E-mail a friendMichael Stipe
airdate December 1, 2004
Frontman for R.E.M. - the Georgia-based band often described as the 'godfathers of alternative rock' - Michael Stipe has been on the music scene since the early '80s. He's known for his complex lyrics and his social and political activism. In the late '90s, he started to focus more on Hollywood and became a successful indie film producer, with credits that include American Movie and the acclaimed Being John Malkovich. Stipe is also a photographer and often contributes to the artwork of R.E.M.'s albums.
Michael Stipe
Tavis: Michael Stipe is the lead singer of the seminal band R.E.M., which has been together now for nearly 25 years. He's also a successful movie producer, just in case this music thing doesn't work out. Heh heh. Among his films, this year's critically acclaimed movie "Saved," starring Mandy Moore. As for the music, R.E.M.'s latest CD is called "Around the Sun." In stores now, by the way. Here is some of the video for the single "Leaving New York."
Michael Stipe
Leaving was never my proud,
Leaving New York, never easy, I saw the light fading out.
Tavis: Nice suit, Michael.
Stipe: Thank you.
Tavis: Heh heh heh! Nice to meet you, too.
Stipe: It's a pleasure.
Tavis: Some folk are legends in their own mind. After 25 years, you guys are really--are legends in your own time. You feel like a legend?
Stipe: Well, it's not really mine to say, is it? But thank you for saying that. I appreciate it.
Tavis: How does it feel, though, 25 years later, to still be doing this and doing the tour thing that you guys do so much of?
Stipe: Well, it's a little weird, you know, in that the thing that I find so much satisfaction and the one thing in my life that brings me huge amounts of challenge and epiphany and liberation and freedom and all the things that I think we all look for is also the thing that I do for my job. So I feel like a very lucky guy, really, that--I never expected this thing would continue even to make one or two records, much less have my life, more than half my life at this point.
Tavis: Yeah. Did you--I hear the part that you didn't expect that it would necessarily last this long, but in terms of what you started out to do, what you intended to do initially with your music, have you been able to accomplish that, number one, and number two, is what you're doing with your music now the same thing that you initially wanted to get in the music game for?
Stipe: Well, I never wanted to be in the music game, and we met all of our goals very early on. Simply, we had no goals. Heh.
Tavis: Ha ha ha!
Stipe: We just wanted to do--We wanted to travel, and we, myself and Peter Buck, the guitar player in the band, particularly were fans of the--of the idea of "On the Road," the Jack Kerouac book, and putting together a band and traveling around in a van was our way of doing that. We had no intention ever of even making a record. But we were playing clubs that needed--In order to book us, they needed something on vinyl, so we made our first single, and it was chosen the single of the year by "The Village Voice," and everything kind of--
Tavis: Stop. Stop, 'cause that's a fun--that's a fascinating story for me. So the real plan here was to put together a band and to travel and to do what you enjoy doing? It really wasn't to make records?
Stipe: Well, no. We didn't really want to make records in the beginning. We just wanted to play clubs, and we're really essentially a live band that got--got turned into a band that makes records in the studio. And then that became its own thing, and we kind of learned how to--We learned the craft of songwriting kind of publicly. It was probably about our third record that I think we felt confident enough to feel like what we were doing was actually worthwhile. Although, people loved the first record and the second record.
Tavis: Yeah. What do you find fascinating about songwriting? What makes a good songwriter a good songwriter? We can all write stuff, but what makes songwriting, to use your word, worthwhile?
Stipe: Well, I can only speak for myself. My contribution, largely, to what we do--and I think that's the most challenging to me--is that, well, my body is my instrument, so I have to have some modicum of talent as a singer. Now, some of my favorite singers, Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, can't sing their way out of a paper bag, but they have very--they have a confidence about--about the limited range that they have. I have a very limited range as well, and really--really I totally lost track of what I was gonna say.
Tavis: That's quite all right.
Stipe: Ask me again.
Tavis: Actually I want to move this forward, because you said something now that is very--is much more interesting than what I asked you. That's my way of saying I forgot what I asked. But--
Stipe: OK. Heh heh heh.
Tavis: Ha ha ha! But the Bob Dylan comment you make really is fascinating to me. Because if you ask a guy on the street, you play a Bob Dylan record for someone, a guy on the street, and you ask the guy, "What do you think it is?" they say, "Man, that is trash. This guy cannot sing." And yet Bob Dylan--Speaking of legends, that guy is a legend. And folk who, you know, really appreciate and value music have made this guy legendary, and yet, to your point, you say Dylan can't sing his way out of a paper bag. Why then, what is it that this guy does that connects?
Stipe: Well, he can--he can hit notes that I can't hit. I'm not--That takes us to a whole other conversation, which is that a lot of what passes for music and singing is really just kind of vocal calisthenics, people that have the range, but maybe have no idea what to do with it. I would no sooner lump myself in with Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, because I think that would be incredibly arrogant, but those guys took what they had, which was very limited in terms of range, actual vocal range, but what they were writing and what they were singing about and the passion with which they did so is really kind of the foundation--And neither one of them came from this. They kind of helped create it. The foundation of what my band came out of, which was punk rock. It was kind of the idea that you don't have to be--you're not this supertalented creature that fell to Earth to deliver messages of brilliance to the people. You're a regular guy who just loves what you do, and it's really the passion and the feeling behind it that pushes you forward. Dylan has that for me 10,000 times over.
Tavis: When you say it's about your passion for it, I accept that. I don't mean to get too philosophical here, but I'm fascinated by the way your brain works. When you say it's about the passion--
Stipe: Uh-oh. Heh heh heh.
Tavis: When you say you're passionate about the music, I respect that, and I get that. I wonder, though, whether or not you think that when the Creator decided that there would be this thing called music, that there was an intended purpose for it? What do you--I wonder whether you think there is--there's a reason, a purpose for why music exists, why you have been blessed to do what it is that you do?
Stipe: I have no idea. I'm not sure that I can answer that. I mean, for me, music provides all those things that I said earlier, which is that at a very young age, when I was 15, I heard a record that completely changed my world, simply because it was unlike anything I had heard before, the first album by Patti Smith. I was 15 years old, and I decided then and there that that's what I was going to do was to form a band and be a musician. I didn't even know at the time that I could sing. I only sang because I was too lazy to learn how to play an instrument, so--And I happen to have an OK voice, and I've learned how to use it. But music makes the heart sing. I mean, that--It's a dumb thing to say, but there's epiphany and beauty and brilliance in music, and sometimes even--And our music is often somewhat melancholic, or is charged with that, and for good reason. Sometimes music can make your heart sing, because it takes you to that kind of commonplace that we all share as part of the human condition, and through going there or recognizing that other people go there, it lightens your load a little bit.
Tavis: That wasn't a dumb thing. In fact, it was quite poetic. A very good answer. You are now 44, I think.
Stipe: Almost 45.
Tavis: Almost 45. My man Prince is 45 now.
Stipe: He's a little older than me.
Tavis: A little older than you, yeah. So Prince has hit 45. I raise that only because I'm looking at you guys, and The Stones, of course, are way over 45, I'm looking at you guys who are still doing this tour thing, still hitting the road, and in your case and certainly in Prince's case, with all this energy on stage. So when are you ever going to get tired of this, or get tired out by this?
Stipe: That would be a good question for all the people in my life. Nobody can keep up with me. Part of what I have is a very hypercharged metabolism, which makes touring easy for me. The danger, I think, of touring is that adrenaline is the most powerful drug that I've ever taken in my life, and you can find yourself going out and doing things simply to keep that high going. I think a lot of bands maybe go longer than they should for that reason, combined with other reasons. For me, it's simply a way to--I love performing live. It's brilliant. But it's a way to get the songs that I've worked so hard at making--it's a way to get them out to people so they can hear them.
Tavis: When you say that bands sometimes, certain bands go longer than they should, I wouldn't ask you to be presumptuous and you've been very clear about saying you didn't want to speak for other people, so let me ask you from Michael Stipe's point of view, what would be an indicator that a band has gone on, to your statement, too long?
Stipe: Well, for me, it always comes down to the music and the work. If the work isn't there, then everything around it, all the fun stuff, traveling the world, having money, having famous friends, having the supposedly very glamorous lifestyle which is incredibly glamorous, but there's also the really dirty side of it and the mundane side of it. None of that is worth a hill of beans if the music isn't there. So if one were to recognize that the music is starting to suck, then I think it's up to you to kind of pull back and either change that or find a second career.
Tavis: To your part earlier about the boundless energy that you have, you put some of that to good use when you did the tour before the election with Mr. Springsteen and others. 33 cities you guys did. Was it worth it?
Stipe: Was it worth it?
Tavis: Yeah. I ask that because--
Stipe: You mean because of the election results? Yes, it was incredibly worth it, only in how I found myself feeling in that room, which was not proud of myself for having done something like this, but really there's an energy and a feeling I think in this country right now of personal activism that I saw missing for some time after 9/11, when people felt really unable to raise a voice, much less a voice of dissent. And the sea change that occurred, for me, it was epiphanal and very specific in New York City about a year and a half ago. But the moment where this country kind of quit being held down and feeling like they couldn't say anything--I call it the great quiet--ended and became this period of great personal activism, where people are wearing shirts and they're arguing publicly and they're putting their yard sign in their yard, and they want to have an opinion, and they want their voice to be heard. The "Vote for Change" tour was nothing more than that. It was five bands that wanted to do something in this very important election year, and found we had a much stronger voice if we came together as a coalition.
Tavis: Let me close our conversation by going back to the CD, the latest CD "Around the Sun." I won't surprise you when I tell you that while your fans obviously love everything you do--
Stipe: Not everything. Thank you for saying that.
Tavis: I'm glad you said that, because it's a nice setup right quick here. Because the critics have not been as kind, many of the critics have not been as kind about this CD as they have been about previous R.E.M. CDs and to those persons, you say what about this CD?
Stipe: To the critics?
Tavis: To the persons who think that this isn't R.E.M.'s best work. I've seen a few critics who have said this isn't R.E.M.'s best stuff.
Stipe: I've learned how to read--certain members of my band don't read press. I do. I've learned how to read stuff, and you figure out who is writing more about themselves than about the work or who actually gave it the time of day. I think critics have lost sight of what it is that they do, which is they're paid to listen to music and then turn other people on to it. Maybe they're overwhelmed in their job, maybe they're bitter, maybe they're facing, which I find a lot, midlife crisis and they're kind of projecting that on to me and on to my work, and that happens a lot. I think it's a tremendous CD, and I stand behind it. But it is, like most of our music and like bands like Radiohead, it's not music that you're going to really get the first time. You have to give it a couple of listens. But I'm very proud of it.
Tavis: As well you should be. And I'm sure the fans will decide. Who cares about the critics anyway? The fans will decide whether or not they like "Around the Sun," the new CD from R.E.M. Michael Stipe, an honor to have you on the program. Nice to meet you.
Stipe: Thank you.
Tavis: Up next on this program, legendary women's basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer. Stay with us.
Back to December 1, 2004