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I could never release something on the label I didn't personally love. The label's really an extension of my own musical career, and I'm intensely involved with every aspect personally, so it'd be a betrayal to myself if I released something simply because I thought it would make money.

Michael Gira

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Michael Gira
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: February 19
Composer
Guitarist
Musician
Poet
Record Producer
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Writer
LA
California
Michael Rolfe Gira
Really
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Betrayal
Make
Involved
Label
Never
Simply
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Money
Personally
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Intensely
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More quotes by Michael Gira

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I really wanted to get to the animal core of rock music and eliminate anything that wasn't necessary.
Michael Gira
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When I walk around New York now, there are so many ghosts. I find it very uncomfortable. There were many hard years, and I never really achieved any kind of comfortable financial success, so I just associate it with struggle. When I had a chance to get out, I was elated.
Michael Gira
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You make your work and you can't ask for approval when you're doing it. Otherwise, it's going to be untruthful in some way.
Michael Gira
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Maybe in the future I'll put out someone's one-off project, but generally I don't have time.
Michael Gira
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As far as playing playing festivals and everything, I feel like that's what I was born to do. I'm an entertainer, hopefully in the best sense.
Michael Gira
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Many of the songs were written as a way of paying tribute to specific people, but in the end the songs took on a life of their own and I didn't worry about accuracy or biographical truth, so it's not a problem.
Michael Gira
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I don't throw my body down on the stage at all anymore because I'm sure I'd snap like a twig.
Michael Gira
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I used to routinely break my ribs doing stupid things onstage, but I have a healthy fear of breaking my bones now.
Michael Gira
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Making those CDs, signing them, numbering them, packing them. It takes hundreds of hours, but it's worth it because I'm able to do the thing I love.
Michael Gira
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It's good that people come to the shows because there's nothing fashionable about Swans. Never has been, really. We've never been part of a scene. So the people that come are really there for the music. Fortunately, there's a lot of young people and a burgeoning female contingent, which is good as well.
Michael Gira
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When I first started doing the quieter, more acoustic material in Swans, there was a lot of derision and outright hatred from the audience and press, just as in the early days of Swans when we were rejected outright because of the bludgeoning, single-minded violence of the music.
Michael Gira
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Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments.
Michael Gira
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I never wrote poetry, just prose. I don't really consider songwriting a form of poetry either. The words are important, of course, but they're dependent on the music.
Michael Gira
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I have my own record company. I have to answer to God, basically. I'm not young, so I want to make the best possible work I can before I exit.
Michael Gira
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The sexuality of children - there's a lot friction there. That tension interests me a lot.
Michael Gira
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The music takes you. It has to be alive. It's like you hammer something, and the way it happens to bleed leads you into new directions.
Michael Gira
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I'm pretty confident that people are going to come along for the ride. If they don't, tough.
Michael Gira
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I'm more interested in pulling out strands of joy from both myself and the audience. I'm not saying the music or songs are light, just that when they're performed with the correct commitment it's a source of real pleasure, for me anyway.
Michael Gira
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Nina Simone was an entertainer. Bob Dylan was an entertainer. Anyone that can occupy a piece of music and make the air catch on fire at that moment is a true entertainer. That's how I view it. That's what I was meant to do. I love doing it. That's why I'm on earth.
Michael Gira
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Playing an old record doesn't interest me at all. It's exactly the opposite of what I want to do.
Michael Gira