I love music, and I love reading music autobiographies and memoirs. So today, I’m reviewing Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon, the founding member of Sonic Youth.
Title: Girl in a Band
Series: N/A
Author(s): Kim Gordon (Author), Rachel Kushner (Introduction)
Genre(s): Non-Fiction, Memoir, Autobiography, Rock ‘n’ Roll
Length: 288 pages
Release Date: February 24, 2015
Blurb: Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, fashion icon, and role model for a generation of women, now tells her story—a memoir of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll, written with the lyricism and haunting beauty of Patti Smith’s Just Kids.
Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band. Telling the story of her family, growing up in California in the ’60s and ’70s, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band. Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir.
Gordon takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and ’90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music. The band helped build a vocabulary of music—paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means—and what happens when that identity dissolves.
Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist.
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This book was on sale at Kobo for 1.99 so I made a quick purchase. I love rock ‘n’ roll memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies, and seeing that this had rave reviews, I was all in for reading, even though I never heard one song by Sonic Youth LOL.
The author has an easy-to-read narrative. Not chatty. Not a cup-of-coffee vibe. But one of a woman quietly telling her story.
I don’t know anything about the author, and after reading, I found I really liked her. She’s quite artistic and has a huge passion for art, while also being somewhat of an enigma, even after a full read.
She does give peeks into her life during her childhood. The beginning of the book is what I enjoyed most, especially when she spoke about her mother and brother. But I found when she got to the meat of the book, she drifted, giving more of what I liken to bullet points of her musical life than sharing more about her emotions and feelings during this time, which made the middle of the book somewhat of a slog. I must confess I sort of skimmed pages because I didn’t know any of the people she spoke about, except for Kurt Cobain and a few others.
As she gets to the end of the book, this is where the novel picks up steam again, as she speaks about being a rock ‘n’ roll mom, the disintegration of her marriage, and her final years with Sonic Youth.
Was I disappointed? A little. It’s a good read but not something I’d re-read, since that’s when I know I love a book. Still, I enjoyed her story and what she had to say.
Maggie Blackbird 