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MICHAEL STIPE DAZED & CONFUSED INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

MICHAEL STIPE ON R.E.M.

I don't look at the R.E.M. chatrooms on the internet. I used to, a long time ago. I'm fine with it, honestly. I recognise what I put out - certainly the music - has something that stands on its own, and the moment that it's released, it's no longer mine. And I've always felt that way. But that's a music fan speaking.

REM's new album picks up where Up left off. I like the idea that we've carved our own kind of thing. It sounds pop to me. "The Great Beyond" was a great pop song, but it was made for a radio market that doesn't exist anymore. We are just completely out of step with what's happening.

What we do is definitely not a majority stake. If I can do something that I'm really proud of, that satisfies and challenges me, then I know there is going to be an audience for it somewhere. Somebody's gonna get it. That's always my advice to young film-makers or musicians. I'm not so serious about our work as I think everybody else is.

MICHAEL STIPE ON ARTISTIC SALONS

I always loved the idea. When I was in my early 20s, working on graphic arts an photography, and REM was going along at a very low level, I felt like that's where I work the best, in a kind of committee where ideas can bounce back and forth.

If I could have anyone, alive or dead, in my salon, I would bring in William Burroughs for a little bit. Just to stir shit up. He wrote the introduction to my Patti Smith book of photographs. It's one of the last things he did before he passed away. I'd bring in Arthur Rimbaud for an hour just to set the building on fire. That'd probably be enough.

MICHAEL STIPE ON THE INTERNET

The internet is the most subversive tool, it's ground zero for just about any distributable art form. I wanted to work without feeling like we had this kind of Big Brother eye watching all the time saying, "Oh, you can't do that, or that's not going to sell. Or that's against the law." I was looking for people that were more about art and creating.

The thing that I love about the internet is that it takes the systems that have been in place for a very long time and just knocks them down.

I do use those old systems of distribution - I am about to sign a deal with a giant film company, a first-look deal out of Hollywood. I'm party to them, and I recognise what's good about them. These systems got out films like Velvet Goldmine and Being John Malkovich [for both of which he was executive producer], and were able to release my band's records to so many people in so many different parts of the world.

But I like the subversive element of the internet, the way it trumps the celebrity media which reached a zenith in the late Eighties. The Nineties were just like everyone couldn't stop looking everywhere, because there was so much coming at you. This takes that one step further.

MICHAEL STIPE ON FILM

A lot of the movies I had worked on before were so under the radar, not only in Hollywood but in independent American film making, that no one's ever seen them other than on the film festival circuit. [The internet] provides film with the ability to finance of find financing for some whacked-out French film-maker who wants to make a 17-minute film and put it out there. Prior to this, I was releasing stuff on videotape because that was the only way to get around the theater circuit which is so shut down by large business.

MICHAEL STIPE ON SOCIAL ACTIVISM

I've got in and out of celebrity activism. I think I had a hand in creating it in the mid-Eighties. I realised the power I have is alluring, whether it's music or photography or film. But I'm becoming more reluctant to be pushed onto a pedestal of politics.

That said, my own political drive hasn't diminished at all - it's just that my ability to be cynical about it has increased. But I'm doing a collection of photographs for a CD the local radio station are putting out to raise money for two charities of my choice. I'm thinking about doing something with race relations, and possibly on the campaign against the US equivalent of Section 28.

MICHAEL STIPE ON SEXUALITY

I think things go in cycles. Now we're in a cycle where what people are used to seeing is challenging the very kind of early 20th century idea that this is a man, this is a woman - that's it. That's all been thrown out the window. There are parts of the US, where you can find people who don't think that and completely disagree with you. And you'll find other parts where they think it's such a boring question that you wouldn't even bother bringing it up.

[Public debate around sexuality] normalises it. That's what's been happening for years, it seems to me.

As long as I've been sexually active, I've always been attracted to and slept with men and women. Right now, I've met an incredible man who is an artist, whom I have completely committed myself to.

MICHAEL STIPE LOVE

Does everybody want to fall in love? See, I always challenge that. I think there are a lot of super-independent-minded people out there, who have kind of seen that as nuisance that just stands in the way. If it happens, it runs them over like a truck.

MICHAEL STIPE ON PHOTOGRAPHY AND AGEING

My new photography project is called "For the Empty," which is a translation of horror vacua, the term in art history which refers to the idea that when you're painting or creating, there is an inability to record negative space. I wanted to open and close the book with my own nude self-portrait as a way of neutralising everything else in the book and taking away simplistic voyeurism. But then I got to thinking, who would want to see some nude pictures of me at the age of 40?

More and more, I think about getting old. I think it's part of my job as a pop star going on 20 years in the public eye to be conscious of where I'm at. But I think this obsession with age and ageing is something that's increasingly insidious in out culture.

MICHAEL STIPE ON SUCCESS

I never thought about if I'd never succeed. To me, the central question becomes, "Why am I doing this at the age of 40? Am I doing it for money? Am I doing it for fun?" Clearly it has to be because you still love music. Life is exceptionally short You have to do what you want to do and you have to know why you're doing it. I do it because making music is my first love. Photography is like breathing, film means being on the phone all the time, working, listening to people and finding out what's going on. Writing lyrics and singing is incredibly difficult. It would be the easiest thing to say I've had enough. I could just do one but I see it as more challenging to do all three.