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ICHAEL STIPE HAS taken a day out of his summer holiday in the south of France to meet us in London. Clearly he left in a hurry. Comprising trainers, black trousers, posh shirt and a flat cap, his outfit suggests he |
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couldn’t remember if he was going to the gym, a wedding or to sell fruit and veg down the market.
The centrepiece of this look is a silver tie knotted halfway down his sparrow chest with new wave truculence. Every time it flops down his front to make him look attitudinally scruffy, Stipe tosses it over his shoulder to look arty, boho or like someone walking through a Force 10 gale. Today, he looks very much the eccentric lone traveller - he rummages through a little green shoulder bag and a larger man-bag holdall graffitied with phone numbers and a cartoon cow. He’s not quite alone - bassist Mike Mills is around, too, doing some interviews of his own. In a clear break with tradition, though, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck has remained on holiday with his family in California. “We’re all fine, thanks for asking” is Stipe’s slightly terse response to a raised eyebrow.
Then he announces he needs “to piss like a racehorse” and disappears next door for what indeed does sound like a major disturbance in the farmyard. He’s chuffed and energised when he returns. The 13th R.E.M. album, he says, has their first guest rapper since KRS-ONE opened Out of Time. This time it is former A Tribe called Quest rapper Q-Tip on a sterling new track called The Outsiders. The mood of this track and the other five he plays me is sombre. It is also perhaps their most politically agitated work since 1987’s Document when -oh dear- a belligerent Republican President put “war” at the top of his foreign policy priorities. R.E.M. are already supporting the Democratic nominee John Kerry in his bid for the White House.
“Come, let’s talk,” he beams as I kick away the doorstop.
“No” says Stipe raising his tattooed right hand. “I’d like to keep it ajar in case we start to fight.”
You’ve been deeply affected by 9/11and the war in Iraq, haven’t you?
For better or worse, the times we live in have had a profound effect on what we’re thinking about and writing about. We released [then internet only track] Final Straw a week before our country attacked a sovereign nation. We were in Vancouver, so we had that distance and we thought, Fuck it, let’s release the song. We had to say something. Being a talking head on CNN would not be my preferred platform. Music speaks for me much more articulately. Were we afraid of a backlash? No it’s a song, a fucking song. What happened with the Dixie Chicks [the all-girl country band who became pariahs after attacking a George W Bush from the stage] was a pretty mild comment blown out of proportion by the US media, and the country music constituency is a good deal more conservative than ours.
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You were in New York during 9/11, weren’t you?
I’ve said this a lot, but it isn’t reported much- you have to recognise what my country went through, which was this profound loss of innocence and sense of a shock. I know what that feels like now. That period of mourning and shock had to happen, but sadly it happened at a time when the people in power were able to manipulate those emotions.
I’m not making excuses, but terrorism isn’t something we’ve had to live with. I didn’t know what that felt like and now I do and it’s absolutely fucking terrifying.
Your father was a US army helicopter pilot. Does he disagree with your views?
I couldn’t relate to my father and uncle’s experiences, or the troops in Iraq who’d been at war, until 9/11. My father was a career army man, having been to Vietnam twice and Korea once. I’m very proud of him for that. But yes, we agree on Iraq. Politically, we are almost down the line.
We’re giving you control of US foreign policy for the afternoon. Move some troops. Write some cheques. What would you do?
I’ve been doing interviews long enough to know that I shouldn’t answer that question, no fucking way. I’ll let my music do the talking. One of the songs on the new album is called I Wanted To Be Wrong. It’s my Fahrenheit 9/11 – I wrote it a year and a half ago and that’s all I have to say. |
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