I used to routinely break my ribs doing stupid things onstage, but I have a healthy fear of breaking my bones now.

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'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.

I used to routinely break my ribs doing stupid things onstage, but I have a healthy fear of breaking my bones now.

As far as playing playing festivals and everything, I feel like that's what I was born to do. I'm an entertainer, hopefully in the best sense.

I don't throw my body down on the stage at all anymore because I'm sure I'd snap like a twig.

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.