Sonic Youth 101
By Joy Modafferi

Like hundreds of bands to hit the independent American music scene, Sonic Youth has made their mark. But unlike the majority of those bands, Sonic Youth is still making music.

In the early 1980’s Sonic Youth helped form what is now commonly referred to as “No Wave,” rooting back to artists such as Glenn Branca and Lydia Lunch. During this period, New York City was experiencing a musical transformation spawned by the likes of Iggy and The Stooges, The Dead Boys, Richard Hell, The Ramones and a slew of other bands with an entire sound that refused to have a definitive shape, speed or style.

The visual art world was in full bloom with figures like Keith Haring and Jean-Michael Basquiat. The city ranged from Doc Martin wearing types to the William Blake reading kind of folk. At the hub of the scene were three musicians- Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo. Their vision was to unleash rock music from traditional confines it had previously known.

In 1985 Sonic Youth interviewed with Melody Maker Magazine. In an attempt to describe their vision guitarist Lee Renaldo stated, “We’re interested in the possibilities for sound-making output from the guitar, bass and drums in ways that haven’t been fully explored as we’d like to feel they’ve been. We’re interested in textural sounds and the blendings of instruments in ways that don’t fit into the standard lead and rhythm guitars and rhythm section backing it up. The music’s got the emotion, the sentiment and the lyrical thinking of rock music. We’re a rock band and proud of it. We’re not an art, noise or extreme band. We just do what we do.”

Twenty years later they are still doing what they do. Yet, in that time Lee Renaldo has undeniably rewritten the vocabulary for the electric guitar. In a recent interview with Smash Magazine, Renaldo said he would like to amend that 1985 quote. “I would definitely put art, noise and extreme into the equation. There is not anything derogatory about these terms. A band that has been around as long we have can rack up a few more adjectives. We have had a very long career. There have been a lot of different points to analyze and points that have contributed to our change and vision.”

Noting different levels of success with experimentation, Renaldo adds: “We were achieving our vision from the very beginning. Our vision is always evolving but I think by the mid-eighties with our Bad Moon Rising album, we had crystallized the kind of direction we wanted. We were becoming more technically proficient, although I don’t know how much that really helped us out, but it is something that can’t help but happen if you play as long as we do. But in some ways we are as amateurish as we were when we first started.”
It was that amateurish curiosity that inspired, at least in part, much of the music that made Sonic Youth famous in the first place.

Sonic Youth has always been known for experimental guitar playing. It is not uncommon to see the band toting around more than a dozen guitars on tour. Each guitar is tuned differently. And some instruments are juxtaposed together, like a drumstick jammed under the strings at a specific fret to achieve a desired sound. There is an obvious separation from conventional music that was, and is revealed through their guitar playing.

Renaldo recalls the time when he first stuck a screwdriver into his guitar: “At the earliest incarnation of Sonic Youth when it was basically me, Thurston and Kim, when we were a trio, before we even had a drummer, we were just figuring out other ways to make sounds out of the instruments we had. It happened early-on that we were sticking drumsticks and screwdrivers up to the instruments and plugging electric drills into the wa-wa petals. It was an accepted practice, at least in New York, to be involved in making rock music, but not just playing "Louie-Louie" in some garage somewhere. The impetus for the screwdriver really came about from the whole New York thing going on at the time. There was this thing called minimalism, and at that time people were just playing around with what you can so with the notion of a string stretched across two points- may it be a guitar, piano or any stringed instrument. It goes into the physics of what goes on with a string at certain points, where you get theses harmonics jumping out- one of them is on the ninth fret. I used a screwdriver as an additional bridge, basically as a metallic wand, and when you stick it under certain frets on the guitar you get these acoustic phenomena’s happening. It started with that.”

Sonic Youth has legitimately earned and retained their status as indie royalty- an indie archetype of sorts- despite having signed to a major label.
Originally in 1986, Greg Ginn of Black Flag signed Sonic Youth on none other than SST Records. Amazingly, the band’s stature was enhanced, not diminished by signing to Geffen/DGC Records. In the process they were able to help and attract countless other bands including Mudhoney, Dinosaur Jr., and Die Kreuzen. It was Sonic Youth that was responsible for the introduction of Nirvana to Geffen, which, along with Sub Pop released Nevermind - the album that arguably brought indie rock into the world of mainstream music.

Each band member is involved with other projects, which Renaldo says contributes to both their ability to help other bands, as well as to the longevity of Sonic Youth. As he explains, “Having different things going on gives us broad bases to work from. We are all doing other things than music. We are involved in books, book publishing, record releasing, cinematic endeavors- it’s all stuff we want to pursue. The last half decade or so, we have curtailed our touring schedules to some degree around our kids’ schedules. We have found that we have a little more time to pursue other things- that’s been real cool because we can utilize our time better. We are not constantly doing Sonic Youth stuff. Yet, we are in a unique position for a band of our type- we have a major label and an indie label. We are able to operate in both spheres and we are able to get offers to do all this other stuff. On some level we are all about working as hard as we can, pursuing a lot of different things. It is great to have all these opportunities. We want to utilize our opportunities- give back to the community by releasing records by other people because all this has been afforded to us. We want to take advantage of the good luck!”

In a perfect world, the alpha dog would lower his paw and pull up the deserving pups one by one. The indie community is only as strong as its relationships. The ones forged between real people with less than rock star attitudes help keep it alive. There are few bands in the industry that have embraced this concept like Sonic Youth.

There is a saying that goes: ”An unaimed arrow never misses its mark.” Sometimes having no direction to start off with can be liberating. And sometimes, being a part of nothing is all the something you need. As Thurston Moore once said, “We were a part of nothing. We just said 'fuck it' and got cheap guitars and screwdrivers and turned up the amps to ten.”

(Thanks to Lee and Sonic Youth for the interview, and for playing "Eric’s Trip" off of Daydream Nation at The H.O.B show in Vegas.)