Spike Magazine

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Interview [published June 2000]
Sonic Youth: Sonic Spice
Andrew McCutchen meets Sonic Youth mainman and guitar torturer
extraordinaire Thurston Moore
“I moved to New York to fuck Patti Smith” writes
Thurston Moore, going back, going way back to an
epoch of rock history when Sid Vicious was at his
most vicious, prowling the Village’s streets after
Nancy’s brutal murder, when Lydia Lunch was just
a “girl on the corner with a nose ring”, and when
Kim Gordon was a pretty blond he hadn’t met yet.
These, and other tasty details of the late 70s New York
scene, are exposed by Moore in an endearingly naff
little short story found on the internet titled ‘On the
Loose’, which ends (gag) with the words; “…and that
was when I first kissed Kim”.
Adolescent prose aside, this brief fusion of flesh
meant more than just two badly dressed kids getting it
on in a seedy loft apartment. It meant that Moore would
soon tattoo his upper left arm with the prophetic words,
‘Sonic Life’, and the band we all know, and mostly
love would soon follow. Neither Moore (thank god)
nor I, however, have a Sonic Youth history lesson on
the cards today, and we move quickly over the details
to greener pastures.
In short, Moore summarises for the record, they
BUY Sonic Youth music online from and
wrote a bunch of albums, most good, signed to a major,
became a ‘brand name’, were slated as much as
celebrated, but they survived, and they can still shake
it, as demonstrated by their latest album NYC Ghosts
And Flowers. And they’re really, really nice. Even
Moore, who could understandably have an ill tempered
stoat down his trousers about the way he’s been written
up over the years, (NME described his Root tribute
album as “…a snowman celebrating warm weather by
commissioning a statue of himself made out of more
snow”. Ouch!) is expectant of demeanour rather than
defensive, gentle of temperament, rather than bitter and
quietly erudite in a non-threatening, non-Radiohead
kind of way. Would a true beret owning, deconstructarock
svengali admit to loving the Spice Girls? You’ll
find out. But let’s first take it back to the genesis.
On a fundamental level, I challenge Moore, little has
changed in Sonic Youth land over the last 20 years. He
nods, and smiles.
You still write songs about Patti Smith; “Yep”.
(Check out the dissonant-licious ‘Patti Smith Math
Scratch’ on Moore’s last solo album Psychic Hearts.)
486
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