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I went to art school and never thought I'd be a musician, but then punk rock came along in the late 70s and kind of ruined my life. So I quit art school to get involved in music and I've been doing it ever since.

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
Kind
Went
Quit
Never
Since
Quitting
Life
Came
Musician
Art
Rock
Thought
Rocks
School
Late
Music
Along
Ruined
Ever
Involved
Punk

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I'm the band leader. That's not to say that the other people are my minions - they all put in a tremendous amount of personality, and push the music in ways I would never expect.
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I like loud electric guitars because I like how you can just lose your entire being in the sound.
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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.
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Maybe in the future I'll put out someone's one-off project, but generally I don't have time.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I'm pretty confident that people are going to come along for the ride. If they don't, tough.
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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.
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I wanted to challenge myself and move into something new. I felt that using the name Swans and the sonic attitude that that engenders was what I needed to move forward musically, and it's led to lots of new things.
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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.
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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.
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I'm a producer in the old-school way - not just some slacker working on Pro Tools.
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I really wanted to get to the animal core of rock music and eliminate anything that wasn't necessary.
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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.
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At a certain age, children are total Id - they're anything but beautiful little flowers. That always interests me. The place where the ego and the superego start, and where guilt and socialization and morality takes place, the true root of it.
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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.
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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.
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I got involved, for the most part, in the actual song construction, lyrics even. I didn't want to write the lyrics, but if there was a howler in there, I definitely pointed it out. Just trying to bring it up to a higher level. Of course, after a couple records, people get fed up with that. That's fine.
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