Buck prefers to read than drink, says REM singer

Michael Stipe, singer and lyricist of the rock band REM, described his guitarist Peter Buck yesterday as the big brother he never had, a person who went out of his way to talk to him as a friendless teenager.

Mr Stipe, front man of one of the wealthiest and most influential bands of his generation, appeared overwhelmed when he appeared before Isleworth Crown Court in west London, to defend his friend.

He stopped in the middle of his evidence to apologise to the judge. "I am sorry. I am very nervous because I am kind of shy,'' he said.

He described Mr Buck as a quiet, considerate man who would rather read a book after a concert than go to a bar.

The 42-year-old singer was the final witness in an eight-day trial which has heard how Mr Buck behaved like a "drunken lout'' in the first-class cabin of a transatlantic flight last April, assaulting staff, overturning a trolley, smashing crockery and trying to steal a knife. At one point on the journey between Seattle and Heathrow, Mr Buck, 45, announced he wanted to "go home'' and tried to leave by an exit door.

The guitarist, who insists he remembers nothing, is claiming he developed "non-insane automatism", having taken a sleeping pill along with wine early on in the flight.

He denies one charge of being drunk on an aircraft, two counts of common assault on the cabin service director, Mario Atius, and a stewardess Holly Ward, and one of criminal damage to British Airways crockery.

Mr Stipe described reports of the incident as "absurd'', insisting that in more than two decades he had never seen his friend behave aggressively. He said: "Something people don't even know about the American South is that there is what is called a southern gentleman. Peter is my definition of such: considerate to all people, genteel and polite. Basically a southern gentleman is someone who follows the golden rule 'you treat people as you would want to be treated, no matter who they are'. That is why this whole thing to me is absurd.''

Describing how they had met in 1979 and moved into an apartment together in Athens, Georgia, before forming REM, he said: "I was a teenager and he was my only friend at the time. To me he is like a big brother. When I was 19 he was the only person who would talk to me.

"I had just moved [to Athens] with my family. He was interested in music as I was and he went out of his way to make me feel comfortable.''

Mr Stipe said that since his friend's marriage to Stephanie and his move to Seattle, Mr Buck had become a family man who spent most of his time at home. "During our last tour, after a show, when the adrenalin level was high he would go back to his room and read rather than come to a bar with Mike [Mills, the REM bass guitarist] and I and the other guys," Mr Stipe said. "Since he has become a father he is even more responsible."

Mr Stipe described Mr Buck as a man with a photographic memory and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the music business. On the day after the guitarist was arrested upon arrival at Heathrow – when the band were due to headline the South Africa Freedom Day concert in Trafalgar Square – Mr Stipe went to see him at the Dorchester Hotel.

"He was more upset than I have ever seen him. He said he took a pill and blacked out," Mr Stipe said. "It doesn't make any sense, not at all. He is just not a person who is rude to anyone."

Mr Stipe said he teased Mr Buck over his height and long nose. "He can sometimes come across as stand-offish and looking down his nose. But he is not. He is the antithesis of that. He is a gentle, kind, incredible person and doesn't look down on anyone.''

Earlier in the day the court heard from Mr Buck's wife, Stephanie. The couple have twin daughters, aged seven. Mrs Buck, a lawyer, who now runs a live music club, described her husband as a "very gentle man who would apologise to a waiter if he left food on his plate". She told the court that when her husband drank alcohol he became "sweet, just a little more affectionate and relaxed". In the 10 years that she had known him, Mrs Buck said she had never seen him behave aggressively. "I would not be married to him if he was anything like that,'' she said.

She said that during a dinner with another rock band, the Psychedelic Furs, a friend had offered her husband some tablets from his wife, a doctor, to help him sleep. This was the medication that guitarist claims to have taken.

Closing submissions will take place after Easter.