Kim Gordon

00:00:15Speaker 1: Pushkin. At seventy years old, Kim Gordon, the former bassist and founding member of Sonic Youth, is somehow making the most abrasive music of her career right now. This month, she dropped her second solo album, called The Collective, with producer Justin Raisin, who's previously worked with artists like Drake Loyati and Charlie XCX. Kim's spoken word like vocals on The Collective are the perfect accompaniment to Justin's distorted trap style beats, especially on her first single, bye Bye, which was originally intended for rapper Playboy Carti Cotish. On today's episode, Lee Rose talks to Kim Gordon about her latest solo album, as well as her memoir Girl in a Band, that detailed her very public split with ex husband Thurston Moore. Kim also delves into why she always felt like an outsider in New York City's thriving downtown art scene, and recalls Sonic Youth's story tour in the early nineties. Opening up for Neil Young. This is broken record liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm Justin Mitchman. Here's Leah Rose's conversation with Kim Gordon I saw.00:01:38Speaker 2: That you're getting ready to play some shows to support the new album. How are you going to translate the album or the songs or the new music to the stage. What are you guys thinking?00:01:50Speaker 3: Well, this is so it'll be the same group of girls that I toured the last record with, but the drummer will have probably have some kind of hybrid kit, so she'll be uh what she'll be doing, She'll be playing, like you know, some of the beats and then sampling stuff. I guess, uh huh. Same with a guitar player and the bass player. They're all very technologically savvy. I'm kind of the only one who has sent and then there'll be some things on backing tracks that we just can't reproduce.00:02:28Speaker 2: And for the actual for the recording of the songs, were you playing with a live band or was it mostly okay, it's mostly programmed stuff.00:02:37Speaker 3: It was it was basically me and Justin Raisin. He was my collaborator. Like I said, I wanted to have more beats on this record, and he would basically send me beats. Like I talked about what sort of you know, hip hop I liked, and I'm sort of inspired by rhythm because I'm not a very melodic singer in my range as kind of limits it, let's just say. Anyway, So he would make up beats with some sounds and send it to me, and I would decide what I thought I could work on, and then I would go in and make up guitar parts in the studio and lay down some vocals, and usually start out with some of the songs I had complete lyrics, but I still didn't know how I was going to place them, you know, And then other songs I would have, you know, half lyrics, and then I would sort of start improvising or other things would come out around my mouth. Where'd that come from? I? And so then it became like for him like sort of a shaping editing kind of process. And then you know, sometimes he would sample my guitars, put it back in, and and then I would go back and then usually add more guitar vocals.00:03:54Speaker 2: So the guitar is you playing.00:03:57Speaker 3: Yeah, although there might be some things he played guitar on, but mostly it's me. And then I had Sarah come in in the end and add more dense and noise stuff.00:04:09Speaker 2: What were the reference the hip hop reference tracks that you gave him.00:04:13Speaker 3: You know, like schooly D, how Gucci time, oh, old school? Yeah yeah, mostly like yeah, eighties or nineties. Okay, I didn't really give him that many references. But and then for the last record we talked about, you know, I'd played them different things, like even esg or there was this single I really liked by this banda Jellies, just like a super minimal kind of fun song. I'm like eighty two or eighty three.00:04:42Speaker 2: That's cool. I thought some of I mean, some of the music sounds like kind of like blown out dub and trap beats. So I thought maybe you were referencing more more recent stuff.00:04:55Speaker 3: Well, yeah, there is some yeah, reference to recent stuff, but it's kind of like, well, I liked the last record. I really liked that song Peprika Pony, which is a trap speed so like. But yeah, no, I know that he makes beats for other people, and so I knew that, yeah, that would involve other things, but it wasn't like I specifically pointed out some you know, contemporary person.00:05:22Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I've been reading some of the things that are being written about what's been released so far, and people are like, you know, like you're dropping bangers like trap bangers, and it's just it's so great.00:05:34Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean yeah, Justin gets a kick out of that, Like he couldn't wait for like his hip Hop World or whatever to hear a record or something.00:05:44Speaker 2: How did you two meet? How did you start working together?00:05:48Speaker 3: Super accidentally actually met him through his brother, uh Jeremiah, who uh I think curates beats for Drake or something. People send him beats. It was actually just in a restaurant and I was with a friend and he was with this girl, and our tables were so close together, and they had kind of a friend vibe. But then sudden they started talking about their sex life together, and our tables were so close that we just all turned to look at each other and started laughing. So we just started talking and and he was kind of like, yeah, my brother's a producer and he did the Discover Our record and that was kind of a cool record. But I when usually people say the word producer, my head kind of just turns off. I don't know, necessarily, It's not the way I've ever worked. So but then yeah, Justin started dming me and he was working on a project with Lawrence Rothman and they were having different people come in and do vocals along with Lawrence. And I wasn't actually living in La then, I was saying in an airbnb and yeah, I thought it was sort of a character, but I he kept sending me sup but eventually he sent me something that okay, I could do something on this, and so I went over and he has this home studio in his garage. It's a very big garage, LA style, and I did some vocals and he basically took what was left over and put a very trashy drum track to it and sent it to me, and I was really surprised. It was just like, oh, he really knows my sensibility. And so I went back and I did. He had Stella from Warpaint come in and put drums over it, and I put some guitar on it and vocals and that became murdered out. And then it wasn't until like six months later that I think we actually started working on a record.00:07:41Speaker 2: Sounds fun.00:07:43Speaker 3: Yeah, it was kind of I really didn't have any desire to do a solo record. You know. I played with the Bill Mace. We have a experimental guitar duo improv group and Body head and so and I have you know, I make visual arts. So I wasn't really thinking about launching a solo career in that sense.00:08:07Speaker 2: Does Bill like this solo stuff that you're doing.00:08:10Speaker 3: He's very supportive, you know, he says he does, but I don't know what he really thinks.00:08:17Speaker 2: The thing that struck me about it as a lot of the people that we talk to as people get older, things start to get quieter, their music starts to slow down, and this is the opposite of that. It's so noisy in the best way. Is that something that you were intending to do from the beginning. Was that part of the original concept?00:08:43Speaker 3: No, I didn't really think about it, actually, not at all. I don't know, Like, it wasn't really until it was done that I thought, oh god, it's really a loud record. I mean, I'm I'm kind of a slow developer. I'm just not making a really loud record. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I kind of see the record as an intervention into the culture or what does that mean? Like, because it's so different and so kind of abrasive in some way and not an easy listening kind of record. It has this other thing about it and I think people seem to be more and more ready for things that aren't conventional. And I don't know, so I think it's just meant to be a little bit of a disruption into what is business as usual.00:09:39Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.00:09:40Speaker 3: But it didn't really like I didn't. You know, this is all like I'm saying this, but it's kind of unconsciously done.00:09:47Speaker 2: Do you listen to loud music normally?00:09:50Speaker 3: Uh? Not normally actually, you know, if I'm just around my house now, like I'll listen to like even John Fahi, you know, or like Brazilian music or Bardo Pond, you know, kind of Actually I love Barti Pond, Like I love that there's something really glorious and beautiful about their drone. It's very soothing to me, even though it's kind of loud.00:10:12Speaker 2: I don't know if this is a connection between earlier music you've made with Sonic Youth, but seems like you're sort of comfortable with the drone.00:10:20Speaker 3: Yeah.00:10:21Speaker 2: Do you see any sort of connective tissue between the music you were making with Sonic Youth and the new solo music.00:10:28Speaker 3: I mean, you know, in some ways, like if the songs that I sang on were the ones that were kind of more abstract slabs of music and you know, songs that we'd kind of make up all together sitting around as opposed to ones Often Thurston would come in with a melody and he would know what he wanted to sing, and then we'd find our parts to it and still arrange it all together. But other songs it was kind of a challenge like how am I gonna sing on this? And in a way like being presented with like beats and pieces of music would sound and beats, it wasn't dissimilar. You know, it's kind of okay, what can I do with this? And you know, if I didn't feel like I could do something, obviously it wouldn't do it. But you know, some things would immediately like move me. And that's also the way it was with in Sonic, you like, oh yeah, I could definitely do something you know, like massage history. I knew I could do something like that. It's funny. It just occurred to me the other day that it's kind of not dissimilar in that way.00:11:32Speaker 1: M hm.00:11:33Speaker 3: And then we did do some things that were like you know, cool thing or nature scene that were kind of had moments of what reference to hip hop.00:11:42Speaker 2: Or Yeah, I was surprised to see. I don't remember where it was from, but I read an interview with you where you were saying for cool Thing that llll cool Jay's going back to Cali was one of your favorite music videos of all time. I thought that was super cool.00:11:58Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was definitely an inspiration, and the song kind of came about, you know. I was I was supposed to review l A Cool Day's new record, and I interviewed him and I asked, I was always curious how working with Rick Rubin was and what his knowledge of rock was or you know, or wasn't all Rick, you know, who brought what? And because I really liked Radio. I really liked that record a lot, and I was disappointed to learn that it was he was really into bon Jovi really and in a way it makes sense, like h but again, like I think it's because Rick probably you know, liked the big, chunky power chords of bon Jovi. That was kind of you know, like that went with the space and the beats he was doing, and yeah, in some of the music and anyway, so that's where it was part of the inspiration for the lyrics. You know, like being disappointed in some many Well, you're not into dissident guitars. And I always thought, actually hip hop would be so much it'd be cooler if they kind of were into more dissonet, kind of like their idea of rock. It's kind of corny in some respects. So anyway, So I think Justin someone who appreciates that. I never said that to him, but you know, he appreciates that this is going to make a trap speek cent different, you know, like it.00:13:32Speaker 2: Reminds me of have you heard Jesus Kanye's Jesus? I wonder if Justin's a fan of that album, but it's very like it feels like industrial music inspired.00:13:43Speaker 3: Yeah, I heard him do it live and a horrible at the met at this the Met Ball, and it was the acoustics are terrible. I thought it was terrible, but I didn't honestly didn't sit down and listen to it the whole thing. But I I'm sure he was a fan of it. I'm sure he wasn't. Yeah, hell, he calls me Kanye sometimes so bad.00:14:09Speaker 2: And now that you're in the full interview cycle promoting the new album, how do you feel about doing interviews. I know, it's like a strange thing to ask you in an interview, but.00:14:20Speaker 3: That's a good question.00:14:22Speaker 2: You've been interviewed so many times for so many years, Like.00:14:26Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think I've done over fifty interviews for this record so far.00:14:30Speaker 1: Wow.00:14:31Speaker 3: And then I did a couple of interviews yesterday and one was with someone an Think and Poland, and he's quoting my interviews I've already done for this record, really, And actually it was fine because I could clarify a couple of things that were, you know, taken out of context or whatever. But at the same time, I thought it was kind of strange because I've been I think I started doing interviews last fall when I was in Europe. But you know, it's a necessary evil. Sometimes I like it, you know, like it depends on the interviewer really, and it's made me think so much about the record, and I don't like that. Like I can give explanations for most of the songs, but I don't feel like it's always a good idea. I think it's nice when people come to their own conclusions sometimes or like project what they want or but for some things like the song I mean, man it's kind of useful to explain it.00:15:33Speaker 2: Does it seem like people are missing the mark with the questions they're asking you about the.00:15:37Speaker 3: Album sometimes, I mean, the worst question I've been asked is why did you make another record? And like I think they want me to say because of the pandemic or some Yeah, I don't know, Like I don't have a I don't have a good answer. I was just like, I don't know. I was bored. I don't know what else to do. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's it's a difficult question to answer.00:16:00Speaker 2: It seems miraculous, like for some I don't make music, and it seems like to create something out of nothing just seems yeah, incredible.00:16:10Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is like, uh, yeah, you make you know, you you make something in a space I wasn't there before, and that's it's like you made a roomers.00:16:18Speaker 1: You know, we're gonna take a quick break and then come back with more from Kim Gordon and Li Ros. Here's Kim Gordon with Lea Rose.00:16:31Speaker 2: So yeah, so back to the dissonance Somewhere. I heard you say that you felt like extreme noise and dissonance can be really cleansing. Yeah, do you remember when that first struck you.00:16:45Speaker 3: Probably driving around uh in Western mass in this you know, in my car and this everything covered in snow and just kind of yeah, it's not sentimental, it's not emotional, it's not I don't know, and it's just like looking at suburbia, you know, it's just kind of like, I just want something to cut through this. This is kind of depressing. I was just like that idea. I could be driving around this super bin l like, I mean, some of a beautiful landscape, but then some of the suburban parts, you know, depressing. And how kind of funny you know about music that you can just have it in your head and be it can contrast so much with what's going on around you, and it creates its own Yeah it's sounds stupid, but it creates its own architecture, environment, space and transports you.00:17:35Speaker 2: So you said that before you started making the album, you want to do something that was more beat driven. Do you remember why you wanted to do that.00:17:44Speaker 3: Because I feel like, yeah, I'm inspired by rhythm I really like And when I first started playing with these two girls, when I first started playing guitar back in nineteen eighty or something. It was for this artist, Dan Graham's art performance. It's called mirror performance audience, where he'd have a mirror standing behind a huge mirror, like a giant wall mirror, and he would just stand there and describe the audience their gestures, they're shifting in their seats, and then he would turn around and describe himself in the mirror, harving the audience. It was all very self conscious, and he wanted to do the piece with an all girl band because he was writing articles about the slits and feminism and rock and all this stuff. So he introduced me to this school Miranda sat and Miranda and we started playing, and then this other musician, Christine Han, joined us. But it was my idea was like a drum machine with someone taught me how to play like half jazz chorts, just like pretting the bottom three strings, so kind of doing that and then getting lyrics from like women's magazines ads for different colored lipstick. And there was like a talking song that we did that is taken from kind of this first person text on the back of Cosmopolitan's, like I'm a Cosmopolitan girl and I describing the whole thing anyway, So that was a song. So I kind of like from the very beginning I sort of did that.00:19:25Speaker 2: Anyway, Was that around the same time you were writing for you started writing for magazines in New York. Yeah, so you were writing about male bonding and what happens between men on stage in bands. Was that the actual impetus of you joining what became Sonic Youth.00:19:44Speaker 3: Well, yeah, Dan was writing these are articles about women in rock, and so to be sort of rebellious, I thought, I'm going to write about men in rock. But there was this composer Rhese Chatham who was influenced by but Lama. Yeah, he started with leam, but he applied it to electric guitar. So he and he told Glen Bronca. So they were both doing kind of writing pieces of music with open etuning. So Reese had this piece called Guitar Trio. It was so what they would do is they would take a hit of anal nitrate, this stuff called locker room. It was a popular drug in the West Village among sort of a gay community. They would take a hit of that and then downstroke on the guitar wars and in this rhythm. Anyway, So the first thing I wrote was just a description of that performance. It was very short. It is called Trash, Drugs and Male Bonding. It was for this art magazine called Real Life. Yeah, and then I wrote longer pieces have been involved a group of male artists. Whatever. But in order to do my research, I read books by John Retchie because I couldn't really find any material that described that talked about male sexuality in a certain way. John Retchie books were kind of about the gay bar scene in the West Village and kind of this idea of needing distance for desire. And then yeah, but I did feel like, well, maybe I'll learn more about male bonding if I'm in the band or something. But I met Thurston through Miranda and we started playing music together.00:21:31Speaker 2: Do you think the desire to go that far was learning what it would actually be like by embedding yourself in a real band of boys. Do you think that has anything to do with your dad being a sociologist?00:21:46Speaker 3: Well? I thought maybe so in retrospect, because he did have this book on his bookshelf called Men at Work, and I used to look at it and wonder, what's that about it? And why isn't there a one that's as women in Work or something? But yeah, I don't know. I guess you know in a way that a lot of lyrics on the record are kind of stemmed from a sort of sociological kind of observe interest, and some of it is emotionally reactive.00:22:14Speaker 2: Did you actually ever learn, like, did you ever get the knowledge that you were seeking in the beginning, like what happens between men on stage in bands? Did you have any big takeaways from being in the band for so long?00:22:29Speaker 3: Not really actually, I mean no, nothing that surprised me. But there's a difference between playing bass and electric guitar, I think, and maybe it has to do with this sound you get from electric guitar, but it definitely feels like this more of a sense of power, and you know, just electricity is kind of an interesting thing to use that way, and you can subvert it with your body and move with your body and some of those heroic gestures windmills and things like that. It become staples of you know, arena rock or just like a kind of rock or like they do something to the sound in a way, you know. Yeah, But I think it also is kind of has to do with people playing in bigger and bigger places and then make so the gestures become bigger, more perform more performative or something.00:23:27Speaker 2: But now it sounds like you play with mostly women.00:23:30Speaker 3: Yeah, just kind of happened that way. The first incarnation of the band was there was a male drummer. This guy's serving laws is great. And then after the pandemic, you know, people had other commitments, but it's great, Like I, yeah, I have so much fun playing with them.00:23:49Speaker 2: It sounds like you became more aware of being a girl in the band after Sonic Youth was signed to Geffen. In your book, you talked about how you would intentionally center yourself on stage.00:24:02Speaker 3: I don't really intentionally center myself on stage. That's just the way there's someone of that. Oh yeah, no, I mean there's nothing to do. I think it has to do with separating the two guitars, you know, and having the bass in the middle next to the drums. It's really what it. I just was when I think in my book I was describing being in the center of the stage or something. Believe me, it's not what I would have first shows. Actually, when we first started going to England, you know, in eighty four, maybe that's when people started asking was it like being a girl a band, and why don't you have like a persona you know, like, why aren't you all dressed up like Susie Sue or Lady A Lane or somebody. That's when I first started becoming for self conscious about it. I guess, yeah. But then when we signed to GET and I realized, oh, I have this platform. Now that's a little bigger. It's not like we were really in the mainstream, and so I thought, I have other lots of topics I can write about as a woman or a girl, and yeah, like, so that's her swimsuit issue. Because also right after we signed TOGEP and there was this big me too moment that happened between this big A and R guy and his secretary. This was a ninety ninety or ninety one or something. Oh wow.00:25:22Speaker 1: Yeah.00:25:22Speaker 2: And then shortly after, I guess a year or so after you were signed, you went on tour opening for Neil Young. What did that change for Sonic Youth?00:25:32Speaker 3: Ultimately, I guess that made our name a little bit more known again. You know, people kept asking us what it's like to be in the mainstream, and we really weren't. And it was quite apparent from Neil's audience that we weren't, but I think it did do something and we learned how to play on big stages. But we didn't when we toured with them. We didn't even have guitar texts, like we actually had hired these two friends of ours who played in a band who never guitar TechEd, and we never really got sound checks in the beginning either. So for a while, like every guitar Thirston would pick up would be out of tune, and then he would be frustrated and smash it a lot of times. And then Neil's guitar tech Larry, who was awesome, would like fix it. But it was it was a tough It was a tough tour.00:26:24Speaker 2: Actually, was that that the first time you played really big stadiums And.00:26:29Speaker 3: Yeah, and the only show that wasn't seated was I think the cow Palace and that was great because our fans could come forward, but otherwise it'd be you know, empty seats are like a hippie give me the finker or something.00:26:46Speaker 1: After this quick break, we'll be back with the rest of Kim Gordon and Lea Rose. We're back with the rest of Lea Rose's conversation with Kim Gordon.00:26:59Speaker 2: How do you think growing up in la in the sixties, how do you think that shaped your point of view as an artist.00:27:07Speaker 3: Well, it's more like the school I went to did a lot to shape me. It was the Lab School at UCLA, and it really was a lab school, Like it was a lot of learn by doing. There was like incredible grounds, you know, like neutrad building design and a huge grass area, a huge cement concrete area with a gully that ran through the school up into these kind of maze of in pathways of brushes and bramble. And then there's like an adobe house and a stagecoach and an African hut. So when we were studying early California, we would make die fabric and make shawls and make fringe and grind corn and skin a cow hide, you know, and go to Dana Point and throw it off like the early settlers and stuff like that. And there was like a you know, art program and a music appreciation program and a eurythmics class. I loved it, like it was great. It didn't prepare me for regular school.00:28:14Speaker 2: But what was it like skinning a cow when you were were you.00:28:18Speaker 3: Like well, we didn't actually skin. We didn't skin the caw. We skinned a cow hide. They gave us this hide that we stretched out in the sun and then we Yeah, I didn't participate in that so much.00:28:31Speaker 2: That sounds crazy.00:28:32Speaker 3: It was kind of gross, but uh, it was fun going to Dana point and pretending. There's a lot of pretend stuff.00:28:39Speaker 2: And you wrote in your book that you've always known, even as young as the age of five, that you were an artist.00:28:45Speaker 3: Well, I wanted to be an artist. Yeah, I mean I didn't really. I wasn't very verbal, but I was good with my hands, and I just didn't feel confident articulating such because my older brother he was very verbal and articulate, but he also was mean, so he would make fun of whatever I said and call me stupid. And I was afraid of making a mistake, you know. So it was mostly like verbal mistake, you know, like I didn't have a problem with I was making something, you know.00:29:20Speaker 2: Yeah, I was curious when you became a mom. After hearing about your childhood, you said that you were on your own a lot as a child. When you became a mom, what type of mom were you? Number One? Were you like an anxious mom. Were you sort of hands off? And how was your parenting style different than how you were raised.00:29:41Speaker 3: I was anxious for sure, And I read books, you know, if I got stuck with some issue or something, I would read a book. Yeah, And my mother always said that I was really independent, So that's you know why she she encouraged that. You know, Like, so I I did that, you know, I mean, would let Coco, you know, I wouldn't. I would encourage her to play on her own or you know, but I tried to to be more present and interactive with her, you know, as far as telling her how I felt, Yeah, just talking to her more.00:30:18Speaker 2: You know, you talked about in your book. You talked about when your family moved to Hong Kong when you were a young teenager, and the first day you were there, you just were sort of like standing there and said something like, how am I possibly going to survive here?00:30:36Speaker 3: Yeah?00:30:36Speaker 2: And I was curious if there's ever been another time in your life where you've had a similar reaction to like, how am I going to get through this?00:30:45Speaker 3: I mean that was definitely it was just such a culture shock, you know. It was for some really being around property and just just so hot and noisy, and yeah, I didn't see anything I recognized. I didn't see any popular culture. You know, it was way before globalization, and I don't know, I guess you know. When my marriage broke up, that was difficult, you know, like, am I going to get through this? Yeah, it's just overwhelming. Yeah. When I first moved to New York, that was kind of tough too, like not having a lot of money, and I think I got like some accident settlement which helped me have enough money to get an apartment. But before that, it was every two months I was subletting and moving around, and I never had a backup plan. I didn't have like I purposely never learned to type. I love that I want to be a secretary, and I was like, what an idiot I was. Yeah, somehow I just never really doubted that I would just end up okay.00:31:49Speaker 2: So you never had a point in life where you're like, Okay, I'm ditching this and I'm just going to go, like get a nine to five Yeah.00:31:58Speaker 3: Never, I mean I tried when I lived in LA At one point I worked as a custom framer, and that was really just hard having a nine to five child, I get it. I guess sick a lot.00:32:11Speaker 2: If you're in a situation like that and you're getting sick a lot, do you look at it like, oh, this is my body telling me I'm doing the wrong thing.00:32:18Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.00:32:19Speaker 2: In your book, you talked about when you were first living in New York City and people, maybe it was just one person would call you a hippie and it would just like drive you crazy.00:32:31Speaker 3: Oh well that was my friend Dan. Oh No. What he did is he told the landlord, this Belgian man who he called himself a captive landlord, because he couldn't raise the rent. You know, a rent was incredibly cheap, It's like one hundred and seventy five dollars a month side. But he told him that I was a hippie and that I might at people crashing at my apartment. Why Dan said that, I don't know.00:32:59Speaker 2: That's the worst thing to say to a landlord.00:33:01Speaker 3: Yeah. He would say things, really unfiltered things sometimes.00:33:06Speaker 2: Did you feel like in those early years when you were in New York that you had to sort of shut off your la neus. Did you feel different than the people you were meeting in the scene you were in kind of I mean like Reese, this same composer who was actually the music director of the Kitchen at this time.00:33:27Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd have these conversations with him and he would say, you're You're always going to be look middle class, you know. Yeah, I definitely didn't feel very New York in the white dressed or anything.00:33:40Speaker 2: Did you find yourself changing the way that you looked.00:33:43Speaker 3: Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, like, uh, well I didn't have contexts, and I had glasses, and I got these flip up sunglasses that I would wear that an attempt to feel cooler or something disguise the glasses. But I couldn't afford contexts. It's so poor.00:34:02Speaker 2: So after you were in New York and you started to become more established and no more people in the art scene. After working at gallery and started making art yourself, you were meeting a lot of I guess the art scene in New York City in the eighties, that's when things got really commercial and artists were blowing up, and.00:34:22Speaker 3: Yeah, it was beginning. Yeah, yeah, painting was becoming big.00:34:27Speaker 2: With all the successful artists that you've known, successful musicians you've known. Is there something or a set of things that you can point to that leads to somebody being successful.00:34:43Speaker 3: I don't know, I you know, honestly, I can't answer that question. I think that you just, you know, have to really want something, and so you don't really give up or you're just kind of, you know, follow the thread. If you can find a thread, that's all you need, and maybe you just follow it.00:35:02Speaker 2: You described your early days there, or at least yourself, like you were sort of unorganized and you felt like you were a mess.00:35:09Speaker 3: Yeah.00:35:10Speaker 2: Do you still feel like that now or was that just that point in your life.00:35:16Speaker 3: I think it was more at that point in my life. I mean, I'm still not a very organized person, but it doesn't bother me. I mean, also I come a manager house, so that helps.00:35:28Speaker 1: I don't know.00:35:28Speaker 3: It's just hard when you feel like an outsider to a community, you know, and the art community is probably the roughest. And then I also felt kind of like an outsider to the music scene in a way because I was a visual artist and I don't know, like I liked playing music, but I didn't feel like I guess I felt like middle class, you know, I felt I just felt supremely uncool. I felt, you know, like you see you around people like wearing all black who look incredibly chic, even though black as a color that doesn't show dirt and it can be the cheapest clothes in the world, but you know, at night in a club or yeah, every once else seemed much cooler, you know, and stylized in their look, and I wasn't. It wasn't like that.00:36:20Speaker 2: At that point. Were you looking at people and trying to figure out how you would dress, Like would you take things from people you would see or was that not even something you were interested in.00:36:30Speaker 3: I just didn't feel like I could do that all black thing at that time. Like I just felt like, yeah, this is not me or that's too easy, you know, Like I had, like I bought a pair of these pink like pat and leather and swayed knee boots at uh nine to nine records for ten dollars, you know, so I would wear those with you know, whatever pants I was wearing at the time or something, or like it would I have one thing that I kind of thought was sort of cool, but I was kind of hopeless that the whole dressing thing.00:37:03Speaker 2: That sounds bold though at least you were taking chances.00:37:06Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so I think I was like stabbing in the dark.00:37:12Speaker 2: Yeah, outside of music, what else are you working on?00:37:16Speaker 3: Not too much? I mean, I you know, doing some work in my studio or painting, but I really have been pretty caught up with this and memorizing lyrics, so it's hard to like change heads. So yeah, I was a small book coming out that about my brother. It's more of like an art book that Calm Press is putting out in March or April. It'll be out and it's just kind of a you know, he died last year and sort of a celebration.00:37:44Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know he died.00:37:45Speaker 3: Yeah, he was like us. He was a schizophrenic and so he never really got to fulfill his potential in any way. And so I often, you know, I've been fun. Writing is a good way to make something positive out of something and just think about you know. I can't think sometimes unless i'm writing.00:38:02Speaker 2: So yeah, the writing in your memoir Girl in the Band was great. I listened to the audiobook version, which I recommend because you can hear you tell your story and your own words.00:38:15Speaker 3: Oh NICs.00:38:16Speaker 2: But yeah, the writing was very direct and poetic. I really enjoyed it and was that hard for you to write.00:38:25Speaker 3: It was hard to write, and because I also was like, well, it wasn't my idea to begin with it. I think after the success of Patti Smith's book, people were looking around, like who else would be good? And then I was when I was trying to write, It's like, I don't really want to write about myself. So I tried to make it like a portrait of la in the sixties, seventies in New York in the eighties nineties. Yeah, and like halfway through, I thought, oh, these should be essays. That would have been a better, more enjoyable form, and so I decided the way to write about the band would just be to pick songs that I sang and then write things around them, kind of more an essay form.00:39:05Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought it was really excellent. Was it hard to get so deeply personal in the book?00:39:11Speaker 3: Of course it was, But I felt like I have to include this. I don't want the book called book to be about this breakup, but it's part of my story, and so I have to. It makes sense to put it in.00:39:25Speaker 1: You know.00:39:25Speaker 3: The hardest thing was achieving the right tone for it. And you know, I mean just tons of stuff I got to put in but just you know, the sort of purpose. Actually, one of the hardest things about writing it was just figuring out how to explain the art world and write about people that because you know, memoirs are such a popular culturist thing that writing about artists like is it going to be boring or you know, like people aren't going to know who anyone is? And then but then writing about people who are known sounds kind of name droppy, you know, like Sophia Coppola or you know, Spike John's or something like that.00:40:08Speaker 2: But you know, are the Kurt Cobaine sections?00:40:12Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean Kurt was more intertwined in things. But anyway, they're just people who I knew at this certain point in their life, you know.00:40:22Speaker 2: Yeah.00:40:22Speaker 3: Anyway, so that was kind of that was hard figuring out how to write about that.00:40:27Speaker 2: Yeah, I imagine that was a hard press run after that, because then you get questions about all the personal stuff, right.00:40:35Speaker 3: I remember being on Terry Grosse's show and she was pushing me to talk more about it, and I kind of said, I think I already said everything I want to say about it in the book. Yeah, And she didn't like that. At all because she likes to dig, you know people that dig, and I don't know, she kind of like closed up after that.00:40:57Speaker 2: Oh she got pissed off.00:41:00Speaker 3: I think she did. Yeah.00:41:01Speaker 2: I always like to ask people what they're listening to, new music, old music, whatever it is, what you're liking.00:41:08Speaker 3: Well, Bill Mason, new record app that I like, it's on Drag City. I just watched this really cool movie actually called The Black Power Mixtape.00:41:19Speaker 2: Oh I've heard of that.00:41:20Speaker 3: Yeah, it's based on footage that this these Swedish journalists shot from I think sixty one to seventy five or something like, are sixty seven to seventy five interviewing a lot of you know, Soukley Carmichael and a lot of the people involved. But also like the footage of Harlem at that time is so cool. But this we'd just saying is like it things seem different in a way, just you know, the wealth gap and oh yeah, there's a scene where these Swedish tourists are going through Harlem and the guys explaining to him in Swedish like don't get out here and just talking about like the drug use and you know, in the meantime, like US government is like fed drugs into the Ikta and you know, propagated this credible, horrible situation. And anyway, it was fascinating.00:42:19Speaker 2: Oh, I'll check that out.00:42:21Speaker 3: It has a music contemporary music in it and interviews with over voiceovers with different musicians. It's really cool cool.00:42:31Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate you coming on and talk about the new album and oh.00:42:36Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having me.00:42:40Speaker 1: Thanks to Kim Gordon for talking about her career and her new album, The Collective. You can hear it along with our other favorite Kim Gordon and Sonic Youth songs on a playlist at Broken Record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where we can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben tollinany. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.