Michael Stipe: How Queer!

It’s been 20 years since I announced to the world that I was queer – and that I had found the strength and the voice to say that, and to move forward with my life as a completely out, publicly queer individual.

It was September 1994, and my band REM had released the two biggest records of our career. With Out of Time and Automatic for the People, we had sold more than 25m records worldwide, and we were ramping up to tour for the first time in five years. I was more famous than I could have ever imagined. For the promotion of our next album, Monster, and its world tour, I decided to publicly announce my sexuality. I said simply that I had enjoyed sex with men and women my entire adult life. It was a simple fact, and I’m happy I announced it...

Michael Stipe, The Guardian Short Cuts.

Well done Michael!

Still seems shaming you can't say you're 'gay', though.

Someone describing themselves as 'queer' 25 years ago may have at least sounded transgressive and radical, but now... not so much.

PS Fagburn seems to recall a UK press release for REM's 2001 album, Reveal, trumpeting that Stipe had just come out. Who knew that it would carry on being such a great marketing tool?

PPS There are rumours Stipe has recently, secretly got gaymarried.

Fagburn: I Am Superman...

And I can do anything...
x

Nietzsche? Gay as a pink lorry! I can prove this...

MTV: 30 Years Of Gay (ish) Videos

John Taylor, Duran Duran: In the first year or two, videos primarily were coming out of Europe, with a very sophisticated milieu. And they were dropping like bombs on the suburbs of Ohio and Texas, places that were so conservative. For people that were a little different — maybe they didn’t yet know they were gay, or didn’t know they were into art — the kinds of things that were on MTV were like life changers. All this stuff like Culture Club was the result of an underground, London art-school sensibility.

Michael Stipe, lead singer of R.E.M.: Our contribution to MTV — and I’ll use a term that was not really around in the 1980s — was very queer. And purposefully so. If you saw a beautiful woman wearing not much in The One I Love video, then you were also going to see a man wearing not much. There are a lot of shirtless men in R.E.M. videos. I shot and edited Finest Worksong and basically called all my hot, male friends and said: “OK, everyone take your shirt off and get sweaty.” I shot from a particular angle that was taken from Russian Constructivist art, where everyone looks like a god or goddess. I wanted our videos and our songs to appeal to guys and girls. And that exactly reflected my sexuality, actually.

Been through the papers.
I have been reduced - REDUCED! - to filling a space by quoting from a piece in The Times on The Golden Years Of MTV.
And they're just quotes nicked extracted from a book anyway.
From John Taylor from Duran Duran FFS!
I now feel like a whore like all the rest!
I think it is best I pass over in silence that four (4!) newspapers today ran the "news story" about Chris Birch, the supposedly once straight rugby player who woke up as a screaming pansy after coming out of a coma he went into after trying to perform a backflip.
That's right, performing a backflip - how extremely heterosexual.
One of those papers that ran the story was The Daily Mirror - cribbing quotes from yesterday's Mail, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the Mirror had first ran this story two months ago.
Chris' tale is apparently so unbelievably fascinating it has now gone global.
I shall also spare you my thoughts on the fact that several papers today are STILL GOING ON ABOUT THOSE FUCKING "GAY PENGUINS"!
Many people are clearly gripped like nuts in a vice by all this tenuous pantomime pseudo-news bollocks, but I'm not.
Sorry - but feel free to ask me again after the lobotomy.
So I'll just go for a walk and try to calm down.
Good day!

REM: Split

"To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening."

R.E.M.

"A wise man once said--'the skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave.' We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we're going to walk away from it.
"I hope our fans realize this wasn't an easy decision; but all things must end, and we wanted to do it right, to do it our way.
"We have to thank all the people who helped us be R.E.M. for these 31 years; our deepest gratitude to those who allowed us to do this. It's been amazing."

Michael Stipe.

REMHQ.

Thank you, you were wonderful.

x

Thought For The Day 2: Michael Stipe

"For a time I was conflicted by how I was represented, and then Aids came, and that's an era that has still to be spoken about in depth by people of my age. It was a very difficult time to be honest and frank about one's sexuality. And a very scary time for people like myself, who were not able to be tested anonymously without some concern. I mean, under Reagan, lest we forget, there was a time when they were talking about internment camps for people who were HIV positive. To this day I can't give blood to the Red Cross because I have sex with a man...
"On a sliding scale of sexuality I'd place myself around 80-20, but I definitely prefer men to women. I had sex with, and enjoyed sex with, women until I met someone that I fell in love with, and who is now my boyfriend. That's the only real news in the last 12 years, but when it's a slow news day I get dragged out of some closet again."

Michael Stipe, interviewed by Sean O'Hagan for The Observer.
For the record Fagburn should point out Stipe may hold the record for the number of times a star has "come out". First - arguably - in 2001 in Time magazine. I think the last time was in 2008 in Spin magazine.
Slow news days? It might help if your press officer didn't announce you've come out - again!? - when REM have a new album coming out. Just sayin'...