Girl in a Band

Kim Gordon is arguably and objectively one of the coolest people to have ever walked the planet. Full stop. An artist’s artist. An L.A. girl who made good in New York City. A woman who sought to define her style and relationship to her art, even as part of a band that helped define alternative music.

I’m stunned at how many people did not like Girl in a Band, and it makes me realize how much parasocial relationships impact people’s ability to enjoy an artist’s work. Most of the criticism was that she didn’t appear graceful and ‘above the fray’ when talking about her ex or other artists. Or annoyed that she isn’t a master of the narrative. Apparently, these folks prefer the ghostwritten bullshit that passes for memoir that most famous people put out.

I listened to the audiobook, which Gordon narrates, and was completely caught up in it. Her life has been fascinating (I had no idea she used to date Danny Elfman!) and at 72 – long after most humans have given up and deteriorated creatively and intellectually – she continues to produce compelling work with a pronounced edge.

The book begins in Gordon’s childhood, and we learn about her fraught family life, especially her emotionally closed-off mother and her mentally ill brother. Her stories about growing up in the sixties in L.A. give us a faded, melancholic snapshot of a very specific time and place that was so creatively powerful and filled with possibility that its reverberations are still felt today.

The book is, admittedly, a bit of a mixed bag. In addition to her early family life, we are treated to anecdotes about moving to New York and finding her way in the art scene, where we’re introduced to a wild and colorful cast of characters – some of whom are well known in popular culture. She also explores her sense of self – her femininity, conscious style choices, her relationship to motherhood, and the heartbreak of having to redefine herself after a public divorce with her ex-husband and former bandmate Thurston Moore.

Gordon pulls no punches. She’s not trying to appease an audience, posture social graces, or perform to the sensibilities of her readers. Her loathing of the woman that Moore left her for is wide open, as is her derision for Courtney Love (Gordon was a good friend of Kurt Cobain). These are people with whom Gordon was in actual relationships, and she has every right to her negative opinions about them.

To be fair, I don’t consume many memoirs, and I generally loathe celebrity culture, but Girl in a Band was a treat. I truly enjoyed it. Maybe it helps that I was never a Sonic Youth stan. I don’t see Kim Gordon as a “celebrity” outside of any popularity (welcome or unwelcome) that Sonic Youth attained in the 90s. She’s an artist, and artists don’t make art for approval.