Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: thing you are not. I will go to the music
Speaker 1: you're hearing is the biggest song by one of the
Speaker 1: biggest bands in the world of the last forty years.
Speaker 1: In the eighties, r e M was the epitome of
Speaker 1: the artful alternative band, producing a string of beautiful, if
Speaker 1: occasionally inscrutable albums and slowly evolving over time. But then
Speaker 1: came the album Out of Time, ri E M's true
Speaker 1: arrival as global rock stars, writing largely on the strength
Speaker 1: of Losing My Religion, which was in constant notation on
Speaker 1: TV and radio throughout The record is now being reissued,
Speaker 1: and it was the moment lead singer Michael Stipe stepped
Speaker 1: out with a bit more confidence into his role as
Speaker 1: front band. Both intensely private and flamboyantly public, Stipe led
Speaker 1: the band through twenty more years of bold experimentation, massive success,
Speaker 1: and the occasional misstep, but never insincerity. RI E M
Speaker 1: disbanded in two thousand eleven, and for the last five years,
Speaker 1: Stipe has channeled his new time and energy into photography, teaching,
Speaker 1: and politics, and while his songs will almost certainly last
Speaker 1: in the cultural memory for a very long time. Stipe
Speaker 1: himself has even longer term ambitions, like living until he's
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty. I think that, you know, I
Speaker 1: think the way things are advancing, it would be possible
Speaker 1: to live a happy life well into your hundreds. If
Speaker 1: was the outer edge and you go to one years,
Speaker 1: what are all things you want to do in those
Speaker 1: twenty five years? I would hope that I inherited from
Speaker 1: my mother a great curiosity about the world, and I've
Speaker 1: watched her age and remain curious and want to keep
Speaker 1: learning and growing. And I would hope that I would
Speaker 1: have that you were an army child. Ye, army Brad,
Speaker 1: I don't know, army. I'll let you say Bratt was
Speaker 1: most of the nurture and so forth from your mom
Speaker 1: because she was she was she more on the scene
Speaker 1: and Dad was gone all the time. Did you pick
Speaker 1: up things from him to He came and went a lot.
Speaker 1: But what what being an army Bratt did to myself
Speaker 1: and my sisters was to create probably a closer family
Speaker 1: dynamic than regular people have, because we picked up and
Speaker 1: moved so much that we were we were the foundation. Um.
Speaker 1: It made you closer. It made us much closer and
Speaker 1: so a very very very lucky man in their regard.
Speaker 1: I'm one of the ones who I like I landed,
Speaker 1: like I got the gold ring. And when it comes
Speaker 1: to family, yeah, I mean you you have two sisters,
Speaker 1: two sisters, so the three of your total, and on
Speaker 1: a day around you see them where they or they
Speaker 1: often like Alaska and Fiji were the whole family lives
Speaker 1: in Athens, Georgia, and they're in Athens. I know Athens.
Speaker 1: I know Athens yea. And that it wasn't Mike was
Speaker 1: Mike from Athens, Mike Mills actually from Macon. We all met,
Speaker 1: we were from we all met a new g a
Speaker 1: um of the places I read that you lived when
Speaker 1: you were moving around in Europe and in the South,
Speaker 1: and so was there one place you stayed the longest.
Speaker 1: You're a recollection of memory of a place you were in.
Speaker 1: Remember Germany? Yeah? I remember Germany more than anywhere really.
Speaker 1: I think Germany and then well it's hard to say,
Speaker 1: because I'm um, I kind of see everything, so but
Speaker 1: then I don't really remember everything. But Germany was for
Speaker 1: me a time that I feel like I remember almost
Speaker 1: every single day that we were there. Which was about
Speaker 1: just under two years. How old were you seven and eight?
Speaker 1: How old were you when you'd say, I'm not a
Speaker 1: musician and I don't play music, but I feel like
Speaker 1: I have, you know, Elvis lives inside me, you know,
Speaker 1: I have. I have this desire like everybody everyone, which
Speaker 1: is they could sing and get up there and perform
Speaker 1: and have that effect on people. And you'd hear MacArthur park,
Speaker 1: you know, Richard Harris would sing McArthur and and I go, god,
Speaker 1: I remember listening to that song on a transistor radio.
Speaker 1: And I go back and look up the date and
Speaker 1: I go, oh my god, I was nine. It's so
Speaker 1: much younger. It's in you so much younger. Can you
Speaker 1: can you remember when how old you were when you
Speaker 1: let that in and starts? What a great song to reference.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's one of those really insanely bizarre pop
Speaker 1: songs that you know, here's a guy that doesn't sing,
Speaker 1: he's he's a drunk most of his life, he's a
Speaker 1: he's brilliant, and for some crazy, for some reason, the
Speaker 1: songwriter tags him to sing this insanely beautiful song about
Speaker 1: nothing about a cake with green icing that's melting in
Speaker 1: the rank it's really it's you know when you win
Speaker 1: in Yeah, I love that song and I love the song,
Speaker 1: and the guy who wrote it was one of one
Speaker 1: of our great American songwriters, Jimmy Webb. I did. I
Speaker 1: did an interview with him once for a book that
Speaker 1: he wrote in and he called me on the phone
Speaker 1: to talk about songwriting and we had an hour to
Speaker 1: talk and I couldn't get a word in edge twice
Speaker 1: he talked the entire time. I couldn't wait for the
Speaker 1: book to come out to see what I had said
Speaker 1: because I don't remember having said anything. It was pretty
Speaker 1: pretty good. But but do you remember, like an age
Speaker 1: was it was your time in your life when you
Speaker 1: remember when music came in, music comes in. It was
Speaker 1: always there. Um My my earliest members before the my
Speaker 1: kind of ground zero point was at the age of
Speaker 1: fifteen when Patti Smiths and I bought it the day
Speaker 1: it came out. But prior to that, the songs that
Speaker 1: really resonated with me on radio or um the Banana Splits,
Speaker 1: the Archies, Um. You know, it was really kind of crappy,
Speaker 1: beautiful pop music, The Monkeys, The Monkeys. I didn't have
Speaker 1: a brother or sister who turned me on to the
Speaker 1: and and and Alice Cooper and um, the Rolling Stones
Speaker 1: of the Beatles, where my bandmates did have that. I
Speaker 1: listened to what kids listened to and what the cereal
Speaker 1: boxes were telling you was music. Um, But following that,
Speaker 1: it was really Benny in the Jets by Elton John
Speaker 1: and the song um, Hey Kids, boog you too, jump
Speaker 1: Up and Down and Blues Wait Shoes rock On by
Speaker 1: David which I kind of rewrote as a song drive
Speaker 1: on automatic for the people. It opens, it opens that record,
Speaker 1: and um, I rewrote that song. I rewrote a bunch
Speaker 1: of songs from the seventies and songs that I remembered.
Speaker 1: Like Everybody Hurts was my take on Love Hurts. Kind
Speaker 1: of a direct left there, but but it turned into
Speaker 1: a very different song. And do you learn to play
Speaker 1: an instrument? I played accordion when I was well. I
Speaker 1: wanted to play Oregon, but um, we couldn't afford the
Speaker 1: next instrument up, so I wound up with an accordion
Speaker 1: and I played quite well. You weren't accomplished a communists.
Speaker 1: You could have been on Sullivan now when No. But
Speaker 1: but as many people they're entry into music is whether
Speaker 1: it's you know, they pick up a guitar and there's
Speaker 1: obviously a discipline, a curiosity. I'm always mesmerized by this
Speaker 1: by men and women who they pick up a guitar
Speaker 1: when they're nine an ten years or they just start
Speaker 1: to explore that or beyond that. In a more traditional way.
Speaker 1: Someone's parents are saying, sit down at that piano and
Speaker 1: you're gonna do this lesson for a year and grind
Speaker 1: them down until they break through and they can really
Speaker 1: play the piano. Then they're grateful that they have this
Speaker 1: skill that attracts all these people. Um, was there anything
Speaker 1: like that for you? There was no formal musical training none,
Speaker 1: So thus you knew is it safe to us him?
Speaker 1: Did you always know you wanted to be a singer? No? No, Um.
Speaker 1: The whole the whole idea of punk rock was that
Speaker 1: anybody could do this. That it was. It wasn't this
Speaker 1: kind of holy handed down from on high talent or skill. Um.
Speaker 1: And I was and remained quite literal. And so when
Speaker 1: they said anybody can do this, I said, okay, I'll
Speaker 1: do it. And I guess I was too lazy to learn.
Speaker 1: And you believe that everybody, anybody can do it? Absolutely
Speaker 1: not much. What changed? Everybody can't sing, but I don't
Speaker 1: really want to hear it right? Um? What changed? When
Speaker 1: did you realize you could sing? Well? Honestly, about ten
Speaker 1: years ago. I realized that my voice was that specific.
Speaker 1: I never through most of our career. I didn't understand
Speaker 1: why people liked my voice or thought or could not could.
Speaker 1: I just didn't know that my voice was that different.
Speaker 1: And 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 rockabilly. 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 I loved Lux
Speaker 1: Interior and I loved the Cramps, and I saw them
Speaker 1: perform on I think one of the first shows they
Speaker 1: ever did outside of New York City, and um, and
Speaker 1: I thought he was just amazing and they were incredible.
Speaker 1: So I kind of picked up that rock and belly thing. Um,
Speaker 1: but I don't think I really developed a voice until
Speaker 1: my Well, people that love murmur would argue with that
Speaker 1: but anyway, I didn't feel confident with my voice until
Speaker 1: probably the third or fourth album, which was six years in.
Speaker 1: When you were at U 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: Genese quad that we all know when someone walks into
Speaker 1: 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, or
Speaker 1: something happened you believe that. How did you find each other? Clubs?
Speaker 1: Record store? Record store? You saw Mills and a record store.
Speaker 1: Peter Buck and he looked really cool and a lot
Speaker 1: of people back then didn't look really cool, but he
Speaker 1: looked really cool. And um, he would you know, he
Speaker 1: would turn me on to different records that that would
Speaker 1: come into the store and and like Suicide, the first
Speaker 1: Suicide album, we hit it off and um, and then
Speaker 1: I had to convince him to start a band with me.
Speaker 1: What was it about horses that appealed to I can't say,
Speaker 1: I mean outside of you know, I had really good taste.
Speaker 1: As it turns out. I mean, it's one of the
Speaker 1: greatest records I ever made. And I did buy it
Speaker 1: and listened to it on the day that it was released,
Speaker 1: which is kind of crazy. But you've spoken about the
Speaker 1: cover art appealed to you too, Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: an incredible image. But she represented something other and something
Speaker 1: to me alien, and part of that was this this
Speaker 1: um uh openness is fluidity about sexuality that I think
Speaker 1: certainly resonated with me and with 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 in a kind of a live audience.
Speaker 1: She's a great conversation. Yeah, but um you related to
Speaker 1: that area. It's really really the third song I think
Speaker 1: it was, Birdland is the song that touched me in
Speaker 1: a way that um, I don't think anything i'd ever
Speaker 1: touched me before. And I stayed up all night listening
Speaker 1: to it. I went to school next day and I said,
Speaker 1: that's that's what I'm gonna do that's that's it. And
Speaker 1: then it took me two years to find people that
Speaker 1: I could play with. UM that didn't work out very well.
Speaker 1: I wound up moving to Athens, uh, following my father's retirement,
Speaker 1: and and UM started the band. And when you leave Athene,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a kind of gestation there in Athens
Speaker 1: and performing in clubs in all over Georgia. Are you like, well,
Speaker 1: what kind of do what's the what's their? Could you
Speaker 1: get into there when you're at that level? Well, it
Speaker 1: was early days, um, Uh, so there wasn't really a circuit.
Speaker 1: I mean one was kind of cobbled together by bands
Speaker 1: like RM and Pylon also from Athens, and Black Flag,
Speaker 1: Sonic Youth. Um. All these bands were playing like these
Speaker 1: pizza parlors and gay discos and kind of anywhere that
Speaker 1: would let a band set up in a corner. Music
Speaker 1: is very different than that it is now, and the
Speaker 1: way that music is consumed and the way that it's
Speaker 1: marketed and so forth. Uh. And most bands, I mean
Speaker 1: yours could be different. I don't know. I want to
Speaker 1: find that out. Most bands enter into a business agreement
Speaker 1: in order to take them to the next plateau. That's
Speaker 1: 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, which Prince never did and he always
Speaker 1: hated before. But um Uh, Peter and Mike particular, you
Speaker 1: were encyclopedic about about music, and they had read every
Speaker 1: biography and knew every in and out of every story
Speaker 1: of a band that got so far and then it
Speaker 1: fell apart because of this or this reason, and they
Speaker 1: were determined to prevent that from happening to us. Who
Speaker 1: did you sign with? Who was your first label you
Speaker 1: signed with? The first label was UM that we signed
Speaker 1: with was I R. S Records, Miles Copeland UM, and
Speaker 1: he was very generous looking back. I mean we didn't
Speaker 1: like each other very much at the time, but he
Speaker 1: allowed us. Well, he was a business guy, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't that interested in the business part of what was
Speaker 1: going on. I just wanted to do what we did,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to do it our way. And who
Speaker 1: in the band was taking care of business? Mike? No,
Speaker 1: we had Uh. We had a manager and a lawyer
Speaker 1: who were helping us. And so nobody in the band.
Speaker 1: You had to rely on people you trusted to take
Speaker 1: care of it, and it all worked out well. You
Speaker 1: were happy. We were really lucky in that regard, and
Speaker 1: you know, we we kept our eye on it and
Speaker 1: didn't allow those things that break up bands to break
Speaker 1: us up. So we had a really long, great career
Speaker 1: and chose the time to disband, and I think we
Speaker 1: even did it was the time we most broke up
Speaker 1: from correct, we even did that, right, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: over and over right. So describe for people who don't
Speaker 1: know and I really don't care about the um the
Speaker 1: kind of tedious details of it, in the personal details
Speaker 1: of it. But you know, you look at a movie
Speaker 1: like Let It Be, and you don't see people storming out,
Speaker 1: you don't see people yelling at each other, you don't
Speaker 1: see the negativity they've obviously uh left that out or
Speaker 1: they was never captured on camera. When people are making
Speaker 1: an album and there's that kind of attention for people
Speaker 1: don't understand the music business, particularly rock and roll business,
Speaker 1: what typically happens? What do people get? Well, I can't conflict.
Speaker 1: I've never seen Let It Be for you. I'm not
Speaker 1: a giant fan but um, but um, you know, a
Speaker 1: wet fan. I'm not a giant fan of the Beatles.
Speaker 1: I mean I understand, I recognized what they did, but
Speaker 1: I never they never touched me from the beginning, and
Speaker 1: so I never kind of you know, I feel the
Speaker 1: same way about Captain Beefheart and I just never really
Speaker 1: was my thing. Um, but they wrote some good songs,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. I mean, let it be might have
Speaker 1: been before Reality TV or or it was was that
Speaker 1: before after um American Family know that? Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: that was the early seven what's the one that was
Speaker 1: done about Bob Dylan? And um was that Penna Baker
Speaker 1: that followed Bob Dylan? And there were there was there
Speaker 1: was some kind of people walking out of rooms and
Speaker 1: insulting each other and what have you. When you had
Speaker 1: conflicts with people you make music with, what is the conflict?
Speaker 1: But typically I I mean I was very young and
Speaker 1: and and um and very shy, and so I would
Speaker 1: just shut down. I would go into a kind of
Speaker 1: a quiet you know, I would I would be silent
Speaker 1: for three days, which nobody wanted because it made it.
Speaker 1: It made everything impossible. Those guys, you know, we're we're
Speaker 1: more loud and um often got their way, but often
Speaker 1: it kind of pulled me out of you know, we're
Speaker 1: in a in a in a band dynamic. Everyone's got
Speaker 1: an idea, in an opinion. And what happened, what happens
Speaker 1: when it all comes together, is this this beautiful compromise
Speaker 1: where one person over kind of overseas one part, another
Speaker 1: overseas another part. Somehow it all works. And that's the
Speaker 1: conductor who's that's chemistry. So that chemistry served us pretty
Speaker 1: well for most of her career. But but it was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was at times very very difficult, and
Speaker 1: and and and and I'm proud of the the times
Speaker 1: that 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. So Jah, the
Speaker 1: song Lotus is a good example of a song that
Speaker 1: we were called 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 get um to to to arrive
Speaker 1: at a place that made sense. Live the song is
Speaker 1: faster and we're adrenaline because we're performing it in front
Speaker 1: of people or whatever, and um and it got a
Speaker 1: lot better. It got a real lot better. So for
Speaker 1: my money, you know, the recording of that song is
Speaker 1: kind of dis interesting document of of a moment in time.
Speaker 1: But the but but the real song emerged in live performance.
Speaker 1: I mean, because I don't I don't know anything about this,
Speaker 1: and I always see what I see in films or
Speaker 1: television or what I have here. Is there a producer
Speaker 1: or like who decides, especially in the early days before
Speaker 1: you become big stars, like who's sitting there sitting They're going, well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna come in here and will drop that note
Speaker 1: down a little bit. Who's who's the decider? We always
Speaker 1: we we always had finals, We always had final cut
Speaker 1: on everything. So all of our records were produced with
Speaker 1: a producer, but we were co producing, so the band
Speaker 1: had the final saying final cut. Was there one of
Speaker 1: you who had a better ear than the other in
Speaker 1: terms of how this music should be mixed? Do somebody
Speaker 1: have a gift for that? Right? Everybody had an opinion, sadly,
Speaker 1: m did you like performing live? I loved it? What's
Speaker 1: the first time you performed live? Because Murmur becomes the
Speaker 1: album of the year from Rolling Stone, you beat out Thriller.
Speaker 1: How did you feel about that? I wanted to crawl
Speaker 1: into a hole one during myself. Don't want to be famous. No,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be famous, But but my idea you
Speaker 1: did want to be famous. My idea of fame was
Speaker 1: this kind of teenage fantasy version of it. It didn't
Speaker 1: require all the work and all the scrutiny and all
Speaker 1: the kind of like all the stuff, Like being able
Speaker 1: to look you in the eye and sit here and
Speaker 1: talk about myself is something that it took decades for
Speaker 1: me to be able to do, and that that's not
Speaker 1: my nature. But um, why do you think it's not
Speaker 1: your nature? Well, I mean you are a shy person. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I still am. But I've I've managed, over the course
Speaker 1: of fifty six years to kind of emerge. I always
Speaker 1: say to people on a person of adulthood, but I
Speaker 1: say to people, I think I am a shy person,
Speaker 1: and they look at me to go, you're kidding and
Speaker 1: out of your mind. Just overcame it so extraordinarily. The
Speaker 1: thing you figure out when you're around a lot of
Speaker 1: creative people is is that if you're a creator, you
Speaker 1: have to create. It's not a choice. It's not something
Speaker 1: that you do because you want to be famous. It's
Speaker 1: something that or because you want to be richer, 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 weak from the chaff when it comes
Speaker 1: to um a culture that now allows people to be
Speaker 1: famous just for fact of being famous, or that you're
Speaker 1: you're acknowledged and recognized for something other than a talent
Speaker 1: or 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 heard and we're gonna sing, and they
Speaker 1: call up someone, so we're gonna sing bally High and
Speaker 1: also this orchestra wild be like Bannan. The music would
Speaker 1: play behind I'm sitting there in a chair, the orchestras
Speaker 1: five behind me, and I get this chill that just
Speaker 1: shoots right up my skull, like, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is music. You know, what was the first time you
Speaker 1: stepped out in front of a stadium and crab? What
Speaker 1: was your first big first moment? What was your first
Speaker 1: pole Jim and Yanni momentum. We one of the one
Speaker 1: of the things that Miles Copeland, who had I R.
Speaker 1: S Records, did was he put us on a um
Speaker 1: on a bill at Chase Stadium, UH with Joan Jett
Speaker 1: and the Black Hearts opening for the Police. So we
Speaker 1: played sixty people. We had, we played five songs. I
Speaker 1: said I would do it if I could wear a
Speaker 1: wedding dress someone someone had offered me. 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 them.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm gonna do it. So I went looking
Speaker 1: for a wedding I couldn't find one. I found a tuxedo,
Speaker 1: so I wore a tuxedo instead of really ratty tuxedo.
Speaker 1: Did you tell the guys in the band you would
Speaker 1: plan on wearing a wedding day? Yeah? And they were
Speaker 1: cool with it. They were fine with They didn't care,
Speaker 1: they didn't give a fuck. Um. They wanted you to
Speaker 1: be you. But but I I remember it because it
Speaker 1: was raining, uh, and we had five songs, and we
Speaker 1: had and it was this giant place and to the
Speaker 1: band it meant everything because the Beatles had had famously
Speaker 1: performed there. To me, it was just as big outdoor
Speaker 1: as your wedding day. It was my wedding day right
Speaker 1: as it turns out. And my dress. You were getting
Speaker 1: married to sixty people. My dress wasn't starched. Um, how
Speaker 1: did it feel? You know? What's interesting is that I
Speaker 1: don't really remember the show so much. I remember the backstage,
Speaker 1: what was happening. Andy Warhol was there. That was thrilling
Speaker 1: for me. Um, Matt Dylan was there. And this was
Speaker 1: after not the outside. I was what was the Rumble Fish.
Speaker 1: He had 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 Jettson.
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, Joan jett knows Matt Dilon, How
Speaker 1: exciting is that? And we were kind of peeking through
Speaker 1: the window, and then there was a knock at the
Speaker 1: door and it was Matt Dillon and he was a
Speaker 1: big r M fan. So we sat with us and
Speaker 1: we talked for a long time, and I was kind
Speaker 1: of touched by that, very touched by that. That's what
Speaker 1: I really remember, the kind of adrenalized ballet high moment.
Speaker 1: I mean, put me in front of any number of
Speaker 1: people and I would get that adrenaline rush and I
Speaker 1: kind of would go into a trance. M radio Heads
Speaker 1: lead singer Tom York told me he was in awe
Speaker 1: of Michael Stipe's on stage persona. 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, it was off.
Speaker 1: You can hear that whole interview at Here's the Thing,
Speaker 1: Dot Org coming up, Michael Stipe talks about how R. E. M.
Speaker 1: Became politically aware and discusses his fear of collage. Yes, collage.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the singer and artist Michael Stipe.
Speaker 1: When fellow rock frontman Eddie Vetter inducted Stipe into the
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: he had this to say, such wisdom in the feelings
Speaker 1: of these songs that I think they helped us find
Speaker 1: things that we knew were inside us. And I can
Speaker 1: say that personally there are things that I hold and
Speaker 1: feel very deeply about inside here that Michael Stipe put
Speaker 1: in there himself. This all happens without ever being able
Speaker 1: to understand a thing. He was saying, When I think
Speaker 1: of you and your music, it's the beauty and the love,
Speaker 1: the romance, the passion, all of it goes up to
Speaker 1: a certain point and you will not get sentimental about it.
Speaker 1: You're the least sentimental performers. It's there and you go
Speaker 1: right up to the precipice and there's not it's not
Speaker 1: sent cry right now, thank you for saying that. I'm
Speaker 1: a very sentimental person, and I despise sentimentality. I despise nostalgia.
Speaker 1: Do you agree that that's a hallmark of the music
Speaker 1: you guys make. I'm very flattered that you say that
Speaker 1: we go to that line and we never cross it.
Speaker 1: In my in my most closer than anybody I know, well,
Speaker 1: thank you. In my most critical moments, I would say, well, no,
Speaker 1: we crossed it many times and and not so um,
Speaker 1: not so gracefully. But but I appreciate that. That's a
Speaker 1: huge compliment. As a writer, that's a huge compliment and
Speaker 1: as a singer, because you can the way the way
Speaker 1: something is performed, the way you put it down on tape,
Speaker 1: really can can make or break it. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of an example of someone who's very, very brilliant
Speaker 1: with that. I think Sia Um is brilliant with the
Speaker 1: way she uses her voice. There are other singers through
Speaker 1: throughout our lives, and we don't have to name names
Speaker 1: who have amazing voices but have no idea how to
Speaker 1: use them, or they overuse them, or their producers. They
Speaker 1: do that crack at the high note every single time,
Speaker 1: and by the end of the song, you're exhausted and
Speaker 1: the thing they do. There's a thing now when you're
Speaker 1: when your music is when you're moving along, regardless of
Speaker 1: after murmur and after you start to take off and
Speaker 1: really make it. One of the things I'm always curious
Speaker 1: about for highly successful musicians of whatever type of music
Speaker 1: is is music in your life, other people's music, and
Speaker 1: then the obligation and or or even just the ambition
Speaker 1: to now drive your music to the next level, does
Speaker 1: it push other music out? Or if you always listened
Speaker 1: to music. And that's a really good question, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to answer it honestly. There's a point where I
Speaker 1: stopped being able to listen to other music. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't because I was afraid I was going to um
Speaker 1: accidentally imitator steal something from someone. Music became un interesting
Speaker 1: to me. Now that I don't make music anymore, I'm
Speaker 1: able to listen to music. I'm able to read novels,
Speaker 1: uh and books. I'm able to absorb myself into TV
Speaker 1: shows and films that I just didn't have time for.
Speaker 1: I mean, I realized when RIM disbanded five years ago.
Speaker 1: It took me about six months to recognize how much
Speaker 1: of how much of a creative kind of fog I
Speaker 1: had been in with that band. I'm such a perfectionist,
Speaker 1: I'm such a control freak. I oversaw every aspect of
Speaker 1: the band and and along with Peter and Mike and
Speaker 1: Bill when he was there. Um, but it completely consumed
Speaker 1: my every waking thought the entire time that that band
Speaker 1: was going, and so other things fell fell away, and
Speaker 1: I think I became a little bit of a less
Speaker 1: interesting person for now working having a life that allowed
Speaker 1: me to not write a song about being on the
Speaker 1: road or being in a band, or write songs about
Speaker 1: the industry of music, which is the most pathetically boring
Speaker 1: thing you could possibly you know, focus on what people do.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite songs that we ever wrote is
Speaker 1: called Supernatural, Super Serious, and it's this insanely beautiful narrative,
Speaker 1: really beautiful narrative about innocence and teenage ideas and how
Speaker 1: those are flattened or dismissed or disregarded as an adult
Speaker 1: and then you come back, it comes back at some
Speaker 1: point and you realize you're still that person. So that's
Speaker 1: all in this lyric for me, I probably need to
Speaker 1: write a little short story to go along with it.
Speaker 1: For anybody that listens to the song, because I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that I successfully managed to get all that into
Speaker 1: the lyric. Have you ever thought about writing a book
Speaker 1: like that where you explicate all the lyrics of your songs?
Speaker 1: Or I'm actually doing it, but I'm not doing a
Speaker 1: very good job of it. About well, I'm as you
Speaker 1: may have figured out it in this conversation. I think
Speaker 1: in a very um, 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 known.
Speaker 1: I'm legendary, if you will, for your passions about causes.
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of people are involved in causes,
Speaker 1: and um, when does that begin for you in your
Speaker 1: career when you say to yourself, I can't keep my
Speaker 1: mash and I want to start talking about this. Well,
Speaker 1: it was it was the Reagan It was the Reagan era,
Speaker 1: and the country was falling apart in a way that
Speaker 1: that was quite evident. And we were then as as
Speaker 1: a band traveling overseas representing America and getting ship thrown
Speaker 1: at us for you know, the cruise missiles that were
Speaker 1: being sent over and put into position. In parts of Europe,
Speaker 1: people were very very unhappy about that. We became politicized
Speaker 1: quite quickly as a band um and you know we
Speaker 1: I'm a child of the seventies. You know, we came
Speaker 1: out of a place where um, everything that the sixties
Speaker 1: was and this is I think perfectly encapsulated. Again. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about Patty Smith for a moment, but when she
Speaker 1: wrote Just Kids, that book to me is like The
Speaker 1: Big Chill, but for sentimental douche bags, for people that
Speaker 1: for people that lived through it and were at one
Speaker 1: point told your sellout and you have to get a job,
Speaker 1: and all of your dreams and inspirations, everything that you
Speaker 1: thought you could do with this thing is flatlined. Go
Speaker 1: get a job. Just Kids provided those people with the
Speaker 1: first for the first time, I think, a way of
Speaker 1: looking at themselves as children, as teenagers, as young people
Speaker 1: again and saying that innocence was quite beautiful and in
Speaker 1: fact we were right. Things didn't go our way, but
Speaker 1: we had a place. The people that dropped out in
Speaker 1: the sixties and then had to get jobs became the
Speaker 1: people that were teaching me in sixth, seventh, eighth, and
Speaker 1: 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, what's going on everything.
Speaker 1: But I had I had an entire year long course
Speaker 1: called environmental science, taught by Miss Enoch and it was
Speaker 1: there was a there was a textbook, and it was
Speaker 1: taught in public schools in Texas. Anyway, as a twelve
Speaker 1: thirteen year old, I knew about all this energy stuff.
Speaker 1: And and so then as an adult, you know, you
Speaker 1: you you become politicized quite quickly when you travel outside
Speaker 1: of the country, and that's what happened to us. Are
Speaker 1: you still are you still speaking at it some issues
Speaker 1: right now? Are you still working with organizations now? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean you know, I currently. I was a big
Speaker 1: supporter of Bernie Sanders and went out and advocated for
Speaker 1: him and for his campaign. Um. I mean, it's so
Speaker 1: sad that we have allowed ourselves to sink to this
Speaker 1: level of really entertainment, that's what it is. I blame
Speaker 1: media completely for it, including which sorry to say it,
Speaker 1: but later but I wanted to ask, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is really what what what does it feel like from inside?
Speaker 1: What does it feel like playing that character? It's satire,
Speaker 1: it's brilliantly done, but it's still adding to the kind
Speaker 1: of synicism, it's adding to the push of of you know,
Speaker 1: Warhole said, I think Andy Warhol said, there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as bad publicity. How have we created this monster?
Speaker 1: How how have we put our particular American brand onto
Speaker 1: this thing? Well, there's two things that come to mind.
Speaker 1: One is when I was approached by Lauren, who's a
Speaker 1: friend of mine, to do it, my first impulse was no,
Speaker 1: because in order to do that effectively, you need to
Speaker 1: have some appreciation of the person. So if I do
Speaker 1: Tony Bennett, if I do Pacina or DeNiro or this
Speaker 1: one of that one, whatever you can achieve or even
Speaker 1: kind of achieve, Half asked. It's there's some kernel of
Speaker 1: appreciation for which Trump I have none. Now the show
Speaker 1: and giving people that chance, I have had a obviously
Speaker 1: a wave of people I've had. It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: unsettling to me, actually, how many people come up to
Speaker 1: me all day long and they thank me because they
Speaker 1: say we needed something to laugh about, they needed a release.
Speaker 1: Um see, I think that I pray to God that
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton wins for only one reason. And I never
Speaker 1: thought I could sink I could distill it down to
Speaker 1: one reason, but that the court. The court is the
Speaker 1: key to everything. We have to keep her accountable. But
Speaker 1: but but I agree with you that, yeah, that there's
Speaker 1: there there there are some very problematic issues with her
Speaker 1: as well. I'm not a big fan, right, but tell
Speaker 1: me what was there? Something specifically what it was? And
Speaker 1: but we have got to I think all of us
Speaker 1: have to go and vote, uh, if not for someone,
Speaker 1: against someone, and we all have to vote against Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: That's that. Let's say that as a Sanders supporter, by
Speaker 1: the way, but I'm gonna vote Sanders had a chance.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna vote for her. Sander's had a chance, and
Speaker 1: and and and in a telegenic age where the two
Speaker 1: where the two nominees now are old, say just looked even. Oh.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had a friend of my turned to
Speaker 1: me and he said to me, he goes, he doesn't
Speaker 1: have a chance. I said, why because people don't want
Speaker 1: geppetto to be the President of the States. And I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: if you want to look at it that way. His
Speaker 1: would have been a flawed administration as well, but it
Speaker 1: would have been I think it would have been flawed
Speaker 1: in something that is more, it would have been braver.
Speaker 1: It would have certainly been braver. Um. I was talking
Speaker 1: to other people who work in your business, which and
Speaker 1: liked my business, which is a very youth centered business
Speaker 1: in terms of the performing and the whole of the
Speaker 1: ark of it, and all of us as we get older,
Speaker 1: when this business it changes. Was there a moment that
Speaker 1: you realize it started to change for you, not even
Speaker 1: in terms of people's perception of you and the response
Speaker 1: to you, your response to it. Did you sit there
Speaker 1: one day and go, I didn't even know if I
Speaker 1: want to do this anymore? This way many times as
Speaker 1: an as an older person in a you know, rock
Speaker 1: and roll band, for our pop band. Uh M, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a point where I said, this is this is
Speaker 1: not um, this doesn't look. It's not a good look.
Speaker 1: And I we I we have to either grow with
Speaker 1: it and be who we are right now m 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. Uh. Not the perpetual teenager thing
Speaker 1: that a lot of people kind of go down that
Speaker 1: route and the cameras get a little fuzzier and pulled
Speaker 1: back a little more, and all the girls in the
Speaker 1: front row are paid extras, yeah, or or or the
Speaker 1: girls are in their mid fifties as well, you know,
Speaker 1: and I I just didn't I didn't particularly see myself
Speaker 1: in that role. I'm now exploring all these other mediums
Speaker 1: that I'm really thrilled to be working on other than music.
Speaker 1: And I'm also, although I'm not prepared, not ready 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, who Casey Spooner from the band Fisher
Speaker 1: Spooner um working on an album for a couple of
Speaker 1: years and got really stuck and said, I need help
Speaker 1: with a song. Can you help me? And I went
Speaker 1: in and it was very clear to me what needed
Speaker 1: to be done, and I told him, But there was
Speaker 1: another piece of music playing while we were talking, and
Speaker 1: I said, can I comment on that one as well?
Speaker 1: And long story short, I wound up producing the album
Speaker 1: and co writing every song on it. And so as
Speaker 1: a producer and writer, I've kind of come back into
Speaker 1: music through Fisher Spooner and that Records out in the Spring.
Speaker 1: You've been making films, film production. I stopped making film.
Speaker 1: You just stopped. I stopped filming because I wanted, I
Speaker 1: needed to just step away from everything. And so when
Speaker 1: when when iri AM disbanded five years ago, I pretty
Speaker 1: much shuddered both of my production companies, thrilled that we
Speaker 1: had done what we did in the um. It was
Speaker 1: twenty seven years, I guess of I made about that
Speaker 1: many feature films, most of them very independent, the most
Speaker 1: famous one being being John Markovic with Spike Jones it UM.
Speaker 1: I was really ready to just step away from everything
Speaker 1: and explore other mediums that I not wanted to. Photography
Speaker 1: needed to really look into, and photography the primary one now.
Speaker 1: Photography was my first love, photography before music, and so
Speaker 1: a lot of the work that I'm doing now it's
Speaker 1: not I don't. I think of myself as an artist
Speaker 1: who works in all these different mediums, and music is
Speaker 1: one of them and obviously the most the one I'm
Speaker 1: best known for. But photography has come back around. I'm
Speaker 1: doing a book I'm working on a book now through
Speaker 1: the guy Jonathan Burger brought me to n y U
Speaker 1: to teach art for the False semester and that was thrilling.
Speaker 1: And out of that is coming a book of my
Speaker 1: work that I'm working with him on, So that's really exciting. Um,
Speaker 1: you are such a unique and such a kind of
Speaker 1: particular person and you know that. Thank you. And you
Speaker 1: you're performing well. I mean you're performing. You're singing, and
Speaker 1: your style and your appearance and your kind of demeanor
Speaker 1: and everything you're You're very was acting ever in the
Speaker 1: cards for you? Did you ever think about going off
Speaker 1: and making films and acting? I was asked, Um, I
Speaker 1: was offered the role of the psychopathic killer in the
Speaker 1: film seven. They wanted someone very unexpected, and unfortunately my
Speaker 1: band was going on tour the same month that they
Speaker 1: started filming, so I wasn't and it required nothing I
Speaker 1: had to do is run down some hallways and look scary.
Speaker 1: There was no dialogue. UM, I'm so glad you didn't
Speaker 1: do that. I would have loved doing it. I I
Speaker 1: didn't like the way that movie ended. They changed something
Speaker 1: at the end that meant that Brad pets rather than
Speaker 1: Morgan Freeman's character killed Kevin Spacey in the end, which
Speaker 1: shouldn't have happened. It didn't make sense. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I no, I don't. I always felt like
Speaker 1: just because something is available to you through fame, or
Speaker 1: through connections or through proximity, it doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: should say yes to it, And so I've been very
Speaker 1: careful with I mean, the other mediums that I'm working
Speaker 1: in now are things that sometimes terrify me. I'm doing
Speaker 1: collage work. I'm I despise collage. I'm working with I'm
Speaker 1: working with hand handwriting in my own line, and I'm
Speaker 1: a terrible drawer. But I'm I'm working with the things
Speaker 1: that I most fear about myself, and I'm and I'm
Speaker 1: not showing them to the public unless I really think
Speaker 1: that I've got something. But this book that I'm working on,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of working through a lot of these things
Speaker 1: with the book. So it's it's been thrilling. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that you should play Boo Radley, but you should
Speaker 1: play a Boo Radley type of character, where, no matter
Speaker 1: how unique or odd, he may strike people in the
Speaker 1: hair and make up the whole appearance deep down inside,
Speaker 1: he's this beautiful soul. I would like you to stick
Speaker 1: to that at the idiot man child, I'm that's what
Speaker 1: my dog thinks. I'm the idiot Mantel, the freaky Angel.
Speaker 1: I like to call the weird Angel, no psycho killer.
Speaker 1: When I meet UM directors like Todd Haynes, uh and
Speaker 1: Spike Jones, or I meet actors like yourself, for John Malkovic,
Speaker 1: I realized that these are people that wake up with
Speaker 1: a need and a desire to do that thing, and
Speaker 1: I have so much respect for it that um for
Speaker 1: me to even try. You know, I don't play trombone either.
Speaker 1: Why would I Why would I even want to ever
Speaker 1: try to play trombone? But I I I leave that
Speaker 1: to those that have that need, that wake up with
Speaker 1: that desire. My desires are in the same ballpark, but
Speaker 1: slightly different. And so that's where I've tried to spend
Speaker 1: my short time on this earth, hopefully two or at
Speaker 1: least I'll take uh really focusing on the things that
Speaker 1: I feel like I might be able to that will
Speaker 1: challenge me, that will challenge hopefully whatever audience I'm able
Speaker 1: to attain, and we'll keep me on my toes keep
Speaker 1: me curious. I'm gonna end this with what I consider
Speaker 1: and I don't assume you're gonna agree with me, But
Speaker 1: beyond my substantial appreciation for you and your artistry and
Speaker 1: the band and the music and the whole legend of R.
Speaker 1: E M and so forth, I want to say that
Speaker 1: you occupy a very unique place in my life. Very
Speaker 1: few pieces of music make the cut and get on
Speaker 1: this playlist? Which is the song I can play in
Speaker 1: the gym that puts the fire in my ass to
Speaker 1: go work out? And Crush with Eyeliner is on that playlist?
Speaker 1: Great songs. You fire up those guitars and I'm like,
Speaker 1: let's go, baby. I'm thrilled to help push you onto
Speaker 1: the thrilling ale. R E ms landmark record Out of
Speaker 1: Time is being rereleased for its anniversary on November. Well,
Speaker 1: Crush with Eyeliner came later in the band's catalog, And
Speaker 1: if that doesn't get you going, I don't know what will.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the
Speaker 1: thing