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By the time I was 18, I had absorbed punk rock from America, Britain, and the West Coast. All of it was so dark and weird and different and cool and hot and sexy and rebellious. It was a fist-in-the-air kind of rebellion that I wasn't getting from the '70s mainstream.

Michael Stipe

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Michael Stipe
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: January 4
Actor
Composer
Film Producer
Guitarist
Musician
Peace Activist
Record Producer
Restaurateur
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Television Actor
Decatur
Georgia
John Michael Stipe
JMS
Stinky
Time
Air
Mainstream
Rocks
Britain
Fist
Wasn
Hot
Absorbed
Dark
Sexy
Rebellious
Getting
Weird
Fists
America
Cool
Rebellion
Different
West
Coast
Kind
Rock
Punk

More quotes by Michael Stipe

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My feeling is that labels are for canned food... I am what I am - and I know what I am.
Michael Stipe
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If you disagree with me, fine! Because that's the great thing about America, we can disagree!
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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.
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I'm tired of being this solemn poet of the masses, the enigma shrouded in a mystery.
Michael Stipe
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There was never a golden era of American radio as far as I can tell.
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I was doing that [a collaboration with Kurt Cobain] to try to save his life. The collaboration was me calling up as an excuse to reach out to this guy. He was in a really bad place.
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I was a teenager, we were pretty much fully indoctrinated, thanks to sexual scare tactics. I remember so many public-health commercials with a B-actor in a fake alley background warning us to use protection or telling us the only real safe choice was abstinence. We were highly frightened of sex from day one. There was no free-swinging '90s.
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I've never written a song that's hopeless. I'm not a hopeless person. I'm crazily optimistic. I crazily see the good in people. I crazily see the way out of a terrible situation. I crazily try to be the diplomat. If there are two warring factions in my life, I want them to agree to disagree at the very least.
Michael Stipe
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[Columbia House] magazines were how I found out about the punk world going on in New York. Because of what I read, at the age of 15, I hounded the local record store to order a copy of Horses [1975] for me by Patti Smith.
Michael Stipe
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Our generation was supposed to be about trying to deal with nuclear concerns and environmental disasters.
Michael Stipe
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Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.
Michael Stipe
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If I'm tired of me, I'm sure the public is as well.
Michael Stipe
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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
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I went through a period where I was really tired of seeing and reading about myself.
Michael Stipe
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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.
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When I write, I tend toward melancholy, and the few times that I've tried pure joy in music, it doesn't really work that well. The joy can be through catharsis. I think that's what I do well, and observation.
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I distinctly remember a conversation with my band in the van where I was having a complete meltdown. It was 1984, I think, and I was huddled in the back corner of our van and saying, I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. I didn't want to play any more shows. I just wanted to stop.
Michael Stipe
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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
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I remember traffic jams Motor boys and girls with tans Nearly was and almost rans I remember this, this ... At the edge of the continent
Michael Stipe
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I'm just not that fascinating a person to have had all those lives that I've written about.
Michael Stipe