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Kim Gordon Biography & Facts

Kim Althea Gordon (born April 28, 1953) is an American musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of alternative rock band Sonic Youth. Born in Rochester, New York, she was raised in Los Angeles, California, where her father was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduating from Los Angeles's Otis College of Art and Design, she moved to New York City to begin an art career. There, she formed Sonic Youth with Thurston Moore in 1981. She and Moore married in 1984, and the band released a total of six albums on independent labels before the end of the 1980s. They would subsequently release nine studio albums on the major label DGC Records, beginning with Goo in 1990. Gordon was also a founding member of the musical project Free Kitten, which she formed with Julia Cafritz in 1993. Sonic Youth released their sixteenth and final studio album, The Eternal (2009), on Matador Records before disbanding in 2011 after Gordon and Moore separated. Following the dissolution of Sonic Youth and her divorce from Moore, Gordon formed the experimental duo Body/Head with Bill Nace, releasing their debut album Coming Apart in 2013. She subsequently formed Glitterbust with Alex Knost, releasing a self-titled debut album in 2016. Body/Head released their second studio album, The Switch, in 2018. She released her first solo album, No Home Record, in 2019. In addition to her work as a musician, Gordon has had ventures in record producing, fashion, and acting, and has worked consistently as a visual artist throughout her musical career. She debuted as a producer on Hole's debut album Pretty on the Inside (1991), and founded the Los Angeles–based clothing line X-Girl in 1993. Beginning in the mid-2000s, Gordon began acting, making minor appearances in such films as Last Days (2005) and I'm Not There (2007), followed by guest-starring appearances on several television series. In February 2015, she published a memoir, Girl in a Band, by HarperCollins imprint Dey Street Books. Life and career 1953–1978: Early life Kim Althea Gordon was born April 28, 1953 in Rochester, New York, the second child of Althea (d. 2002) and Calvin Wayne Gordon (1915–1998). At the time of her birth, Gordon's father, a native of Kansas, was a professor in the sociology department at the University of Rochester. Her mother, a descendant of American pioneers of the West Coast, learned to sew during her upbringing in the Great Depression, and worked as a seamstress throughout Gordon's childhood. She was described by Gordon as "reserved and usually anxious" and "an unfulfilled artist." Gordon has one older brother, Keller (1949–2023), whom she described as "brilliant, manipulative, sadistic, arrogant, almost unbearably articulate," and "the person who more than anyone else in the world shaped who I was, and who I turned out to be." At the age of five, Gordon and her family relocated to Los Angeles, California when her father was offered a professorship in the sociology department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he later became the Dean of Faculty. As a child, Gordon attended University Elementary School, a progressive elementary school affiliated with UCLA, which she described as "learn[ing] by doing. So we were always making African spears and going down to the river and making mud huts, or skinning a cowhide and drying it and throwing it off the cliff at Dana Point." In her memoir, Gordon recounts spending summers with her family in Klamath, California, near the Oregon border. The family also lived in British Hong Kong for one year during her childhood. Gordon attended University High School in Los Angeles, and dated classmate Danny Elfman while a student there. After graduating high school, she attended Santa Monica College for two years before transferring to York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Gordon soon grew homesick and chose to drop out of York at the end of the school year and return to Los Angeles. "I was less and less happy as the bleak Toronto winter moved in," she recalled. "Without the benefit of California sunshine, my hair grew darker and darker, and I had no idea how to dress for the cold." She decided to enroll at the Otis College of Art and Design, which she said "changed my life." Gordon lived in Culver City and Venice, Los Angeles, and worked at an Indian restaurant to pay her tuition. She also briefly worked for art dealer Larry Gagosian as a side-job. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1977. While 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 earned a Master's degree in classics. He was subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and for a time lived in halfway houses before becoming a ward of the state of California. The song "Schizophrenia," which appeared on Sonic Youth's fourth studio album, Sister (1987), was partly inspired by her brother. 1979–1994: Sonic Youth and X-Girl After graduating from the Otis Art Institute, Gordon moved to New York City in 1980, hoping to pursue a career in art. There, she took art-related jobs to earn an income, such as working as a writer for Artforum, and launched a "D.I.Y. project called Design Office, doing low-fi artistic interventions" in friends' apartments. In 1981, she curated an exhibition at White Columns Gallery that involved contributions from Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler, among others. Around 1981, Gordon became interested in "no-wave" bands, recalling: "When I came to New York, I'd go and see bands downtown playing no-wave music. It was expressionistic and it was also nihilistic. Punk rock was tongue-in-cheek, saying, 'Yeah, we're destroying rock.' No-wave music is more like, 'NO, we're really destroying rock.' It was very dissonant. I just felt like, Wow, this is really free. I could do that." In 1981, Gordon joined the short-lived band CKM, with Christine Hahn and Stanton Miranda, and met her future Sonic Youth bandmates Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore through Miranda. At the time, Gordon, then 27 years old, had never played an instrument. Gordon began dating Moore and, together with Ranaldo, the couple then formed Sonic Youth in 1981. Originally the band released their 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) on Neutral and Homestead Records, respectively, before signing with SST to release EVOL (1986) and Sister (1987). Gordon and Moore married in 1984, three years after beginning Sonic Youth. In October 1988, the band released Daydream Nation through Enigma Records. In 1989, Sonic Youth signed onto DGC Records, a subsidiary of Geffen, and released Goo (1990), which became the group's first commercial hit. Also in 1989, Gordon, Sadie May, and Lydia Lunch formed Harry Crews, an.... Discover the Kim Gordon popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Kim Gordon books.