Michael Stipe talks shop
Original article: Jam!
By JOHN SAKAMOTO
NEW YORK -- Every once in a while, if you're really lucky, what starts out as a standard interview turns into something much more interesting: a conversation.
I was fortunate enough to have that experience recently with Michael Stipe.
It started out predictably enough: some to-and-fro about R.E.M.'s challenging new album, "Up" (out Oct. 27); the departure of drummer and founding member Bill Berry; the peculiar interaction among Stipe and remaining members Peter Buck and Mike Mills.
But somewhere along the way, it took one of those weird left turns that you're not even aware has happened until much, much later, when you find yourself wondering just how the hell you ended up talking about mushrooms, religion vs. science, 12-step programs, and the Beach Boys' 'Smile'.
Here's how we got there.
Q: Listening to "Up" for the first time, it seemed as though the band had decided to emphasize the fact that Bill Berry wasn't there. It almost seemed as though, instead of filling in the hole left by his absence, you opted to build things AROUND the hole. Is that a fair assessment?
Michael Stipe: "Well, we didn't want to have a faux Bill Berry. We didn't want to bring someone in to play his parts. In fact, when we first came together to record our ideas for the record, in March of '97 in Hawaii in Peter (Buck)'s living room, we used drum machines on every song. There were 40-plus songs on those tapes when we left a couple of weeks later. The ideas I went off and tried to write words and music to.
Then we got back together in October in Athens (Georgia) to do a month of, kind of pre-production. You know, take those demos, do other demos, or maybe try and track a few things from those demos. And it was the first day back that Bill announced his departure. The record was already pretty experimental in that he was going to sequence and loop stuff. We were going to play around using various percussion rather than having a drum kit all the way through.
Mike and Peter, most of what they wrote was not written on guitar, it was written on keyboards -- synthesizers, pianos, some stuff on bass guitar. Some parts were just string parts. They wrote on the synthesizer but they just played strings. So, already we had kind of kicked out of the standard guitar/drum kit kind of thing. But that was thrown really out there, and became even more experimental, when Bill said that he was leaving.
Also what it did was, basically it so emotionally unhinged the three of us (who were) remaining. Bill was thrilled to finally not be in a band anymore. That was really what he wanted. I'm real thrilled for him, but it did leave the rest of us thinking, 'What the f--- are we gonna do now?"
Q: Given the fact that you were moving toward less conventional percussion, is it possible Bill saw his role as a drummer diminishing and felt like this might be a good way to ease out of the band?
Michael Stipe: "No, because he was so much more than that. We are, and have always been, a true democracy. Every person has veto. Every person has an equal opinion. Each opinion is heard out. It's a lengthy process. It's difficult some times to live with, but it served us well as a band for 17 years, and it served us well as friends. We've maintained our friendships much longer than most bands are able to do.
"The reasons that he quit is because he was tired of being in a rock band. He didn't enjoy any more the spark and the desire to go into the studio and work on one song and do this kind of press junket and do videos and go on tour had left. He didn't want to do that stuff any more. I think he's brave and courageous, and I really admire him. A man in his position with this band, with all the stuff that's comes to us, the successes, the acclaim, everything, is walking away, saying, 'You know what? I've decided that I want to change my life.' I really admire that a lot. And it's very Bill. If you knew Bill, it's a very Bill thing to do."
Q: Just after he announced he was leaving the band, Bill was quoted as saying that he didn't feel the same creative spark he had while working on previous R.E.M. albums. Looking back ...
Michael Stipe: "Looking back, yeah, but I didn't notice it then. I think Mike and Peter did more than I did. But I think they just thought that maybe he was just in some kind of daydreamy state, you know. We were in a very beautiful place, with incredible weather for two weeks. It was hard not to spend all day walking on the beach. But in retrospect, Mike and Peter and I were in the living room, putting the stuff down (on tape) and listening to it and coming up with ideas, and Bill would pop in and out every now and then. So I can see now, he was feeling removed, you know. It was a hard decision to make, I think, but ultimately he followed his heart. But we all have pretty short lives, so I think when someone makes a decision like that, however difficult or however easy it is for them, it's a good thing.
Q: When was the last time you talked to him?
Michael Stipe: "Right before I left Athens. I called him and talked to him just for a little bit, and said that Mike and I were planning on coming back with the record completed, getting a bottle of wine and taking it out to his farm and playing it for him. But he was like, 'Well, I really want to go buy it in the store the day it comes out. (Laughs). He wants to be a fan, you know? He's really excited on what we are going to do with the record. We said, 'Come on, Bill, we'll send you a copy'. But he wanted the experience of going and plopping down 14 dollars or whatever at Best Buy. So he probably deserves the title The Premier R.E.M. Fan In The World."
Q: So he's never expressed any second thoughts about quitting?
Michael Stipe: No. He is SO happy.
Q: How much did the music change from the sessions in Peter's living room in Hawaii and Athens to what we hear on "Up"?
Michael Stipe: "I have a feeling that what might of happened is that a lot of the stuff that was drum machine would've gotten tracked live in the studio, and some of that element would have taken the backseat to a live kit. Although a lot of it would have remained. A lot of the material -- we have, what, 14, 15 songs here, out of 40? -- a lot of the stuff didn't lend itself to that at all, to a guitar and a kit kind of thing. So it might have taken the record in a different kind of direction.
But I know that we did feel, Mike and Peter and I, that these conversations did come up only after Bill made the announcement, and then we were like, 'What the f--- are we gonna do?'. And we had that month in the studio when I would normally have been writing and instead I was, you know, I was completely wrapped up emotionally and I was not able to get much done. I suffered writer's block more than usual. It's a common thing, it usually happens on every record, but even more on this one, I think. We were just thrown into a complete state of chaos. And with that, every technique and process and rulebook that we've ever had in the last 10 albums, really, the only way to kind of face the music, and I hate to say that, the only way to face the situation at hand, is to throw it out the window and just say f-- it. Anything goes. Our world has been thrown upside down, but let's not run away from that, let's allow that to be a liberating factor and not an oppressive one. So what that led to, many, many difficult months later, is this record.
Q: You said you had the worst writer's block you've ever had, but scanning the lyric sheets, a lot of the new songs read as though they just kind of poured out.
Michael Stipe: (Laughs). "Thank you. That's a great, great compliment. But, no, it was a struggle. There was one 'vomit' song -- I don't know if you know that term -- but 'Hope' was the one song that just came floating out. But it didn't come floating out like 'Country Feedback' did, like 'E-Bow The Letter', or 'Departure', (which were) all written, not even as songs, but pulled out. I'm not a writer, I don't keep journals, nothing like that. But some times things just come, and I write them, and that's that, and I realize later that it could be used as a song, and that's where those came from.
This one ('Hope'), I was writing it to be a song. I had to pull it apart and put it back together several times, but all the words were there. And certainly the sentiment. I mean, what I was going for thematically in that song was something that really carried through a lot of the record.
Topically speaking, a lot of the record is kind of dealing with classification and categorization of different things, particularly religion and spirituality versus science and technology and where those two clash and how, culturally and sociologically, in this period of time in history, a lot of people are not able to recognize that science and religion are essentially the same thing, and that they overlap more than they're really separate. And where they overlap and where they contradict and where they mesh together is probably where most of us sit. It probably makes the most sense, but we're not quite to the point where we're able to see that, culturally."
Q: In your case, has that view evolved? It might not have been how you saw things 10 years ago?
Michael Stipe: "I think it might have. I think it might have, yeah. I can't really say where it sprung from. It would be easy to say sexuality, you know, the classification of sexuality. But it's not that rudimentary. I suppose myabe in my own very skewed quest for spirituality or some greater thing, realizing that the prevailing thought of -- and this is an old line - but the prevailing thought of separation of mind, body and spirit is just a completely ludicrous one. And one that maybe served us well at some point in history, but now it's really tired and really old and it's time for us to just let it go."
Q: There's an early Patti Smith poem called "The Salvation Of Rock", in which she writes, "Rock, like sculpture, is the solid body of a dream." A lot of the lyrics on the new album, moreso than we've heard on recent R.E.M. albums, seem to be dealing with the space between dreaming and waking, or ...
Michael Stipe: ... or kind of the middle ground. Not necessarily drawing a very clear distinction between dreaming thought and waking thought, or fantastic and real. Questioning both and the importance of both and the importance that we put on our dreams as opposed to, 'This is a couch, and I am sitting on it.' Things that we just take for granted and things that we are very quick and very easy to dismiss and not think about or say, 'Oh, that's bad and I don't want to go there' or, 'Oh, I don't know what I must've eaten to make me dream that.'
And it's R.E.M, you know. (Laughs). You're gonna cover a lot of dreams, a lot of dream area. You're gonna cover a lot of memory and loss, and all the themes that run typically through our music are all kind of there".
Q: Is it fair to assume also though, that since you've agreed for the first time to include the lyrics with an R.E.M. album that "Up" is either your most personal album you've, or you really want us to be able to read the words this time?
Michael Stipe: "It's not autobiographically personal, no, but (agreeing to print the lyrics) happened as a mistake, and I think it maybe -- and I hate to say this because it sounds like (adopting deep, pretentious voice), 'Here's an example of how liberated we are.' That sounds stupid, but it really was a f--- all, f--- anything, let 'er rip kind of atmosphere in the studio, and it was incredibly difficult. You know, records are hard to make, this one was harder. Records are difficult to make. This one was incredibly difficult.
There were moments of complete breakdown of communication between the three of us, or the four of us, if you include (co-producer) Pat McCarthy. There were moments that were very horrible, difficult for each of us. The five of us if you include (longtime manager) Bert Downs. There were moments that were incredibly hairy and horrible and difficult for each of us. There were also really funny and really fun and really light moments. And moments of feeling like we were doing something great here.
But mixed in with that was the darker side of trying to form something like this and get it completed and finished. The darker sides were much darker than ever. And, to throw an old cliche in the air, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I feel that now, Mike and Peter and I are much stronger as a band and much stronger as friends than we were even a year ago. And for that I'm thankful. It was really hard but it was worth it just for that."
Q: You said it was a mistake. Do you mean it was a mistake to want to put all the lyrics out there for all to see?
Michael Stipe: "No. It happened one night. I put the lyric sheets up on the wall in the studio. It gives me help, especially when I'm really stuck, if I have six of them up, and I can see them, and they're there, every time I go to get tea or to get a smoke, or get something to eat or go answer the phone, or walk back into the studio to try to record something, they're all there and I'm like 'God, I really need to get a set of words, so I'll go to work on it.
It's a dumb motivational thing that works for me. If I can see something, it makes it a lot more changeable and real. What that provides for the other guys in the band, the producer, anyone else who's working on the project, is that it gives me confidence, it gives them the opportunity to look at the stuff and figure out where I'm coming from and what my contribution is gonna be. They can watch stuff get crossed out or see other stuff added or get moved around, and it'll inspire or change the sound of the music. It'll often change the arrangement, so it works really well.
One night, we had had a good night, it was in San Francisco, there were probably eight songs on the wall, nearly completed lyrics, and he was reading them and said, 'These are really great, we should put them on the CD'. And I was like (in a nonchalant voice), 'Okay', and Peter was like, 'Sure'. So something that for, like, 17 years I've held out on doing, and those guys supported me -- I believed that lyrics are meant to be heard and not read -- we shot it down in about five seconds. And so in a way, maybe it is a little indication of the kind of feeling that was prevalent during the making of the record. That was one of the better, brighter moments."
Q: I'm guessing here, but was 'The Apologist' one of the ones that was hardest to complete the lyric for?
Michael Stipe: "I came up with that title about four years ago. It was something that I really wanted to do. I just wanted to have a song called 'The Apologist'. I thought it was a great title. Then it was a matter of finding the subject matter. Was it hard to write?"
Q: I wondered it you went through a lot of different drafts?
Michael Stipe: Not so much, no. There were things that I had that just didn't work. I really wanted to get the word 'issues' into that song. That's just because it's just a dumb therapy-speak kind of thing. The character there has been through detox or some sort of 12-step program, and he emerged a better triumphant person in the other end. And they decided as part of their therapy, they're going back to people from their past life and they're apologizing for the person that they were. Well, as the song goes on, it becomes more and more evident to the listener that this person, in fact, is not a better person but has turned into a real monster. Perhaps they've been brain-washed and have no idea what they're doing. And that's evident from the way they're treating the people from before the change. So if there's a note of cynicsim on this whole record, it's in that song.
"I read a quote by Natalie Merchant in 'Us' magazine, of all things, where she was kind of being shredded by some reporter. I don't know, maybe the way it got edited, maybe it was the editor, but it seemed that they were being very mean towards her. And she is a very, very smart person, and she doesn't suffer fools gladly. But she essentially said, 'I have one opportunity over two years, to put out an expression of what I've been thinking of, and to do what is the most important thing for me, my music. And she said I'm sick to death of cynicism and irony. And she said no, these are not cynical songs, these are not ironic songs, this is real. And that really struck a chord, because I felt the same. I hadn't put it in those terms. I add self-pity to the list of things that just seemed very tired to me. And maybe it's my age, or maybe it's having gone through the '90's, or maybe it's how much in media, or in music, cynicism and irony have really run their course. And self-pity in music is, like, over. In 'The Apologist', there is a note of cynicism, but I think it's really more that the character's just so pathetic and so lost.
The rest of the record, you know, I was struggling, because thematically I didn't really know where the record was going. At first I thought I was rewriting the tenets of the Bible, at some point. (Laughs). And I didn't even realize it. It took a conversation with Patti Smith to figure out that that's what I was doing. It was like, wow. And I was really jet-lagged, I'd been on a plane all day, and your mind is just off on that middle ground I love so much. It's like mushrooms without actually having to eat them. The next conversation I had with Patti concerning this mammoth task we were about to undertake -- this was, I think, before Bill quit the band -- but she said you have to be fearless, of who you are and about what you have to offer because what you have is very unique and you need to not be afraid and just run towards it and be unafraid. And that word stuck with me. And coming from her, you know, as a friend, as someone I've admired her work for, you know, half my life, it meant a great deal and it just stuck in my craw, and that word meant a lot to me during the entire recording.
And so, when I went to write a sad song, I wanted it to be really f---in' sad. You know? And not distance myself from the character, not allow the listener to distance themselves. If I wrote a romantic song, I didn't want it to be ironic. I'm tired of hiding behind irony in love songs. I've done that, I've done it really well, but 'At My Most Beautiful', I wanted that to be the most romantic song I'd ever written."
Q: That song is gorgeous.
Michael Stipe: "It's incredible, isn't it? (Laughs). Thank you. It came from, I was driving up and down Santa Monica Boulevard when I was putting together the Patti Smith book I was working on ('2XIntro: On The Road With Patti Smith'). I was consistently late. It's one of my bad personality traits. I was stuck in traffic, this mid-day traffic, on Santa Monica Boulevard, but I had the tapes, and I was listening to them in the car, and I was trying to come up with stuff. I wrote the line, 'I found a way to make you smile', and I just thought, that's the most beautiful thing in the world.
And it sounds like the Beach Boys, I thought. I don't know the Beach Boys like Mike and Peter do, but they're huge fans, especially of the 'Pet Sounds' era. But I remember thinking there's a song or an album called 'Smile' (the Beach Boys' famous unreleased follow-up to 'Pet Sounds'), and so I'll make this like my little (tribute) ... Anyway, I thought, this will be my gift to Mike and Peter -- and Bill at the time, but he quit. I'm gonna write a song that's so Beach Boys, you know, I'm gonna try and make it like, without a whole lot of background, because I never really listened to their records. I just kind of went from there. I've since learned that 'Smile' was a record that never was released after 'Pet Sounds'? I hope if (Brian Wilson) hears this, he hears it as it was intended, which was as an homage."
Q: When you say that you don't want the listener to feel any distance from the songs, you realize that people are going to listen to, say, 'The Apologist', and think that YOU'RE apologizing for everything you've done.
Michael Stipe: "I think a lot of that is up to the critics, people like music writers, people that write this stuff. It's such an easy out, to psychoanalze me to each character. It's just sophomoric, you know? I'm sick to death of it. As a writer, it's insulting, because I feel like, yes of course I'm in every song, of course I inject my thoughts and my humour and my concerns and things that I think about into these songs. That's the genesis of creation, if there is one. (Pause). Did I just say the genesis of creation. (Laughs at himself). Whoo. Back to the Bible!
But it is, that is the rock upon which creation brings forth. It's your own thing. Yes that's all there, but no I'm not these people, and I would say so if I thought I was. I think I'm fairly well-versed in that, and I'm not as protective of myself publicly as I'm made out to be. I'm much more the same person. And not through some symbiosis that's occurred over the last 18 years.
Q: But you understand that some long-time fans are still going to listen to something like 'At My Most Beautiful' and wonder if they're supposed to take it at face-value, or if there isn't some clever subtext that isn't just Michael Stipe writing a very romantic song?
Michael Stipe: "Yeah. I tried to make it infallibly romantic, you know? Just bald-faced. I must say that every woman who has heard that song -- and I think that women are just superior to us and that's that -- are like wow! That is great. You know, so it seems like it's working. I mean, I've written songs before that I thought were these incredible diatribes against organized religion, these numbing thoughts that this life doesn't matter because you're moving on to something better. And they were taken to be the most beautiful, most sad, you know, eulogies instead, that people completely missed. So, okay, maybe as a writer I wasn't quite up to what I wanted to be, I missed the mark. Most people missed the point that I was trying to make. I'll accept that it's a beautiful song and I'll let it be one. I'll change MY take on it to allow it to be that.
'Sweetness Follows' (a song about death, from 1992's 'Automatic For The People') is the song I'm thinking of. Which to me just seemed like a bad excuse. To most people, you throw in the extremely heavy ingredient in my voice, all the more reason to make sure that what I do sing, if you want to explore it, if you want to go beyond just having it as entertainment, or something to dance to, or something to listen to while you're washing dishes, there's something else there. There's something to hold on to.
Maybe I'm reacting to our first two albums, where there was NOTHING to hold on to. There was a lot of sound. (Laughs). People still respond to those records, and that's ultimately what matters here. It doesn't matter that I'm writing a love song, in 'Diminished', that happens to be courtroom drama at the same time. And if there's a critic out there that personifies THAT character as ME, I would gladly hammer their head, you know? I've never been in a courtroom before in my life, but I've watched Court TV. I was influenced by O.J. Simpson like the rest of us. I've watched this country's obsession with that particular form of drama reach the pitch that it's reached, and I'm disgusted by it. At the same time, that language is there, it's floating around in the ether, and I nab it out just as readily as the next person, like it or not.
Same with therapy-speak. it's almost like excorcising these words, like the word 'issues', by putting them in a song and getting them out there and using that language to get across a very different idea from maybe what it originally meant."
Michael Stipe: "One of my proudest songs off the last record was 'Undertow', because I felt like I was using the idiom of gospel. I was using a very southern -- well, from my point of view -- a very southern, very black idiom to express an opinion that was antithetical to that form of religion, to church on Sunday, you go to heaven or you go to hell. But the belief is the same as that of the birds and the other creatures of the earth. They die like we do. They go somewhere, like we do. They don't have to have it written on tablets or in books or in video form in order to understand it. It's more, more ... what do you call it?
Q: An inherent characteristic?
Michael Stipe: Thank you.
Q: Is it at least safe to assume that the album's last song, 'Falls To Climb', is one song where the 'I' is you?
Michael Stipe: "No, absolutely not. Sorry. (Laughs).
-- At this point, we receive the two-minute warning from the band's publicist. "I'm trying to talk really fast," says Stipe. "And I'm being really smart here." --
Michael Stipe: I've heard of a couple interpretations which blew my mind. Like, wow, that's so completely different. I just got the idea of someone being within a group of people, the most physically, the most hunched over and withered member of that group, who's ritually ignored by all the others. But also the one who takes all of the blame, because they are the easiest ones to blow off. They're not gonna fight or talk back, and whatever that person's exterior is, their interior is, in fact, stronger than everyone else's in their group. I'm thinking a group of 20 people. What is internal in this person is a strength and intelligence and knowledge of something greater, and they're trapped inside this tiny, weak body, and they're looked down on.
This is something that I've been thinking about for some time. Trying to personify this idea of someone who can be the absolute weakest, and in fact they are the strongest and they are the ones ultimately who sacrifice themselves for the better of the group.
I think it's incredibly beautiful. I played it for some friends last night and they were all, like, you know, I almost started to cry. It's like a really, really sad song. Actually, I sang it through once. I worked really hard on it. Listen to it. Listen very hard to where the voice is."
Q: Last question. What's next for you?
Michael Stipe: "I have no idea. And I couldn't be happier".
Original Posting: http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~turidbro/jam.html
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