TLOBF Interview // Michael Gira (Swans)

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It’s not often I get nervous interviewing bands anymore, but from the first email offering a chance to speak to Michael Gira I could feel my stomach churn. Gira formed Swans in 1982 and has been an influential figure in modern music throughout his career as solo artist, author, and founder of Young God Records, home to Devandra Banhart and James Blackshaw among others.

I was excited when I heard the band would be reactivated for a series of dates this autumn, ecstatic when I read that a new record was on the way, but the real moment of kick in the teeth joy came when pressing play on My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope to the Sky and realising that it was more breathtakingly accomplished and stunningly composed than any expectations I had played out in my dreams.

This was also the point I became really nervous about the interview. For two hours before dialling his number I sat composing a long series of questions, writing out line after line of quotation and generally over preparing to a state of knotted guts and stuttered thoughts.

Thankfully the voice on the other end was warm, patient and accommodating of my stab in the dark questioning.

When did you decide to reform Swans?

Oh, I guess about a year ago.

What was the overriding factor in your decision?

Well, I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’ve been making music under the name Angels of Light for several years and I was developing a lot of songs that I guess were intended to be on an Angels of Light record and the more involved I got with that concept, the less interested I was. So I’d been wanting to make something that was more completely overwhelming and experiential and extreme for a long time, so I thought, why don’t I just take these songs and rip them apart and make a Swans album? So that’s what I did.

When’s the first show?

The first live shows will be when the tour starts. We’re going to do something very similar to what we did when we recorded the record which is just rehearse for a really, really long time everyday, like twelve hours a day for three weeks and then start playing in order to just completely become immersed in the material by the time that we foist what we do upon an audience.

How we recorded the record was, the band had received a crude demo of me and an acoustic guitar so they knew how the song went, but then we went into the recording studio which was a very large space, and we set up our gear in pretty close proximity with no separation, no isolation booths, no nothing, and just played the material for twelve hours a day. And by the time we were finished it had completely transformed into something else, something very much Swans, and we decided to record it.

Have you been playing out the live shows in your head, trying to figure out the balance between old and new? Or have you been trying to figure out what song you can build breakdowns into? How does it play out in your head?

Sort of like that. We’re gonna take four songs from this album, and there’ll be a starting point, y’know? We’ll start playing them, re-familiarise ourselves with them, and then they have to expand and become something else that works live. And then we’re gonna take several Swans songs from mostly the early days up to like, ’85, ’86, and do the same thing to those; take a starting point, and change them into something new.

Eventually the set will take shape, and how each song relates to another will be important as well, like transitions between songs and quiet moments and those things that you would take a lot of time playing. None of us live in the same town basically. We can’t get together all the time and slowly do this but we have to do it intensely over a period of three weeks.

Are you nervous about it?

Extremely! But I guess that’s good. I’m always nervous about what I do; it has to be good, it has to be true. That’s the main thing.

I read an interview with you the other day where you said you were annoyed that the opening of the album wasn’t longer and you felt you’d chickened out of it. Is there a desire to push the live show further?

Definitely, most definitely. What I’m doing right now sort of relates to that sentiment. Right now I’m doing extended instrumental sections to the album, like the intro to songs and the instrumental in Eden Prison and just sonic sections of the record. I’m taking those as raw material and I’m making one long, forty minute piece of music out of them and putting more guitars on them, vocals, strings, horns, all kinds of other sound sources and making one long, evolving piece out of it.

I’m making a remix album, but I don’t want to call it a remix album. It’s for a special edition of the album, it’s gonna have this extra CD with it.

Do you ever think you’ve taken things too far? Can you ever go too far? Is there a limit to anything, or is it always about pushing for that limit?

I don’t think about things in terms of pushing a limit as that implies constriction in the first place. It’s more just trying to find something that erases who you are. I mean, for making loud rock music it’s the same kind of inspiration some composers might have as well, to make something that completely transforms you, that rearranges your molecules, that just turns you into dust sonically. That you can just slide up to heaven on. That’s kind of what I want to try.

I remember reading a quote from you once that was about how you’d always play at such volume that it would erupt your soul to the point that you became nothing, and I really liked that. It kind of stuck with me.

It’s like tantric sex in a way. You reach a point where you’re completely dissolved and everybody has that aspiration. I think that’s part of the whole reason religions exist, asides from fear.

Within the music and within your writings you do focus more on the darker side of being. Why is that? Is it more interesting or is it to have a greater impact?

I don’t really think like that. I don’t really know. If you look at some of the songs on the record, they’re not all dark.

But not just on this record; looking at everything you’ve done in the past with the solo material and the books you’ve put out.

I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think that’s the only thing I do. But it is part of life, it is part of who I am, what I am. I don’t focus on the dark side really, it’s more what’s underneath the surface is kind of what I’m going for.

It’s like if you pay attention to the tape that’s playing in your mind, say when you’re standing in a bank. What’s really going on in your mind, you know? I think if you could voice what’s really going on in your mind most people would find it kind of shocking. I sort of look for that area of things; does that make sense?

Yeh, it definitely does. Have you ever seen a live show that’s pushed you more to take things further?

What was very, very influential to me in my young days was in 1969, seeing Pink Floyd. This was when I was a runaway in Europe. I saw them at a Belgian rock festival and this was soon after Syd Barrett had gone and to me it was just astounding.

It’s always sort of that memory of the possibilities of sound and spectacle that I reach for. And I guess another person whose music has always been sort of influential to me is Glenn Branca’s music, although I haven’t sat around listening to it for years. Some concerts I saw in New York in the early days were to me just the epitome of how high music can go. I never want to emulate him technically, to sound like his music, but it’s just something about the soaring, the ever-ascending sound of it, is just really inspirational and really spirit full in a lot of ways.

How do you feel now about the way that you are intrinsically connected to No Wave?

Well it depends who you talk to. I guess a lot of people would say that we’re post-No Wave. In fact, by the time I moved to New York the No Wave scene was dead. I moved there in ’79.

I always feel you and Sonic Youth were influenced by it but not part of it.

One of the reasons I moved to New York was because of what you call No Wave; Lydia Lunch, Theoretical Girl, Suicide. All those groups I thought were amazing. Suicide is not No Wave by any stretch of the imagination but they were fantastic and I was kind of an Alan Vega fan boy. I saw them at Max’s Kansas City probably like five times and I always saw him at shows. I’d go back to the dressing room door and stutter ‘H-h-h-h-hi Alan.’ I was just completely in awe of him as a performer; I thought he was fantastic.

I was also influenced in the early days of Swans by The Stooges, in their pre-Levis jeans days, in their pre-commercial days.

You can hear that in Swans with that chugging riff throughout.

Again, it’s not trying to sound like them, it’s more like taking the hidden quasi-sexual religious urge that’s in those grooves, that’s in those sounds and not trying to sound like it, but taking the essence that’s there. And also another influence would have been Throbbing Gristle at the same time too.

It’s sort of a line between post-punk and No Wave that you seem to cross.

And out of it we made something unique to us.

But you once said about No Wave; ‘They were all so concise in the music, the delivery, and the point that they just ended. It wasn’t a premature death, it was an immediate and acute one.’ But now so many of those bands are back, how do you feel?

I look at the Swans re-activation I call it, not reunion, I look at it as a move forward, not to relive the past, you know? What I needed in my own work to stay viable and to stay honest and to push myself further was to reach back and grab some of that sound, that sonic aspiration that I had with Swans, and inject it into what I’m doing today. So that’s what I’m doing. That’s not really like trying to have a reunion or something. But people can do whatever they want. Life’s short, right? Might as well use what you have.

What about the reasons that you ended Swans, was it thirteen years ago? Was it due to frustrations with record labels I read somewhere?

Well at the end I was my own record label so yes, I was incredibly frustrated!

Well, how do you handle it now with all the complaints of the Internet, record labels struggling? How do you handle Young God Records differently?

Well, let me say, I don’t care about major labels, they can die, although they do release a lot of good music, but the whole complaining about the Internet as you say, is valid. I’ll give you an example, let me give you a couple of examples of why I hate people who steal music which is what it is when you download something illegally, you’re stealing from me, from the artist, someone who works.

One thing I just did to raise money to be able to pay to record this album was I made a thousand copies of a handmade CD/DVD double thing where I made a woodblock print and I printed a thousand copies of these and then I went over each one of these copies with a different colour felt pen and marker four times, that’s times a thousand I did that, signed them all, packed them all up, shipped them out.

I worked hundreds of hours making these. Hundreds. Like literally, weeks of repetitive, boring, stressful work trying to get this done. And people through the website bought these in order to help fund the Swans album.

So I did all that work and then I just now paid all the money I made from that and plus more from my savings to record this album. Now I’m gonna put this album out there after all that work and all that investment of time and energy and my whole life’s influence and all the experience I’ve gained, I’ve put into this album. I put everything, heart and soul into it. Now I’m going to put it out there and people are going to steal it. So how would you feel if you were me?

And here’s a less personal example. Say I’m a master carpenter, really finely skilled. Say I make one hundred tables over the course of a year, I hand-make these really beautiful tables. I put everything, all my work and all my hours into them. I carve them beautifully, I shellac them twenty-five times so they’re just exceptional works of art and I have orders for these hundred tables so I take them and I put them in my warehouse.

They’re sitting there to be delivered the next day, I’m going to be remunerated for my year’s work, and not to mention all the years it took me to gain the skills to make these tables. And that night someone just comes in and says ‘Oh, I’ll have these, backs a truck up and takes all the tables. That’s how I look at illegal downloading.

No, it’s a very fair point, absolutely.

It’s unsustainable. And in fact, I’m very proud of what I’ve done with Young God Records, helping people like Devandra Banhart and Akron/Family and James Blackshaw. Helping all these people either gain or expand upon an audience and really investing thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours working with them. Helping produce their records in many cases.

Five years ago I could sustain it. I was getting paid for it so I could live and do the work that God meant me to do. But now, at this point, I’m not continuing the label because there’s no money. I can’t do it. So the people who are on the label right now I’m continuing to work with, but I won’t help anybody else. I won’t bring anybody else into the label because it doesn’t pay anymore.

No, I didn’t mean it as a flippant comment, complaining, I just meant there’s a lot of independent labels out there who work really hard to come up with new ways of…

I know. You could try to sell vinyl… but none of it compensates for the huge losses of income from people not buying music. And I’m not saying this to you in particular, but it’s a point with me because it has directly, severely affected my ability to continue doing what it is I love to do. So people should think about it when they do that, you know?

There’s nothing more I can add to that.

I just mean it’s the only thing I know how to do. I don’t have another skill so if I can’t make a living out of music I’m screwed, and so is my family. And that’s not just me. What about those other not rich, not incredibly successful artists, what are they going to do? What are the tremendously skilled and great recording engineers going to do when people can’t afford to pay to go into a studio anymore? All that, the whole thing, is just dependent on it as much as some bloated music industry that needs a whipping, you know? It’s real people who’ve devoted their lives to something they love.

I’m gonna come back round from that and say, Sonic Youth are obviously a band who you had more than just parallels with at the start of your careers and they’ve been together, nearly thirty years and are still doing good. So how do you think they’ve managed? How do you think Swans now sit alongside Sonic Youth?

I don’t want to compare myself to them. They’re the Monkees and I’m Jimi Hendrix. Put it that way.