Michael Stipe und sein Publikum

Aus einem Interview mit Michael Stipe vom 6. März 2011 mit dem englischen Guardian

Now 51, Stipe has been lead singer of REM for just over 30 years. The band's new album, Collapse Into Now, is their 15th. In the interim, the group have gone from cultdom to indie sainthood to global superstardom. The tipping point came in 1991, with the release of their seventh album, Out of Time, and its stirring hit single, "Losing My Religion". It caused a seismic shift in their fortunes that bass guitarist, Mike Mills, later described, not altogether positively, as "life-changing". Even before then, Stipe seemed troubled by the whirlwind of fame, struggling to make sense of the stadium tours that followed 1987's hit single "The One I Love". He has had an uneasy relationship with his own celebrity ever since.

"I had to grapple with a lot of contradictions back in the 80s," he says, frowning. "I would look out from the stage at the Reagan youth. That was when REM went beyond the freaks, the fags, the fat girls, the art students and the indie music fanatics. Suddenly we had an audience that included people who would have sooner kicked me on the street than let me walk by unperturbed. I'm exaggerating to make a point but it was certainly an audience that, in the main, did not share my political leanings or affiliations, and did not like how flamboyant I was as a performer or indeed a sexual creature. They probably held lots of my world views in great disregard, and I had to look out on that and think, well, what do I do with this?"

Das mit den "fat girls" macht mich sprachlos. Ich glaube, das ist das erste Mal, dass jemand das Nonmainstream-Publikum, die Indie-Crowd, die "early adopters", als "Freaks, Schwule, fette Mädchen, Kunststudenten und Indie-Liebhaber" bezeichnet. Seit wann zählen fette Mädchen zu den Hipsters?

Wow.

Auf der anderen Seite fühle ich mich geehrt, denn die "fetten Mädchen" zählen ganz offensichtlich zu dem Publikum, mit dem sich Stipe wohlfühlte, bevor die Band einem breiteren Publikum bekannt wurde.