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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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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
Chance
Ghost
Never
Success
Uncomfortable
Around
Financial
Find
York
Elated
Many
Comfortable
Associate
Hard
Walk
Ghosts
Kind
Walks
Associates
Years
Struggle
Achieved

More quotes by 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.
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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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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'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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments.
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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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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 like loud electric guitars because I like how you can just lose your entire being in the sound.
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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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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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I really wanted to get to the animal core of rock music and eliminate anything that wasn't necessary.
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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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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 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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The goal is ecstasy, but I don't want to make some sort of saccharine pop music. I want to make something that's completely uncompromising: the best possible music ever made.
Michael Gira
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The sexuality of children - there's a lot friction there. That tension interests me a lot.
Michael Gira