- Improvisation
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- Nov 07, 2020
Lee Ranaldo Quotes
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- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Long
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- Nov 07, 2020
We'd been on Geffen for a long time, and I think we felt that we needed a change. I just don't think we felt very close to the people at the label after all this time or that they understood what we were trying to do. I don't have any regrets, because at the time we signed with Geffen, it was the right thing to do.
- Cassette
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've been sort of writing sketches for songs on my own forever and putting them down on cassette tapes. Yet for years and years and years, my main songwriting outlet was as a member of Sonic Youth, and for most of our time together, our best songs were written in a group setting, where the four of us were getting together in a room.
- Feel
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- Nov 07, 2020
Bands rise and surface in the British press so regularly that, for the most part, unless something really catches my ear, I feel like, 'Oh, if they're still around in two years, I'll see what they're up to.'
- Celebrity
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- Nov 07, 2020
It's easier to write about a celebrity, a personality, than it is to dig in and write about the music.
- Make
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- Nov 07, 2020
We used to have endless discussions with journalists about that: 'Why are you calling it noise? It's not noise, it's music,' and make references to everybody from John Cage to whoever.
- Important
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- Nov 07, 2020
We always operated within a sense of community not just about the band. It's important to the way we define ourselves. It's the entire world in which we operate.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
What Nirvana's success means is that certain radio stations now have their ear more cocked to bands like us; they're more open to playing more stuff.
- Great
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- Nov 07, 2020
'Daydream' brought us to the top of the heap of the indie-college market and recognition by all of our peers; 'Daydream' kind of capped off everything we set out to do when we started as a band, in terms of, like, wow, wouldn't it be great to make a record that a lot of people liked and listened to?
- Mean
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- Nov 07, 2020
Signing to a major, there weren't many bands from our sphere that were doing it. I mean, obviously R.E.M. had done it, and Husker Du and the Replacements had done it, and maybe Soul Asylum, but that was probably about it. Those four bands were pretty much the only ones from that milieu that had signed to a major.
- Challenge
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- Nov 07, 2020
Signing to a major label was an experiment for us. It was a challenge: working in a big studio with a producer was a challenge in a lot of ways. It all shaped what the band went on to become through the '90s. After we made 'Goo,' we went out and toured with Neil Young in ice hockey arenas for three months, and that was the same kind of thing.
- Father
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm just old enough to be able to say I got those very first Beatles records right as they were hitting America. My father brought them home. It was definitely the earliest musical influence on my life, and still one of the greatest.
- Listening
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- Nov 07, 2020
Listening to the Beatles' music figures into pretty much all of my childhood memories.
- Always
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- Nov 07, 2020
'Europe '72' was a super influential record full of fantastic songs and amazing experimental musicianship. I always valued both of those aspects in what Sonic Youth has done through the years - being able to get very abstract and very concrete within the same song.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I was in the first years of university, I fell in more with the visual arts crowd because it was more interesting than where music was.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
'Europe '72' came out right around the time that I started going to see the Dead, and it had a huge impression on me.
- Big
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- Nov 07, 2020
I saw the Dead in '73 at Nassau Coliseum, and that same year, I saw them at the crazy, big Watkins Glen festival. It was just outrageous. It was amazing to see the reciprocity between them and their audience.
- End
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- Nov 07, 2020
In Sonic Youth, at the end of 'Expressway to Yr. Skull,' we'd tap on the backs of our guitars to get this low-level feedback, and if I leaned forward, and the guitar hung off my body, it would resonate differently.
- Canadian
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- Nov 07, 2020
My wife's from Canada, and we're Canadian citizens.
- Early Days
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- Nov 07, 2020
Being a guy who was a geek with tape machines in the early days and really interested in how records get made, I was inspired in particular by how the Beatles were innovating when they were making those records late in their career while using the studio in a maximal way.
- Music
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- Nov 07, 2020
Sonic Youth was a collective. There's something fantastic about the idea of making music is a social activity.
- Always
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've always been an acoustic guitar player, and I've pretty much continued to play acoustic guitar throughout all of the Sonic Youth periods. My material for Sonic Youth often started on acoustic guitar.
- End
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- Nov 07, 2020
Sonic Youth has a very democratic process for the most part. It almost doesn't matter who brings in an initial idea; everything gets worked over by the band and kind of co-written by everyone in the end because everyone's ideas get contributed to it.
- Beginning
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- Nov 07, 2020
I guess, from the beginning, Thurston and Kim were the dominant singers in the band, and although I was singing in bands previously, I guess I mainly deferred to them a lot in terms of who was singing the bulk of the songs.
- Either
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- Nov 07, 2020
We're not really an underground band anymore, and we're not a mainstream band, either.
- Dead
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- Nov 07, 2020
The Grateful Dead always had their iconography down pat.
- Grateful Dead
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- Nov 07, 2020
There is still nothing under the sun quite like a Grateful Dead concert.
- Matter
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- Nov 07, 2020
I didn't intend to make one solo record, much less two. It's really a matter of seeing how it goes.
- Guitar
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- Nov 07, 2020
We're not playing your typical guitar tuning, so there is no normal chords for us to get our footing with. We're pretty much making it up as we go as far as the sounds we're creating. Oftentimes, the song will be inspired by just a certain kind of block of sound that somebody creates.
- Like
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- Nov 07, 2020
Our audience seems to be able to handle whatever kind of weird opening acts we turn them on to. I mean, sometimes it happens to be something like a band like Nirvana or Mudhoney, and other times, its just weird noise crews that we dig up.
- New
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- Nov 07, 2020
When we first started, in the early Eighties, we had some crappy guitars - Japanese knockoffs that wouldn't hold standard tuning. Later, we'd shove drumsticks or screwdrivers under strings to scheme new noises, sure. But initially, open tuning was a technique used to make our cheap guitars sound better. It wasn't academic or conceptual.
- Nov 07, 2020
My solo shows require a sit-down, indoor space.
- Think
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think Thurston's and my weird tunings lent Sonic Youth a very different sound from the get-go. In the band's 30 years - aside from covers - there are maybe two or three songs we wrote using traditional tuning.
- Course
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- Nov 07, 2020
Every band runs its course.
- City
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- Nov 07, 2020
I gravitated to New York City in the late '70s to pursue a career in visual art, which is what I trained in at university.
- Think
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm married to a Canadianm so I have a lot of fond thoughts about Canada. I think about the prairies of Manitoba, where my wife is from, and I have a lot of friends and relatives on both coasts and have spent a lot time in Canada from Nova Scotia to B.C. In some ways, it's a much more sane country than the U.S.
- Ethos
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- Nov 07, 2020
I recognise that the whole issue of downloading and intellectual property rights is not an easy one, but on the whole, I'm a fan of downloading, both legal and illegal, and the open-source ethos that it harbours for the future is a good one.
- Noise
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- Nov 07, 2020
We're a rock band. We're proud of it. We're not an art band, a noise band, or an extreme band.
- Nirvana
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- Nov 07, 2020
Obviously, for Geffen, if it wasn't for us, it's quite possible that bands like Nirvana or Beck would not be on the label.
- Good
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- Nov 07, 2020
Change is always good. It brings you to a new place.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
People assumed we called the record 'Murray Street' because of its proximity to the World Trade Centre, but that wasn't it at all. Before the attacks, I had simply been walking around taking pictures of things, and I had this photograph of the street sign. We felt it was somewhat evocative and decided to use it on the back cover of the album.
- Go
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- Nov 07, 2020
We'll go in one direction with one album, and then we like to do the opposite right away. But it's not like we ever have an idea before we start - that would be too artificial. It all starts from just sitting in a room and playing.
- Nov 07, 2020
I don't know what the vintage Sonic Youth sound is.
- Moment
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- Nov 07, 2020
As far as we're concerned, we're always Sonic Youth, and we're always making a Sonic Youth record. We just see it so much more as a continuum than a periodic thing. We're just in the studio making the next record, and we don't relate it to anything other than what's going on at the moment.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
We find that the more you talk about it, the more you head off any spontaneous inspiration that might happen.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
It's not like we set out to antagonize the audience in any way. We're just presenting our music; it's really much more innocent.
- Boy
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- Nov 07, 2020
I always use the Rolling Stones as the whipping boy for this, but they still play old songs as 90% of their set, and we would die if that were the case.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
Whenever I work on an album and the time comes to do all the artwork, the only thing I think of is the LP artwork. When we worked on the 'Electric Trim' artwork, we spent weeks and weeks making the LP artwork great, and then the CD artwork came together in a day or two. The LP is what's important to me.
- Past
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- Nov 07, 2020
One thing I always loved about vinyl was the length of a side, around 20 or 22 minutes. That's the perfect length of an attention span for listening time, you know? You could listen and give it all your attention. Put on something that's 70 minutes, and nobody's sticking around past the first 20 or 30 minutes.
- One Thing
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- Nov 07, 2020
One thing I always hated with CDs is when people started putting 65 to 75 minutes on their albums.
- People
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- Nov 07, 2020
Sonic Youth was not a singer-songwriter band. It was an electric collective. And, whatever else people's perceptions of Sonic Youth were, it was always about putting together a time-based composition - and that is exactly what songwriting is, in its classic form.
- Happy
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- Nov 07, 2020
During the whole time in Sonic Youth, I was happy to put my energy into that. It would have been very difficult to do a solo project.
- Listening
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've always played acoustically - it's how I learned. I grew up listening to Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Dylan and what have you.
- Light
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- Nov 07, 2020
In the week following Sandy, we weren't flooded, but we were without everything else - I ended up living by candlelight - no phones, no computers, no light, no power. If we took a walk at night to go and find something to eat, it was completely black, with no lights coming out of the windows, no street lights: a very apocalyptic feeling.
- Enough
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've been lucky enough to be in this amazing band, and to me, a band is really a collaborative unit, and that's definitely been what Sonic Youth has been.
- Love
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- Nov 07, 2020
Obviously, Sonic Youth has been a huge part of my life for many, many years, and I love all those guys dearly.
- Gentle
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- Nov 07, 2020
One of the things I loved - or I love still - about this Occupy movement is it's got a very gentle core. I mean, it's really decidedly nonviolent in the face of all kinds of situations.
- City
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- Nov 07, 2020
I have nothing against change or evolution, and I'm not one of those people who wants the city to be what it was 40 years ago or whatever, because that's not what New York is, really.
- Great
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- Nov 07, 2020
I have great memories of the old Times Square - wouldn't have missed being here to see that place for the world - but I can also deal with the new Times Square in the overall scheme of N.Y. City 2010.
- Old
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- Nov 07, 2020
I don't mourn the old, romantic, dirty Times Square, although it was more unique.
- Music
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- Nov 07, 2020
I came late to Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention. I don't know why, but that's the beauty of music - songs and voices are there when you need them, when you're ready to find them, whether in their time or after.
- Dark
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- Nov 07, 2020
I've never been a huge Zeppelin fan, much to the chagrin of everybody else in my former band. But certainly those Pink Floyd records, I was really into them, especially 'Dark Side of the Moon.'
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
When you listen to early Leonard Cohen records or Joni Mitchell records, you feel like a window is being opened into someone's life.
- Done
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- Nov 07, 2020
I felt like the last thing we did, 'The Eternal,' and the touring we did behind it was some of the strongest stuff we'd ever done, and the band was very much a vital entity.
- Always
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- Nov 07, 2020
I always think that, for me, being someone who comes out of electric guitar experimentation, the idea of playing acoustic guitar is, in itself, kind of a radical move.
- Different
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- Nov 07, 2020
I'm so used to knowing what to do with an electric guitar and amplifier, but with an acoustic guitar, it's different, but I still have an amp and a whole bunch of pedals.
- Before
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- Nov 07, 2020
When Sonic Youth wrote music, we would rehearse for months before anybody heard anything.
- Music
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- Nov 07, 2020
When Sonic Youth writes music, we write everything in a very communal way. It doesn't matter who brought something in initially; it all gets transformed by the band.
- Like
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- Nov 07, 2020
I ride a bicycle. I make artwork and do other kinds of stuff - but in terms of unwind, I like to play tennis and ride.
- Creativity
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- Nov 07, 2020
New York always has a lot of creativity going on.
- Nov 07, 2020
You don't work in isolation anymore. Anybody can write a song and put it up on the Internet the next day.
- Family
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- Nov 07, 2020
After Hurricane Sandy, my family and I stayed in our apartment in lower Manhattan before things normalized. We're lucky enough to live on a bit of high ground, so we weren't flooded... but it was intense. Since there was no light, water, or electricity, I spent a lot of time playing acoustic guitar in the evenings.
- Nov 07, 2020
To some degree, I consider myself a writer, and so I have a strong relationship with literature.
- Look
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- Nov 07, 2020
You look out on the street, and everyone has their heads in their phones. Nobody's really looking up at the sky or the buildings and taking the day in. I try to be conscious of it, but everybody falls prey to it.
- Know
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- Nov 07, 2020
Sonic Youth has always been the vehicle for my writing, you know, because it's a collective songwriting entity: we write our songs as a group.
- Key
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- Nov 07, 2020
One of the key guitars in my career has been an early-Seventies Fender Telecaster Deluxe that I had before Sonic Youth started and that I played pretty much throughout Sonic Youth.
- Capture
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- Nov 07, 2020
Usually my records are made trying to capture the essence of a band playing in a room.
- Guitar
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I first learned guitar - when I was 14 or 15 - I had an older cousin who showed me some stuff. And he was into all these tunings. He was showing me tunings that people like David Crosby or Neil Young used - like dropped D and open D tunings.
- High
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I was in grade school and high school, I did a lot of chorale singing. And the chorus would be tenor, bass, and alto and soprano.
- Like
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- Nov 07, 2020
When I first moved to New York, I was friends with a lot of dancers - people from Merce Cunningham's company and things like that.
- Drummer
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- Nov 07, 2020
Sonic Youth played one show before we even had a drummer. It was just me, Kim, and Thurston. The lights slowly went down, and the set was just 30 minutes of feedback.
- First
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- Nov 07, 2020
We got our first significant pieces of press in the 'New York Rocker' from early gigs at CBGB.
- Live
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- Nov 07, 2020
My main pedal is the Ibanez Analog Delay, the AD9 or the AD80, whichever one it is. That's my go-to pedal for short delay. I don't think I could live without that pedal.
- Exclude
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- Nov 07, 2020