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ROCK FOR ART’S SAKE
Interview with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth
Still thumping, humping and crunching out their trademark subterranean noise attack with reckless fervor, Sonic Youth have come, seen and conquered the dreaded major label enemy without scratching their already splintering guitars. With a dry sense of humor peeking through grinding chords and hypnotically eerie ambient rhythms, the mighty Youth’s sticky, supersonic Goo has blazed to the top of the PoMo charts. Did anyone say sellout? A multi-album DGC contract didn’t inflate their lifestyles; it merely widened their audience beyond the cult fringe. NY’s fab underground four – guitarist Thurston Moore, bassist Kim Gordon, guitarist Lee Renaldo and drummer Steve Shelley – don’t care enough about money to abandon their principles. They’ve remained on their own particularly twisted track, as gritty as ever. Group member Moore let HITS’ art-damaged Joe Jarrell in on his very personal feelings about sculpting ice, censorship and his new vinyl bellbottoms.
HITS: As America’s leading art-rock band, do any of you actually paint or sculpt?
Thurston Moore: I do ice sculptures on stage with my guitar. We’re actually trying to incorporate a little more art into the punk thing right now.
HITS: Where do you guys shop for your cool duds?
Thurston Moore: Anywhere and everywhere. In Cincinnati, there’s and amazing place that has this basement with all these close-out clothes from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, including several unopened boxes of furry bellbottoms.
HITS: And how many did you walk away with?
Thurston Moore: I bought some really weird, Jim Morrison style vinyl bellbottoms, something I thought I’d never wear but I bought anyway. I ended up wearing them onstage and they felt like hot plastic melting against my legs.
In the future, there’s going to be more of a crossover between artists and politicians. HITS: The “Kool Thing” video has a very Andy Warhol Factory feel. Did any of you ever get to meet Warhol?
Thurston Moore: Kim got a pair of boots signed by Andy once. I was selling some magazines and comic books on the street once many years ago, to make some chump change, and he came by and took my picture. It’s probably in one of a million shoeboxes in a storage space somewhere now.
HITS: Who taught you how to tune your guitar?
Thurston Moore: I didn’t have a sense of the history of alternate guitar tuning when I was playing with Glen Branca. I didn’t know that much about electric guitars to begin with; I just used to bash around on them. Later, I found out the Velvet Underground used various tunings and even The Rolling Stones were using odd blues tunings. Glenn explored the idea that volume can totally change a composition, with vast electric guitars creating all these hyper-overtones in a kind of magical way.
HITS: What do you think is the most pressing problem in the U.S.A. today?
Thurston Moore: The media and the way it deals with the censorship issue. The whole thing is based on what? Dirty words and dirty pictures. To make such a huge deal out of that in light of what’s really heavy in America, that’s the problem.
We’re trying to incorporate a little more art into the punk thing right now.
HITS: Do you consider yourselves a political band?
Thurston Moore: We’re just sort of white, middle-class liberal youth. I don’t think we’re that politically sophisticated, which you have to be to get involved in politics..It’s interesting to see people like Sting and Michael Stipe taking political stands just because they have such incredibly high profiles now, with the media and MTV. It seems like, in the future, there’s going to be much more of a crossover between artists and politicians.
HITS: If Sonic Youth had political power, what would you do with it?
Thurston Moore: We’d put video cameras in all the jails and have the “Jail Channel” on TV.
HITS: What kind of music do you listen to while on tour?
Thurston Moore: Lee favors Dylan, Steve brings Tom Waits, Kim likes The Carpenters and The Cows and I listen to Ornette Coleman and Babes in Toyland.
HITS: Now that Sonic Youth has achieved major label status, what product would you like to endorse?
Thurston Moore: Um, Bayer Aspirin. Actually I’d like to be one of those racecar drivers who wear the suits with the patches all over them.
If they don’t let us have [creative control], we’ll leave.
HITS: I understand there was a controversy over Raymond Pettibon’s album sleeve.
Thurston Moore: Not really. When we first did that cover, the first thing that was said was that it looked like a bootleg cover, and it’s not really the kind of cover the label likes to have. But that was one of the reasons we liked it. Then they had some trouble with the text because it said, “We killed our parents and hit the road.” They didn’t like the word “kill” on the cover because they thought it might limit a lot of the sales potential as far as putting it in Woolworth’s in Cincinnati. So we said, “Too bad.” It wasn’t our ambition to please everybody anyway.
HITS: So you were able to retain creative control…
Thurston Moore: Oh yeah, of course. I mean we always have and we always will. If they don’t let us have [creative control], we’ll leave.
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