R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe recounts meeting David Bowie for the first time
He was consumed with nerves
Last updated 5th Feb 2020
Former R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe has told Absolute Radio he was consumed with nerves when he met his idol David Bowie for the first time.
Michael Stipe and multi-instrumentalist Mike Mills recently appeared on Danielle Perry’s show to promote the 25th anniversary reissue of R.E.M.’s seminal 1994 album ‘Monster’ when the conversation moved on to David Bowie.
Stipe said he was so overwhelmed at the surprise meeting with Bowie in the late 1990s that he had to have a lie down and self-medicate with caffeine to pluck up some courage.
“We were stuck in Switzerland,” Michael explained. “We wound up in Montreux at the house of Claude Nobs (late Montreux Jazz Festival founder) – that’s the house that they (Deep Purple) wrote ‘Smoke on the Water’ about, that old song from the seventies.
“Claude invited us to dinner. He brought in a chef from Spain, a performing group from some other part of Europe and then he told us that David Bowie would be joining us for dinner. At which point I said ‘I need to lay down’. So I took a nap.
“When I woke up they said Mr Bowie has arrived and dinner is served. And I said ‘I need an Espresso’. I had three Espressos before I could work up the nerve to go downstairs and sit at a table with David Bowie. That was quite an evening. (He was) an incredible gentleman.”
Reflecting upon what Bowie was like to have dinner with, Mike Mills said: “(He was) charming, very intelligent, very witty. He was discussing the Millennial change and how he had this theory that all the kids were getting tattoos and body modifications because of the millennium change coming up. It was like ‘ok, I guess I see that as a theory’, but that was his feeling about it.”
Elsewhere in the chat, Michael Stipe opened up about his first solo song ‘Your Capricious Soul’; a track that he wrote some time ago but decided to release to raise funds for the Extinction Rebellion environmental movement.
“I wanted to add my voice to this incredible movement that’s happening with Extinction Rebellion and I thought ‘well, what better push than that to put out my first ever solo single?!’,” Michael told Danielle.
“And I love the song so… the song had been sitting around maybe eight more songs that are either finished or near finished. I just felt motivated by everything that is happening right now with Extinction Rebellion. I thought ‘I want to put this out. I want to dedicate the first year of its release, and all of my profits, to go to the organisation and support the great work they’re doing.
“(The movement is) going to continue getting stronger I believe. So, I’m just happy to add my little bit to that movement.”
Asked by Danielle if music artists themselves need to look at their own carbon footprint, Michael responded: “We all need to look at who we are and our impact, y’know the choices we make every day. We can’t go back to living in caves, that would be absurd.
“But we also need to be very careful that we don’t allow the criticisms and the arguments from the right, and the people that are the distractors, and those that are saying that climate change isn’t real, or that it doesn’t exist, or that these movements are ridiculous, or optimistic, or pie in the sky, or whatever. That’s absurd. We can’t take their arguments and apply them negatively. We don’t want to shoot into our own rings. This is important. This is significant.
“There’s a community of people – and it involves every human on earth – who need to address this and I think now’s the time.”
You can listen to Danielle Perry's show on Absolute Radio from Monday to Thursday at 7pm. Danielle also hosts The Sunday Night Music Club at 8.30pm on Sundays.