Kim Gordon Talks End of Sonic Youth, Relationship With Kurt Cobain in Long Memoir Excerpt

Kim Gordon‘s memoir, Girl in a Band, will be released on February 24. Earlier this week, The Guardian published a few salient excerpts, including details about her relationship with Thurston Moore and her thoughts on Courtney Love and Billy Corgan. Now, The Guardian has published a longer piece that stitches together excerpts from various parts of the book. Read the whole thing here, and check out some highlights below.

In Sonic Youth’s early stages, they considered using the name Male Bonding. (Imagine if Male Bonding named themselves Sonic Youth in that universe—what a world.) In those days, Gordon says she put up with a lot of bland questioning from UK music journalists: 

The mostly male music press in the UK was cowardly and nonconfrontational in person. They would then go home and write cruel, ageist, sexist things. I assumed it was because they were terrified of women; the whole country had a queen complex, after all. I refused to play the game. I didn’t want to dress like Siouxsie Sioux, or act out the role of an imaginary female, someone who had more to do with them than with me. There was a popular look at the time – the vintage dress, the makeup – that just wasn’t me.

She talks about seeing an early Nirvana show, noting that while she and Moore thought it was “amazing,” Iggy Pop “wasn’t impressed.” After the show, they met Cobain backstage. 

I’m not sure why, but I felt an immediate kinship with him. When Nirvana toured with us in 1991, before Nevermind broke, no one in Europe knew who they were. Kurt was funny and fun to be around, and soaked up any kind of personal attention. I felt very big sisterly, almost maternal, when we were together.

Later, she talks about her and Moore becoming parents, and realizing how that was changing their relationship:

Thurston was a natural. I’d read my share of parenting and baby books, but he was much more experienced around kids, having done a lot of babysitting when he was younger. He was never awkward holding Coco or getting down on the floor and playing with her. In the end he was probably a better dad than he was a partner, as more and more he began pulling away from me, wanting to do everything his way. Looking back, I think it was probably because he didn’t want to be with me any more.

Finally, she talks about Moore’s affair that ended their marriage:

And so it all started, in slow motion, a pattern of lies, ultimatums, and phoney promises, followed by emails and texts that almost felt designed to be stumbled on, so as to force me to make a decision that he was too much of a coward to face. I was furious. It wasn’t just the responsibility he was refusing to take; it was the person he had turned me into: his mother. We tried to save it. We were both in therapy and seeing a marriage counsellor, too. But it was like dealing with an addict who was unravelling, who couldn’t stop himself. He and I still slept in the same bed – it was a big bed – but in the mornings, we would get dressed and go downstairs and do our own thing. I could either put up with the humiliation, or I could end things.

And Sonic Youth’s final show:

It was a strange place for things to come to an end. Thurston and I weren’t speaking to each other. We had exchanged maybe 15 words all week. After 27 years of marriage, things had fallen apart. The couple everyone believed was golden and normal and eternally intact, who gave younger musicians hope they could outlast a crazy rock’n’roll world, was now just another cliche of relationship failure – a male midlife crisis, another woman, a double life.

Gordon’s book tour in support of Girl in a Band begins later this month.

Watch Gordon’s Body/Head noise duo perform on Pitchfork.tv’s “+1″:

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