Sonic Youth singer Thurston Moore: "The Grammys feel like a fashion show or a lingerie runway."

When Sonic Youth started playing in New York clubs in the early 1980s, the first reviews weren't very flattering: those guys led by Thurston Moore (and that punk- inflected girl, Kim Gordon ) just made noise. It was the era of noise rock, of no wave, a bit like what the Sex Pistols advocated in the United Kingdom: "We're not into music, we prefer chaos." But Sonic Youth evolved into a sophisticated and avant-garde chaos, allergic to the masses, which influenced bands like Nirvana, My Bloody Valentine, and Pavement . "Either we were fetishistically adored or we were disliked. Indifference, poison for any artist, had never been a threat," admits Thurston Moore, who has just published a monumental memoir of almost 600 pages, Sonic Life (Editorial Contra). In them he tells the genesis of the group, the tours around the world (from the Soviet Union to China), the Kurt Cobain concerts in which the entire stage was destroyed, his wedding to Kim (instead of a wedding ring he got a tattoo of a cross with the words Sonic Life)... But the story ends abruptly in 2011, when the group, already a cult band, dissolves after the separation of Kim and Thurston (he fell in love with someone else).

His memoirs aren't typical of a musician. His publisher complained that he'd written two of James Joyce's Ulysses ...

It originally had over 800 pages. I had to cut out so much stuff... This book is very light compared to the previous version; there was tons of information!

The first 200 pages read like a coming-of-age novel about a kid from Connecticut who arrives in New York. Sonic Youth doesn't appear until page 209. Is the band inextricably linked to the punk atmosphere of 1970s New York?

It defines a lot of Sonic Youth's aesthetic, completely. At the time, New York wasn't just a playground for people who didn't need a lot of money to make art and music, it was also a theater. There were so many interesting characters on the streets! It was like a Fellini film or something. I liked the subversive nature of art and music; we were very interested in experimental ideas.

The first 200 pages read like a coming-of-age novel about a kid from Connecticut who arrives in New York City. Sonic Youth doesn't appear until page 209. Is the band inextricably linked to the punk atmosphere of 1970s New York?

It defines a lot of Sonic Youth's aesthetic, completely. At the time, New York wasn't just a playground for people who didn't need a lot of money to make art and music, it was also a theater. There were so many interesting characters on the streets! It was like a Fellini film or something. I liked the subversive nature of art and music; we were very interested in experimental ideas.

These experimental ideas were at the heart of Sonic Youth's genesis, a movement reminiscent of art rock , noise , and punk . Do you think their approach was understood in the early years? They received devastating reviews like this: "There's no way I could recommend this band, or even tolerate being in the same room with them... Sonic Youth is/are the music a dentist's drill makes."

(laughs) Yes, and we included the phrase "music from a dentist's drill" in our press kit. Our approach was understood by our community, which was very small, below 14th Street, the district where we existed. At first, we just wanted to appeal to that community. We thought that was our universe, our world. Then, obviously, that would change. We took a windowless van and started touring the country. Then we started taking planes to go to the Soviet Union, to Japan... I hear from young Chinese people who were at those concerts we did in Shanghai, and they said to me, 'Do you realize that after the Sonic Youth concert, all these bands started popping up all over China?'

There are many epic moments in his book: the concert with Patti Smith in Central Park, playing with Paul McCartney, his duo tour with Yoko Ono... About his tour with Neil Young in 1991, while Bush was launching Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East, he says that every night Young played the national anthem in the style of Jimi Hendrix (who did a hard rock version in protest against Vietnam) and Sonic Youth played Black Sabbath's War Pigs in the middle of the set.

We didn't play it, we played the Black Sabbath tape at full volume through an amplifier (laughs).

It was a very political gesture... With all the current conflicts, not just in the Middle East, how do you view the activism and political engagement of musicians?

You have groups like Kneecap or Bob Vylan that talk about the crimes and genocides that are happening on an international scale and have a lot of impact.

They are punk and hip hop groups...

Yes, I think very few people in the entertainment industry dare to speak out publicly. There's a lot of fear of retaliation from these so-called democratic governments. For example, the US doesn't allow certain people to enter the country because of what they see on their social media or revokes the visas of artists who say something on stage in protest against this kind of murderous regime. And I think it's going to get worse. There are festivals that have even expelled bands for their positions. I'm thinking of Lana del Rey, McKay, Foo Fighters... they've taken a stand in their shows. But I'd also like to hear the voice of someone like Nick Cave or Dave Grohl.

Do you miss the punk spirit? You define it as "a welcoming space where you can proclaim your sexual or political identity, your love, your hate, or your indifference, without judgment or permission from anyone."

To this day, I think punk has been the most open, meaningful, and important forum for everyone's voice, especially youth culture. Although there were some dark aspects, like skinhead culture, punk allowed all voices to coexist. Essentially, it was very anti-fascist and anti-Nazi. Although there were some confusing moments, for me, punk rock was always a voice of socialism, with principles of anarchism. When the Sex Pistols sing "Anarchy in the UK," they make anarchism a kind of sexy attitude. That was very clever. But bringing that idea to pop music was truly radical. New generations are embracing punk rock as a place where they can truly express intellect and intelligence, which is always demonized in some way. When I see certain bands today at a festival and on stage denounce the festival itself and all these corporations, it seems like a very punk spirit to me.

You write about the early 2000s, "The dominant music of youth culture had shifted toward eroticized Disney pop." How does today's mainstream sound to you?

Some are a guilty pleasure. It's as if they have every right to exist to alleviate the horrors of daily life. I'm going to see Lana del Rey later.

Lana del Rey is a very select mainstream... If I put on a commercial Spanish radio station now, reggaeton would probably play.

When I listen to mainstream music on the radio, it seems very assertive, as if it were created to soothe people's emotions. It's like a balm, I guess. Watching the Grammys feels like a fashion show to me, with people walking down the runway in lingerie. It's something to watch, even though the artists can be great. I can't even imagine working at the level of someone as brilliant as Lady Gaga or Beyoncé. My thing is just improvising music and free noise in my basement.

As he did in his early days... It's surprising that at the end of the book he doesn't mention the dissolution of Sonic Youth.

I didn't have enough pages. And I didn't want to explain it in two pages or one chapter; it could be a whole book. I also didn't want to monetize many of the emotional issues in my life. I wanted the book to be about joy.