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Did you plan to change rock music for ever? Were you envisaging a decades-long career, or was it all a bit more haphazard? Nepthsolem
When Sonic Youth first started, there had been such a high bar set for music that achieved something that people hadn’t done before, it was difficult to know how to add to that. There was the Velvet Underground, who cast a huge shadow, and then all the no wave bands, and when you’re faced with all that coolness, and you feel like you don’t belong, how do you make something happen? You have to focus on the thrill of making something that is like nothing that existed before. It sounds pretentious to say, “We wanted to do something new”, but that was it, and then you have to see what happens. And that’s still my approach. Honestly, I had no intention of doing solo records – I’d been playing in an improv-based project with Bill Nace, Body/Head, but that was all. And it was this producer in LA, Justin Raisen, he kept bugging me to make a solo record. There was no plan; in the end, again, I was like, let’s see what happens.
Your memoir, Girl in a Band, is one of my favourites. It reads almost like a novel. Have you ever considered writing a novel? timwthornton
I’ve thought about it. I consider myself more as a visual artist who writes, rather than a writer. I won’t say I won’t ever try to write a novel, but writing is always a challenge, just the getting started part, and I’m such a procrastinator. But once I get into it, I really, really enjoy it. It’s the thinking I love. A lot of times I actually don’t know what I think about something until I start writing about it.
What can you tell us about your role in The Chronology of Water? catymurray
The movie is based on the memoir by the avant garde writer Lidia Yuknavitch, and I played a character that was very, very, very loosely based on the photographer Nan Goldin. I like [screenwriter/director] Kristen Stewart a lot, and it was interesting to see just how much she knew what she wanted. She was very articulate as a director. I do like acting. I like things that are psychological, and that also involve moving around in space.
What quality or qualities do you put your success down to? eamonmcc
Oh God … I guess, perseverance? But also going after the things that interest me. My approach towards achieving anything has always been intuitive. I’ve also had a lot of self-doubt; I feel like everything has been kind of a struggle. With Sonic Youth, it was such a gradual evolution towards gaining an audience, and it really involved a lot of perseverance. And we were fortunate – that achievement, and the experience of those years, has opened up lots of opportunities for me.
As a teenager, I discovered so much visual art through Sonic Youth record covers. What exhibitions or artists generally have spoken to you recently? laurasnapes
I saw the Sol LeWitt wall painting exhibition at the small gallery Okey Dokey, in LA. A lot of LeWitt’s wall pieces are instructional: like, you start in the middle of the wall and make an uneven line, and that first line is black, and then you go towards the bottom and the top, alternating the colours, following this wiggly line. I think it took the people behind it four days to install it; they do these pieces all around the world. This one was mainly in primary colours, and it was pretty amazing!
What was Jean-Michel Basquiat like? PunCrock
I used to work at a photocopy shop in Little Italy run by this guy Todd, who was very welcoming to artists – he’d let them manipulate their work or whatever they wanted to do on the machines. Everyone would go to Todd’s. Jim Jarmusch would be there, copying his scripts – his girlfriend, Sara Driver, worked there with me. Basquiat would come in often – we actually sold his record by his band with Vincent Gallo, Gray. Stupidly, because they were always sat there on the counter, I never bought one. But I Xeroxed some things for him that he put in his paintings. He was very quiet; I never really got to know him. There were so many talented, interesting people in New York at that time; he was just another person I was intimidated by [laughs].
Do you ever look back and reflect on your career and the influence you’ve had on people? Lamstonite
No. That would make me self-conscious. And for me, the main goal of everything is not to become self-conscious.
Apparently, “in the style of Sonic Youth” is a popular prompt on AI music generation platforms. How do you feel about that? AbrahamicGod
I would be curious what it sounded like. People are very seduced by technology – it’s cool, it’s sexy. Part of the appeal of AI is that it isn’t human at all: it’s clean, it has no sense of death about it, it has no sense of human frailty. It’s definitely something I’m kind of fearful of.
Was punk for you more about sound, aesthetics or the permission to think differently? Pistol76
It was the anti-corporate sensibility that was important to me, really, rather than the three-chord rock. I was drawn in by no wave music, which was much more nihilistic: bands like DNA, Mars, Theoretical Girls and Lydia Lunch. They felt more free. But there were certainly bands from the punk era I admired, like the Raincoats and the Slits. There were a lot of women playing music in punk and, in England especially, gender rules didn’t seem to matter so much.
What was the reaction to your famous T-shirt, “Girls invented punk rock, not England”? Bridie Boy
That was a T-shirt somebody made from something I said in an interview. They threw it on stage and I started wearing it. It’s funny. It was really just born out of this discussion over who invented punk rock, England or America. I felt like women had the most to rebel against, that they were more outsiders.
What or who was, is and will be the Koolest thing? djshuggg
[New York mayor Zohran] Mamdani? Fingers crossed. I wrote Kool Thing about meeting LL Cool J after I interviewed him for Spin in the 80s. Radio is one of my favourite records; I liked how minimal it was. What was he like? He was just a dude. I was curious, when he made those early records with Rick Rubin, how much Rick influenced the rock music he sampled. So I asked LL what rock music he liked, and he said, “Bon Jovi” [laughs]. I also stood out front of [New York music club] CBGBs and did a survey, just casually asking all these young white kids what they thought of LL Cool J’s new record. A lot of them didn’t even know who he was. I guess that proves how much of a bubble the punk scene was.
Did you ever establish the exact dimensions of hell? walmai
No. But I think we’re learning about them right now.
Are you shy? maharesa
Yeah, I’m a shy sort of person. A lot of performers are actually shy; there’s something about interfacing with the technology of being on stage, hearing your voice through a microphone, that is kind of transcendent and makes you feel like you’re not yourself, in a certain way. Is it a means of overcoming my shyness? I guess so. When I’m on stage, no one can bother me, I can just enjoy myself. I feel invincible on stage sometimes. Sometimes, I feel incredibly vulnerable. I have as much of a desire to please as to fuck with people’s expectations, and that’s what makes performing in a rock’n’roll context interesting for me.
Do you think that the male ego is even more fragile now in the music business, or have things changed for the better? CaptainLib
I think the male ego is even more fragile than it ever was. I read these articles like “I’m embarrassed to have a boyfriend”, and I think, yeah, men are in trouble. It’s great that there are more women in music now. The point of having more women, in any field, is that it gets rid of the cliches about who women are.
What do you do to keep positive in such a turbulent world? revelstoke
Making art is always a good antidote – it makes you feel like you have some control over something, and that can be positive. I also watch lots of movies and bad TV, like The Pitt, and I watched that new show, Vladimir.
What’s on your backstage rider these days that wasn’t 30 years ago? Kolkio666
Chicken from Whole Foods – someone in the band was on a particular diet, so we had to make sure there was always some protein, but we all ended up enjoying it. In the early days, playing somewhere like CBGB, there were no riders; I don’t think there was even a dressing room. Back then, bands loved to go to Europe, because the riders were so much better. The people who ran European venues, they made you feel like a human [laughs].
Regrets. Have you had a few? Or then again, too few to mention? Grayce
Maybe too many to mention [laughs]. Regrets, aren’t they just a kind of nostalgia? When I look back, I wish I’d had more self-confidence when I first moved to New York. I could have pursued art more vigorously, and not started playing in a band.
