{"id":106125,"date":"2025-08-29T19:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T19:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/106125\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T19:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T19:48:09","slug":"thurston-moore-talks-velvet-underground-sonic-youth-olivia-rodrigo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/106125\/","title":{"rendered":"Thurston Moore Talks Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, Olivia Rodrigo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs hard as it is to believe, Sonic Youth<\/a> played their final show 14 years ago this fall, instigated by the breakup of co-founders Thurston Moore<\/a> and Kim Gordon. In the years since, they\u2019ve each continued working on many fronts: Gordon was nominated for a Grammy this year for her solo album The Collective<\/a>, while Moore has made numerous solo albums of his own, started an indie label called Daydream Library Series<\/a> with wife Eva Prinz, and published a memoir, Sonic Life.<\/p>\n

\n\tLate last year, Moore had a brief, surprise onstage reunion with former Sonic Youth bandmates Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley at the New York club the Stone, playing an hour of improvised freeform music that harked back to the band\u2019s heyday. But Moore continues to move on: He\u2019s just taped an interview for Rick Rubin\u2019s podcast, and he\u2019s working on his first novel \u2014 set in early Eighties New York, with what he calls \u201ccharacters and incidents I certainly felt like I could write about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn news that shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone, Moore is also paying tribute to the Velvet Underground<\/a>. Out today is a newly recorded version of the band\u2019s \u201cTemptation Inside Your Heart\u201d (an outtake first released on the VU collection), with Moore joined by his current band (bassist Deb Googe, drummer Jem Doulton, and guitarist James Sedwards) and electronics whiz Jon Leidecker. Hopping on a Zoom from his home in London, Moore talks about that Velvets cover and his own past, present, and rock & roll future.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re releasing this version of \u201cTemptation Inside Your Heart\u201d pegged to what would have been the late Sterling Morrison\u2019s 83rd birthday. What does that milestone represent to you?
My wife, Eva, and I published a book, Linger On, a collection of interviews with the Velvet Underground by the Spanish journalist\u00a0Ignacio\u00a0Juli\u00e0 [through Moore and Prinz\u2019s book company, Ecstatic Peace Library]. It brought me back into thinking a lot about the Velvets. I always felt Sonic Youth was very much an island in the scene. I liked the idea of community, but also felt we kind of stood apart in some ways. And looking at the Velvet Underground, they were such a model for a band that was completely singular and genuine in the world of rock music.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tI always thought Sterling was the most mysterious member of the Velvet Underground, and I wanted to bring attention to his birthday. We know a lot about Lou. We know a lot about Nico. We know a lot about John Cale. Mo Tucker has always had social media presence. They\u2019ve all told their stories in many ways. But Sterling doesn\u2019t get as much ink as everybody else in the group. He never made a solo record. Maybe he passed away too young before he could fathom such a thing. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI met him once at the old Knitting Factory [in New York]. He was a very sweet guy. I would have liked to have gotten to know him. Listening to the Velvet Underground records, a lot of them are Lou, certainly, but Sterling\u2019s concepts on guitar and his rhythms and melodies move the songs away from the middle ground Lou is establishing as a songwriter. Sterling was the one who brought this really artful rock & roll aesthetic into those Velvet Underground songs.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf all the songs, what led you to pick \u201cTemptation Inside Your Heart,\u201d an outtake released after the band had broken up?
There\u2019s a certain beatific joyfulness in that song. It\u2019s obviously a bit of a throwaway song happening in the session, with Lou sort of talking through it and asking funny asides and talking to himself back and forth. I don\u2019t make those funny asides. But when he sings \u201cI know where the evil lies inside of your heart,\u201d he\u2019s singing in such a sweet, crooning way. There\u2019s no nihilist energy in the song. The only nihilism is in the lyrics. It\u2019s about this shared feeling of insecurity that everybody has in their relationships to each other.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd it has a good riff.
It\u2019s a driving riff, and then it has that great breakdown with the background vocals. Instead of doing background vocals on my version, I decided to replicate the background vocals on my guitar.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tSo you\u2019re only releasing one song? No B side?
We were talking about this the other day. More people are buying streams. The idea of an A side or B side, or even a sequenced album, has become secondary, if not tertiary, to the relationship between the artist and the consumer. You tend to do more business song by song. When I put out my last record, Flow Critical Lucidity<\/a>, I noticed there were people who purchased the album proper as the way I sequenced it, but more people will cherry-pick it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThanks to Spotify and other services, you can literally see which songs are popular and which aren\u2019t.
Yeah, you can sort of see what\u2019s going on. I don\u2019t look at that stuff so much. I experience it myself when I\u2019m investigating certain artists and look at their albums online and see which tracks on an album are more popular. It\u2019s interesting. Even if it\u2019s an album like Nantucket Sleighride by Mountain, you can sort of see that, like, \u201cThe Animal Trainer and the Road\u201d is the big seller [laughs]. That\u2019s a great song, but that whole album is quite good. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhich Sonic Youth song is the most popular in that regard?
I have not looked. That\u2019s too frightening for me to even, like, think about. [Ed. Note: Spotify figures show that 1988\u2019s \u201cTeen Age Riot\u201d wins with 87 million streams, followed by 2006\u2019s \u201cIncinerate\u201d with 60 million, their version of \u201cSuperstar\u201d from a 1994 Carpenters tribute album with 58 million, and 1990\u2019s \u201cKool Thing\u201d with 57 million.] <\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking of Sonic Youth, how did your live reunion with Ranaldo and Shelley last December come about?
That was about as much of a reunion as us having dinner together or something. It was a gig I had at the Stone, and I initially asked Lee to do a guitar duo. We\u2019ve done this before in different places, and I thought it would be cool to ask Steve to play, because he\u2019s in town, and he plays drums. And I thought that would be cool. So that\u2019s all it was. But I did realize it would become a bit of a of a story, since Sonic Youth doesn\u2019t exist anymore and the fact that three of the five members [of the band\u2019s last incarnation] were together on \u2026 well, it wasn\u2019t even a stage. We were together on the floor of the Stone. We like to play improvised music, and that was just completely free improvisation.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou didn\u2019t do any \u201chits,\u201d for sure.
Not at all. It was advertised as just a duo with me and Lee. So when people showed up and then the three of us were there, it became a bit of a buzz. And I understand that. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDid you feel the weight of any expectations?
No. Nobody was. It\u2019s a small room. It only holds, like, 60 people or something, and it was already sold out. Nobody had any preconception of what was going on. Nobody showed up there whispering, \u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen?\u201d Afterwards, people started sharing it on social media, and it became a bit of a story, as I understand. I figured that\u2019s what would happen.<\/p>\n

\n\tKim wasn\u2019t there, obviously.
She wasn\u2019t around [laughs]. I don\u2019t think she\u2019d be that interested anyway. But my rapport with Steve and Lee, as far as playing in the context of free improvisation, is already pretty established.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat did it make you miss about the band? \u00a0
I didn\u2019t think about that. I don\u2019t, like, miss things. I miss the future. I think about things I really want to do. And as far as music is concerned, reformation doesn\u2019t really come into it so much. We had a solid career of 30-plus years, far longer than most bands have had. And the legacy of the recordings stands on its own. I don\u2019t feel like there\u2019s anything left unsaid as far as what we were doing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sound of the four, or sometimes five, of you made was unique.
Very much so. But we\u2019re all kind of long in the tooth now. I don\u2019t know if that can ever be recaptured. And I don\u2019t like the whole \u201cre\u201d thing, you know, reforming.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, I asked Kim what it would take for her to be interested in a Sonic Youth reunion, and she said<\/a>, \u201cI don\u2019t know. It would never be as good as it was.\u201d
[Nods.] I find bands that get back together to be just an exercise. A lot of the time it\u2019s less to do with the band and has more to do with the brand. Unless it\u2019s the OG members, you know, but even, a lot of the aspects of bands that are so important is their youth. And to replicate that is a little bit like a grandmother in a mini-dress, which I don\u2019t want to be. I don\u2019t want to see guys in their seventies reform their bands from when they were in their twenties, and they still have the same haircut when they were in their twenties.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe band has regularly been approached about one-shot reunions, right?
I get asked every day. We all do. It\u2019s a constant thing. I like it because I\u2019m glad we had such an effect and left such a mark. It\u2019s almost otherworldly, in a way, because I\u2019m so proud of it, and it\u2019s such a big part of my life experience. But it\u2019s very encapsulated. It has a great beginning and middle and end.<\/p>\n

\n\tA pretty dramatic end, actually.
[Shrugs.] You know \u2026 I think The Eternal was a really fine final statement. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCan you see you and Kim back onstage together, even just once?
I know that\u2019s a fantasy. I\u2019m always actually very resistant to such fantasies, in a way.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m also wondering what you make of pop artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan headlining festivals like Lollapalooza, which bands like Sonic Youth once did.
With rock & roll bands, it\u2019s all about the interaction a group has in their kind of family onstage. In some ways, this is the advent of the single pop star surrounded by production, whether it\u2019s dancers and lights and films and stage sets. It\u2019s become very sort of Disneyfied, in a way, and it caters to mass popularity in a way Disneyland does. It crosses over from the core rock & roll audience that would see Led Zeppelin or Pearl Jam to a concert that welcomes people who aren\u2019t that invested in rock music at all, but are invested in entertainment as a broader kind of concept. It has a broader appeal than, say, the standardized rock band. There are still rock bands, but they\u2019re not just playing Lollapalooza. They\u2019re not the success stories they once were.<\/p>\n

\n\tI think all of those musicians are completely credible. Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan are great artists. I just went to see Lana Del Rey, and it was kind of amazing. There was a stage set of a farmhouse, and she was walking in and around it and had dancers everywhere, and she was using AI video. It was something to see. I liked it. I like her music, and I like what she\u2019s up to aesthetically. But at the same time, my predilection is to hear music in a much more intimate setting. I like seeing the interaction between musicians that\u2019s very organic. You know, a musician playing guitar that\u2019s plugged into an amp.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s still a demographic of young people interested in experimental rock music and anything that comes out of punk culture. It\u2019s not Olivia Rodrigo huge.\u00a0But that was never the intention of being in a band anyway, to be on such a massive scale. To me, it was always cooler to have a modest kind of existence in that respect. The big business of rock & roll was a bit of a conflict for somebody like Kurt [Cobain] to all of a sudden be in a band that was so massive. He dealt with it in his own way, and then he didn\u2019t deal with it in his own way.<\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t know if anyone worries about \u201cselling out\u201d anymore the way he did.
Yeah, it doesn\u2019t really matter anymore. But I would never say that Olivia Rodrigo or Chappell Roan are selling out, because what they\u2019re doing is really smart. Chappell Roan\u2019s promotion of human rights and the LGBTQ community is massive. That\u2019s amazing for her to be able to have that voice, to that many people, or for Olivia Rodrigo to talk about literature on her social media and say put your phones down and start reading a book. It\u2019s not just crass entertainment. More power to them. It\u2019s not really my kind of music. And I certainly don\u2019t strive for that kind of mass acceptance at all. I know it would be great for my pocketbook, but other than that \u2026<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tKim achieved a certain level of recognition with a Grammy nomination \u2014 the first for anyone in Sonic Youth \u2014 for her latest album.
It\u2019s wonderful. That\u2019s nothing but good news. I certainly don\u2019t look down my nose at any of that. It\u2019s great to be rewarded and to have people recognize you on any level. I would never denigrate that at all. When I would see Johnny Rotten refusing to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by writing an acerbic letter, it\u2019s just completely disingenuous. We\u2019re on this planet for such a short time. Why don\u2019t we just embrace each other and not be so self-righteous?<\/p>\n

\n\tDo you ever wonder if Sonic Youth will get inducted into that Hall of Fame?
It\u2019s not something I ever think about. I feel like we already exist in the Hall of Fame. Maybe not that one. Is there a Noise Rock Hall of Fame? \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As hard as it is to believe, Sonic Youth played their final show 14 years ago this fall,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341,60531,60532,60533],"class_list":{"0":"post-106125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-sonic-youth","13":"tag-the-velvet-underground","14":"tag-thurston-moore"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}