Michael Stipe’s Missive to River Phoenix, and the Story Behind the R.E.M. and Patti Smith Duet “E-Bow The Letter”

There were things Michael Stipe wished he could have said to his friend actor and musician River Phoenix, who died in 1993 at 23. When R.E.M. began working on their tenth album New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Stipe started writing the labyrinthine letter to his late friend.

“There’s a handful of people I’ve met in my life who I instantly felt, ‘Ahh, this is gonna be a lifetime friendship, OK, done,’” said Stipe in 2020. “Meeting River was like that. There was definitely mutual admiration for what we had each done creatively, but beyond that was an instant spark, a warmth, a kinship.”

Stipe continued, “We had so much in common in terms of activism and beliefs about the environment and vegetarianism, but also how to utilize fame and a public platform to encourage progressive ideas.”

More than a month before the release of New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the band shared “E-Bow The Letter.” The title references an EBow, an electromagnetic device used to create a vibrational, violin-like effect for the electric guitar, and reads like a letter from Stipe to Phoenix.

The Lyrics

Verses of “E-Bow The Letter” run like a stream of consciousness. Look up, what do you see? sings Stipe cryptically. Right from the start, Stipe moves through a train of memories, visions, and dreams linked to a friend.

Look up, what do you see?
All of you and all of me
Fluorescent and starry
Some of them, they surprise

The bus ride
I went to write this
4 a.m. this letter
Fields of poppies, little pearls

All the boys and all the girls
Sweet-toothed
Each and every one a little scary
I said your name

I wore it like a badge of teenage film stars
Hash bars, cherry mash and tinfoil tiaras
Dreaming of Maria Callas
Whoever she is

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Deeper in, the lyrics speak to the elusiveness of fame—This star thing, I don’t get it—androgyny, mortality, drug use—These corrosives do their magic slowly and sweet—and more.

This fame thing
I don’t get it
I wrap my hand in plastic to try to look through it
Maybelline eyes and girl-as-boy moves

I can take you far
This star thing
I don’t get it

aluminum, it tastes like fear
Adrenaline, it pulls us near (I’ll take you over there)
It tastes like fear
(I’ll take you over)

Will you live to 83?
Will you ever welcome me?
Will you show me something that nobody else has seen?
Smoke it, drink

Here comes the flood
Anything to thin the blood
These corrosives do their magic slowly and sweet
Phone, eat it, drink

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Patti Smith

Making the song even more poignant, when Patti Smith read the letter, she agreed to sing through the lyrics with Stipe, breaking in with I’ll take you over through his Aluminum, it tastes like fear / Adrenaline, it pulls us near / It tastes like fear.

“Patti Smith singing on something that I helped write was just amazing,” said Stipe in 1996. “She changed my life in a real literal way in 1976 when I saw her play live. She changed my perception of what music was.”

Smith later sang backing vocals on the track “Blue” from R.E.M.’s final album Collapse into Now, in 2011.

Photo: Rick Diamond/WireImage