• 1981-2011

  Thurston MooreGuitar, vocals1981-

  Lee RanaldoGuitar, vocals1981-

  Kim GordonBass, vocals1981-2011

  Steve ShelleyDrums1985-

  Jim O'RourkeMultiple instruments, production1999-2005

  Mark IboldBass, guitar2006-
• Sonic Youth guitarist/vocalist Thurston Moore and bassist/vocalist Kim Gordon married in 1984 and split in 2011, which ended the band. The break came after Gordon discovered Moore was having an affair with Eva Prinz, an editor with Moore's publishing house Ecstatic Peace. Moore and Gordon have a daughter named Coco Hayley Gordon Moore who grew up to become an actress, going by Coco Gordon-Moore.
• In 1985, Sonic Youth created a band called Ciccone Youth to glorify their obsessions with Madonna (Ciccone is Madonna's surname). In 1986 Ciccone Youth released "Into The Groovey" (a grungy remake of Madonna's "Into The Groove"), and in 1988 released their lone album, The Whitey Album, but never toured.
• The members of Sonic Youth own a record label, SYR (Sonic Youth Recordings), which they use to release their own experimental albums.
• Each member released a solo album or was a part of a side-project band while Sonic Youth were active.
• Guitarist Lee Ranaldo is a poet. He's published five books, including Poems, lyrics, letters, observations, wordplay & postcards from the early days of Sonic Youth in 1998.
• In July 1999 a truck full of their equipment, including unique and irreplaceable instruments, was stolen after a show. Though it was a tragic loss for them, it also gave them a fresh start for their following albums. Over the years fans scoured pawn shops and sites like Ebay and recovered six of seven lost guitars.
• Kim Gordon revealed to The Guardian that when she was teenager, she and a friend were busted by security for smoking weed at Disneyland. Gordon recalled the pair being taken underground, being held overnight in a cell and spotting "Mickey Mouse with a walkie-talkie."
• They broke up in 2011, but in 2020 Sonic Youth released dozens of rare, previously unreleased live recordings on their Bandcamp page to support fans during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
• In 2015 Kim Gordon released a memoir titled Girl in a Band, where we learned that many of the lyrics she wrote were chosen arbitrarily without any deep meaning in mind.
• In January 2022 the band released a single titled "In & Out" ahead of the March release of their In/Out/In compilation album. A five-track EP, it includes previously unreleased outtakes recorded from 2000 to 2010.
• Sonic Youth were an innovative band in the noise-rock genre, and pioneers of alternative music that inspired Nirvana, but their influence far outweighed their popularity - they never had a hit.

Comments: 1

• Steven from Park City, UtCurrently Mark Ibold is playing bass with them to free Kim up to sing.

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