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Did Michael Gira Date Madonna?

We compile all of the evidence that confirms Michael Gira did indeed date Madonna in the very early 80s.

December 6, 2024

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For years, I’ve heard the rumour that Michael Gira dated Madonna sometime in the late 70s or early 80s. The connection between such sonically, and commercially, dissimilar artists is certainly a fascinating line of enquiry. But, confirmatory evidence online is relatively thin, localised mostly to the odd Reddit comment or fleeting mention in a piece of music media.

In need of conclusive evidence, I’ve dug through every article, archival interview, and book reference I can find to validate the rumour. (Spoiler alert: the evidence suggests that Michael Gira did indeed date Madonna). Let’s investigate.

Now, much of the evidence revolves around Sonic Youth, and one of the first instances to be found came in the form of a Guardian interview with Thurston Moore. In the interview, he doesn’t make explicit reference to a romantic encounter between Michael Gira and Madonna, but he does plant the seed by referencing their creative, social and geographic overlap. Essentially, same place (New York City), same time (early 80s), same scene (no wave) and same people (Dan Braun and Josh Braun):

“Madonna was actually in a couple of no-wave bands that nobody ever talks about. She was in a band with these two twins, Dan and Josh Braun, who were the first members of Swans, Michael Gira’s band. Nobody really knows about that part of her history; she was in a pre-Swans no wave band! There’s all that interconnected history in New York with Madonna and the no wave scene.”

CHECK OUT OUR EXHAUSTIVE LIST RANKING THE BEST LIVE ALBUMS BY SWANS

Further evidence comes in the form of a 1987 Sonic Youth interview after their “Ramones Set” at Fitzgerald’s on 20 September in Houston, Texas. In it, a back-and-forth plays out between Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and one of the interviewers, Sicko (Austin Caustic). The band appears to cautiously half confirm it, while Sicko suggests he has photos to prove it:

THURSTON: Supposedly she heard it, and said it’s OK, she just won’t tell her management. And she’s like, she used to live in New York, she went out with a friend of ours for a while, and I won’t tell you who, because you know who it is. And she was in this band called “Spinal…”, this weird Gang-of-Four-ish new wave band, with these kids who were in Deep Six, Circus Mort, who turned into the Swans. I mean, there’s a weird connection there; so she is actually part of the Swans thing.

SICKO: Madonna is part of the whole Swans trip? This has the makings of a real underground Weekly World News story. . .

THURSTON: Weekly Weird News.

SICKO: A real news flash: Madonna went out with Michael Gira, we have pictures.

THURSTON: Why Michael Gira?

SICKO: Well, I don’t know, you said she was hanging out with the Swans, I mean…

THURSTON: Well, you can’t say Michael Gira, ’cause he’d be offended. Michael Gira would be very offended.

KIM: Yeah, he’s a very private person.

WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED WHEN SWANS MET NEUROSIS? WE GOT YOU COVERED.

Thurston would subsequently give up confirmation of their dating unprompted and nestled within an anecdote about Madonna in Spin Magazine October, 2004 (page 91). The interview was undertaken by Jon Dolan at the Massachusetts home of Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Coco Gordon-Moore. Evidently, however guarded Thurston may have previously been on the topic, this was no longer the case in the comfort of his own home:

Interviewer: It’s funny she comes up, because in the ’80s Sonic Youth were a punk band that wrote songs about celebrities and celebrity culture like “Madonna, Sean and Me.”

Thurston: There was that whole Danceteria scene, this (New York) nightclub that catered to everybody, going back to the older Warhol crowd. There were three floors. Everybody would gallivant on the second floor, the third floor was lounging, and the bands would play on the first floor. I remember playing with Mission of Burma and there’d be like 30 or 40 people in the room, but like 300 people on the floor above, dancing. That’s where Madonna was. I remember meeting her. Then she would play, and it was like, “Get the fuck out of here.” Because it was disco. There was a whole culture of that I didn’t care for. We wanted to make rock noise. I remember she dated Michael Gira from the Swans for a couple weeks. He was like, “I’m dating this girl who’s so beautiful,” and he was right, she was a fox. We were like, “Well, okay, good for you, congratulations.”

The book Sacrifice And Transcendence by Nick Soulsby documented the entire history of Swans up until the point of 2018. And in that book, there is a fleeting mention of Michael Gira and Madonna’s relationship from Jonathan Tessler, percussionist for Swans in 1982:

“Mike’s apartment had been a Spanish Iglesias, which the local Puerto Rican or Dominican immigrants used for Sunday services and Bible meetings… When Mike took it over it was stripped of furniture – the only things left were lighting, power sockets, then all four walls were covered in shipping blankets and large old commercial egg cartons for soundproofing… When he was dating Madonna I remember the two of them, for at least a couple of weeks, living in that part of the space – there was a bedroom alcove made by the addition of a hanging curtain.”

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