Im aktuellen Rolling Stone �u�ern sich Mike und Michael zu U2.

Stipe schrieb:

Ich habe sie mir heute gekauft. Aber ich finde die Jubil�ums-Ausgabe war ja wohl die beste Rolling Stone die es jemals gab.

Liest du den Rolling Stone seit Anfang an?

Kauf dir das Heft doch selbst - das zitiere ich doch nicht alles (es sind immerhin zwei ganze S�tze, wenn ich mich richtig erinnere).

MICHAEL STIPE
UP CLOSE AND REAL PERSONAL WITH ROCK�S VOICE OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS
BY INGRID SISCHY

(Jarret McNeill, Interview�s assistant editor, dials Michael Stipe�s number. Phone rings. David Belisle, Stipe�s tour assistant, picks up.

David Belisle: Hello?

Jarret McNeill: Is Michael Stipe there, please?

DB: Who�s calling?

JM: Interview magazine.

DB: Okay. Hold on. (away from the receiver) Michael, they�re calling from Interview. (noises in background)
(McNeill connects Interview�s editor in chief, Ingrid Sischy)

DB: Can you hold on for a minute?
(silence�noises in background�sound of toilet flushing�sound of water running)

IS: Um, maybe we should call back or at least give him a minute. (McNeill and Sischy laugh. Sischy hangs up. McNeill holds the line.)
(extended silence�more sounds of running water�sound of drawers opening and closing�rustling noises in background�silence)

Michael Stipe: Hello?

JM: Michael?

MS: Yes?

JM: Hi, its Interview magazine calling.

MS: Oh, did you just call?

JM: We�ve actually just been on hold.

MS: You�you�re kidding.

JM: Not at all.

MS: I�ve been�I�m so sorry�I�ve been in the shower. I was just going to call you back.

JM: There�s absolutely no need to apologize. Would you like a few more minutes to get ready?

MS: I�m actually ready now.

JM: Great, let me conference you in with Ingrid.

IS: Hello.

MS: Hi, Ingrid. How are you? I didn�t realize your man was on hold there. I was in the shower.

IS: (laughs) we heard the whole thing. It was really funny.

MS: Oh, God. So you guys were in the bathroom with me the whole time?

IS: Well, after we heart the toilet flush, I decided I�d better give you your privacy, but now I�m back. (laughs) So, I�d like to begin our conversation with the bands new record, Around the Sun. Rather than going for that old-fashioned idea that art has to be timeless, it seems that you and the band wanted something that really feels like it represents the shape of now.

MS: That�s exactly right. Timelessness was something that seems important to me in my early twenties, when we were making our first records. And I don�t even know where that came from. Maybe it came from my art-school teachings.

IS: We inherit this idea that art�s supposed to be timeless, which is really an impossible notion, since history is always being revised. For so long the goal of timelessness was how art was judged. The question was always �Will it last?� and I always felt the answer was, number one: Who knows what will last? How do we know if we�ll last? And number two: With all the great art that I�ve ever seen in my life, part of what makes it so vibrant and alive is that in looking at it, you understand the moment in which it was made. So for me, the best stuff will show people in 50 years what we�re going through now. It achieves that timelessness, but not out of some goal that it will last, but because of its ability to pin down how we feel right now.

MS: I know. My opinion has drastically changed. What it�s about now is now. If you think about art and music or any creative medium as a conduit to the world we�re moving through, what you want from it is something that helps you maneuver your way through. You want something that helps you realize who you are, what you think, and what opinions you hold in the right now.
IS: What�s interesting about what you�re saying is that you, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills began to work on Around the Sun before we hit the state of emergency and the resurgence of activism that I think our culture�s been feeling lately, didn�t you?

MS: We started the record during the �the Great Quiet� really, which is the period right after 9/11, when people felt held down.

IS: And is that why you started the record then?

MS: No, it just happened to be that a great tragedy occurred, and we had a record to make, so I began with a very conscious idea of not allowing politics to enter in to the work. I didn�t want to write a political record. I finally backed away from that, though, after trying a few songs and realizing that I was really holding myself back. I just quit thinking about it and let the music come out of me. I�ve talked before about Paul Klee. When he taught at the Bauhaus he would draw a circle. He would start at the bottom and say that this is an innocent, untrained, uneducated mind. And as you move up the left side of the circle, you�re learning everything there is to learn about your particular field until you reach the top. And at that point, you are completely educated and trained in whatever it is that you�re studying. He said that�s when people become craftsmen or artisans, and that�s fin; but it�s when you move down the right side of the circle and you start to forget everything that you�ve learned that you start to become and artist. And when you get to the point back at the bottom of the circle, and you�ve forgotten everything, he said that is what creates and artist. I�m extrapolating here because I haven�t read his lecture notes in 20 years, but what I took from it was that artists are conduits to something else, some energy that�s in the air. And it�s good and fine to be an artisan or a craftsman, but a real artist is someone who learns everything and then forges it again. I feel that over the past 24 years I�ve come back to a place where I�m not thinking about what I�m doing. I�m not sitting down with the intention of writing a song called �The Worst Joke Ever� or �I Wanted To Be Wrong.� I�m not that smart. I don�t write autobiographically, and I never have, but there�s something in there, as an observer, as a voyeur, taking in the world around me, breathing it in and really, really observing, which is what I do best. And if I can just turnoff my thinking brain long enough to allow that unconscious voice to do all the work, then I wind up with the 55 minutes of music that comprise this new record. Every single one of these new songs came from that unconscious voice.

IS: Tell me how it works.

MS: Well, often I�ll have an idea of what I want the record to be. Peter will have an idea. Mike will have an idea. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don�t. But halfway through a record, every one of our ideas has been basically thrown out the window because the record just becomes itself. It takes on a life of its own. Our job, really, is to recognize that, and to allow it to be what it wants to be. One of the reasons the three of us have stayed together for so long is the same reason we all came together in the first place: an incredible, mutual love of music.
My contribution to what we do�the most challenging thing that I do in my life�is writing lyrics. It�s not something that comes easy to me. Taking photographs is really easy for me�it�s like breathing. And melody is easy. I can hum along to just about anything. But lyrics and ideas are much more difficult. When I�m able to turn off the thinking brain and let the unconscious voice take over, the best ideas come flying out of me. Often I have to look at them on the page and go, �What on earth is that about?� It�s important o note that I�ve never used the work or interviews as therapy for myself. I don�t need the work to be that. But what comes out of me often surprises me in its intensity, and I�m thinking about the two songs, �Final Straw� and �I Wanted to be Wrong�, which are�I don�t even like the word, but they�re very political songs. What surprised me is that I found myself in them. I found big chunks of Michael Stipe in those songs. And maybe for the first time in 24 years, I didn�t feel the need to erase myself out of them, because the voice was so strong. It really speaks of the time that we�re living in, and the chaos and confusion and disappointment and anger and fear and sadness. All of that surrounded by�what is still present in me and in Americans in general�this sense of optimism and the feeling that we can rise above. The idea that this country, and our mission, is bigger than us all.

IS: Now I want to go back to that time you called the Great Quiet.

MS: Right, well, for me it was the result of an entire nation really suffering for the first time. Not a generation, but a nation. There was this collective loss of innocence. There had never been an attack like that on our soil, and we did not understand or recognize what it meant or how to react to it. Everyone just folded into themselves. The idea of raising a voice, much less a voice of dissent against the prevailing winds, felt impossible. I feel like that was true across the board. That was the Great Quiet. And it lasted for a long time, much longer than I thought it would.

IS: But the atmosphere has really changed over the past three years. When I compare the feeling you�re talking about to the feeling of the past six months, you can really sense the beginning of a collective rage�and a collective understanding that the Great Quiet was filled not with just extraordinary heroism, courage, and sacrifice, but with a lot of confusion as well, and that all sorts of mix-ups and lies occurred afterwards.

MS: Well, for me personally, the end to the Great Quiet cam e in the summer of 2003, at a Radiohead show in New York at the Beacon Theatre. It was a televised thing, and they had sold tickets for $2. The entire place was filled with fanatic Radiohead fans. Typically at a Radiohead show, everyone sings along to every song; they know every lyric. Sometimes you can�t even hear Thom Yorke�s voice over the din of the audience. But this night, when they walked onstage and started playing the first song, the audience was quiet, reverential. No one was singing along to any of the songs. It wasn�t until they played the song �No Surprises� that says �the government, they don�t speak for us.� And on that line, every single person in that room shouted out �the government, they don�t speak for us!� and on the next line of the lyric, they were dead quiet again. I was there with a group of people, including Q-Tip, and I looked over and Tip, and his mouth was hanging open. And I was like, �Did that just happen?� and he just nodded his head yes. Afterwards, we were sitting around at the bar with Thom and the band, and Tip and I said, �Do you realize what happened tonight?� and Thom said, �I almost fell over. I almost couldn�t sing the next line of the song.� That, to me, was the beginning of the end of the Great Quiet in New York. And of course New Yorkers would get it first because they were there. Anyway, the sentiment and this feeling of the Great Quiet had ended for me, in one line of one song in one moment in New York City. And thus began a period of great personal activism, I think, in the U.S. that is still spreading like wildfire across the country. Now I think people feel that they were quiet, their feelings were sublimated for so long by this shock and this loss of innocence and this mass tragedy that we all shared, and now they want to raise their own voice. They�re wearing T-shirts, they�re arguing publicly, they�re educating themselves, and they�re reading about stuff that�s outside of the mainstream media.

IS: It seems to me that the anti-apathy that�s manifested itself of late represents a real sea change in the way people are thinking and feeling today, which leads us to R.E.M.�s participation in the Vote for Change tour.

MS: Five groups wanted to do something in a very important election year. We realized that we�d have a much stronger and louder voice if we combined our efforts and did a tour with everyone working together. And so it was R.E.M., Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, the Dixie Chicks, and Pearl Jam. The idea was that we would swoop down onto a swing state and have everyone play at different venues in different cities on the same night. Then we�d pick up and move on the next swing state and do the same thing.

IS: And what did you walk away from that experience feeling?

MS: It felt like I could celebrate activism, and I could celebrate wanting to be involved. I just felt like we did what we could, you know? We put our yard sing in our yard, and our yard just happened to be a stage. And I agree with you that this feeling of people raising their voice and having a say in the direction of their country has been activated.

IS: I think so. And it doesn�t just stop because there�s a new guy in town or because there�s the old guy back in town.

MS: Exactly.

IS: Let�s talk more about the album. When I picked it up, the first thing I noticed was the variety of art contributions. There�s Fischer-spooner, there�s Barry McGee, there�s Doug Coupland, there�s Wolfgang Tillmans, there�s the diving Thomas Roman Dozol.

MS: Well, I came out of art school, and when the band first started having to design posters or T-shirt to sell in clubs, the band kind of turned to me and went, �Look, you�re the one who studied art. You take care of this.� So I find myself 24 years later in this position where there are people doing really incredible work, and I can turn to them and say, �Look, I�m doing this special package that I think is really cool. Would you be interested in contributing something to it?�

IS: it�s a nice surprise group show. Tell me about the song that the album�s named after, �Around the Sun.�

MS: It�s a song of great hope. The whole record has a them of ascendancy and velocity and movement and motion. It�s about moving form one place to another, from a place where you might be stuck in a place where you�re less stuck. I think R.E.M. has always been a great driving band. It�s good music to listen to while you�re driving. I live a peripatetic life, and I always have. My father was in the military. I was born on an army base, and I�ve moved around since my first year on this earth. When my father retired, I was 18 years old, and I went to school for a year and then started a band and started moving again. So, from our very first record to this one, there is a feeling of velocity and motion thought the music.

IS: The songs feel very cinematic to me.

MS: They are. To me, music is extremely visual. As a fan, the music that I started
with, Television and Patti Smith and �Bennie and the Jets� by Elton, landed on me, first through reading about it and seeing the pictures. At the commissary on the bas where my father was stationed, for some bizarre reason they were carrying Rock Scene magazine in 1975. I would pick it up, and then I wound up with a subscription to The Village Voice, so I was reading all about the things that were happening at CBGB. I was 15 years old, living in the Midwest, completely disenfranchised, a total teenager, full-on acne, bad hair, withdrawn, shy, you know, questioning my sexuality. And then when Patti�s record came out, I bought it the day it was released, and I sat up all night listening to it. And it then that I said, �This is what I�m going to do with my life. I�m gonna be in a band.�

IS: Now Michael, close your eyes, and picture a kid on an army base, going to the commissary and coming across Around the Sun. What do you hope it would give that kid?

MS: Wow. You�re going to make me cry. (Pause) I would hope that they would stay up all night listening to it, that it would be unlike anything they�d ever heard before. And it would somehow open their world up, and they would find some part of themselves that they had not previously figured out. I would hope in some small way, in some tiny epiphany, it might change the trajectory of their life.

IS: Great.

MS: Wow. That was powerful. Brought tears to my eyes.

IS: Me, too.

MS: I have to blow my nose. Can you hang on one second? (Sets down phone�sound of Stipe blowing nose in background) Sorry about that.
IS: We�ve heard the rest. We might as well hear you blow your nose. (both laugh)

THE END

gardening@night schrieb:

Im aktuellen Rolling Stone �u�ern sich Mike und Michael zu U2.

hoho na dann mal ab zum Kiosk

Hab mir vorhin das Neon Magazine gekauft, sind richtig nette bildchen drinnen;)

Super - vielen Dank Carolin! *durchles*

gardening@night schrieb:

Stipe schrieb:

Ich habe sie mir heute gekauft. Aber ich finde die Jubil�ums-Ausgabe war ja wohl die beste Rolling Stone die es jemals gab.

Liest du den Rolling Stone seit Anfang an?

Nee, leider nicht. Ehrlichgesagt habe ich nur die Jubil�umsausgabe und die neue. Aber ich h�tte gerne die, die vor der Jubil�umsausgabe rausgekommen ist... Aber die gibs ja leider nirgendswo mehr zu kaufen...

Migraine Girl schrieb:

DAS nenne ich einen fanfreundlichen Service, liebste Carolin, danke f�r's Abtippen! *knuddel*

Uff, war das 'ne Tipperei...Text markieren, "copy" - "paste" - mir tun jetzt noch die Finger weh

Aaaahhh schrieb:

Du raubst mir all meine Illusionen, verehrte verr�ckte Katze

Das tut mir jetzt aber leid

Interview mit MS im Filter Magazin. nachzulesen hier:
http://www.filter-mag.com/features/interior.48.html

(ist allerdings schon von Januar)

Danke.
Wie lang? Auch Bilder? Lohnt sich's?