ARTICLE [from _Details_ Magazine, v.9:no.10, April 1991)
Cover Title: R.E.M., Love Song '91
Title: [large Stipean doodle of:] R.E.M. [Subtitle:] On their new LP, _Out
of Time_, R.E.M. explore "love." But like everything else about the band
and its resident enigma, Michael Stipe, love is a many splintered thing.
by Brantley Smith
At the Grit, a vegetarian restaurant in Athens, Georgia, the waitress has a
few specials. "Tonight's soup is potato and dill," she tells Michael Stipe
and me. "Is it thick?" Michael wonders. With a nod, the waitress starts to
describe its consistency: "Yeah, it's got a lot of ..."
Michael deadpans, finishing her sentence: "... jizz in it."
The waitress laughs. Michael laughs.
So he does have a sense of humor.
All day long, the other members of R.E.M. -- of which Stipe is the
enigmatic lead singers and lyricist -- had been swearing to me that Michael
was a funny guy. The band's bass player, Mike Mills, had described
Michael's sense of humor as being one that "often goes over people's heads.
Or maybe between their legs."
Wherever it goes, wherever it's been, it's certainly a relief to find it.
Because Michael Stipe is a Very Serious Person. Serious about his music.
Serious about his causes. Serious about his enigma.
He'll willingly discuss the music of R.E.M.'s new, seventh studio LP, _Out
of Time_, a stylistically diverse collection of what *he* calls "love
songs." He'll gladly talk about his work with Greenpeace and the Nature
Conservancy, pausing mid-sentence as he does this to pull a bay leaf from
his mouth (it came from the jizzy soup) and remark, "This is a sign of very
good fortune." But any discussion is filtered through his enigma. And the
enigma is what you have to work through first. It's the product of an
army-brat childhood filled with shyness and self-invention, a fearsome
flower that thrives on contradiction. And though at times he has claimed
ignorance of its existence, Stipe has carefully cultivated it throughout
his eleven years as a performer who is part rocker, part eternal art
student. The rocker appears onstage -- and onstage only -- as a shimmying,
kohl-eyed whirling dervish, and the art student shows up... everywhere
else: in his lyrics, which are often as intriguingly lovely ("It's a Man
Ray kind of sky") as they are infuriatingly obtuse ("I believe in coyotes /
and time as an abstract"); in the videos and clue-encoded artwork he's
designed for the band's albums (LP sleeves have been given such helpful
labels as "File Under Water" and "File Under Fire"); and in his dress and
hairstyles (the former to be taken quite literally, and the latter having
included a latterday friar look, complete with shaved bald spot and a blond
crew cut groomed with mustard).
The enigma feeds on his legendary, natural-man eccentricity -- the stories
of his being so energy-conscious that he has no hot water and no
refrigerator. I ask about the refrigerator. "That's the kind of detail
people don't need to know," he replies. And what about his reported
psychic sensitivity to earthquakes that occur hundreds of miles away? The
list goes on. He recently hauled three enormous silos from an old
cotton-processing plant to his farm outside Athens. "I plan on cutting
doors in them and making a Mother Goose thing," he says.
Sometimes the enigma is less thorny. The silos can be explained: Michael is
a good citizen, plus he likes old stuff. He takes great pride in the
cultural heritage of Athens, and both he and the group have lent time and
money toward the preservation of its landmark buildings.
It is almost always forgotten when Stipe is being bashed for his artistic
pretensions that Michael *is* an artist. He paints, shoots films and
videos, and makes records with musicians as diverse as KRS-One and
Chickasaw Mudd Puppies.
R.E.M.'s drummer, Bill Berry, describes Michael best: "He definitely
marches to a different drummer. Or two. Or three." But Michael is not just
a kook who fluked into the big time; he knows exactly what he's doing.
Berry is quick to add that whatever else he may be, Stipe did "take three
fairly ordinary guys and make a unit that's pretty acceptable."
And then some.
*
JUST UP OCONEE STREET, A BLOCK from downtown Athens, sit the Steeplechase
Condominiums. Off to the left of these gray monstrosities stands the
condo's mascot: a red steeple protruding forlornly from its brick base,
forever torn asunder from the old Episcopal church it once adorned. The
steeple is all that's left of a landmark in the city's musical history, but
whoever graffitied "Rolling Stones Forever," on the side of the steeple got
his facts a little wrong. It wasn't Mick and Keith but Michael Stipe and
guitarist Peter Buck who, way back in 1980, lived in the church, threw
wild, impromptu parties, and -- just for fun -- formed a band.
"There were some amazing times in Athens from '79 to '84," says Mike Mills
of the period when the B-52's single handedly put the sleepy southern town
on the map. After the B's inspirational success, all the "cool" kids in
town stopped merely dropping acid, partying, and calling it a night, and
started dropping acid, partying, and forming artsy rock bands.
Bands such as Pylon, the Method Actors, and the Side Effects sprang up, and
on April 5, 1980, R.E.M. -- though as yet unnamed -- followed, playing
their first gig at a party in the Episcopal church on Oconee Street. The
most unlikely member of the band, Michael Stipe, an intensely private art
student at the University of Georgia, was -- as he is today -- the key
novelty. At first, they played mainly '60's covers (considered wildly
uncool) and a few originals. By the time they released their first single,
"Radio Free Europe," in 1981, R.E.M. had found a sound that would redefine
both themselves and, to a rather impressive degree, the indie-rock trends
of the '80's.
Throughout the past decade R.E.M. has come to symbolize a genre. The
success of their blurry but intriguing sound -- part country punk, part
Byrdsian jangle -- turned their schoolboy lark into a career. Perhaps more
crucially, Michael Stipe's indecipherable but seemingly provocative lyrics
established him as the poet laureate of the undergrad set. As the '80's
progressed, so did the band's commercial instincts and, subsequently, its
fortunes.
For Michael, this growth can be measured in poetic terms of darkness and
light. On the 1984 _Reckoning_ tour, he designed the lighting so that he
could perform in almost total darkness, though he now denies it: "*I* could
see the lights; they were blinding me." (In fact there were no such
lights.) A year later Michael was bounding across the stage bathed in
spotlights. "I like it. It's fun. It keeps me happy. The stages got
bigger. The audiences got bigger. There were more people to see me. And the
band."
The band got bigger still. Their last LP, the 1988 platinum _Green_, was
the first product of their five-record, rumored $12 million deal with
Warner Brothers Records. Michael says R.E.M. was offered "colossal amounts
of money" for the use of its hit "Stand" as the theme of the Fox TV show
_Get a Life_. "And we said, without hesitation, 'Take it. It's yours.'"
*
FOR MILLIONAIRES, R.E.M. LIVE modestly. I did see a small Mercedes in the
driveway of bill Berry's 1846 red-stained wood house, but Michael drives
around in a gray Volvo station wagon -- the first car he's owned. It is
said that Stipe has invested some of his money in old buildings, but his
home -- and there is some question as to where he actually lives -- is said
to be the plainest of the bunch's. He claims to live on a farm outside
Athens with his dogs and his silos and his creek. "Well, I wouldn't call it
a creek," he says. "It's more like an underground spring that goes into a
pond where the cattle go and shit."
Bucolic as it may seem, Athens is no cow town. At a Mexican restaurant,
Peter Buck gives me my first taste of local political intrigue. "You're
staying at the Holiday Inn?" he asks incredulously. "One of the guys that
runs it is the ultimate creep." Swigging margaritas (no salt) while
manically bouncing the table's plastic cloth up and down with his
relentlessly tapping foot, Peter tells me about the recent mayoral campaign
in town. R.E.M. backed the female candidate, Gwen O'Looney, and a couple of
days before the polls opened, someone from the Holiday Inn allegedly
started a smear campaign against her. According to Peter, the guy at the
Holiday In provided funds for pamphlets pointing out that O'Looney's
husband is president of the local ACLU, which advocates such things as
legalizing drugs and prostitution and removing the phrase "In God We Trust"
from coins. In rather more colorful Buck-speak, the pamphlet suggested
O'Looney was "communist atheist" in favor of "legalizing kiddie porn." The
happy ending, Peter crows, was that O'Looney won by 540 votes and the
scandal ruined her opponent's political career. "We beat him like a
goddamn gong. And he's out of this town!"
The tall, scraggly-haired Buck, thirty-four, reminds me of Keith Richards.
He admits to an affinity for knives, using a switchblade as a letter
opener, and wears a double silver ring, a more benign version of Richard's
trademark skull ring. Pointing to a white enamel inlay, he remarks, most
correctly, "By the way, that's not ivory."
An inveterate music junkie, Buck says he buys fifteen records a week. In
the last couple of years he's produced and played on a slew of outside
projects, most notably a Hindu Love Gods record with Warren Zevon, and
every Wednesday he sits in with a local country-western band. But R.E.M.
is clearly his priority, and _Out of Time_ is his favorite record yet. "I
started dropping a bug in everybody's ear: 'Let's have lots of strings...
weird horns... keyboards, and lots of vocals.'" And so they did. While
mixing the disk at Paisley Park, he recalls, a staff member there suggested
they call the LP _Time and Love_ but, he says, laughing, "that sounded like
the Fifth Dimension."
Buck imagines that if and when R.E.M. ends, he'll go back to school for his
English lit degree or write for a newspaper. "I can write about rock 'n'
roll," he forecasts. "And I know I can cover the garden-club events."
*
"WAR is bad," reads the sign in R.E.M.'s downtown Athens HQ. Brooke
Johnson, who assists R.E.M.'s lawyer, Bertis Downs IV, and manager,
Jefferson Holt, proudly tells me everything in the office, from "computer
paper to toilet paper," is made from recycled products. The building's
exterior is varnished with a biodegradable shellac that "Michael was
adamant about." One by one the band straggle in. They have to do one of
the things they hate the most: a photo shoot. "All in all, I'd rather be
picking up garbage," opines Bill Berry. Michael arrives, and right off the
bat excitedly tells Peter about a band that's playing in town tonight:
"There's this guitar player called Dawn. She's really tall and skinny and
has this big nose and blonde hair, and she's really pretty. I'm going."
Mike says he's going to see his brother's new band, Three Walls Down, at
the 40 Watt Club. Even without a sibling in the group, Mills would be
comped; the club is co-owned by Peter's wife, Barrie. Throughout this
exchange Michael tugs his shirt up to expose his hairy, well-toned tummy
while pushing his hands a great distance down his oversize black Gap jeans.
It seems a little odd, but no one takes any notice.
At the photo location, the place where Michael's silos come from, we talk
about music, and I get another taste of Stipe-think. I say the ornate
strings of the new LP are reminiscent of the Beach Boys. He says, "I never
listened to the Beach Boys, with the exception of _Pet Sounds_. Peter tied
me to an armchair and made me listen to it. I just don't get it. I
recognize the brilliance *objectively*, but it doesn't do anything for me
personally. Is that too general a statement?" I ask him about Madonna.
"She's as crafty a stylist as the people behind the Reagan administration
were," he replies, "and probably a lot more fun. The music is definitely
secondary -- but it's also very, very good. I've never listened to it,
myself." For the record, Michael has been listening to Urban Dance Squad,
the new Suzanne Vega, and Boogie Down Productions' _Edutainment_. Does he
listen to a lot of music? "No. I'm usually on the phone."
He mentions some of his recent production jobs. He's shopping around an EP
for the Opal Foxx Quartet, which Michael says he has stopped describing as
"a drag queen with a backup band, because there's so much more to it than
that. Although the singer does wear a dress and is a boy." Another band
called Hetch Hetchy comes up. I know this is his sister Lynda's group --
"which is a secret," he declares.
"Huh?"
"She's not my sister. She's a friend."
"Oh, O.K."
Pause. "That's a lie." He chuckles. Vaguely. A train passes by about a
quarter-mile away. Surely no one can see him, but Michael waves anyway.
Now the sun is getting low in the sky, casting long shadows. Michael makes
creative use of it. "High noon," he says, offering Mike Mills his shades.
"Wear these. You'll rule the universe." Then he slowly bends his knees in a
balletic plie' and makes angular sun shapes with his arms. Finally, at the
end of this private performance piece he walks over to some concrete
rubble. After studying the broken pieces for a minute, he shares a
revelation: "I thought I recognized that cement."
At the Globe, a cozy late-afternoon gathering place where people drink
beer, read poetry, and listen to country music, I visit with the
bespectacled bassist, Mike Mills. I ask him if Michael's eccentricities are
calculated. "I don't think Michael is weird to be weird," he is quick to
answer. "He just prefers to do things differently, and I find that very
admirable. Michael is aware that everything in rock 'n' roll that can be
done pretty much already has been done. Without him we'd certainly be a lot
less unique."
Mike drive me over to Bill's house. Mari, his wife of five years, is
cooking Cajun food, and their new puppy, Patsy (named for Patsy Cline), is
galloping around. Bill sinks into a big chair, Budweiser in hand. The
mono-eyebrowed drummer describes the new LP as "wacko." Was it an attempt
to prove to the world that R.E.M. hasn't lost its edge? He explains that
the success of the last two records has earned the band "the right to do
whatever we wanted this time." Then he belches. Perfect.
*
MICHAEL CALLS AT EXACTLY EIGHT, though everyone says he wouldn't be on
time. A little out of breath, I jump into his car and tell him I've been
running around like crazy.
"Where?" he asks dully.
"Oh, well... Bill just dropped me off five minutes ago. You know, I've been
'running around.'"
"Oh." Pause. "I thought you were out jogging."
We head out to the Grit. Does Michael eat there often? "Well, it's a
vegetarian restaurant, and I'm a vegetarian, so yeah. Would you mind
putting on your seat belt? Another vegetarian rule."
Over spring water and cappuccino -- "just foam, just put a *little* coffee
in it" -- he holds forth, haltingly, his enigma in full bloom. "I was a
prodigy piano player," he says, a fact that has until now been
undocumented. "I lost it all at puberty." He indulges artistic navel
contemplation: "I think a lot of what I do comes from somewhere in the
lower lobes. I think R.E.M. is fairly complex." Minutes later he quips
that the bands songs are "just a bunch of minor chords with some nonsense
thrown on top."
This, of course, is nonsense. At a certain point in time -- after you've
talked to Michael, after you've talked to Bill, Mike and Peter about
Michael, and after you've talked to Michael about what they've said -- you
come to understand that nonsense is Michael's trump card. And he is a very
adept gamesman. Like the protagonist of R.E.M.'s new single, "Losing My
Religion," who repeatedly stops himself short of total self-revelation
("Oh, no, I've said too much). Michael Stipe makes it a rule to reveal
only what is absolutely required.
On the surface, he seems to operate on the most even of keels, never
showing feelings as deeps as anger or joy. It is all the more remarkable,
then, that onstage and in the studio this seemingly emotional cipher can be
the most transcendent and passionate of performers. This quality is what
makes R.E.M. work. But the real Michael Stipe exists behind a smoke screen
that comes across as equal parts southern hospitality and southern
hostility. "In the South," he observes, "there is a modicum of respect and
politeness that is not only expected but demanded. In the North, people
deal with problems by yelling at each other, but it's understood that
you're not really mad. There's a definite edge beneath southern politeness
that can be infuriating. It can also be uplifting." In Michael's case, it
is more often the former. When asked if it annoys him that R.E.M.'s fans
consider his songs autobiographical, he doesn't answer directly, he answers
*politely*: "I'd rather do this than be a bomber pilot."
"Excuse me, Michael." A heavyset young man in dark clothes interrupts us
briefly. "We share dog duties," Michael explains. He tells me about
Triple, a now crippled former Central American convent guard dog that he
and his friends saved from an almost certain death.
We grapple with the "love" concept behind _Out of Time_. "I've never set
out to write love songs," he declares. And this collection of songs is
anything but boy-meets-girl. "Radio Song," his dirgy Manchester-style
collaboration with rapper KRS-One, opens with the line, "The world is
collapsing around our ears" and ends with the rap "Now our children grow up
prisoners / All their life radio listeners." Not exactly moon-June-spoon.
"Me In Honey," a country-stomp duet with the B-52's Kate Pierson, is about
"unwanted pregnancy from the male point of view."
Throughout the discussion Michael is brooding; his placid blue eyes search
out infinity in the middle distance. He tells me about a song that
celebrates brotherly love, "Shiny Happy People": "It's the happiest song
I've ever written. You can't sing the words without smiling, because
there's so many 'E' sounds -- shineee. Happeee. Peeeeple." With every
word, his cupid's-bow lips stretch apart, caught somewhere between a smile
and a grimace.
"It's funny," I observe. "You're not known as a happy-go-lucky guy."
"I'm an extraordinarily happy person," he says with the straightest of
faces. "Can't you tell?"
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