Fountain of Youth

Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore on aging and raging.

"We're of a certain age—the image of rock needs to be validated as serious music."

While waiting for a phone call from Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth's guitar playing leader, a friend of mine tells me she gives the band "credit for sustaining a career without ever having to get any better as players, writers or singers; an art form in and of itself."

She meant it as a compliment.

From the rip 'n' tear of Daydream Nation to the elastic noise symphony of the band's latest album, A Thousand Leaves, Sonic Youth's sound is a muzak of detuned, ringing guitars, deadpan vocals and anti-rhythmic drumming. Harmonic chaos as beauty. Noise as soft woven web. Distortion as friend—these are the tenets of Sonic Youth, the 17-year-old band (Moore, bassist/wife Kim Gordon, guitarist Lee Ranaldo and drummer Steve Shelley) which has made art rock its calling. In the history of rock and roll, Sonic Youth has made an impression as remarkable and self-defining as the Rolling Stones.

Where does it all come from?

For starters, there was the no-wave movement of their youth: the Glenn Brancas, Alan Vegas and Tom Verlaines who defined the scene in mid-'70s Manhattan. In particular, Verlaine, Television's vaunted guitarist and composer, enthralled Moore as soon as he arrived in New York. (On their tour, which comes to Philly this Friday, the opening acts include Verlaine in an instrumental duo with Jimmy Ripp and the Wharton Tiers Ensemble. Tiers is a Philly native, producer of A Thousand Leaves, and is one of Glenn Branca's Theoretical Girls.)

Still all the Rage: ( l. to r.) Sonic Youth's Ranaldo, Moore, Gordon and Shelley

"I read an interview with Tom in the '80s," says Moore. "I was flabbergasted because he said the two things he liked to listen to were Sonic Youth and L.L. Cool J."

But go back even further in Moore's past, to a Connecticut kid whose music professor father played classical piano to a less-than-enthused, AM-radio listening Thurston.

"Any appreciation of music in the broad spectrum is from my upbringing. It's funny though, because when he used to play the piano he'd work out pieces and would start and stop on certain phrases for like five minutes at a time. And that kind of fractured playing had an influence on the way I play guitar."

Moore talks a lot about age, youth and generational concerns; how bands today are informed by rock and little else. It's the same argument director Martin Scorsese has given regarding modern film students. They film from film and not from life.

For Moore, experience is the best teacher.

"Playing together for 17 years, we grew together and acquired a communication and sophistication that only exists by playing for that amount of time. That's what defines us to some degree. You can equate that with age. It's a very positive part of what we are. We're not interested in giving the band a face lift. To me, age makes us richer. I'm proud of it."

Sonic Youth has moved from playing paneled basements to the opulent, corporate-funded art halls with the epic show at Lincoln Center last fall.

"The guy who booked us secured a Philip Glass retrospective and wanted something that would fit his schedule," says Moore with fan-like excitement. "Upon hearing our instrumentals (three EPs that came out on Sonic Youth's indie label, SYR) he figured we'd fit. We were taken aback. But then we figured we could play together in a manner that would meet the requirements of Lincoln Center. We're of a certain age and the image of rock needs to be validated as serious music."

The aging of Youth is even more impressive because of the long-time marriage of Moore to Kim Gordon, one of punk rock's feminist heroes. Their relationship is as unique as the band's longevity perhaps because of the fact that they're practically inseparable.

"Kim and I never knew anything else outside of our relationship," says Moore. "As soon as we met we were playing music together. It was all very coincidental, our relationship and professional life. Having a child makes that stronger."

Moore talks about his 4-year-old daughter, Coco, as if she's part of the band—an educational tool that helps him accept aging more gracefully. Moore launches into a discussion of rock's progeny—the Wainwrights, Townshends and Lennons who've recently released albums.

"I've seen handfuls of articles lumping these kids together. I can only hope Coco at 20 is as together as Sean Lennon."

When I tell Moore than Sean Lennon is his competition in Philly (Lennon and Sonic both play on June 5) he yells that fact to Kim.

But the thought of competition is nil. A Thousand Leaves, recorded at their own studio Echo Canyon, is not the flavor of the moment. From the coarse, hard angles of "Sunday" and Gordon's buckshot-punk response to Meredith Brooks' limited feminist viewpoint on "Female Mechanic Now On Duty," to Ranaldo's tart yearning on "Karen Koltrane," A Thousand Leaves is Sonic Youth's autumnal symphonic masterpiece.

The title, Moore says, is a reference that all things must pass and move on. "It informed our lyrical ideas," he adds.

No song is more informed by the drama of the rites of passage than Moore's own lengthy elegiac tune "Hits of Sunshine (For Allen Ginsberg)." With one long gust of wind, Sonic Youth breathes life into not as much his poetry, but what Ginsberg stood for.

"He was a gentle someone in the community," says Moore, of a man he knew only peripherally, but whose work inspired him. "He made himself a timeline for the counterculture. He was a wonderful poet and provocateur who could articulate, in his own language, what went on in the collective heart and soul of youthculture from the '50s on. [He was] instrumental in making things happen. From the peace movement to punk rock, he made things go."

If I didn't know the song by heart I would've thought Thurston Moore was talking about Sonic Youth.

Sonic Youth with Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Ripp, and the Wharton Tiers Ensemble, Fri., June 5, 8:30 p.m., Electric Factory, Seventh and Willow (between Callowhill and Spring Garden), 336-2000.