R.E.M. still seeking perfection

As his band takes a long glance at past triumphs, R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe talks to MICHELE MANELIS about the passion he still has for the group.

After 23 years, multi-platinum record sales and countless world tours, R.E.M. are examining how far they have come. There is a new retrospective album, In Time: The Best of REM 1988-2003, which as the name suggests covers the band's period after they emerged from the American rock underground.

There's nothing ground-breaking about a greatest hits album but what is unusual is that R.E.M., who became one of the biggest rock bands in the world in the early 90s with hits such as Everybody Hurts and Losing My Religion, has managed to keep their sanity - and their credibility - intact.

"What has kept us sane and together for all these years is that we still haven't realised our dream," says frontman, Michael Stipe. "That is to write and record a perfect album and, of course, that will never happen. Our love of music remains as pure and simple as it always was."

The album features two new tracks. "I went into the studio thinking, 'Two songs to write - this is going to be a piece of cake. I'll be out of here in a month.' But then I realised that those two songs have to be as good as the songs we are best known for over the past 15 years, so it was a little bit more of a challenge than I expected."

Stipe has always been politically motivated and says of the first single, Bad Day: "As an American I think it is commenting a great deal on the present Administration and on the media that supports that Administration and its goals. I don't want to say any more on that subject. I'd rather leave something for the listeners to figure out."

Stipe's bohemian regalia of jeans, beanie and dark-rimmed glasses add to his bookish persona.

Despite his thinking man's rock-star status, he looks somewhat out of place in the restaurant of the luxurious Ritz Carlton Hotel in San Francisco. Stipe is often described as eccentric or enigmatic.

"I'm described that way because journalists in the 80s didn't have anything to write about us as a band because we didn't have any real manufactured image. We're just regular people doing what we do.

"I think it was Orson Welles, or someone more articulate than me who said that any person thrown into the spotlight and observed under a microscope is going to seem peculiar to some of the people watching," he says. "It doesn't bother me any more."

While many stars chase celebrity at any cost, Stipe, familiar tabloid fodder for such reasons as his sexual ambiguity, rumours of Aids and an alleged relationship with Courtney Love, has remained as unaffected as possible.

"You can't take it seriously. It's so phenomenally bizarre, what can you do but laugh?" he shrugs. "I have advised other media figures that fame just isn't enough. You have to have something that you actually do. I am a pretty grounded person, enough to know that all the celebrity and all the fame and fortune that comes along with this career is ancillary.

"My job is to be an artist. That's where it begins and ends. If the creative flow has been dammed up, everything else is shit."

Evidently, creativity is something Stipe has in abundance. He maintains a successful career as a movie producer and has been responsible in part for such indie hits as Being John Malkovich and the glam-rock tribute Velvet Goldmine.

"I've been involved in film-making since 1987. I have a lot of energy and a desire to be around other creative people because that fuels what I do. And it goes back to, in the case of R.E.M., the mothership, which is writing music and doing everything it takes to support that."

R.E.M formed in 1980 when Stipe was an art student studying photography and met the remaining three members of the quartet: Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry. The line-up stayed the same until Berry's departure in 1997 because of ill health. Longevity over the course of more than two decades is a rare commodity in rock.

"R.E.M. is a band, maybe, that has never really been in step with what's popular or what fads are going on. Looking back over time, I can only guess that that has been to our advantage."

Stipe (43) finds being described as an elder statesman of rock unbelievably insulting. It would seem natural for him to worry about sustaining a career in his middle years.

"I've had a really lucky life and I'm in pretty good shape. I haven't quit learning yet, and that's the most important thing. A lot of people seem to reach their 40s and just kind of collapse into some kind of routine other than what they might learn from having children and watching and helping a child grow up.

"They might quit learning themselves. They might forget what it is to question what they know or what they think they know and expand into other arenas of life. I'm really happy to be 43."

Interestingly, Stipe is non-judgmental when it comes to the crop of style-over-substance teen idols who are marketed as sex objects.

"I'm okay with it. It just seems like a reflection of the culture we are living in now. I'm not so sure it's altogether good, but it has been going on since the 40s and 50s. Look at Shirley Temple. Look at Annette Funacello," he says. "There's nothing new about what's happening now. We just have to deal with it."

* In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003 is released on CD and DVD on October 31.

There are 16 songs on the album, which cover the period from the band's sixth studio album and major label debut Green to 2001's Reveal. Apart from the new tracks Bad Day and Animal, the tracklisting is Man On The Moon, The Great Beyond, What's The Frequency Kenneth?, All The Way To Reno (You're Gonna Be A Star), Losing My Religion, E-bow The Letter, Orange Crush, Imitation Of Life, Daysleeper, Animal, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight, Stand, Electrolite, All The Right Friends, Everybody Hurts, At My Most Beautiful, Nightswimming.

A special limited edition of the album on CD will also be released, featuring a second disc of rarities and b-sides.