Back in the day, Sonic Youth, couldn’t buy a good review. In 1982, “Aquarian Weekly” writer Sukey Pett concluded: “There is no way in hell I can recommend this band, or even tolerate being in the same room with them. “Sonic Youth is/are dentist drill drone
music.” In his new book, “Sonic Life: A Memoir” (Doubleday), the band’s co-founder Thurston Moore tells of his early days and how the band went from being widely maligned to one of the late 20th century’s most influential acts. Born in Coral Gables,
Florida, and raised in Bethel Connecticut, it was inevitable Thurston Moore would form an experimental band. At age 10, he attended a guitar lesson. “The teacher showed us how to play ‘Kumbaya,’” he writes. “I quickly realized I would not be returning.” Instead, he stole his brother’s Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. But when he tired of Moore snapping the strings, he gave Moore his own instrument, which had “fallen off a truck.” No matter. “I wasn’t too bothered with its origins,” he writes. “I had just turned 16 years old and now had my first real noise machine.” Soon after, Moore discovered The Stooges, getting his hair cut like
Singer Iggy Pop, taking their album Raw Power to the hairstylist as a template. “An hour later I walked out with an embarrassing feathered shag, like the kind John Travolta had in Saturday Night Fever a few years later,” he writes. From the
New York Dolls to David Bowie, Moore was attracted to the “otherness, if not the otherworldliness” of left-field artists. “My father became concerned why his son had so many images of these prettified men — their pouty lips, shirts off, emblazoned about his bedroom walls.” After studying journalism at Western Connecticut State, Moore moved to New York, hitting clubs like CBGB and catching acts like the Ramones. His own bands came and went. There was the punky Even Worse, and The Coachmen, where, at their final gig, he met his future wife and Sonic Youth cofounder, Kim Gordon. They formed their band in 1981 and the duo married three years later. Over the decades, Sonic Youth released 15 studio albums and influenced countless bands, from Nirvana to The Strokes. Moore and Gordon split, both personally and artistically in 2011, shocking fans . But their legacy remains intact. “I knew we had made our mark when they called us the ‘grandparents of grunge’,” Moore writes. In other words, Sukey Pett was wrong.