!!!Underocver Sonic Youth Interview

[Rock On Multimedia]

Sonic Youth - Lee Ranaldo
by Paul Cashmere, Undercover CD-RoM Music Mag

The 90’s wasn’t the decade the world was meant to notice Sonic Youth. As a band who formed in New York in 1981, their number at the deli of stardom should have been called a decade ago. Seldom does the average band stay in cue for the spotlight for such a long period of time without the obligatory stroking of the ego, but then again Sonic Youth are know ordinary band.

They defy convention, which probably accounts for the longevity. It’s a better world to live in knowing their are some bands out their that really do it for the art.

Sonic Youth were discovered by the masses as a result of the influence they have had on newer contemporary bands more so than their labels own marketing ploy. Would Kurt Cobain, for instance, have ever developed the riff to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had the foundations of grunge not been first laid by bands like Sonic Youth through the 80’s. Sonic Youth grew into today’s mindset much like the kid who gets his big brothers hand me downs. Their baggy image in the 80’s fits like a pair of 501’s in the mid

Sonic Youth are now in the interesting position of influencing today while being influenced by yesterday. If Neil Young is the Grandfather of Grunge, does that make Sonic Youth one of his siblings. Guitarist Lee Ranaldo finds the resurrection of Young today quire amusing "as far as we’re concerned, Neil has never gone away. For us, it wasn’t so much of a revival, we’ve always been into his work. It just worked out early on when he was plugging back in to what was happening for us to work with him. I rea

The crossroads where Young, Sonic Youth and bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana have met is soundtracked with feedback and harmonics. It’s a sound that takes top priority at a Sonic Youth gig. Watching the crowd absorb the melody of a song like "The Diamond Sea" with it’s 4 minute conventional structure followed 16 minutes of feedback is a bizarre thrill for those already initiated to the joy of Sonic Youth.

Following a decade and a half of history, it’s impressive to see perfectly choreographed mayhem. Scoring the following gig at Summersalt for any band must have been decided by the short straw. Sonic Youth live is not a listening exercise, more so an absorbing experience.

The Neil Young/ Sonic Youth comparisons don’t end with just the live performance. It was no wonder that Young chose them to open for him on his 1990 tour. Both are extremely prolific when it comes to studio work. Sonic Youth have delivered a new studio album every year, along with solo works, outside projects and babies, but Lee doesn’t find the workload daunting. " Pretty much everybody was doing a bunch of different things. Thurston and Kim had the baby, so we all had pretty much a year that we were go

The spotlight externally falls on the husband and wife team of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. Their sudden detour into parenthood had a minimal effect on the consistent output of Sonic Youth. In fact, it led to a solo album this year from Moore. While he was doing his own thing, Lee was punching knobs for Sydney’s You Am I, producing their number one effort "Hi Fi Way". "I haven’t got any more production projects though. The last You Am I thing was the last thing I’ve done".

The reconstruction for the sessions of their latest album "Washing Machine" led the band away from their beloved New York City for the first time. Regrouping to record in Memphis was a whole new experience for them " Memphis is a great city and we wanted to get away from New York to escape phone calls and what not, all the interruptions. We wrote all the stuff in New York before we left, so the music was pretty much done before we went down there. Memphis is pretty laid back, so steeped in old music cul

However, Memphis did give the band the chance to see another side of life. "the coolest thing we did was we went to this old juke joint in Hollysprings, Mississippi which is about 45 minutes out of Memphis. Sunday nights after midnight is when it happens. You drive down these little dirt roads and you pull up on the side of the road, there’s this little shack. Inside there’s these old guys playing blues music and people are dancing and they’re selling moonshine corn liquor in the back and Budweisers from

’95 became the year of the festival for Sonic Youth, with the highlight, top billing at Lollapalooza and ending up in Australia with Summersalt. It will be interesting to track Sonic Youth through the remainder of the decade. It’s unlikely their pictures will ever take up pride of place on your bedroom wall, but something tells me the best is yet to come for Sonic Youth.

You can check out Sonic Youth, interactive in Undercover, the world’s first music magazine on CD-ROM.

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Paul Cashmere is Director, Editorial and Development for Undercover