I'm a producer in the old-school way - not just some slacker working on Pro Tools.

It wouldn't interest me to try to sound like Cop or something. It would be silly and soul-crushing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.