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In fact, a lot of critics seemed to consider R.E.M. the first American music since the '60s to break out on its own and develop a stand-alone sound.
Michael Stipe
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Michael Stipe
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: January 4
Actor
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Film Producer
Guitarist
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Peace Activist
Record Producer
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Singer-Songwriter
Television Actor
Decatur
Georgia
John Michael Stipe
JMS
Stinky
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American
Develop
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More quotes by Michael Stipe
So, when you divide the world into music lovers, music fans and then those people who are just very casual about their music, it's wallpaper to them, it's elevator music, it's just the thing that's playing in the background that helps them through their day.
Michael Stipe
We made part of the record in Miami, and I would go down to the beach, and not 20 feet from the water I see a fish that is at least seven feet long swimming close to the shore. I did not go back in the ocean the entire month.
Michael Stipe
The whole punk ethic was do-it-yourself, and I've always been very literal, especially as a kid. When they said that anybody can do this, I was like, 'OK, that's me.'
Michael Stipe
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.
Michael Stipe
Because the casual music listeners are the ones who turn on the radio and they don't really care what's playing, they just know that they kinda like it or it's easy to drive to or it's easy to sing along to or whatever.
Michael Stipe
If I'm tired of me, I'm sure the public is as well.
Michael Stipe
And I don't expect anyone can bring about a revolution in the way that Bob Dylan did - and really didn't - in the 1960s.
Michael Stipe
Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.
Michael Stipe
There is always something of the writer in the work but I don't think Melville had to be swallowed by a whale to write a great novel. If I had lived the lives of all the characters of the songs I've written, that would truly be an extraordinary story.
Michael Stipe
Anything you do as a group is fraught with compromise... But everyone 's got to do that, right? It's part of being a good parent, or a good boyfriend, whatever.
Michael Stipe
If you disagree with me, fine! Because that's the great thing about America, we can disagree!
Michael Stipe
My feeling is that labels are for canned food... I am what I am - and I know what I am.
Michael Stipe
When we first started, we were a band from Athens and that was so off the map.
Michael Stipe
At the [teenage] time, I did have an inkling of my sexuality. And I had an inkling that I was different from other people in ways beyond my sexuality. But I didn't get into music because I thought, Oh, these people will understand me.
Michael Stipe
It was '86. We were a big enough name and we had enough cache that MTV wanted to play us, so, along with Michael Jackson and Madonna, they played our upside-down, black-and-white, backward, single unedited footage of a rock quarry with orange letters over the top of it and called it art.
Michael Stipe
There tend to be two different drives that lead young people toward music. One is that music provides an escape it takes you away from the unhappiness or torture of where you are and makes you feel less alienated-you believe there is a place you fit in somewhere else. The other is a sort of transcendent, spiritual feeling in the purity of music.
Michael Stipe
I'm tired of being this solemn poet of the masses, the enigma shrouded in a mystery.
Michael Stipe
For every great thing we did, there is a very public moment of falling on our faces. But everything that came through us as a band was a distinct vision of R.E.M.
Michael Stipe
I knew [Kurt Cobain] and his daughter. And Courtney [Love] came and stayed at my house. R.E.M. worked on two records in Seattle and Peter Buck lived next door to Kurt and Courtney. So we all knew each other. I reached out to him with that project as an attempt to prevent what was going to happen.
Michael Stipe
Punk-rock records came out and you bought whatever you could find. But Devo didn't happen for another three years. Sex Pistols didn't tour the States until '78. At that time, for me, it was really about CBGB, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, the Ramones, and Television.
Michael Stipe