Michael Stipe on R.E.M. and Fear of Collage

occasionally inscrutable albums and slowly evolving over time. But then came the album Out of Time, ri E M's true arrival as global rock stars, writing largely on the strength of Losing My Religion, which was in constant notation on TV and radio throughout The record is now being reissued, and it was the moment lead singer Michael Stipe stepped out with a bit more confidence into his role as

front band. Both intensely private and flamboyantly public, Stipe led the band through twenty more years of bold experimentation, massive success, and the occasional misstep, but never insincerity. RI E M disbanded in two thousand eleven, and for the last five years, Stipe has channeled his new time and energy into photography, teaching, and politics, and while his songs will almost certainly last

in the cultural memory for a very long time. Stipe himself has even longer term ambitions, like living until he's a hundred and twenty. I think that, you know, I think the way things are advancing, it would be possible to live a happy life well into your hundreds. If was the outer edge and you go to one years, what are all things you want to do in those

twenty five years? I would hope that I inherited from my mother a great curiosity about the world, and I've watched her age and remain curious and want to keep learning and growing. And I would hope that I would have that you were an army child. Ye, army Brad, I don't know, army. I'll let you say Bratt was most of the nurture and so forth from your mom because she was she was she more on the scene and Dad was gone all the time. Did you pick up things from him to He came and went a lot.

But what what being an army Bratt did to myself and my sisters was to create probably a closer family dynamic than regular people have, because we picked up and moved so much that we were we were the foundation. Um. It made you closer. It made us much closer and so a very very very lucky man in their regard. I'm one of the ones who I like I landed,

like I got the gold ring. And when it comes to family, yeah, I mean you you have two sisters, two sisters, so the three of your total, and on a day around you see them where they or they often like Alaska and Fiji were the whole family lives in Athens, Georgia, and they're in Athens. I know Athens. I know Athens yea. And that it wasn't Mike was

Mike from Athens, Mike Mills actually from Macon. We all met, we were from we all met a new g a um of the places I read that you lived when you were moving around in Europe and in the South, and so was there one place you stayed the longest. You're a recollection of memory of a place you were in. Remember Germany? Yeah? I remember Germany more than anywhere really. I think Germany and then well it's hard to say, because I'm um, I kind of see everything, so but

then I don't really remember everything. But Germany was for me a time that I feel like I remember almost every single day that we were there. Which was about just under two years. How old were you seven and eight? How old were you when you'd say, I'm not a musician and I don't play music, but I feel like I have, you know, Elvis lives inside me, you know, I have. I have this desire like everybody everyone, which is they could sing and get up there and perform

and have that effect on people. And you'd hear MacArthur park, you know, Richard Harris would sing McArthur and and I go, god, I remember listening to that song on a transistor radio. And I go back and look up the date and I go, oh my god, I was nine. It's so much younger. It's in you so much younger. Can you can you remember when how old you were when you let that in and starts? What a great song to reference.

I mean, that's one of those really insanely bizarre pop songs that you know, here's a guy that doesn't sing, he's he's a drunk most of his life, he's a he's brilliant, and for some crazy, for some reason, the songwriter tags him to sing this insanely beautiful song about nothing about a cake with green icing that's melting in the rank it's really it's you know when you win in Yeah, I love that song and I love the song, and the guy who wrote it was one of one

of our great American songwriters, Jimmy Webb. I did. I did an interview with him once for a book that he wrote in and he called me on the phone to talk about songwriting and we had an hour to talk and I couldn't get a word in edge twice he talked the entire time. I couldn't wait for the book to come out to see what I had said because I don't remember having said anything. It was pretty pretty good. But but do you remember, like an age was it was your time in your life when you

remember when music came in, music comes in. It was always there. Um My my earliest members before the my kind of ground zero point was at the age of fifteen when Patti Smiths and I bought it the day it came out. But prior to that, the songs that really resonated with me on radio or um the Banana Splits, the Archies, Um. You know, it was really kind of crappy,

beautiful pop music, The Monkeys, The Monkeys. I didn't have a brother or sister who turned me on to the and and and Alice Cooper and um, the Rolling Stones of the Beatles, where my bandmates did have that. I listened to what kids listened to and what the cereal

boxes were telling you was music. Um, But following that, it was really Benny in the Jets by Elton John and the song um, Hey Kids, boog you too, jump Up and Down and Blues Wait Shoes rock On by David which I kind of rewrote as a song drive on automatic for the people. It opens, it opens that record, and um, I rewrote that song. I rewrote a bunch of songs from the seventies and songs that I remembered.

Like Everybody Hurts was my take on Love Hurts. Kind of a direct left there, but but it turned into a very different song. And do you learn to play an instrument? I played accordion when I was well. I wanted to play Oregon, but um, we couldn't afford the next instrument up, so I wound up with an accordion and I played quite well. You weren't accomplished a communists.

You could have been on Sullivan now when No. But but as many people they're entry into music is whether it's you know, they pick up a guitar and there's obviously a discipline, a curiosity. I'm always mesmerized by this by men and women who they pick up a guitar when they're nine an ten years or they just start to explore that or beyond that. In a more traditional way.

Someone's parents are saying, sit down at that piano and you're gonna do this lesson for a year and grind them down until they break through and they can really play the piano. Then they're grateful that they have this skill that attracts all these people. Um, was there anything like that for you? There was no formal musical training none, So thus you knew is it safe to us him? Did you always know you wanted to be a singer? No? No, Um. The whole the whole idea of punk rock was that

anybody could do this. That it was. It wasn't this kind of holy handed down from on high talent or skill. Um. And I was and remained quite literal. And so when they said anybody can do this, I said, okay, I'll do it. And I guess I was too lazy to learn. And you believe that everybody, anybody can do it? Absolutely not much. What changed? Everybody can't sing, but I don't really want to hear it right? Um? What changed? When did you realize you could sing? Well? Honestly, about ten

years ago. I realized that my voice was that specific. I never through most of our career. I didn't understand why people liked my voice or thought or could not could. I just didn't know that my voice was that different. And it's a very different voice. It's a very recognizable voice. So when you were singing in the in the beginning of your career, it was awful. We were We were terrible. I mean I sang rockabilly. You mentioned Elvis Presley earlier.

I was singing in this kind of hiccup. Elvis Presley's style probably inspired by The Cramps. I I loved Lux Interior and I loved the Cramps, and I saw them perform on I think one of the first shows they ever did outside of New York City, and um, and I thought he was just amazing and they were incredible.

So I kind of picked up that rock and belly thing. Um, but I don't think I really developed a voice until my Well, people that love murmur would argue with that but anyway, I didn't feel confident with my voice until probably the third or fourth album, which was six years in. When you were at U g A with the other three. What do you think that they saw on you that they picked you for that job? Well, it sounds arrogant

to say it, but charisma. It was that that that Genese quad that we all know when someone walks into a room or and when I walk into a room, I don't have that, but when I'm on stage performing with that band behind me, it was. It just was the chemistry between all of it. Really, when you open your mouth and saying those songs with those guys, or something happened you believe that. How did you find each other? Clubs? Record store? Record store? You saw Mills and a record store.

Peter Buck and he looked really cool and a lot of people back then didn't look really cool, but he looked really cool. And um, he would you know, he would turn me on to different records that that would come into the store and and like Suicide, the first Suicide album, we hit it off and um, and then I had to convince him to start a band with me. What was it about horses that appealed to I can't say, I mean outside of you know, I had really good taste. As it turns out. I mean, it's one of the

greatest records I ever made. And I did buy it and listened to it on the day that it was released, which is kind of crazy. But you've spoken about the cover art appealed to you too, Yeah, I mean it's

an incredible image. But she represented something other and something to me alien, and part of that was this this um uh openness is fluidity about sexuality that I think certainly resonated with me and with with millions of other people who are questioning their sexuality or or or emerging into something that they weren't familiar with or something that wasn't at the time quite accepted or acceptable. We're doing her on this show in a kind of a live audience.

She's a great conversation. Yeah, but um you related to that area. It's really really the third song I think it was, Birdland is the song that touched me in a way that um, I don't think anything i'd ever touched me before. And I stayed up all night listening to it. I went to school next day and I said, that's that's what I'm gonna do that's that's it. And then it took me two years to find people that I could play with. UM that didn't work out very well.

I wound up moving to Athens, uh, following my father's retirement, and and UM started the band. And when you leave Athene, I mean there's a kind of gestation there in Athens and performing in clubs in all over Georgia. Are you like, well, what kind of do what's the what's their? Could you get into there when you're at that level? Well, it was early days, um, Uh, so there wasn't really a circuit. I mean one was kind of cobbled together by bands like RM and Pylon also from Athens, and Black Flag,

Sonic Youth. Um. All these bands were playing like these pizza parlors and gay discos and kind of anywhere that would let a band set up in a corner. Music is very different than that it is now, and the way that music is consumed and the way that it's marketed and so forth. Uh. And most bands, I mean yours could be different. I don't know. I want to find that out. Most bands enter into a business agreement in order to take them to the next plateau. That's

disadvantageous for them. Did that happen to you? No? Um, when you started signing with people, did you maintain all the rights tool you're publishing? Yeah, you did, and we own our masters, which Prince never did and he always hated before. But um Uh, Peter and Mike particular, you were encyclopedic about about music, and they had read every biography and knew every in and out of every story of a band that got so far and then it fell apart because of this or this reason, and they

were determined to prevent that from happening to us. Who did you sign with? Who was your first label you signed with? The first label was UM that we signed with was I R. S Records, Miles Copeland UM, and he was very generous looking back. I mean we didn't like each other very much at the time, but he allowed us. Well, he was a business guy, and I wasn't that interested in the business part of what was going on. I just wanted to do what we did, and I wanted to do it our way. And who

in the band was taking care of business? Mike? No, we had Uh. We had a manager and a lawyer who were helping us. And so nobody in the band. You had to rely on people you trusted to take care of it, and it all worked out well. You were happy. We were really lucky in that regard, and you know, we we kept our eye on it and didn't allow those things that break up bands to break

us up. So we had a really long, great career and chose the time to disband, and I think we even did it was the time we most broke up from correct, we even did that, right, Yeah, I mean over and over right. So describe for people who don't know and I really don't care about the um the kind of tedious details of it, in the personal details

of it. But you know, you look at a movie like Let It Be, and you don't see people storming out, you don't see people yelling at each other, you don't see the negativity they've obviously uh left that out or they was never captured on camera. When people are making an album and there's that kind of attention for people don't understand the music business, particularly rock and roll business, what typically happens? What do people get? Well, I can't conflict.

I've never seen Let It Be for you. I'm not a giant fan but um, but um, you know, a wet fan. I'm not a giant fan of the Beatles. I mean I understand, I recognized what they did, but I never they never touched me from the beginning, and so I never kind of you know, I feel the same way about Captain Beefheart and I just never really was my thing. Um, but they wrote some good songs, that's for sure. I mean, let it be might have been before Reality TV or or it was was that

before after um American Family know that? Yeah, that was that was the early seven what's the one that was done about Bob Dylan? And um was that Penna Baker that followed Bob Dylan? And there were there was there was some kind of people walking out of rooms and insulting each other and what have you. When you had conflicts with people you make music with, what is the conflict? But typically I I mean I was very young and and and um and very shy, and so I would

just shut down. I would go into a kind of a quiet you know, I would I would be silent for three days, which nobody wanted because it made it. It made everything impossible. Those guys, you know, we're we're more loud and um often got their way, but often it kind of pulled me out of you know, we're in a in a in a band dynamic. Everyone's got

an idea, in an opinion. And what happened, what happens when it all comes together, is this this beautiful compromise where one person over kind of overseas one part, another overseas another part. Somehow it all works. And that's the conductor who's that's chemistry. So that chemistry served us pretty well for most of her career. But but it was, you know, it was at times very very difficult, and and and and and I'm proud of the the times that we failed. We failed horribly and but we all know,

you know, we didn't blame the other guy. We didn't blame the industry, we didn't blame radio. We just agreed that we had not made the best record or the best song or the best recording. Some of my favorite recordings of our work is not what wound up on records, but what wound up in live performances. So Jah, the song Lotus is a good example of a song that we were called Lotuses. Lotus is the name of the song, and it's a good song, but it's way too long

on the record. It's too slow, which is my fault. And we recorded it and mixed it at a time when we weren't really talking to each other, so it was very difficult to get um to to to arrive at a place that made sense. Live the song is faster and we're adrenaline because we're performing it in front of people or whatever, and um and it got a lot better. It got a real lot better. So for my money, you know, the recording of that song is kind of dis interesting document of of a moment in time.

But the but but the real song emerged in live performance. I mean, because I don't I don't know anything about this, and I always see what I see in films or television or what I have here. Is there a producer or like who decides, especially in the early days before you become big stars, like who's sitting there sitting They're going, well, you're gonna come in here and will drop that note down a little bit. Who's who's the decider? We always we we always had finals, We always had final cut

on everything. So all of our records were produced with a producer, but we were co producing, so the band had the final saying final cut. Was there one of you who had a better ear than the other in terms of how this music should be mixed? Do somebody have a gift for that? Right? Everybody had an opinion, sadly, m did you like performing live? I loved it? What's the first time you performed live? Because Murmur becomes the album of the year from Rolling Stone, you beat out Thriller.

How did you feel about that? I wanted to crawl into a hole one during myself. Don't want to be famous. No, I wanted to be famous, But but my idea you did want to be famous. My idea of fame was this kind of teenage fantasy version of it. It didn't require all the work and all the scrutiny and all the kind of like all the stuff, Like being able to look you in the eye and sit here and talk about myself is something that it took decades for me to be able to do, and that that's not

my nature. But um, why do you think it's not your nature? Well, I mean you are a shy person. Yeah, yeah, I still am. But I've I've managed, over the course of fifty six years to kind of emerge. I always say to people on a person of adulthood, but I say to people, I think I am a shy person, and they look at me to go, you're kidding and out of your mind. Just overcame it so extraordinarily. The thing you figure out when you're around a lot of creative people is is that if you're a creator, you

have to create. It's not a choice. It's not something that you do because you want to be famous. It's something that or because you want to be richer, because you want to be recognized for something, for this or

that you create because you have to. And maybe that's what separates the weak from the chaff when it comes to um a culture that now allows people to be famous just for fact of being famous, or that you're you're acknowledged and recognized for something other than a talent or a thing that you can offer that's unique or interesting. One time I did a concert style version of South Pacific and it was Reba McIntyre and Brian Stokes Mitchell are the leads, and we're there and Paul Jim and

Yanni's there conducting this orchestra. It was it was it was like a ninety piece orchestra and like, Okay, we're ready, We're gonna be heard and we're gonna sing, and they call up someone, so we're gonna sing bally High and also this orchestra wild be like Bannan. The music would play behind I'm sitting there in a chair, the orchestras five behind me, and I get this chill that just shoots right up my skull, like, oh my god, this is music. You know, what was the first time you

stepped out in front of a stadium and crab? What was your first big first moment? What was your first pole Jim and Yanni momentum. We one of the one of the things that Miles Copeland, who had I R. S Records, did was he put us on a um on a bill at Chase Stadium, UH with Joan Jett and the Black Hearts opening for the Police. So we played sixty people. We had, we played five songs. I said I would do it if I could wear a

wedding dress someone someone had offered me. Someone said I dare you for a hundred dollars, which at the time was a very very large amount of money to me, I dare you to wear a wedding dress, she's taking them. I said, I'm gonna do it. So I went looking for a wedding I couldn't find one. I found a tuxedo, so I wore a tuxedo instead of really ratty tuxedo. Did you tell the guys in the band you would plan on wearing a wedding day? Yeah? And they were

cool with it. They were fine with They didn't care, they didn't give a fuck. Um. They wanted you to be you. But but I I remember it because it was raining, uh, and we had five songs, and we had and it was this giant place and to the band it meant everything because the Beatles had had famously performed there. To me, it was just as big outdoor as your wedding day. It was my wedding day right as it turns out. And my dress. You were getting

married to sixty people. My dress wasn't starched. Um, how did it feel? You know? What's interesting is that I don't really remember the show so much. I remember the backstage, what was happening. Andy Warhol was there. That was thrilling for me. Um, Matt Dylan was there. And this was after not the outside. I was what was the Rumble Fish. He had done Rumblefish and and I was a huge fan, and he was kind of like hanging out in between these two trailers. One was ours, the other was Joan Jettson.

I was like, wow, Joan jett knows Matt Dilon, How exciting is that? And we were kind of peeking through the window, and then there was a knock at the door and it was Matt Dillon and he was a big r M fan. So we sat with us and we talked for a long time, and I was kind of touched by that, very touched by that. That's what I really remember, the kind of adrenalized ballet high moment. I mean, put me in front of any number of people and I would get that adrenaline rush and I

kind of would go into a trance. M radio Heads lead singer Tom York told me he was in awe of Michael Stipe's on stage persona. You'd stand there for the first two tunes barely move. He was a sort of lightning conductor and he was just waiting for it to hit, and then when it hit, it was off. You can hear that whole interview at Here's the Thing, Dot Org coming up, Michael Stipe talks about how R. E. M. Became politically aware and discusses his fear of collage. Yes, collage.

This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing. My guest today is the singer and artist Michael Stipe. When fellow rock frontman Eddie Vetter inducted Stipe into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in two thousand and seven, he had this to say, such wisdom in the feelings of these songs that I think they helped us find things that we knew were inside us. And I can say that personally there are things that I hold and feel very deeply about inside here that Michael Stipe put

in there himself. This all happens without ever being able to understand a thing. He was saying, When I think of you and your music, it's the beauty and the love, the romance, the passion, all of it goes up to a certain point and you will not get sentimental about it. You're the least sentimental performers. It's there and you go right up to the precipice and there's not it's not sent cry right now, thank you for saying that. I'm

a very sentimental person, and I despise sentimentality. I despise nostalgia. Do you agree that that's a hallmark of the music you guys make. I'm very flattered that you say that we go to that line and we never cross it. In my in my most closer than anybody I know, well, thank you. In my most critical moments, I would say, well, no, we crossed it many times and and not so um, not so gracefully. But but I appreciate that. That's a

huge compliment. As a writer, that's a huge compliment and as a singer, because you can the way the way something is performed, the way you put it down on tape, really can can make or break it. I'm trying to think of an example of someone who's very, very brilliant with that. I think Sia Um is brilliant with the way she uses her voice. There are other singers through throughout our lives, and we don't have to name names who have amazing voices but have no idea how to

use them, or they overuse them, or their producers. They do that crack at the high note every single time, and by the end of the song, you're exhausted and the thing they do. There's a thing now when you're when your music is when you're moving along, regardless of after murmur and after you start to take off and

really make it. One of the things I'm always curious about for highly successful musicians of whatever type of music is is music in your life, other people's music, and then the obligation and or or even just the ambition to now drive your music to the next level, does it push other music out? Or if you always listened to music. And that's a really good question, and I'm going to answer it honestly. There's a point where I

stopped being able to listen to other music. And it wasn't because I was afraid I was going to um accidentally imitator steal something from someone. Music became un interesting to me. Now that I don't make music anymore, I'm able to listen to music. I'm able to read novels, uh and books. I'm able to absorb myself into TV shows and films that I just didn't have time for. I mean, I realized when RIM disbanded five years ago.

It took me about six months to recognize how much of how much of a creative kind of fog I had been in with that band. I'm such a perfectionist, I'm such a control freak. I oversaw every aspect of the band and and along with Peter and Mike and

Bill when he was there. Um, but it completely consumed my every waking thought the entire time that that band was going, and so other things fell fell away, and I think I became a little bit of a less interesting person for now working having a life that allowed me to not write a song about being on the road or being in a band, or write songs about the industry of music, which is the most pathetically boring thing you could possibly you know, focus on what people do.

One of my favorite songs that we ever wrote is called Supernatural, Super Serious, and it's this insanely beautiful narrative, really beautiful narrative about innocence and teenage ideas and how those are flattened or dismissed or disregarded as an adult and then you come back, it comes back at some point and you realize you're still that person. So that's all in this lyric for me, I probably need to write a little short story to go along with it.

For anybody that listens to the song, because I'm not sure that I successfully managed to get all that into the lyric. Have you ever thought about writing a book like that where you explicate all the lyrics of your songs? Or I'm actually doing it, but I'm not doing a very good job of it. About well, I'm as you may have figured out it in this conversation. I think in a very um, circuitous and tangential way, and so I'll always come back to my point, but I lose

most people in the way. I have great stories, and I'm a terrible storyteller. Now the you are very well known. I'm legendary, if you will, for your passions about causes. I mean, a lot of people are involved in causes, and um, when does that begin for you in your career when you say to yourself, I can't keep my mash and I want to start talking about this. Well, it was it was the Reagan It was the Reagan era, and the country was falling apart in a way that

that was quite evident. And we were then as as a band traveling overseas representing America and getting ship thrown at us for you know, the cruise missiles that were being sent over and put into position. In parts of Europe, people were very very unhappy about that. We became politicized quite quickly as a band um and you know we I'm a child of the seventies. You know, we came out of a place where um, everything that the sixties

was and this is I think perfectly encapsulated. Again. We'll talk about Patty Smith for a moment, but when she wrote Just Kids, that book to me is like The Big Chill, but for sentimental douche bags, for people that for people that lived through it and were at one point told your sellout and you have to get a job, and all of your dreams and inspirations, everything that you thought you could do with this thing is flatlined. Go

get a job. Just Kids provided those people with the first for the first time, I think, a way of looking at themselves as children, as teenagers, as young people again and saying that innocence was quite beautiful and in fact we were right. Things didn't go our way, but we had a place. The people that dropped out in the sixties and then had to get jobs became the people that were teaching me in sixth, seventh, eighth, and

ninth grade. And so in the early seventies in America, in public school there was a very clear understanding that it was our job to talk about and fix what became dramatic climate change issues, energy problems, what's going on everything. But I had I had an entire year long course called environmental science, taught by Miss Enoch and it was there was a there was a textbook, and it was taught in public schools in Texas. Anyway, as a twelve thirteen year old, I knew about all this energy stuff.

And and so then as an adult, you know, you you you become politicized quite quickly when you travel outside of the country, and that's what happened to us. Are you still are you still speaking at it some issues right now? Are you still working with organizations now? Yeah? I mean you know, I currently. I was a big supporter of Bernie Sanders and went out and advocated for him and for his campaign. Um. I mean, it's so sad that we have allowed ourselves to sink to this

level of really entertainment, that's what it is. I blame media completely for it, including which sorry to say it, but later but I wanted to ask, I mean, this is really what what what does it feel like from inside? What does it feel like playing that character? It's satire, it's brilliantly done, but it's still adding to the kind of synicism, it's adding to the push of of you know, Warhole said, I think Andy Warhol said, there's no such thing as bad publicity. How have we created this monster?

How how have we put our particular American brand onto this thing? Well, there's two things that come to mind. One is when I was approached by Lauren, who's a friend of mine, to do it, my first impulse was no, because in order to do that effectively, you need to have some appreciation of the person. So if I do Tony Bennett, if I do Pacina or DeNiro or this one of that one, whatever you can achieve or even kind of achieve, Half asked. It's there's some kernel of

appreciation for which Trump I have none. Now the show and giving people that chance, I have had a obviously a wave of people I've had. It's it's kind of unsettling to me, actually, how many people come up to me all day long and they thank me because they say we needed something to laugh about, they needed a release. Um see, I think that I pray to God that Hillary Clinton wins for only one reason. And I never thought I could sink I could distill it down to

one reason, but that the court. The court is the key to everything. We have to keep her accountable. But but but I agree with you that, yeah, that there's there there there are some very problematic issues with her as well. I'm not a big fan, right, but tell me what was there? Something specifically what it was? And but we have got to I think all of us have to go and vote, uh, if not for someone, against someone, and we all have to vote against Donald Trump.

That's that. Let's say that as a Sanders supporter, by the way, but I'm gonna vote Sanders had a chance. I'm gonna vote for her. Sander's had a chance, and and and and in a telegenic age where the two where the two nominees now are old, say just looked even. Oh. I mean, I had a friend of my turned to me and he said to me, he goes, he doesn't have a chance. I said, why because people don't want geppetto to be the President of the States. And I thought, okay,

if you want to look at it that way. His would have been a flawed administration as well, but it would have been I think it would have been flawed in something that is more, it would have been braver. It would have certainly been braver. Um. I was talking to other people who work in your business, which and liked my business, which is a very youth centered business in terms of the performing and the whole of the ark of it, and all of us as we get older,

when this business it changes. Was there a moment that you realize it started to change for you, not even in terms of people's perception of you and the response to you, your response to it. Did you sit there one day and go, I didn't even know if I want to do this anymore? This way many times as an as an older person in a you know, rock and roll band, for our pop band. Uh M, yeah, there's a point where I said, this is this is not um, this doesn't look. It's not a good look.

And I we I we have to either grow with it and be who we are right now m or stop. And I think we did a pretty good job of being people in their early forties, mid forties, late forties,

early fifties doing this. Uh. Not the perpetual teenager thing that a lot of people kind of go down that route and the cameras get a little fuzzier and pulled back a little more, and all the girls in the front row are paid extras, yeah, or or or the girls are in their mid fifties as well, you know, and I I just didn't I didn't particularly see myself in that role. I'm now exploring all these other mediums that I'm really thrilled to be working on other than music.

And I'm also, although I'm not prepared, not ready to be a pop star again, a pop singer, I'm dabbling in music and it feels yeah, yeah, I mean I started actually about a year and a half ago. A friend called me, who Casey Spooner from the band Fisher Spooner um working on an album for a couple of years and got really stuck and said, I need help

with a song. Can you help me? And I went in and it was very clear to me what needed to be done, and I told him, But there was another piece of music playing while we were talking, and I said, can I comment on that one as well? And long story short, I wound up producing the album and co writing every song on it. And so as a producer and writer, I've kind of come back into music through Fisher Spooner and that Records out in the Spring.

You've been making films, film production. I stopped making film. You just stopped. I stopped filming because I wanted, I needed to just step away from everything. And so when when when iri AM disbanded five years ago, I pretty much shuddered both of my production companies, thrilled that we

had done what we did in the um. It was twenty seven years, I guess of I made about that many feature films, most of them very independent, the most famous one being being John Markovic with Spike Jones it UM. I was really ready to just step away from everything and explore other mediums that I not wanted to. Photography needed to really look into, and photography the primary one now. Photography was my first love, photography before music, and so a lot of the work that I'm doing now it's

not I don't. I think of myself as an artist who works in all these different mediums, and music is one of them and obviously the most the one I'm best known for. But photography has come back around. I'm doing a book I'm working on a book now through the guy Jonathan Burger brought me to n y U to teach art for the False semester and that was thrilling. And out of that is coming a book of my work that I'm working with him on, So that's really exciting. Um, you are such a unique and such a kind of

particular person and you know that. Thank you. And you you're performing well. I mean you're performing. You're singing, and your style and your appearance and your kind of demeanor and everything you're You're very was acting ever in the cards for you? Did you ever think about going off and making films and acting? I was asked, Um, I was offered the role of the psychopathic killer in the

film seven. They wanted someone very unexpected, and unfortunately my band was going on tour the same month that they started filming, so I wasn't and it required nothing I had to do is run down some hallways and look scary. There was no dialogue. UM, I'm so glad you didn't do that. I would have loved doing it. I I didn't like the way that movie ended. They changed something at the end that meant that Brad pets rather than Morgan Freeman's character killed Kevin Spacey in the end, which

shouldn't have happened. It didn't make sense. But but yeah, I mean, I no, I don't. I always felt like just because something is available to you through fame, or through connections or through proximity, it doesn't mean that you should say yes to it, And so I've been very careful with I mean, the other mediums that I'm working in now are things that sometimes terrify me. I'm doing collage work. I'm I despise collage. I'm working with I'm working with hand handwriting in my own line, and I'm

a terrible drawer. But I'm I'm working with the things that I most fear about myself, and I'm and I'm not showing them to the public unless I really think that I've got something. But this book that I'm working on, I'm kind of working through a lot of these things

with the book. So it's it's been thrilling. I'm not saying that you should play Boo Radley, but you should play a Boo Radley type of character, where, no matter how unique or odd, he may strike people in the hair and make up the whole appearance deep down inside, he's this beautiful soul. I would like you to stick to that at the idiot man child, I'm that's what my dog thinks. I'm the idiot Mantel, the freaky Angel. I like to call the weird Angel, no psycho killer.

When I meet UM directors like Todd Haynes, uh and Spike Jones, or I meet actors like yourself, for John Malkovic, I realized that these are people that wake up with a need and a desire to do that thing, and I have so much respect for it that um for me to even try. You know, I don't play trombone either. Why would I Why would I even want to ever try to play trombone? But I I I leave that to those that have that need, that wake up with that desire. My desires are in the same ballpark, but

slightly different. And so that's where I've tried to spend my short time on this earth, hopefully two or at least I'll take uh really focusing on the things that I feel like I might be able to that will challenge me, that will challenge hopefully whatever audience I'm able to attain, and we'll keep me on my toes keep

me curious. I'm gonna end this with what I consider and I don't assume you're gonna agree with me, But beyond my substantial appreciation for you and your artistry and the band and the music and the whole legend of R. E M and so forth, I want to say that you occupy a very unique place in my life. Very few pieces of music make the cut and get on this playlist? Which is the song I can play in the gym that puts the fire in my ass to go work out? And Crush with Eyeliner is on that playlist?

Great songs. You fire up those guitars and I'm like, let's go, baby. I'm thrilled to help push you onto the thrilling ale. R E ms landmark record Out of Time is being rereleased for its anniversary on November. Well, Crush with Eyeliner came later in the band's catalog, And if that doesn't get you going, I don't know what will. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing