Speaker 1: Pushkin. At seventy years old, Kim Gordon, the former bassist
Speaker 1: and founding member of Sonic Youth, is somehow making the
Speaker 1: most abrasive music of her career right now. This month,
Speaker 1: she dropped her second solo album, called The Collective, with
Speaker 1: producer Justin Raisin, who's previously worked with artists like Drake
Speaker 1: Loyati and Charlie XCX. Kim's spoken word like vocals on
Speaker 1: The Collective are the perfect accompaniment to Justin's distorted trap
Speaker 1: style beats, especially on her first single, bye Bye, which
Speaker 1: was originally intended for rapper Playboy Carti Cotish. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: Lee Rose talks to Kim Gordon about her latest solo album,
Speaker 1: as well as her memoir Girl in a Band, that
Speaker 1: detailed her very public split with ex husband Thurston Moore.
Speaker 1: Kim also delves into why she always felt like an
Speaker 1: outsider in New York City's thriving downtown art scene, and
Speaker 1: recalls Sonic Youth's story tour in the early nineties. Opening
Speaker 1: up for Neil Young. This is broken record liner notes
Speaker 1: for the Digital Age. I'm Justin Mitchman. Here's Leah Rose's
Speaker 1: conversation with Kim Gordon I saw.
Speaker 2: That you're getting ready to play some shows to support
Speaker 2: the new album. How are you going to translate the
Speaker 2: album or the songs or the new music to the stage.
Speaker 2: What are you guys thinking?
Speaker 3: Well, this is so it'll be the same group of
Speaker 3: girls that I toured the last record with, but the
Speaker 3: drummer will have probably have some kind of hybrid kit,
Speaker 3: so she'll be uh what she'll be doing, She'll be playing,
Speaker 3: like you know, some of the beats and then sampling stuff.
Speaker 3: I guess, uh huh. Same with a guitar player and
Speaker 3: the bass player. They're all very technologically savvy. I'm kind
Speaker 3: of the only one who has sent and then there'll
Speaker 3: be some things on backing tracks that we just can't reproduce.
Speaker 2: And for the actual for the recording of the songs,
Speaker 2: were you playing with a live band or was it
Speaker 2: mostly okay, it's mostly programmed stuff.
Speaker 3: It was it was basically me and Justin Raisin. He
Speaker 3: was my collaborator. Like I said, I wanted to have
Speaker 3: more beats on this record, and he would basically send
Speaker 3: me beats. Like I talked about what sort of you know,
Speaker 3: hip hop I liked, and I'm sort of inspired by
Speaker 3: rhythm because I'm not a very melodic singer in my
Speaker 3: range as kind of limits it, let's just say. Anyway,
Speaker 3: So he would make up beats with some sounds and
Speaker 3: send it to me, and I would decide what I
Speaker 3: thought I could work on, and then I would go
Speaker 3: in and make up guitar parts in the studio and
Speaker 3: lay down some vocals, and usually start out with some
Speaker 3: of the songs I had complete lyrics, but I still
Speaker 3: didn't know how I was going to place them, you know,
Speaker 3: And then other songs I would have, you know, half lyrics,
Speaker 3: and then I would sort of start improvising or other
Speaker 3: things would come out around my mouth. Where'd that come from? I?
Speaker 3: And so then it became like for him like sort
Speaker 3: of a shaping editing kind of process. And then you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes he would sample my guitars, put it back in,
Speaker 3: and and then I would go back and then usually
Speaker 3: add more guitar vocals.
Speaker 2: So the guitar is you playing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, although there might be some things he played guitar on,
Speaker 3: but mostly it's me. And then I had Sarah come
Speaker 3: in in the end and add more dense and noise stuff.
Speaker 2: What were the reference the hip hop reference tracks that
Speaker 2: you gave him.
Speaker 3: You know, like schooly D, how Gucci time, oh, old school?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, mostly like yeah, eighties or nineties. Okay, I
Speaker 3: didn't really give him that many references. But and then
Speaker 3: for the last record we talked about, you know, I'd
Speaker 3: played them different things, like even esg or there was
Speaker 3: this single I really liked by this banda Jellies, just
Speaker 3: like a super minimal kind of fun song. I'm like
Speaker 3: eighty two or eighty three.
Speaker 2: That's cool. I thought some of I mean, some of
Speaker 2: the music sounds like kind of like blown out dub
Speaker 2: and trap beats. So I thought maybe you were referencing
Speaker 2: more more recent stuff.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, there is some yeah, reference to recent stuff,
Speaker 3: but it's kind of like, well, I liked the last record.
Speaker 3: I really liked that song Peprika Pony, which is a
Speaker 3: trap speed so like. But yeah, no, I know that
Speaker 3: he makes beats for other people, and so I knew that, yeah,
Speaker 3: that would involve other things, but it wasn't like I
Speaker 3: specifically pointed out some you know, contemporary person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I've been reading some of the things that
Speaker 2: are being written about what's been released so far, and
Speaker 2: people are like, you know, like you're dropping bangers like
Speaker 2: trap bangers, and it's just it's so great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean yeah, Justin gets a kick out of that,
Speaker 3: Like he couldn't wait for like his hip Hop World
Speaker 3: or whatever to hear a record or something.
Speaker 2: How did you two meet? How did you start working together?
Speaker 3: Super accidentally actually met him through his brother, uh Jeremiah,
Speaker 3: who uh I think curates beats for Drake or something.
Speaker 3: People send him beats. It was actually just in a
Speaker 3: restaurant and I was with a friend and he was
Speaker 3: with this girl, and our tables were so close together,
Speaker 3: and they had kind of a friend vibe. But then
Speaker 3: sudden they started talking about their sex life together, and
Speaker 3: our tables were so close that we just all turned
Speaker 3: to look at each other and started laughing. So we
Speaker 3: just started talking and and he was kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 3: my brother's a producer and he did the Discover Our
Speaker 3: record and that was kind of a cool record. But
Speaker 3: I when usually people say the word producer, my head
Speaker 3: kind of just turns off. I don't know, necessarily, It's
Speaker 3: not the way I've ever worked. So but then yeah,
Speaker 3: Justin started dming me and he was working on a
Speaker 3: project with Lawrence Rothman and they were having different people
Speaker 3: come in and do vocals along with Lawrence. And I
Speaker 3: wasn't actually living in La then, I was saying in
Speaker 3: an airbnb and yeah, I thought it was sort of
Speaker 3: a character, but I he kept sending me sup but
Speaker 3: eventually he sent me something that okay, I could do
Speaker 3: something on this, and so I went over and he
Speaker 3: has this home studio in his garage. It's a very
Speaker 3: big garage, LA style, and I did some vocals and
Speaker 3: he basically took what was left over and put a
Speaker 3: very trashy drum track to it and sent it to me,
Speaker 3: and I was really surprised. It was just like, oh,
Speaker 3: he really knows my sensibility. And so I went back
Speaker 3: and I did. He had Stella from Warpaint come in
Speaker 3: and put drums over it, and I put some guitar
Speaker 3: on it and vocals and that became murdered out. And
Speaker 3: then it wasn't until like six months later that I
Speaker 3: think we actually started working on a record.
Speaker 2: Sounds fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was kind of I really didn't have any
Speaker 3: desire to do a solo record. You know. I played
Speaker 3: with the Bill Mace. We have a experimental guitar duo
Speaker 3: improv group and Body head and so and I have
Speaker 3: you know, I make visual arts. So I wasn't really
Speaker 3: thinking about launching a solo career in that sense.
Speaker 2: Does Bill like this solo stuff that you're doing.
Speaker 3: He's very supportive, you know, he says he does, but
Speaker 3: I don't know what he really thinks.
Speaker 2: The thing that struck me about it as a lot
Speaker 2: of the people that we talk to as people get older,
Speaker 2: things start to get quieter, their music starts to slow down,
Speaker 2: and this is the opposite of that. It's so noisy
Speaker 2: in the best way. Is that something that you were
Speaker 2: intending to do from the beginning. Was that part of
Speaker 2: the original concept?
Speaker 3: No, I didn't really think about it, actually, not at all.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Like, it wasn't really until it was
Speaker 3: done that I thought, oh god, it's really a loud record.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm I'm kind of a slow developer. I'm
Speaker 3: just not making a really loud record. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I guess I kind of see the record as an
Speaker 3: intervention into the culture or what does that mean? Like,
Speaker 3: because it's so different and so kind of abrasive in
Speaker 3: some way and not an easy listening kind of record.
Speaker 3: It has this other thing about it and I think
Speaker 3: people seem to be more and more ready for things
Speaker 3: that aren't conventional. And I don't know, so I think
Speaker 3: it's just meant to be a little bit of a
Speaker 3: disruption into what is business as usual.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: But it didn't really like I didn't. You know, this
Speaker 3: is all like I'm saying this, but it's kind of
Speaker 3: unconsciously done.
Speaker 2: Do you listen to loud music normally?
Speaker 3: Uh? Not normally actually, you know, if I'm just around
Speaker 3: my house now, like I'll listen to like even John Fahi,
Speaker 3: you know, or like Brazilian music or Bardo Pond, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of Actually I love Barti Pond, Like I love
Speaker 3: that there's something really glorious and beautiful about their drone.
Speaker 3: It's very soothing to me, even though it's kind of loud.
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is a connection between earlier
Speaker 2: music you've made with Sonic Youth, but seems like you're
Speaker 2: sort of comfortable with the drone.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you see any sort of connective tissue between the
Speaker 2: music you were making with Sonic Youth and the new
Speaker 2: solo music.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, in some ways, like if the
Speaker 3: songs that I sang on were the ones that were
Speaker 3: kind of more abstract slabs of music and you know,
Speaker 3: songs that we'd kind of make up all together sitting
Speaker 3: around as opposed to ones Often Thurston would come in
Speaker 3: with a melody and he would know what he wanted
Speaker 3: to sing, and then we'd find our parts to it
Speaker 3: and still arrange it all together. But other songs it
Speaker 3: was kind of a challenge like how am I gonna
Speaker 3: sing on this? And in a way like being presented
Speaker 3: with like beats and pieces of music would sound and beats,
Speaker 3: it wasn't dissimilar. You know, it's kind of okay, what
Speaker 3: can I do with this? And you know, if I
Speaker 3: didn't feel like I could do something, obviously it wouldn't
Speaker 3: do it. But you know, some things would immediately like
Speaker 3: move me. And that's also the way it was with
Speaker 3: in Sonic, you like, oh yeah, I could definitely do
Speaker 3: something you know, like massage history. I knew I could
Speaker 3: do something like that. It's funny. It just occurred to
Speaker 3: me the other day that it's kind of not dissimilar
Speaker 3: in that way.
Speaker 1: M hm.
Speaker 3: And then we did do some things that were like
Speaker 3: you know, cool thing or nature scene that were kind
Speaker 3: of had moments of what reference to hip hop.
Speaker 2: Or Yeah, I was surprised to see. I don't remember
Speaker 2: where it was from, but I read an interview with
Speaker 2: you where you were saying for cool Thing that llll
Speaker 2: cool Jay's going back to Cali was one of your
Speaker 2: favorite music videos of all time. I thought that was
Speaker 2: super cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was definitely an inspiration, and the song
Speaker 3: kind of came about, you know. I was I was
Speaker 3: supposed to review l A Cool Day's new record, and
Speaker 3: I interviewed him and I asked, I was always curious
Speaker 3: how working with Rick Rubin was and what his knowledge
Speaker 3: of rock was or you know, or wasn't all Rick,
Speaker 3: you know, who brought what? And because I really liked Radio.
Speaker 3: I really liked that record a lot, and I was
Speaker 3: disappointed to learn that it was he was really into
Speaker 3: bon Jovi really and in a way it makes sense,
Speaker 3: like h but again, like I think it's because Rick
Speaker 3: probably you know, liked the big, chunky power chords of
Speaker 3: bon Jovi. That was kind of you know, like that
Speaker 3: went with the space and the beats he was doing,
Speaker 3: and yeah, in some of the music and anyway, so
Speaker 3: that's where it was part of the inspiration for the lyrics.
Speaker 3: You know, like being disappointed in some many Well, you're
Speaker 3: not into dissident guitars. And I always thought, actually hip
Speaker 3: hop would be so much it'd be cooler if they
Speaker 3: kind of were into more dissonet, kind of like their
Speaker 3: idea of rock. It's kind of corny in some respects.
Speaker 3: So anyway, So I think Justin someone who appreciates that.
Speaker 3: I never said that to him, but you know, he
Speaker 3: appreciates that this is going to make a trap speek
Speaker 3: cent different, you know, like it.
Speaker 2: Reminds me of have you heard Jesus Kanye's Jesus? I
Speaker 2: wonder if Justin's a fan of that album, but it's
Speaker 2: very like it feels like industrial music inspired.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I heard him do it live and a horrible
Speaker 3: at the met at this the Met Ball, and it
Speaker 3: was the acoustics are terrible. I thought it was terrible,
Speaker 3: but I didn't honestly didn't sit down and listen to
Speaker 3: it the whole thing. But I I'm sure he was
Speaker 3: a fan of it. I'm sure he wasn't. Yeah, hell,
Speaker 3: he calls me Kanye sometimes so bad.
Speaker 2: And now that you're in the full interview cycle promoting
Speaker 2: the new album, how do you feel about doing interviews.
Speaker 2: I know, it's like a strange thing to ask you
Speaker 2: in an interview, but.
Speaker 3: That's a good question.
Speaker 2: You've been interviewed so many times for so many years, Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think I've done over fifty interviews
Speaker 3: for this record so far.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And then I did a couple of interviews yesterday and
Speaker 3: one was with someone an Think and Poland, and he's
Speaker 3: quoting my interviews I've already done for this record, really,
Speaker 3: And actually it was fine because I could clarify a
Speaker 3: couple of things that were, you know, taken out of
Speaker 3: context or whatever. But at the same time, I thought
Speaker 3: it was kind of strange because I've been I think
Speaker 3: I started doing interviews last fall when I was in Europe.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's a necessary evil. Sometimes I like it,
Speaker 3: you know, like it depends on the interviewer really, and
Speaker 3: it's made me think so much about the record, and
Speaker 3: I don't like that. Like I can give explanations for
Speaker 3: most of the songs, but I don't feel like it's
Speaker 3: always a good idea. I think it's nice when people
Speaker 3: come to their own conclusions sometimes or like project what
Speaker 3: they want or but for some things like the song
Speaker 3: I mean, man it's kind of useful to explain it.
Speaker 2: Does it seem like people are missing the mark with
Speaker 2: the questions they're asking you about the.
Speaker 3: Album sometimes, I mean, the worst question I've been asked
Speaker 3: is why did you make another record? And like I
Speaker 3: think they want me to say because of the pandemic
Speaker 3: or some Yeah, I don't know, Like I don't have
Speaker 3: a I don't have a good answer. I was just like,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I was bored. I don't know what
Speaker 3: else to do. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's
Speaker 3: it's a difficult question to answer.
Speaker 2: It seems miraculous, like for some I don't make music,
Speaker 2: and it seems like to create something out of nothing
Speaker 2: just seems yeah, incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is like, uh, yeah, you make you know,
Speaker 3: you you make something in a space I wasn't there before,
Speaker 3: and that's it's like you made a roomers.
Speaker 1: You know, we're gonna take a quick break and then
Speaker 1: come back with more from Kim Gordon and Li Ros.
Speaker 1: Here's Kim Gordon with Lea Rose.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so back to the dissonance Somewhere. I heard
Speaker 2: you say that you felt like extreme noise and dissonance
Speaker 2: can be really cleansing. Yeah, do you remember when that
Speaker 2: first struck you.
Speaker 3: Probably driving around uh in Western mass in this you know,
Speaker 3: in my car and this everything covered in snow and
Speaker 3: just kind of yeah, it's not sentimental, it's not emotional,
Speaker 3: it's not I don't know, and it's just like looking
Speaker 3: at suburbia, you know, it's just kind of like, I
Speaker 3: just want something to cut through this. This is kind
Speaker 3: of depressing. I was just like that idea. I could
Speaker 3: be driving around this super bin l like, I mean,
Speaker 3: some of a beautiful landscape, but then some of the
Speaker 3: suburban parts, you know, depressing. And how kind of funny
Speaker 3: you know about music that you can just have it
Speaker 3: in your head and be it can contrast so much
Speaker 3: with what's going on around you, and it creates its
Speaker 3: own Yeah it's sounds stupid, but it creates its own architecture, environment,
Speaker 3: space and transports you.
Speaker 2: So you said that before you started making the album,
Speaker 2: you want to do something that was more beat driven.
Speaker 2: Do you remember why you wanted to do that.
Speaker 3: Because I feel like, yeah, I'm inspired by rhythm I
Speaker 3: really like And when I first started playing with these
Speaker 3: two girls, when I first started playing guitar back in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty or something. It was for this artist, Dan
Speaker 3: Graham's art performance. It's called mirror performance audience, where he'd
Speaker 3: have a mirror standing behind a huge mirror, like a
Speaker 3: giant wall mirror, and he would just stand there and
Speaker 3: describe the audience their gestures, they're shifting in their seats,
Speaker 3: and then he would turn around and describe himself in
Speaker 3: the mirror, harving the audience. It was all very self conscious,
Speaker 3: and he wanted to do the piece with an all
Speaker 3: girl band because he was writing articles about the slits
Speaker 3: and feminism and rock and all this stuff. So he
Speaker 3: introduced me to this school Miranda sat and Miranda and
Speaker 3: we started playing, and then this other musician, Christine Han,
Speaker 3: joined us. But it was my idea was like a
Speaker 3: drum machine with someone taught me how to play like
Speaker 3: half jazz chorts, just like pretting the bottom three strings,
Speaker 3: so kind of doing that and then getting lyrics from
Speaker 3: like women's magazines ads for different colored lipstick. And there
Speaker 3: was like a talking song that we did that is
Speaker 3: taken from kind of this first person text on the
Speaker 3: back of Cosmopolitan's, like I'm a Cosmopolitan girl and I
Speaker 3: describing the whole thing anyway, So that was a song.
Speaker 3: So I kind of like from the very beginning I
Speaker 3: sort of did that.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Was that around the same time you were writing
Speaker 2: for you started writing for magazines in New York. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you were writing about male bonding and what happens
Speaker 2: between men on stage in bands. Was that the actual
Speaker 2: impetus of you joining what became Sonic Youth.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, Dan was writing these are articles about women
Speaker 3: in rock, and so to be sort of rebellious, I thought,
Speaker 3: I'm going to write about men in rock. But there
Speaker 3: was this composer Rhese Chatham who was influenced by but Lama. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he started with leam, but he applied it to electric guitar.
Speaker 3: So he and he told Glen Bronca. So they were
Speaker 3: both doing kind of writing pieces of music with open etuning.
Speaker 3: So Reese had this piece called Guitar Trio. It was
Speaker 3: so what they would do is they would take a
Speaker 3: hit of anal nitrate, this stuff called locker room. It
Speaker 3: was a popular drug in the West Village among sort
Speaker 3: of a gay community. They would take a hit of
Speaker 3: that and then downstroke on the guitar wars and in
Speaker 3: this rhythm. Anyway, So the first thing I wrote was
Speaker 3: just a description of that performance. It was very short.
Speaker 3: It is called Trash, Drugs and Male Bonding. It was
Speaker 3: for this art magazine called Real Life. Yeah, and then
Speaker 3: I wrote longer pieces have been involved a group of
Speaker 3: male artists. Whatever. But in order to do my research,
Speaker 3: I read books by John Retchie because I couldn't really
Speaker 3: find any material that described that talked about male sexuality
Speaker 3: in a certain way. John Retchie books were kind of
Speaker 3: about the gay bar scene in the West Village and
Speaker 3: kind of this idea of needing distance for desire. And
Speaker 3: then yeah, but I did feel like, well, maybe I'll
Speaker 3: learn more about male bonding if I'm in the band
Speaker 3: or something. But I met Thurston through Miranda and we
Speaker 3: started playing music together.
Speaker 2: Do you think the desire to go that far was
Speaker 2: learning what it would actually be like by embedding yourself
Speaker 2: in a real band of boys. Do you think that
Speaker 2: has anything to do with your dad being a sociologist?
Speaker 3: Well? I thought maybe so in retrospect, because he did
Speaker 3: have this book on his bookshelf called Men at Work,
Speaker 3: and I used to look at it and wonder, what's
Speaker 3: that about it? And why isn't there a one that's
Speaker 3: as women in Work or something? But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I guess you know in a way that a lot
Speaker 3: of lyrics on the record are kind of stemmed from
Speaker 3: a sort of sociological kind of observe interest, and some
Speaker 3: of it is emotionally reactive.
Speaker 2: Did you actually ever learn, like, did you ever get
Speaker 2: the knowledge that you were seeking in the beginning, like
Speaker 2: what happens between men on stage in bands? Did you
Speaker 2: have any big takeaways from being in the band for
Speaker 2: so long?
Speaker 3: Not really actually, I mean no, nothing that surprised me.
Speaker 3: But there's a difference between playing bass and electric guitar,
Speaker 3: I think, and maybe it has to do with this
Speaker 3: sound you get from electric guitar, but it definitely feels
Speaker 3: like this more of a sense of power, and you know,
Speaker 3: just electricity is kind of an interesting thing to use
Speaker 3: that way, and you can subvert it with your body
Speaker 3: and move with your body and some of those heroic
Speaker 3: gestures windmills and things like that. It become staples of
Speaker 3: you know, arena rock or just like a kind of
Speaker 3: rock or like they do something to the sound in
Speaker 3: a way, you know. Yeah, But I think it also
Speaker 3: is kind of has to do with people playing in
Speaker 3: bigger and bigger places and then make so the gestures
Speaker 3: become bigger, more perform more performative or something.
Speaker 2: But now it sounds like you play with mostly women.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just kind of happened that way. The first incarnation
Speaker 3: of the band was there was a male drummer. This
Speaker 3: guy's serving laws is great. And then after the pandemic,
Speaker 3: you know, people had other commitments, but it's great, Like I, yeah,
Speaker 3: I have so much fun playing with them.
Speaker 2: It sounds like you became more aware of being a
Speaker 2: girl in the band after Sonic Youth was signed to Geffen.
Speaker 2: In your book, you talked about how you would intentionally
Speaker 2: center yourself on stage.
Speaker 3: I don't really intentionally center myself on stage. That's just
Speaker 3: the way there's someone of that. Oh yeah, no, I
Speaker 3: mean there's nothing to do. I think it has to
Speaker 3: do with separating the two guitars, you know, and having
Speaker 3: the bass in the middle next to the drums. It's
Speaker 3: really what it. I just was when I think in
Speaker 3: my book I was describing being in the center of
Speaker 3: the stage or something. Believe me, it's not what I
Speaker 3: would have first shows. Actually, when we first started going
Speaker 3: to England, you know, in eighty four, maybe that's when
Speaker 3: people started asking was it like being a girl a band,
Speaker 3: and why don't you have like a persona you know, like,
Speaker 3: why aren't you all dressed up like Susie Sue or
Speaker 3: Lady A Lane or somebody. That's when I first started
Speaker 3: becoming for self conscious about it. I guess, yeah. But
Speaker 3: then when we signed to GET and I realized, oh,
Speaker 3: I have this platform. Now that's a little bigger. It's
Speaker 3: not like we were really in the mainstream, and so
Speaker 3: I thought, I have other lots of topics I can
Speaker 3: write about as a woman or a girl, and yeah, like,
Speaker 3: so that's her swimsuit issue. Because also right after we
Speaker 3: signed TOGEP and there was this big me too moment
Speaker 3: that happened between this big A and R guy and
Speaker 3: his secretary. This was a ninety ninety or ninety one
Speaker 3: or something. Oh wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then shortly after, I guess a year or so
Speaker 2: after you were signed, you went on tour opening for
Speaker 2: Neil Young. What did that change for Sonic Youth?
Speaker 3: Ultimately, I guess that made our name a little bit
Speaker 3: more known again. You know, people kept asking us what
Speaker 3: it's like to be in the mainstream, and we really weren't.
Speaker 3: And it was quite apparent from Neil's audience that we weren't,
Speaker 3: but I think it did do something and we learned
Speaker 3: how to play on big stages. But we didn't when
Speaker 3: we toured with them. We didn't even have guitar texts,
Speaker 3: like we actually had hired these two friends of ours
Speaker 3: who played in a band who never guitar TechEd, and
Speaker 3: we never really got sound checks in the beginning either.
Speaker 3: So for a while, like every guitar Thirston would pick
Speaker 3: up would be out of tune, and then he would
Speaker 3: be frustrated and smash it a lot of times. And
Speaker 3: then Neil's guitar tech Larry, who was awesome, would like
Speaker 3: fix it. But it was it was a tough It
Speaker 3: was a tough tour.
Speaker 2: Actually, was that that the first time you played really
Speaker 2: big stadiums And.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the only show that wasn't seated was I
Speaker 3: think the cow Palace and that was great because our
Speaker 3: fans could come forward, but otherwise it'd be you know,
Speaker 3: empty seats are like a hippie give me the finker
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: After this quick break, we'll be back with the rest
Speaker 1: of Kim Gordon and Lea Rose. We're back with the
Speaker 1: rest of Lea Rose's conversation with Kim Gordon.
Speaker 2: How do you think growing up in la in the sixties,
Speaker 2: how do you think that shaped your point of view
Speaker 2: as an artist.
Speaker 3: Well, it's more like the school I went to did
Speaker 3: a lot to shape me. It was the Lab School
Speaker 3: at UCLA, and it really was a lab school, Like
Speaker 3: it was a lot of learn by doing. There was
Speaker 3: like incredible grounds, you know, like neutrad building design and
Speaker 3: a huge grass area, a huge cement concrete area with
Speaker 3: a gully that ran through the school up into these
Speaker 3: kind of maze of in pathways of brushes and bramble.
Speaker 3: And then there's like an adobe house and a stagecoach
Speaker 3: and an African hut. So when we were studying early California,
Speaker 3: we would make die fabric and make shawls and make
Speaker 3: fringe and grind corn and skin a cow hide, you know,
Speaker 3: and go to Dana Point and throw it off like
Speaker 3: the early settlers and stuff like that. And there was
Speaker 3: like a you know, art program and a music appreciation
Speaker 3: program and a eurythmics class. I loved it, like it
Speaker 3: was great. It didn't prepare me for regular school.
Speaker 2: But what was it like skinning a cow when you
Speaker 2: were were you.
Speaker 3: Like well, we didn't actually skin. We didn't skin the caw.
Speaker 3: We skinned a cow hide. They gave us this hide
Speaker 3: that we stretched out in the sun and then we Yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't participate in that so much.
Speaker 2: That sounds crazy.
Speaker 3: It was kind of gross, but uh, it was fun
Speaker 3: going to Dana point and pretending. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: pretend stuff.
Speaker 2: And you wrote in your book that you've always known,
Speaker 2: even as young as the age of five, that you
Speaker 2: were an artist.
Speaker 3: Well, I wanted to be an artist. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: I didn't really. I wasn't very verbal, but I was
Speaker 3: good with my hands, and I just didn't feel confident
Speaker 3: articulating such because my older brother he was very verbal
Speaker 3: and articulate, but he also was mean, so he would
Speaker 3: make fun of whatever I said and call me stupid.
Speaker 3: And I was afraid of making a mistake, you know.
Speaker 3: So it was mostly like verbal mistake, you know, like
Speaker 3: I didn't have a problem with I was making something,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was curious when you became a mom. After
Speaker 2: hearing about your childhood, you said that you were on
Speaker 2: your own a lot as a child. When you became
Speaker 2: a mom, what type of mom were you? Number One?
Speaker 2: Were you like an anxious mom. Were you sort of
Speaker 2: hands off? And how was your parenting style different than
Speaker 2: how you were raised.
Speaker 3: I was anxious for sure, And I read books, you know,
Speaker 3: if I got stuck with some issue or something, I
Speaker 3: would read a book. Yeah, And my mother always said
Speaker 3: that I was really independent, So that's you know why
Speaker 3: she she encouraged that. You know, Like, so I I
Speaker 3: did that, you know, I mean, would let Coco, you know,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't. I would encourage her to play on her
Speaker 3: own or you know, but I tried to to be
Speaker 3: more present and interactive with her, you know, as far
Speaker 3: as telling her how I felt, Yeah, just talking to
Speaker 3: her more.
Speaker 2: You know, you talked about in your book. You talked
Speaker 2: about when your family moved to Hong Kong when you
Speaker 2: were a young teenager, and the first day you were there,
Speaker 2: you just were sort of like standing there and said
Speaker 2: something like, how am I possibly going to survive here?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I was curious if there's ever been another time
Speaker 2: in your life where you've had a similar reaction to like,
Speaker 2: how am I going to get through this?
Speaker 3: I mean that was definitely it was just such a
Speaker 3: culture shock, you know. It was for some really being
Speaker 3: around property and just just so hot and noisy, and yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't see anything I recognized. I didn't see any
Speaker 3: popular culture. You know, it was way before globalization, and
Speaker 3: I don't know, I guess you know. When my marriage
Speaker 3: broke up, that was difficult, you know, like, am I
Speaker 3: going to get through this? Yeah, it's just overwhelming. Yeah.
Speaker 3: When I first moved to New York, that was kind
Speaker 3: of tough too, like not having a lot of money,
Speaker 3: and I think I got like some accident settlement which
Speaker 3: helped me have enough money to get an apartment. But
Speaker 3: before that, it was every two months I was subletting
Speaker 3: and moving around, and I never had a backup plan.
Speaker 3: I didn't have like I purposely never learned to type.
Speaker 3: I love that I want to be a secretary, and
Speaker 3: I was like, what an idiot I was. Yeah, somehow
Speaker 3: I just never really doubted that I would just end
Speaker 3: up okay.
Speaker 2: So you never had a point in life where you're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm ditching this and I'm just going to go, like
Speaker 2: get a nine to five Yeah.
Speaker 3: Never, I mean I tried when I lived in LA
Speaker 3: At one point I worked as a custom framer, and
Speaker 3: that was really just hard having a nine to five child,
Speaker 3: I get it. I guess sick a lot.
Speaker 2: If you're in a situation like that and you're getting
Speaker 2: sick a lot, do you look at it like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is my body telling me I'm doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: In your book, you talked about when you were first
Speaker 2: living in New York City and people, maybe it was
Speaker 2: just one person would call you a hippie and it
Speaker 2: would just like drive you crazy.
Speaker 3: Oh well that was my friend Dan. Oh No. What
Speaker 3: he did is he told the landlord, this Belgian man
Speaker 3: who he called himself a captive landlord, because he couldn't
Speaker 3: raise the rent. You know, a rent was incredibly cheap,
Speaker 3: It's like one hundred and seventy five dollars a month side.
Speaker 3: But he told him that I was a hippie and
Speaker 3: that I might at people crashing at my apartment. Why
Speaker 3: Dan said that, I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's the worst thing to say to a landlord.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He would say things, really unfiltered things sometimes.
Speaker 2: Did you feel like in those early years when you
Speaker 2: were in New York that you had to sort of
Speaker 2: shut off your la neus. Did you feel different than
Speaker 2: the people you were meeting in the scene you were
Speaker 2: in kind of I mean like Reese, this same composer
Speaker 2: who was actually the music director of the Kitchen at
Speaker 2: this time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd have these conversations with him and he would say,
Speaker 3: you're You're always going to be look middle class, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I definitely didn't feel very New York in the white
Speaker 3: dressed or anything.
Speaker 2: Did you find yourself changing the way that you looked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, like, uh, well I didn't
Speaker 3: have contexts, and I had glasses, and I got these
Speaker 3: flip up sunglasses that I would wear that an attempt
Speaker 3: to feel cooler or something disguise the glasses. But I
Speaker 3: couldn't afford contexts. It's so poor.
Speaker 2: So after you were in New York and you started
Speaker 2: to become more established and no more people in the
Speaker 2: art scene. After working at gallery and started making art yourself,
Speaker 2: you were meeting a lot of I guess the art
Speaker 2: scene in New York City in the eighties, that's when
Speaker 2: things got really commercial and artists were blowing up, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was beginning. Yeah, yeah, painting was becoming big.
Speaker 2: With all the successful artists that you've known, successful musicians
Speaker 2: you've known. Is there something or a set of things
Speaker 2: that you can point to that leads to somebody being successful.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I you know, honestly, I can't answer
Speaker 3: that question. I think that you just, you know, have
Speaker 3: to really want something, and so you don't really give
Speaker 3: up or you're just kind of, you know, follow the thread.
Speaker 3: If you can find a thread, that's all you need,
Speaker 3: and maybe you just follow it.
Speaker 2: You described your early days there, or at least yourself,
Speaker 2: like you were sort of unorganized and you felt like
Speaker 2: you were a mess.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you still feel like that now or was that
Speaker 2: just that point in your life.
Speaker 3: I think it was more at that point in my life.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm still not a very organized person, but
Speaker 3: it doesn't bother me. I mean, also I come a
Speaker 3: manager house, so that helps.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's just hard when you feel like an outsider to
Speaker 3: a community, you know, and the art community is probably
Speaker 3: the roughest. And then I also felt kind of like
Speaker 3: an outsider to the music scene in a way because
Speaker 3: I was a visual artist and I don't know, like
Speaker 3: I liked playing music, but I didn't feel like I
Speaker 3: guess I felt like middle class, you know, I felt
Speaker 3: I just felt supremely uncool. I felt, you know, like
Speaker 3: you see you around people like wearing all black who
Speaker 3: look incredibly chic, even though black as a color that
Speaker 3: doesn't show dirt and it can be the cheapest clothes
Speaker 3: in the world, but you know, at night in a
Speaker 3: club or yeah, every once else seemed much cooler, you know,
Speaker 3: and stylized in their look, and I wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: At that point. Were you looking at people and trying
Speaker 2: to figure out how you would dress, Like would you
Speaker 2: take things from people you would see or was that
Speaker 2: not even something you were interested in.
Speaker 3: I just didn't feel like I could do that all
Speaker 3: black thing at that time. Like I just felt like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is not me or that's too easy, you know,
Speaker 3: Like I had, like I bought a pair of these
Speaker 3: pink like pat and leather and swayed knee boots at
Speaker 3: uh nine to nine records for ten dollars, you know,
Speaker 3: so I would wear those with you know, whatever pants
Speaker 3: I was wearing at the time or something, or like
Speaker 3: it would I have one thing that I kind of
Speaker 3: thought was sort of cool, but I was kind of
Speaker 3: hopeless that the whole dressing thing.
Speaker 2: That sounds bold though at least you were taking chances.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so I think I was like stabbing
Speaker 3: in the dark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, outside of music, what else are you working on?
Speaker 3: Not too much? I mean, I you know, doing some
Speaker 3: work in my studio or painting, but I really have
Speaker 3: been pretty caught up with this and memorizing lyrics, so
Speaker 3: it's hard to like change heads. So yeah, I was
Speaker 3: a small book coming out that about my brother. It's
Speaker 3: more of like an art book that Calm Press is
Speaker 3: putting out in March or April. It'll be out and
Speaker 3: it's just kind of a you know, he died last
Speaker 3: year and sort of a celebration.
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know he died.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was like us. He was a schizophrenic and
Speaker 3: so he never really got to fulfill his potential in
Speaker 3: any way. And so I often, you know, I've been fun.
Speaker 3: Writing is a good way to make something positive out
Speaker 3: of something and just think about you know. I can't
Speaker 3: think sometimes unless i'm writing.
Speaker 2: So yeah, the writing in your memoir Girl in the
Speaker 2: Band was great. I listened to the audiobook version, which
Speaker 2: I recommend because you can hear you tell your story
Speaker 2: and your own words.
Speaker 3: Oh NICs.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the writing was very direct and poetic. I
Speaker 2: really enjoyed it and was that hard for you to write.
Speaker 3: It was hard to write, and because I also was like, well,
Speaker 3: it wasn't my idea to begin with it. I think
Speaker 3: after the success of Patti Smith's book, people were looking around,
Speaker 3: like who else would be good? And then I was
Speaker 3: when I was trying to write, It's like, I don't
Speaker 3: really want to write about myself. So I tried to
Speaker 3: make it like a portrait of la in the sixties,
Speaker 3: seventies in New York in the eighties nineties. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: like halfway through, I thought, oh, these should be essays.
Speaker 3: That would have been a better, more enjoyable form, and
Speaker 3: so I decided the way to write about the band
Speaker 3: would just be to pick songs that I sang and
Speaker 3: then write things around them, kind of more an essay form.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought it was really excellent. Was it hard
Speaker 2: to get so deeply personal in the book?
Speaker 3: Of course it was, But I felt like I have
Speaker 3: to include this. I don't want the book called book
Speaker 3: to be about this breakup, but it's part of my story,
Speaker 3: and so I have to. It makes sense to put
Speaker 3: it in.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The hardest thing was achieving the right tone for it.
Speaker 3: And you know, I mean just tons of stuff I
Speaker 3: got to put in but just you know, the sort
Speaker 3: of purpose. Actually, one of the hardest things about writing
Speaker 3: it was just figuring out how to explain the art
Speaker 3: world and write about people that because you know, memoirs
Speaker 3: are such a popular culturist thing that writing about artists
Speaker 3: like is it going to be boring or you know,
Speaker 3: like people aren't going to know who anyone is? And
Speaker 3: then but then writing about people who are known sounds
Speaker 3: kind of name droppy, you know, like Sophia Coppola or
Speaker 3: you know, Spike John's or something like that.
Speaker 2: But you know, are the Kurt Cobaine sections?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean Kurt was more intertwined in things.
Speaker 3: But anyway, they're just people who I knew at this
Speaker 3: certain point in their life, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so that was kind of that was hard figuring
Speaker 3: out how to write about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I imagine that was a hard press run after that,
Speaker 2: because then you get questions about all the personal stuff, right.
Speaker 3: I remember being on Terry Grosse's show and she was
Speaker 3: pushing me to talk more about it, and I kind
Speaker 3: of said, I think I already said everything I want
Speaker 3: to say about it in the book. Yeah, And she
Speaker 3: didn't like that. At all because she likes to dig,
Speaker 3: you know people that dig, and I don't know, she
Speaker 3: kind of like closed up after that.
Speaker 2: Oh she got pissed off.
Speaker 3: I think she did. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I always like to ask people what they're listening to,
Speaker 2: new music, old music, whatever it is, what you're liking.
Speaker 3: Well, Bill Mason, new record app that I like, it's
Speaker 3: on Drag City. I just watched this really cool movie
Speaker 3: actually called The Black Power Mixtape.
Speaker 2: Oh I've heard of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's based on footage that this these Swedish journalists
Speaker 3: shot from I think sixty one to seventy five or
Speaker 3: something like, are sixty seven to seventy five interviewing a
Speaker 3: lot of you know, Soukley Carmichael and a lot of
Speaker 3: the people involved. But also like the footage of Harlem
Speaker 3: at that time is so cool. But this we'd just
Speaker 3: saying is like it things seem different in a way,
Speaker 3: just you know, the wealth gap and oh yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a scene where these Swedish tourists are going through Harlem
Speaker 3: and the guys explaining to him in Swedish like don't
Speaker 3: get out here and just talking about like the drug
Speaker 3: use and you know, in the meantime, like US government
Speaker 3: is like fed drugs into the Ikta and you know,
Speaker 3: propagated this credible, horrible situation. And anyway, it was fascinating.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'll check that out.
Speaker 3: It has a music contemporary music in it and interviews
Speaker 3: with over voiceovers with different musicians. It's really cool cool.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate
Speaker 2: you coming on and talk about the new album and oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Kim Gordon for talking about her career and
Speaker 1: her new album, The Collective. You can hear it along
Speaker 1: with our other favorite Kim Gordon and Sonic Youth songs
Speaker 1: on a playlist at Broken Record podcast dot com. Subscribe
Speaker 1: to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken
Speaker 1: Record Podcast, where we can find all of our new episodes.
Speaker 1: You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken
Speaker 1: Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing
Speaker 1: help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Ben tollinany. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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Speaker 1: Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.