Singer-songwriter Michael Stipe has known Elton John for more than 35 years. In all that time, he had never once given Stipe’s personal phone number to anyone, especially a musician. Then he decided to break the rules. “He gave my number to Andrew Watt, who texted me and said, ‘I have an idea,’” Stipe recalls.
The idea was for the opening title song of “Rooster,” the HBO dramedy starring Steve Carell as a college writer-in-residence who slides back into his own student-era restlessness. The series, created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses, needed roughly 30 to 45 seconds of music to play between episodes. Watt and Stipe wrote an entire song anyway. Thus was born the theme, “I Played the Fool.”
The duo has eight Grammy Awards between them: Stipe has three as the frontman for the band R.E.M., while Watt has five for collaborations with Ozzy Osbourne, the Rolling Stones and, most recently, Lady Gaga on “Mayhem.” “That’s what we know how to do,” Watt tells Variety. “We could have just said, alright, they need 30 seconds, let’s just do that. But we didn’t. We wrote a song that had a beginning, middle, end and an arc. It was incredible to watch Michael weave that together.”
Michael Stipe
Lunchbox Fund Benefit Dinner presented by Prada, New York, USA – 15 Oct 2018
