Mojo Magazine
September 1994

Linda Hopper

Classmate of Michael's at art school in Athens. Formed a band, Oh OK, with Linda Stipe, Michael's sister. Currently singing with Magnapop whose demos and first single, Merry, were produced by Michael Stipe.

I came to Athens in 1978 to go to art school there. It was a little hick, college town, really kind of dead - candle shops, head shops, a leather tooling place, weird diner-y restaurants. Mostly they were just closed store fronts with rotting fruit in the windows run by brothers and sisters so old you could still buy originally-packaged clothes and shoes from the 1940's. But there were some really cool people there. Under that country atmosphere was this big bar and art lifestyle, lots of cool parties.

Michael and I met at our first class. It was a basic design course. We had the best teacher in the world, a guy called Mike Nicholls. And I spotted Michael because he looked really bizarre. His hair was really blond, bleached, and very long and curly, and he always wore sunglasses - a totally cool look, like someone who'd come down from the North. That stuff came down South really late. You still couldn't buy Roxy Music albums in Atlanta then. Michael was into new wave like Patti Smith and he also liked Plastic Bertrand! I was into The Clash and The Damned and Kraftwerk and stuff.

In the summer of '79 I first saw the band, they were practising a Troggs song. They'd play British Invasion stuff, and Velvet Underground and Monkees. I think they were called R.E.M. then, but they had so many names, like Ninth Wave and Twisted Kite and Negro Wives. They'd play at parties and practise at this place in Jackson Street.

I knew Peter and Michael best because Michael and I were housemates in this big house full of people, and Peter and his girlfriend Ann lived in the house next door. I thought they were incredibly cool. When I first met Peter at the record store I would keep going back and bring beers, looking for reasons to hang out and talk with him. It was a great big family.

The first R.E.M. gig was around April 1980. Initially the art school crowd in the town looked down on them for being more straight-ahead and less fashionable. It took them a while to be accepted by that crowd. They were considered just another bar band. But Michael was totally bizarre onstage. He threw his back out every night. He was compulsive to watch, a real focal point. In fact they all were, they used to get offstage and horse around.

It didn't surprise me that Michael had that confidence, he had a wonderfully supportive family. I met Linda [Michael's younger sister] at a party not long after I arrived in town. Michael came up to me and said, "Will you talk to my sister, she's 17 and she doesn't know anyone". She worked at the Burger King and would come down to the club to see whatever punk band was playing that night, still in her uniform, totally unselfconscious.

It was through Michael and Linda that I began to consider performing myself. Michael was inspired by these professors at college who were discovering native folk artists around Georgia. That was something he really loved. I suppose R.E.M. helped galvanise opinion of the South through their visuals.

Jefferson Holt was the doorman at this club in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I think it was called the Freight Train. It was the first time R.E.M. had played there. I was there too and after the show he put us up in his brother's house, an A-frame by the river, and he was showing us his collection of coffee table books, all Hieronymous Bosch and tits and ass soft-porn-art. It was kinda weird. And then the next thing I know he's down there working with the guys. He was about 27 or 28 and had been working at a record store, Chapter 3 in Chapel Hill, dying for a reason to get out of North Carolina. They all hit it off straight away, and I think it was through him they met Mitch Easter and stuff.

Everything they've ever done has been very subtle and classic, probably without ever thinking too hard about it. They were subtly dedicated without being over-zealous about it. They'd practise every afternoon. It was very success oriented.

If they've changed it's just the way everything changes. They've grown older and moved into different directions in their lives, just a natural sense of progression. They seem like people at peace with themselves. Michael's very comfortable with fame. It's not going to push him over the edge. He knows what he'll accept from people and what he won't. We've been having coffee at three in the morning at the Dunkin' Donuts in Athens - this is in the past year - and people would drive by and see us and then come screeching up and jump out of the car with all their records and ask for autographs, and he'll handle that well. He'll explain he doesn't give autographs but he'll always be civil and shake hands and say "Hi".

When we did our demo work with him, about three years ago, maybe he was confused about whether he wanted to keep with the band or something, but he seemed to be concentrating on other musical things and didn't talk about the band much. But he was awesome in the studio. He's not a technician but he's really encouraging, never negative, and there's never a weird or tense vibe.