(© Vera Marmelo)
Since Sonic Youth entered into what seems to be a definitive state of hibernation, the guitarist and frontman Thurston Moore has had his hands free for a thousand and one other projects. This week, he is up for a marriage of poetry and noise in the company of Anne-James Chaton and Andy Moor.
There was universal dismay when, at the end of 2011, it was announced that Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, rock's coolest couple, were separating after 27 years together. The implosion of their marriage left us with one illusion fewer about everlasting love and also brought down the curtain on Sonic Youth, the New York avant-garde noise band that had kept the underground cool and sexy for three decades.
Not to worry: at 55, Moore is still extremely active. Last year he took on his midlife crisis with, among other things, the roaring punk beast Chelsea Light Moving; more recently, he ignited some guitar lines for the black-metal band Twilight; and three years after the Beck-produced Demolished Thoughts, a new solo album is due after the summer.
Before starting the recording sessions, Moore has found time for yet another “guitar poetry” outing with Andy Moor, guitarist in the Dutch punk band the Ex, and the Parisian sound poet Anne-James Chaton. “We each do some songs and poetry, and there are compositional pieces that Andy and Anne-James worked out,” Moore tells us. “It's fairly loose – it's not like a Berlioz composition.” [Laughs]
You are stopping by at Les Ateliers Claus, an "alternative venue". Do you play these places to keep in touch with the underground?
Thurston Moore: I have no prejudice against playing anywhere, but I do prefer a place where there's more of an intimacy with the audience. When I gig at tiny venues, though, a lot of people still come and expect a Sonic Youth experience. That can be disappointing or enlightening for them. I think it's great to present something outside the comfort zone of a typical Sonic Youth experience. I hope most people who were into Sonic Youth are into opening their minds to other things besides indie rock anyway.
The performance in Brussels mixes music with poetry and sound art. How important is poetry for you?
Moore: Poetry is a big part of my life. I do a lot of work with the poetry communities in New York and London, and I teach at the poetics department of Naropa University in Boulder, but I don't sit around all day reading poems. [Laughs]
Do you enjoy experimenting with writing as much as with music?
Moore: I'm mostly interested in poetry with a visual aspect to it, how the words and the sentences look on the page, and how that relates to pure lyric poetry. The New York School and the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church were in that respect very formative, with poets like Anne Waldman, Allen Ginsberg, and Ted Berrigan. To me, writing and making music are very much part of the same experience.
Thurston Moore: the poetry of noise
Do you see poetry in feedback and noise?
Moore: I find poetry in any kind of sensual art form, be it architecture or painting or music. Poetry is just a word for the essence of emotional expression. I'm an untutored guitar player. I use different tunings and fingerings because that's how I taught myself to do it. It's very primordial.
Sonic Youth was always considered experimental because of what we were doing with noise and tunings, but to me it was all about rethinking the traditional song structure. Shaping different sounds through amps was easy; the songs were the real experiment. When I got into free improvisation, I tried to figure out what it meant, as opposed to jamming. I always thought of free improvisation as looking for a structure in the moment. There's a beginning, there's an end, and there's content. It's a composition happening.
Anyway, in the end I don't know what attracts me in it. [Chuckles] I was always drawn to the radical in music, to artists like David Bowie or bands like the Stooges, who were doing things that were out of the ordinary. I thought being subversive had the most significance.
What's the most beautiful sound you've ever heard?
Moore: Good question. [Laughs] I remember being very excited about the first Stooges record, when I bought it in the early 1970s – very cheap, because at that time nobody was interested in their music. I wasn't quite sure what to think of it at first. It sounded monodynamic, somewhat flatlined. It didn't have all that excited highs and lows of Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer and Pink Floyd. The next time I experienced the same feeling was with the Ramones. They had this charm, this innocence. But the most beautiful sound I've ever heard...that must have been really heartbreaking, sad classical music.
A while ago you had this picture of the Runaways on your Twitter account. A fan?
Moore: O yeah. They are really important to me, because they were doing this punk rock avant la lettre. It was rock 'n' roll for the kids, but they sang about serious things like "Runaway girl". Joan Jett is an amazing songwriter. You see, I'm not completely into serious intellectual egghead music. [Laughs] The Ramones, who presented themselves as these four brothers with leather jackets and torn jeans, had the same comic-book quality. All of punk rock was like that anyway. Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, they're like Spiderman and Thor. There was the social message and the yelling and crying, but they looked really fucking cool.
Moore: I find poetry in any kind of sensual art form, be it architecture or painting or music. Poetry is just a word for the essence of emotional expression. I'm an untutored guitar player. I use different tunings and fingerings because that's how I taught myself to do it. It's very primordial.
Sonic Youth was always considered experimental because of what we were doing with noise and tunings, but to me it was all about rethinking the traditional song structure. Shaping different sounds through amps was easy; the songs were the real experiment. When I got into free improvisation, I tried to figure out what it meant, as opposed to jamming. I always thought of free improvisation as looking for a structure in the moment. There's a beginning, there's an end, and there's content. It's a composition happening.
Anyway, in the end I don't know what attracts me in it. [Chuckles] I was always drawn to the radical in music, to artists like David Bowie or bands like the Stooges, who were doing things that were out of the ordinary. I thought being subversive had the most significance.
What's the most beautiful sound you've ever heard?
Moore: Good question. [Laughs] I remember being very excited about the first Stooges record, when I bought it in the early 1970s – very cheap, because at that time nobody was interested in their music. I wasn't quite sure what to think of it at first. It sounded monodynamic, somewhat flatlined. It didn't have all that excited highs and lows of Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer and Pink Floyd. The next time I experienced the same feeling was with the Ramones. They had this charm, this innocence. But the most beautiful sound I've ever heard...that must have been really heartbreaking, sad classical music.
A while ago you had this picture of the Runaways on your Twitter account. A fan?
Moore: O yeah. They are really important to me, because they were doing this punk rock avant la lettre. It was rock 'n' roll for the kids, but they sang about serious things like "Runaway girl". Joan Jett is an amazing songwriter. You see, I'm not completely into serious intellectual egghead music. [Laughs] The Ramones, who presented themselves as these four brothers with leather jackets and torn jeans, had the same comic-book quality. All of punk rock was like that anyway. Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, they're like Spiderman and Thor. There was the social message and the yelling and crying, but they looked really fucking cool.
Anne-James Chaton's poetry also contains a lot of socio-political commentary.
Moore: I like the way he recaptures the universe of text that exists in the most banal places, such as our consumerist society, and creates something new with it. Much like William Burroughs did in the 1960s, taking these systems of control and re-presenting them, not only as satire but also as commentary on capitalist society. There's a certain violence to it, too, but just with an artful mind. [Laughs]
On last year's Chelsea Light Moving album, in the song "Mohawk" you sang about rock 'n' roll leaving the stage and selling books at the front of the room. I interpreted that as a commentary on the current state of rock 'n' roll.
Moore: I think it had more to do with the idea of growing up, and rock 'n' roll being looked upon as this young man's game. The most radical voices in rock 'n' roll of the last ten years were people like Neil Young and Yoko Ono. Radical music is still completely subterranean. To me the real rock 'n' roll ideas are to be found in the intellectualism of the bookstore. The stuff coming out of the pages of the NME can be a nice guilty pleasure, but I don't find it very inspiring. It's just a coffee cake.
On that album you referred to, among others, William Burroughs, Frank O'Hara, Roky Erickson, and other figures of the counterculture of the Sixties. Why is that period important to you?
Moore: I find it really interesting how these people were experiencing such a cultural upheaval in society, not only in America but all over the world. We're still dealing with what they were making at the time. Punk rock completely comes out of this aesthetic.
Actually, Chelsea Light Moving was kind of me not doing anything too seriously between Sonic Youth going on hiatus and dwelling into more of a serious solo career. I just wanted to do something that I wouldn't have to think about too much. I could just go and plug in, and have some fun for a year. The name of the band, by the way, refers to the van company Philip Glass owned in the early 1970s, to make money to put on concerts of his minimalist piano music. He didn't want to move anything too heavy, because he is a piano player and had to protect his fingers. [Laughs]
Moore: I like the way he recaptures the universe of text that exists in the most banal places, such as our consumerist society, and creates something new with it. Much like William Burroughs did in the 1960s, taking these systems of control and re-presenting them, not only as satire but also as commentary on capitalist society. There's a certain violence to it, too, but just with an artful mind. [Laughs]
On last year's Chelsea Light Moving album, in the song "Mohawk" you sang about rock 'n' roll leaving the stage and selling books at the front of the room. I interpreted that as a commentary on the current state of rock 'n' roll.
Moore: I think it had more to do with the idea of growing up, and rock 'n' roll being looked upon as this young man's game. The most radical voices in rock 'n' roll of the last ten years were people like Neil Young and Yoko Ono. Radical music is still completely subterranean. To me the real rock 'n' roll ideas are to be found in the intellectualism of the bookstore. The stuff coming out of the pages of the NME can be a nice guilty pleasure, but I don't find it very inspiring. It's just a coffee cake.
On that album you referred to, among others, William Burroughs, Frank O'Hara, Roky Erickson, and other figures of the counterculture of the Sixties. Why is that period important to you?
Moore: I find it really interesting how these people were experiencing such a cultural upheaval in society, not only in America but all over the world. We're still dealing with what they were making at the time. Punk rock completely comes out of this aesthetic.
Actually, Chelsea Light Moving was kind of me not doing anything too seriously between Sonic Youth going on hiatus and dwelling into more of a serious solo career. I just wanted to do something that I wouldn't have to think about too much. I could just go and plug in, and have some fun for a year. The name of the band, by the way, refers to the van company Philip Glass owned in the early 1970s, to make money to put on concerts of his minimalist piano music. He didn't want to move anything too heavy, because he is a piano player and had to protect his fingers. [Laughs]
Did you do odd jobs yourself?
Moore: Oh yeah. I used to wash dishes, do deliveries, I worked at a Xerox store and in factories... I had all kinds of jobs in the 1970s and the '80s. I stopped working day jobs around 1989, when we signed to Geffen.
How do you feel now that Sonic Youth, after nearly thirty years, has gone into indefinite hiatus?
Moore: In a way I relish being able to do something new; the band was all-encompassing. The last few years I wanted to move into a different place and change the game a little bit. A lot was predicated upon Kim and I separating, but I think the band would have taken a break anyway. So I miss it, and I don't miss it. It's one of those things.
Recently you opened up about your private life, although you swore you were not going to do that.
Moore: That was a mistake. I was sitting around chatting with this journalist while we were having a couple of beers, and then all the stuff I said got printed. All of a sudden it became a viral wildfire on the Internet, and I was like, Jesus Christ, how stupid of me.
You got a lot of criticism for being very honest.
Moore: Yeah, but that is all online. There are two worlds we live in, one is online and one is the real world. When I go out on the street, it's not there. I don't know who's doing all this criticism on social media, and they don't know anything about my life. I know that I'm a public figure to some degree, and I talk about public figures too, I want to hear about them when they're in the news, but I don't know who they are. Anyway, social media are just gross.
But why did you take to Facebook too?
Moore: I got pissed off and replied to these gossipers, and all of a sudden I made it even worse. I should have known better, but it's so puerile. I don't want to go near that anymore. It's the most boring thing I can think of talking about in any form, especially in some online forum. I'd rather talk about rock 'n' roll and literature and art. Gimme a break. What's going on with your marriage? Who cares? It's one of the worst things of having any kind of public profile. People have a certain investment in you, as far as what you represent to them. And once you disturb that, it becomes a bit of a shit storm. But ultimately, I don't really give a fuck.
Do you need projects like the performance with Andy Moor and Anne-James Chaton to keep going?
Moore: Not necessarily. I would really miss playing music live if I wouldn't do it, but I keep thinking that I want to take a year off and just go hide away somewhere and write – poetry, a memoir, prose. [Chuckles] I might just disappear any second!
Please, don't!
Moore: Oh yeah. I used to wash dishes, do deliveries, I worked at a Xerox store and in factories... I had all kinds of jobs in the 1970s and the '80s. I stopped working day jobs around 1989, when we signed to Geffen.
How do you feel now that Sonic Youth, after nearly thirty years, has gone into indefinite hiatus?
Moore: In a way I relish being able to do something new; the band was all-encompassing. The last few years I wanted to move into a different place and change the game a little bit. A lot was predicated upon Kim and I separating, but I think the band would have taken a break anyway. So I miss it, and I don't miss it. It's one of those things.
Recently you opened up about your private life, although you swore you were not going to do that.
Moore: That was a mistake. I was sitting around chatting with this journalist while we were having a couple of beers, and then all the stuff I said got printed. All of a sudden it became a viral wildfire on the Internet, and I was like, Jesus Christ, how stupid of me.
You got a lot of criticism for being very honest.
Moore: Yeah, but that is all online. There are two worlds we live in, one is online and one is the real world. When I go out on the street, it's not there. I don't know who's doing all this criticism on social media, and they don't know anything about my life. I know that I'm a public figure to some degree, and I talk about public figures too, I want to hear about them when they're in the news, but I don't know who they are. Anyway, social media are just gross.
But why did you take to Facebook too?
Moore: I got pissed off and replied to these gossipers, and all of a sudden I made it even worse. I should have known better, but it's so puerile. I don't want to go near that anymore. It's the most boring thing I can think of talking about in any form, especially in some online forum. I'd rather talk about rock 'n' roll and literature and art. Gimme a break. What's going on with your marriage? Who cares? It's one of the worst things of having any kind of public profile. People have a certain investment in you, as far as what you represent to them. And once you disturb that, it becomes a bit of a shit storm. But ultimately, I don't really give a fuck.
Do you need projects like the performance with Andy Moor and Anne-James Chaton to keep going?
Moore: Not necessarily. I would really miss playing music live if I wouldn't do it, but I keep thinking that I want to take a year off and just go hide away somewhere and write – poetry, a memoir, prose. [Chuckles] I might just disappear any second!
Please, don't!
Thurston Moore + Andy Moor + Anne-James Chaton • 6/4, 20.00, €12/15, Les Ateliers Claus, rue Crickxstraat 15, Sint-Gillis/Saint-Gilles, 02-534.51.03, www.lesateliersclaus.com
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