I purchased David Browne's GOODBYE 20TH CENTURY: A BIOGRAPHY OF SONIC YOUTH at the Barnes & Noble I work at back in the year it was published, which was 2008. I first began listening to Sonic Youth in college, maybe around the year 2001 or thereabouts, and for many years I considered myself a casual fan of the band at best, but over the last two decades they've grown on me, to the extent that this year I finally placed them on my "Top 10 Favorite Bands" list. One of the things that fascinates me about Sonic Youth (and which this book covers to some degree) is that they really weren't typical rock stars, in that they avoided excesses of sex and drugs, and followed a very frugal business model (the book mentions their interest in achieving modest record sales yet a fiercely loyal fan base, having creative autonomy, and maintaining longevity). Also, much like another artist that I covered in these installments (Alfred Hitchcock), the band were more observers than participants. The underground filmmaker Richard Kern makes the same observation in this book: he compared the band to being like Andy Warhol at the Silver Factory, saying that, in contrast to the freaky underground types they rubbed elbows with, outside of the chaos of their art the band were more like levelheaded businessmen with traditional/conservative middle class lifestyles: in this way, I can see a bit of myself in the band's approach to art and life (while on the subject, I also relate to their obsession with pop culture, and how it seems that the things they were into were either really super-mainstream and popular or super underground and obscure, with little middle ground: in some ways I myself am of the same aesthetic temperament).
Browne (a former rock critic) does a very good job at writing a (nearly complete) biography of the band. Not only did he interview at length the four primary band members, but also many of their former band members, business associates, record label executives, and celebrity pals: everyone from Michael Gira to Lydia Lunch to Sofia Coppola to Chloe Sevigny. He also made the decision to divide the book into three parts, each dealing with a different era of the band's career. The first (and longest) part, "Rise," deals with the backgrounds of the different band members, the band's origins, and the recording of their earliest albums up to the classic DAYDREAM NATION and their signing with the Geffen record label: this section really captures the nihilism and grime of the early 80s NYC No Wave scene. Part Two, "Infiltration," mainly covers the first half of the 1990s and the peak of the band's brief flirtation with the mainstream: in some ways this is usually my favorite section to read, which is weird because I find much of the band's 90s output fairly weak (with a few exceptions). Part Three, "Refuge," covers the rest of the 90s and up to what was then the present day, concluding with the band releasing their second to last studio album (RATHER RIPPED) and transformation into "elder counterculture statesmen."
Sometimes I do wish, though, that Browne had worked on the book a few more years before it was published. Had he waited until 2009, he could have included material on the band's final studio album, THE ETERNAL. Had he waited until 2011, he could have also written about the band's final concerts and eventual dissolution, which would have made his book then a complete history of the band, from beginning to end. As it stands now, it feels a bit incomplete, though of course, the year he had finished writing it (2007), he would have had no clue that the band would break up just four years later (and certainly at the time the band had no inkling about this themselves). Also, considering the bad blood that poisoned the band following Thurston Moore's affair with Eva Prinz (an affair which began, as far as I can tell, in 2010), perhaps the band would not have been as candid and forthcoming in their interviews with the author. Interestingly enough, despite the fact that Prinz had been in the Sonic Youth orbit for a number of years by that point, there's no reference to her in the book itself, save for an otherwise cryptic reference to former band member Jim O'Rourke's "problematic personal relationship at home."
I've long felt that the mark of a good music book is that it makes you want to go out and relisten to the albums it covers after you read about them. When doing my annual readthrough of this book this year, I decided to relisten to all 15 of the Sonic Youth studio albums. Some of these albums I've heard many, many times... a few of them only a handful. In any event, and not counting their various side projects (THE WHITEY ALBUM), EPs, SYR releases or other offshoots, if I had to rank their albums from best to worst, it would probably be like this:
1. Murray Street (2002)
2. Daydream Nation (1988)
3. Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star (1994)
4. The Eternal (2009)
5. Evol (1986)
6. Sonic Nurse (2004)
7. Sister (1987)
8. Rather Ripped (2006)
9. Dirty (1992)
10. Washing Machine (1995)
11. Confusion Is Sex (1983)
12. Bad Moon Rising (1985)
13. A Thousand Leaves (1998)
14. NYC Ghosts & Flowers (2000)
15. Goo (1990)
