Thom Yorke recently commented that when he was going through a particularly difficult time that you were instrumental in giving him advice and perspective and that he valued it very deeply. Courtney Love has said that you acted in a similar role with Kurt Cobain. There’s a certain faction of people who get angry when rock stars complain. From a fan’s perspective, you guys seem to have pretty amazing lives. Can you maybe shed some light on what we don’t understand? What is your reaction to the odd person who wants to deny you the right to complain?
The thing that’s upsetting, from my position as a public figure who gets recognized every single day—and often gets complimented, which is a great thing. When people walk up and say, “A song that you did, or that record, really meant a lot to me at that time in my life and I just wanted to say ‘Thank you’ and ‘keep doing what you’re doing.’” That for me is the greatest reward that I get. It boosts my confidence and it’s really a sweet thing for people to want to say that. But, people also have to understand that just because you’re well known, doesn’t mean you don’t have bad moods. I was in a shitty mood last night at this club and people kept trying to sit next to me and I was just like, “Leave me alone. I just want to hear the band. And I want to have a beer with my friend here.” They were excited that I was there or whatever, or they wanted to get snarky with me—I just wasn’t in the mood for it. I hope I didn’t offend anybody, but I have bad moods too and sometimes I’m in public when that happens. Well, it is easy to shoot down people who seem to have everything in the world handed to them on a silver platter, or who have worked really hard and gotten to that place and then are complaining and griping and moaning about what a terrible thing it is—that they’re bothered and artistic, whatever [laughs].
You have to realize there are monumental pressures to being a media figure that people don’t really understand. It’s not wise and it’s not good to gripe about them publicly, and I kind of find that personally offensive as well. But, you have to understand that we’re just people like everyone else. Does that sound really stupid?
No, it’s just that, well, for better or worse, I really have no opinion about it. If someone makes a good record, they made a good record and I’ll listen to it. But I guess I just find this trend interesting. It seems like only recently where someone like a Kurt Cobain, or an Eddie Vedder, or Thom Yorke—all three were at one time at the cusp of something huge. They saw the hordes of people goading them on to make that big leap into mythology and wanted them all at one time to “please be my rock star.” At the last minute, they kind of put on the brakes, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else in the short history of this kind of music has really started to do that until now.
There was a point in the ‘80s when I looked out at my audience and I saw people that—were I not on the stage—they’d sooner slug me as they walked by me on the sidewalk. And I realized that I was way beyond the choir. These were not my people. These were other people. I was an ugly, horrible person on stage then [laughs]—spewing about Reagan and about this and that. It’s where a song like “Exhuming McCarthy” came from. There was a point where I looked out and I saw these people and I realized: I’m the performing monkey. I’m the dancing clown. And they don’t have the same values that I have, other than maybe they like our music, or they like to fuck to it, or get high to it, or listen to it when they’re driving, or whatever. And it was really offensive to me and so I reacted the way anyone would react in that situation: you get very defensive and very insecure and very angry and you want to shove down people’s throats who you really are and see how much of it they can take. OK, well, I thankfully kind of grew out of that, but I had to learn the hard way—that you welcome those people into your church, you welcome them and you say, “This is where I want you to be and I’m glad that you’re here.” And you hope that something that you’re doing might seep into them. That’s me—I’m a populist, you know? My job is to subvert from within. I know that Eddie went through the same thing. I know that Kurt went through the same thing. And I know that Thom went through the same thing. I suspect that Polly Harvey went through the same thing. And there is a grace with which you can kind of approach and attack that kind of a problem. Part of it comes from that D.I.Y. punk mentality that I know every one of those people carry with them, of “This is getting way bigger than I wanted it to.” Or, “Maybe this is what I thought I wanted, but now that it’s here I’m not sure I want it.” And the whole “Corporate Rock Sucks” T-shirt that Kurt wore, the whole baby chasing the money on [the Nevermind record cover], that was a very clear and a very timely statement to make.
But of course you’re going to react like that, and of course you’re gonna take the defensive, and of course you’re going to be incredibly insecure about it and of course you’re gonna question, “What was I thinking? Why did I really want this?” That’s all part of the growth thing. I don’t think that I was really there so much for any of those guys, except as someone who had already been down that road and maybe understood it a little more clearly.
R.E.M. was one of the few bands during the ‘80s that we could be proud of, then the early ‘90s started out with a bang of hope, which kind of waned a bit more quickly than anticipated. Where are we now? How does the current music climate rank in your mind? Is the state of the art healthy?
I think it’s in great shape. Someone said, “When politics go to hell in a gift basket, music gets a real lot better.” That might have something to do with it. It’s like you’ve got something to push against and something to rant about. It stirs everyone’s blood and kind of brings everything to the surface, so maybe that’s good for music. I don’t know. But I think it’s a really exciting time for art and for music right now. I would challenge anyone who says that it’s not. I don’t want to hear about Top 40. We all know what hip-hop was and we all know what it’s become and I’m excited about what it’s going to become after this, because there is some 13 or 14-year-old kid out there that thinks that 50 Cent and Eminem created the world. They’re gonna start their own thing. They might go back and explore and find Boogie Down Productions. They might find N.W.A. and explore that stuff the same way that I found Patti Smith and Television, then I went back and found Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls. These guys might go back and find what brought us to 50 Cent and Eminem. Five or six years from now, there’s gonna be some weird-ass, like some kid whose mother is Spanish is gonna integrate some kind of Barcelona beat into what we consider to be super-mainstream hip-hop, and it’s gonna the most astonishing thing we’ve ever heard in our lives.
Joined: Fri Oct 29, 2004 5:45 pm Posts: 1481 Location: Jersey
I liked the part when Stipe talked about his reaction to all the frat boys in the audience when R.E.M. made it big.Cobain said almost the same thing about some of the Nirvana audience.And I remember Eddie being pretty pissed off at the VS tour when a big part of the audience was made up of top 40 kids screaming for "Daughter".
But,really,thous people jumped off the "Alternative" bandwagon with the media in the mid 90's onto the next trend .Now its the real fans.A few hundred thousand instead of millions and millions.
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