Lee Ranaldo: 'Daydream' brought us to the top of the heap of the indie...

We've been around long enough that there have certainly been people at every stage of our career telling us about one or another record being influential to their lives in one way or another. It's always nice to hear that stuff.

Lee Ranaldo

nice long people

And for me, I think of the group as one in which there's always this pendulum swinging back and forth between writing shorter, more concise pieces until we get kind of sick of it and then writing pieces that get more sprawling and experimental and explore in different directions.

Lee Ranaldo

sick writing thinking

In a certain way, we felt almost like spies in the major label world. We were coming from some other world, and we somehow got our foot in the door and crept in and were prowling around, checking things out and taking back reports from the front.

Lee Ranaldo

spy world

We're obviously not a platinum-selling band, and yet we've managed to maintain a career on a major label through all this time, and I think we always felt like we were, to a certain degree, infiltrators there. And it's been an interesting thing. It's all been like a big art project for us.

Lee Ranaldo

art interesting thinking

Of course you want to keep making good records, but I think there were certain aspects to the indie rock situation at that point where we were pushing the envelope a little bit too far. We weren't happy with the distribution we were getting, and a few other things. So for a lot of ways it made sense for us to jump to a major label right then, and it made sense in terms of challenging ourselves to put ourselves in new situations.

Lee Ranaldo

situation challenges thinking

Certainly our records could be found in most of the mom and pop indie stores, but we still found there were a lot of major stores that weren't on the tip of knowing what was happening and weren't stocking our records as readily as they were stocking, you know, Guns 'n' Roses or Billy Joel or whatever the hell. That certainly changed, and it changed rapidly after Nirvana's rise, that's for sure.

Lee Ranaldo

gun mom rose

This was early '90s and in New York hip-hop was coming on really strong; that was the sort of urban folk music that was almost threatening to eclipse rock music and indie rock music in terms of popularity, which it has certainly gone on to do. But you know, this is the end of the 1980s, beginning of the '90s. The whole independent label thing has really evolved to this incredible point from the early '80s when we started, and there wasn't one record label at all, until a couple people started forming these small labels.

Lee Ranaldo

independent couple strong

Change is always good. It brings you to a new place.

Lee Ranaldo

place good you change

What Nirvana's success means is that certain radio stations now have their ear more cocked to bands like us; they're more open to playing more stuff.

Lee Ranaldo

more like radio success

I have great memories of the old Times Square - wouldn't have missed being here to see that place for the world - but I can also deal with the new Times Square in the overall scheme of N.Y. City 2010.

Lee Ranaldo

city great memories world

Listening to the Beatles' music figures into pretty much all of my childhood memories.

Lee Ranaldo

childhood music listening memories

Bands rise and surface in the British press so regularly that, for the most part, unless something really catches my ear, I feel like, 'Oh, if they're still around in two years, I'll see what they're up to.'

Lee Ranaldo

rise something feel see

Signing to a major, there weren't many bands from our sphere that were doing it. I mean, obviously R.E.M. had done it, and Husker Du and the Replacements had done it, and maybe Soul Asylum, but that was probably about it. Those four bands were pretty much the only ones from that milieu that had signed to a major.

Lee Ranaldo

pretty doing done soul

I guess I see 'Goo' half as a really New York record because I think there are a lot of really particular New York references on it, but I also see it, for us, as the first of our records that really opened up to the larger world around us.

Lee Ranaldo

new see think world

Signing to a major label was an experiment for us. It was a challenge: working in a big studio with a producer was a challenge in a lot of ways. It all shaped what the band went on to become through the '90s. After we made 'Goo,' we went out and toured with Neil Young in ice hockey arenas for three months, and that was the same kind of thing.

Lee Ranaldo

challenge hockey band three

I'm just old enough to be able to say I got those very first Beatles records right as they were hitting America. My father brought them home. It was definitely the earliest musical influence on my life, and still one of the greatest.

Lee Ranaldo

my-life home life father

'Europe '72' was a super influential record full of fantastic songs and amazing experimental musicianship. I always valued both of those aspects in what Sonic Youth has done through the years - being able to get very abstract and very concrete within the same song.

Lee Ranaldo

amazing youth done song

When I was in the first years of university, I fell in more with the visual arts crowd because it was more interesting than where music was.

Lee Ranaldo

more university music interesting

'Europe '72' came out right around the time that I started going to see the Dead, and it had a huge impression on me.

Lee Ranaldo

dead see me time

I saw the Dead in '73 at Nassau Coliseum, and that same year, I saw them at the crazy, big Watkins Glen festival. It was just outrageous. It was amazing to see the reciprocity between them and their audience.

Lee Ranaldo

dead amazing see crazy