As first reported in the New York Daily News yesterday, REM frontman Michael Stipe has finally come out of the closet in the April issue of Spin. The news, of course, surprised absolutely noone. (Hell, did anyone not know that Stipe was gay?) Now, we've got a few excerpts from Spin's cover article:

"I recognize that to have public figures be very open about their sexuality helps some kid somewhere out there [...] "7 Chinese Brothers" was about me breaking up a couple and then dating both of them — a man and a woman — which is a terrible thing to do. But I was young and stupid."

"It was supercomplicated for me in the '80s [...] I was totally open with the band and my family and my friends and certainly the people I was sleeping with. I thought it was pretty obvious."

Interestingly, Spin's article is based around an interview writer Michael Azerrad held with Stipe at the Mario Batali pizzeria Otto. Stipe and Batali co-starred in a cringingly fanboyish episode of Sundance's Iconoclasts in 2005 that featured the pair driving around the streets of New York on a Vespa.