Michael Stipe(I)
- Actor
- Composer
- Producer
John Michael Stipe was born in Decatur, Georgia, on January 4th, 1960.
Since his father was in the military, they moved around a lot. In 1980,
while he was attending the University of Georgia (studying painting and
photography), he met Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry. They dropped out of
school to form R.E.M., which, with over 40 million records sold to
some estimates, rival Irish band U2 in being one of the most popular
bands on the late 20th century. Their debut single in 1981, Radio Free
Europe, generated enough buzz for R.E.M. to sign with a major label.
With IRS Records, they released Murmur (1983), Reckoning (1984), Fables
of the Reconstruction (1985), and Life's Rich Pageant (1986). Document
(1987) brought them into the public view, with Out Of TIme (1991)
sending them to the top of the charts. The movie video for the flagship
song, Losing My Religion, was recently rated by MTV as being one of the
top five greatest music videos. Automatic for the People (1992), was a
successful followup to Out of Time. In 1994, the band released Monster.
The guitar-inclined songs the album focused on showed that R.E.M. could
be a grunge band, as well. New Adventures in Hi-Fi, recorded mostly
during sound-checks during the Monster tour, was released in 1996 to
only modest success. It was followed by the equally so-so Up in 1998.
Michael Stipe began to focus more on Hollywood in the 1990s. In the
early 1990s, he and Oliver Stone tried for over two years to get a movie
financed, but never succeeded. His Single Cell film company started
achieving success in 1999, producing the Oscar-nominated Being John Malkovich (1999), among
other films.
