Stipe takes alcohol “only in desperation” after a show when he can’t sleep. “I have no major vices,” he claims. What he does have is an apocalyptic bent. On Out Of Time it comes in his first line on the record in the intro of “Radio Song”. The personal/political tenor of the record peaks as Stipe croons in the midst of destruction: “The world is collapsing around our ears/I turned up the radio but I can’t hear it.”

A love affair is falling to pieces, the final straw is reached when the protagonist tunes in his dial to be assailed with the banalities of mainstream radio. His desperation turns to curses – “Damn that radio song!” – and the curses are fuelled by stabbing Stax organ, harsh funk guitar and the introduction of guest vocalist KRS-One. The activist rapper keeps the song’s protest flag flying while Stipe brutally assesses the damaged relationship.

“It’s a little hyperbolic, everybody feels the world is collapsing at some point. Then you realise that just because your hair isn’t the way you want it doesn’t mean the world will stop spinning. But y’know, you can’t help but look at things through your own eyes.”

KRS-One got involved because Stipe heard another voice on the song. An early demo had rendered “Radio Song” à la T. Rex (a version will appear on a future B-side) and subsequent development opened up another dimension. “I wanted him on it because I think he’s incredible. I called him and he said he’d love to do it. I knew it would be great, I gave him a few ideas, but basically he could do whatever he wanted over it.”

Was it a big thing for a Southern white boy to get together with a big city rapper?
“No (laughs). The South has got a really bad reputation because a lot of the events that were spotlighted around the world occurred here. I would think that race relations are probably better here than they are in other parts of this country, and probably more so in other parts of the world that are considered more liberal.”

The album’s other guest vocalist is hometown Athens legend B-52 Kate Pierson. A guest on “Shiny Happy People”, her voice is very similar to Stipe’s.

“We keen together, we both have these high, keening voices and incredible lungs and we can just go on and on forever. I’ve got a huge ribcage, I’ve got a good healthy push down there. I heard a female voice on the record and she’s my favourite singer, I just love that nasal adenoid thing, it moves me. We had talked for years about singing together… she used to be in a band called The Sun Donuts when she was in high school, and we’d talked about regrouping that outfit. These songs seemed like an opportune moment.

“It was very exciting for all of us in the band to bring in outsiders. I think it says something about the band that we feel strong enough, an impermeable entity. We can bring other people into the group and it’s not going to step on or overshadow what we are. Of course that could just be me being pig-headed…”

A brooding, spartan tone poem, “Low” is almost an explication of the textbook definition of manic depression – giddy highs and emotional slumps leading to a final abyss of dejection and raging temper.

“Oh God, I’d never thought about it that much, it’s just a song. It was written on the road and I put together a bunch of nonsense phrases. I never meditated on it, it is as I wrote it in a feverish moment somewhere touring round the world. I think it’s kinda funny, actually.”

You see yourself as a humourist?

“Pretty dry, I don’t like comedy per se. Who makes me laugh? Bill Berry – if anybody has a drier sense of humour than me then it’s him, to the point where most people don’t understand it, really.”

Legend has it Stipe lost his rock’n’roll cherry when he came face to face with Patti Smith’s phenomenal Horses as a lonely, callow teen. He devoured the record so completely that it seems to have taken care of all the adolescent lust which never surfaced in his songs, but his musical journey began much earlier.

“When I was about eight or nine I played accordion, piano and guitar. Classical piano at the age of 10. My father was a violin player, my great-grandmother was an opera singer. I’ve never told anyone that before. I’ve never tried but I’m sure I could sing it, too. Mike sings real well, his dad’s an opera singer.”

Investigation of his bloodline also shows there’s a streak of Native American in Stipe. This is well in keeping with the feel of wistful remembrance and longing for something that has been lost in many of his songs. Equally the regenerative pulse which beats in the likes of “Begin The Begin”, “Stand” and “Shiny Happy People” is reflected in the singer’s activism. Aside from producing demos for local bands, information films with KRS-One, political lobbying and preparing to deliver a welcome address to the Athens Student Environmental Awareness group, Stipe now has another string to his bow.

“I met with a number of indian chiefs and lawyers from Yale and Harvard at a seminar on Native American theology and law in Boston. That was interesting; there’s about to be a giant Native American movement because the public are becoming aware of the problems they face. It’s about to explode on the media.”

Do you ever use mind-altering substances to help you write songs?
“No, I think that would be the last thing on my mind if I were to take a mind-altering substance. I think I do enough hallucinating without altering my chemical balance. I stay up for a couple of days and things start happening which shouldn’t happen.”

You seem to be very much a workaholic.
“I work a lot, but I like what I do.”

But you were very sick for a while (on an early tour in England he appeared grey and pasty-faced with the legend ‘Dog’ scrawled on his forehead).
“I was just overworked and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I kind of fell apart, it helped me figure out how to line things up so I can do a lot and still maintain a good human balance.”

It had been suggested earlier that the university campus might provide a location for our photo shoot. But apparently you were hassled when you went down to the peace camp there.
“One guy was kind of rude. I think he was pumped up because of the situation he was in at that moment. He was trying to convince the University President to allow the peace group to stay on campus. My support of the peace camp had been pretty quiet and he was haranguing me for not making a public statement about it. He said, ‘The time to rise has been engaged,’ quoting ‘Finest Worksong’ and I wanted to say, ‘Not everyone can carry the weight of the world – I’m going to breakfast, see you later.’ It was a little over the top.”

After Michael’s had his say, Bill Berry comes by to tell me how he quells pangs of yearning for the road. He fishes every day, goes waterskiing, plays golf and, as a former beer monster, he finds himself becoming “scarily domesticated” as he gets older.

When he first came to Georgia, Berry used to drop acid and hang out at the cemetery looking for ghosts. His psychedelic haze may be behind him, but he doesn’t refute a widely bandied analogy – in terms of management organisation, commitment to certain pressure groups, a large, rabid bohemian fanbase, reactivation of the American frontier spirit and the bootleg business that surrounds them, REM are The Grateful Dead of the ’90s.

“Yeah, I agree. I don’t know that much about how The Grateful Dead work, but I imagine it’s a lot like this. They’re really outside the business mainstream, their offices are probably something like this, maybe a little bigger. I can’t imagine being in the business and having to exist in LA or New York. We keep our overheads as low as possible so we don’t have to bow to monetary considerations.”