Michael Stipe

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Birthday:

4 January 1960, Decatur, Georgia, USA

Birth Name:

John Michael Stipe

Height:

175 cm

John Michael Stipe was born in Decatur, Georgia, on January 4th, 1960. Since his father was in the military, they moved around a lot. In 1980, while he was attending the University of Georgia (studying painting and photography), he met Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry. They dropped out of school to form R.E.M., which, with over 40 million records sold to some estimates, rival Irish band U2 in being one of the most popular bands on the late 20th century. Their debut single in 1981, Radio Free Europe, generated enough buzz for R.E.M. to sign with a major label. With IRS Records, they released Murmur (1983), Reckoning (1984), Fables of the Reconstruction (1985), and Life's Rich Pageant (1986). Document (1987) brought them into the public view, with Out Of TIme (1991) sending them to the top of the charts. The movie video for the flagship song, Losing My Religion, was recently rated by MTV as being one of the top five greatest music videos. Automatic for the People (1992), was a successful followup to Out of Time. In 1994, the band released Monster. The guitar-inclined songs the album focused on showed that R.E.M. could be a grunge band, as well. New Adventures in Hi-Fi, recorded mostly during sound-checks during the Monster tour, was released in 1996 to only modest success. It was followed by the equally so-so Up in 1998. Michael Stipe began to focus more on Hollywood in the 1990s. In the early 1990s, he and Oliver Stone tried for over two years to get a movie financed, but never succeeded. His Single Cell film company started achieving success in 1999, producing the Oscar-nominated Being John Malkovich (1999), among other films. Show less «

Radiohead are so good they scare me.

We love Peter Gabriel - great minds think alike.

I've been to places where people my age had never voted in a democratic election. To go to the voting poll with someone in the former Czecho...Show more »

I've been to places where people my age had never voted in a democratic election. To go to the voting poll with someone in the former Czechoslovakia, a grown man, and watch him cast his vote for the first time brings tears to your eyes. The right to vote is a privilege I want to remind people of. Show less «

I wouldn't survive ten minutes on American Idol (American Idol: The Search for a Superstar (2002)).

[on punk rock] I found something that was secret; it was dangerous and it was exciting.

I guess I've figured out that I can't just blabber anything I want to anymore.

[on once having referred to The Beatles as "elevator music"] I still get death threats about it from Beatles fans. The point that I was tryi...Show more »

[on once having referred to The Beatles as "elevator music"] I still get death threats about it from Beatles fans. The point that I was trying to make was that I was three years too young for them. I grew up in an era where The Banana Splits, The Archies and The Monkees were the music that I listened to. The Beatles were the music that was playing in the background. Show less «