A Quote by Michael Stipe

I went through this difficult time [in the 1984] when we were making our third record where I kind of lost my mind. That's when the bulimia kicked in. And that's when I got really freaky.
I don't mind bad stories when it's true, but we have an administration where the Democrats are making it very difficult. I think we're setting a record or close to a record in the time of approval of a cabinet. The numbers are crazy when I'm looking.
When you go into the whole realm of creating your own music and seeing the project through, it's increasingly difficult because nowadays a lot of people are making music all on their own - the individual instead of the band. And when you have such a solid vision and you spend so much time working on one idea and allowing it to manifest in your mind through a record, and then you have to go and find people to help you see it through live, it gets really overwhelming, to have to project and really clearly state what you're trying to do and how you want them to do it.
Back in college, when I got kicked out of school, I was still in school, I'd just written the song that got me my record deal. If I hadn't gotten kicked out of school I wouldn't be where I am now. Three months after that, I got my record deal and the rest is history.
When we were writing the 'Stage' album, we realized we'd never really done proper covers, where we were taking songs and making them our own and kind of playing around with them. I came up with the idea of doing a cover of 'Wish You Were Here,' but we didn't really want it on the record.
We've always done things the way we wanted to. It's true that our experience affects some of our decision making, but that's a part of growing up and evolving as a band and as people. The first five or six years were really rough. We had no money. We were lost and crazy and made mistakes, but we learned a lot and suffered through tough times, and I think what we did reflected where we were and who we are.
We were making 'Tragic Kingdom,' and we were kind of battling with the record company. It was just being drawn-out, in the same kind of situation where we were all working, we all had jobs, we were going to school.
The first record was basically a quick, fast record. The second record, we were going for more of a poppier sound - like a heavy pop sound. For 'Rocket to Russia,' we'd sort of reached our pinnacle. We'd gotten really good at what we were doing, so that's like my favorite record - that's a really good record. It's just great from beginning to end.
Record Without A Cover' was about allowing the medium to come through, making a record that was not a document of a performance but a record that could change with time, and would be different from one copy to the next.
'Record Without A Cover' was about allowing the medium to come through, making a record that was not a document of a performance but a record that could change with time, and would be different from one copy to the next.
When I was 16, we get kicked out of our house because my mother and my father were separated, so we didn't have money to pay. We got kicked out and had to live with my grandmother, sleeping in the living room, for many years.
I was kicked out of middle school a few times. This guy who was kind of a d*** and a bully got hit by a car. I jumped up and went, YEAH Apparently that wasnt cool with some people cause I got kicked out.
Whenever I approach a record, I don't really have a science to it. I approach every record differently. First record was in a home studio. Second record was a live record. Third record was made while I was on tour. Fourth record was made over the course of, like, two years in David Kahn's basement.
At the time when I was in college, Oscar Grant had just lost his life in Oakland, Calif. He was an unarmed young black male who had a record. And at the time when his death was making headlines, more people were talking about what he had done in his past than the fact that he unjustly lost his life.
Yes, it's a very difficult thing to do, to promote a record, do television shows, and to still want to remain private, it's really quite difficult to explain to people what you're trying to do. I mean I'd actually quite like to be a recluse, but you know, you've got to promote the record as well.
Becoming famous is a really shocking thing, especially when you don't have aspirations to it. It got to the point where I would try and avoid making eye contact with anyone. It was freaky, and it just happened overnight. I couldn't handle it.
I call it "being interrupted by success." We had done The Soft Bulletin, which came out in 1999, and we knew we that were gonna make another record before too long. But in between this, we were still in this mode of kind of just - not re-creating what we could be, but kind of doing different things. For the longest time in the Flaming Lips we were like, "Make a record, go on tour. Come back, make another record," and you know, I think, frankly, we were kind of like, "There's more to life than just recording records and going on tour."
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