Idolator

Anyone who's read their share of REM interviews knows the tale in which a young Michael Stipe buys Patti Smith's Horses, plays it over and over while eating a bowl of cherries and decides "hey, I think I'll find a record store clerk with a guitar and mumble over his arpeggios" before vomiting. It's one of those anecdotes that helped establish the lineage of underground cool, along with the immortal adage "everyone who heard the Velvet Underground started a band." Now Stipe has given a self-professed "exclusive" to Death and Taxes magazine, admitting that Horses wasn't the only album he bought that day. "One of them was Hall & Oates, one of them was Foghat, Fool For the City." Have a field day, popists! More »