FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Swans Explain How To Rock In Your Sixties

Speaking to Michael Gira after about life, art and stuff.

Recently, experimental art-rock outfit Swans played at Le National as they passed through Montreal on tour for their brilliant new record To Be Kind, which just came out in May to much critical acclaim. Being part of the generation that makes up Swans’ new batch of fans, the show was a dropkick to the side of the head, which is a deaf way of saying that their violent brand of pummeling euphoric experimental No-Wave was impressive in a way that other bands around today aren’t. Not better. Just, different.

Advertisement

In a state of prolonged tinnitus following the gig, we got in touch with Michael Gira to try find out why, but also to try discuss what has compelled him and his bevy of misfits to traverse the globe doing this to audiences decade after decade.

Noisey: The concert I attended was a pretty compelling experience, and looking back at your catalogue, one consistent thread seems to be the favoring of extreme experience over “songs”, per se. Back in the early formative years, did you get in touch with that sort of art or performing experience amidst all the punk stuff that was going on and think, ‘yeah.. that.. that’s where I need to go..’
Michael Gira: Well, honestly. It’s all been intuition the entire time to be perfectly frank. It was not an aesthetic or an intellectual decision, it was just working with the people I do, with the sounds that I liked, and kind of guiding it towards some kind of extreme overwhelming experience. But it wasn’t even something that I set out to do, it’s just what was satisfying. I guess I am a very experiential person and I like to just be kind of subsumed or completely engulfed by extreme experience, and by sound. Which probably stems from my early days as a psychedelic hippy, you know, in my teens, the sixties basically, and you know, taking the same vitamins that everyone else did as well.

Because you often get lumped in with the punk and post-punk scenes of back then, even though I see you constantly waving your hand saying no, that you were more in the Throbbing Gristle sort of vein.
Yes, well I would identify with them more, certainly. It’s just we use rock instruments, you know? I love Genesis’ (P-Orridge) work and music, and he’s a friend – not close - but he’s also a hero to me, his whole approach to life, life as a kind of malleable event, a personal adventure in personal discovery, no matter what the boundaries crossed along the way, you know? He’s quite exceptional. And maybe I was drawn to them for that reason ‘cause I sort set about that in the music in the early days. Sonically I guess we don’t resemble them at all, but there’s sort of a similar intent I think.

Advertisement

It seems that you didn’t really relate with the counterculture punk scenes that were really thriving in those days. Was that because you found nature of it to be just another form of conformity – unlike TG - almost from the get-go?
Well yeah, very quickly it became that. The punk I liked – I don’t know if you can call it that – in the early days was like Patti Smith and Television and the British groups like Wire, I guess the more immediately post-punk? I favored that sort of thing. I was involved in the punk scene in LA, but that was quickly revealed as being stylized and conformist. Semi-hardcore punk, and punk, and all that other stuff that came quickly after the original punk was just a cartoon to me, really.

Not trying to psychoanalyze, but I read that in the sixties you spent a lot of the time traveling through Europe, dealing aforementioned ‘vitamins’, hanging out with serious hippies, and winded up spending your 16th birthday in an Israeli adult prison in 1969. Meanwhile, most counterculture American kids of your generation were probably at Woodstock or Sunset Boulevard doing yoga and taking LSD. I’m curious if that kind of parallel hippy experience perhaps shaped your views of rebellion and counterculture in any way upon returning to the States, or am I reaching?
Well, I think you’re reaching a bit. But what it did shape, certainly being in prison, and so far away from home, shaped my view of the world immensely, and in my life, in a way, it was very special to me, because it underscored the urgency of living through to your aspirations, and also the urgency of time. Because once you get locked in a room, time is like this physical object or something, and you really become aware of how important it is.

Advertisement

Having done Swans and this kind of work for so long, throughout vastly different eras and periods of time, and now having successfully revived the group for more, do you notice any differences now between audiences in the 80s and 90s, as opposed to people coming out these days? How are things different, or are they?
Yes. I think due to the Internet, people are informed more of what they’re going to experience, or they have a closer understanding of the kind of show or experience we’re able to create. It is now easier to reach our actual audience, rather than just the few hundred people that decide to show up, who may or may not understand what it is we’re doing, which was the case before. And I think because of that, the audience responses are much more involved and favorable now. I don’t even look at it like applauding or saying “you’re great,” but they’re actually really interested in the experience, just like we are, and so they actually really want to be there.

Whereas in the 80s and 90s, it was a lot of hostility and shock and all that crap, you know? Which doesn’t really interest me. A lot of people that didn’t get it, coming to the shows, thinking that they did, aggressively. (NB: Gira infamously attacked headbangers, aggressors at shows.) So it’s nice to feel that there’s people that are informed and want what we can provide, and they want to be inside that same cyclone of sound that we’re in.

Advertisement

So when you disbanded in the late 90s, besides your Angels of Light (solo project) picking up, was that because you felt the project was being misinterpreted and being pigeonholed as some dark violent shock rock act that you just couldn’t be bothered with anymore?
[Laughs] Well. There were numerous reasons for disbanding it. Probably one was physical exhaustion, because I don’t think I took a break for 15 years since the inception of Swans, you know? I didn’t take any breaks or a holiday, just worked on it all the time, 24hrs a day. It was all I lived for, my life’s work, and it was never financially remunerative in any meaningful way, so it was necessary to work harder than anybody else in the fucking business, just to be able to do it. And I think after 15 years of that I was just exhausted mentally, spiritually, physically, and psychically.

But yes, the other thing, is that Swans just seemed like a dead-end in the way that we were perceived. I could never break free from those stupid stigmas. I still can’t actually. Even when I did Angels of Light, it was always this monkey on my back. And even now there are the preconceptions as well. Especially in the British press, they still emphasize the volume and darkness and violence and those kinds of things, which I find a bit, not a little bit, I find them to be extremely cliché.

But I’m curious, because similar to what you’re saying about the press, do you know that Swans’ legacy is associated with creating grindcore and ..
Ukhh! Fuck no! [Laughs] ukh..

Advertisement

.. noisegrind and a lot of those types of niche genres. Are you okay with that?
[Laughs] I would very much like to be guillotined if I did that, but I didn’t. But I guess that’s just some people – or the media – interpreting certain aspects of the music, and taking it, and making it into something really stupid

Do you think it’s because people extract superficial elements rather than wanting to look at the whole picture?
Well yes, because the sound of Swans, what we were about, from the very beginning has just changed and changed constantly. That’s the constant. So maybe various performers are influenced by selective periods in our history, but I think I can say that I’ve never heard anyone make music that they say was strongly influenced by us that I thought was any good, so.

Who, if anybody, would you see as your contemporaries now? Or do you still find yourself in a unique fringe position?
Well there’s certain bands I admire [he mentions The Necks, Carla Bozulich] but, who are our contemporaries now.. do you mean from the elderly? [Laughs] The geriatric generation of bands? [Laughs] I don’t know. Well we’ve always expressed that we’ve never really fit in anywhere. We’ve never really felt part of a scene of had any sense of community with other musicians.

How do you find the atmosphere surrounding being a performing independent artist in 2014 compared to when you started? Is it harder/easier? Do independent scenes seem more leveled and interesting, or would you say it’s a bit of a parody now and things were better twenty years ago? Or just different?
Look, I’ll tell you what, it’s always been fucking hard. If you’re making music that’s destined not to be really popular, it’s always hard. You just have to figure out a way to survive. I certainly have no advice to people these days on how to do that. It’s kind of a hopeless proposition by definition, really [Laughs] but.. how do I feel about the independent scene now? I don’t feel anything about it. Never have. [Laughs]. I mean there’s certain people’s music that I like who are around, music I respect, others not, and it’s just kind of always been like that.

Advertisement

But now, in bringing Swans back to critical acclaim with new material on The Seer (2012), and then taking it even further with follow up To Be Kind (2014), you’ve stated you were adamant that you wanted it to be new material and that you wouldn’t be playing old “hits” at shows. Did you feel that doing so would be a contradiction of what Swans was? Because it’s almost as if you said, “if you’re coming for the old stuff then you don’t really get what Swans was about.”
Well. Like I said. I think people know now that they’re coming for a unique experience and not a replication of something else, and that’s what’s happening now. At first there was a bit of that after The Seer, but it stopped quickly.

But was any of that though an attempt to steer away from aforementioned stigmas of the band?
No, well, yeah, sure, of course. But also, I wouldn’t be able to feel authentic playing that material, you know? With how I work, it’d be just like a suit that doesn’t fit you anymore. You’re a different person. So, I mean. For us, we’re doing old things live, we did a song from The Seer (The Apostate), which to us is like ancient, and that’s like a year old. [Laughs] And we’re doing a couple of things from the new album which is unusual for us, but I just haven’t had time yet to come up with concept for new pieces entirely. But hopefully over the next 18 months of our touring cycle, we will work in more newer material and move out the older material.

Advertisement

And now with the reformation of Swans, you’ve turned out of necessity to this kickstarter/crowdfunding approach now to record the records you want because you can’t afford to record records with album sales alone. Has that in any way changed the dynamic with the audience or how you approach a record? Is there any “Shit, this better be good, because now all these paid and are now counting on it” or do you not really think like that?
Well. With all due modesty, I would say that we at Young God records, Angels of Light or Swans, kind of invented the kickstarter idea back in 1999/2000 by making handmade CD’s and releasing them through the internet specifically to our audience, in order to raise money for the next record, and the response from that system has always been really enthusiastic. And that’s what I’ve been doing all along, maybe more sporadically, because now with Swans it’s completely necessary because these records, they’re very expensive to make, and record sales these days are anemic, so it’s the only choice now. But thankfully the audience has grown to a large enough extent that we’re able to make and send off a thousand or two thousands of this [fundraising fan stuff] and make enough money to at least mostly fund a record. It doesn’t really change anything other than that it is a lot of physical rope work that takes up a lot of time and can sometimes be overwhelming.

Advertisement

About the songwriting. With Swans, I think a lot of people don’t realize that the majority of Swans tracks – even like the intense new one
"Oxygen" – are actually acoustic solo tracks that then get fleshed out by the group.
Yes. Like with "Oxygen". I play the guitar with my thumb, doing that sort of bass-y sound, and then I came up with a chord or a groove within that, which was then fleshed out. But yes the majority of the songs are written acoustically, and then fleshed out either live, or in the studio.

I read recently in an interview that somewhat recently you were way out far in a cabin all alone, and you coughed something up, and started choking to the point that you were passing out and thought you were gonna die, and so started slamming yourself down onto the floor in attempt to dislodge it, and it ended up shaping a song. Was that song the final version of "Oxygen"?
Yes. [Laughs]

That’s eerily exactly what that track sounds like.
That was a really… I wouldn’t say it was transforming, because as soon as it was over, everything, life, just went back to its kind of mundane level, but for at least that moment, it was just this intense awareness of mortality, and that if I didn’t do something, I was done for. So I did.

After that happened, did you go back to the studio after and be like ‘Alright dudes, that "Oxygen" song, it’s changing.’
[Laughs] No, no, no. It was more of a natural progression.

Advertisement

One of the things I love about the records, and your approach to it, is that there seems to be a strict decisiveness with Swans. You know, for better or for worse, you come up with some ideas, you make some hard decisions about recording quickly, release it, and then just move forward. That takes a certain amount of confidence, though. Is that approach ever daunting if the wake of what you put out doesn’t look too great, or is that the only way you know how to work?
Well, yeah. It’s funny that you say that, because my wife, one of the things she always says that she likes in a lot of her favorite groups and records, is that it is unapologetic. It doesn’t mince. And I guess that is a quality I aspire to also that many of my heroes had. But also, a lot of the time, I really just can’t stand listening to the work that I’ve just done because in doing it I’ve heard it a million times. So I just move on. But I like to work hard too in general, so.

Having done this type of experiential art for so long, at this intensity. Are you not completely fucked and tired, now at your age (60)? Because I came to the show, sober, stood front and center, and I was fucked the next day, and I was just in the audience standing still.
Every bone. Every muscle. Every tendon. Every nerve in my body aches constantly. [Laughs]

Right…
I’m serious! [Laughs] Just getting out of bed is really hard, but it’s also, the moment, I remember Montreal - that was one of our better shows ever actually - and being inhabited by, whatever you want to call it, the Gods of sound, for that period of time, is, to me, part of the entire reason for my existence, really. So yes, it is worth it.

Do you go into some weird sort of extended hypnotic mind frame after a while to get through the tour? Not to intellectualize it, but do states like that naturally occur doing it night after night for months at a time.
Well, yes, because to me it’s also a kind of spiritual pursuit, not in any kind of new age way, but it’s kind of like meditating. You reach a certain zone, and you’re connected to the universe, and I think when music reaches its peak in terms of what it has to offer, that’s sort what happens as well.

Well thanks for doing it. One last question, I saw a cover of Bowie’s Under Pressure by Xiu Xiu that credits you as singing on it. Is that accurate or is that some freehand Internet relabeling?
Yeah sure. That was just a fun thing with Jamie [Xiu Xiu]. Certain people ask me to do things, and they’re really goofy sometimes but, I don’t really give a shit. They’re friends, I’ll do anything. To think that I might not is just like one of those preconceptions about Swans we spoke about earlier. But yeah, that’s real, that’s me.

Photos courtesy of Ben Stas

Steven Viney is a writer that lives in Montreal. He's on Twitter.