The album Thurston Moore called a “masterpiece” and the song that floored him
In the late 1970s, a new avant-garde art scene called No Wave took over New York City. The movement birthed dance-inspired artists like the B-52’s and Lizzy Mercier Descloux, as well as an increased interest in noise music from the likes of Swans and Suicide. Sonic Youth were one of the biggest names to emerge out of this scene. Their experimentation with the guitar still influences bands in the indie and alternative scenes today.
At the helm of Sonic Youth’s innovative guitar use was Thurston Moore. In 1976, Moore dropped out of university in Connecticut to join the post-punk no-wave scene in New York. He immersed himself in the culture, joining a hardcore punk band and attending performances by William S. Boroughs and Patti Smith, the latter of whom had a particularly important influence on Moore.
Increasingly engaged with the alternative scene around the CBGB, Moore recalls that he was “well into what Patti Smith was doing in New York”, in an interview with Rolling Stone. He dubs Smith’s 1975 debut record Horses a “masterpiece”, the singer shares: “Radio Ethiopia was great, but by and large, the Patti Smith Band was like a rocking bar band with this amazing poet as a lead singer. They were central to all that was deemed punk rock in the CBGB’s scene in New York.”
Horses flew fairly under the radar, and Patti Smith only gained wider fame outside of the scene with the 1978 hit ‘Because the Night’, written in collaboration with Bruce Springsteen. Moore terms the track “a pretty straight-ahead Patti Smith-Bruce Springsteen composition.” He seems more enamoured with the B-side to the single, ‘God Speed’, written with Ivan Kral, Smith’s bassist.
Moore shares, “That song really floored me because it was so unlike most of their material. It was less straight-ahead and fist-in-the-air kind of Patti Smith style, and it seemed almost improvised. It’s a very heavy song, very evocative, very strange, and very spiritual. It sounds like it was done in the middle of the night with the lights off.”
The song’s unique structure had a particular impact on the Sonic Youth frontman: “It’s not a very verse/chorus/verse/chorus song, and hearing it was very formative to me because of that approach.”
Moore went on to form Sonic Youth with Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo in 1981. Following the formative impact of Smith on the frontman, the majority of their discography followed non-traditional song structures. In fact, it became a surprise when they did – ‘Teen Age Riot’ is one of few tracks with a classic pop structure.
Moore concludes his praise for the album by stating, “In a way, it’s some of her most impassioned delivery on a microphone, but it was relegated to a B-side, and it didn’t appear on Easter. I always held it very dear. It’s always been this amazing song to me. Most people don’t know about it.”
Despite the relative obscurity of ‘God Speed’ and Horses compared to much of Smith’s discography, their influence on Moore is palpable in Sonic Youth’s work and further afield in alternative scenes. Horses remains one of the most important rock albums ever, also inspiring the likes of Hole and Nick Cave.
