The album that made Michael Stipe throw up and decide to start a band in the same night
Most of us know what it’s like to have a song or album inspire us to change our mindset or behaviours… For some of us, this comes in the form of small tweaks, like being a little kinder to strangers, or letting your hair down once in a while – for Michael Stipe, it came as projectile vomit, and the decision to kickstart his entire music career.
To his credit, Stipe has always seemed to have a more dramatic reaction to music than most, to the point where, when he hears something he likes, he sometimes forgets how to function. For instance, one of his first moments when he truly fell in love with all that music stood for was when he heard ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ on the radio for the first time, and stood frozen, staring, wondering what kind of heavenly sorcery he was hearing.
At the time, the German version was a huge hit in Germany and was playing on an old radio owned by a cleaner who also babysat whenever his parents were out at work. The first time it started blasting out of those old-school speakers on a tall shelf above his head, he was a goner – for both The Beatles and music in general.
However, the first time Stipe felt truly awe-inspired, both musically and in a more existential sense, was when he heard Patti Smith’s Horses for the first time – Stipe became immersed in different rock scenes in various ways, discovering new bands through his magazine subscription and later reading about the CBGB scene, with regular features about bands like the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie.
In 1975, however, everything changed when he bought a copy of Horses on the day it came out, and was instantly charmed by the way Smith’s sounds and lyrics “just completely lifted” him in ways no other music ever would again. ‘Birdland’, in particular – Smith’s improvised masterpiece about feeling alien to the human race – struck Stipe into action, physically and mentally.
“I realised that this is what I wanted to do with my life,” Stipe said, referring to his ambition to start a band and follow in the same footsteps. He also said that there was a general attitude at the time, especially among punk singers and bands, that said, “We’re not special people,” and, “Anyone can do this,” which was “significant” for him as it allowed him to believe he could one day have the same impact, even with less skills than some of the more established players out there at the time.
Of course, his epiphany also came with a drastic Stipe-typical response, although the memory of listening to Horses was defined less by staring up at an old radio as a child and more by throwing up and officially deciding to pursue a musical career. “I stayed up all night listening to it on headphones, ate a bowl of cherries and threw up,” said Stipe. “I decided then that I was going to start a band.”
Most decisions made after a prolonged emotional state, and especially after an all-nighter, are ones we later cast aside as silly after a good night’s sleep and some real food. However, Stipe’s snap decision turned out to be fate, leading down a path that resulted in countless other music lovers listening to his music and feeling the same immediate sense of awe.
After all, most of us probably can’t remember the first time we heard songs like ‘Shiny Happy People’ and ‘Man On The Moon’, but it’s not hard to imagine how immersed we probably felt under Stipe’s familiar melancholic spell, with all the same thoughts and feelings as Smith’s earlier magnum opus spotlighted in ways we probably never heard or experienced before.
