michael stipe in berlin, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. how are you, stephen? am very well, delighted to see you. i think it's fair to say that we all think of you, first and foremost, as a musician, but these days, your primary focus seems to be visual art and i'm just wondering whether that visual sense was with you from the very beginning. yeah, i actually started as an art student, but prior to that, i took up photography at 1a. it was when i was 15 years old that i discovered the cbgb punk rock scene in new york and patti smith, and i bought her record the day it came out, and then i kind of never looked back. but i took photographs the whole time that i was performing and writing and singing with rem. and i've used photography in my life almost like a diary, because i don't really write anything down, and so the images, for me, are kind of a way of remembering my extraordinary and very, very lucky life. i've had a sneak preview of the book of photographs and images which you are currently releasing and it's fascinating to me because it's partly, it seems,

so it is with my guest today, michael stipe, lead singer of the american band rem, who were pioneers in the 1990s.