Review
A Vanity Fair Favorite Book of 2023
Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Fall by Vogue, The Chicago Tribune, and The Guardian
"Both a herculean work of research and a love letter—to Moore’s youth, to underground rock, and to a band that formed in downtown Manhattan in 1981 and went on to change music forever... an exuberantly detailed account... Sonic Life is a big book and it feels like a whole life is poured into it."
—Vogue
“Electrifying… At its most evocative when describing the downtown music scene of the late 1970s and ’80s New York.”
—Mark Yarm, The New York Times
"An edgy valentine to ’80s punk... Few musicians have more indie rock credibility than Thurston Moore... Moore writes self-assuredly and aware but without conceit."
—The San Francisco Chronicle
"Vivid… This memoir finds its room tone when [Moore] meets Kim Gordon… It’s a terrific love story…. He’s a good observer of other people, always a good sign in a memoirist… [An] excellent memoir.”
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"A rich and strange tableau of the music world . . . Sonic Life roars along with the runaway-freight-train passion of a true believer."
--The Wall Street Journal
"Moore’s nightlife testimony becomes a memorial to the lost petri dish of a downtown scene that made Sonic Youth possible."
--The Washington Post
"The tale of a record collector geek made good, a seeker after new sounds who in turn became a key architect of experimental rock in the two decades that followed. . . an engaging memory piece through a golden era of busted toilets and secondhand smoke that now seems as distant as Montparnasse in the 1920s."
--The Los Angeles Times
"In taking readers along his musical trajectory—from idolizing the likes of Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, and Ron Asheton to sharing stages with them—Moore simultaneously charts rock’s decades-long evolution through punk and hardcore, new wave and no wave, indie and grunge."
--Vanity Fair
"A microscopic look at how [Moore's] interests in punk, art, and guitar experimentalism fueled his contributions to one of alt-rock’s most daring bands. . . Moore’s memories of being a New York band on SST, the Year Punk Broke, and the horror he felt following Kurt Cobain’s death document turning points both in his life and in the evolution of underground rock with vivid detail."
--Rolling Stone, Best Music Books of 2023
"Sonic Life is a deeply researched account of the music and culture that formed Moore’s persona as the godfather of the alt-rock movement."
—Shondaland
"[Sonic Life] is perhaps as subversive as Sonic Youth themselves were: the memoir of a well-read, thoughtful music fan, unsaddled by drugs 'n' drink, who came out the other side synapses intact. God bless him (and them) for that."
—Clinton Heylin, Spectator (UK)
"Downtown scientists rejoice! For Thurston Moore has unearthed the missing links, the sacred texts, the forgotten stories, and the secret maps of the lost golden age. This is history—scuffed, slightly bent, plenty noisy, and indispensable."
—Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Underground Railroad and Harlem Shuffle
"I thoroughly enjoyed Thurston Moore's trip down the gauntlet of memory lane, dodging beer bottles and pools of blood as he balances the demands of art and survival. Plus I'm a sucker for anyone who name-checks Saccharine Trust. A raw, rollicking document."
—Nell Zink, author of Avalon and Doxology
“Thurston Moore has always been a great artist, expansive in his knowledge of, and commitment to, new sounds and visions. Now, added to his expert musicianship, are his very real gifts as a memoirist and cultural historian. Filled with wonderful insights about the New York–based cultural landscape that made him, Moore's Sonic Life is essential reading—a moving meditation by a creative force.”
—Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of White Girls
“Sonic Youth was the lodestar of alternative rock, pushing boundaries and providing inspiration to a generation of renegade, free-thinking bands. In this candid memoir, Thurston Moore traverses his journey from ardent fan to revolutionary instigator, sharing his love of transgressive soundscapes and finding ever new guitar tunings for his celebration of song.”
—Lenny Kaye, guitarist, producer, and author Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock and Roll
“All rock-n-roll begins in the thrall of fandom. Thurston Moore shares his origin story, a love story like no other, about the ‘mystic deliverance’ of music and art. It is a moving portrait of an artistic life, but it is also an inspiring and astute insider history of New York as the epicenter of so much outsider and subversive culture. Generous, joyful, beautifully written, this book is a heart ripper.”
—Dana Spiotta, author of Wayward and Stone Arabia
“Thurston Moore’s all-embracing memoir Sonic Life works the way Sonic Youth did, with raging appetite for experience, with velocity and nerve, with a total devotion to making art from the resolute stance of starry-eyed fan and unabashed permanent novice. His recall is as amazing as his generosity.”
—Jonathan Lethem, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of Motherless Brooklyn
"Were you there? Well this is as close as it gets! Thurston Moore’s compelling and spirited account of the streets, the songs, the clothes, the clubs and the contenders! A sensitive and authentic testimony to Moore’s commitment to life lived through art and music. Beats with the heart of a true artist and mutineer."
—Viv Albertine, author of Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
"[An] exuberant and widescreen memoir...that details Sonic Youth’s New York City origin story in a fascinatingly fine-grained way—and fans will devour every page… A vivid recollection of a lost world."
—Vogue
“The best kind of music memoir, an act of cultural excavation.”
—Chicago Tribune
"Sonic Life is an absolute joy, a memoir populated by misfits and magicians, the dreamers and the demented, full of vivid imagery and fabulous anecdotes, fired by an insatiable appetite for adventure, experiences and new noise. For anyone similarly consumed by music, it offers a fascinating documentation of the genesis and growth of America's alternative rock scene, by one of its key players. It's also an unabashed love letter to New York, in all its messy, chaotic magnificence, and the best book about rock music in the city since Please Kill Me."
—Louder
“Moore is a rock historian and a brilliant writer. His poetic sentences evoke New York’s East Village from 1980 through 2000 perfectly. We experience East Village diners and delis, historical music venues, tenement buildings, and railroad apartments. He also writes mellifluously about the commitment required to be in a band. He places us right there with him in vans, planes, and trains to experience a Sonic Youth tour. In Sonic Life, Moore not only tells the story of a burgeoning music scene and an original band, but he also transports us to a time when artists lived their lives on their own terms, just like Sid Vicious and Joey Ramone did.”
—Alternative Press
"Moore, a founding member of Sonic Youth, is among the more creative guitarists (along with bandmate Lee Ranaldo and Kim Gordon) during a period in rock music filled with folks exploiting sonic possibilities... Moore’s word choice remains measured, thoughtful... a book for the Sonic Youth fan."
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Moore’s meticulous new memoir uses unvarnished, highly readable prose... Pages whiz by with jolting anecdotes."
—Under the Radar
“Fascinating...Moore conjures the grit and atmosphere of 1980s New York with ease.”
—Town & Country
"Sonic Life largely reads like a post-punk coming-of-age story, tracing its protagonist’s journey from scrawny Connecticut fringe kid to New York alt-rock titan... Reading through Sonic Youth’s as-it-happens process made me want to pick up my guitar and create something weird... Sonic Life succeeds in the places where it conjures this effect: of walking through hell alongside someone who has survived it."
—Pitchfork
“A love letter to to the New York underground music and art scenes of the 1970s and 80s...Moore's prose suggests he could have had an alternative career as one of the few great music journalists to have become a household name.”
—The Wire
“[Moore] writes about music in a breathless gush of hyperbole that proves almost too infectious… Moore’s depiction of pre-gentrification Manhattan’s post-punk bohemia is richly evocative and Sonic Life’s highlight."
—The Guardian (UK)
“Sonic Life will be every alt-rocker's binge-read this winter.”
—Mojo(UK)
"A fascinating chronicle of music, art, life on the road—and a vanished New York City."
—The Millions
"A literate, absorbing account... A self-aware, charmingly rough-and-tumble tale of the rock ’n’ roll life."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"Vivid... Encyclopedic and capacious, Sonic Life is no less than a history of U.S. underground arts and culture... a prismatic view on the musical democracy that was Sonic Youth."
—BookPage (starred)
"Fascinating...Moore conjures the grit and atmosphere of 1980s New York with ease.”
—Publishers Weekly
"An expansive autobiography... [Moore is] a patient and methodical storyteller, providing rich context for the artists who shaped and intersected with his career. Moore’s dual perspective as both music industry insider and obsessive fan and collector results in a vibrant piece of cultural history."
—Booklist
“Vastly entertaining . . . Sonic Life’s enthralling anecdotal content should easily earn it a spot on your bookshelf—especially its main course: a vivid and elaborate slideshow of Thurston’s coming of age in late-70s No Wave Manhattan. A more mythic artistic adolescence-slash-storybook New York success story couldn’t be imagined. . . a punk, hardcore, no- and new wave Library of Alexandria.”
—SPIN
About the Author
THURSTON MOORE is a founding member of Sonic Youth, a band born in New York in 1981 that spent thirty years at the vanguard of alternative rock, influencing and inspiring such acts as Nirvana, Pavement, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, My Bloody Valentine, and Beck. The band’s album Daydream Nation was chosen by the Library of Congress for historical preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2006. Moore is involved in publishing and poetry and teaches at the Summer Writing Workshop at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He divides his time between the USA and England.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
Epiphany
Gene bounded into our small South Miami, Florida, house, the summer of 1963, a look on his face as if he had located a gift of gold dropped from a psychedelic UFO. In his hand he clutched an article of sonic subterfuge: a seven-inch black vinyl single deliriously titled “Louie Louie,” by a group called the Kingsmen. Their name suggested royal knaves, subjects of a British Invasion–informed notion of aristocracy, and not the four hip, sneering roustabouts from the Pacific Northwest that they were.
From that moment onward, my brother’s universe and mine would become all flash lightning, “Louie Louie” ringing out repeatedly, a seductive noise machine from on high, the singer wailing, out of control and completely cool, steering us toward an undeniable future—
Okay, let’s give it to ’em, right now!
I was five years old to Gene’s ten, my response to the record driven as much by the sound as by my older brother’s excitement. He reverently spun the single, an artifact from preteen heaven that he had somehow stumbled onto. The only other music heard in our house had been our father’s classical records and, more profoundly, the sounds emanating from his hours-long performances at the piano—an instrument that commanded most of the real estate in our modest living room. He worked deliberately through a repertoire of Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and other heavies. Classical music ruled our airwaves.
At least until “Louie Louie” came breaking and entering in.
With that disc in constant revolution, the energy of our existence would change, a new current of electricity introduced. It was as though it had taken the soundworld of our day—our kitchen appliances, our television—and recast it into song, using only guitars, organ, and drums. The lead singer’s voice had the air of a boy smoking a cigarette with one hand while banging a tambourine in the other, an insolent distance to his delivery, a vision of being at once boss and bored.
The flip side of the record was “Haunted Castle,” an instrumental with a simplistic chord figure and a suitably mysterious vibe. The fun danger of “Louie Louie” was offset by the cool otherness of “Haunted Castle.” Everything about these subversive vibrations suggested to me a new world; they were changing not only my here and now but my vision of what the future might hold for me.
I decided to someday, somehow, be in a band like the Kingsmen.
The first order of business would be my hair. From flipping through the pages of 16 magazine, the bible of 1960s pop-rock teen-idol worship, I could see how the cool cats in bands like the Kingsmen all had bangs grazing their eyebrows, the back of their hair hanging slightly below their collars.
To grown-ups, my little-boy crew cut was cute, but after my blinding introduction to rock ’n’ roll by way of “Louie Louie,” I knew it would no longer do. Forget cute.
After a bit of pleading, I was given permission by my parents to let my hair grow out. Each day I would check its progress, wetting the minuscule strands of my potential fringe so that it might fall onto my forehead, yearning to flick it casually to the side. A few of my classmates at the Epiphany Catholic School took me to task for my preening and faux flicking—
“You don’t have long hair, stop pretending.”
But I needed the practice.
My father’s piano had always been our family’s great and sacred object. It cost as much as a car, and we were living on a schoolteacher’s wages. But it was a necessary extravagance—not just an outlet for my father but a collective beacon of high art, a reflection, I thought, of our commitment to sound and composition.
But it wasn’t for me. What I really wanted was a guitar.
Preferably electric.
Or at least a transistor radio.
Anything that could bring more “Louie Louie” into the world.
