Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo

Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

In this episode of Broken Record, Justin Richmond interviews Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth about the band's trajectory from the New York No Wav

Key takeaways

• Sonic Youth maintained a 'ferocious' musical reputation despite being personally 'fun loving goofballs.'
• The band's transition from SST Records to Geffen marked a significant shift from the underground to the mainstream.

Main topics

• Sonic Youth history
• Indie vs Major label dynamics

Notable quotes

We were making music, not making money.

Conclusion

A profound look at how artistic uncompromisingness can coexist with la

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Speaker 2 (0:04) Malcolm Gladwell here. My new book, The American Way of Killing, investigates America's gun violence crisis. Why is the richest country in the world plagued by such lethal violence? Through a series of stories, interviews, and archival tape, I confront one of today's most urgent moral dilemmas and examine why the U.S. has never quite understood its own problem and why you can't fix what you refuse to see clearly. Pre-order The American Way of Killing at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Speaker 1 (0:43) Pushkin. Speaker 1 (0:48) I initially reached out to you because I didn't realize when Bob Weir passed away that you were a fan. And I had only started getting into The Dead since about 2020 when it clicked for me. You know, I mean, the great thing about music is there's always like these great catalogs just kind of waiting to be found. And Sonic Youth, similarly, in the last five years, clicked for me. Not that I didn't like Sonic Youth before, but I think I was a little scared of you guys. Because, you know, it just seemed very intimidating as a, you know, I was like, I don't. There's already so much that felt like so much cooler than me as a kid. And it was like Sonic used another level beyond Speaker 3 (1:27) that. You know, we were we were like fun loving goofballs, you know, but for some reason, especially early in our career, we had this weird reputation where people were a little afraid of us for some reason. They thought. Because the music was ferocious, that we were going to be ferocious as people as well, which was not the case at all, you know? Speaker 1 (1:49) And now that I know you guys are familiar, more familiar with you guys, it's not that way. But you guys were in a time when purity mattered a lot and authenticity. You guys were like the gold standard. It was like, you know, you couldn't get better. You pegged everything against something. Sonic Youth, and so it was kind of like, oh man, I don't know if I'm cool enough. So Speaker 3 (2:08) you never saw us play? Speaker 1 (2:09) You know, I probably did at a festival at some point. Maybe so. I'm sure I did at a festival. We played at a bunch of LA Speaker 3 (2:16) festivals for one thing. Obviously, we played a lot of festivals, but since Kim was based in, or Kim grew up in LA, we spent a lot of time in LA, and our record company was in LA, and we played a lot out there, which was... really cool for me to be able to spend a lot of time in LA because I really love it. Speaker 1 (2:34) Really? Speaker 3 (2:34) Yeah, we played at Al's Bar and was there a place called Club Lingerie? I think Speaker 1 (2:39) that Speaker 3 (2:40) was in LA. I was too young Speaker 1 (2:41) for that, but I've heard of Club Lingerie. Yeah, we played Speaker 3 (2:43) those places and we played the Roxy and stuff like that as well at some points. Speaker 1 (2:47) Did you guys, yeah, it's funny because I guess it's the Kim connection, but it does feel like there's a bit of between Speaker 1 (2:55) SST and Geffen. You just feel like there's a strong and then Death Valley 69. It feels like there's a West Coast drink that runs through Sonic Youth. Speaker 3 (3:05) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, for sure. For sure. And we were totally fascinated with that, you know, especially that period of like, you know, the Beach Boys on the one hand and Peace and Love and Manson on the other hand. You know, that's the period I was talking about, actually. When that song came out, it was one of the first songs that a lot of people heard. We'd be going around and people would imagine that they were going to meet a bunch of Mansonites or something like that, which couldn't have been further from the truth or further from the subject matter of the song in a way. It was funny. People had a certain impression of us because the music was ferocious. I used to say that we were friends with a lot of bands in New York in the early days that were living really edgy. like kind of ferocious lifestyles, you know, deep into hard drugs and stuff like that. And then they'd get on stage and the music was less ferocious than their lifestyles. And with us, it was kind of the reverse. Offstage, you know, we wanted to live in nice places and have refrigerators with food in them or whatever it was, eventually having kids and stuff. But we wanted the onstage to be where the ferocity lived, you know. Was there a catharsis to it, you think? There's always a catharsis to be playing music. I mean, that's the case all the time. And to play music that could be as wild and free as some of our music was super cathartic, you know, in a way. But that was something that was definitely coming out of, I mean, not just the New York scene, but we were really feeling that from a lot of the things that were happening here back at that point in time, like what bands like Teenage Jesus or DNA were doing or Glenn Branca and Reese Chatham. I mean, this was really... Speaker 3 (4:49) music that wanted to move you in one way or the other, like really in that cathartic sense, you know, and, and, you know, the stuff that was going on in LA too, Black Flag and Minuteman. And, you know, it was just like, they didn't want you to just stand there as a, as a passive observer. They wanted you to be really involved. Speaker 1 (5:05) Yeah. What, I mean, given that there was so much going on around New York. It always seems to me it would have made more sense to maybe sign with like a Z Records or 99 or something, you know, versus... Speaker 3 (5:16) Yeah, we would have loved to have been on 99. I mean, the first two records were on Glenn Branca's label, which was a brand new indie label at a time when there really weren't like indie labels all over the place, you know, so it was kind of a radical move that he did that. So our first bunch of records were on New York labels, but... We were in love with SST Records. We were in love with everything they did. And we just thought they were like the pinnacle of a record label at that point in time. All the bands we loved were on SST, Sacher & Trust and Meat Puppets and, you know, you name it. And so when we had the chance to move to them, we really just kind of jumped at it. Speaker 1 (5:56) Signing to SST, did you get to know... everyone over there pretty well or was it like a family or a group? Speaker 3 (6:03) Yeah, I mean, to a large degree. I mean, we certainly got to know Greg Ginn and Henry Rollins and all those guys. And we were already, well, probably right around the same time we signed with them, we got to be really good friends with Mike Watt in particular and the Minutemen guys and the Meat Puppets. You know, we did lots of shows with all those bands. It felt really cool. to be a part of that. You know, and Petty Bone, you know, Raymond Petty Bone was sort of part of that crew at that point. Yeah. He became a good friend. And then, you know, things changed and we ended up on another California label with Geffen, which was also really cool. Just Speaker 1 (6:42) to stick on SST for a second, you were there when the Minutemen kind of changed into Firehose. Speaker 3 (6:47) Yeah. We were playing a warehouse gig in L.A. with the Swans. the night that D. Boone died in Arizona or New Mexico, wherever it was. And I was actually playing his amp on that gig the night that he died. I mean, I think he died later in the evening than our show was, but that was pretty devastating. And we were really close to Mike in particular in that period, and especially once that happened, then we got really close to Mike. And actually... When that happened, Mike kind of shut down for a period of time. He wasn't doing anything. He wasn't playing music. And he came out to New York when we were recording the record Evol, like 1985. Just not that long after Dee had died, I guess. We had this one song, actually, this song called In the Kingdom that I sang that was kind of a Stooges-esque riff, and we never really finished it as a song. It was always going to be this thing. I was going to do this kind of spoken word thing over. And Mike was in the studio when we were getting ready to record it and we asked him to play on it. And he played the bass on that song and this other song. We did a cover of Kim Fowley's song called Bubblegum. And I think those were the first two. That's kind of an extra track from that period. And those two were the first things that Mike did in music again since D. Boone died. And then shortly after that, Ed from Ohio, as he's known. called Mike up and said, hey, let's play, and Firehose started. Wow. Yeah. So I always felt like we had a hand in pulling Mike out of his doldrums of D. Boone's death. Speaker 1 (8:28) You kind of kept a relationship with Pettibone. Did you keep a relationship with Greg as well? Speaker 3 (8:33) No, not really. I mean, I think we had a falling out when we left the label, and I don't think he was very happy about the situation, and it was kind of an awkward moment. We didn't really keep up much after that. But Speaker 1 (8:45) that didn't transfer to Pettibone at all, like the awkwardness of that? Speaker 3 (8:49) No, not at all. We were relating to Raymond on a completely different level. And at that point, he was starting to be more in the art world than the music world. And Kim and I trained as artists, and we all had a real affinity for his art in particular. Speaker 3 (9:08) He lives nearby here. We see each other every once in a while. That's Speaker 1 (9:11) amazing, man. Speaker 3 (9:12) Yeah, we actually, my wife Leah and I acted in his most recent movie, which was, you know, he made all these movies in the late 80s, early 90s. He made a whole bunch of feature-length movies that were really, he did one about the weatherman that I think Kim and Thurston are in. He did a whole bunch of movies. And he started making some again, and his most recent movie was about the Beatles. I played Ringo and Leah played Linda Eastman. And this artist, Marcel Zama, played Paul. And this costume designer played George. And this couple from England, I think, played John and Yoko. And it was just, you know. His movies are kind of like his drawings, you know, like a bunch of people standing in one position and saying stuff, you know, just kind of like the drawings are. So they're very weird movies, very cool. Speaker 1 (10:10) Sounds like it might be better than the, I think they're putting out like four Beatles biopics soon. Speaker 3 (10:15) Yeah, they're coming. They're coming. Speaker 1 (10:17) I think I'd rather see you as Ringo. Speaker 3 (10:19) Yeah, Speaker 1 (10:19) yeah, yeah. Did you, the move to Geffen, did you guys get to know Geffen at all? We had really Speaker 3 (10:27) one meeting with him when we were getting ready to sign with a major. I guess it was in the wake of like REM signing and the replacement signing or Husker Du. It was like all the majors started to get interested all of a sudden, you know? So we met with... with David Geffen. We met with Ahmet Erdogan for Atlantic Records. We met with Herb Albert and the people at A &M. But we met with all of these classic record men from the older generation. And that was the coolest thing to us. We met Herb Albert in the studio, in the A &M studios in LA, where all these great records were made. And we're walking through the studios with him and we come around the corner and there's his trumpet like sitting on a pedestal. And he says, oh, yeah, that's my trumpet. And like he picked it up and he played something for us, which was like totally surreal. We met Ahmet Erdogan at a kind of a swanky Chinese restaurant in uptown in New York here. The coolest thing about all these meetings was these guys told us all these insane stories, like stories about being in the studio with the Stones, like with big bowls of Coke on the mixing desk and all this like debauchery going on. Like Geffen told us stories about having to smuggle David Crosby pot across the country because he was supposed to play Madison Square Garden that night with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and his pot delivery didn't make it. And he was like refusing to go on. And Geffen's like, I'm not going to carry pot on the plane, you know, and all this. of stuff and uh and eventually he did but we just got so many cool stories from like we were deep into that the moments of that era and all these bands that had you know like the beach boys working on those classic records or the carpenters or whatever and so to meet with all these people like we almost didn't care if we got signed or not we were just like this is amazing we get to like suck the stories out of all these people, which was really, really interesting. And then we chose Geffen because they really offered us the best deal in terms of full creative control, no oversight, like didn't have to present demos or any of that stuff. And it worked really well for us with them for a pretty good amount of time. For Speaker 1 (12:42) a while, Speaker 3 (12:42) right? Speaker 1 (12:42) Yeah. Speaker 3 (12:43) Yeah. I mean, we're still, it's not called Geffen anymore. It's called Universal, but we're still on that. path with, you know, the records we made with them. We're still putting out stuff through Universal. But yeah, they were good. And then, you know, on our backs, they signed Nirvana. So at that point, we could do no wrong in their eyes. You know, it was like, boy, we brought them like the biggest cash cow of the era. Yeah. Speaker 1 (13:06) Yeah. Oh, that's right. And you guys shared management with Nirvana too, right? Speaker 3 (13:11) Yeah. They followed us. They were asking us who