Q: Walk Unafraid is one of my favourites and I love hearing it love. It’s been interpreted as the climax of the Michael Stipe narrative. How personal is that song?

A: personal in that its quite literal inspiration was something Patti Smith told me, some great advise she gave me as a lyricist and artist when I was really in hardcore writer’s block…but I think it goes beyond me, and that’s not my self mythologizing but trying to push it further out into the world of collective experience