A member of one of the top alt rock bands of the genre's heyday was spotted looking sprightly out and about in New York this week. He met his bandmates in 1980 in Atlanta, and they all dropped out of college together to pursue a music career that rapidly led to success and acclaim. They remained together for more than three decades, being inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame four years before they finally dissolved the group. Their frontman was named godfather to Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love's daughter Frances Bean Cobain, and he wrote a heartrending song about his failed bid to help the Nirvana icon cope with his personal struggles.
When he surfaced in Manhattan this week at the age of 66, his once clean-shaven cloven-in-marble features were concealed by a festively bushy white beard. He is none other than Michael Stipe, who is beloved by alt rock fans around the world as the frontman of the 1980s and 1990s band REM. For his latest sighting, he wore a colorful outfit including his tie-dye jacket, a yellow and white checked shirt, a sky blue beanie, and orange-tinted shades.
Early Life and Rise to Fame
Born to a military family in Georgia, Stipe was enrolled at a university there when he met his future bandmates Peter Buck, Bill Berry, and Mike Mills. REM was born out of their friendship, prompting them all to leave school and devote their energies to their burgeoning showbiz career. Their debut single 'Radio Free Europe' garnered enough attention on college radio to kick-start their rise to fame, and their first album 'Murmur' proved to be a revelation to critics and a commercial success upon its release in 1983.
Stipe drew particular attention for his dashing looks, plaintive vocals, and often unintelligible early lyrics that fans have spent years attempting to decode. 'People are still trying to figure out what the words are to some of those songs,' Stipe said in the 1990s. 'I hate to break it to them, but...it's just utter nonsense, it's sounds, and it doesn't make sense sometimes, and it doesn't have to.'
Peak Years and Influence
It was in the late 1980s and early 1990s that REM recorded much of their best-known work, including the hit songs 'Losing My Religion,' 'Everybody Hurts,' 'The One I Love,' and 'It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine).' Stipe also became a friend of a number of artists who regard him as an influence, such as Kurt Cobain and Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke. 'Michael is still my favorite lyricist,' Yorke remarked to the Guardian in 2013. 'I loved the way he would take an emotion and then take a step back from it and in doing so make it so much more powerful.' When Radiohead opened for REM on tour in 1995, Yorke would wait in the wings to watch Stipe perform every night.
Relationship with Kurt Cobain
Stipe was particularly close to Cobain before the latter shot himself in 1994 at the denouement of a long spiral from depression and heroin addiction. In response to Cobain's suicide, Stipe wrote an REM song called 'Let Me In' about his attempts to help his friend overcome his demons. 'I had a mind to try to stop you. Let me in, let me in,' he sang in the number, which was released months after Cobain died. 'Well, I got tar on my feet and I can't see all the birds look down and laugh at me, clumsy, crawling out of my skin.' He recalled later that the lyric 'was completely unedited' and 'fell out of me so quickly' that the words were 'written in the amount of time it takes to sing them.'
Later Years and Legacy
Bill Berry left the group in 1997, and the rest of REM soldiered on for over a decade before the band dissolved on warm terms in 2011. In the immediate aftermath of the separation, Stipe described his erstwhile bandmates as 'my best friends' in an interview with the Guardian. Although REM have occasionally reunited for one-off performances since then, various members have staunchly maintained the band will not actually reform. Stipe honored his friend's legacy in his role as godfather to Cobain and Courtney Love's daughter Frances Bean Cobain, who was a year old when her father died. In 2023, Stipe served as the officiant of Frances Bean's secret wedding to her second husband Riley Hawk, the skateboarder 'nepo baby' of Tony Hawk. As for his own love life, Stipe is interested in both men and women and has been involved with French photographer Thomas Dozol for over a decade.
