These Are Days – 10,000 Maniacs, Natalie Merchant, Michael Stipe, Cat Stevens and Salman Rushdie

• Idle googling turns up not one but two Natalie Merchant profiles

• Idle gossip about her and Michael Stipe had to be addressed, I guess

• An unplanned blog post. Surprise! The ROTR will return to hibernation.

In a spasm of boredom the other day, I googled my name and up came a YouTube video of a profile I did of Natalie Merchant in 1993, when she had just left her first band with only 9,999 Maniacs.

Watch this and you’ll see I was compelled to pry into the personal lives of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and Ms. Merchant. I appreciate her graciousness.

Then, down the YouTube queue, there was another Merchant profile. One I did five years later. Showbiz Today just couldn’t get enough Natalie, apparently.

So there you have them. Two Merchant meetings. Not a lot of conclusions to be drawn from them. She was very sweet, very smart, favored bright red lipstick (not my preferred look on a woman, but, hey – we weren’t on a date. We were better friends.)

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Tons more celebrities HERE