And so that's where
Speaker 1: I've tried to spend my short time on this earth,
Speaker 1: hopefully two or at least, I'll take really focusing on
Speaker 1: the things that I feel like I might be able
Speaker 1: to that will challenge me, that will challenge hopefully whatever
Speaker 1: audience I'm able to attain, and we'll keep me on
Speaker 1: my toes, keep me curious. Thanks to Tom York and
Speaker 1: Michael Stipe and this show's regular host, Alec Baldwin. Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing is produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donahue and
Speaker 1: Zach McNeice. I'm the show's engineer, Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening.