When Thurston Moore released his memoir, Sonic Life, in 2023, it was the final edited version of a behemoth of a book. Even at that stage, it was 77 chapters long and easily hit 500 pages. The book comprised Moore’s life from his childhood in Bethel, Connecticut, to the formation of Sonic Youth and the band’s sudden 2011 breakup. Between the big moments were times and places of personal significance to Moore.
But the book was “about four times longer” as a first draft, said Moore in an interview with The Guardian. “A huge, unedited ream of stuff, page after page about every record that was significant to me in the punk and post-punk years. Basically, I just kept going and put it all in there.”
Sonic Life is a significant record of one of the premier, if under-appreciated, figures in post-punk. Sonic Youth came up around the same time as REM and Nirvana. However, they weren’t afforded the same kind of monumental fame. Still, they remained an underground favorite, a go-to cult choice for mild-mannered DIY punks and unequivocally cool East Coast kids.
In the book, Moore spoke about what drove him to form Sonic Youth in the early 80s. He was drawn to the low rents and artsy community of Alphabet City in the Lower East Side. There, many struggling artists staked their claim. With a rampant drug problem and dangerous city streets, it was far from the gentrified East Village of today.
“I guess I was instinctively drawn to the urban,” said Moore. “For a time, as a young teenager, I wanted to be a hippie and hitchhike around the country, but I didn’t like the music so much.”
Thurston Moore On the early influences that led him to form sonic youth
The flowery, hippie, summer of love music didn’t appeal to Thurston Moore. But there was something about punk rock that put him on the path to Sonic Youth.
Continuing, Moore explained, “Whereas, when I was 16 in the early 1970s and I first saw a picture of Iggy Pop standing on people’s hands, his body spray-painted silver, pointing out to the skies, it was like, What is this? I needed to hear what that image sounded like.”
Another photo of Iggy Pop influenced Thurston Moore on his journey to Sonic Youth. In the book, he described “a crazily beautiful sunburst Stratocaster” he had when he was 16. With that instrument, he would play along to his favorite band, one of which was The Stooges. The photo of Iggy Pop on the cover of the album Raw Power fundamentally changed him.
Moore described taking the album to a local hairdresser. “This is what I want to look like,” he said.
Later, after turning 18, he saw the Patti Smith Group at a venue in Westport, Connecticut. This was yet another stepping stone on the path. “This is what I had been waiting for,” he wrote. “Rock and roll transcendence… There was no turning back.”
Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
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