“Music’s never loud enough. You should stick your head in a speaker.
Louder, louder, louder.”
—Lou Reed
(McNeil, McCain 6)
Of Whispers, Squalls, and Wails
Rock music has seen many, many changes, movements, and countless acts since its birth somewhere in the middle of the 1950s. Rock & roll may have started out somewhat simple with three-chord jumpin’ rockers by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Jerry Lee Lewis, but in time things did change. The 1960s ushered in the Beatles, and the psychedelic rock scene shortly thereafter. The 1970s saw the rise of progressive rock, and the punk movement. By the 80s there was so much rock that had happened, where things would go was anybody’s guess. The 80s saw the rise of indie rock, which brought in a fantastic new aesthetic, and a slough of impeccably great bands including R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, the Replacements, Dinosaur Jr., the Meat Puppets, Black Flag, Minor Threat, and Sonic Youth. These American bands and their overseas counterparts freshened up rock, despite little acknowledgement in their time. They all proved to be profoundly influential, and by taking a look at Sonic Youth, one can truly understand how influential some of these groups were. Like their heroes the Velvet Underground, the Sonics created a sphere of musical influence both deep and wide. Since the mid-80s, they have been paving the way for other artists to try something different, just as the Velvets had started that trend since the late 1960s. Both groups expanded rock music’s vocabulary, and both groups are widely acknowledged as undeniable forces in the subgenre of experimental rock, and beyond. While the Velvet Underground surely takes the cake as the most influential experimental rock group of all time, Sonic Youth is undeniably the most important experimental rock group since the Velvets.
A key to understanding Sonic Youth’s success is to understand the Velvet Underground’s success. When their debut The Velvet Underground & Nico was released in January of 1967 (Deming), nothing so abrasive had hit popular music. While not all of the album’s eleven tracks are as raunchy or noisy as the centerpiece “Heroin,” Lou Reed’s lyrical fixations on the album prove to be shocking enough—surely for the late 1960s. The combination of charming little pop tunes such as “Sunday Morning” and “Femme Fatale” with fractured noise rockers like “Run Run Run” and the free jazz explosion “European Son” was probably weird enough at the time. Unfortunately, the album had trouble getting released, taking about a year before so, due to its overtly suggestive themes (McNeil, McCain 18).
Up until the album’s release, not much in popular music had been quite as groundbreaking, or as challenging. Pete Townshend was starting to grow out of guitar smashing. The Beatles would release Sgt. Pepper in June, kicking off the “Summer of Love” (Erlewine), but hadn’t yet touched upon the musical adventurism of “The White Album.” Jimi Hendrix would release Are You Experienced? and Axis: Bold as Love in ‘67 too, but despite his wild guitar skills and distorted magic, as well as his experiments in the studio, none of it quite compares to the Velvets’ in-your-face, raw approach. The Doors would debut the same year as well, featuring some challenging numbers, particularly “The End,” but yet the Doors had more to do with the dark side of psychedelia than musical experimentation. Captain Beefheart hadn’t flexed his most avant-garde muscles yet, sticking with blues and rock & roll structures on his debut Safe as Milk. Perhaps the closest thing to the Velvets at the time was Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s debut Freak Out!, released a year prior to the Velvets’ debut, though most of the album is focused on parodying the blandness of mid-60s pop songs.
Lou Reed said of the early days of the Velvets, “To my mind, nobody in music was doing anything that even approximated the real thing, with the exception of us. We were doing a specific thing that was very, very real. It wasn’t slick or a lie in any conceivable way...” (McNeil, McCain 7). Reed’s lyrics turned unflinchingly toward drugs, kinky sex, and more. The territory to which songs like the S&M paean “Venus in Furs” and the earth-shattering “Heroin” go to proved revolutionary. Sonically, the Velvets broke new ground for pop music with these songs, both of which feature John Cale’s droning viola, à la La Monte Young. What Cale brought to the Velvets’ sound was a certain sense of class, as he was a native of Wales and studied under avant-garde composer La Monte Young in New York City (McNeil, McCain 4).
Furthermore, the songs on the debut album as well as the other Velvets records sound monumentally under-produced, lacking the sheen of, say, even an early Beatles record (i.e.: A Hard Day’s Night). The apparent low quality in the Velvets’ production undoubtedly influenced the lo-fi movement of the 90s, with artists such as Smog, Sebadoh, Pavement, Guided by Voices, and Neutral Milk Hotel making use of lesser recording technology.
The Velvets’ second album, White Light/White Heat proved just as groundbreaking. Featuring only six tracks, it is a surrealistic nightmare of a rollercoaster ride through the dark backstreets of New York City. The title track sheds light on amphetamine use, and the epic “Sister Ray” is seventeen minutes of sheer madness involving heroin users, a prostitute sailor, an accidental murder, and the police threaten to stop it all. White Light/White Heat is the grittiest of the Velvets’ four albums. The lyrics are markedly darker than those on The Velvet Underground & Nico, and the music spares any “prettier” moments with the exception of “Here She Comes Now,” but even that song is rather suggestive and creeps along much like the rest of White Light/White Heat.
White Light/White Heat broke more sonic ground than its predecessor. For one thing, the Velvets were never quite as loud again in the studio. “The Gift” is a short story read by Cale over a demented R&B jam. Reed’s guitar on “I Heard Her Call My Name” blazes with psychotic delight, and jumps out of the mix screaming bloody murder. “Sister Ray,” in all its seventeen-minute glory, features some of Reed’s most outrageous guitar work, blistering through and through, and Cale’s organ blasts and sounds like it could explode at any moment. Again, the shoddy production shows like in the first record, but again it has a certain “lo-fi” charm, proving that you don’t need George Martin or Phil Spector to produce a great, or important record.
These two records became vastly influential, as well as The Velvet Underground and Loaded, released in 1969 and 1970, respectively. It has been said that even though not many people had heard The Velvet Underground & Nico upon its release, those who did started their own bands. The early punk movement obviously took cue from the Velvets, particularly the New York bands. The New York Dolls’ gender-bending, Patti Smith’s fiery poetics, Television’s expertly ragged musicianship, the Talking Heads’ weird paranoia, and Suicide’s and the Silver Apples’ early forays into electronic music all were indebted to the Velvets. In Detroit, Iggy Pop and the Stooges owed their soul-crushing volume, rough attitude, and their frequently suggestive lyrics to the Velvets too. The “Kraut-rock” scene in Germany had its roots in the Velvets; groups like Can and Faust wore the influence well. David Bowie, an avowed fan, went on to produce Lou Reed’s most famous record, Transformer. And all these artists were only marking the beginning of the Velvets’ influence, as they continue to inspire groups today. They became one of the most important groups in rock & roll, even getting inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
Sonic Youth on the other hand began proper in 1981 featuring the lineup of Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and Lee Ranaldo, playing at the New York “Noise Festival” (Azerrad 235). Ranaldo had joined the group when Moore approached him early in the festival after seeing him perform with Glenn Branca’s guitar ensemble. By the time they secured drummer Richard Edson and recorded their self-titled debut EP, Sonic Youth was beginning a path that would become as important as the Velvets’.
While their first release may not be as striking or as important as some of their later releases, the Sonic Youth EP bears a number of the group’s trademarks. Alternate guitar tunings, eerie guitar sounds, washes of feedback, atypical song structures, and oblique lyrics, all run through the veins of the five songs. A marked difference in comparison to their later albums is Richard Edson’s drumming, being a particularly “funky ‘street beat’” also common in several other New York bands at the time including Liquid Liquid, the Bush Tetras, and ESG (Azerrad 237). Edson eventually left, but once the Sonics discovered and hired Steve Shelley in ’85 (Azerrad 258), they’d certainly found a winner.
By the time Sonic Youth would release their third album EVOL in 1986, they had already sown the seeds of their influence. Fellow indie rockers Dinosaur Jr. released their debut record a year earlier, featuring their own brand of loud but relatively accessible tunes that bear influence from the Sonics. The two groups even toured together for a short time after the release of EVOL (Azerrad 265). It wouldn’t be too hard to see English noisemakers the Jesus and Mary Chain as picking up a thing or two from the Sonics either, with their feedback-laden pop songs. Ireland’s My Bloody Valentine, the quintessential shoegazer group, with their unabashedly dreamy gems of songs, also bore more than a passing resemblance at times to Sonic Youth’s dissonant feedback—thing is, My Blood Valentine often sounded “prettier” than the Sonics. New Jersey group Yo La Tengo would release their first album in ’86 featuring the beginnings of their noisy pop songs that owed some debt to the Sonics.
EVOL is a particularly interesting album in that it shows the Sonics getting into slightly more accessible territory than the two albums and debut EP preceding it. The opener, “Tom Violence,” sounds like Sonic Youth, that’s the for sure, but it feels a little less wandering. “Shadow of a Doubt” with its sexual tension is one of Gordon’s best songs in the Sonic Youth canon, and actually does have a verse-chorus-verse structure, also featuring a bridge. Ranaldo’s “In the Kingdom #19” updates the Velvets’ “The Gift,” with Ranaldo reading a rather strange story concerning a car accident over a punky, noise fused jam. The album’s best track however, is the seven-minute opus “Expressway to Yr. Skull” (also known as “Madonna, Sean, and Me”). The song’s first section sounds like an anthem as Moore sings, “We’re gonna kill the California girls,” while the second section features Moore, Ranaldo, and Gordon’s guitars feeding back ever so slightly, creating a dreamy atmosphere until the track fades out.
EVOL was an underground hit, and setup audiences for two masterpieces that would follow: Sister, released in 1987, and the sprawling double-album Daydream Nation, released in ’88, the latter of which is often considered the Sonics’ best work. Sister is a bit more up-tempo in comparison to earlier Sonic Youth records, even featuring a cover of “Hotwire My Heart” by little known San Francisco punk outfit Crime, and the result sounds similar to that of the Velvets’ “I Heard Her Call My Name,” with some lead guitar work that jumps out of the mix. The album’s up-tempo songs seem like reminders that the band isn’t just all about atmosphere and droning and making creepy sounding records. They grew up with a love of bands like the Stooges, the MC5, and Television as well as having learned valuable lessons from Glenn Branca, whom Ranaldo had studied under, among other musical avant-gardists (Azerrad 234, 236). Former drummer Bob Bert said of some of the Sonics’ influences, “[Glenn Branca] was just an obvious influence. ‘Hey, we can take this approach that Glenn and Rhys Chatham are doing and blend it with the MC5 and have a whole new thing’” (Azerrad 243).
The double-album Daydream Nation may be the Sonics’ most influential album to date. It was the album that damn near broke them into the mainstream, finding prominence in the press, notably the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and also finished in the number one spot on CMJ’s year-end chart, as well as topped the independent charts in England for NME and Melody Maker (Azerrad 270). The album continued the trend set by EVOL, featuring a more streamlined approach, but “streamlining” is a relative concept for the group.
Probably Sonic Youth’s best known song, “Teen Age Riot,” kicks off the record. A joyous take on the D.I.Y. aesthetic, the chiming guitars and lightly distorted ones along with Moore’s ever present cool, make for the band’s most accessible song up to that time. The punky “Silver Rocket” and two-step hardcore beat of “’Cross the Breeze” keep in check the more subdued moments of “The Sprawl” and “Candle,” while the improvised section of “Total Trash” and the blazing aggression of “Rain King” can please anyone looking for a sonic head rush. Daydream Nation saw Sonic Youth in top form, and in turn got them signed to Geffen Records (Azerrad 271).
The 90s brought in a slough of bands who undoubtedly learned a thing or two from Sonic Youth, including lo-fi bands such as Pavement and Sebadoh, as well as the likes of Tortoise, June of 44, and others. A band directly influenced by Sonic Youth however, was Nirvana. Sonic Youth brought them to Geffen Records (Azerrad 233), which then kick-started the alternative rock boom of the decade with the album Nevermind. Beyond Nirvana, Sonic Youth still continues to inspire artists today.
Interestingly enough, the Velvets and Sonic Youth actually have a lot of things in common, so much so that one has to wonder if lightning actually can strike the same place twice. Both bands formed in New York City, and became major representatives of the music scene there. John Cale worked with avant-garde composer La Monte Young, while Lee Ranaldo worked with avant-garde composer Glenn Branca. Both bands featured women—Maureen Tucker banged the drums with the Velvets and did some occasional singing, while Kim Gordon played bass and sang with the Sonics. Lou Reed and Thurston Moore do have rather similar voices, and also seem to exude a certain “too cool for school” kind of aura. Both groups featured two guitar players exchanging lead duties—Reed and Sterling Morrison in the Velvets, Moore and Ranaldo in the Sonics. Also, both groups heavily influenced rock movements that followed their lead, being the punk movement for the Velvets, and the grunge and alternative rock movement for the Sonics. Even if these are all just coincidences, it is nonetheless remarkable considering how often this sort of thing happens—or perhaps doesn’t happen, is more like it.
Both groups have a special place in rock & roll, having inspired so many and received as many accolades as they have. In 2005, Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation was inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, alongside Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced?, B.B. King’s Live at the Regal, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s We’re Only in it for the Money, and the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out. A year later, The Velvet Underground & Nico found its way in too, along with Paul Simon’s Graceland and the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” One can imagine it is only a matter of time before Sonic Youth find their way into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame like the Velvets.
It’s true that there were groups after the Velvets’ time that were important in the growth of experimental rock, but none proved as vastly influential or as popular as Sonic Youth. The Kraut-rock group Can put out several great records early in their career, and obscure English post-punk outfit This Heat released two devastatingly original albums in their short lifetime. Captain Beefheart, Pere Ubu, and Frank Zappa kept things interesting through the American 70s. But perhaps Sonic Youth’s success was inevitable. The Velvets had been the seeds in fertile soil tilled by the likes of composers John Cage and La Monte Young, and free jazz gods Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. The myriad artists who rose out of those seeds grew strong, but perhaps not as tall as Sonic Youth, who became the most prominent and important experimental group since the Velvet Underground.
Works Cited
"2005 National Recording Registry." Library of Congress. 10 May 2008 <http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0605/nrr2.html>.
Azerrad, Michael. Our Band Could Be Your Life. New York: Black Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2002.
Deming, Mark. "The Velvet Underground & Nico." All Music Guide. All Media Guide. 07 May 2008 <http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:dpfqxql5ldhe>.
Daydream Nation. Perf. Sonic Youth. CD-ROM. Geffen Records, 1993.
EVOL. Perf. Sonic Youth. CD-ROM. Geffen Records, 1994.
"Historical Recordings, Musical Legends." Library of Congress. 12 May 2008 <http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0704/nrr.html>.
"Inductee List." Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. 11 May 2008 <http://www.rockhall.com/inductees/inducteelist/>.
McNeil, Legs, and Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me. New York: Grove Press, 2006.
Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." All Music Guide. All Media Guide. 09 May 2008 <http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:difwxql5ldae>.
Sister. Perf. Sonic Youth. CD-ROM. Geffen Records, 1994.
The Velvet Underground & Nico. Perf. The Velvet Underground. CD-ROM. Polydor, 1996.
White Light/White Heat. Perf. The Velvet Underground. CD-ROM. Polydor, 1996.
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