Warning, This Won't Bring You Any Closer To The Music - Kim Gordon

Writer: Jefferson Hack
Photos: Corinne Day

As bass player and co-conspirator in Sonic Youth she has continually placed her music before her sexual persona, ripping out the boundaries in the male-orientated world of rock. As the axe and sublime vocal grind in the Free Kitten jazz/punk jam, she relentlessly inscribes the issue of gender into short, sharp, subversive songs. As the protagonist in female clothing line X-Girl she plays a tight-fit counterpart to the boy-dominated baggy T-shirt scene. And personally, as the mother to Coco and wife of Sonic Youth's founder and front man, Thurston Moore, Kim has a partnership that, unlike so many others, manages to coexist with the pressures of rock celebrity.

Forget anything you may already know about Kim Gordon. She's criticized as the been-there-seen-it all grandmother of punk rock and lauded as a pro-feminine icon, the rock-queen of cool.

When it comes to her, the discourse of rock is filled with more than the usual amount of bull-shit, but that's what happens when you make challenging music; when you do your own thing and you can't be categorized and lumped into a scene.

Musically, Sonic Youth stand out in a cultural climate that has embraced the commercialization of punk rock. Their passion for self-expression means they never give themselves the chance to sell out. Sonic Youth progressed from the early '80s New York, 'no wave' scene to become catalysts and exponents of the '90s American 'independent' genre. Their dissonant, alternately tuned, lo-fi approach to recording and an incredible appetite for touring made their signing in 1990 with 'complete creative control' to rock giants Geffen inevitable. After ten albums they had finally outgrown the underground and were more prepared than any other band to try and exploit the irony of working within the mainstream; pushing the limits of rock to an experimental and creative high with the support of a major label. Since then Goo, Dirty and Experimental Jet Set Trash And No Star have seen them repeatedly throw people's expectations. Their influence, collaboration and support saw bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam go supernova around them, saw riot girl blow up and adopt Kim as an illustrious prototype yet all the time Sonic Youth circumvented success, avoiding fame in an all-consuming musical culture that, as they have seen first-hand, destroys anything creative with an uncontrollable passion.

Kim is in London, after a week-long tour of the UK. She has swapped her Sonic bass for the guitar in side project Free Kitten which she fronts alongside provocatrice Julie Cafritz (ex Pussy Galore), accompanied by Yoshimi of The Boredoms on free-form drums and Mark Ibold of Pavement on jazz-tilted bass.

In a post-gig atmosphere of calm Kim sits, unabashed, backstage. Her X-Girl T-shirt is lifted, exposing her left breast. Coco suckles her, supported in the safety of her mother's guitar arm.

Kim's spare hand casually holds Coco's dummy like a plectrum. Her onstage image contrasts sharply to that of her as a mother: Kim's low-slung, cock-rock, guitar pose never once hints at this femininity. Rockboys always wanted to be women ever since Elvis, but for Kim, when she's performing, "it's not important that I'm a woman it's just important that I want to rock."

Dazed & Confused: The pressure that you have influence in what you say and do, is that something you find difficult to handle? I mean some people regard you as a female icon.

Kim Gordon: I guess I find it hard to take seriously. I don't feel like a female icon! I don't really pay attention to it to be honest. I hope I have encouraged people to feel like they can do whatever they want to do, and that is probably the most positive thing, but at the same time...

D&C: You're not consciously aware of it...

KG: Right. Unless I see some girl who's totally miming my moves on stage.

D&C: Can't you relate it to women you admire?

KG: I guess I admired Patti Smith but I've never seen her live. And Anita Pallenberg, I've always admired her because she's a cool person much in the way that Courtney Love is cool, although she's not the most positive role model, but that's because I know her. I mean, young girls don't care if you do drugs. If they think you're cool it doesn't matter. It's all part of the whole pop rock star thing. I don't think it's going to make girls want to take drugs, maybe it'll just motivate them to play music because it's exciting.

But I've always had male heroes. I was always looking at the male thing because there really weren't any women doing what I was doing. Seeing the power of the electric guitar was really exciting and also I was fascinated with male bonding. I am a voyeur.

D&C: You've got the traditional male rock guitar pose.

KG: I've always been a tomboy. When people talk to me about female sexuality in rock I always feel like, well, you really have to find out about male sexuality in rock first.

D&C: Elvis was a woman?

KG: Well that's what rock has always been about, ever since Little Richard to Mick Jagger.

For me it's always been about a place where men can be vulnerable and actually sing to other men without it being thought of as weird and just being emotional...

D&C: Why then is gender such an issue when it's reverted to women?

KG: Now women have to do it.

D&C: It's taken them a long time.

KG: I really think that Madonna hasn't been given enough due as far as her influence in the '80s. If I could think of one icon or personality as the most influential person in the '80s it would be Madonna. She really brought out the issue of female sexuality as a persona in music to the extent that it's no longer possible for music writers to write about women's music without addressing the gender issue, whether it's Liz Phair, PJ Harvey or Courtney Love. Besides the fact that her music isn't very interesting any more, as far as being an influence she was culturally an influence, and you see it in the writers because they only analyze music in terms of their female persona and the music is secondary.

People like Liz Phair because they're like the girl next door and that is the sexuality she is present-ing. But because we are all different we're able to make music continually interesting. There is nothing I hate more than a writer who puts down one girl for another.

D&C: One sound shouldn't represent a whole gender in the same way that it doesn't in male rock.

KG: Although it's getting harder and harder to see the difference

D&C: In boy bands?

KG: Yeah, definitely. I used a joke about calling Lou Barlow (Sebadoh) 'the new man', because he would talk about how vulnerable he is, and the way Steven from Pavement sings, high like a girl at times, you can feel his repression coming out; to some extent I think Thurston started that.

D&C: Do you think you will ever back away from gender politics as an issue in your writing.

KG: Well, I'm a woman. And there have been so many songs written about things that have to do with being a man and so there's a lot of room to write about things that I can relate to.

D&C: You've achieved a lot in your musical history. There's been the different spin-off projects as well as Sonic Youth. What's been your mission, your personal drive?

KG: I started off as a visual artist, but I never really felt comfortable in that world because it's so snobby and elite and it intimidated me, but I'm still a visually-orientated person. With music I just got drawn in because of the emotionality in it.

And when I moved to New York, I was more excited about the music that was being done at the time, by people like DNA and Teenage Jesus and Glen Branca. It was much more radical than LA, punk rock.

D&C: It was a pretty small scene.

KG: It wasn't popular at all, but it was very hap-pening. I actually saw the tail end of it. I was in a band at art school, and I always had boyfriends that were in bands.

D&C: Were they always the guitarists?

KG: My first boyfriend was a drummer, when I was 13.

D&C: Drummers are notoriously unreliable as a rock’n’roll KM: Actually they come in different stereotypes.

They are either prima donnas, or they're flaky and play in three bands or they're totally the rock, and the most practical down-to-earth person.

D&C: I was sort of asking about the drive that keeps you going, rather than how you got into the music…

KG: Right, I know... I'm trying to avoid that.

Actually I'm trying to work out what it is.

D&C: Have there been periods when you've done nothing?

KG: Not really.

D&C: Are you afraid of being bored, not wanting to do nothing?

KG: I guess I'm one of these people that gets their self-esteem from doing something. I really wish I could just do nothing, cause I am sort of lazy in a way, but I only really feel good when I'm doing things. I don't really care about it once it's done, it's just the whole process of doing it. I really want people to like what I do, but at the same time I feel uncomfortable when they like it.

D&C: Well if nobody liked it, you probably wouldn’t do it.

KG: Sure, I’d probably slit my wrists or something. (laughs)

D&C: You've always been critical of stardom.

But so many people and bands aspire to being famous, yet they all want credibility with their success.

KG: Sonic Youth are not a massively successful record-selling band. That is the trade-off.

Nirvana were an exception, but at the same time I never really believed that Kurt would be able to deal with it. On the one hand he was saying, '1 want to sell a million records,' but I think he liked having money. I don't think he liked the fame so much.

D&C: So how rich has music made you?

KG: We live comfortably but we're not rich. I like working with limitations, I don't like the idea of going into an empty room and wanking off on the guitar and saying that's the music. I have a rough idea of what a pop song is and it is a lot more stretched-out than most people's.

D&C: Would you say you have more of an art approach rather than a lifestyle approach to making music?

KG: I'm not really trying to be arty or anything, it’s just my own expression.

D&C: Because it is experimental and dissonant, it sounds like it's produced by young, drug-influenced people whose lifestyles are very different to your own...

KG: When you grow older maybe you don't indulge in drugs or whatever but you have that experience, you're not a different person. I freak out when I look at Coco because I don't feel like the image of a mum. When I listen to the Yardbirds or early recordings of the Stones, to me that music is all weird and fractured and very rhythmic and to me that was really abstract music. It's kind of taking elements of that and being extreme.

D&C: So how does being 40 and being called hip make you feel?

KG: Kind of meaningless, because when you have a baby or you are close to someone who dies you realize that it's really about reality, it's not about being hip or cool; you start operating on a different level.

D&C: With motherhood, will your attention to other projects and Sonic Youth diminish?

KG: To some extent you have to decide what your priorities are within each project, and then trust other people to do other stuff.

D&C: But if you want something done properly you've got to do it yourself?

KG: I learnt to do that with Sonic Youth, not fight on every issue, it wears you out. You have to decide what is important to you in what situations. Recording, writing, and videos and pictures are important...

D&C: You've co-directed a few Sonic Youth videos.

KG: Videos are really frustrating because the end result is that they are just on MTV or not even played on MTV! I guess I don't really trust that many people visually, but every director I've worked with has been great - we’ve been really lucky. Tamara Davis we've worked with a lot.

D&C: You're often bunched together with a lot of other high-powered female friends like Tamara Davis, who’s married to Mike D. This women in the music industry group, is it true?

KG: The press makes it all sound like everyone is really big friends, but it's not true. Tamara is a good friend of mine, I like Kim Deal, I feel a kindred with her, but we don't really talk that much. Courtney I'm not really friends with.

D&C: Was there a friendship at one point?

KG: She wanted me to produce (Pretty On The Inside) the record... the term 'friend', I treat with great meaning. I mean, you can only be a friend with someone who is capable of having a friendship where they interact with you. Let's just leave it at that.

D&C: OK. So what makes you happy?

KG: Doing a really good gig. Having the satisfaction of doing a really good show.

D&C: Do you listen to Sonic Youth records at home?

KG: No, never.

D&C: When was the last time?

KG: We were remastering them recently because Geffen is reissuing them and it was the first time I could listen to them and not cringe, thinking they’re all flawed.

D&C: And what did you think?

KG: They hold up pretty well. It's kind of interesting listening to it, given the kind of music people make now.

D&C: Why?

KG: Because it fits right in, people talk about lo-fi and all our records were lo-fi up until Goo, they were all so-called lo-fi, although it's a ridiculous word.

D&C: They sound good.

KG: We just made records that we thought sounded good, and most of the people who make lo-fi records think they sound good too. It's weird when I'm out and I hear Sonic Youth, sometimes it takes me a while to work out that it is. It can be so familiar.

D&C: Have you read The Sonic Youth Story, the new book by Alex Foege?

KG: It's OK. It's very dry. Alex's a really nice guy so l don't want to put him down.

D&C: Do you agree with him that Kurt's death signifies the end of an era?

KG: To me it's sort of arbitrary to say what is an end of an era. It's just the continuing of an era of the mainstream exploiting punk rock. There was Nirvana and now there's Green Day.

D&C: So you don't think it's to do with a cultural shift in taste? More of the same old thing?

KG: I don't think it has anything to do with us, as much as grunge had anything to do with us.

We were never a grunge band; to me grunge was like heavy rock or something. I think what Alec was trying to say is that we have our own niche that we've worked out and we never really fit into any category of music and I don't think that has changed.

D&C: Tell me about the last dream you had.

KG: I've had really weird dreams since Coco was born. Extremely vivid, yet sort of crazy dreams. The last one I remember is an embarrassing dream about Keanu Reeves.

D&C: What was embarrassing about it?

KG: I think we were hanging out in West LA and I turned round and said 'I really feel like kissing you’, and I kissed him.

D&C: Do you know him?

KG: I've met him a couple of times, but it wasn't his personality and it didn't even look like him in the dream. D&C: Tell me your favorite joke.

KG: I'm really bad with jokes, I don't have any jokes.

D&C: If I print that it'll just sound like you're boring...

KG: That's why I hate interviews.

D&C: Is there anything else you wanted to say, dispel a rock'n'roll myth?

KG: Only that you can never know anything that is true in the media. It just occurred to me that I always assume that people understand where I'm coming from in my writing and music and obviously they never can do.