For a singer who mumbled his lyrics and refused almost all interviews in his early years, the Olympia shows laid bare a creative process once steeped in enigma. Stretching his memory back to a time when coming from Athens, Georgia was enough to confer a little Southern Gothic mystique upon R.E.M.’s music, Stipe concedes: “There used to be some wilful obscurity going on there. But of all the members of the band, I’m the least enigmatic and, really, the least eccentric — and yet those terms have followed us around.”
The Times (UK) recently chatted with Michael Stipe and covered his thoughts on how R.E.M.’s 2007 shows in Dublin helped the band refocus on making solid music. It also serves as good promo for the upcoming release of those Olympia shows, which will arrive at your favorite retailer (or, um, on the internet) on October 27.
Also, thanks to The Times for not using “got their groove back” in the predicate of any sentence in the article.
