Two of the most popular shows from the Here’s The Thing archives are Alec’s conversations with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, and R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. These are fascinating, ground-breaking artists who influenced each other. Thom Yorke started Radiohead in 1985 when he was just a teenager. With each of the group’s nine studio albums, Radiohead evolved its sound and, at times, pushed the music industry. In this 2013 interview, Thom Yorke talks with Alec about working with longtime collaborators, fatherhood, and his fame. Michael Stipe was a founding member of R.E.M., a band that practically defined indy rock for much of the 80s and 90s. R.E.M. broke up in 2011 and, in this conversation from 2016, Michael Stipe talks to Alec about what getting time back has meant to his art, politics, and ability to read, listen, and enjoy the world.
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I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from My Heart Radio. I'm Frank Imperial and you're listening to Here's the Thing from I Heart Radio. Hey Frank, what's going on? Is there a technical problem? No problem on this side. You just asked me to host an archived show. Oh right, why do I keep forgetting that? Well? Good luck with the show, Frank. Oh are you going to mute me? Definitely? Two of the most popular shows from the more than two fifty archival episodes of Here's the Thing are radioheads Tom York and r E MS. Michael Stipe, the frontman for two of the most interesting and influential bands of the last several decades, have a lot in comment. Michael Stipe was a founding member of R A M, the band that practically defined alternative music in the eighties and early nineties. R M released fifteen studio albums and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in two thousand seven. RIM broke up in two thousand and eleven, and Michael Stape has been exploring other ways of making art and music since then. But first Alex two interview with Tom York. He formed Radiohead with some of his friends when he was just sixteen years old. Since then, the band has been nominated for eighteen Grammys, won three, and sold tens of millions of records. Radioheads nine studio albums have demonstrated the group's comfort with experimentation. Tom ne York said technology made some of that easier. After we did Okay Computer. I finally in the late late nineties you could like go on tour with the laptop and it was powerful enough that you could record, edit, use synthesizers, bit into it and it wouldn't crash, and it was fairly stable. So I first started getting into it then. And what I thought was really interesting is when we were working on Okay Computer, I started using learning the software that we were using the studio to We were still mostly working on type old school, but I suddenly thought, we'll hang on a minute. If I can learn how all this equipment works, I'll have a completely different way of thinking about how to write. So I forced myself to learn all this equipment and learn to use the laptop because a lot of music I was into was being made electronically anyway, and I kind of thought it would be interesting to do it within the band, because normally musicians don't fall into doing the production side of it or building the tracks. They're like, stay this side of the studio, offense with the mix, and let someone total. So I definitely was much more into blurring that up. Did n produce both your solo albums? Yeah? He does. He does a lot, and he did all of the radio, Yeah he does. You attribute that to having that kind of faith of someone. You find someone you trust. I mean not all the time, and we do argue a lot, but to have someone who's like, um I sounding board all the time, it makes everything so much more fun because if you're if you're knocking out ideas, you can't edit them and knock them out at the same time. Like if you're on the stage and you're trying to get through your part or whatever, you have to have someone out front saying, okay, that's not working. I mean I do on my own a lot. I do work. You know, you generate ideas, but all I then have is a mountain of ideas that gradually I don't have to sit through and it just takes so long. It's so much more fun sharing it with someone and you think about your four days into computerized music. He was into it. I did wonder when I first started doing it, but he was into it because he watched me doing it in such a different way to him. But I mean, I was like a kid being given a hammer. I was just handling away on stuff. I didn't really know what I was doing, but he was kind of fascinated about that, you know, and he'd come and literally tidy up the mess I've done on the computer. What were other people? Who were other people that were working in that in that area that you listened to who is making then? Then well then it was I was obsessed with a X twin then and Oteca. There was a lot of really interesting things happening in Britain. Then on this label called Warp and it was it was first spell as in the warp w a RP like the floor is warped after the fun Yeah, And then I say, with your accent, that could have been anyone of forwards. When on this label called wo Wo Warm War, Warp Wall War, War whoop, yeah, saying like we're saying here in the United States war it's war country and Western record bit you bottom now and there boy, so you you as you were, you were obsessed with the music that was on Whoop Records because it didn't have any guitars and I was having a troubled relationship with my guitar at the time. Is that true? Well not really. It's just like I ended up being in a band, signing this to this big record label, and it's a band and when big letters, so certain things go with that. But yet when I was at college, I was listening to a lot of other things, and after a while it was like, oh, this is it's really annoying that I felt like we couldn't break out of that. So I just started forcing us to break out of that because it didn't make sense to me. You've been with those guys for how long now we started when we're sixteen Radiohead, which is um Now I'm forty four, so that's quite a while. And some bands that have had a tremendous longevity, obviously the Rolling Stones of the premier example, they've changed partners over the years, like they were the New York Yankees. You know, there's somebody else playing a third base every four or five years. But you guys, it's the same cast of people obviously, what do you attribute that to persistence my great diplomatic skills not but there must be times when they've I mean, I'll never mccurrently said to me, even the Beatles got tired of being the Beatles were the times you guys said there and looked at each other and said, I think we're done. I do that frequently, frequently, I mean at least the others too, not as much. They just wait for me to do it. Um. So, we just did a tour last year, right, and it was probably, in theory, the scariest one we've ever done, because it was lots of big gigs, which I normally am spending my time trying to shy away from. Why because you can't achieve technically in a large space where you normally want to exactly that you can't get across to people the right way, I felt. So we did spend a lot of time and effort coming up with like a stage design which used screens in a certain way which made it intimate, even though you know, some nights was like thirty or forty. People are trying to create some sort of intimacy with that, and when it worked, it was insane. It was because the upside of playing to that many people is you have this really crazy collective energy that you can tap into, like a crowd, you know thing. There's one show we did in Phoenix that sticks in my mind where there was something about maybe that it was in Phoenix and people don't get the opportunity those sort of people don't get the opportunity to get together that often or something. There was some sort of excitement within the crowd that was so great to play with. When when we hit it musically, it felt like the whole room, the whole of the building was moving. Honestly, we both came off you know that, and it's bombed. I understand that not from my own experience, but from seeing artists perform. You know. I often asked myself, why the hell would would you put yourself through this? Because it's very stressful. It's a lot of pressure, and for me mentally, I've just build myself up to it in my head gradually and it sounds really precious, but it messes with my head. I want to get to that given to me a couple of hours before you go out there, and you've got to blow this thing out for all these people and just stone cold silence, basically almost meditative. Well, yeah, I do. I do that and focused, I stand on my head for a bit and basically I'm completely on my own until five minutes before we go on, and then we're all in the room together, pacing up and down like wild animals, and then then we're on. But when we first started doing big shows, it was with my from Michael Stipe, and he does the total opposite. He literally he'll be talking to you and then someone taps in his should and then they're on. And I was like, how the hell do you do that? Man? And I tried to do it like that, I couldn't it, and so I ended up going did he did? Did you get any indication why Stipe could do that? There's a lot of nice spiritual tones inside of R. E. M's music too. Yeah, no, I don't know. I think what he used to do was 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, he was off. But he would wait and if he wasn't going to hit, he was still there three or four tunes later and waiting, he kind of warmed up in front of everybody, engaging it all, whereas I can't do that because I have to sort of be clear of everything before, you know, whatever, I need to um be completely empty. I started playing guitar when I was seven. I sat down and said I was going to be Brian May when it was a lot of bad thing to be. And then I tried to do I read like when I was ten or something. I read that he built his first guitar himself, which is when he still plays. So I tried to do that, but my efforts would in that sense, you were not Brian May in that sense of handcrafting of the guitar. And I had to cheat with the neck on the guitar. I found an older neighbor gave me a neck of an electric guitar. That great. Okay, that's good, but you know I was ten or eleven, so I was trying to like bolt it together to this other piece of wood that I had cut out, and it was just a disaster. But it kind of worked, but it was ugly. Was your family musical? Not really? No. The only one that sticks out is barently my great grandmother. She get really hammered and then stay up playing her pump organ thing downstairs all night and keep the family up. You were around, did your witness that I met her once and she was kind of she wore black. I was quite scary when I was really tiny. But now that your parents were artists musicians, no, no, no, no. When the guitar came into your life when you're seven, Brian May or no, was it music itself? And when you moved by music itself? Or was it like many people when they're very was rock stardom was? Never? It was? It was you weren't running around your bedroom imitating Jagger and you thought, like you want my My whole thing was we didn't have any sound system in the house. We had nothing, no high fi nothing except for in my dad's car and had a type player in it. So I when and would sit for hours. I would sit for hours and it was the sound of Brian May's guitar. Actually it was. It was one of those funny things where you know, when you turned something up and you're in a very controlled loud environment, just that sound was just you know, nothing else. It was that when you're that small and you've never I've never really heard music particularly at all up until that point. You know, it's funny, it's got a weird thing. But I mean, lots of kids at that age that you know, their parents didn't really have hi fires or anything as such. You know, guy I didn't know who had a high fight down the round and only played Albert, which I thought was worse than not having one. But that was me some of those goods. And then and then the guitar, and you're trying to fashion your own guitar by the time you're eleven, and then when you take another step toward deepening your commitment, how old are you when you form the band. I did have a band when I was eleven. It was very exciting, like going around to a friend's house is setting up and jamming, and all our mates would come and hang out and girls, which I thought, this is interesting, But that sort of fell two bits because I kept fighting with the drummer. And then when I was sixteen, I was thinking, well, okay, I need to get this together really and just went around the school sort of choosing people. So you went around picking people. I got it. I got it because he was dressed like Morrissey, and he had some cool socks, and I saw he had a guitar. I had no idea where they could play or not. I don't really care. I got Colin because I knew Colin could play very well and I needed a base player could play very well. But he had never played bass before. And his brother Johnny was this mythical musical prodigy, so roped him in. And then Phil was the only drama we knew anyway, So and and he had a house down the road that we could rehearse him and you and you lived where you grew up where well, this was at Abingdon School in near Oxford. And then when you form Radiohead when you're six team basically yeah, we started sort of writing, doing demos and messing about and it was, you know, it was quite interesting straight away that it was quite I think because Phil had quite a lot of experience. He was a bit older, and he'd had his home band, so he knew how to put things together a bit. And in fact, we used to go and do demos in his sister's bedroom like right from the beginning, which which was great. I mean, there's nothing better than like just starting off by just trying to write demos from scratch, even though you can't really play, even though you don't know each other. That's where you start, you know. It's kind of a nice way to figure out where you're about. What do you think you do best? You lead a band, you well, you you play guitar, you write music, you produce music, you do it, and you sing. What do you think your greatest strength is? If you had to pick one. So, I don't know what I'm doing, right, I like the fact that's I don't know what I'm doing. I think we're not. Honestly, I can't go I'll go through whole phrases where I've got a clue. I regularly lose complete confidence in what I'm doing. Why do you think that? Is? Partly because I think I don't quite understand how it happens. When what happens when the appreciation comes to you know, when you're when you're piecing something together right, things will fall into place you make it. Yeah, I mean, in some ways, the nicest bit about the creative thing, the nicest bit about recording and writing, is this sort of weird limbo where you in between scratching away scratching away nothing really happening, nothing really happening, and then something wants to be built and starts to get built. You just have to let it happen. And then it gets to the end and you and you look at it a few months later and go huh um, sort of weird amnesia that goes with it. Something will happen, one little sound goes off and you go, oh, that's really nice. When I was at school, I didn't get on with the school system at all. Um. I see it, and my son the same, that sort of the mechanics of how a school operates and how you're supposed to blend in or whatever. So I hid in the music stroke art department and had a great time there and discovered that actually that's what I wanted to do. Straight away, the heads of both schools just saw what I was up. This is the teacher that you often credit with your Yeah, where was the teacher's name, Terry James, But but it was him and my art teacher as well. Actually it was like someone sort of takes you and of the wing and say, well, you know what, you're actually quite good at. Mentoring is a very critical thing in this business. Yeah, because it's not. It's enough at that age, it's enough to just get a little push and then okay, what does someone push you in a different direction? Yeah, well that would be bad. How about do you go to the other I think you need engineering? Yeah, my father used to think. I used to get to advertising, which is like really brilliant. Yeah, I'd really be good at that, sending other people ship. Well, one thing you're good at is avoiding. My original question, which was what do you think your best at? And let's try to choose. If you can't, if you may, you don't mind, confine yourself to the list. I provide what do you think your best at? Okay, this is multiple choice guitar band, kind of you know, paternal figure, songwriting, producing, singing, I guess singing. What was singing to you? How did your singing evolve where you were right of where you are now where most people say you have one of the most evocative singing voices and all of music today. Well, basically went to a few singing lessons, but that was basically just so I could literally breathe right. You know, my favorite singers like bu York. When I watched Buyork sing It's in here, it's right here. They say in yoga and stuff that whatever it is, can't remember that that spot at the top of the forehead that you really Most singers like Neil Young's the same. He sings into this spot in his head and and what he's singing he's already heard, you know what I mean, He's hearing it come out. The same with with Buyork when she's singing, she's singing what she's hearing, So there's no force. It's a force in itself. It sent me a while to get that, you know, even when we were on tour with R. E. M. Back when we're doing the Benz in nineties six or whatever it was. I was still trying to figure it out then watching Michael and wanting to sound like Michael Bike. I couldn't, you know, because my voice is in a different tone completely and so on. But what I did learn, what you know, watching him, was again that thing of like watching someone who their voices in sort of command of them rather than the other way around. Yeah, but it's very natural, but it takes a long time for that to become natural. I think, like any singer, it takes a long time to find that thing, and it keeps changing to me how I sing now, or to me it feels different to a few years ago. It just does it, just does each of doything to do it. Well, yeah, there's probably some physical elements to it, but but also just where you're at, you know, because singing is nothing but like probably like that saying sing is nothing but being in a moment. That's it. Radioheads, Tom York, did you know that there are over two fifty episodes in the Here's the Thing archives. If you like these in depth conversations between Alec and other actors, policymakers, and musicians, go to Here's the Thing dot org and take a look around. After the break, Alec and Tom York talk about fatherhood and how it changes performing. I'm Frank Imperial in for Alec Baldwin on Here's the Thing. Tom York seems a little uneasy about his fame, and Alec wondered would he trade the trappings of being a celebrity for a better world. If I said to you, I snapped my fingers and you go back to having a very normal life and you're not you at all with everything that goes with it, and the rest of the world is elevated unless of the world gets better. Things you care about? I think of an issue you can I say to you Tom York, Tommy York, Tom, or you go back and the world gets better. Would you make that change to find better? It's a tricky question, but you do. It's not an either or, but you do care. But other things. Is there an issue that you're embracing now? Is there something you're involved with now? I well, in my slack asked fashion, I was helping um Greenpeace do this thing which was trying to stop drilling in the Arctic. But it sounds like it's kind of working because the company seem to be pulling out because they can't just pull up. Yeah, that's right. I don't think that's entirely down to us, but I think it definitely helped that we're making their life extremely difficult everywhere they turned. But challenge now is to turn the Arctic into reserve so it can't happen because what that was going to do is create this gold rush, you know, all rush up there, which was just going to be insane, and this at the same time where the ice is melting. Basically, they only started considering it was a possibility because the ice was melting. They thought, okay, great, maybe got a better chance of drilling, which is like, So I was kind of stuck in that for a while because Yeah, to me, the irony of it was too much. Um, I don't know where I'll go next. I don't I find it very stressful. I did get involved. A few years ago. We did this thing in Britain, the first Climate Change Act, which meant the government was is committed to reducing CEO two emissions and now lots of countries have got it. It was the first one and the government didn't want to do it. Bled didn't want to do it, but we found this interesting loophole and got thousands of people to send letters in and said at the bottom of the letter to the the MP, please can you pass this on to Blair? Right, And apparently they were obliged to pass on these letters. So Blair was literally getting thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of letters, which doesn't normally happen. And he did pass the law after much arguing and me refusing to meet him because it was during the Iraq War and all sorts of Yeah, well, any normal human being would be. Anyway, I was very glad I did it, and the people I was working for at the time, I was it was Friends of the Earth and it was really inspiring and I became really good friends with the guy who's running Friends of the Earth at time, Tony Juniper, who now works with Prince Charles um And and it was a great period. But I just it burned me out getting that close to politics. The most fascinating figure that we work with was the lobbyist that we had, our one lobbyist, so like we went into this Port Colors House in Britain. You probably have the equivalent here. I don't know what it's called, but Port Collor's House was built for the lobbyists. It was built for special interests to go and sit with a cup of coffee, round table about this size and wait for MPs to go past, color them, sit them down and lobby them in big the Capitol building. Anyway, I found it completely fascinating, you know, because it's there's hundreds of these people walking around and I'm like, none of them are lobbying for us. So when you may possibly could argue that our one mate, Friends of the Earth, that was like technically, you know, maybe speaking for the people a little bit, but basically they were all special interests and they had the ear of government, and I just thought, hang on, hang on a minute, how did this happen? Anyway? Where were we a minute ago? I know where I want to go? Okay, go and let go there there? Your children? Do your children know who you are and what you do? Yep, they're used to it. They're used to people coming up and saying hello. But most of the time it's very friendly, and that's normal. That's their normal. That's what they've grown up in. Twelve and seven. So one seven the age that you decided you wanted to Brian May and by then he's he he would already have made his guitar with that neck. That was eleven. I think you said, So where are they at musically? Um, my son is a great drummer, But I don't know if you want to do that forever or not. He's like not bothered really, which is cool. You know, he just and he comes and hangs out with me when I'm working in my studio. We just hang out. You know, we're friends. But I don't think you know, they're burning ambition to be musicians or anything. Really, even though he's really good, he's for pleasure. I mean at that age that's good, right His father had affected your work? Um, yes, but not really that you have the obvious things where you go out on the road more if you didn't have children. Yep, absolutely, But that's not necessarily a bad thing at all. You know, being on the road is is it's a it's not a great way necessary, it's it's you don't want to do it all your life. You get a little bit on, it gets a little unhealthy quite quickly mentally, if not physically. As you've gotten older and you look around the musical landscape, do you admire a lot of what's being done is your in the in the mainstream, in the mainstream. There's nothing in the mainstream. The mainstream is just avoid you know. To me, I mean, what's weird about putting a record out now? Really? And this is not like sour grapes at all. It's just the fact the volume, literally the sheer volume and stuff that gets put out. It's like this huge fucking waterfall and you're just throwing your pebble in and it carries on down the waterfall and that's that right, Okay. Next, basically, you know, like in this country, see the radio is tied up and people don't really listen to already. In the same way, it's it's music is going through a weird time because on the one hand, as ever, there's always really exciting music being made. It's never not being made. It's a question of whether you're going to get to hear it or not. And I mean I kind of I kind of knew the game was up a few years ago when one of our sort of team of people came in saying, Nokia wants to offer you millions of pounds because they want content for their phones. And this is like in two thousand, I don't know, early two and like, content, what you know, content? What do you mean music? Yes? Okay? Content maybe that yes? Yeah, just could be music stuff, Yeah, stuff could be snoring. Have you got some stuff? You know? And you're like okay, And I think really that my problem with it is it's like it's now like something to fill up the hard ware with, you know, the music itself has become secondary to that, which is a weird thing to me. Is like the most pleasurable experiences you ever have is like when something's played to you don't know. We're like going around to friend's house and they'll stick a tune on you, like what the hell's there? You know, which is what it's about. You know. That's what we're like going into store when I was a kid, like and the new Smith's records come out, and like and I'm going up to the guy. I think that's like he's really cool, like the indie store in town and just talking to him about music for twenty minutes, you know, And you know how everywhere you go, music is everywhere. It's everywhere, but it's not like, yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's content. Yeah, it's content. Is king that bullshit will change, And when it does, then I think we'll have a resurgence. The underbelly will come back over belly and then well with its middle aged to belly. So you're forty three years old, forty four years old. It's just our professional courtesy that we shave a year off of of our already. Yeah, all of them. Um, you're in the now and you're in the here or what have you. And I'm not saying that glibly, and you're know what I'm saying, but you're not somebody who like Mick Jagger, for example, like I wonder if Mick Jagger is going to hit a day, Like does it happen in a day? Like as Mick Jagger in bed one day and he picks up the phony, He's like, you know, I just can't do it anymore. I can't get out of this bed. I can't do another fucking show again. And it's over. Like do you think of other things? I think all the time of the next thing I'm gonna do. Yeah, as the next thing. You don't have to tell us what it is, but you know it would end if someone happens in my voice, I don't know. Certain things could make it physically stop, and it will stop at some point, something will happen. But for me, I'm yeah, I'm always hearing different things. There's always half finished things, which you asked Pol Nigel. He knows about that. There's always a mountain of half stuff. I want to get into stuff. I've started stuff I want to you know. But I also think it's good to sort of take breaks because it's like anything you start to go in small circles unless you you literally you're spending unless you are just literally working too hard. It's a regenerative thing. I find that I'm well. I mean, my family, my friends know that I'm a nicer person. If I'm working and I'm into what I'm doing, then if I stop, there is a period where I'm fairly unbearable. If I do stop, yeah, for too long, probably there's a threshold. But like, if you want to shift right with your work, if you want to shift, if you're writing, if you're being creative at all, you kind of have to stop to make that shift because if you just I'm constantly creating, I've got this mountain of brilliant ideas. You're making the basic mistake that you're assuming all our ideas are brilliant, where in fact I need to go and do normal ship. I need to. I can't write unless I have a period where restored. Well, no, it's not restored, just just reset. I'm like just normal, normal, normal, normal, normal, normal normal. You must have a lot of people in the music world, young people who look up to you. Um, one of the best buzzes really is that thing where someone comes up who's new and they're really into you know, I'm really into what they're doing it's really fascinating and it's really totally new to me. But yet the occasions when off of you yeah, and you're like, how could you how could you feel off me? I don't see any of my stuff, but they see it, and I'm like, wow, that's so cool, especially when it's like like it's in hip hop and like, really you know people within hip hop who are into Radiohead. I'm like, I find that so fascinating because i mean, obviously I'm massively into hip hop, and we've we use hip hop as a reference point in the way we build tracks and stuff. But really, wow, that's bonkers. Obviously that's one of the really good bits. But it's not really mentorship. It's just people who you admire good at their ship. You know, when it happens, it happens. How does success make you feel? Well? Has it made me feel? It's always been a little bit far away from me, And the only time it sort of makes sense is when we play in front of people, and the rest of the time it's like, well, it's it's just it's who I've been for so long. I can't tell you because it's just that's what it is. I've probably been doing it more than I haven't in my life in terms of years, in terms of time. So most of the time I don't really notice. Some people come up and I go, well, that's nice, you know, thanks very much. You know, it's not like I'm not grateful. I'm just I just don't notice. And then sometimes something will whack you over the head and you go, blimey, things like doing the first time we did Saturday in my life, for example, and you go, really, people give a ship because sometimes you can't. You don't know, you don't know you've got on the inside, you can't see it. And and and also we've spent so long running away from it, and I don't feel like a run away from it now because there's nowhere to run run, nowhere to run. And also it's like, yeah, I'm really grateful for I'm very incredibly lucky. It's a very good point. There's nowhere to run and still do it. Yeah, I mean, I just think I'm well jammy as we take it's just really jammy, especially in the US, you know, like people really give a ship and it's like, well that's amazing. Radio heads Tom York to hear the complete conversation go to Here's the Thing dot org. It's hard to believe that r M broke up a decade ago. When Alec talked to Michael Stipe in two thousand and sixteen, he was just five years into his post r M life, with more time to pursue photography, teaching, and spending time with his friends and especially his family. What being an Army brand 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. 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're you have two sisters, two sisters, so the three of your total and they around you see them? Are they or they often like Alaska and Fiji were the whole family lives in Athens, Georgia, and they're in Athens. I'm of Athens Club. I know Athens yea. And that it wasn't Mike was Mike from Athens. Mike Mills actually from making. We all met, all were from, we all met a new g A of the places I read that you lived when you were moving around in Europe and in the South and so forth, was there one place you stayed the longest, if 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 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. I don't play music, but I feel like I have, you know, Elvis lives inside me, you know, 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 this 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 ice that's melting in the rank. It's really it's you know when 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, 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 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. My kind of ground zero point was at the age of fifteen when Patti Smith releases and I bought it the day it came out. But prior to that, the songs that really resonated with me on radio or the Banana Splits, the Archies, 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 Who and Alice Cooper and the Rolling Stones are 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. But following that, it was really bending in the Jets by Elton John and the song um Hey Kids, book You Too, Jump Up and Down and Rock, 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 remember, 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 that's it well. I wanted to play Oregon, but we couldn't afford the next instrument up, so I wound up with an accordion and I played quite well. You weren't accomplished accordions. You could have been on a 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 in and women who they pick up a guitar when they're nine and ten years or they just start to explore that we're 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. 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, 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. 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 so you believe that everybody, anybody can do it? Absolutely not right. 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 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 Rocketbilly. You mentioned Elvis Presley earlier. I was singing in this kind of hiccup. Elvis Presley's style probably inspired by The Cramps. I loved Luxe 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 rocketbilly thing. 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 you 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 genes a 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 and something happened, you believe that. How did you find each other? Clubs? Record store? You saw Mills and a record store and Peter buck Rabbit and he looked really cool, and a lot of people back then didn't look really cool, but he looked really cool, and he would turn me onder different records that that would come into the store, and and like Suicide, the first Suicide album. We hit it off and then I had to convince him to start a band with me. What was it about horses that appealed to you? 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 listen 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. Uh. But she represented something other and something to me alien, And part of that was this openness, is fluidity about sexuality that I think certainly resonated with me and 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 and a kind of a live audience. She's a great conversation. Yeah, but you related to that. It's really really the third song I think it was Birdland is the song that touched me in a way that 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. And then it took me two years to find people that I could play with. That didn't work out very well, and I wound up moving to Athens following my father's retirement and started the band. And when you leave Athe, I mean there's a kind of gestation there and athen and performing in clubs in all over Georgia, are you like, well, what kind of do what's the what's the circuit you get into there when you're at that level. Well, it was early days, so there wasn't really a circuit. I mean one was kind of cabbled together by bands like RM and Pylon also from Athens, and Black Flag, Sonic Youth. All these bands were playing like these pizza parlors and gay discoss 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 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. Peter and Mike particularly were encyclopedic about Sick 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 I R S Records, Miles Copeland, 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 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 I 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 most broke up with We even did that, right, M Yeah, I mean over and over. Sure, when you had conflicts with people you make music with, what is the conflict? But typically, I mean I was very young 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 were more loud and often got their way, but it 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. 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 I'm proud of 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. Su Jazz. The song Lotus is a good example of a song that we recorded 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 arrive at a place that made sense. Live, the song is faster, and we're ajournalised because we're performing it in front of people or whatever, 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 a moment in time, but but the real song emerged in live performance. Is there a producer or like who decides, especially in the early days before you become big stars, Like who's sitting there, sitting there going, well, you're gonna come in here and you will drop that note down a little bit. Who's who's the decider? 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 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? No? Right, everybody had an opinion, sadly. 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. You didn'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 teen age 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. 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, I'm 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's 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 recognized for something, for this or that you create because you have to and maybe that's what separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the culture that now allows people to be famous just for the fact 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 here and we're gonna sing and they call up someone so we're gonna sing bally High and also this orchestrauld 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 Paul 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 bill at Schase Stadium with Joan Jett and the Black Hearts Hope for the Police. So we played to sixty people. We had. We played five songs. I said I would do it if I could wear a wedding dress. 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 my 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 and they were cool with it. They were fine, They didn't care, they didn't give a fuck. Um. They wanted you to be you. But I remember it because it was raining and we had five songs, and it was this giant place, and to the band it meant everything because of 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. 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. Matt Dylan was there, and this was after not the outsider was what was the Rumblefish kid 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 Jutts, and I was like, wow, Joan jutt 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 the very touched by the r M s. Michael Stipe. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to follow here's the thing. On the I Heart radio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Michael Stipe talks about how he became politically aware. I'm Frank Imperial and this is here's the thing. There's a deep passion in R. E. M's music, and Alec marveled at how it never crosses over to sentimentality. I could 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 gracefully. 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 make or break it. I'm trying to think of an example of someone who's very, very brilliant with that. I think Sia is brilliant with the way she uses her voice. There are other singers 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 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 accidentally imitate or 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 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, 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 manage 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, I'm not doing a very good job of it about well, I'm, as you may have figured out in this conversation, I think in a very 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 and legendary, if you will, for your passions about causes. 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 the Reagan era and the kind tree 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 shipped thrown at us for 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 I'm a child of the seventies, you know, we came out of a place where everything that the sixties was and this is I think perfectly encapsulated. Again. We'll talk about Patti 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 lived through it, and we're at one point told your sellout and you have to get a job, and all of your dreams and aspirations, everything that you thought you could do with this thing is flatlined. Go get a job. Just Kids provided those people 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, the Lynchin, what's going on everything. But I had an entire year long course called environmental science taught by miss Enoch. 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 become politicized quite quickly when you travel outside the country. And that's what happened to us. I was talking to other people who work in your business, which and like my business, which is a very youth centered business in terms of the performing and the whole of the arc of it, and all of us as we get older in this business, it changes. Was there a moment that you realize it started to change for you? Many times as an as an older person in a you know, rock and roll band, for our pop band. Yeah, there's a point where I said, it's not a good look and we I we have to either grow with it and be who we are right now 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, not the perpetual teenager thing that a lot of people kind of go down that route and the camels get a little fuzzier and pulled back a little more. I just 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 and already 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, Casey Spooner from the band Fisher Spooner 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. You've been making films as well a 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 I I 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. But I was really ready to just step away from everything and explore other mediums that I not wanted to be 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. 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 uh unique and such a kind of particular person and you know that. Thank you and you and 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 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. 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. The idiot mantel I'm good at. That's what my dog thinks. I'm the idiot mantell. The freaky angel. I like to the weird angel when I psycho killer, when I meet um directors like Todd Haynes 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 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 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 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. Thanks to Tom York and Michael Stipe and this show's regular host, Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is produced by Kathleen Russo, Carrie Donahue and Zach McNeice. I'm the show's engineer, Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening.