Kim Gordon
Kim Althea Gordon is an American musician, singer and songwriter best known as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Born in Rochester, New York, she was raised in Los Angeles, California, where her father was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduating from Los Angeles's Otis College of Art and Design, she moved to New York City to begin an art career. There, she formed Sonic Youth with Thurston Moore in 1981. She and Moore married in 1984, and the band released a total of six albums on independent labels before the end of the 1980s. It then released nine studio albums on the label DGC Records, beginning with Goo in 1990. Gordon was also a founding member of the musical project Free Kitten, which she formed with Julia Cafritz in 1993.
Sonic Youth released its 15th and final studio album, The Eternal, on Matador Records before disbanding in 2011 after Gordon and Moore separated. After the dissolution of Sonic Youth and her divorce from Moore, Gordon formed the experimental duo Body/Head with Bill Nace, which released its debut album, Coming Apart, in 2013. She subsequently formed Glitterbust with Alex Knost, releasing a self-titled debut album in 2016. Body/Head released its second studio album, The Switch, in 2018. Gordon released her first solo album, No Home Record, in 2019. Her sophomore solo effort, The Collective, followed in 2024. Released to widespread critical acclaim, it has earned Gordon her first two Grammy nominations.
In addition to her work as a musician, Gordon has had ventures in record producing, fashion, and acting, and has worked consistently as a visual artist throughout her musical career. She debuted as a producer on Hole's debut album Pretty on the Inside, and founded the Los Angeles–based clothing line X-Girl in 1993. Beginning in the mid-2000s, Gordon began acting, making minor appearances in such films as Last Days and I'm Not There and guest-starring on several television series. In 2015, she published a memoir, Girl in a Band, by HarperCollins imprint Dey Street Books.
Life and career
1953–1978: Early life
Kim Althea Gordon was born April 28, 1953, in Rochester, New York, the second child of Althea and Calvin Wayne Gordon. At the time of her birth, Gordon's father, a native of Kansas, was a professor in the sociology department at the University of Rochester. Her mother, a descendant of American pioneers of the West Coast, learned to sew during her upbringing in the Great Depression, and worked as a seamstress throughout Gordon's childhood. She was described by Gordon as "reserved and usually anxious" and "an unfulfilled artist." Gordon had one older brother, Keller, whom she described as "brilliant, manipulative, sadistic, arrogant, almost unbearably articulate," and "the person who more than anyone else in the world shaped who I was, and who I turned out to be."At the age of five, Gordon and her family relocated to Los Angeles, California, when her father was offered a professorship in the sociology department at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he later became the Dean of Faculty. As a child, Gordon attended University Elementary School, a progressive elementary school affiliated with UCLA, which she described as "learn by doing. So we were always making African spears and going down to the river and making mud huts, or skinning a cowhide and drying it and throwing it off the cliff at Dana Point." In her memoir, Gordon recounts spending summers with her family in Klamath, California, near the Oregon border. The family also lived in British Hong Kong for one year during her childhood.
Gordon attended University High School in Los Angeles, and dated classmate Danny Elfman while a student there. After graduating high school, she attended Santa Monica College for two years before transferring to York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Gordon soon grew homesick and chose to drop out of York at the end of the school year and return to Los Angeles. "I was less and less happy as the bleak Toronto winter moved in," she recalled. "Without the benefit of California sunshine, my hair grew darker and darker, and I had no idea how to dress for the cold." She decided to enroll at the Otis College of Art and Design, which she said "changed my life." Gordon lived in Culver City and Venice, Los Angeles, and worked at an Indian restaurant to pay her tuition. She also briefly worked for art dealer Larry Gagosian as a side-job. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1977.
While she was a student at Otis, Gordon's older brother Keller suffered a psychotic episode on the day of his graduation from the University of California, Berkeley, where he had earned a Master's degree in classics. He was subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and for a time lived in halfway houses before becoming a ward of the state of California. The song "Schizophrenia," which appeared on Sonic Youth's fourth studio album, Sister, was partly inspired by her brother.
1979–1994: Sonic Youth and X-Girl
After graduating from the Otis Art Institute, Gordon moved to New York City in 1980, hoping to pursue a career in art. There, she took art-related jobs to earn an income, such as working as a writer for Artforum, and launched a "D.I.Y. project called Design Office, doing low-fi artistic interventions" in friends' apartments. In 1981, she curated an exhibition at White Columns Gallery that involved contributions from Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler, among others. Around 1981, Gordon became interested in "no-wave" bands, recalling: "When I came to New York, I'd go and see bands downtown playing no-wave music. It was expressionistic and it was also nihilistic. Punk rock was tongue-in-cheek, saying, 'Yeah, we're destroying rock.' No-wave music is more like, 'NO, we're really destroying rock.' It was very dissonant. I just felt like, Wow, this is really free. I could do that."In 1981, Gordon joined the short-lived band CKM, with Christine Hahn and Stanton Miranda, and met her future Sonic Youth bandmates Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore through Miranda. At the time, Gordon, then 27 years old, had never played an instrument. Gordon began dating Moore and, together with Ranaldo, the couple then formed Sonic Youth in 1981. Originally the band released their first unnamed EP in 1982 and their first two albums, Confusion is Sex and Bad Moon Rising on Neutral and Homestead Records, respectively, before signing with SST to release EVOL and Sister. Gordon and Moore married in 1984, three years after beginning Sonic Youth. In October 1988, the band released Daydream Nation through Enigma Records.
In 1989, Sonic Youth signed onto DGC Records, a subsidiary of Geffen, and released Goo, which became the group's first commercial hit. Also in 1989, Gordon, Sadie May, and Lydia Lunch formed Harry Crews, and released the album Naked in Garden Hills. To promote Goo, Gordon toured with Sonic Youth extensively between 1990 and 1991, and a documentary titled 1991: The Year Punk Broke documented the band's tour with Nirvana, Babes in Toyland, Dinosaur Jr., Gumball and Mudhoney. In early 1991, Courtney Love, who had been influenced by Sonic Youth and the no-wave scene, sent Gordon a letter asking her to produce her band Hole's debut record, Pretty on the Inside. Gordon, along with assistance from Don Fleming, produced the album in March 1991, which received critical acclaim and later achieved cult status. Gordon commented on the recording sessions that Love "was either charming and nice or screaming at her band" but that she was "a really good singer and entertainer and front person." In 1992, Gordon released a single, "Electric Pen," with Mirror/Dash, a short-lived project she formed with Moore.
Beginning in 1993, Gordon co-owned, with Daisy von Furth, a women's streetwear clothing company in Los Angeles, called X-Girl. The company was a spin-off of X-Large, a men's streetwear company co-founded by Michael Diamond of the Beastie Boys. The first X-Girl store was opened in Los Angeles in 1994. Actress Chloë Sevigny served as a model for several pieces in the clothing line. Also in 1993, Gordon formed the musical project Free Kitten with Julia Cafritz. On July 1, 1994, Gordon gave birth to her only child, daughter Coco Hayley Moore, with Thurston Moore.
1995–2008: Music, art, and acting
Free Kitten released their debut studio album, Nice Ass, in 1995, followed by Sentimental Education, both on the independent label Kill Rock Stars. In 1993, Gordon co-directed The Breeders' "Cannonball" music video with Spike Jonze, and was also involved in an exhibition entitled Baby Generation at Parco gallery in Tokyo. Gordon's exhibition Kim's Bedroom was shown at MU in the Netherlands, and included drawing and paintings alongside live music and special guests.As a part of Sonic Youth, Gordon released several albums in the mid–late 1990s, including Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, Washing Machine, and A Thousand Leaves, all on DGC Records. They subsequently released NYC Ghosts & Flowers in 2000, and Murray Street in 2002. In 1999, after selling her share of X-Girl, Gordon relocated with Moore from New York City to Northampton, Massachusetts, to raise their daughter. Around 2002, Gordon became involved with The Supreme Indifference, a musical collaboration that involved Gordon, Jim O'Rourke and Alan Licht. The band appeared on the 2002 compilation Fields and Streams, though their contribution was deemed "annoying" and the project "self-indulgent" by critic Adrian Begrand of PopMatters.
In 2003, Gordon was featured in the Gothenburg Biennale and exhibited Club In The Shadow, an installation art collaboration with artist Jutta Koether, at Kenny Schachter's Contemporary Gallery in New York City. In 2005, she submitted another collaboration with Koether for the Her Noise exhibition in London, United Kingdom, entitled "Reverse Karaoke." In the same year, an artist's book Kim Gordon Chronicles Vol. 1 was published and featured photos of Gordon throughout her life. The following year, Kim Gordon Chronicles Vol. 2 was released and featured her drawings, collages, and paintings.
Beginning in 2005, Gordon began appearing in minor or supporting parts in films, first as a record executive in Gus Van Sant's Last Days. She then had a small role portraying a textile exporter in the 2007 French thriller film Boarding Gate, and in Todd Haynes's I'm Not There, inspired by the life of Bob Dylan. The same year, she played a street troubadour in the season six finale of the television series Gilmore Girls, along with husband Moore and their daughter Coco, performing the song "What a Waste" from the album Rather Ripped.
In September 2008, Gordon launched a limited-edition fashion line called Mirror/Dash, inspired by Françoise Hardy and based on the idea that "there's a need for clothes for cool moms."