Before Musician left R. E. M. and 10,000 Maniacs, we handed a blank cassette to Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant and asked them to interview each other on the tour bus while they traveled. Natalie asked for a few topic questions, which we scribbled out. Ten days later the cassette arrived at our office. The two singer/lyricists gave us a revealing conversation, complete with descriptions of what they were driving past, inside jokes, and the steady hum of the bus in the background.

MERCHANT: "Do fans who know your songs well, know you?"

STIPE: They know me as a songwriter, they know a lot of my ideas, they know a lot of the things that I consider important. But they don't know me as a person, and there's a very fine distinction - as you know - between yourself as an entertainer and songwriter and yourself as a person. I think that a lot of people who like me as a songwriter would probably find me despicable and worthy of crucifixion if they had to live with me day to day. We've agreed on that before. We both know that. What about you?

MERCHANT: I have sympathy for people who claim to understand me through the work that I do, because I've felt that connection with other performers, other writers. But I never would have had the courage to confront them.

STIPE: Certainly not to go to their backyard and sit and wait for them to come home.

MERCHANT: Not even to go backstage! I was even terrified to meet you. That's odd because I did feel a connection with you. I don't know if it was because of the lyrics you wrote, because they were pretty..

STIPE: Obtuse.

MERCHANT: Right. It was the way that you performed onstage, the way that when you walked onstage you seemed to abandon whatever restrictions your personality has in day-to-day life. That's the way I feel onstage. I feel more myself onstage than I am doing this interview, or when I'm at dinner with my parents. The only other time that I feel as comfortable as when I'm onstage is when I'm entirely alone.

STIPE: I feel like my onstage persona is an explosion of very minute parts of the real me. It's parts that I think people need and that I need.

MERCHANT: It's raw exposure. And because of the music that we write I think every few songs there's an opportunity for a different emotion to take over. I feel like a channel, a vessel.

STIPE: Sometimes it's really hard to go from a real happy song into sad.

MERCHANT: Sometimes I don't feel the capacity to express all of that in one night. But sometimes I have such strong mood swings anyway that I can convince myself of anything when I'm onstage. There's definitely someone in every audience who's experiencing one or more of the things that our songs are going to put them through. It's already there. Maybe that's what we pick up on. Which brings us to another question: "Do you feel an obligation to the audience?"

STIPE: I think we both feel an obligation to the audience: to not present ideas that are despicable. I feel the need to present a good example, one that thinks about things.

MERCHANT: How about when you sing I See No Evil, take your pants off and start screaming and pounding your chest?

STIPE: I seriously feel like that's the biggest joke in the world, and if someone doesn't get it then they haven't gotten the whole concert. You can't just take the goodness, the upper cream, the thoughtful part, and say that's a full experience. It's not. You have to inject some humor into it.

MERCHANT: But I think sometimes there's some really honest aggression in what you're doing. When you do It's the End of the World, we're not talking goodness. We're talking something that's very vital and important and that so many people have the need to express. You do it onstage.

STIPE: And I do it like a cartoon. In a way.

MERCHANT: I don't know. If it's all just performance, you're a master of deception. Because sometimes it looks so honest you look like you're about to collapse.

STIPE: I am, during the verses. Then you come to the chorus and it's this complete flip-flop of what the verses are saying. That whole thing is an absolute dichotomy.

MERCHANT: How about a song like Gravity?

STIPE: There are times when I have to turn my back because my eyes are rolling back in my head when I sing that, and I don't want people to see that. There are times when I'm not even there. I'm where I was when I was inspired to write that song, and my hands move in the way that they were. It's automatic. My hands splay out when I sing that song.

MERCHANT: So I guess honesty is what we owe to our audiences. If I feel like crouching in the comer against the monitor cabinet and hiding from the audience, that's just as honest as if I feel like strutting across the stage, really proud of who I am and what I'm doing. There are times when I'm humiliated by who I am and what I'm doing.

STIPE: Exactly. I would feel absurd strutting all night. But crouching in a comer all night would be cheating those people who've come to see you and to try to experience what it is you're trying to give to them.

MERCHANT: Right. So it's a balance of the two. Have you ever given a performance that was completely selfish? Where you hid all night, or stood with your arms to your sides with your eyes closed and just sang - because it was your obligation to sing? It was your job?

STIPE: Yeah, I've done that [laughs]. I did that for a year and a half I used to stand perfectly still and not move at all.

MERCHANT: That would be really difficult. A lot of your material inspires such happiness and movement. Most of it is really kinetic music. But there's the line: Are you there to entertain these people or are you there to put them through what you're being put through? It feels like this last album of yours puts people through something you've been through. It seems like very involved music. The people who are listening have to become involved in it. It's hard to listen to it and just say, "Well, that's a nice record." Which is the way I like people to react to our music, too. Have a strong feeling for it: hate it or have affection for it.

STIPE: That whole gray area in the middle where people won't completely slam it, but they'll criticize really crucial points of it, really blindly. Like Miss Kristine McKenna ... [who knocked Natalie - and took a dig at Stipe - in Musician, Oct. '87].

MERCHANT: She sounds like a beauty queen contestant.

STIPE: [to tape recorder] I'm going to tell you this right now, because I didn't to your face. My whole idea about the 10,000 Maniacs record review is that Kristine McKenna wore a peasant skirt in high school and still hasn't gotten over it.

MERCHANT: We're warming up here, start transcribing!

STIPE: I had to get a stab in there before I could really talk. Natalie, we talked in Europe about our position, our jobs, what we see and the way we see it compared to other people.

MERCHANT: We're provided with an opportunity through touring to see glimpses of other people's lives and the territories that they live in, but in so many ways we're removed from their day-to-day existence.

STIPE: Completely removed. Both of us have been through the desert a number of times and neither one of us could remember having gone out and laid in the sand.

MERCHANT: Or touched it. I don't know what the desert smells like. Or to feel the temperature drop at night. It's very unusual the way we see the world. We have a cinematic perspective because we're always looking through glass. It's very sterile.

STIPE: The bus or the van or the hotels with windows that don't open [laughter]. When they do, you get down on the wall-to-wall carpeting and bow to Mecca. One's inspired to carry one's own sheets around.

MERCHANT: Also, when we're on the road we're forced into this environment that neither of us is comfortable with. Like this truckstop.

STIPE: Truckstops I know how to deal with. But women in Hyatt gift shops who say, "Are you dressed for Halloween?"

MERCHANT: I don't have a wicker duck full of complimentary shampoo pouches at home. And I don't have two color televisions or a cellular phone in the bathroom.

STIPE: Let's get out and stretch. [tape off] Repeat what you just said.

MERCHANT: When my mother used to take me to the theater or symphony or ballet as a child, I would usually choose a performer that I felt some connection to. Man or woman, it didn't matter. In some way they exemplified a part of me that I either wanted to make stronger or maybe a part of me that didn't exist, something I really wished to attain. That person just by virtue of being onstage and being watched by thousands of people - was intrinsically interesting. Just to have all that attention focused upon you. I'm sure there are plenty of writers who write music and lyrics equal to what you're doing. Do you agree?

STIPE: Yeah.

MERCHANT: And definitely equal to what I'm doing. I'm always seeing things in the press, in literature, in magazine articles; I'm so envious of the command that these people have over language! Or I'll see a girl dancing in the crowd and appreciate the way she's moving and wish that I had that kind of freedom. So I know they're out there. But I'm on the stage and they're in the audience. It's a peculiar feeling.

STIPE: It's the same as going to see a band in a little club right after you've performed for 11,000 people. You feel a little jealous! It's not envy - but you feel like they have something that you don't have. A freedom. I think a lot of that fascination with a person on the stage has to do with the human capacity to project onto other things what people need within themselves. That's what I think our music has a lot to do with. Whatever you need, you can put into whatever it is you're focusing in on. Whether it's conscious or subconscious. That's why television is such a popular medium, and moving film.

MERCHANT: Film just sucks me right in. There's always a character in a film I immediately can identify with. I sometimes identify really negative properties in myself in the character, and it's really frightening. But whatever it is, there's some action or dialog in the film that drags something out of me, which may be really unattractive or really beautiful. Maybe a successful performer can do that too. I think you do it.

STIPE: The question is, "Do people you know recognize themselves in your songs?" Often. But the real problem is when people you don't know recognize themselves in your songs. In a way that's good, because you're writing the songs to be taken by everyone and for them to project part of themselves into. But when it comes back to them projecting that onto you, it gets really hairy. You find yourself in these relationships that don't exist with people. They think they know you so well and they don't. It's very terrifying.

MERCHANT: Maybe it's because the lyrics are so personal. It's an open-letter policy.

STIPE: Yeah, but my lyrics are often so personal that they're completely incomprehensible. Which is fine with me. The language there is the sound and what's behind the sound. It has much less to do with the words.

MERCHANT: But sometimes there's such an intimacy in your voice. In a song like Perfect Circle.

STIPE: That was extraordinary. That and Gravity were perhaps my real gut-spillers.

MERCHANT: Well, you share those songs with hundreds of thousands of people. You may never meet them, encounter them in any way other than as a mass of flesh over the course of a tour..

STIPE: But I can feel that energy.

[NOTE: The above article was part of a cover story about R.E.M. Below is the small part of that story which dealt with the Maniacs]

A few hours later the wake-up calls came. The day's schedule was a nine-hour drive from Providence to Rochester. Stipe and Maniacs singer Natalie Merchant left in Michael's tour bus, the other three R.E.M. s departed in their tour bus, and the other Maniacs in their van. Hockey star Gustafson had his wrist wrapped in a wet towel. The whole way to Rochester the wounded bassist said, "Y'know - I think it's broken," and then Dennis Drew said, "It's not broken. If it were broken, you'd be in terrible pain." When we finally got to Rochester, we told Steve we'd take him to the hospital as soon as we checked in and saw just a little of the World Series. Buck came by to watch the game, hang out and order room service. Finally, the Maniacs' road manager said he'd take Steve to the hospital, 24 hours after he fell on his wrist. Guess what? It was broken. Steve played the rest of the tour in a cast.

Gustafson claimed that having to concentrate so hard was good for his bass playing. Augustyniak, still "doing a Ginger Baker," as he called playing and puking, summoned similar will-power and the crippled 10,000 Maniacs sets went over great. It didn't hurt that halfway through each night's performance Natalie pulled Stipe out on stage to sing A Campfire Song, their duet from the Maniacs' new album. Pretty soon Peter Buck was learning a Maniacs song, too, and Augustyniak was playing congas with R.E.M. In Rochester, Natalie joined R.E.M. to sing on Swan Swan Hummingbird. A week later Michael appeared during the Maniacs' set with a cake. and got the audience to sing happy birthday to Natalie.

The fact that the two singer/lyricists were traveling together as well as dueting all over the place raised questions among the fans about the possibility that we finally had a James and Carly for the '80s. In a cover story on Natalie, Melody Maker called them "more than friends." To which I'd say, "Yeah, they're good friends." This isn't Betty and Veronica.