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with Jesse Thorn is a production

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of maximumfund.org and is

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distributed by NPR. It's

0:38

Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorn. My first

0:41

guest this week is Michael Stipe. You know

0:43

him as the lead singer of REM, one

0:45

of the biggest rock bands in the history

0:47

of the genre. Maybe you also

0:49

know him from his fun appearances on TV shows

0:51

like At Home with Amy Sedaris and The Adventures

0:53

of Pete and Pete. Outside

0:55

of REM, which broke up in

0:57

2011, he's collaborated with Warren Zevon,

1:00

Patti Smith, Billy Bragg, KRS1 and

1:02

so many others. REM

1:04

has also reunited. Well, sort of.

1:07

Later this year, they'll be inducted into the Rock

1:09

and Roll Hall of Fame. They recently

1:11

performed their classic Losing My Religion at

1:14

the Songwriters Hall of Fame. I

1:25

talked with Stipe in 2022. He'd

1:34

been recording his own material sporadically back

1:37

then. He still is. Here's one of

1:39

those songs. It's called Drive to the

1:41

Ocean. I'll

1:43

drive through the mountains, the

1:46

crumbling west. I'll

1:49

sail like the whales before

1:52

man was a pest. Radio

1:56

Transistor, my friend. Michael

2:07

Stipe, welcome to Bull's Eye. I'm so happy to have you on the

2:09

show. Thank you, Jesse. I'm happy to be here. You

2:12

were a military kid. Do you remember every

2:15

stop of your childhood or were

2:17

there multiple stops before you remember?

2:20

There were multiple stops before I remember, but I know

2:22

each place because I've been back to most of them.

2:26

But that for me was normal.

2:28

So it felt perfectly normal

2:30

for me when my father

2:32

retired and I started my band to

2:35

kind of keep moving at that same

2:37

pace. What's the first one that

2:39

you remember? The first place that I remember?

2:42

It would have been in

2:44

Georgia. I think my first memory is

2:46

my sister, my younger sister being born

2:49

and then bringing her out into the

2:51

parking lot of the hospital. My

2:53

older sister and I were sat in the backseat waiting

2:57

to see her for the first time. My

3:00

second memory is a hallucination because

3:03

two months later, my sister

3:05

was born September 30th, 1962 and

3:08

I was two years old. Two

3:10

months later, I had contracted scarlet

3:12

fever, pneumonia and whooping cough,

3:14

I think. But I almost died and

3:16

then I had a terrible reaction to

3:18

the medication that they gave

3:20

me for it. But my second

3:22

memory as a photographer trying to get a picture

3:25

of me in a Christmas sweater and I was

3:27

hallucinating. So it was like a Jack Nicholson movie

3:29

from the 1960s. How

3:32

old are we talking about? Like four or something? Two. I was two.

3:34

Holy mackerel. It's

3:38

not unusual for me to have somebody on

3:40

the show that grew up a military carat.

3:43

And it's such an extreme social

3:46

environment because you are

3:50

so bonded to whoever

3:53

is traveling with you, whoever in your family

3:55

is with you, your mom or whatever or

3:57

in people. your

4:00

mom and dad or depending on the

4:02

mix. You're also often every

4:05

two years or

4:07

so meeting new people

4:09

and doing different stuff. And

4:11

there are some people who come out

4:13

of that experience very socially

4:16

facile, like just ready to

4:18

go. Like maybe

4:21

they struggle with depth, but they can just

4:23

show themselves to people, be like, yep, here

4:26

I am. I've done this five times before,

4:28

let's go. I don't

4:30

though gather that that was what

4:33

you were like when you were a kid, am I wrong? I

4:36

mean, I would say that possibly one

4:38

of the shared experiences of people who have that

4:40

type of childhood or lifestyle

4:42

growing up, your

4:44

family become very, very important because they

4:46

are your anchor, much more than

4:49

the community or the group of friends

4:51

that you might make at school or

4:53

out of church or in your neighborhood.

4:56

And so, I'm very lucky that I

4:58

have a great family. I had a

5:00

great father growing up and I

5:02

have this very loving, very intimate and very close

5:04

relationship with my sisters. And so, but I do think

5:07

that a lot of that had to do with

5:09

us picking up and moving all the time. Night

5:12

swimming deserves a

5:15

quiet night. The

5:20

photograph on

5:23

the dashboard

5:27

taken years ago,

5:31

turned around back so

5:33

the windshield shows, every

5:36

street light reveals

5:39

a picture and

5:41

reverse. Still

5:44

it's so much clearer,

5:46

I forgot

5:49

my shirt at the

5:52

water's house, the

5:55

moon is low tonight.

6:03

When did you figure out that you

6:07

might be a weird kid? Weird.

6:14

Okay. Well, I picked that

6:16

one out of a long list of possibilities,

6:19

but alternative seemed a little on the nose.

6:21

Okay. No, I mean, I figured out queer

6:23

pretty early on and then had to

6:25

figure that out because the categories

6:27

that were available to me didn't exactly

6:30

match how I felt. And so

6:32

that was a bit odd. But I

6:35

was the daydreamer. I was a kid that looked out the

6:37

window. I'm the only boy

6:39

of three kids. I'm the middle kid.

6:41

I'm left-handed. I'm queer,

6:43

as it turns out. So

6:45

there's all these and a military kid. So there's all

6:48

these things that are maybe different from what

6:50

other people, quote unquote, normal

6:53

upbringing might provide. But that's not

6:56

so different, huh? I

6:59

don't know that I ever... Maybe, you know what? I bet

7:01

I know what it was. I think probably I could

7:04

always emotionally read a room

7:07

even as a very, very young child. And so there

7:09

would be things going on that kids didn't need to

7:11

know about. But I would look at

7:13

the adults and see that something was wrong. So I

7:15

would pull someone aside and say, what's happening? And

7:18

they would routinely separate

7:21

me from the other kids and say, someone's

7:23

had an accident and it's because of some bad

7:26

men that he met during

7:28

the war. And we're talking about a distant family

7:30

member, not my father, but who

7:33

had a car wreck. And it's because he had been drinking and

7:35

this was in the early 60s. But

7:38

that's a good example. I mean, I think I knew

7:41

then that I'd go back and all the kids

7:43

would be playing and no one else

7:45

seemed to have tapped into this emotional

7:47

dissonance that for me was absolutely present

7:50

in the room, like a fog. And

7:53

the parents or the adults would always... In

7:56

my family, they would treat me with respect in

7:58

terms of how they... answered

8:00

those questions. It's a very different time than

8:02

what a parent might say to a kid

8:04

now, but they

8:06

did their best and they did a good job. Maybe

8:08

that's when I realized that I was a little bit different from those

8:11

around me. And that

8:13

was a particular real

8:15

life example that you just

8:17

gave? Yeah. How

8:19

old are you? I

8:21

would have been, that was probably five or six. That

8:24

is really young to notice something like that. Well,

8:27

I mean, that's just who I am.

8:31

It's okay. I'm fine. It turned out okay.

8:35

What about the queer part of it? Because

8:38

you've had romances with, you have a partner

8:41

who's a man right now, I think,

8:43

right? Yeah, that's right. But you've had

8:45

romances with women as well.

8:48

That's right. When

8:52

did you realize something and what did you realize? Pretty

8:55

early on. I think maybe as a young

8:57

teenager, probably around 12, 13, 12, I would

8:59

say, yeah, yeah,

9:04

no, earlier. I'm

9:06

placing it now where I lived at the time. So that's always

9:08

a nice way because I know what years we moved from so

9:10

and so to so and so. So it would

9:12

have been earlier than that, probably 11, 10.

9:15

What did you notice? I'm going backwards, aren't

9:17

I? Maybe seven. Four

9:21

is my final offer. I

9:25

consider my first sexual experience that I remember.

9:28

I was either six or seven years old and that

9:30

happened in Germany. It was with a brother, sister, team.

9:33

I still have a thing for redheads, as

9:35

it turns out. They were a good bit older

9:37

than me and I think they had more of an idea of what

9:39

they were doing. It was completely fine.

9:41

I don't think it had any bad

9:45

impact on me, but I do remember it. What

9:49

did you even know about what that meant at

9:51

the time? I didn't know anything. There wasn't much

9:53

to. The thing that

9:56

I thought about when I thought about

9:58

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visit sk.com. On

13:04

this week's episode of Wild Card,

13:06

comedian Taylor Tomlinson explains how you

13:08

can use fear as a motivating

13:10

force. I was afraid that I would

13:12

get years down the road and go, man, I really wish

13:14

I had pursued that or I wish

13:16

I had developed this town

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that might have taken me somewhere. I'm

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Rachel Martin. Join us for NPR's Wild

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Card podcast, the game where cards control

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the conversation. Welcome

13:33

back to Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorn. We're listening back

13:35

to my 2022 conversation with Michael Stipe.

13:38

He is, of course, the lead singer of

13:40

the band REM, one of the biggest alternative

13:42

rock bands ever. REM was

13:44

recently inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

13:46

This fall, they will join the Rock and

13:48

Roll Hall of Fame. Let's get back into

13:51

our conversation. lead

20:00

guitarist and singer for the band

20:03

television from the CBGB scene. No

20:05

one in my high school knew who Tom Verlaine

20:07

was, but it caused this huge ruckus because it

20:10

was blasphemous to call anyone God except for

20:12

God. But then all the English teachers were

20:14

like, it's Paul Verlaine. They didn't know the

20:16

right, they thought it was the

20:19

romantic poet from France, not some

20:21

guy from the Bowery. But

20:24

anyway. What

20:27

did your dad, the last in a long line

20:30

of Methodist preachers think about it? My

20:32

father wasn't a Methodist preacher, my grandpa was. Well, the

20:35

end of the long line of the Methodist preachers, I

20:37

should say. They never

20:39

caught the Vandal, you know, the Vandal

20:41

was me, of course. But they never

20:43

caught the

20:45

Vandal, so my father didn't hear about it. Nobody's

20:48

heard about it until this interview, I don't think. That's

20:51

pretty funny to admit, but there it is. What I wouldn't

20:53

give to have one of those Tom Verlaine

20:55

as God, many of the graph sheets now. When

21:02

did you feel like you were there? Was it when you got to art

21:04

school? What does

21:06

there mean there? I mean, like that you

21:08

were inside the thing that you imagined being

21:10

inside. I mean, you weren't literally inside of

21:13

CBGB scene at the time.

21:16

You're a thousand miles away from

21:18

that. But art

21:20

school is a whole

21:22

other deal. I didn't feel

21:25

like I was inside of it then either. I have to say, Jesse,

21:27

I was still, you

21:31

know, I was very, very shy. And yeah,

21:33

I didn't. I mean, the early

21:36

punk rock scene in Athens, Georgia, which is where I

21:38

moved when I was 18 to go

21:40

to college, was really

21:43

incredible. But I was kind

21:45

of an outsider there. I do remember there

21:49

was a party that then it was, you know,

21:51

the band Pylon, the method

21:53

actors was a band here in

21:55

the late 70s, early 80s, the

21:57

B-52s. and

38:00

Wally. Our theme song is

38:02

Huddle Formation, written and recorded by The Go

38:04

Team, thanks to them and to their label

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great freaking band. Bullseye is

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on Instagram, find pictures from behind

38:13

the scenes and staff recommendations, all

38:15

kinds of fun stuff, at

38:17

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn. I think that's about

38:19

it. Just remember, all great radio hosts, have

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