Interview with Lee Ranaldo

Goodbye 20th Century

Originally published by Tower Records’ Pulse! (June 2000)

The rock band Sonic Youth is known for its experimentalism, but many of its fans were undoubtedly surprised when the band recently released a double CD of scored works by classical New Music composers. Goodbye 20th Century (SYR 4) has a track list that could be mistaken for the latest from the Arditti Quartet, with pieces by John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Takehisa Kosugi, Steve Reich, Nicolas Slonimsky, James Tenney, Christian Wolff -- and even a new piece written especially for the group by Pauline Oliveros. Also included are Fluxus works by Yoko Ono (a scream piece performed by the daughter of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore), and George Maciunas (in which the band nails down the keys of a piano; a video of the event is included as a CD-ROM track). Composers Christian Wolff and Takehisa Kosugi joined the group on some of the performances, as did musicians Christian Marclay, Jim O’Rourke, William Winant, and Sonic Youth’s studio engineer Wharton Tiers. I spoke to guitarist Lee Ranaldo about the experience:

Damon Krukowski: Did working from scores affect the way you played your instrument on these recordings? (And did you have to keep your eyes on the page?)

Lee Ranaldo: I tried to approach the execution of these pieces as naturally as possible, that is, trying not to resort to any “new music” posturings as I have heard them on other recordings. I tried, and I think we all did, to adapt the pieces to the way we, as individuals, play. And yes, we did have to keep our eyes on the pages, with some pieces more than others, but with all of them to some degree. That’s what kept it true and from becoming some sort of free improvisation.

DK: Is the type of improvisation these pieces employ different from the improvisation you are used to from the band’s other work?