By Amy Raphael, typed by Karolina Wihed

Esquire June 1999-07-09

The Esquire interview Michael Stipe He does sit-ups at the dinner table and howls like an animal in his sleep. Has St Michael, people's poet, become the Phoebe Bouffet of Rock?

By Amy Raphael Photographs by Kevin Cummins

We are in Italy and REM are preparing to go on stage. In a few minutes, they will perform at the country's biggest music festival. Michael Stipe stands motionless, looking withdrawn, entertaining himself in his head. Or perhaps he is just concentrating; this small backstage space is a little like a Fellini film, with a deranged woman singing opera in one corner and some pretty boys fiddling nervously with bow ties in another. REM's keyboard player arrives in a bright-orange plastic wheelchair; a few days earlier he ran up a mountain for the first time in his life and now he can barely walk.

I am standing a few feet away from Michael Stipe, watching him as he stretches his head towards one shoulder and then the other; he has a slightly sore neck. I look away for a moment, to see what is going on in this momentary madhouse, and walking towards us is Mikhail Gorbachev. He is wearing a tuxedo, an impassive expression and, of course, that wine-stain birthmark on his shiny head. I forget myself; in my excitement, I grab Stipe's arm and shriek: "Look! Look! My God, look!"

Stipe slowly looks down at my hand gripping his forearm, raises an eyebrow and lifts his head to see Gorbachev pass by inches in front of us. I quickly let go of his arm and apologise. Finally, he smiles. "My God," he says quietly. "That was Gorby."

As everyone knows, Michael Stipe is a little eccentric. He is a pop-star poet; arty, philosophical, intellectual even. Most of all, he is mysterious and elusive. Which is, of course, exactly how we want our finest rock stars to be.

The first time we are introduced, he is sitting on a hotel terrace in the south of France eating lurid orange soup. The sun is so bright it hurts, but Stipe sits staring into it, wearing his thick-rimmed Morrissey glasses. He is not, apparently, particularly interested in meeting anyone new. He looks up, squinting into the sun, and mumbles: "Hi."

I don't see him again until later on that day, after we have driven in a convoy of vehicles across the border to Italy, to the Sanremo music festival. In the corridor of a decaying four-star hotel, I hear him say to someone: "I don't eat before I sing." He goes upstairs and changes into a black leather jacket which reverses into a brown suede jacked, black trousers and box-fresh black shoes.

There are interviews to be done. Stipe sits on a sofa alongside guitarist Peter Buck (in sunglasses) and bass player Mike Mills (smiling for three), and an attractive girl for a local radio station sits on the edge of her chair, holding tightly on to her microphone. She asks why the band have changed their minds and decided to tour their current album, Up.

Michael Stipe: "We always wanted to; it was just a matter of when."

She talks about Stipe's lyrics; I am frustrated, sitting at the other end of the room, not quite able to hear; Stipe never discusses his lyrics. Then I hear Stipe say: "It's about a higher understanding."

Earnest in the extreme, she says: "Of all the artists who have performed at Sanremo this week - Blur, Alanis Morissette, Cher - whom whould you most like to work with?"

Peter Buck, his expression hidden behind his glasses: "We'd have to pick Cher."

The girl is delighted: "I asked her the same question and she chose you too!"

Stipe and Mills try not to laugh.

The interview finishes and Buck and Mills disappear. Stipe dig around in his pockets, concern on his face. "Ah yes," he says with relief. "I've got my scissors."

Outside the hotel, a dozen girls, aged from 14 to 17, stand around smoking and endeavouring to look cool. REM's driver, dressed in a Gucci suit and with immaculately gelled hair, feels sorry for them; he reaches inside the plush mini-van and produces an empty Evian bottle which Michael Stipe may or may not have touched. They jostle for the bottle and squeal with delight. Moments later, REM appear. Buck and Mills sign a few autographs, but Stipe prefer not to. Instead, he winks at them.

We drive the short distance to the venue and sit in the dressing room until it's time to soundcheck. Stipe holds a roll of salami up to his nose, declares that it smells like socks and drops it back on the table. He spots some freshly squeezed blood-orange juice and is delighted. "It's the best," he says, drinking a few quick mouthfuls."

Suddenly, he is standing in front of me. He looks at me, his lashes long, his eyes blue, intense, unblinking. "Sorry for being jetlagged at lunch yesterday," he says, although in reality it was only this lunchtime. His voice is deep, deeper that I'd expected, and purposeful. "I didn't like you saying hello with your sunglasses on."

He half-smiles - he does this a lot, a bemused little smile as much to himself as to anyone else - and wanders off. While Mills and Buck saunter around amusing each other, Stipe sits at the table playing with his mobile phone, adding and subtracting numbers. He is not being aloof, just distracted.

He turns to me. "What's your name? Amy? Do you have a pen?" I pass him one. After a few minutes, he hands it back and, for some reason, I hold it in my left hand. "You're left-handed?" he asks, beaming. I shake my head. "It doesn't matter," he says, disappointed. After all, this is the man who wrote backwards with his left hand until the age of 12.

The soundcheck is brief. REM will perform only two songs later on that evening - "Lotus" and "Daysleeper", both from Up. The stage is very glitzy, very fake and very big. Stipe walks on with his shoulder bag and a bottle of Evian, ignoring the women who continue to mop the stage. There is a lectern for his lyrics, which is possibly an affectation, because in reality he never needs to check his own lyrics.

He shuts his eyes and sings, his right hand shaking an invisible tambourine. His voice is glorious. Effortless. "I cried the other night/I can't even say why..." He suddenly stops singing "Daysleeper" and announces: "If you put a marble on this floor, it would go shooting off the stage. Ha ha." After the soundcheck, it's time to eat. We all sit on the same coach for the first time today. Michael Stipe sits somewhere in the middle, fiddles with his mobile phone and entertains. "I've got this message from a Mr Cringe, asking me about line rental... Oh," he says, frowning, "it's from a year and a half ago." He looks up and addresses the whole bus. "I guess it's time to erase it." The laughter lasts for over a minute.

A couple of large tables have been reserved at the restaurant. I'm standing next to Stipe and he's about to sit down. I ask if he minds if I sit next to him. "I don't care," he shrugs. His assistant Sue comes over and sits between us. I feel a little awkward, something of an unwanted guest. Sue has business to discuss with him; for example his favourite six REM videos. He considers black and white versus colour. "Of course, we get questions like this because we're ARTY and EDGY," he says loudly, and laughs.

The waiters appear with plates of pasta. Stipe eats his crespolini in silence and suddenly bows his head. I am concerned that the pasta may be making him feel ill. Sue says to me, sotto voce: "Don't worry. He's having an epiphany."

Wanting a drink, I order a glass of prosecco, a young, fruity, sparkling wine. I suggest to Stipe that he tries it; he agrees and drinks half a glass at once. Although nothing is going wrong, I feel a little nervous, and after the pasta, I play with a heavy silver ring I wear on the middle finger of my left hand. I notice Stipe watching my ring and, when I leave it on the table, he reaches across and takes it.

Michael Stipe is in an odd, dislocated mood. He has extraordinary table manners, perhaps as a result of being hyperactive as a child. During the course of an hour or so, he does sit-ups and then lifts his jumper to admire his stomach. He does acrobatics with a teaspoon, moving it from his mouth to his forehead and back again to his mouth. He plays songs on his mobile. He eats a lump of sugar out of the bowl. He is fidgeting so much at one point that he accidentally knocks over his glass of prosecco; minutes later, he purposefully chucks the rest of the drink over the table and then wipes it up with his napkin. No one pays him any attention.

Wearing my ring, he produces some makeup and small phials from his pocket. There is some white creamy stuff which he smooths on under his eyes and some ylang-ylang which he dabs on his pulse points. "It brings you to the present," he explains.

It is time to go. Mills and Buck get on the coach. Stipe is still sitting at the table, fishing around in his pockets. He finally produces his nail scissors, lifts up his jumper, finds the label and cuts it off.

On 5 April 1980, REM played their first show in a disused church on Oconee Street in Athens, Georgia. John Michael Stipe had just turned 20 and his first gig with his new band was at a friend's birthday party in the church where he had once lived with Peter Buck.

Stipe was born in Georgia but, as his father flew army helicopters, his family moved around: Texas, Germany, Illinois. They returned to Athens in 1978, when Stipe was 18; he decided to study art and photography. Although he is reluctant to discuss his childhood, or even his late teens, Stipe will say that he was miserably shy and relied on his sisters for friendship until he met Buck.

With two other locals - Bill Berry and Mike Mills - on drums and bass, the as-yet-unnamed band performed a church-hall set of original songs and well-worn covers: the Monkees' "Stepping Stone" and the Velvet Underground "There She Goes Again".

REM (they picked their name from the dictionary due to its vagueness) toured non-stop for the next few years; occasionally, all four wore dresses on stage. In July 1981, they released their first single, "Radio Free EuropÈ", on a friend's label. Less than a year later they signed a proper record-company deal.

Over the following two decades, Michael Stipe steadily became the ultimate pop-star poet and REM the most important and influential American "alternative" rock band - although, of course, Nirvana briefly challenged their position in the early Nineties.

Then, in October 1997, REM almost split up. The four friends had a pact that if one member left, the band would quit. Bill Berry had survived a life-threatening fever in Germany in 1989 and a brain aneurysm while on tour in Switzerland in 1995. He could not face touring again, but offered to stay to keep the band together; they finally decided to continue without him. As Mike Mills put it at the time, it was oddly liberating: "Once Bill had left, we just said, 'Well, there are no rules any more. We can do anything we want to.'"

Back at Sanremo, there is more time to kill before REM perform their two songs. Peter Buck stretches out across a row of chairs and tries to get some rest. Mike Mills chats to Scott, the new drummer. "I could play 'Daysleeper' with mittens on and nobody would notice," he opines.

"Michael Stipe, who owns a business card pronouncing him "word's greatest photographer" (a friend had it made up for him, as a half-joke), gets his camera out. He takes pictures of curtains and carpets and corners before disappearing behind a partition to talk in hushed tones on his mobile.

Finally, it is time for the show. We walk through the corridors and eventually find ourselves backstage. Which is when we see Gorby.

The next day, we are back in the south of France, at the Colombe d'Or. A beautiful hotel in a small village 20 minutes north of Nice, it is famous for its past: former guests include Jean-Paul Satre and Pablo Picasso. Unsurprisingly, it is one of Michael Stipe's favourite hotels - not because he considers himself part of its artistic dynasty, or even because he himself is a little surreal, but simply because it is a magical place.

Today, Stipe is a little sleepy; it is 2pm and he had just got out of bed. He is also hungry, so we talk at one of the tables on the hotel terrace. Again, I notice his surprisingly deep voice, but I don't realise how much he laughs until I listen to the interview on tape and realise that what sounded like hiccups were, in fact, giggles.

Stipe is wearing stripy trousers, a dark-green jumper and flip-flops he bought for $2 in LA's Chinatown. The word "Epoch" is written across the front of them. He is not wearing any nail varnish; he says he's over it, he's given it all away. He had two tattoos on his right had. One is old, a question mark on the palm - because he liked the idea of having something "permanent, but ephemeral". The other, where his thumb meets his forefinger, is a brick. It was a gift from his sister.

He asks for the menu and squints at it; the light is bright, intense, but still he wears only his heavy, black-rimmed glasses. "What do I want?" he asks himself. He used to be vegetarian; now he eats fish, but not meat. He looks around the terrace. "I love it here," he says, quietly. "It has a familiarity... and it's exotic, but not in the bad sense of the word. Where I come from, the trees don't look like that." He giggles, pointing at the naked fig trees with their knotted branches. "If I eat smoked salmon and cheese, that's not a bad thing, is it?"

The waiter appears. "Bonjour," says Stipe.

"Vous avez choisi, monsieur?"

"Er, oui. Um... may I have the soup? It's pumpkin, right? And, er, a salad. And the saumon fumÈ. And water for my tea: hot water," he says, showing his tea bag. "Oh, and a Perrier also. Thank you. Could you make sure the soup is vegetarian? Thank you."

Before we start talking, Stipe squints at me across the table. "Can you take your glasses off? Do you mind? Thanks. Is it too bright? Shall I swap places with you so that I'm facing the sun? OK. What were you saying? Will you be able to hear over those people?" he asks, gesturing at the next table. "They're loud Americans." He smiles; I am touched by his sleepy concern and his need for direct eye contact as he talks.

Yet Stipe is not an easy interviewee. He will chat, but he doesn't like direct questions. And he is fiercely private. At one point, I mention Kurt Cobain. Cobain was inspired by Stipe and they were planning to collaborate shortly before Kurt's suicide. I ask if they got round to discussing the type of music they would make. "Yeah, we did," Stipe says, looking away. "But I'd rather not talk about him."

Still, his secrecy takes little away from his charisma and charm, and his humour, though rather unusual, makes him good company.

When REM released Up last year, there were no plans for a tour. The album - their most experimental yet, with nothing as obvious commercial as, say, "Shiny Happy People", or as fundamentally appealing as "Everybody Hurts" - was labelled by some as "difficult" and "impenetrable". It is, in fact, an album of wonderfully obscure and oblique love songs; it's just a little more lo-fi than it is rock.

A few months into 1999, REM announced a series of dates; cynics would say they had to tour the record to sell it. Michael Stipe doesn't care what anyone thinks. "Up" was a physically and mentally and spiritually exhausting record to make," he explains, adeptly constructing the first of many roll-ups. "So the idea of going out on the road... you know, you're supposed to be joyful and celebratory and provoking great feelings in people." He starts laughing. "You can't really do that when you're miserable and exhausted!"

Stipe's hot water arrives and he teases the tea bag by dangling it above the cup before finally dropping it in. "There's a very romantic idea about travelling and performing, and it can be romantic. But it's also a grind. It's not always fun. I'm not complaining. It's just that when Bill left, we had to re-examine ourselves - 'wow, are we going to look great any more?' - you know." He pauses, relighting his roll-up. "We made the decision to break the cardinal rule that if one of us left the band, we wouldn't stay together. What I have with REM is very special; those guys are, for me, the most inspiring."

The waiter is back. "The soup is vegetarian, sir." He carefully puts the orange soup on the table.

"Totally great. I'm so excited about this soup," Stipe says, having his second epiphany in as many days. "It looks really genius. Merci. Thank you very much."

In under a year, REM will be celebrating their 20th anniversary, albeit with a slightly different line-up. "Incredible, huh? I saw this TV show recently that documented the band from our first show in the church to now, and it was an hour long. It was really wild watching it. I remember almost every photograph that was taken. I remembered the situation I was in and how I felt. Overwhelming."

He must have felt proud. "Yeah, but I felt proud of what I had achieved in 1982. I felt successful. We were having a great time. That sounds really simple, but..." he suddenly laughs like an over-excited child. "I was going to wear my ring today, but I forgot."

I look puzzled. "Your ring," he says, pointing at the one he tried on in Italy. "I have the exact same ring. It's from London. A designer called Jacqueline Rabun. I have a necklace by her too. Well, it's maybe a necklace and a bracelet. I wear it everywhere; around my waist or my neck or my arm or my ankle. I guess that's pretty much everywhere. It's really great. I can't wear my ring that often, though, because people are always shaking my hand and it hurts when people grab your hand really right. I wear it on my left hand and hit myself with it because I'm left-handed. Mmmm," he says, tasting the soup. "This is so great."

Patti Smith didn't save Michael Stipe's life. But she certainly changed it. When he was living in Texas, he listened to country-music artists from Tammy Wynette to George Jones. Yet nothing really touched him until, on day in 1975, he went out and bought Patti Smith's Horses.

"I bought it the day it came out. I went home and listened to it all night on headphones. I didn't take them off till the morning, when I had to go to school. It was one of the single most cathartic moments of my life."

Did life make sense after that night? "Nothing made sense. But it set me on a path. It just felt right. It felt like: this is music, this is what I'm going to do." He laughs. "I was really naive; I mean, I was 15. I was simple-headed, but it was a defining moment for me. Remember the whole punk aesthetic was that anybody could do it. You didn't have to be special or talented. Or beautiful or rich or whatever. I just decided that I knew I'd be a singer. That was that."

When Stipe moved back to Athens three years later, he still had what he refers to as his "romantic notion" in his head. He met Peter Buck and petitioned him to play guitar and write songs with him. "He was someone I could talk to and hang out with. Excuse me," he says, belching. "I was really on my own then. Peter was the only person I could talk to. When I met him, I knew a lot about alternative music and it was my passion. But Peter knew even more than I did. He worked in a record store." Stipe smiles, his blue eyes sparkling in the sun. "He sold cheap records that no one else wanted. It was perfect."

Are you ever nostalgic for those days? "Well, back then I wasn't in the south of France eating amazing food, but a pizza was amazing food then. I was doing exactly what I wanted and 40 people a night wanted to hear us. That, to me, was a phenomenal success. We were having a blast. And, somehow, we're still managing to have a blast."

He drops a hunk of bread in his soup and watches it sink. "You know yesterday... it'd be really easy not to understand the whole situation in Sam Remo. It was no more ridiculous than the Grammies or the Oscars or any of the award things I've ever been to; they're all completely insane..." He bursts out laughing. "It was wild seeing Gorby."

I overreacted though. "You overreacted?" By grabbing you. "No! I don't think you did. I was like, 'Oh my God!' It was wild to be inside it and also to be kind of outside it."

Michael Stipe likes being a celebrity - "it's great" - and he has a collection of celebrity friends. Patti Smith, Courtney Love, Bono, Thom Yorke... He says he could fetch his Psion from his room and prove that it's 50-50, that he has plenty of friends who aren't known outside their immediate circle. I ask how Courtney is; he squirms. "She's fine," he says, quickly - this is obviously another "private" matter. "Everyone in Europe is completely obsessed with my friendship with her. It's like, she's fine." He pauses. "Actually, she's doing great. She's in a really, really good place right now. She has the constitution of an ox. Do you want to move into the sun? I like sweltering heat. Everything becomes more extreme when it's really hot."

We move to another part of the terrace and sit side by side, staring into the sinking sun. Someone from the record company passes by and asks how Stipe slept last night. "Yeah, really good," he says. When she has gone, he continues: "I had strange dreams. I had this really wild dream where this cat bit me on the ass and wouldn't let go and then it turned into a person. Whom I didn't know."

Male or female? "That doesn't matter," says the man who will admit being "an equal-opportunity lech" and "queer" but who won't reveal any details. "The interesting thing is that I was trying to get out of the house, away from this cat, and everything had been sucked dry - maybe I had the heat in my room on too high. The house was built on stilts of lace and everything was so... dry." He starts on another roll-up. "I make funny animal sound when I'm asleep and scared." He sighs. "I've heard it a couple of times upon waking and it's really the most insanely scary, weird sound. It's like a howl." He clutches his midriff. "Now my stomach hurts."

The waiter arrives moments later with a plate of smoked salmon and little orange balls of caviar. "How beautiful," says Stipe, with great reverence. "This is crème fraîche? Perfect." His voice has dropped to a whisper. "I'm so excited. The French are just rocking my ass... I'm glad I'm eating fish. I started again after I'd had dental surgery and all the drugs - the Novocaine and the antibiotics - made me crave fish. I'd wake up smelling it. And then just being on tour - you have to be superhuman.

We chat for a while and then I ask him if he is happy with who he is. "As a person?" he asks, delicately dipping a strip of smoked salmon in the crËme fraÓche. "Yeah. I am. There are improvements to be made, but... they're kind of run-of-the-mill. The same things that everyone grapples with - depression... actually, I shouldn't kick off with that because it makes me sound like I'm depressed, which I'm not."

Stipe has to leave; he's flying to Paris. "Let's do, like five more minutes. What is the laundry list of things we have to work on about ourselves? Communication issues. Ego issues. Maintaining an ability to prioritise. Fear."

Fear? Do you worry about... "Don't sidetrack me. I'm supposed to be coming up with a list here." Sorry. "You're supposed to be helping! Not just listening. This is a conversation. Do I worry about what?" Death. When Bill Berry was ill on the road and almost died and then you were ill, too... "That was blown out of proportion because we had to cancel dates. I had surgery [for a hernia] that was so minor and insignificant. With then exception of Bill almost dying from a brain aneurysm," he laughs, "it was a great year."

Someone from the record company comes to the table; it's time to go. She says she likes Stipe's jumper. "Really? I wasn't sure about the colour. It doesn't make me look green?"

A few weeks later, I speak to Michael Stipe on the phone. He is in a hotel room in Oslo. Tomorrow, he will be going home, back to Athens to see his two dogs and his non-famous friends.

"At My Most Beautiful", REM's recent single, is, I say, a wonderful love song - yet you insist that you've never been in love. "I have a very vivid imagination," he says, and I can tell he's smiling. "I can sing the Yellow Pages and make people cry. The point for me, as a lyricist, is to write something that's a challenge, something that is really pure." He whispers: "And really true."

So you have been in love? "Five or six years ago, I told a journalist that I hadn't, not having any idea how much people would pick up on it and make a big deal out of it. I don't think it's their business to begin with, to tell you the truth. My private life is private."

He sounds serious and withdrawn, so I talk about anagrams of his name (of Michael Stipe without the John). "A speech limit"; "emphatic lies"; "impale ethics" and "lime pastiche", which sounds like an REM song title. He listens carefully. "'Illicit as hemp'? 'Hamlet is epic'. Wow, that's really wild. 'I emplace shit'? Wow. Hang on, excuse me."

He disappears to pick up another phone. "Sorry. That was Bertis [Downs, REM's adviser]. What were we talking about? Being on tour? No, but you can. "I'm really excited," he says, his mood lifting. "Being on tour - it's my favourite season. I love travelling. Especially when I'm warm. I really like it when it's warm and I get to perform, because I sweat a lot. Oops."

There is a noise at the other end of the line.

What are you doing? "I almost just died."

Pardon? "I almost just died."

How? "I went out on to the balcony and stepped on my shoestring and almost went over to my death," he says calmly. REM play Earl's Court, 22-23 June; Glastonbury, 26 June; Manchester Evening News Arena, 17 July; and Stirling Castle, 19-21 July

Stipe's celebrity friends on why they like Mike

Courtney Love, Hole "Michael is really diplomatic. He knows how to navigate his way round things that are insincere or in his way, and I've learnt that from him. Because, you know, my mouth is less specific, now. I think about things a little more."

Patti Smith "I have long admired Michael as an artist, as well as REM's ability to produce heightened and worthy popular songs. They have also presented beautiful and intelligent music videos, such as 'Orange Crush', 'Stand' and 'Losing My Religion'. Since the spring of 1995, I have had the pleasure to meet Michael and develop a meaningful and lifelong friendship. He is a compassionate man with a generous spirit and had shown my children and I kindness and care beyond the call of duty."

Thom Yorke, Radiohead "At the first gig we did with REM, Mr Stipe came in to say hello before the show. He said, 'Hi, I'm Michael. I'm really glad you could do this. I'm a very big fan.' When someone you really admire gives you something like that, your shoulders get a little lighter. You feel a little stronger."

Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters "The first time I ever sat down with Stipe was over breakfast at his vegetarian-friendly restaurant in Athens. He had come to see our band the night before at the 40-Watt club. He turned me on to 'facon' [vegetarian bacon] and soysage [duh]. It was pretty good. REM have always represented the southern underground vibe to me. They're from Georgia, for Christ sakes. They were different from Hüsker Dü or Television, all the bands who hailed from the northern states. There was some South in the music. Maybe Stipe's sinuses. Maybe the easy-living vibe. Maybe the small town of Athens. So, growing up in Virginia, I could see where they were coming from. They were normal, just like us [Nirvana]. Somewhere between punk rockers and pop stars. So we all looked up to them. Not really as idols or rock stars, but more like the cool dudes that you bought weed from who dabble in photography and worked at the local record shop.

7/11/99