I see a parallel between Sonic Youth and -- forgive me -- the Grateful Dead. It's a similar thing, where you could just go on playing forever, to a large, loyal audience who like new stuff and are up for a lot of improvisation.
I've always felt a certain reverence for the Grateful Dead scene. But we didn't have the countercultural mass that the Grateful Dead had. When counterculture in the '60s happened, all the major media went to it. You know,
Time,
Life -- everybody featured it and said to the youth of the world, "Look what's over here, this could be you, this could be your own world." And people flocked to it. I think with our scene, coming out of a nihilist '70s rock thing, the record labels were already sort of corporatized. It wasn't like an independent-label game anymore. 'Cause all those labels in the '60s, they were kind of independent label ventures anyway. By the '70s, it wasn't like that. There was also no way that the media was going to point to it and say "Here is the new youth culture." It was more like, "Here is this really weird marginal thing happening: punk rock." Punk did become as influential as hippie culture, but at the time, it was really kept at bay.
One thing you seem to share with your old-school punk peers Ian Mackaye and Steve Albini and Mike Watt is a real work ethic. Do you see younger bands today with that same drive, or was that a product of the '80s underground?
I think we all influenced each other that way, but I always wondered if that work ethic would have been necessary if we had been able to cash in. None of us get rich off what we're doing. The original do-it-yourself model of punk rock -- make your own record, your own fanzine -- really made an impression, and as a teenager, it was much cooler than the all-expenses-paid rock-star trip, which, in a way, made us like a gang. To me, that stuff is not too dissimilar from songwriting. Of all the people you mentioned, enterprise? And we've been involved with them for years. People pick and choose who's more evil than who in the global economy.
You consulted on Gus Van Sant's film Last Days and advised Michael Pitt, who delivered a spot-on impersonation of your friend Kurt Cobain. Did working on the film help sew up some things for you?
Well, Kurt's hardly the only person I've known through the years who's gone by the wayside. I do find it almost hard to believe that he was even there, because it was such a short period of time. His ascendancy was so quick -- all of a sudden everybody knew this person that we knew. And then all of a sudden it was over. It's funny you mention it, because I actually just received this.
[He digs through his hard drive and locates a Charles Peterson photograph of Cobain backstage with Kim Gordon.] I was looking at this the other day. He had a really deep soul. And even though he was just another one of the gang, everyone knew that he had just something a little extra going on.
Just look at his face -- he's really paying attention to Kim.
He respected her a lot. And he really adored her. I knew Kurt, but it wasn't that intimate a relationship. I mean, we spent a lot of time together when we were on tour and we kept connected, but I think [his death] was a lot more emotional for her. My thing with Kurt was a couple of goofy guys jumping around with each other, whereas they had something deeper. I remember having to make that phone call to Kim. She was doing a photo shoot or something. And she was pregnant, and it was heavy -- it was very, very heavy. I just remember going out and walking around...going to [Manhattan record and video store] Kim's Underground on Bleecker Street in a daze. Two or three hours after I got the call, the guy behind the counter at Kim's got on the phone, and I could hear him saying, "Are you kidding me?" I could hear him getting the information. And it was just like,
I gotta get out of here. And there was nowhere I could go.
You have a famously great marriage, which is virtually unheard of for a rock star, particularly when the spouse is also a bandmate. What's your secret?
There's no secret. We've never sold each other out on anything. I can easily follow the allure of wanting to go out and be with the boys, and play industrial noise and smoke pot and drink, but nothing replaces the reality of our relationship. I can't trade that for anything. I can't think of how or where I'd be without Kim's influence. And we're like any couple that's been together for close to 30 years. There's a genuine psychophysical connection. Sometimes I feel things happening in me, and I know that something's going on with her. When you're married and you have that kind of connection, you become really spiritually, psychologically connected. We grew up together, in a way.
You're also a father to 13-year-old Coco. How do you juggle all of that?
Well the husband/father thing is primary. And it gets problematic, because I get asked to do a lot [outside the band]: "Will you play with me at the Hook?" "Can you fly to this little experimental music festival in Europe and play with these guys?" And it's these guys that I would love to spend the weekend playing with -- "Yeah, I'll do it!" And before I know it, every weekend for two months is me bouncing around -- and that's not cool. I'm not a traveling salesman. I can't do this, I'm not a single man. So in the last couple years, I've really put the kibosh on that, because I saw it really interfering with my home relationship. I'm not gonna walk away from that just to play noise with a bunch of dudes in Belgium.
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