Kim Gordon

At 70 years old, Kim Gordon has this physical status:

Kim Althea Gordon (born April 28, 1953) is an American singer, songwriter, and bassist, as well as a guitarist and vocalist with the alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Gordon was born in Rochester, New York, where her father, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, was raised.

Gordon came from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, where he began a career in New York City.

In 1981, she and Thurston Moore formed Sonic Youth.

She and Moore married in 1984, and the band released six albums on independent labels before the 1980s.

Nine studio albums would follow on the DGC Records brand, beginning with Goo in 1990.

Gordon was also a founding member of the musical group Free Kitten, which she co-founded with Julia Cafritz in 1993. Sonic Youth's sixteenth and final studio album, The Eternal (2009), was released on Matador Records before disbanding in 2011 after Gordon and Moore separated.

Following Sonic Youth's dissolution and her separation from Moore, Gordon formed the experimental duo Body/Head with Bill Nace in 2013, releasing their debut album Coming Apart in 2013.

She and Alex Knost formed Glitterbust in the late 1990s, releasing a self-titled debut album in 2016.

In 2018, Body/Head's second studio album, The Switch, was released.

In 2019, she released No Home Record, her first solo album.

Gordon has had ventures into recording design, fashion, and acting, as well as being a visual artist throughout her career.

She debuted as a producer on Hole's debut album 'All About the Inside (1991) and subsequently founded the Los Angeles-based clothing company X-Girl in 1993.

Gordon began acting in late-2000s films including Last Days (2005) and I'm Not There (2007), as well as guest-starring appearances on several television series.

Girl in a Band, HarperCollins imprint Dey Street Books, was published in February 2015.

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Life and career

Kim Althea Gordon was born in Rochester, New York, and she and Althea (d. 2002) and Calvin Wayne Gordon (1915-1998) were the second child of Althea (d. 2002). Gordon's father, a native of Kansas, was a professor in the University of Rochester's sociology department at the time of her birth. During her upbringing in the Great Depression, her mother, a descendant of American pioneers of the West Coast, learned to sew and spent time as a seamstress throughout Gordon's life. "Reserved and largely anxious" and "an unfull artist," Gordon called her. Keller, Gordon's older brother, is older (b). (1949), who she described as "brilliant, manipulative, sadistic, and nearly impossible to articulate" and that "the person who made me who I was and who I appeared to be" more than anyone else in the world.

Gordon and her family immigrated to Los Angeles, California, where her father was given a professorship in the sociology department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he later became Dean of Faculty at the University of California. Gordon attended University Elementary School, a UCLA-affiliated kindergarten, where she referred to as "learn[ing] by doing. So we were always making African spears and heading down to the river to make mud huts, skinning a cowhide and drying it off the cliff at Dana Point." Gordon's book tells how she and her family spent summers in Klamath, California, just north of the Oregon border. During her youth, the family lived in Hong Kong for one year.

Gordon attended University High School in Los Angeles and knew Danny Elfman when he was a student there. She attended Santa Monica College for two years before transferring to York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, after graduating high school. Gordon became homesick and decided to leave York at the end of the school year and return to Los Angeles at the end of the year. "I was getting less and less excited as the bleak Toronto winter came," she recalled. "Without the benefit of California sunshine, my hair became darker and darker, and I had no idea how to dress for the cold." She enrolled at the Otis College of Art and Design, which she said "changed my life." Gordon stayed in Culver City and Venice, Los Angeles, and worked at an Indian restaurant to pay her tuition. Larry Gagosian, an art dealer, also worked as a side-job for a brief period of time. In 1977, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

When 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 obtained his Master's degree in classics. He was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent a time in halfway houses before becoming a state ward. "Schizophrenia," which appeared on Sonic Youth's fourth studio album, Sister (1987), was partially inspired by her brother.

Gordon moved to New York City in 1980 after graduating from the Otis Art Institute in the hopes of pursuing a career in art. There, she did art-related jobs to make a living, such as writing for Artforum and launching a "D.I.Y." Design Office is a program that does low-fi artistic interventions" in friends' homes. She curated an exhibition at White Columns Gallery in 1981 that featured contributions from Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler, among others. "I'd go to New York and see bands downtown playing no-wave music," Gordon recalls. It was nihilistic and expressionist at the same time. 'Yes, we're destroying rock,' Punk's rock was tongue-in-cheek,' she mused.' "NO, we're just destroying rock," No-wave music sounds like.' It was really dissonant. I was just thinking, oh, this is really free. I should do that."

Gordon began CKM in 1981 with Christine Hahn and Stanton Miranda, and through Miranda, she met her future Sonic Youth bandmates Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore. Gordon, who is now 27 years old, had never played an instrument. Gordon began dating Moore and the twosome later formed Sonic Youth in 1981, together with Ranaldo. The band's first unnamed EP (considered by the band to be their first album) in 1982 and their first two albums, Confusion is Sex (1983) and Bad Moon Rising (1985), respectively, before signing with SST to release EVOL (1986) and Sister (1987). Gordon and Moore married in 1984, three years after starting Sonic Youth. Through Enigma Records, the band's Daydream Nation emerged in October 1988.

Sonic Youth, a Geffen subsidiary, joined DGC Records in 1989, which became the company's first commercial success. Gordon, Sadie May, and Lydia Lunch formed Harry Crews in 1989, and the album Naked in Garden Hills was released. Gordon went on tour with Sonic Youth extensively between 1990 and 1991, as well as a 1991 documentary titled The Year Punk Broke chronicled the band's tour with Nirvana, Babes in Toyland, Dinosaur Jr., Gumball, and Mudhoney. Courtney Love, who had been influenced by Sonic Youth and the no wave movement, sent Gordon a letter in early 1991, asking her to produce her band Hole's debut album, Pretty on the Inside. Gordon and Don Fleming produced the album in March 1991, which received critical acclaim and later earned cult status. Love "was either charming and generous or screaming at her band," she said on the recording sessions, but that she was also a "really good singer and entertainer and front person." Gordon released "Electric Pen" with Mirror/Dash, a short-lived project she began with Moore in 1992.

Gordon co-owned, with Daisy von Furth, a Los Angeles women's streetwear clothing firm, called X-Girl, starting in 1993. The company was a spin-off of X-Large, a men's streetwear business co-founded by Michael Diamond of the Beastie Boys. In Los Angeles, the first X-Girl store was opened in 1994. Chlo Sevigny, an actress, appeared in several collections of clothing. Gordon founded the musical group Free Kitten with Julia Cafritz in 1993. Gordon gave birth to her only child, daughter Coco Hayley Moore, on July 1, 1994. Thurston Moore was born on July 1, 1994.

In 1995, Free Kitten released their debut studio album, Nice Ass, and Sentimental Education (1997), which were both published under the independent name Kill Rock Stars. Gordon co-directed The Breeders' "Cannonball" music video with Spike Jonze in 1993 and was also involved in an exhibition entitled Baby Generation at Parco gallery in Tokyo. Kim's Bedroom, Gordon's exhibition, was on display at Universita Brussel in the Netherlands, and featured drawing and paintings as well as live music and special guests.

Gordon released several albums in the mid-to-late 1990s, including Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star (1994), Washing Machine (1995), and A Thousand Leaves (1998), all on DGC Records. In 2000, and Murray Street in 2002, they released NYC Ghosts & Flowers. Gordon Gordon moved with Moore from New York City to Northampton, Massachusetts, to raise their daughter in 1999 after selling her X-Girl. Gordon became involved with The Supreme Indifference, a musical collaboration that included Gordon, Jim O'Rourke, and Alan Licht around 2002. The band appeared on the 2002 compilation Fields and Streams, although critic Adrian Begrand of PopMatters called their involvement "annoying" and the scheme "self-indulgent" and the result "self-indulgent."

Gordon was included in the Gothenburg Biennale in 2003 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 participated in another exhibition with Koether in London, United Kingdom, titled "Reverse Karaoke." Kim Gordon Chronicles Vol. 1, an artist's book, was released in the same year. Gordon's first book was published and featured photos from her life. Kim Gordon Chronicles Vol. 31: Kim Gordon Chronicles Vol. 2 in the following years. Her drawings, collages, and paintings were among the 2 new editions, which were included in her books.

Gordon began appearing in minor or supporting roles in films, first as a record executive in Gus Van Sant's Last Days. She appeared in the 2007 French thriller film Boarding Gate and In Todd Haynes's I'm Not There (2004), inspired by Bob Dylan's life. She appeared as a street troubadour in the season six finale of Gilmore Girls, alongside husband Moore and their daughter Coco, on the album Rather Ripped.

Gordon launched Mirror/Dash, a limited-edition fashion line launched in September 2008 (also the name of a musical side project designed with Moore), inspired by Françoise Hardy and based on the belief that "cool moms" have a need for clothes.

In 2009, Sonic Youth's The Eternal, their final studio album, was released. Will Hermes, a Rolling Stone journalist, wrote about the album: "It's amusing to think that the ferocious Sonic Youth, a major-label act for nearly 20 years." The Eternal marks their literal return to indie rock, and this is no surprise considering that they've always done pretty much what they want anyway. The Eternal's most concise record has to be, which is the irony. "It's also a rock & roll assu kidder." Gordon, as well as the remainder of Sonic Youth, made an appearance in the television series Gossip Girl and performed an acoustic interpretation of "Starpower."

After 27 years of marriage, Gordon and Moore divorced in 2011. Sonic Youth disbanded, according to bandmate Ranaldo, who had been together for 30 years. Gordon admitted she had confronted Moore about a text message from another woman, which was followed by counselling sessions, and the break occurred because Moore continued his extra-marital affair. Gordon said her ex-husband was "like a lost soul."

During her divorce, she discovered she had been diagnosed with DCIS breast cancer, which was successfully treated with surgery.

Following the announcement of Sonic Youth's hiatus, Gordon began touring with Ikue Mori, a Tokyo-born drummer with late-1970s band DNA—Gordon had appeared with Mori at NoFunFest in 2004. "You sort of want to get lost, and you want to get lost, and you hope that the audience gets lost with you," Gordon said in a related interview. Bill Nace, Gordon, and Mori were selected for the All Tomorrow's Parties event, which was curated by Deerhunter. Gordon developed "Body/Head," a Nace noise guitar project, and "The Eyes, The Mouth," a Belgian label Ultra Eczema, was released in 2012. Coming Apart, the band's debut album, was released on September 10, 2013, on the Matador Records label, and the band completed a tour of the United States in 2013.

Gordon also immersed herself in creating art after feeling that music had "sidetracked" her career as a visual artist. "The Show Is Over" at Gagosian Gallery in London and "Design Office with Kim Gordon—Since 1980," both in a retrospective of a project she began in 1980, was among the exhibitions. Wreath Paintings by Rudolf Schindler's iconic Fitzpatrick-Leland House were on display in Rudolf Schindler's historic Fitzpatrick-Leland House in 2014 under the Byname of Design Office. Mindy, a recovering heroin user in a rehabilitation program, appeared in the season three premiere of the show Girls as Mindy in January 2014. In a Portlandia episode in March 2014, she appeared as herself.

On February 24, 2015, Gordon published Girl in a Band, a HarperCollins imprint Dey Street Books. The memoir delves into her childhood, life in art, Sonic Youth, and Thurston Moore's marriage, marriage, and divorce. Girl in a Band, the lyric in Sonic Youth's final album, The Eternal (2009), derives from a lyric in "Sacred Trickster." "What's it like to be a girl in a band?" the lyric goes. Gordon debuted in The Nightmare (2015), a German horror film in which she played a schoolteacher, which was released at the Locarno International Film Festival the same year. She also contributed to the film's soundtrack. Gordon moved from Massachusetts, where she had lived with Moore and their daughter, to Los Angeles, where she bought a house in the Franklin Hills neighborhood in November.

Gordon formed Glitterbust, a London-based experimental music band founded in 2015, releasing a self-titled debut album in March 2016. Gordon appeared in Tony Oursler's film Imponderable, which opened at the Museum of Modern Art in June 2016. "Murdered Down" was Gordon's first solo album released on September 12, 2016, followed by her second solo album, "Sketch Artist." On September 11, Air BnB, a third track, was announced. All songs appeared on her debut solo album on Matador Records, No Home Record, which was released on October 13, 2019.

Gordon appeared on HBO's Animals and later in Gus Van Sant's comedy-drama film Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot in 2017. Her album No Home Record was ranked number 8 on Paste Magazine's "20 Top Punk Albums of 2019" list.

Kim Gordon, Gordon's first North American museum solo exhibition, opened at The Andy Warhol Museum in 2019. The exhibition includes a commission score for Andy Warhol's 1963–64 silent film Kiss in conversation with text paintings, figure drawings, and erotic sculpture.

Gordon released "Abstract Blues" on Sub Pop Records in December 2021, backed by "Slow Boy" backed by "Slow Boy."

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