MUSIC | INTERVIEW
Thurston Moore: my punk life with Nirvana and Madonna
The Sonic Youth frontman talks to Will Hodgkinson about touring with Kurt Cobain, his break-up with Kim Gordon and being grunge’s most clean-living star
Lee Ranaldo, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth in 1991
GIE KNAEPS/GETTY IMAGES
The Times
The tall, sandy-haired 65-year-old sipping tea in the upstairs bar at the Olympic Cinema in Barnes, southwest London — formerly a recording studio used by everyone from the Rolling Stones to Björk — does not look like a former leader of America’s premier noise-rock disruptors. With his teacherly air and considerate, subdued manner, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth seems more like an academic than a wrecker of civilisation. But then he claims his chosen path was a product of geography as much as anything. He grew up in Connecticut, an hour away from New York City. Punk rock was within commuting distance.
“I think about that sometimes,” says Moore, whose T-shirt bearing the logo of the DIY label Dischord Records is the only visual clue
