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SWANS SACRIFICE AND TRANSCENDENCE THE ORAL HISTORY NICK SOULSBY A Jawbone ebook First edition 2018 Published in the UK and the USA by Jawbone Press 3.1D Union Court 20–22 Union Road London SW4 6JP England www.jawbonepress.com Text copyright © Nick Soulsby. Volume copyright © 2018 Outline Press Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews where the source should be made clear. For more information contact the publishers. For Stacey, Kalijah and Devaune: it’s an honour knowing such an exceptional family and such good people. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1.0 JUST A LITTLE BOY 2.0 MOTHER, MY BODY DISGUSTS ME 3.0 WORKING FOR PLEASURE 4.0 GANG 5.0 THIS IS MINE 6.0 PUBLIC CASTRATION IS A GOOD IDEA 7.0 OUR SUFFERING BODIES WILL SUFFER NO MORE 8.0 ANONYMOUS BODIES IN AN EMPTY ROOM 9.0 WILL WE SURVIVE 10.0 WHEN THE LIGHT GOES OUT 11.0 KILL THE CHILD 12.0 NEW MIND 13.0 TO LIVE THROUGH SOMEONE 14.0 THE SEER RETURNS 15.0 FINALLY, PEACE? PLATE SECTION CONTRIBUTORS INTRODUCTION The enduring creative vitality of Michael Gira and Swans across a period of four decades is near-unrivalled in the annals of music. Music history divides fairly cleanly into artists who have been popular and artists of significance to the future direction of sound. Swans were most definitely the latter— their influence is all over countless subgenres of modern rock-orientated music—but, as impressively, this past decade has established them as a band with a burgeoning fan-base and well-earned acclaim. Founded in 1982, the band established a formidable critical reputation prior to their initial dissolution in 1997. Swans’ music created suspended moments where sound was so all-engulfing that both audience and performers existed briefly outside of the mechanics of time or flesh, forgetting oneself entirely. Few bands are willing to attempt, let alone succeed in attaining, such physical and metaphysical intensity. Swans, in 1997, already deserved to be expounded on in book form. It’s surprising, to me, that this volume—in 2018—is the first. At this point in time, with the band having accomplished the feat of returning to life and eclipsing their existing reputation and heritage, a book testifying to their remarkable journey was certainly due. Four new albums revitalised Swans’ existing legend and earned them a new standing as one of the finest bands to tour the planet in recent years. There was no talk of a ‘return to form’—a damning phrase nearly always indicating wishful thinking, pale pink echoes of past triumph, and a talent long-since dissipated. Swans created music that leapt into the future, never sounding like a rehash of their past, yet bore the considerable weight of the band’s legacy. The critical response was resounding; audiences grew year on year throughout the band’s six-and-a- half year return. With the current line-up disbanding in November 2017 and future iterations in the pipeline, the time felt right for a book on Swans. This work is an oral history composed of the voices of some 125 individuals who played a part in the past four decades of music created by Michael Gira either with Swans or as part of other identities under which he has travelled. Across this introduction I’ve adopted a thematic approach, tackling Gira himself, the people who have made up the band, the time and place in history during which the band arose, and then their position as a unit operating within the music business. My desire is to provide at least some dissection and context for the story that unfolds, given that pauses for contemplation play little part in the flood of life and memory therein. In The Orbit Of Gira The beating heart of Swans is, and has always been, Michael Rolfe Gira. It is impossible to disentangle the man from the project: it is his life’s work, and it is fair to say that there would be no Swans without Gira. There is a misguided tendency, however, to speak in absolutes: ‘Gira is Swans and Swans is Gira.’ This is a significant oversimplification. More accurately, Swans are a phenomenon called into being at the intersection of four elements: the unknowable vision in Gira’s mind; the part of it he is able to articulate at a given moment; the reactions of a shifting cast of musicians interpreting what is communicated to them; and the way the music changes in response to how those individual interpretations are combined. It’s very telling that Gira has always declined a solo career. Over 90 percent of his considerable output has been expressed via collaborative entities: Swans, Skin, Angels Of Light. The arrival of computer technology in the mid-90s provided musicians the opportunity to abandon communal creation altogether in favour of warping and designing sound alone via machines. Gira experimented with this path on 1996’s Soundtracks For The Blind, and with the Body Lovers/Body Haters albums of 1997, only to declare this approach unsatisfying. A common reading of musical figures is the cheap trash approach of ‘great man’ history in which reality is reduced to single individuals— usually men—who impose a near-divine will upon characters who simply act out the role dictated for them. This approach belittles both the influence of the many people who have contributed to Swans and the power of Gira himself. Gira’s desire in music is not some egotistical confession of self, hence why he rarely releases solo works or works under his own name. His greatest talent—and Swans’ defining feature—is the way the band’s entire sound flexes to utilise the strengths of the musicians involved. Gira has shown an ever-maturing ability to shape and steer the surprises and happy accidents that arise through the active participation of a community. Given Gira provides Swans’ core vision, lyrical bite, and the overall form into which all collaborators must fit, it is inevitable that observers look to Gira’s personal biography to explain the band’s character. Gira’s childhood is barely conceivable to most people. A wealthy Californian family background, intelligent parents, and the vast US federal government support unleashed by the G.I. Bill created something that looks, in retrospect, like the American dream of the 50s. This would all collapse spectacularly in a welter of alcoholism, parental abandonment, divorce, and a family home gutted by fire. Gira’s brother, Daniel, recognises a critical factor: ‘Mike was at that vulnerable age. You could call it the sweet spot or the bitter spot—he was seven or eight.’ Daniel was much younger and unable to comprehend what was occurred; Robert, their older brother, was entering his mid-teens and better able to detach himself both mentally and physically from the situation at home; Michael was old enough to know what was happening but still too young not to internalise it. He developed a stutter, acted out violently, took drugs, was thrown out of formal education—and all before reaching teenhood. The next act would see him living as a teenage runaway in Europe and the Middle East, spending time in jail and working manual labour positions, before eventually being returned to the US, where he would achieve the academic requirements for admittance to the Otis Art Institute. One response would be to rehash the dull and lazy cliché of a traumatised childhood birthing a suffering artist. Nonsense. Suffering rarely creates great art. More usually, it creates social dysfunction, criminality, chemical addiction, malformation of personality—none of which are inherently creative. The truth is, it is impossible to claim that Gira’s traits as an adult are simply consequential damage. Who can say who Gira would have been given other circumstances? An alternative reading of Gira’s life sees him cast as living testament to corporate conservative platitudes in which force of will overcomes all obstacles to an individual’s inevitable rise. Again, nonsense. Gira’s musical objectives relied on him finding creative collaborators, and his wilfulness has sabotaged him repeatedly by alienating people. Whatever force of will he possesses has mattered only so much in the face of wider circumstances and others’ wishes. A better reading is that it is impossible to quantify or measure the impact of Gira’s youth upon Swans: it is both certain and unknowable. One can be shocked at his youth while acknowledging that educated parents created a highly literate child; that an Israeli jail was no place for a child while accepting that the tatty library therein provided the first seed of Gira’s desire to be an artist; that his entire family possess an admirable work ethic while noting it has still meant a life lived, in Gira’s case, in semi-poverty and obscurity. The most crucial point is that Gira, the primary witness, does not consider himself as a victim. His achievements, and his flaws, deserve to be appreciated without being reduced to an acting out of trauma. Where does that leave us? With the need to measure Gira’s actions as an adult, and how they have influenced the music. Before Swans, from 1978 to 1981, Gira’s earliest attempts to build a life in music failed for discernible reasons. In his first band, Little Cripples/Strict IDS, he shared leadership with his friend Alex Gibson; in his second band, Circus Mort, a degree of democracy was maintained, with input from all of his bandmates. Gira was unable to adapt to either scenario and was sacked in both cases, and each band then reformed without him. Being unable to negotiate his way to satisfaction, being unable to compromise, he was forced to decide that the only option remaining was to be the unequivocal leader of a band. His driven nature may not be essential to all bands, but it is uncontroversial to say that, when it comes to the sound and story of Swans, Gira’s unbending nature certainly was and is. Gira’s articulacy is laced throughout the music of Swans, even as ex- bandmates and colleagues simultaneously recount how utterly awful he can be at communicating emotionally. Stories abound of Gira’s aggressive reaction to compromise, interruption, broken concentration, and so forth. His perfectionism, too, could be infuriating to those called upon to endure marathon rehearsals in search of whatever mystery he is seeking. The space for other voices within the band expanded and contracted depending on the individual or individual circumstance at a given point in time. Time and again, resorting to psychological explanations for the entirety of Swans’ chequered career fail firstly because Gira is a rational human being who reacts differently at different times, and secondly because, while Gira may be the boss, the musicians in the band possess agency and do not simply dangle from puppet-strings. The People Between 1981 and 1997, Swans would be riven by volatility. More than thirty individuals were members across a span of barely fifteen years. It is fair to trace the evolution of Swans’ sound to this churn of humanity, and not just to deliberate artistic and creative decision-making. It is unsurprising that it took a full year, across 1981–82, for a still-shifting iteration of Swans to come together around Gira and drummer Jonathan Kane. Most new bands undergo change as their creative identity coalesces, but while this arrangement was sufficient to allow a first EP to be recorded, what distinguishes Swans is that this instability would be the norm, with no line- up lasting more than a couple of years. In 1983, Swans would lose guitarist Sue Hanel, co-founder Jonathan Kane, and a slew of percussionists and bassists before attaining some degree of stability around guitarist Norman Westberg, drummer Roli Mosimann, and bassist Harry Crosby. By the close of 1984, the wheel had turned once more, and the only official band members were Westberg and Gira. Another period of change saw two drummers—Ivan Nahem and Ronaldo Gonzalez—arrive and leave before a new line-up solidified with Jarboe on keyboards and vocals, Al Kizys on bass, and Ted Parsons on drums. By the close of 1987, Parsons had departed, and Kizys was soon to follow. The recruitment of Virgil Moorefield and Jason Asnes—on drums and bass, respectively—for The Burning World wouldn’t last as far as the record’s release in early 1989. Having been a point of stability across five albums, Westberg departed after a subsequent tour with yet more new people: Kristof Hahn, Steve McAllister, and Vinnie Signorelli. It was Jarboe who would prove the most enduring presence within Swans. Far more significant than her romantic attachment to Gira, Jarboe