Michael Stipe
Michael Stipe
John Michael Stipeis an American singer, songwriter, musician, film producer, music video director, and visual artist. He was the lyricist and lead singer of the alternative rock band R.E.M. from their formation in 1980 until their dissolution in 2011...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth4 January 1960
CityDecatur, GA
CountryUnited States of America
tired im-tired wells
If I'm tired of me, I'm sure the public is as well.
tired mystery poet
I'm tired of being this solemn poet of the masses, the enigma shrouded in a mystery.
stars guitar sick
Peter was sick of being a pop star, the guitar god, and so he decided to teach himself other instruments. Among the instruments that he picked up was the mandolin.
ethos rocks heaven
The punk-rock ethos was "Do it yourself. Anyone can do this. We're not sent from the heavens."
ukulele band maps
When we first started, we were a band from Athens and that was so off the map.
teenager want groupie
We don't get groupies.We get teenagers who want to read us their poetry.
shoes looks stranger
When you meet a stranger, look at his shoes. Keep your money in your shoes.
teenage player guitar
You don't need to be talented. You don't even have to play the guitar to be a guitar player in a punk-rock band. So I, in a very naïve and teenage way, said, "That's it. I'm going to be in a band."
wall phones house
I simply constructed a project to try to snap Kurt [Cobain] out of a frame of mind. I sent him a plane ticket and a driver, and he tacked the plane ticket to the wall in the bedroom and the driver sat outside the house for 10 hours. Kurt wouldn't come out and wouldn't answer the phone.
mistake looks done
I started lip-synching with "Losing My Religion." There were a few horrendous mistakes we made, but I own those mistakes. I'm embarrassed by them. I always say when I look back at anything I've ever done, it's with equal dollops of humiliation and triumphant glory.
dad army grandparent
I was born in Georgia. That's where my grandparents-and all my people-are from. But my family traveled a great deal because my dad was in the army as a helicopter pilot.
integrity thinking two
When we signed with Warner Bros., they knew what they were getting. They knew they weren't going to get some easily manipulated prepackaged pop group. That was not going to happen. What they wanted, I think, was the integrity that we had to offer. What they wanted was the kind of street cred or cache that R.E.M. could bring to them and the chance that we would give them a hit or two. What happened was we gave them a bunch of hits. And we became huge.
mind records difficult-times
I went through this difficult time [in the 1984] when we were making our third record where I kind of lost my mind. That's when the bulimia kicked in. And that's when I got really freaky.
absolutely huge people popular respond
We're absolutely American and distinctly so, I think. That's part of what people respond to outside of this country, part of the reason that we're such a huge band outside of the U.S., where we're not so popular now as we were 10 or 12 years ago.