SONIC LIFE

The Sonic Youth guitarist and songwriter delivers a literate, absorbing account of life in the New York of CBGB, no wave, and affordable spaces for artists.

Born in Florida and raised in Connecticut, Moore was surrounded by classical music—“at least until ‘Louie Louie’ came breaking and entering in.” Then, he began a surreptitious campaign of sneaking into his older brother’s room to play his guitar until finally getting a “noise machine” of his own. While his young peers favored such things as prog rock or “the denim-shirt balladry of America,” Moore fell in love with David Bowie, Kiss, and especially Patti Smith. Nearby New York beckoned with seedy clubs where first-wave punk bands lurked. It was “a new vanguard of punk rock destruction,” he writes, and he “wanted in.” He got there, hanging out with the likes of Suicide and Television, taking the stage at some of those dingy clubs, and haunting bookstores such as the Gotham Book Mart. In time, he found Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo and formed Sonic Youth, a band that never exactly smashed the charts but nonetheless earned a highly devoted following. Moore is insightful on many aspects of the scene. For example, he writes that even though the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were all the rage, it was the “women-centric groups [that] struck the era’s most significant, radical, and fascinating chords.” He also remains insistent on the virtues of what he calls “sonic democracy,” whereby everyone’s ideas deserve a chance to find their way to the stage or dance floor. Not that the whole tale is halcyon. Moore allows that his breakup with Gordon was untidy, and his New York may have been affordable but also a touch dangerous, with “low-level heroin dealers [who] skulked about the neighborhood” and heat waves that threatened to fell those who couldn’t afford air conditioning in the days when it was possible to be poor and live in Manhattan.

A self-aware, charmingly rough-and-tumble tale of the rock ’n’ roll life.